Expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia

Meanwhile Jean Baptiste Le Coeur, the young Acadian, had never lost his faith in the prophecy of his heart at parting, that he and Adele would meet again and be happy. He was now trading with some Mohawks at the French mission at Crown Point. One of the young barbarians told him that a beautiful French girl, the captive of an old chief, who treated her tenderly as a daughter, was then in the Scarron (Schroon) Valley. Le Coeur was instantly impressed with the belief that she was his lost Adele. He accompanied the young Mohawk to the borders of Scarron Lake, where he found the lodge of the chief. As he approached it, in the shadows of the forest, he saw a young woman, with her back toward him, sitting on a mat at the door of the wigwam feathering some arrows. On her head was a French cap. Her neck was fair. He approached her gently. Their eyes met. The maiden sprang from the mat, and uttering a wild cry of jean she fell, fainting, in her lover's arms. It was a moment of supreme joy. The prophecy of Le Coeur's heart was fulfilled. The old chief, touched with mercy and compassion, gave away his pale - faced daughter before the altar at Crown Point, where the affianced at Grand Pre were married by a revered priest of the beloved church, in the bosom of the wilderness. Descendants of Jean Baptiste and Adele now occupy a high social position in Montreal.

The English officials pursued the smitten Acadians with a rod of hatred, after their expulsion. When Lord Loudon was commander-in-chief of the British forces in America, some of the Acadians, settled in Pennsylvania, ventured to address a respectful petition to him. The cold-blooded earl, offended because the document was in the French language, brutally seized five of the leading men who signed the petition, and who had been persons of wealth and distinction in Nova Scotia, and sent them to England with a request that, to prevent their being troublesome in the future, they should be consigned to hard service as common sailors in the British navy. The king appears to have approved the measure; and the Lords of Trade, when the exodus from and the desolation of Acadia was completed, congratulated the British monarch-the profligate Hanoverian - that "the zealous endeavors of Lawrence [governor of Nova Scotia] had been crowned with entire success." The annals of the most barbarous nations can afford nothing more exquisitely cruel than the treatment these poor people received from their English conquerors. "We have been true to our religion and to ourselves, yet nature appears to consider us only as objects of public vengeance," said some of them who remained in Nova Scotia, sadly, in a petition to the local government for relief.

During these movements in the East, the expedition against Fort Du Quesne had begun and ended. Braddock, sanguine and dogmatic, had written to Newcastle from Williamsburgh, that he should be beyond the Alleghanies before the close of April. In an interview with Dr. Franklin at Frederick, Maryland, he told the statesman, in a boastful manner, what he should do elsewhere in America, after he had captured the Ohio fort. He saw no serious obstacles in his way. The philosopher, seeing how shallow was the general's knowledge of the impediments before him, ventured to say at the commander's dinner-table that the mountains were hard to pass with troops and their supplies, and that the Indians were dexterous in laying and executing ambushes. "The savages," said Braddock haughtily, "may be formidable to your raw American militia; upon the king's regulars and disciplined troops, it is impossible they should make any impression." This remark was a key to the secret of his subsequent misfortunes.

The army for the recovery of Fort Du Quesne assembled at Alexandria. Colonels Dunbar and Sir Peter Halket were Braddock's chief lieutenants. There Colonel Washington, who had been invited by Braddock to join his military family as aid, and retain his title, and had agreed to accept the position, but as a volunteer only, had his first interview with the general. The young Virginian joined the army at Will's Creek (Cumberland) in May, where it had been detained by lack of horses and wagons for transportation, which Dr. Franklin, when called upon, promptly supplied from Pennsylvania. The whole force gathered there, regulars and provincials, each in about equal numbers, was two thousand men. Braddock looked upon the latter with contempt, and wrote to ministers that he did not expect much from them because they had "little courage or good-will." In his petulance because of frequent breaches of promise on the part of contractors, he charged the whole American people with a want of ability, honor and honesty, and raved at times like a madman. Washington found him, as he wrote to William Fairfax, "incapable of arguing without warmth, or giving up any point he asserts, be it ever so incompatible with reason or common sense."