venturous; and when the English landed, they wanted to leave the harbor and save their ships.  Drucour insisted that they should stay to aid the defence, and they complied; but soon left their moorings and anchored as close as possible under the guns of the town, in order to escape the fire of Wolfe’s batteries.  Hence there was great murmuring among the military officers, who would have had them engage the hostile guns at short range.  The frigate “Echo,” under cover of a fog, had been sent to Quebec for aid; but she was chased and captured; and, a day or two after, the French saw her pass the mouth of the harbor with an English flag at her mast-head.

When Wolfe had silenced the Island Battery, a new and imminent danger threatened Louisbourg.  Boscawen might enter the harbor, overpower the French naval force, and cannonade the town on its weakest side.  Therefore Drucour resolved to sink four large ships at the entrance; and on a dark and foggy night this was successfully accomplished.  Two more vessels were afterwards sunk, and the harbor was then thought safe.

The English had at last finished their preparations, and were urging on the siege with determined vigor.  The landward view was a solitude no longer.  They could be seen in multitudes piling earth and fascines beyond the hillock at the edge of the marsh.  On the twenty-fifth they occupied the hillock itself, and fortified themselves there under a shower of bombs.  Then they threw up earth on the right, and pushed their approaches towards the Barachois, in spite of a hot fire from the frigate “Arethuse.”  Next they appeared on the left towards the sea about a third of a mile from the Princess’s Bastion.  It was Wolfe, with a strong detachment, throwing up a redoubt and opening an entrenchment.  Late on the night of the ninth of July six hundred French troops sallied to interrupt the work.  The English grenadiers in the trenches fought stubbornly with bayonet and sword, but were forced back to the second line, where a desperate conflict in the dark took place; and after severe loss on both sides the French were driven back.  Some days before, there had been another sortie on the opposite side, near the Barachois, resulting in a repulse of the French and the seizure by Wolfe of a more advanced position.

Various courtesies were exchanged between the two commanders.  Drucour, on occasion of a flag of truce, wrote to Amherst that there was a surgeon of uncommon skill in Louisbourg, whose services were at the command of any English officer who might need them.  Amherst on his part sent to his enemy letters and messages from wounded Frenchmen in his hands, adding his compliments to Madame Drucour, with an expression of regret for the disquiet to which she was exposed, begging her at the same time to accept a gift of pineapples from the West Indies.  She returned his courtesy by sending him a basket of wine; after which amenities the cannon roared again.  Madame Drucour was a woman of heroic spirit.  Every day she was on the ramparts, where her presence roused the soldiers to enthusiasm; and every day with her own hand she fired three cannon to encourage them.