Raymond will excite these missionaries not to slacken their efforts; but he will warn them at the same time so to contain their zeal as not to compromise themselves with the English, and give just occasion of complaint."[84] That is, the King orders his representative to encourage the missionaries in instigating their flocks to butcher English settlers, but to see that they take care not to be found out.  The injunction was hardly needed.  “Monsieur Desherbiers,” says a letter of earlier date, “has engaged Abbe Le Loutre to distribute the usual presents among the savages, and Monsieur Bigot has placed in his hands an additional gift of cloth, blankets, powder, and ball, to be given them in case they harass the English at Halifax.  This missionary is to induce them to do so."[85] In spite of these efforts, the Indians began to relent in their hostilities; and when Longueuil became provisional governor of Canada, he complained to the Minister that it was very difficult to prevent them from making peace with the English, though Father Germain was doing his best to keep them on the war-path.[86] La Jonquiere, too, had done his best, even to the point of departing from his original policy of allowing no soldier or Acadian to take part with them.  He had sent a body of troops under La Corne, an able partisan officer, to watch the English frontier; and in the same vessel was sent a supply of “merchandise, guns, and munitions for the savages and the Acadians who may take up arms with them; and the whole is sent under pretext of trading in furs with the savages."[87] On another occasion La Jonquiere wrote:  “In order that the savages may do their part courageously, a few Acadians, dressed and painted in their way, could join them to strike the English.  I cannot help consenting to what these savages do, because we have our hands tied [by the peace], and so can do nothing ourselves.  Besides, I do not think that any inconvenience will come of letting the Acadians mingle among them, because if they [the Acadians] are captured, we shall say that they acted of their own accord."[88] In other words, he will encourage them to break the peace; and then, by means of a falsehood, have them punished as felons.  Many disguised Acadians did in fact join the Indian war-parties; and their doing so was no secret to the English.  “What we call here an Indian war,” wrote Hopson, successor of Cornwallis, “is no other than a pretence for the French to commit hostilities on His Majesty’s subjects.”

[Footnote 84:  Memoire du Roy pour servir d’Instruction au Comte de Raymond, 24 Avril, 1751.]

[Footnote 85:  Lettre commune de Desherbiers et Bigot au Ministre, 15 Aout, 1749.]

[Footnote 86:  Longueuil au Ministre, 26 Avril, 1752.]

[Footnote 87:  Bigot au Ministre, 1749.]

[Footnote 88:  Depeches de la Jonquiere, 1 Mai, 1751.  See Appendix B.]