Fort Beauséjour
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Fort Beauséjour (), renamed Fort Cumberland in 1755, is a large, five-
bastion A bastion is a structure projecting outward from the curtain wall of a fortification, most commonly angular in shape and positioned at the corners of the fort. The fully developed bastion consists of two faces and two flanks, with fire from the ...
ed
fort A fortification (also called a fort, fortress, fastness, or stronghold) is a military construction designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from La ...
on the
Isthmus of Chignecto The Isthmus of Chignecto is an isthmus bordering the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia that connects the Nova Scotia peninsula with North America. The isthmus separates the waters of Chignecto Bay, a sub-basin of the Bay of ...
in eastern Canada, a neck of land connecting the present-day province of
New Brunswick New Brunswick is a Provinces and Territories of Canada, province of Canada, bordering Quebec to the north, Nova Scotia to the east, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the northeast, the Bay of Fundy to the southeast, and the U.S. state of Maine to ...
with that of
Nova Scotia Nova Scotia is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada, located on its east coast. It is one of the three Maritime Canada, Maritime provinces and Population of Canada by province and territory, most populous province in Atlan ...
. The site was strategically important in
Acadia Acadia (; ) was a colony of New France in northeastern North America which included parts of what are now the The Maritimes, Maritime provinces, the Gaspé Peninsula and Maine to the Kennebec River. The population of Acadia included the various ...
, a French colony that included primarily the
Maritimes The Maritimes, also called the Maritime provinces, is a region of Eastern Canada consisting of three provinces: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The Maritimes had a population of 1,899,324 in 2021, which makes up 5.1% of ...
, the eastern part of Quebec, and northern
Maine Maine ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the United States, and the northeasternmost state in the Contiguous United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Provinces and ...
of the later United States. The fort was built by the French from 1751 to 1752. They surrendered it to the British in 1755 after their defeat in the Battle of Fort Beauséjour, during the
Seven Years' War The Seven Years' War, 1756 to 1763, was a Great Power conflict fought primarily in Europe, with significant subsidiary campaigns in North America and South Asia. The protagonists were Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and Kingdom of Prus ...
. The British renamed the structure as Fort Cumberland. The fort was strategically important throughout the Anglo-French rivalry of 1749–63, known as the French and Indian Wars by British colonists. Less than a generation later, it was the site of the 1776 Battle of Fort Cumberland, when the British forces repulsed sympathisers of the
American Revolution The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a colonial rebellion and war of independence in which the Thirteen Colonies broke from British America, British rule to form the United States of America. The revolution culminated in the American ...
. Since 1920 the site has been designated as a
National Historic Site of Canada National Historic Sites of Canada () are places that have been designated by the federal Minister of the Environment on the advice of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada (HSMBC), as being of national historic significance. Parks C ...
, named the Fort Beauséjour – Fort Cumberland National Historic Site. Portions of the fort have been restored, and a museum and visitor facilities were added to the site. It attracts about 6000 visitors annually.Fort Beauséjour – Fort Cumberland National Historic Site of Canada
Parks Canada


Historical context

During the 1600s and 1700s, European monarchies were nearly continuously at war with each other. The threat of Anglo-American invasion of
New France New France (, ) was the territory colonized by Kingdom of France, France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Kingdom of Great Br ...
was constant, as England tried to establish power in North America, and Acadia was particularly vulnerable to attacks by water. Its capital, Port-Royal, was founded in 1605, destroyed by the British in 1613, moved upstream in 1632, besieged by the British in 1707, and finally taken in the
Siege of Port Royal (1710) The siege of Port Royal (5–13 October 1710),Dates in this article are given in the New Style; many older English accounts use Old Style dates for this action: 24 September to 2 October also known as the Conquest of Acadia, was a military sie ...
. Under the terms of the 1713
Treaty of Utrecht The Peace of Utrecht was a series of peace treaty, peace treaties signed by the belligerents in the War of the Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city of Utrecht between April 1713 and February 1715. The war involved three contenders for the vac ...
, the
Kingdom of France The Kingdom of France is the historiographical name or umbrella term given to various political entities of France in the Middle Ages, medieval and Early modern France, early modern period. It was one of the most powerful states in Europe from th ...
had ceded to the
Kingdom of Great Britain Great Britain, also known as the Kingdom of Great Britain, was a sovereign state in Western Europe from 1707 to the end of 1800. The state was created by the 1706 Treaty of Union and ratified by the Acts of Union 1707, which united the Kingd ...
the territory known today as mainland Nova Scotia. The treaty stated that France retained control of
ÃŽle Royale The Salvation Islands ( French: ''ÃŽles du Salut'', so called because the missionaries went there to escape plague on the mainland), sometimes mistakenly called the Safety Islands, are a group of small islands of volcanic origin about off the co ...
(now
Cape Breton Island Cape Breton Island (, formerly '; or '; ) is a rugged and irregularly shaped island on the Atlantic coast of North America and part of the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. The island accounts for 18.7% of Nova Scotia's total area. Although ...
) and ÃŽle Saint-Jean (
Prince Edward Island Prince Edward Island is an island Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. While it is the smallest province by land area and population, it is the most densely populated. The island has several nicknames: "Garden of the Gulf", ...
). France's colony of Canada, or New France, extended from the
Gaspé Peninsula The Gaspé Peninsula, also known as Gaspesia (, ; ), is a peninsula along the south shore of the St. Lawrence River that extends from the Matapedia Valley in Quebec, Canada, into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It is separated from New Brunswick on it ...
in the east to Quebec in the west. The treaty of Utrecht defined neither which nation had sovereignty over the land between Gaspesie and Nova Scotia, now New Brunswick, nor the western border of Nova Scotia. The ''de facto'' border became the Isthmus of Chignecto at the Missiguash River, site of the prosperous Acadian settlement Beaubassin. In the mid-1700s France and Britain were about to clash worldwide and in North America in the
Seven Years' War The Seven Years' War, 1756 to 1763, was a Great Power conflict fought primarily in Europe, with significant subsidiary campaigns in North America and South Asia. The protagonists were Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and Kingdom of Prus ...
. By the middle of the 1700s, over one million British colonists occupied a limited area along the Atlantic coast, but the primarily ethnic French population of what is now The Maritimes was 18,544, part of a total New France population of 70,000.


Fort Beauséjour

As tensions escalated, in 1749 the British erected fortifications in Nova Scotia at Citadel Hill, Halifax, which they founded as a town; and at Fort Sackville,
Bedford Bedford is a market town in Bedfordshire, England. At the 2011 Census, the population was 106,940. Bedford is the county town of Bedfordshire and seat of the Borough of Bedford local government district. Bedford was founded at a ford (crossin ...
. The French rebuilt the
Fortress of Louisbourg The Fortress of Louisbourg () is a tourist attraction as a National Historic Sites of Canada, National Historic Site and the location of a one-quarter partial reconstruction of an 18th-century Kingdom of France, French fortress at Louisbourg, Nov ...
, and re-occupied Fort Nerepis as part of their defences. In 1750 the French added to the military personnel in their colony. In April of that year Governor Edward Cornwallis of Nova Scotia sent British Major Charles Lawrence with a small force to establish British authority in the isthmus of Chignecto. On the north bank of the Missaguash River, Lawrence found French forces under Louis de La Corne, who had orders to prevent any British advance beyond that point. De La Corne evacuated and burned the village of Beaubassin to prevent its aiding the British. Rather than fight the French, with whom the British were not at war, or admit to any territorial limitation, Lawrence withdrew. Officials in London disagreed about how far to direct actions of troops in establishing national claims during a time of peace. But Cornwallis eventually sent Lawrence to the Missaguash River with a stronger force and they routed a group of Abenaki and allied Indians led by Father Le Loutre, a French agent provocateur. In the autumn of 1750 Lawrence built Fort Lawrence near the site of the ruined village of Beaubassin. In November 1750 Governor General de la Jonquière ordered that two forts be built at either end of the Isthmus of Chignecto to block the British: one was Fort Gaspareaux on the Northumberland Strait and the other Fort Beauséjour on the
Bay of Fundy The Bay of Fundy () is a bay between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with a small portion touching the U.S. state of Maine. It is an arm of the Gulf of Maine. Its tidal range is the highest in the world. The bay was ...
. Construction began in April 1751 under the direction of Lieutenant Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry. By 1751 the
gunpowder magazine A gunpowder magazine is a magazine (building) designed to store the explosive gunpowder in wooden barrels for safety. Gunpowder, until superseded, was a universal explosive used in the military and for civil engineering: both applications re ...
, a well, four casemates, and officers' quarters were finished. The
barracks Barracks are buildings used to accommodate military personnel and quasi-military personnel such as police. The English word originates from the 17th century via French and Italian from an old Spanish word 'soldier's tent', but today barracks ar ...
were added the following year. By 1753 the fort had
palisade A palisade, sometimes called a stakewall or a paling, is typically a row of closely placed, high vertical standing tree trunks or wooden or iron stakes used as a fence for enclosure or as a defensive wall. Palisades can form a stockade. Etymo ...
walls and a earthwork. It was a pentagon-shaped
fort A fortification (also called a fort, fortress, fastness, or stronghold) is a military construction designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from La ...
with
bastion A bastion is a structure projecting outward from the curtain wall of a fortification, most commonly angular in shape and positioned at the corners of the fort. The fully developed bastion consists of two faces and two flanks, with fire from the ...
s built of earth and pickets at the corners. In 1754, Louis Du Pont Duchambon de Vergor became the commander of Fort Beausejour. Events eventually revealed that he was unfit for military command. Louis-Léonard Aumasson de Courville, who became Vergor's secretary at Beauséjour claimed that Vergor was "avaricious in the extreme," and in his memoirs is a quotation attributed to François Bigot: "Profit, my dear Vergor, by your opportunity t Beauséjour trim, â€“ cut â€“ you have the power â€“ in order that you may soon join me in France and purchase an estate near me."


Battle of Fort Beauséjour

The French position may have been undermined by
Thomas Pichon Thomas Pichon (30 March 1700 – 22 November 1781), also known as Thomas Tyrell, was a French government agent during Father Le Loutre's War. Pichon is renowned for betraying the French, Acadian and Mi’kmaq forces by providing information to t ...
, a clerk at the fort. The British commandant at Fort Lawrence paid Pichon for information about French activities. Pichon provided accounts of French activities, plans of forts and an outline of the steps necessary for capture, which Lieutenant-Colonel  Robert Monckton later used in the attacks. Pichon delayed the strengthening of Beauséjour by advising that the British would not attack that year. A convoy of 31 transports and three warships left
Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
on 19 May 1755, carrying nearly 2,000
New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...
provincial troops and 270 British regulars, and dropped anchor near the mouth of the Missaguash River on 2 June. The next day the troops, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel
Robert Monckton Lieutenant general (United Kingdom), Lieutenant-General Robert Monckton (24 June 1726 – 21 May 1782) was a British Army officer, politician and colonial administrator. He had a distinguished military and political career, being second in com ...
of the regular army, disembarked a few kilometres from Fort Beauséjour. To defend the fort, Commander Louis Du Pont Duchambon de Vergor had only 150 soldiers from the Compagnies franches de la Marine and a dozen canonniers-bombardiers. On June 16, a large English bomb went through the roof of a casemate and killed many of its occupants. Vergor laid down his weapons. The fort was surrendered, and renamed Fort Cumberland. The next day Fort Gaspereau was surrendered without being attacked. The fall of these forts settled the boundary dispute in favour of the British and marked the beginning of the Expulsion of the Acadians. The minister of Marine, Machault, had good reason to believe the forts had been "very ill defended" and Vergor was summoned before a
court martial A court-martial (plural ''courts-martial'' or ''courts martial'', as "martial" is a postpositive adjective) is a military court or a trial conducted in such a court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the mili ...
at Quebec in September 1757 but was acquitted.


Fort Cumberland

In the months following the fort's capture, British forces ordered Acadians living in the region to sign an oath of allegiance to the British Crown. However, the Acadians refused, preferring to remain neutral. Some Acadians reported that they had been coerced into assisting in the defense of Fort Beauséjour, and the British used this as a reason to begin the Expulsion of the Acadians. Acadian homes were burnt to prevent their return. As the British army had relocated to Fort Cumberland, they abandoned and burned Fort Lawrence in October 1756. Fort Cumberland became one of the sites in which the British imprisoned or temporarily held Acadians during the nine years of the expulsion, the others being Fort Edward (Nova Scotia); Fort Frederick,
Saint John, New Brunswick Saint John () is a port#seaport, seaport city located on the Bay of Fundy in the province of New Brunswick, Canada. It is Canada's oldest Municipal corporation, incorporated city, established by royal charter on May 18, 1785, during the reign ...
, and Fort Charlotte, Georges Island, Halifax. Under the leadership of French officer Boishébert, Acadians and Mi'kmaq fought the expulsion from their homeland. In the early spring of 1756, a band of Acadian and Mi'kmaq partisans ambushed a small party of New England soldiers' cutting wood for Fort Cumberland, killing and mutilating nine men. In April 1757, after raiding Fort Edward, a band of Acadian and Mi'kmaq partisans also raided Fort Cumberland, killing and scalping two men and taking two prisoners. In July, Mi'kmaq captured two of Gorham's rangers outside Fort Cumberland. In March 1758, forty Acadian and Mi'kmaq attacked a schooner at Fort Cumberland and killed its master and two sailors. In the winter of 1759, five British soldiers on patrol were ambushed while crossing a bridge near Fort Cumberland. They were scalped and their bodies were mutilated as was common in frontier warfare. In October 1761, commander of the fort Roderick McKenzie of the Montgomery's Highlanders went to Bay of Chaleurs to remove the 787 Acadians. He captured 335. In 1776, early in the
American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which Am ...
, Fort Cumberland and its garrison of the Royal Fencible American Regiment repelled several rebel attacks in the Battle of Fort Cumberland. These were mounted by local
guerrillas Guerrilla warfare is a form of unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military, such as rebels, Partisan (military), partisans, paramilitary personnel or armed civilians, which may include Children in the military, recruite ...
led by the American sympathizer Jonathan Eddy. After the end of the Revolutionary War, by which the United States gained independence, the British abandoned Fort Cumberland in the late 1780s. When territorial conflict with the United States resumed in the
War of 1812 The War of 1812 was fought by the United States and its allies against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom and its allies in North America. It began when the United States United States declaration of war on the Uni ...
, Britain sent forces to refurbish the fort and garrison it. It was not the site of any action in that war. In 1835 the British military declared the fort surplus property and it was abandoned.


National Historic Site

In 1920 the fort was designated as a
National Historic Site of Canada National Historic Sites of Canada () are places that have been designated by the federal Minister of the Environment on the advice of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada (HSMBC), as being of national historic significance. Parks C ...
for its significance to French and British history in the country. It is named the Fort Beauséjour – Fort Cumberland National Historic Site. Portions of the fort have been restored. In addition, a museum and visitor facilities have been constructed. The museum depicts and interprets the conflicts between France and Great Britain in the 1700s, and the later struggle between rebels of the Thirteen Colonies and Britain. Attracting about 6000 visitors each year, the fort contributes to heritage tourism in the Maritimes.


Commanders

* Louis de la Corne, Chevalier de la Corne (1749–1750) – established pickets * Pierre-Roch of Saint-Ours D'Eschallions (1750–1751) * Jean-Baptiste Mutigny de Vassan (1751–1753) * Louis Du Pont Duchambon de Vergor (1754)


See also

* List of French forts in North America * Military history of Nova Scotia


References


Further reading

* Jeremiah Bancroft kept a diary in which he gives an account of the fall of Fort Beausejour and the Expulsion of the Acadians at Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia.Jonathan Fowler and Earle Lockerby (2009). Operations at Fort Beausejour and Grande Pre in 1755: A soldier's diary. ''The Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society Journal'' pp. 145–184 {{DEFAULTSORT:Beausejour, Fort Military forts in New Brunswick Buildings and structures in Westmorland County, New Brunswick French forts in Canada French forts in North America National Historic Sites in New Brunswick Military forts in Acadia Fort Beausejour Fort Beausejour French and Indian War forts Tourist attractions in Westmorland County, New Brunswick Forts or trading posts on the National Historic Sites of Canada register Military history of Nova Scotia Military history of New England 1751 establishments in the French colonial empire