GLOSSARY:
In support of ...
BLUPETE'S HISTORY OF NOVA SCOTIA: 1600-1763.
The English and French Regiments at Louisbourg: 1758.
Introduction:
A regiment is, as we may see from the OED, a "considerable body of troops, more or less permanently organized under the command of a superior officer, and forming a definite unit of an army or military force." At Louisbourg, in 1758, there was to be thirteen English regiments and five French regiments, which, we list below. As for the English, in all, at Louisbourg, there were four colonels, 11 lt-colonels, 10 majors, 97 captains, 216 lieutenants, 106 ensigns, 6 chaplains, 13 adjutants, 14 quarter-masters, 14 surgeons, 23 surgeons-mates, 476 sergeants, 258 drummers, and 11,021 rank and file.1
In 1758, as part of a larger project known in history as the Seven Years War, the English determined to launch an attack against Louisbourg. Fifteen thousand army men, ten thousand of which were regulars, were to be employed in the expedition against Louisbourg; they were under the command of Jeffrey Amherst. It was to be a complex military operation carried out in days when instant communication and easy transportation did not exist. The theatre of war where the troops had to be landed was a place that was remote and for many of the men that came together there at Louisbourg: a half a world away. In the mid-18th century all things had to be moved physically by slow transport. In this regard a very large English fleet of sailing vessels were drawn together at Halifax, just a two day sail south of Louisbourg. One hundred and twenty transports and other auxiliary vessels were employed, together with 23 men-of-war and 16 smaller vessels, carrying crews of about 14,000 men. On June the 8th, 1758, the British had affected a landing on the shores just below Louisbourg and the Siege of Louisbourg of 1758 had gotten underway.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] These numbers were set forth by Gordon in his journal, as is a rather full accounting of all the men and supplies used in the Louisbourg campaign of 1758. (NSHS, vol. 10)
[2] A regiment had always taken its name after the commanding officer at its head, until, in 1751, when the British officially designated its regiments by numbers; thus, that which had been known as Cornwallis's, late Phillipp's, became the Fortieth Regiment of Foot, viz., "The Fighting Fortieth." (See NSHS#21 p. 132.)
[3] "The Assault Landing, 1758," by J. MacKay Hitsman and C. C. J. Bond, published in The Canadian Historical Review, Vol. XXXV, no. 4, Dec., 1954, p. 327.
[4] Bell's, Foreign Protestants, p. 166.
[5] See Eye witness' account, the "Cunningham Letter," as set forth by McLennan (Louisbourg) at p. 239.
[6] "There were 1000 men of the Regiment d'Artois entrenched there, with one 24-pounder, four 6-pounders and six swivels." (Hitsman and Bond, "A Foredoomed Fortress," published in Canadian Army Journal, April, 1956, p. 85.) That there was a thousand French regulars mounting the shore defences (indeed, most all of the French soldiers were in the field at the time the British were coming in) is certainly so; but it is likely there was only 500 of the Artois, and that would account for most all of them at Louisbourg. (The count of 520 is given by McLennan, op. cit., p. 263.)
[7] "The Expedition of the Second Battalion of the Cambis Regiment to Louisbourg, 1758"; by Michel Wyczynski; NSHR, vol. 10 (1990), No. 2, p. 98.
[8] "A Foredoomed Fortress," Hitsman and Bond, op. cit., p. 85.
[9] In A History of the Island of Cape Breton (1869), the author, Richard Brown, at page 304, estimates that 3,400 soldiers constituted the garrison at Louisbourg when the British came ashore in June of 1758. In addition, there was 700 "burgher militia," a band of Indians and the crews of the French fleet which had managed to get into the harbour. The men of the ships, which were all pressed into service during the siege, would have amounted to 3,500, or so.