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Another interesting and well known figure was one Charles DesChanps Boishebert. He, too, was a native Canadian and had been in the military service since 1742 and had come to Acadia the year previous, with Ramezay who was his uncle. His future career was a chequered one. At one time he was engaged in defending the trade route between Detroit and Montreal. Later on he was in Paris but was back again in Acadia in 1755. He gained great reputation during the next few years, in making Sorties upon the English garrisons and in rescuing Acadian refugees, who had escaped the Expulsion. He fought at Quebec in 1759, and at St. Foy in 1760. Following the Conquest, he was arrested for peculation and suffered confinement in the Bastille. After fifteen months imprisonment, he was exonerated and released, when he retired to his estate near Rouen. Surely, for one man, he had seen enough. Then, too, there was the Marin whom we have already met in his unsuccessful attempt to break through from Tatamagouche Harbour in 1745. But war, in summer or in winter, was the same to him. Only a few years before he had surprised the small Dutch village of Saratogo by a night attack, in which he destroyed all its buildings and killed or carried off its inhabitants into captivity. Until he, too, with Coulon was captured by Johnson at the seige of Niagara in 1759, he continued his indefatigable activities in the warfare of the woods. From Gouzar the column proceeded on its way readily on the ice of the Harbour, passed the Blockhouse, Ross’s Point, and then, it is scarcely open to doubt, having followed close to the shore turned up the French River. It is to be remembered that to the success of the expedition time was a vital element; every day increasing the problem of supply and the danger of detection. French River was the usual and shortest route followed in going back and forth from Tatamagouche to the Cobequid settlements and for Coulon to have passed it by and gone via Waugh’s River would have thrown him out of his way by at least ten miles and lost him a day or more. We think then that it can be safely assumed that he went by the French River. Back |
