They met no enemy, and entered Halifax harbor on the thirtieth.  Holbourne and his fleet had not yet appeared; but his ships soon came straggling in, and before the tenth of July all were at anchor before the town.  Then there was more delay.  The troops, nearly twelve thousand in all, were landed, and weeks were spent in drilling them and planting vegetables for their refreshment.  Sir Charles Hay was put under arrest for saying that the nation’s money was spent in sham battles and raising cabbages.  Some attempts were made to learn the state of Louisbourg; and Captain Gorham, of the rangers, who reconnoitred it from a fishing vessel, brought back an imperfect report, upon which, after some hesitation, it was resolved to proceed to the attack.  The troops were embarked again, and all was ready, when, on the fourth of August, a sloop came from Newfoundland, bringing letters found on board a French vessel lately captured.  From these it appeared that all three of the French squadrons were united in the harbor of Louisbourg, to the number of twenty-two ships of the line, besides several frigates, and that the garrison had been increased to a total force of seven thousand men, ensconced in the strongest fortress of the continent.  So far as concerned the naval force, the account was true.  La Motte, the French admiral, had with him a fleet carrying an aggregate of thirteen hundred and sixty cannon, anchored in a sheltered harbor under the guns of the town.  Success was now hopeless, and the costly enterprise was at once abandoned.  Loudon with his troops sailed back for New York, and Admiral Holbourne, who had been joined by four additional ships, steered for Louisbourg, in hopes that the French fleet would come out and fight him.  He cruised off the port; but La Motte did not accept the challenge.

[Footnote 490:  Works of Franklin, I. 219.  Franklin intimates that while Loudon was constantly writing, he rarely sent off despatches.  This is a mistake; there is abundance of them, often tediously long, in the Public Record Office.]

[Footnote 491:  Loudon to Pitt, 30 May, 1757.  He had not learned Pitt’s resignation.]

The elements declared for France.  A September gale, of fury rare even on that tempestuous coast, burst upon the British fleet.  “It blew a perfect hurricane,” says the unfortunate Admiral, “and drove us right on shore.”  One ship was dashed on the rocks, two leagues from Louisbourg.  A shifting of the wind in the nick of time saved the rest from total wreck.  Nine were dismasted; others threw their cannon into the sea.  Not one was left fit for immediate action; and had La Motte sailed out of Louisbourg, he would have had them all at his mercy.

Delay, the source of most of the disasters that befell England and her colonies at this dismal epoch, was the ruin of the Louisbourg expedition.  The greater part of La Motte’s fleet reached its destination a full month before that of Holbourne.  Had the reverse taken place, the fortress must have fallen.  As it was, the ill-starred attempt, drawing off the British forces from the frontier, where they were needed most, did for France more than she could have done for herself, and gave Montcalm and Vaudreuil the opportunity to execute a scheme which they had nursed since the fall of Oswego.[492]