[Footnote 240:  See ante, Chapter 4.]

[Footnote 241:  Rameau (La France aux Colonies, I. 63), estimates the total emigration from 1748 to 1755 at 8,600 souls,—­which number seems much too large.  This writer, though vehemently anti-English, gives the following passage from a letter of a high French official:  “que les Acadiens emigres et en grande misere comptaient se retirer a Quebec et demander des terres, mais il conviendrait mieux qu’ils restent ou ils sont, afin d’avoir le voisinage de l’Acadie bien peuple et defriche, pour approvisionner l’Isle Royale [Cape Breton] et tomber en cas de guerre sur l’Acadie.”  Rameau, I. 133.]

[Footnote 242:  Supra, p. 102.]

On the part of France, an invasion of the Acadian peninsula seemed more than likely.  Honor demanded of her that, having incited the Acadians to disaffection, and so brought on them the indignation of the English authorities, she should intervene to save them from the consequences.  Moreover the loss of the Acadian peninsula had been gall and wormwood to her; and in losing it she had lost great material advantages.  Its possession was necessary to connect Canada with the Island of Cape Breton and the fortress of Louisbourg.  Its fertile fields and agricultural people would furnish subsistence to the troops and garrisons in the French maritime provinces, now dependent on supplies illicitly brought by New England traders, and liable to be cut off in time of war when they were needed most.  The harbors of Acadia, too, would be invaluable as naval stations from which to curb and threaten the northern English colonies.  Hence the intrigues so assiduously practised to keep the Acadians French at heart, and ready to throw off British rule at any favorable moment.  British officers believed that should a French squadron with a sufficient force of troops on board appear in the Bay of Fundy, the whole population on the Basin of Mines and along the Annapolis would rise in arms, and that the emigrants beyond the isthmus, armed and trained by French officers, would come to their aid.  This emigrant population, famishing in exile, looked back with regret to the farms they had abandoned; and, prevented as they were by Le Loutre and his colleagues from making their peace with the English, they would, if confident of success, have gladly joined an invading force to regain their homes by reconquering Acadia for Louis XV.  In other parts of the continent it was the interest of France to put off hostilities; if Acadia alone had been in question, it would have been her interest to precipitate them.