[2]
In the next century, some of the people of Acadia were torn from their
homes by order of a British commander. The act was harsh and violent,
and the innocent were involved with the guilty; but many of the
sufferers had provoked their fate, and deserved it.
Louis XIV. commanded that eighteen thousand unoffending persons should
be stripped of all that they possessed, and cast out to the mercy of
the wilderness. The atrocity of the plan is matched by its folly. The
king gave explicit orders, but he gave neither ships nor men enough to
accomplish them; and the Dutch farmers, goaded to desperation, would
have cut his sixteen hundred soldiers to pieces. It was the scheme of
a man blinded by a long course of success. Though perverted by
flattery and hardened by unbridled power, he was not cruel by nature;
and here, as in the burning of the Palatinate and the persecution of
the Huguenots, he would have stood aghast, if his dull imagination
could have pictured to him the miseries he was preparing to inflict.
[Footnote: On the details of the projected attack of New York, _Le Roy
a Denonville_, 7 _Juin_, 1689; _Le Ministre a Denonville, meme date_;
_Le Ministre a Frontenac, meme date_; _Ordre du Roy a Vaudreuil, meme
date_; _Le Roy au Sieur de la Caffiniere, meme date_; _Champigny au
Ministre_, 16 _Nov.
Pages:
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244