The Battle of Fort Beauséjour was fought on the Isthmus of Chignecto and marked the end of Father Le Loutre's War and the opening of a British offensive in the Acadia/Nova Scotia theatre of the Seven Years' War, which would eventually lead to the end of the French colonial empire in North America.

[2] After two weeks of siege, Louis Du Pont Duchambon de Vergor, the fort's commander, capitulated on June 16.

[3] English claim to present day New Brunswick, and Northern Maine conflicted with small French presence and Acadian settlement in the area.

[5] In the 1750s, New Englanders were subjects to drought, despondency, high taxes and violence, all of which were further manipulated by Puritan and Protestant priests to garner support for an impending attack on the Catholic French.

The English especially resented the Acadians for holding rich land and for the support they had from the Mikmaq, which prevented the establishment of a Protestant settlement.

[8] Abbé Le Loutre, the priest at Fort Beauséjour, created yet another source of tension as he was a representative of the French government, and therefore also allied to the Mikmaq.

[10] Lieutenant-Colonel Lawrence and the Nova Scotia Council, along with many previous governors, had noted that on many occasions, the Acadians did not act neutrally.

French officer Ensign de Jumonville and a third of his escort were attacked and killed by a British patrol led by George Washington.

[14] As a result of the military buildup at Chignecto, as part of the larger coordinated effort of the French and Indian War, the Governor of Massachusetts, William Shirley planned to take Fort Beausejour.

[6] In 1750, the Governor of New France Jacques-Pierre de la Jonquière heard that the English were building a fort in the region of Acadia.

[15] The building of the fort began in 1751 and the plans created by a military engineer named Jacau de Fiedmont, who became a lieutenant in 1752.

To begin with, the fort's priest Abbé Le Loutre decided to reallocate manpower to an irrigation project.

[citation needed] For a year preceding the Siege of Beauséjour, Pichon gave crucial military information such as maps and battle plans to the English.

[25] While Vergor was technically in charge of the fort, it was Jacau de Fiedmont who coordinated all of the defence plans and preparations for the attack.

that the English suffered a loss of eighty men, but this was most likely a fabricated number to boost the already low morale of the Acadians, as their aim was bad.

[24] The night of June 4, Vergor continued to put into place defence mechanisms, this time setting all of the surrounding buildings, shops, and homes on fire.

[28] Fiedmont also worried about the level of motivation of the Acadians, as he desperately needed them to work in order to continue to fortify the defenses.

On June 12, an officer by the name of Vannes left with 180 men to attack Lieutenant Colonel Scott, but came back later that night without ever having fired a single shot.

The written capitulation included clauses which protected the Acadians, dictated what the English could take in terms of material goods from Beauséjour, and stated that the French could not bear arms in America for the next six months.

De Boishebert knew that he faced a superior force so he burned the fort and retreated up the river to undertake guerrilla warfare.

[citation needed] The capture of Fort Beauséjour was a deciding factor in relations between the British Empire and the Acadian population of Nova Scotia.

For decades Britain had been struggling to extract an oath of allegiance from the Acadians, who maintained that the "conventions of 1730" had secured their neutrality in all future Anglo-French conflicts.

[35] Such refusal, combined with French colonists' repeated attempts to incite rebellion among their fellow French-speakers, left British officials—especially Governor Charles Lawrence—increasingly wary of an attack from within.

[36] Lawrence's letters reveal a marked hostility toward the Acadians by 1754,[37] at which point he was planning with Massachusetts Governor William Shirley to draw British battalions into Nova Scotia.

If not for General Edward Braddock's humiliating defeat that same year, Lawrence might have extended British control well beyond Acadia, eliminating the perceived need for mass deportation.