Military history of the Acadians
Much of the local conflict was orchestrated by the Governor of Acadia and Baron de St Castin, who raided Protestant villages along the Acadia-New England border at the Kennebec River in present-day Maine.
[5] Letters from an Acadian official censured and requested the removal of certain priests, called "do nothings", who took no part in the King William's War but attended strictly to their religious duties and were therefore suspected of favouring the British.
[7] During Queen Anne's War, the members of the Wabanaki Confederacy from Acadia raided Protestant settlements along the Acadia/ New England border in present-day Maine in the Northeast Coast campaign (1703) .
[8] Church had a small cannon on his boat, which he used to fire grape shot at the attackers on the shore, who withdrew, suffering one Mi’kmaw killed and several wounded.
[10] Soon thereafter a force of some 600 warriors, including Acadians, Abenaki, and Mi’kmaq, under the leadership of Gaulin and Saint-Castin, gathered and blockaded Fort Anne.
[15] In the lead up to Father Rale's War, shortly after Cyprian Southack established himself at Shelburne, Nova Scotia (1715), the Mi'kmaq raided the station and burned it to the ground.
The following day, 24 September, Southack released the Acadian prisoners, with the exception of Bernard Marres dit La Sonde, onto the Canso Islands without any provisions or clothing.
[20] He seized two French ships, and encouraged Governor of Nova Scotia Richard Philipps to build Fort William Augustus at Canso.
A priest, Father Sebastian Rale and Wabanaki Confederacy members from Acadia also participated in the 1723, 1724 campaigns along the border against the British, who had long threatened to remove the Acadians because they would not take an oath of loyalty.
"[22] During King George's War, Abbe Jean-Louis Le Loutre led an insurrection consisting of Acadians and Mi’kmaq to recapture the capital in the siege of Annapolis Royal (1744).
[24] Two Minas inhabitants, Armand Bigeau and Joseph LeBlanc dit Le Maigre, had traded with Louisbourg and assisted the supplying of Duvivier's forces by sea.
He reported that upon hearing the news of Louisbourg and his own withdrawal from Annapolis Royal, the Acadians were "overpowered with grief from the apprehension of remaining in the disposition of the enemy".
[39] After the failure of the French Duc d'Anville Expedition to recapture Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia Governor Paul Mascarene told Acadians to avoid "deluding Hopes of Returning under the Dominion of France".
Louis Liénard de Beaujeu de Villemond stated in his journal that while the Canadian troops were passing several villages near present day Truro, Captain Coulon on his approach march to the battle sent a detachment of troops at "daybreak to Copequit to block all the paths because the ill intentioned inhabitants could undertake to pass and alert the English to our march".
"[45] The French fleet movements in Nova Scotia waters before the massacre enjoyed the help of Acadian pilots, including Nicholas Gautier and his two sons.
Le Loutre is reported to have said that "the English might build as many Forts as they pleased but he wou'd take care that they shou'd not come out of them, for he was resolved to torment them with his Indians...."[49] Richard Bulkeley wrote that between 1749 and 1755, Nova Scotia "was kept in an uninterrupted state of war by the Acadians ... and the reports of an officer commanding Fort Edward (Nova Scotia), [indicated he] could not be conveyed [to Halifax] with less an escort than an officer and thirty men.
Throughout Father Le Loutre's War, English speakers began calling the Acadians "French neutral", a label that would remain in common use through the 1750s.
[63] The Natives then captured Lieutenant John Hamilton and eighteen soldiers under his command (including Handfield's son), while surveying the fort's environs.
According to Historian Stephen Patterson, more than any other single factor—including the massive assault that eventually forced the surrender of Louisbourg—the supply problem brought an end to French power in the region.
[77] When he received word that the British were planning an expedition to the Petitcodiac River, he hurried to Chipoudy, where he organized 120 Acadians, Maliseets and Mi'kmaq into a guerrilla fighting force.
[96] The campaign was so successful, by November of 1758, the members of the House of Assembly for Lunenburg stated "they received no benefit from His Majesty's Troops or Rangers" and required more protection.
)[115] Soon after the siege of Louisbourg, Major Dalling went with 30 of James Rogers rangers to Spanish Bay (Sydney, Nova Scotia) and took Acadians prisoner.
[122] Major Joseph Godin dit Bellefontaine, Sieur de Beauséjour (Seigneur of Pointe Ste-Anne) was Commander of the Acadian Militia of the St-John River valley.
In June 1758, Lieutenant Meech of Benoni Danks' Rangers along with fifty-five men advanced up the Petitcodiac River, suspecting that this was where the Acadian and Mi’kmaw raids originated.
Along with the French, they continued up river to draw the British fleet closer to the Acadian community of Pointe-à-la-Batterie, where they were ready to launch a surprise attack on the English.
On July 7 British commander Byron spent the day getting rid of the battery at Pointe aux Sauvages and later returned to the task of destroying the Machault.
[130] The fifty years of quasi-uninterrupted hostilities on the Acadian territory were finally resolved by the Treaty of Paris (1763), in which the French were expelled from British North America; they retained only a small portion of Louisiana on that continent.
One unit was named "Independent Rangers of Iberville Squadron Militia Cavalry", after Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, founder of the French colony of Louisiana.
During World War II, Acadian soldiers were instrumental in the Battle of Normandy and the liberation of Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer, Calvados, in which they are named by the Brèche des Acadiens.
[136] Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer is located at the eastern end of Nan Sector of Juno Beach, one of the landing sites on D-Day, at the beginning of the Battle of Normandy, during World War II.
