Rebirth of the French Colony 131

for both Louisiana and the West Indies will be ex- posed if Canada and Ile Royale are not made secure.*

This memoir, when read side by side with the British accounts of Acadia, reveals clearly the mo- tives which actuated the French in concentrating so much attention upon Isle Saint Jean and in inciting the Indians against the new settlement at Halifax. When read side by side with the correspondence of official and missionary, it proves that the policy of the latter was directed from headquarters and that Le Loutre, des Herbiers, Prevost, La Galissoniére, and Bigot were all active agents in a national policy which had the highest sanction, a policy, however, which was no doubt dictated by desperation. To make Le Loutre, alone, the scapegoat, is merely to sidestep the issue. He was an efficient instrument who resorted to every artifice to carry out a plan that appealed to his intelligence and gave expression to his masterful and intriguing disposition. To him, as his letters so often attest, “the mterests of the state and of reli- gion” were one: hence he would convert the savages so as to make them French, and use them as a menace against the Acadians to prevent both becoming Brit- ish subjects; hence, too, the origin of the first Aca- dian expulsion; for it was he who commenced the grand dérangement by forcing the Acadians over the Isthmus of Chignecto so that they would be upon French soil.

The immediate result of the grand dérangement, in its earlier stages, was a large influx of Acadians

8 Can, Arch. Report, 1905, Vol. II, App. N, p. 291.