The French and the Micmacs 221 
     
    
   
   
    
     especially the motives they had for making war against 
     
     the English when France was in peace with that nation. 
     
     By the most diligent researches, from some of your own 
     
     people, and from persons of undoubted integrity, I have 
     
     learnt what follows. 
     
    

    
     It is alleged against the English, that in the year 
     
     1744, towards the end of the month of December, they 
     
     committed the following treacherous acts and barbari- 
     
     ties. M. Ganon having the command of a detachment of 
     
     English troops, was sent to observe the retreat of the 
     
     French and savages before Port Royal in Acadia, where 
     
     he found two lonely cottages of the Mikmack savages. 
     
     In these were five women and three children, and two of 
     
     the women were big with child; but the English, without 
     
     any regard to objects so worthy of compassion, plun- 
     
     dered and set fire to the two cottages, and inhumanly 
     
     butchered the five women and two children. It was even 
     
     found that the pregnant women had their bellies ripped 
     
     open; an act of barbarity, which notwithstanding it 
     
     had been in time of war, made those who informed me 
     
     thereof, to shudder with horror. 
     
    

    
     Five months before this cruel action, one David, 
     
     captain of an English privateer, having artfully set up 
     
     French colours in the strait of Fronsac, contrived so, 
     
     by means of a renegado who served under him as an 
     
     interpreter, as to inveigle the chief of the savages of 
     
     Cape Breton, together with his whole family, to come on 
     
     board his ship. This chief, whose name was James 
     
     Padenuque, was first of all confined to a dungeon, after- 
     
     wards carried to Boston, and stifled at length on board 
     
     a vessel, in which the English pretended to convey him 
     
     back to Cape Breton. Yet they detained his eldest son, 
     
     who was only eight years old; neither would they con-