Near the shores of the Mira River halfway through the 18th century sat two small villages now lost to time – Village des Allemands and Village Rouillé. Though existing for only six short years, the stories these villages tell reflect the greater challenges that typified the Canadian maritime region during the 1750s. 

SHOW NOTES:

MUSIC – 

1. Violin Sonatas, Op 9, No 7in G Major III Ari
2. Les Habitants – Tourdion
3. Duo Baroque La Tour – Flute Sonatas, Op 3, No.2 III Minuetto, Variation
4. Barde – Jack McCann/Aughrim 

John Montresor – 

1. The Montresor Journals  – https://archive.org/details/montresorjourna00montgoog/mode/2up
2. “The Everywhere Footprints of Captain John Montresor,” Miriam Touba – https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/the-everywhere-footprints-of-captain-john-montresor

Allemands, Rouillé and the Mira River region – 

1. “A Journal of the Siege of Louisbourg and Cape Breton, in 1745,” James Gibson, p.26, 27
2. “The Cultural Landscape of 18th Century Louisbourg – Miré Region – Rouillé and German Villages,” Margaret Fortier

Charles Deschamps de Boishebert – 

1. Boishebert’s Journal – https://diffusion.banq.qc.ca/pdfjs-1.6.210-dist_banq/web/pdf.php/tkoDvwzuNDJVEqNl8ol06A.pdf#page=16
2. 2. Phyllis E. Leblanc, “DESCHAMPS DE BOISHÉBERT ET DE RAFFETOT, CHARLES,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 4, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed September 3, 2023, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/deschamps_de_boishebert_et_de_raffetot_charles_4E.html.

Gédéon de Catalogne, Louis-Charles-François de Catalogne – 

1. Dictionnaire généalogique de la noblesse de la Nouvelle France – https://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/2479071
2. F. J. Thorpe, “CATALOGNE (Catalougne), GÉDÉON (DE),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 2, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed September 3, 2023, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/catalogne_gedeon_2E.html.

Antoine Le Poupet de La Boularderie, François Le Poupet de La Boularderie – 

1. Dictionnaire généalogique de la noblesse de la Nouvelle France – https://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/2479071
2. Dale Miquelon, “LE POUPET DE LA BOULARDERIE, ANTOINE,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 4, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed September 3, 2023, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/le_poupet_de_la_boularderie_antoine_4E.html.

TRANSCRIPT

Dawn broke over Cape Breton Island on the morning of March 28 1759. Through a punishing onslaught of heavy wet snow marched a group of 40 men; British soldiers engaged on an inland scout that would bring them from the shores of Louisbourg harbour to the Bras d’Or Lakes, some 40 kilometres in total. They had walked through thick, dense forests, over commanding heights and around wide open lakes, and with the help of a guide and the snowshoes on their feet, would push deep into the uncharted interior of the island. As they approached the Mira River, they entered a clearing and came upon the charred ruins of a house along the road – then another, and another after that. The burnt houses stretched for miles, all the way to the river’s shores. John Montresor, one of the 40 men, documented the event in his journal –

 “Marched through the remains of a village called Village des Allemands – burnt down. This spot was generally called by the French Les Deserts, the land being open and free from trees. After crossing the bridge commences another village called by the French village de Rouillé – Burnt. Situated on the ascent of Devil’s Mountain.”

 Who were the people living in these long lost Cape Breton communities? What led to the destruction of these villages? And how is it that these villages were, ultimately, forgotten?

This is The Lost World of Cape Breton Island. It’s the aim of this project to reconstruct the lives of people long gone, walk roads that no longer exist, and retell events from Cape Breton’s history through the documentation left behind by those who saw it for themselves.  These primary sources tell the stories of a long forgotten landscape – each one a thread in the tapestries of Cape Breton’s vivid and engrossing history. 

The second installment in our mini-series about the Lost Settlements of Cape Breton takes us some thirty kilometres north of the harbour of St Esprit – the focus of our last episode – to the villages of Allemands and Rouillé, two communities that developed near the Mira River during the tumultuous 1750s. These two villages existed for only six years, but the fact that they’ve more or less disappeared from the collective cultural memory of the area reflects the greater uncertainties of the Canadian maritime region during the 18th century.

In this episode, we’ll be relying on two primary sources to tell these villages’ stories – firstly, the journal of John Montresor, a portion of which we heard read at the beginning of this episode. Montresor was a British engineer who landed in Cape Breton with the British forces during the second siege of louisbourg in 1758 and would stay in Louisbourg for a good part of 1759. Nothing escapes his observant eye – the quality of the roads he’s walking on, the kinds of houses he encounters in his travels and the length of the bridges he crosses all seem to find their way into his observations. His Journals were reproduced by the New York Historical Society and printed in 1882. Secondly, we’ll examine the journal of Charles Deschamps de Boishebert, a French military officer who at the time of the second siege of Louisbourg was operating out on the Mira River. Boishebert’s journal covers his time in Cape Breton during the span of about a month in the spring of 1758. It was transcribed and published in the February 1921 edition of the Bulletin des Recherches Historiques. Though both journals were primarily kept for military and personal purposes, they contain vivid remarks about the cultural landscape through which these men traveled, much of which has been reclaimed by nature over the last three hundred years. Coincidentally, they also capture the final moments of Allemands and Rouillé as living, breathing, communities. Additional information will also be taken from “Les Derniers Jours de l’Acadie” –  a collection of correspondence that passed through Louisbourg during its final years under French control, compiled by Gaston du Boscq de Beaumont.

Settling people on the Mira River was part of a larger project designed by the well-intentioned but misinformed Count de Raymond, the Governor of Île Royale from 1751 to 1753. It was his hope that the grain produced in these villages would make Île Royale less dependent on grain shipments from places like Canada or France, which in war-time, might never arrive. But the Count de Raymond was infamous for his ludacris ideas, like sending partridge pies from Cape Breton to the Palace of Versailles for King Louis XV, for example. According to official correspondence, he was shocked to discover that the pies had gone bad during the 2 month-long trans-Atlantic crossing. Unfortunately, his designs for both Allemands and Rouillé turned out to be as misguided as his pies for the King. It was common knowledge among the people of Île Royale, the name given to Cape Breton by the French, that the locations for these villages were poorly chosen and based on an incomplete understanding of the island’s geography.

 The villages were laid out along the grand chemin du Miré, or something along the lines of the ‘Great Mira Road’ in English. This road connected the capital, Louisbourg, to the pastures and properties at the confluence of the Mira and Salmon Rivers. It had been cut through thirty-or-so kilometres of rough coastal forest during the 1730s, and was the most important thoroughfare in Cape Breton at the time, allowing movement from the port of Louisbourg to the interior of the island for hunters, land owners, millers and also for couriers bringing official correspondence between Canada and Île Royale. Despite the fact that this ancient road is slowly being reclaimed by nature, much of it still exists as a backwoods trail and is known locally as ‘the Old French Road’. Interestingly, Montresor includes a visual description of the kinds of homes that were built along this road in Allemands and Rouillé – Montresor says “These houses were built with logs and Plastered, with small Enclosures picketed in and parallel to the Road.” Although 18th century maps of Allemands and Rouillé have survived to our day, like the beautiful map created by a man named Couagne in November 1757, the specific portion of the Great Mira Road on which these villages were built disappeared some time during the first half of the 19th century, meaning that the precise location of these settlements are unknown to us today. The area did not retain the name of either of these villages, but evidence of their existence and location is preserved in the name of French Village Lake, located not far from the route of the Great Mira Road.

 The core of Rouillé’s population was made up of soldiers from the Louisbourg garrison that had accepted the offer to marry and then farm for the colonial administration. The families that settled in Village des Allemands, on the other hand, were either “Swiss or Alsatians” who had deserted from Halifax, hoping for something a little better than the newly founded town had to offer. Allemands was named after these German families, who made up the majority of the population in that village. With regards to Rouille, Historian Margaret Fortier says that “In a rather blatant move to win ministerial approval, Raymond called the new settlement “Village Rouille” in the minister [of the Marine’s] honour.”

 It’s difficult to appreciate the isolation that the people of Allemands, Rouille and the Mira River area would have been exposed to in the 18th century. During the wettest seasons, spring and fall, the roads would have been almost completely impassable, cutting one off from public services and amenities in Louisbourg – essentially civilization – for nearly half the year. Given these geographical challenges, we could very accurately describe these settlers as living on a kind of “frontier.” That being said, there existed homesteads much farther from Louisbourg than even Allemands and Rouille were. Historian J.S. McLennan, writing about these kinds of larger far-flung estates, makes the following observation: 

“The description of these farms would indicate that this outflow of enterprise and population would come from a more thriving town [referring to Louisbourg] than the official letters described. Scarcity of food is a serious thing, but satisfaction, with her offspring comfort and energy, treads close on the heels of supply.”

The years to follow would bring much uncertainty to the settlers of Allemands and Rouille. A census taken in 1753 recorded a total of 78 people living in these two villages, but five years after their initial settlement, both communities were – not surprisingly – struggling. To compound the situation, the soil in Allemands and Rouillé was of poor quality. Fortier continues:  “The land at the chosen site was unfruitful, capable of producing only hay. Wheat stood no chance of success.” In 1754, the man who replaced Count de Raymond as governor, Augustin de Drucour, visited the villages and was forced to assure the villagers that their land would indeed yield results, knowing full well, however, that it was a lie. To add fuel to the fire, the villages were too far away from the capital for settlers to go back and forth in a day, meaning that if they wanted to sell their produce in Louisbourg, they’d not only have to travel for the greater part of the day but also pay for lodging overnight. Things derailed even further when the military officers supervising Rouillé began to run the community like their own little fiefdom.

To add to these challenging conditions, the Mira River region around Allemands and Rouillé was particularly susceptible to the tides of war that submerged the island during the first half of the 18th century. It was possible to reach The Great Mira Road from the coast of the North Atlantic by means of a “chemin plaqué,” a kind of marked path that ran from the shore and through the woods, finally intersecting the road around Twelve Mile Lake. As a result, the region had seen much looting and destruction during the first siege of Louisbourg in 1745 when New England scouting parties meandered through the area, burning homesteads and making off with whatever they could find.

To top it all off, war between the American colonies of Great Britain and France would break out in 1754 and snowball into the much larger European conflict known as the Seven Years War. It became apparent that the British, who had been unable to carry out an attack on Louisbourg in 1757, would lick their wounds in Halifax until the spring when the ice had cleared and they could make another attempt. In the following year, war would finally come to these villages’ doorsteps.

 On June 8 1758, the British landed at l’Anse de la Cormorandière, known today as Kennington Cove. In the days that followed, more troops were able to get ashore, and British soldiers soon began spreading throughout the entire region. The second siege of Louisbourg would begin only a few days later. Charles Deschamps de Boishebert, the French military officer whose journal we’re also examining in this episode, had been tasked with keeping the field beyond the walls of Louisbourg in case of a siege and finally arrived in Cape Breton after a tedious voyage from Québec City. After passing through St Peters, Boishebert arrived at the Mira River via the Bras d’Or Lakes on July 1, and once there, set up a base not far from what Montresor called “The Ferriage”. Skirmishes soon broke out between Boishebert’s 300 strong militia situated on the Mira and the British down towards Kennington Cove. The villages of Allemands and Rouillé would have been caught in the middle. It didn’t take long however for the British to overwhelm Boishebert’s small force, and he had no choice but to evacuate the area, retreating to the Bras d’Or and across Cape Breton to the mainland as, in his own words, the British began “[advancing] on the road of Rouillé and that of the Mira, encamping detachments of 800 men.”

At this point, we’re going to diverge from the narrative of Allemands and Rouillé and talk about some of the people who show up in Boishebert’s journal, along with their connection to Cape Breton. Listed among Boishebert’s group on the Mira are the names Catalogne and La Boularderie – two names that will resonate with listeners familiar with Cape Breton Island. The Catalogne mentioned here was more than likely Louis-Charles-Francois de Catalogne, the grandson of Gédéon de Catalogne, the renowned cartographer of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Gédeon’s son, Joseph, was born in 1694 and passed away in Louisbourg in 1735, and Joseph’s son, Louis-Charles-Francois, was born in 1734, making him about 24 years old at the time he joined Boishebert. The family’s name is now associated with the modern day community of Catalone, Cape Breton, which was the location of the Catalogne family’s early-18th century estate. Besides Cape Breton, the family had strong ties to the city of Montreal. 

The Boularderie mentioned in Boishebert’s journal was either Antoine Le Poupet de La Boularderie or one of his older sons. Antoine had 9 children born to him, all at La Petite Brasdor, today’s Point Aconi and Alder Point. Antoine said in a letter about his establishment at La Petite Brasdor- “I have in my employment 25 persons, a very handsome house, barn, stable, dairy, dovecote, and oven, wind and water-mills, twenty-five cows and other livestock.” This settlement was almost as old as the Colony of Île Royale itself, and was located on the island that still bears the family’s name – Boularderie Island, known locally as Boularderie. Both Catalogne and La Boularderie would likely be leaving Cape Breton – a place they probably considered home – for the last time.

 What happens to Allemands and Rouille immediately after Boishebert’s retreat is not discussed in either journal. It’s Montresor, nine months later, who tells us that both villages had been systematically burnt down – the circumstances left unexplained. In all likelihood, the villages were burned down by either the French to make sure the houses couldn’t be used by the enemy, or by the British troops as they advanced towards the Mira on the Great Mira Road. Despite the many challenges that the villages faced during the six years they existed, in the end it would be war that cemented their erasure from local memory. In preparation for this episode, no documentation was found that sheds light on what happened to the handful of families that were living in the villages at the time, but it’s likely they were relocated sometime before the British landed at Kennington Cove. If in the future documents come to our attention that discuss what happened to these families, or who it was that burned down Allemands and Rouillé, we’ll continue our examination of these forgotten villages’.

In addition to the houses located in these villages, at least two other properties also situated on the Great Mira Road are mentioned in Montresor’s journal and would have been affected by the events of the second siege of Louisbourg. Before arriving in the vicinity of Allemands and Rouille, Montresor mentions “Portic’s Farm,” which is likely to have been located southeast of Allemands around today’s Twelve Mile Lake. No further details are provided about who Portic was, his farm, or if his farm suffered a similar fate to that of Allemands and Rouillé, but it’s possible that the farm grew hay for Louisbourg, like many farms in this area did. More prominently described by Montresor, however, is the homestead of Joseph Lartigue, or “Jean Lertie” according to the Montresor journals. Located in the present day community of French Road, this property was where Montresor and his detachment of 40 soldiers slept on the evening of March 27th 1759, the day before they came upon the remains of Allemands and Rouillé. Joseph Lartigue had been a member of Île Royale’s Superior Council and also served as town magistrate, and at the time of his passing some fifteen years before in 1743, owned multiple properties around the island, however his primary residence was built along the quay in Louisbourg. A reconstruction of this house can be visited at the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site. A map created after Joseph Lartigue’s death depicting his many properties throughout the island confirms the existence of a small house and barn on this concession just as Montresor describes, however it’s unclear whether the house itself survived the events of 1758. 

About six years later in the mid-1760s, the Mira River was visited by Samuel Johannes Holland, a British surveyor tasked with touring Cape Breton and evaluating its potential for future settlement. Holland noted that the Great Mira Road, once so busy, had been reduced to nothing more than an overgrown footpath, and that many of its bridges had finally collapsed. Although there was nothing left of Allemands and Rouille for Holland to see, Holland does say that he was able to speak to a German man who, in Holland’s words, “was a settler at the first establishment of German Village [Allemands].” And although not specifying where he spoke to him, it’s likely that he met this German man during his survey of Cape Breton. Therefore it’s probable that at least some German families from Allemands remained on the island after the events of 1758.

After a seventy year hiatus, this area of the Mira River would again see settlement when Scottish families arrived in Cape Breton and would set down lasting roots in the early 19th century. The area where Allemands and Rouillé had been located became known succinctly as “French Road,” the name we’re familiar with today. An article written in 1922 by teacher and genealogist Michael D. Currie answers the question of when Scottish settlement began: we quote “The emigrants who came here from Scotland in 1832… settled in rear lots or “Back Lands”, as these localities were called, at … French Road and elsewhere in Mira.” unquote. Despite the fall of the French regime in Cape Breton in 1758, the founding of a new capital at Spanish Bay in 1785 and the creation of a better road that served to connect the coastal communities in the Gabarus area, The Great Mira Road, by this time known as The Old French Road, would continue to link the communities in that part of the island for many years.

Despite the passing of centuries and changes of regime, the people who lived in Allemands and Rouille lay claim to an experience shared by many of those who came to call Cape Breton home in the years to follow – an experience aptly described by Historian Ann-Marie Lane Jonah as “resettling, and then re-resettling again.” The turbulent story of these two communities exemplifies the harsh reality of life in Cape Breton, when it sat on the faultline of two competing colonial powers. Now, the narratives of Allemands and Rouille can only be found abroad –  in the brief remarks scribbled down by those who never permanently resided in Cape Breton and who never planned to stay, like John Montresor and Charles Deschamps de Boishebert. In the end, it’s their words that help us recreate the clearest picture we yet have of what it was really like to live in these rural Cape Breton communities some three hundred years ago. [END]