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Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 2
by Iain C. Walker Part I The King's Bastion and its CasematesThis study is an attempt to correlate the stratigraphic evidence obtained and the dating evidence suggested by clay pipe fragments recovered from the excavation of the King's Bastion and its casemates. The area under consideration was a casemate, designated 1 Right, approximately 34 ft. long by 12 ft. wide and filled to a depth of 7 ft., in the right flank of the King's Bastion, Fortress of Louisbourg, Nova Scotia. The fortress was constructed by the French, who, forced to leave Placentia, Newfoundland by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, settled at Louisbourg in the same year. In 1716, the area was surveyed with a view to constructing fortifications, and in 1720 building was commenced, The defences took the form of a double-crowned work following Vauban's First System of Fortification, cutting off the landward side of the southern peninsula commanding the harbour entrance (Figs. 1, 2).
Construction started with one of the crowns, called the Bastion du Roy or King's Bastion, work commencing on its right, or north, flank (Fig. 3). This right flank held six casemates of the same size as Casemate 1 Right (Fig. 4), and a small seventh casemate at the right shoulder angle where the right flank met the right face. In the right face eight small casemates were projected, but although work started on all eight, only two were ever completed; however, during a delay of some years in the construction of the casemates, the foundations of six were utilized for various purposes, as revealed by archaeological investigation. Accordingly, these casemates and those in the right flank have been designated Casemates 1-15 Right and will be referred to as such in the text when comparisons with other material are made.
Across the gorge of the bastion was constructed the Chateau St. Louis, which contained the chapel, Governor's quarters and, originally, the Intendant's quarters. Occasional references will be made to material found during the excavations of this area. Historical evidence indicates that though the first excavations for the construction of the King's Bastion were made in 1717, work did not commence in earnest until 1720, when the right flank and casemates were begun. By 1724, on historical evidence, the arches of these casemates (1-6 Right) had been completed; so, too, from indirect historical evidence must have been those of Casemates 7-9 Right. Thereafter there was apparently no further work done on casemate construction until the early 1730s. About 1732, the foundations of Casemates 10-15 Right appear to have been filled in, and the paving of the platforms above the right flank casemates, begun in 1731, was completed in 1733. As records note that scaffolding still in place in the casemates prevented any of them from being used as late as 1726, it seems unlikely that there should be occupation material in any of the casemates previous to this date, other than casual material dropped before and during the construction or rubbish surreptitiously deposited there. As there is a reference in 1727 to a prison having been constructed in one casemate, it seems probable that major occupation material can be expected from about this time. Because the left flank of the bastion contained six large and one small casemates similar to those in the right flank — and indeed small casemates in the left face were at one time postulated as well — it is not always clear to which casemates the documents refer, but the majority of references are to the right casemates. In any case, the chronology of the left casemates must have been fundamentally similar to that of the right — considerable work was done on their foundations in 1722 and a reference in 1725 to unsatisfactory construction indicates that at least one casemate here was completed by that time—and it may be said that effective occupation of all casemates in the King's Bastion, left and right, commenced about 1726. The fortress was besieged twice and captured both times. In 1745, New Englanders took it with the assistance of the British, who returned the fortress to the French in exchange for Madras in 1749. In 1758, the British captured the fortress and in 1760 systematically razed the entire line of defences protecting the town, leaving at the King's Bastion only Casemates 1-3 Left and 1-4 Right still standing. Until 1768, a British garrison remained, and the town inside the erstwhile fortifications continued for several decades: in fact, farms and fishermen's cottages remained until the area became a National Historic Site in 1928. By the end of the 19th century, photographs indicate that the back walls of the surviving right casemates had collapsed into the casemates, effectively sealing the deposits underneath. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to indicate when this occurred, whether in 1760 or at any time in the following hundred or more years. A photograph taken in 1893 from the back of either Casemate 1 Right or 2 Right, looking towards the left casemates, suggests the former were as full of rubble then as in 1961. In the first decade of this century, restoration work was done by D. J. Kennelly on both sets of casemates, but his death in 1907 brought to a halt his grandiose but eccentric and inaccurate schemes. In the 1930s, the Canadian government dug out much of the chateau and restored or rebuilt parts of the chateau and the casemates. The present work, also sponsored by the Canadian government, commenced in 1961. The damage done in both sieges and the repair work have a bearing on the archaeological interpretation of Casemate 1 Right, but these considerations will be left until the historical-archaeological evidence is discussed, when this evidence will be compared with the clay pipe evidence. Historical references to the casemates between the 1760s and the beginning of the present century are few, and not particularly helpful. At the beginning of this century, the three surviving left flank casemates still had their backs and tops, though not their fronts, which were rebuilt by Kennelly. In 1861, there is a reference to three of the casemates being used as sheep pens (logically, the three left casemates), and in 1849, there is a reference to three casemates being used as sheepfolds and a fourth being used as a cabbage patch. This latter might indicate that at that time a fourth casemate was usable, but one would not normally grow cabbages in the dark and it is tempting to suppose that Casemate 4 Left was the one referred to, since it was open to the sky, shallow, yet protected to its northeast by the still-standing Casemates 1-3 Left and protected on the other sides by mounds of rubble which did not exclude the sun from its roughly southwestern exposure. If so, then the evidence might suggest that the right casemates were even then unusable because their collapsed back walls and attached roofing had already filled them. (As no trace of the fronts has been found in any of these casemates, it appears probable that they were dismantled at some time.) In 1785, there is a reference to some of the casemates being "in a solid state," implying that others had collapsed, but these others may have been those demolished in 1760. In 1853, there is a reference to "the bomb-proof cassines [sic] and the arches beneath the citadel" still standing, and "arches" very aptly describes the backless and frontless ruins of the right casemates as we later know them to have been. A picture taken not later than 1901 shows them without backs or fronts. It seems likely, therefore, that the right casemates lost their backs relatively early; although it could have been as early as the demolition itself or in the first half of the 19th century. There is no reason why the disintegration should not have taken place over a period of many years. The possibility that the casemates could have been used by the English garrison until 1768 should not be ruled out, however.
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