Pepperrell's colonials take Louisbourg; Du Chambon surrenders after 47 days of siege

For twenty-five years, France had poured thirty million livres into the stone walls of Louisbourg, a fortress on Cape Breton Island that New Englanders had taken to calling the "American Dunkirk" — a base from which French privateers raided their shipping and coastlines. In the spring of 1745, Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts Bay persuaded the colonial legislature to fund an audacious assault, and 4,200 soldiers and sailors aboard 90 ships departed under land commander William Pepperrell and naval commodore Peter Warren. After 47 days of siege and bombardment, French Governor Louis Du Pont Du Chambon surrendered the fortress on June 28, 1745 — the first major British colonial military victory in North America won largely without British regulars…