The die was now cast and hesitation vanished. Shirley wrote to all of the colonies as far south as Pennsylvania, but of these only four responded: Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, which blazed with holy zeal as, since the enterprise would be directed against Roman Catholics, it was supposed that heaven would in a peculiar manner favor it. There were prayers in churches and families. New Hampshire provided 500 men, of which number Massachusetts was to pay and provide for 150; Rhode Island voted a sloop carrying fourteen cannon and twelve swivels; Connecticut promised 516 men and officers provided that Roger Wolcott should have second rank in the expedition; and Massachusetts was to provide 3000 men and the commanding officer.
This last condition was one of the hardest to fulfil, for, as Governor Wanton of Rhode Island wrote, there was not in New England “one officer of experience nor even an engineer.” The choice fell upon William Pepperell, of Kittery, Maine (then a part of Massachusetts), who though a prosperous trader had had little experience to fit him for commanding an attack upon a great fortress. Pepperell’s home is still standing at Kittery and is a substantial structure as befitted its affluent master.
There was staying at Pepperell’s house at this time the preacher Whitefield. Pepperell asked his guest for a motto for the expedition. “_Nil Desperandum Christo Duce_” was suggested; and this being adopted gave to the expedition the air of a crusade.
A novel plan was suggested, among others, to Pepperell by one of the zealots of New England. Two trustworthy men, according to this plan, were to be sent out at night before the French ramparts, one of them carrying a wooden mallet with which he was to beat upon the ground. The other was to place his ear to the ground and wherever a concealed mine would give back a hollow sound was to make a cross mark with chalk so that the New England boys would know where not to walk when they attacked the fort. The French sentry meanwhile, it was supposed, would be too confused by the unusual noise of the thumping to take any action.
Within seven weeks after Shirley issued his proclamation preparations for the expedition were complete. The force, all told, numbered about four thousand men. Transports were easily obtained in the harbor of Boston or in the towns adjoining. There was a lack of cannon of large calibre, but it was known that the French possessed cannon of large calibre, so cannon balls and supplies to fit such guns were carried along, it being foreseen that the army would capture sufficient of the French cannon to supply its needs. Of other supplies there was a sufficiency and, to overbalance the lack of any military training whatever in the officers, Governor Shirley had written a long list of instructions for the siege. These instructions, after going into such minute directions as how to make fast the windows of the Governor’s apartment at Louisburg, and outlining a complex series of military manœuvres to be undertaken after dark by men who had no idea of the country they would be in, ended with the words, “Notwithstanding the instructions you have received from me I must leave you to act, upon unforeseen emergencies, according to your best discretion.”