"A large enclosure, with a palisade round it, in which there were but one officer and nineteen soldiers," wrote the Marquis of Montcalm at a later period, "could not be considered as a fort adapted to sustain a siege." In the first campaign, the settlements formed by the Acadian emigrants on the borders of the Bay of Fundy were completely destroyed: the French garrisons were obliged to evacuate their positions.
This withdrawal left Acadia, or neutral land, at the mercy of the Anglo-Americans.

Before Longfellow had immortalized, in the poem of Evangeline, the peaceful habits and the misfortunes of the Acadians, Raynal had already pleaded their cause before history.

"A simple and a kindly people," he said, "who had no liking for blood, agriculture was their occupation.
They had been settled in the low grounds, forcing back, by dint of dikes, the sea and rivers wherewith those plains were covered.

The drained marshes produced wheat, rye, oats, barley, and maize.

Immense prairies were alive with numerous flocks; as many as sixty thousand horned cattle were counted there.