Through the town to the quay

Short and central, Rue Toulouse links the military heights and the commercial waterfront. Imagine it at year’s end, with the last ships awaiting a fair wind for France. The governor's last dispatches are carried down Rue Toulouse to the port as the sailors make their farewells in the town.

Here, as you turn back into the streets of Louisbourg, is an opportunity to gather together the building styles of this French colonial town of the early 1700s. In timberframe or stonemasonry, the lines would have been familiar to a visitor from Saint-Malo or La Rochelle, for many of the designs are characteristically French. To find local adaptations, look for the pervasive use of wood, particularly in the piquet buildings of vertical logs, also in the shingling and board siding of more substantial homes.

Even where the forms are most traditional, homeowners adapted their buildings to local conditions. Plank siding kept out the ceaseless wind, and some homes had interior and exterior shutters to seal and secure their many-paned windows. Looking over the rooftops, note the many dormer windows that suggest how crowded households used every available inch of space.

De la Plagne Property

Pierre-Paul d’Espiet de la Plagne and his wife Marie-Charlotte Delort owned the house on the corner in the 1740s. Pierre-Paul was the son and nephew of garrison officers and both his brothers had served here with him. His kinship ties extended throughout the colonial elite, and he received choice postings around the colony. De la Plagne sometimes used his troops as servants in his home, and a young soldier called La Fleur later used the knowledge he had gained working in this house. On a dark night in 1740 he scaled the fence, forced a window and robbed his captain of a few coins. It was not a planned theft ⁠— swift discovery and conviction saw the soldier branded and whipped through the streets.

The house has a timber frame beneath its siding ⁠— only the adjoining storehouse is masonry. There are two chimneys. In houses that were often partitioned into many small rooms, fireplaces meant heat. As you explore the furnished homes of Louisbourg the location of the fireplaces can hint to you about the comfort of each room.

After the first siege of Louisbourg, de la Plagne retired to his estates in southwestern France.