ward was an English stronghold during the troublous period when both England and France were contending for the Minas country. It commanded the river highways of the St. Croix and the Avon, was a refuge from maurauding Indians, a sally-point for avenging troops and, at the last, a prison for Acadians who had escaped deportation.
From the town of Piziquid, de Villiers and his aides planned the attack on the detachment of Massachusetts volunteers in command of Colonel Noble who, in the winter of 1747, were quartered among the Acadian inhabitants of Grand Pré, then the chief town of this region. The settlement of French farmers extended in those days from the station called Horton's Landing, about 20 miles west of Windsor, toward the present village of Grand Pré. The church, the burying-ground and a well that served part of the population were in a meadow edged now by the railroad track. From the Dominion Atlantic station at Grand Pré a stone may be cast to the fabled Normandy willows which witnessed the invasion of Winslow's troops, and the scenes of dismay that follow in the autumn of 1755.
The eviction of the Acadian subjects of George II is excused by English historians as an act necessary to the peace of the country and one too long deferred by lenient governors. They maintain that the French inhabitants who remained in Nova
