t nevertheless somewhat idyllic life on the edge of the northern wilderness and hostile indians came to an abrupt end in 1755 after the British captured Fort Beausejour, the last French redoubt in the area. Winzerling says that the Acadians "were caught as pawns on the chessboard of international rivalry" (10), the struggle between Great Britain and France for control of North America.
Despite their pacific nature, the Acadians were regarded by the British governor as an alien and potentially subversive force. After first demanding that the Acadians swear an oath of unconditional allegiance to the British Crown, which they refused to do, he burned their homes and expelled them by ship. By the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, about 10,000 Acadians, two thirds of the colony, had been forced into exile back to Europe, to the American colonies, which generally gave them a hostile reception, to other French areas, the West Indies and elsewhere. In the course of their diaspora, families and lovers were broken up or separated and thousands died. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow immortalized the plight of the Acadians in his poem Evangeline: "scattered they were like, like
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