page_title: Île aux Noix
section_title: French fortifications
hierarchical_section_title: Île aux Noix / French fortifications
caption_attribution_description: English: New France 1754
context_page_description: Île aux Noix is an island on the Richelieu River in Quebec, close to Lake Champlain. The island is the site of Fort Lennox National Historic Site of Canada. Politically, it is part of Saint-Paul-de-l'Île-aux-Noix.
context_section_description: The population of New France during the last years of the Seven Years' War lived through difficult times.  It faced an appreciable reduction in support from the home country, at a time when France's resources were being stripped by the situation on the European continent.  In the colony from year to year, civilians and soldiers saw their hopes crushed as they worked out strategies, which were constantly deprived of the necessary royal support.  The campaigns of 1759 and 1760 provide strong evidence of this situation and it is in this context that the strategists decided to build a fort on Île aux Noix.
  From August 16 to 28, 1760, French soldiers commanded by Colonel Bougainville, were besieged by William Haviland during the British advance on Montreal. Bougainville realised that the fort of Île aux Noix could not resist a longer siege. On August 27, Bougainville had his troops silently leave the island in the middle of the night and headed to Montreal where he hoped his soldiers could help. The siege of Isle aux Noix ended on August 28, when a group of about forty French soldiers surrendered to the British forces.
  The last French governor-general of New France, Pierre François de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal, surrendered to British Major General Jeffrey Amherst on September 8, 1760. France finally ceded Canada to the British in the Treaty of Paris, signed on February 10, 1763.
  The strategic importance of Île aux Noix decreased as soon as the conquest of Canada was complete in 1760.  Amherst had not thought it wise to preserve the French fortifications on Île aux Noix and therefore he ordered the razing of the entrenchments to salvage the construction materials, which might be reused at Crown Point.
caption: Location of Fort Île aux Noix
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