Despite the British conquest of Acadia in 1710, Nova Scotia remained overwhelmingly populated by Catholic Acadians and Mi'kmaq for nearly four more decades. When Edward Cornwallis arrived to establish Halifax in June 1749 with thirteen transports, he triggered a new phase of conflict. Within eighteen months, the British moved to lock down peninsula Nova Scotia by building fortifications in every major Acadian community: Fort Edward at Windsor, Fort Vieux Logis at Grand-Pre, and Fort Lawrence at Chignecto. Only Cobequid remained without a garrison. The Wabanaki Confederacy -- Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, and Penobscot peoples -- had a long history of resisting British encroachment along the New England-Acadia border. Mi'kmaq raids on British settlements at Shelburne in 1715 and Canso in 1720 had made clear that the expansion of Protestant settlement would not go unchallenged.

Weeks before the siege, violence had already escalated sharply. On September 30, 1749, about forty Mi'kmaq attacked six men cutting trees at a sawmill in Dartmouth. Four were killed on the spot, one taken prisoner, one escaped. Two of the dead were scalped, and the heads of the others were cut off. A detachment of rangers pursued the raiding party and killed two Mi'kmaq, taking their heads. The atrocities on both sides reflected a conflict in which neither party recognized limits. On October 2, Cornwallis issued an extirpation proclamation against the Mi'kmaq. The siege of Grand-Pre would be the first recorded clash after that grim declaration, an escalation in a war where communities that had coexisted uneasily for decades were being driven toward irreconcilable positions.

On November 27, 1749, a force of 300 Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Penobscot, and eleven Acadian militiamen attacked Fort Vieux Logis at Grand-Pre, commanded by John Handfield. Before the main assault, the attackers captured Lieutenant John Hamilton -- son of Otho Hamilton, a member of the Nova Scotia Council -- along with eighteen soldiers surveying the fort's surroundings. Handfield's own son William was among the prisoners. Six women and another soldier were also taken nearby. Over the following week, the combined native and Acadian force made repeated attempts to storm the fort itself but could not take it. By the time Gorham's Rangers arrived from Fort Sackville, the besiegers had already withdrawn toward Chignecto with their captives. The siege had failed to take the fort, but the prisoners gave the attackers considerable leverage.

The captured soldiers and settlers spent two years as prisoners before a complex negotiation secured their release. Lieutenant Hamilton, whose family connections ran deep in colonial Nova Scotia, and his father-in-law William Shirriff, both members of the provincial council, brokered the deal. The key exchange was deeply personal: a daughter of Mi'kmaq chief Captain Sam -- whose original name was Jerome Atecouando and who had once served under Gorham -- had been taken prisoner at the Saint John River in 1748 and kept with Gorham's wife in Boston. She was traded for Hamilton and the other captives. The council paid Father Le Loutre's ransom of 882 pounds to free sixty prisoners in all. In the aftermath, Gorham's Rangers marched to Pisiquid to build Fort Edward and seize property from Acadians who had participated in the siege. The Mi'kmaq and Acadians continued raiding Protestant settlements, striking Dartmouth in 1751 and Lunenburg in 1756. Perhaps most surprisingly, Captain Hamilton, years after his captivity, wrote Governor Lawrence a letter of support for Abbe Le Loutre, the very priest who had helped orchestrate the conflict -- a reminder that in colonial Nova Scotia, the lines between enemy and ally were rarely as clean as official histories suggest.