The Louisbourg Expedition (1757) was a failed British attempt to capture the French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 fortress of Louisbourg on Île Royale (now known as Cape Breton Island

Cape Breton Island

Cape Breton Island is an island on the Atlantic coast of North America. It likely corresponds to the word Breton, the French demonym for Brittany....

) during the Seven Years' War

Seven Years' War

The Seven Years' War was a global military war between 1756 and 1763, involving most of the great powers of the time and affecting Europe, North America, Central America, the West African coast, India, and the Philippines...

 (known in the United States as the French and Indian War

French and Indian War

The French and Indian War is the common American name for the war between Great Britain and France in North America from 1754 to 1763. In 1756, the war erupted into the world-wide conflict known as the Seven Years' War and thus came to be regarded as the North American theater of that war...

).

A strong French naval concentration was formed at Louisbourg, as Dubois de La Motte led a defence with 9 ships-of-the-line and 2 frigates, which were reinforced with the arrival of Joseph de Bauffremont

Joseph de Bauffremont

Joseph de Bauffremont, Prince of Listenois , was a member of the Bauffremont family, and a French Navy officer under Louis XIV. He was a commander in the Seven Year's War...

 from Saint-Domingue

Saint-Domingue

The labour for these plantations was provided by an estimated 790,000 African slaves . Between 1764 and 1771, the average annual importation of slaves varied between 10,000-15,000; by 1786 it was about 28,000, and from 1787 onward, the colony received more than 40,000 slaves a year...

 with 5 ships-of-the-line and a frigate, and 4 ships and 2 frigates from Toulon

Toulon

Toulon is a town in southern France and a large military harbor on the Mediterranean coast, with a major French naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur region, Toulon is the capital of the Var department in the former province of Provence....

 under Joseph-François de Noble Du Revest.

This strong French naval deployment repulsed the attempts of Lord Loudon

John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun

Major-General John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun was a British nobleman and army officer.-Early career:Campbell inherited the peerage on the death of his father in 1731, becoming Lord Loudoun. The earl raised a regiment of infantry that took part in the Jacobite Rising of 1745 on the side of the...

 in the Louisbourg Expedition, who had committed a squadron under Francis Holburne

Francis Holburne

Admiral Sir Francis Holburne was a Royal Navy officer who also served as a Member of Parliament.-Naval career:Francis entered the Navy in 1720 as a volunteer aboard , passing his examinations in 1725...

.

On 24 September 1757, the British fleet was scattered by a gale, but the French could not pursue them due to a typhus

Typhus

Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...

 epidemic. Dubois de La Motte would return to Brest with his sick men on 30 October 1757.

The British succeeded in capturing Louisbourg

Siege of Louisbourg (1758)

The Siege of Louisbourg was a pivotal battle of the Seven Years' War in 1758 which ended the French colonial era in Atlantic Canada and led directly to the loss of Quebec in 1759 and the remainder of French North America the following year.-Background:The British government realized that with the...

 the following year.

The next battle in Nova Scotia the Battle of Bloody Creek (1757), happened after the Louisbourg Expedition.