Fort Saint Louis was a French fort built in the 17th century on

Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region of Labrador, having a total size of . As of 2025 the population ...

at the time of the

New France New France (, ) was the territory colonized by Kingdom of France, France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Kingdom of Great Br ...

. The construction began in 1690 for a new French fort on Newfoundland. In 1662, the French had established a strategic trading post in a well protected cove overlooking

Placentia Bay Placentia Bay () is a body of water on the southeast coast of Newfoundland, Canada. It is formed by Burin Peninsula on the west and Avalon Peninsula on the east. Fishing grounds in the bay were used by native people long before the first Europ ...

that separates Avalon to the rest of Newfoundland and near the

Grand Banks The Grand Banks of Newfoundland are a series of underwater plateaus south-east of the island of Newfoundland on the North American continental shelf. The Grand Banks are one of the world's richest fishing grounds, supporting Atlantic cod, swordfi ...

. To protect this place, several forts were built around the cove, Fort Plaisance from 1662, the Fort Royal in 1687 and Saint Louis 1690. Fort Saint Louis was built inside the harbor in order to protect the small port city of Plaisance from an enemy attack. It was to reinforce the old fort built of wood in Placentia. Fort Saint Louis was built in stone. Its enclosure was nearly 250 meters long, encircling two bastions, the headquarters of the governor and the buildings of the garrison. The walls stood four meters high and the walls measured two meters thick. Almost thirty guns were operational on this fort. The fort was attacked during

King William's War King William's War (also known as the Second Indian War, Father Baudoin's War, Castin's War, or the First Intercolonial War in French) was the North American theater of the Nine Years' War (1688–1697), also known as the War of the Grand Allian ...

in the Battle of Placentia (1692). In 1713, the

Treaty of Utrecht The Peace of Utrecht was a series of peace treaty, peace treaties signed by the belligerents in the War of the Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city of Utrecht between April 1713 and February 1715. The war involved three contenders for the vac ...

forced the French to abandon their settlements in Newfoundland. 'Plaisance' became 'Placentia'. The inhabitants were moved to

Île Royale The Salvation Islands ( French: ''Îles du Salut'', so called because the missionaries went there to escape plague on the mainland), sometimes mistakenly called the Safety Islands, are a group of small islands of volcanic origin about off the co ...

which began the construction of

Louisbourg Louisbourg is an unincorporated community and former town in Cape Breton Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia. History The harbour had been used by European mariners since at least the 1590s, when it was known as English Port and Havre à l'An ...

External links

*http://www.heritage.nf.ca/patrimoine/exploration/forts_f.html *http://www.pc.gc.ca/fra/lhn-nhs/nl/castlehill/natcul/histor.aspx {{coord, 47.251348, N, 53.964388, W, source:wikidata, display=title Saint Louis

See also

External links