June 06, 2013
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THE French made use of the years that intervened between the peace of 1748 and the outbreak of hostilities in 1754 to draw a line of posts along the Ohio and near to the Allegheny Mountains. They intended to confine the English to the country east of the Alleghenies, and to secure to themselves the whole of the great interior valley. This was especially exasperating to Virginia, which claimed the western country.
George Washington, then a young man of twenty-one, who had already spent much time on the frontier as a surveyor, was sent into the wilderness by the Governor of Virginia as an ambassador to urge the French to depart peaceably. This errand the athletic and cool-headed young man accomplished, in spite of great hardships and dangers.
In the next year, 1754, Washington was sent as a major at the head of some troops to dislodge the French, who had built a post at the head of the Ohio, where Pittsburg now stands. This they called Fort Duquesne [du-ken].
Washington found the French too strong for his force, but, by surprising and defeating a skulking party of them, he brought on the war, which the French wished to postpone.
Washington was himself afterward attacked by a superior force, and compelled to give up the disputed ground.
In 1755 General Braddock, an English officer, marched from Virginia in command of an army of English regulars and colonial militia, to drive the French from Fort Duquesne. Braddock was brave and honest, but harsh and brutal in manners. He could not understand the nature of a war in the woods. Like other English officers of the time, he despised the American militia and their half-Indian way of fighting.When only eight miles from Fort Duquesne, the French and Indians attacked Braddock's army. The red coats and solid ranks were a good target, and the soldiers were mowed down by the deadly fire that came from trees and gullies where no enemy was to be seen.
The British soldiers, though brave enough, were unused to such warfare, and unable to do anything to repel the unseen foe. When they fought, they fought in a line in plain site. They had no concept of hiding behind things to avoid being a target.
After standing huddled together for three hours, they broke and fled. The Virginians, whom Braddock had despised, had stood their ground for a while, fighting behind trees like the Indians; but Braddock, thought this was cowardly and ordered them to "come out in the open field like Englishmen" and even struck some of them with the back of his sword.
General Braddock exposed himself fearlessly. He had four horses killed under him, and was on the fifth when he was mortally wounded.
George Washington, who was the only officer on Braddock's staff not killed or wounded, behaved with admirable courage. He had two horses shot under him, and four bullets pierced his clothes. Nearly all the officers of Braddock's army were killed or wounded, and the soldiers who escaped the slaughter fled back to Fort Cumberland in a wild panic.
In the same summer with Braddock's defeat came the removal of the Acadians. Acadia was the name of the region now included in the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. It had been settled by the French about one hundred years when the English conquered it in 1710, during Queen Anne's War.
The people continued to speak French and to take sides secretly with their own nation in every struggle between the two countries, though they had lived forty-five years under English rule. In this war the hard resolution was taken to scatter the Acadians through the various English colonies. They were seized and put on board vessels and sent away; their houses and barns were burned, and their lands confiscated.
Some of them got to Louisiana, some to Canada, and some, after great hardships, made their way back to Acadia; others were scattered in various places, and their sufferings have excited pity even to our own times.
Almost the whole of this year's operations of the British and colonial troops ended in failure. Sir William Johnson was sent to capture Crown Point, a French fort on Lake Champlain. His raw forces succeeded in beating off the French in the battle of Lake George, but Johnson, who was no soldier, did not even attempt to go farther, and Crown Point was not attacked. General Shirley set out to capture the French fort at Niagara, but he was outgeneraled by the French, and did not reach it.
The statesmen who governed in England at this time were very incompetent. The colonies were divided by factions and jealousies, and the war in America was carried on with half-heartedness and stupidity.
in 1756 Lord Loudon was sent to command the troops in America. He laid siege to Louisbourg in 1757, but failed to take it. For this movement he drew away many of the troops that had protected the New York frontier. Aware of this, the French, under Louis-Joseph de Montcalm [mont-cahm], besieged and captured Fort William Henry, at the south end of Lake George.
By the terms of capitulation (which means to surrender or give up) the colonial troops were to be allowed to return home. But after they had surrendered the fort, the Indian allies of the French fell on them and killed a great many. Others they seized and carried off.
William Pitt, also called the Earl of Chatham, became Prime Minister of England at this time and he made great changes in the conduct of the war in America. He very much wanted to take Canada, and drive the French out of America. He chose his commanders with care and the English colonies began to feel some hope of getting rid of the enemy that sent the Indians, like wolves, to destroy the defenseless settlements.
In 1758 the English again laid siege to Louisbourg, that great fortress which New-Englanders had once captured. After a siege by sea and land, lasting nearly two months, and much hard fighting, the town surrendered.
In September of this same year the French fort, called Frontenac, which stood where the town of Kingston in Canada now stands and controlled Lake Ontario, was taken by an English expedition.
General Forbes, though so sick with a painful and mortal illness that he had to be carried on a litter, cut a road through the thick forests on the Pennsylvania mountains, marched into Ohio, and forced the French to abandon Fort Duquesne. The English established a fort here and called the place Pittsburg, in honor of the great prime minister who had turned the current of the war from defeat to victory.
The English army in America suffered one considerable defeat at Fort Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain. General Abercromby had sailed down Lake George and marched through the woods to attack Montcalm, at Ticonderoga. The English and colonial troops tried to carry the French works by assault, but after several repulses they retreated in a panic to their boats, and sailed back to the fort at the south end of Lake George.But the English successes in 1758 pushed the French in America far toward ruin. Louisbourg, the great French stronghold, from which private “soldiers” were sent out, was gone, and by the fall of Fort Duquesne and Fort Frontenac the routes from Canada to Louisiana were cut off.
The fur trade of Canada was destroyed and the Indians of the interior were no longer willing to come to the support of the French, seeing the English in possession of the main roads into their country.
During the siege of Louisbourg, James Wolfe, a young brigadier general, had attracted much attention by the energy and daring of his operations. He was sent by Pitt to take Quebec, if such a thing were possible.
Quebec is on a high, steep bluff, overlooking the St. Lawrence where that river is narrow, and the natural strength of the fortress is very great. All through July and August of 1759, Wolfe's army and the English fleet tried in vain to find a weak spot in the defenses of the Canadian stronghold, but the fortress frowned on them from its inaccessible heights.
In several attacks, made at various points, the English were held off and sent back. As the season of storms was coming on, and the fleet must soon leave, even Wolfe began to wonder if the taking of Quebec was possible. But, in spite of sickness and pain, this heroic man roused his army to make one more attempt. Meantime Montcalm, who commanded the French forces, was extremely vigilant. He kept his horses saddled day and night to ride to any point that might be assailed, and he did not take off his clothes for nearly three months.
Wolfe put his men in boats and dropped down in the night from the fleet above the town and onto a little bay. This place is now known as Wolfe's Cove. Twenty-four volunteers climbed the steep precipice by a rough path and drove off the guard at the top. When firing was heard, the whole force landed and clambered up the rocky steep, by holding onto bushes.
When morning came, the British soldiers were in line of battle less than a mile from Quebec, where the French must fight or have their supplies cut off.
Montcalm attacked immediately, but his ranks were broken by the steady English fire, and Wolfe led a charge in person. Though twice wounded by bullets, Wolfe kept on until a shot entered his breast, inflicting a mortal wound.
When told that the enemy were fleeing everywhere, he said, "Now, God be praised. I die in peace!" Montcalm, who was also mortally wounded, said, "I am happy that I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec."
Quebec soon capitulated, and the fate of Canada was sealed. The French attempted to retake the city in vain. The taking of Montreal, in 1760 completed the conquest of Canada by the English. By the Treaty between England and France made in 1763, the French possessions in America east of the Mississippi, except a district around New Orleans, were ceded to England.
The joy in the colonies knew no bounds. The people had seen their shipping cut off by privateers, their property wasted by taxation, their paper money depreciated, and their young men destroyed by almost continual war. The frontiers had been desolated by the Indians, under French influence, for three quarters of a century. Now they looked forward to peace, and the expansion of the English settlements in America into a vast empire.
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