French and Indian War

• 1. Introduction

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  The French and Indian War was fought over land that Voltaire called nothing more than a few acres of snow. The French philosopher meant Canada, and he meant it as a shrug. Yet the war in North America between Great Britain and France lasted from 1754 to 1763. Each side leaned on Indigenous allies, and those allies had their own reasons for fighting. Historians generally treat it as one theater of the global Seven Years' War, although many Americans see it as a conflict of its own.

  If the stakes were really so slight, why did the fighting spread across a whole continent? Why does the war carry different names in Boston, London and Quebec? And what did the winners and losers each pay for their treatment of those snowy acres? The answers begin with a map that nobody had finished drawing.

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• 2. A War of Many Names

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  In British America, wars usually took the name of the reigning monarch. King William's War and Queen Anne's War followed that habit. A King George's War had already been fought in the 1740s under George II. With the royal name used up, colonists named the next conflict after their enemies, and the French and Indian War stuck. It remains the standard name in the United States, even though Indigenous peoples fought on both sides. Less common labels include the Fourth Intercolonial War and the Great War for the Empire.

  Across the Atlantic, the same fighting never received a separate name. Europeans folded it into the Seven Years' War. That name counts only from the formal declaration of war in 1756 to the peace treaty of 1763. The American fighting had started two years earlier. By the capture of Montreal in 1760, it was largely finished, after only six years. Many American historians therefore treat the two wars as separate, since the European one did not involve the colonies. Canadians generally blend them together as the Seven Years' War, or Guerre de Sept Ans.

  In Quebec, the preferred phrase is Guerre de la Conquête, the War of Conquest. Popular historians Jacques Lacoursière and Denis Vaugeois promoted it. They borrowed the idea from Maurice Séguin, who saw the war as a dramatic tipping point for French Canadian identity and nationhood. In that view, the name records a defeat in which New France became part of the British Empire. To understand how such a defeat was possible, it helps to count the people on each side.

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• 3. Empires and Nations

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  About 75,000 people made up the French population of North America. Most lived along the St. Lawrence River valley. Others settled in Acadia, which covered present-day New Brunswick and parts of Nova Scotia, and on Île Royale, now Cape Breton Island. Smaller communities sat at New Orleans, Biloxi, Mobile and in the Illinois Country along the Mississippi. French fur traders ranged across the St. Lawrence and Mississippi watersheds. They often married Indigenous women, and traders who married the daughters of chiefs formed high-ranking unions.

  Against them stood roughly 1.5 million British settlers, outnumbering the French 20 to 1. These colonists lived along the Atlantic coast from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland down to Georgia. Their charters were granted when the width of the continent was unknown, so many older colonies claimed land stretching arbitrarily far west. Britain had captured Nova Scotia from France in 1713, and it still held a large French-speaking population. Britain also claimed Rupert's Land, where the Hudson's Bay Company traded furs.

  No French regular army troops were stationed in America when the war began. About 3,000 troupes de la marine defended New France. These colonial regulars included some men with real woodland combat experience, and the colonial government recruited militia when needed. The British colonies had no standing forces at all. Their local militia companies were ill trained and available only briefly. Virginia was the exception, with a large frontier and several companies of British regulars. The colonial governments also preferred to act independently of each other and of London. That complicated talks with tribes whose lands overlapped several colonies.

  Between the two colonial populations lay territory dominated by Indigenous nations. In the north, the Mi'kmaq and Abenakis were engaged in Father Le Loutre's War. They held sway over parts of Nova Scotia and Acadia and much of Maine. The Iroquois Confederation dominated upstate New York and the Ohio Country. Delaware, Shawnee and Mingos lived in Ohio under formal Iroquois rule, which limited their authority to make agreements. The Iroquois began with a stance of neutrality to keep trade flowing with both sides. Holding that stance proved difficult, and member tribes sided with whichever power offered the better trade.

  The interior Southeast belonged to the Catawbas, the Creeks and Choctaw, and the Cherokee. When war broke out, the French used trading connections to recruit fighters from the western Great Lakes. That region was not directly part of the quarrel. Wyandots, Mississaugas, Ojibwas, Winnebagos and Potawatomi answered the call. The British had the Iroquois Six Nations and the Cherokees, until differences produced the Anglo-Cherokee War in 1758. That same year, Pennsylvania negotiated the Treaty of Easton. A number of Ohio Country tribes promised neutrality in exchange for land concessions. Most other northern tribes sided with the French, their main trading partner and supplier of arms. Spain, meanwhile, claimed only Florida, where a few hundred Europeans lived, mostly in St. Augustine. It also held Cuba and other West Indies territories that later became military targets.

  One British figure moved easily through this world. William Johnson was the British Superintendent for Indian Affairs in New York and beyond. He spoke Iroquois languages and became a respected honorary member of the Confederacy. The Iroquois called him Warraghiggey, meaning he who does great things, and made him a colonel of the Iroquois in 1746.

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• 4. Race for the Ohio

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  A lead plate buried at the site of Pittsburgh was France's first answer to the British traders in the Ohio Country. The governor-general of New France, Roland-Michel Barrin de La Galissonière, worried about traders such as George Croghan. He ordered Pierre-Joseph Céloron to lead an expedition. Its goals were to tell France's allies that trade was exclusive to those New France authorized, to discourage British alliances with local tribes, and to show French strength.

  Between June and November 1749, Céloron's force of about 200 troupes de la marine and 30 Indigenous men covered about 3,000 miles. They went up the St. Lawrence, followed the northern shore of Lake Ontario, crossed the Niagara portage, and traveled along the southern shore of Lake Erie. At the Chautauqua Portage near Barcelona, New York, they moved inland to the Allegheny River and followed it to the future Pittsburgh. There Céloron buried engraved lead plates asserting the French claim. Any British merchants he met were told to leave.

  At Logstown, local people told Céloron that they owned the Ohio Country and would trade with the British regardless. Farther south, near the village of Pickawillany, he warned the Miami chief known as Old Briton of severe consequences if he kept trading with the British. Old Briton ignored him. Céloron's report was blunt. "All I can say is that the Natives of these localities are very badly disposed towards the French," he wrote, "and are entirely devoted to the English. I don't know in what way they could be brought back." Massachusetts governor William Shirley took the opposite view of the danger. He insisted that colonists would not be safe while the French remained.

  Diplomacy did little to settle the matter. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ended the War of Austrian Succession in 1748 and focused mainly on Europe. A commission was handed the colonial border disputes, but it reached no decision. Claims clashed from Nova Scotia and Acadia to the Ohio Country. They even reached the rich fisheries of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland.

  In 1749, the British government granted land to the Ohio Company of Virginia. The grant required the company to settle 100 families and build a fort to protect them. Pennsylvania claimed the same territory, and both colonies pressed their cases. In 1750, Christopher Gist explored the region for Virginia and the company and opened talks with tribes at Logstown. He completed the Treaty of Logstown in 1752 with the local "Half-King" Tanacharison and an Iroquois representative. The terms allowed a strong house at the mouth of the Monongahela, at the modern site of Pittsburgh.

  On the 17th of March 1752, the Marquis de la Jonquière, governor-general of New France, died. Charles le Moyne de Longueuil took over temporarily and sent Charles Michel de Langlade, an officer of the Troupes de la Marine, to punish the Miami of Pickawillany for ignoring Céloron. Langlade led 300 men, including French Canadians and Ottawa warriors. On the 21st of June, they attacked the trading center, captured three traders, and killed 14 Miami, including Old Briton. Some Indigenous members of the party reportedly ate him in a ritual.

  In the spring of 1753, Paul Marin de la Malgue took command of 2,000 troupes de la marine and Indigenous allies. He followed Céloron's route, but he built forts rather than burying plates. Fort Presque Isle rose on Lake Erie's south shore near Erie, Pennsylvania. A road was cut to the headwaters of LeBoeuf Creek, and Fort Le Boeuf was built at Waterford, Pennsylvania. Marin drove off or captured British traders as he moved south, alarming both the British and the Iroquois.

  Tanaghrisson, a chief of the Mingo, traveled to Fort Le Boeuf to confront the French. The Mingo were remnants of Iroquois and other tribes driven west by colonial expansion. Tanaghrisson intensely disliked the French, whom he accused of killing and eating his father. He threatened them with military action, and Marin contemptuously dismissed the threat.

  Iroquois runners carried news of the French forts to Johnson's manor in upstate New York. Johnson and Indigenous representatives then met Governor George Clinton and officials of other colonies at Albany. Mohawk chief Hendrick, speaker of the tribal council, insisted that Britain honor its obligations and block French expansion. Clinton's response failed to satisfy him. Hendrick declared the Covenant Chain broken, ending a long friendship between the Iroquois Confederacy and the British Crown. Virginia's governor was already preparing his own answer.

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• 5. Washington's Ambush

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  Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia had money at stake in the Ohio Company, and so did the brother of a young militia officer. In October 1753, Dinwiddie sent 21-year-old Major George Washington of the Virginia Regiment to warn the French to leave. Washington's party included Jacob Van Braam as interpreter and the company surveyor Christopher Gist. It also included Guyasuta, a Mingo warrior, Jeskakake, a Cayuga chief, Kaghswaghtaniunt, a Seneca leader, and Tanaghrisson. On the 12th of December, they reached Fort Le Boeuf.

  Marin had died on the 29th of October, so Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre now commanded the French forces. He invited Washington to dine. Over dinner, Washington handed him Dinwiddie's letter demanding an immediate French withdrawal. Saint-Pierre answered, "As to the Summons you send me to retire, I do not think myself obliged to obey it." He argued that the French claim was superior, since René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle had explored the Ohio Country nearly a century earlier.

  Washington's party left early on the 16th of December and reached Williamsburg on the 16th of January 1754. His report stated, "The French had swept south." It detailed their fortifications and their plan to fortify the meeting point of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers.

  Dinwiddie had not waited for the report. He sent William Trent and 40 men to that spot, and they began a small stockaded fort in early 1754. Governor Duquesne dispatched Claude-Pierre Pécaudy de Contrecœur, who led 500 men south from Fort Venango on the 5th of April. They reached the fort on the 16th of April. Contrecœur let Trent's company withdraw and bought their construction tools to keep building what became Fort Duquesne.

  Historian Fred Anderson suggests Tanaghrisson wanted to win British support and regain authority over his own people, who had leaned toward the French. One of Tanaghrisson's men told Contrecœur that British musket fire had killed Jumonville. Historians generally see the glen as the opening battle of the war and the start of hostilities in the Ohio valley.

  Washington pulled back several miles and built Fort Necessity. On the 3rd of July, Canadians under Jumonville's brother attacked it. Washington surrendered and negotiated a withdrawal under arms. One of his men reported that Shawnee, Delaware and Mingo warriors accompanied the attackers. These were the very people Tanaghrisson had hoped to influence.

  In June and July 1754, delegates gathered at the Albany Congress. They hoped to present a unified colonial front in trade and negotiations with the tribes, whose allegiance seemed pivotal. Neither the colonial legislatures nor the Crown approved the plan. Even so, its format and many of its details became the prototype for confederation during the War of Independence.

  News of both battles reached England in August. After months of negotiations, the government of the Duke of Newcastle decided to send an army the next year to dislodge the French. Its commander would be Major General Edward Braddock.

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• 6. Defeats and Deportation

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  Word of Britain's plans leaked to France well before Braddock sailed. In 1755, King Louis XV sent six regiments to New France under Baron Dieskau. The British sent a fleet in February to blockade French ports, but the French fleet had already left. Admiral Edward Hawke detached a fast squadron to chase it. On the 8th of June 1755, Admiral Edward Boscawen fired on the French ship Alcide and captured her and two troop ships. British seizures of French shipping continued through the year.

  Britain's plan for 1755 was a four-way attack. Braddock would march on Fort Duquesne. Shirley would fortify Fort Oswego and attack Fort Niagara. Johnson would take Fort St. Frédéric at Crown Point, and Lieutenant Colonel Robert Monckton would take Fort Beauséjour. Braddock led about 1,500 regulars and provincial militia, with George Washington as one of his aides. French regulars, Canadian militiamen and Indigenous warriors ambushed them from trees and from behind logs. On the 9th of July, at the Battle of the Monongahela, Braddock called a retreat. He died of his wounds days later. Roughly 1,000 British soldiers were killed or injured, and the remaining 500 retreated to Virginia under Washington. Washington and Thomas Gage played key roles in organizing the retreat, and both would later face each other in the American Revolutionary War.

  Shirley's effort at Oswego bogged down in logistical trouble, made worse by his inexperience with large expeditions. Learning that the French were massing to attack Oswego, he left garrisons there and at Fort Bull and Fort Williams. The last two stood on the Oneida Carry at Rome, New York, and supplies for the Niagara attack were stored at Fort Bull. Johnson's expedition was better organized. The French governor, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, saw him as the larger threat and sent Dieskau to Fort St. Frédéric. Dieskau planned to attack Fort Edward on the Hudson, but Johnson had fortified it strongly, and Dieskau's Indigenous allies were reluctant. The two sides met in the bloody Battle of Lake George, which ended inconclusively. The French withdrew to Ticonderoga Point and began building Fort Carillon.

  Colonel Monckton took Fort Beauséjour in June 1755, the sole British success of the year. It cut the French fortress of Louisbourg off from land reinforcements. To starve Louisbourg of supplies, Nova Scotia's governor Charles Lawrence ordered the deportation of the Acadians. Monckton's forces, including companies of Rogers' Rangers, forcibly removed thousands. They chased down many who resisted and sometimes committed atrocities. Resistance could be stiff, and Acadians worked with Mi'kmaq allies on frontier raids against Dartmouth and Lunenburg. The only clashes of any size were at Petitcodiac in 1755 and Bloody Creek near Annapolis Royal in 1757.

  After Braddock's death, William Shirley took command and laid out plans for 1756 at Albany in December 1755. He proposed renewed attacks on Niagara, Crown Point and Duquesne, plus Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario. He also proposed a wilderness march through Maine and down the Chaudière River to Quebec. Disputes with Johnson and New York's governor Sir Charles Hardy left the plan with little support. In January 1756, Newcastle replaced Shirley with Lord Loudoun, with Major General James Abercrombie as his second. Neither had the campaign experience of the three officers France sent in May 1756: Major General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, the Chevalier de Lévis and Colonel François-Charles de Bourlamaque. All three were veterans of the War of the Austrian Succession. On the 17th of May 1756, Britain formally declared war on France, and the conflict spread into Europe.

  Vaudreuil, who hoped to become commander in chief as well as governor, struck before the reinforcements arrived. Scouts had reported a weak British supply chain, so he ordered an attack on Shirley's forts at the Oneida Carry. At Fort Bull, the French destroyed the fort and large supplies, including 45,000 pounds of gunpowder. That set back British hopes on Lake Ontario and endangered the Oswego garrison, already short of supplies. French agents in the Ohio valley also encouraged Indigenous raids on frontier settlements, and refugees streamed east.

  The new British command was not in place until July. Abercrombie reached Albany but refused to act without Loudoun's approval. Montcalm exploited that inertia. He moved his headquarters to Ticonderoga as if to threaten Lake George again, then slipped away and captured Oswego in August. Afterward, Montcalm and his Indigenous allies quarreled over the prisoners' personal belongings. The Europeans did not regard them as prizes and stopped the warriors from stripping the prisoners of valuables, which angered them.

  Loudoun was a capable administrator but a cautious field commander. For 1757 he planned an attack on Quebec. William Pitt, the Secretary of State responsible for the colonies, ordered him to take Louisbourg first. Delays dogged the expedition, which was ready to sail from Halifax only in early August. French ships had escaped the blockade, and a fleet waiting at Louisbourg outnumbered the British. Loudoun returned to New York amid news of a massacre at Fort William Henry.

  French irregulars had harassed that fort through the first half of 1757. In January they ambushed British rangers near Ticonderoga. In February they raided across the frozen Lake George and destroyed storehouses outside the main fortification. In early August, Montcalm and 7,000 troops besieged the fort, which capitulated on terms of withdrawal under parole. When the withdrawal began, some of Montcalm's Indigenous allies attacked the British column, angry about the lost chance for loot. They killed and captured several hundred men, women, children and slaves. The disasters of 1757 would bring down the British government.

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• 7. Conquest of New France

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  Bad weather and a corrupt official hurt New France in 1758. A poor harvest in 1757 and a difficult winter strained the colony. The intendant, François Bigot, allegedly ran supply schemes that inflated prices. Montcalm believed they filled the pockets of Bigot and his associates. The British blockade limited French shipping, so Vaudreuil and Montcalm were resupplied only minimally. A massive smallpox outbreak among western tribes led many to stay away from trade that year. Some warriors reportedly came from beyond the Mississippi for the William Henry campaign and went home afterward. Modern writer William Nester believes they might have met European carriers, although no proof exists. The tribes blamed the French for bringing "bad medicine" and for denying them prizes.

  Montcalm concentrated his scarce resources on defending the St. Lawrence, with primary defenses at Carillon, Quebec and Louisbourg. Vaudreuil argued unsuccessfully for continuing the raids that had worked well. In London, British failures in North America and Europe toppled Newcastle and the Duke of Cumberland, his chief military adviser. Newcastle and Pitt then formed an uneasy coalition in which Pitt dominated military planning. He built the 1758 campaign on a plan largely developed by Loudoun, who had been replaced by Abercrombie after the failures of 1757. Pitt greatly increased British resources in the colonies, while France preferred to concentrate its forces in Europe.

  Pitt's plan called for three major offensives against the heartlands of New France. In September and October 1758, General John Forbes led 6,000 troops against the Ohio Country, and the French withdrew from Fort Duquesne. The great fortress of Louisbourg fell after a siege. The third thrust failed in the Battle of Carillon. There 3,600 Frenchmen defeated Abercrombie's 18,000 regulars, militia and Indigenous allies outside the fort the French called Carillon and the British called Ticonderoga. Abercrombie salvaged something when he sent John Bradstreet to destroy Fort Frontenac, including supplies destined for New France's western forts and furs destined for Europe. Abercrombie was recalled and replaced by Jeffery Amherst, the victor at Louisbourg.

  France's new foreign minister, the duc de Choiseul, decided to plan an invasion of Britain to draw British resources away from North America. The scheme failed militarily and politically. Pitt kept planning major campaigns against New France and sent funds to Prussia, Britain's ally on the European mainland. The French Navy lost the 1759 naval battles at Lagos and Quiberon Bay. Some French supply ships did slip out of France past the blockade.

  In the summer of 1759, the British campaigned along the northwest frontier of Canada to cut off the French forts to the west and south. They captured Ticonderoga and Fort Niagara and defeated the French at the Thousand Islands. In September 1759, James Wolfe defeated Montcalm at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. The battle claimed the lives of both commanders, and the French then surrendered the city.

  In April 1760, François Gaston de Lévis led an attempt to retake Quebec. He won the Battle of Sainte-Foy, but his siege ended in defeat when British ships arrived to relieve the garrison. Another blow followed at Restigouche, where a British naval victory destroyed the French ships meant to resupply his army. In July, Amherst led about 18,000 men in a three-pronged advance on Montreal. After clearing French positions along the way, all three forces surrounded the city in September. Many Canadians deserted or surrendered their arms, and the Indigenous allies of the French sought peace and neutrality. On the 8th of September, Lévis and Vaudreuil reluctantly signed the Articles of Capitulation of Montreal.

  Vaudreuil won generous terms from Amherst. French residents who chose to stay could keep their Roman Catholic worship, their property and their homes. The British treated sick and wounded French soldiers, and French regulars sailed home on British ships under a promise not to serve again in the war. Most of the fighting in America ended in 1760, with one notable exception. The French seized St. John's, Newfoundland, and Amherst sent troops under his nephew William Amherst. They regained control after the Battle of Signal Hill in September 1762. Many British troops were then reassigned to the West Indies. They captured Spanish Havana after Spain belatedly joined the war on France's side. Major General Robert Monckton led an expedition against French Martinique in 1762.

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• 8. Peace and Its Price

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  On the 10th of February 1763, Britain, France and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris, with Portugal in agreement. Britain gave France a choice. It could surrender its continental North American possessions east of the Mississippi, or it could give up the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, which Britain had occupied. France gave up the continent. It judged the sugar of the islands more valuable and easier to defend than the furs of the mainland. It did keep the two small islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, along with fishing rights.

  Britain was happy to take New France, since defending its colonies would no longer be a problem. Many colonists, however, concluded that without the French threat they no longer needed British protection. Spain traded Florida to Britain to regain Cuba. Under the separate Treaty of Fontainebleau, it gained Louisiana from France, including New Orleans, as compensation for its losses. Britain and Spain also agreed that navigation on the Mississippi would be open to vessels of all nations.

  General Amherst oversaw the transfer of French forts on the western frontier to British control. His policies disturbed many Indigenous people and contributed to Pontiac's War in 1763. A series of attacks on frontier forts followed, including one on Fort Miami that ended a nearly half-century of European garrisoning at Kekionga. The frontier settlements required British forces to stay, and the conflict was not fully concluded until 1766.

  A smallpox outbreak that began in the 1750s and lasted into the 1760s devastated several Native communities across the American Midwest. It was brought on in part by victorious warriors who had fought for the French and carried home infected prizes of war. The Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi peoples suffered most. Odawa leader and historian Andrew Blackbird recalled that the outbreak had "entirely depopulated and laid waste" the large Odawa settlement of Waganagisi.

  Britain gained control of French Canada and Acadia, home to approximately 80,000 mainly French-speaking Roman Catholics. The deportation that began in 1755 had freed land for immigrants from Europe and migrants from the southern colonies. Britain resettled many Acadians throughout its American provinces. Many others went to France, and some went to New Orleans, which they expected to remain French. Attempts to settle Acadians in places as different as French Guiana and the Falkland Islands failed. In Louisiana, the Acadian population contributed to the founding of the Cajun people. The French word Acadien became Cadien and then Cajun.

  King George III issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763 on the 7th of October 1763. It outlined how to divide and administer the newly conquered territory, and it still shapes relations between the government of Canada and the First Nations to some extent. It reserved the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains for the Indigenous population. That line was only a temporary obstacle for westward-bound settlers. The proclamation also barred Roman Catholic Canadians from civic participation. The Quebec Act of 1774 addressed their grievances and transferred the Indian Reserve into the Province of Quebec. It kept French civil law, including the seigneurial system. The largely Protestant Thirteen Colonies saw the act as a threat of popery, and it is usually grouped with the Intolerable Acts that led toward the American Revolutionary War. It served as Quebec's constitutional document until the Constitutional Act of 1791.

  The Seven Years' War nearly doubled Britain's national debt. The Crown looked for new revenue and tried to tax its colonies. Resistance grew stiffer until troops were called in, and that contributed to the start of the American Revolution. France put little value on its American holdings beyond the profitable sugar islands of the Antilles. Choiseul thought he had struck a good bargain at Paris. Yet military defeat and the financial burden of the war weakened the French monarchy and contributed to the French Revolution in 1789.

  For Indigenous nations, the end of French power meant the loss of a strong ally. The military roads built by Braddock and Forbes opened the Ohio Country to colonial settlement. The Spanish takeover of Louisiana was not completed until 1769 and had modest effects. British control of Florida pushed tribes that refused to trade with Britain to migrate west. That raised tensions between the Choctaw and the Creek, historic enemies competing for land. Florida's Catholic population also left, mostly for Cuba. Some Christianized Yamasee were resettled on the coast of Mexico.

  France did return to America in 1778, with the Franco-American alliance against Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War. Historian Alfred A. Cave describes it as French "revenge for Montcalm's death".

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