THE COLONIAL WARS

For most of the seventeenth century, the French and British empires in America developed in
relative isolation from each other, and for most of that century the homelands remained at
peace with each other. After the Restoration of 1660, Charles II and James II pursued a policy
of friendship with the French king, Louis XIV. The Glorious Revolution of 1688, however,
worked an abrupt reversal in English diplomacy.
William III, the new king, as leader of the Dutch republic, had engaged in a running conflict
against the ambitions of Louis XIV. His ascent to the throne brought England almost
immediately into a Grand Alliance against Louis in the War of the League of Augsburg,
sometimes called the War of the Palatinate or the War of the Grand Alliance and known in
the American colonies simply as King William’s War (1689–1697). This was the first of four
great European and intercolonial wars that would be fought over the next seventy-four years,
the others being the War of the Spanish Succession (Queen Anne’s War, 1702–1713), the
War of the Austrian Succession (King George’s War, 1744–1748), and the Seven Years’War
(the French and Indian War, which lasted nine years in America, from 1754 to 1763). In all
except the last, the battles in America were but a sideshow accompanying greater battles in
Europe, where British policy pivoted on keeping a balance of power with the French. The
alliances shifted from one fight to the next, but Britain and France were pitted against each
other every time.
Thus for much of the eighteenth century, the colonies were embroiled in global wars and
rumors of wars. The effect on much of the population was devastating. New England,
especially Massachusetts, suffered probably more than the rest, for it was closest to the
centers of French population. It is estimated that 900 Boston men (about 2.5 percent of the
men eligible for service) died in the fighting. This meant that the city was faced with assisting
a large population of widows and orphans. Even more important, these prolonged
conflicts had profound consequences for Britain that later would reshape the contours of its
relationship with America. The wars with France led the English government to incur an
enormous debt, establish a huge navy and a standing army, and excite a militant sense of
nationalism. During the early eighteenth century the changes in British financial policy and
political culture led critics in Parliament to charge that traditional liberties were being
usurped by a tyrannical central government. After the French and Indian
War, American colonists began making the same point.

THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR Of the four major wars involving the European
powers and their New World colonies, the climactic conflict between Britain and France in
North America was the French and Indian War. It began in 1754, after enterprising
Virginians during the early 1750s had crossed the Allegheny Mountains into the Ohio River
valley in order to trade with Indians and survey some 200,000 acres granted them by the king.
The incursion by the Virginians infuriated the French, and they established
forts in what is now western Pennsylvania to defend their interests. When news of these
developments reached Williamsburg, the Virginia governor sent out an emissary to warn off
the French. An ambitious young Virginia militia officer, Major George Washington, whose
older brothers owned part of the Ohio Company, a business venture to develop settlement and
trade in western Pennsylvania, volunteered for the mission.With a few companions,
Washington made his way to Fort Le Boeuf in late 1753 and returned with a polite but firm
French refusal. The Virginia governor then sent a small force to erect a fort at the strategic
fork where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers meet to form the great Ohio. No sooner
had the English started building than a larger French force appeared and ousted them.
Meanwhile, the twenty-two-year-old Washington, hungry for combat and yearing for military
glory, had been organizing a regiment of Virginians. In the spring of 1754, the tall, muscular

1
surveyor-turned-soldier led his 150 volunteers and Iroquois allies across the Alleghenies.
Their mission was to build a fort at the convergence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and
Ohio rivers (where the city of Pittsburgh later eveloped). Along the way, Washington learned
that French soldiers had beaten them to the strategic site and erected
Fort Duquesne, named for the French governor of Canada.Washington decided to make camp
about forty miles from the fort and await reinforcements. The next day the Virginians
ambushed a French detachment. Ten French soldiers were killed, one escaped, and twenty-
one were captured. The Indians then scalped several of the wounded soldiers as a stunned
Major Washington looked on.Washington was unaware that the French had been on a
peaceful mission to discuss the disputed fort. The mutilated soldiers were the first fatalities in
what would become the French and Indian War.
Washington and his troops retreated and hastily constructed a crude stockade at Great
Meadows, dubbed Fort Necessity, which a large force of vengeful French soldiers attacked a
month later, on July 3, 1754. After a daylong battle, George Washington surrendered, having
seen all his horses and cattle killed and one third of his 300 men killed or wounded. The
French permitted his surviving troops to withdraw after stripping them of their weapons.
After the Virginia regiment limped home, Washington decided to resign rather than accept a
demotion. His blundering expedition triggered a series of events that would ignite a
protracted world war. As a prominent British politician exclaimed, “The volley fired by a
young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire.”
Back in London the Board of Trade already had taken notice of the growing conflict in the
backwoods of North America and had called commissioners from all the colonies as far south
as Maryland to a meeting in Albany, New York, to confer on precautions. The Albany
Congress (June 19–July 10, 1754), which was meeting when the first shots sounded at Great
Meadows, ended with little having been accomplished. The delegates conferred with Iroquois
chieftains and sent them away loaded with gifts in return for some half-hearted promises of
support. The congress is remembered mainly for the Plan of Union, worked out by a
committee under Benjamin Franklin and adopted by a unanimous vote of the commissioners.
The plan called for a chief executive, a kind of supreme governor, to be called the president
general of the United Colonies, appointed and supported by the crown, and a supreme
assembly, called the Grand Council, with forty-eight members chosen by the colonial
assemblies. This federal body would oversee matters of defense, Indian relations, and trade
and settlement in the West and would levy taxes to support its programs.
It must have been a good plan, Franklin reasoned, since the assemblies thought it gave too
much power to the crown and the crown thought it gave too much to the colonies. At any rate
the assemblies either rejected or ignored it. Only two substantive results came out of the
congress. Its idea of a supreme commander of British forces in America was adopted, as was
its advice that a New Yorker who was a friend of the Iroquois be made British superintendent
of the northern Indians.
In London the government decided to force a showdown in America. In 1755 the British fleet
captured Nova Scotia and expelled most of its French population. Some 5,000 to 7,000
Acadians who refused to take an oath of allegiance to the British crown were scattered
through the colonies, from Maine to Georgia. Impoverished and homeless, many of them
desperately found their way to French Louisiana, where they became the Cajuns (a corruption
of Acadians), whose descendants still preserve elements of the French language along the
remote bayous and in many urban centers.
The backwoods, however, became the scene of one British disaster after another over the next
three years. In 1755 a new British commander in chief, General Edward Braddock, arrived in
Virginia with two regiments of army regulars. Braddock was a seasoned, confident officer,

2
but neither he nor his red-clad British troops had any experience fighting in the wilderness.
Braddock viewed Indians with contempt, and his cocksure ignorance would prove fatal.
With the addition of some colonial troops, including a still-headstrong George Washington as
a volunteer staff officer, Braddock hacked a 125-mile road through the mountain wilderness
from the upper Potomac River in Maryland to the vicinity of Fort Duquesne. Hauling heavy
artillery to surround the French fort, along with a lumbering wagon train of supplies,
Braddock’s force achieved a great feat of military logistics and was on the verge of success
when, six miles from Fort Duquesne, the surrounding woods suddenly came alive with
Ojibwa and French soldiers in Indian costume. Beset on three sides by concealed enemies,
the British troops panicked and retreated in disarray, abandoning most of their artillery and
supplies.
Brave General Braddock had several horses shot out from under him before he was mortally
wounded. George Washington, his own coat riddled by bullets, helped other officers contain
the rout and lead a hasty retreat. More than 900 British and Virginia soldiers were killed or
wounded in one of the worst British defeats of the eighteenth century. Braddock died four
days later. The overconfident general’s last words were prophetic: “We shall know better
how to deal with them another time.” Twelve of the surviving British soldiers left behind on
the battlefield were stripped, bound, and burned at the stake by Indians. A devastated George
Washington wrote his brother that they had “been scandalously beaten by a trifling body of
men.” The vaunted redcoats “broke & run as sheep before Hounds,” but the Virginians
“behaved like Men and died like Soldiers.” The French victory demonstrated that backwoods
warfare depended on Indian allies and frontier tactics for success.

A WORLD WAR For two years, war raged along the American frontier without becoming a
cause of war in Europe. In 1756, however, the colonial war became the Seven Years’War in
Europe. In the final alignment of European powers, France, Austria, Russia, Saxony, Sweden,
and Spain fought against Britain, Prussia, and Hanover. The onset of world war brought into
office a new British government, with the eloquent William Pitt as head of the ministry. Pitt’s
ability and assurance (“I know that I can save England and no one else can”) instilled
confidence at home and abroad.
A brilliant visionary and a superb administrator, charismatic and supremely self-confident,
Pitt decided that America should be the primary theater of conflict with France, and he sought
to bludgeon the French with overwhelming force, on land and at sea.He eventually mobilized
some 45,000 troops in North
America, half of whom were British regulars and the other half American colonists. Pitt was
able to garner such substantial colonial participation by reversing Britain’s administrative
policies. His predecessors had demanded that the colonial legislatures help fund the defense
effort. Pitt decided to treat the colonies as allies rather than subordinate possessions, offering
them subsidies for their participation in the war effort. The colonists readily embraced this
invitation to become partners in an imperial crusade, and they contributed key resources and
large numbers of men to the war effort. Pitt’s America-first policy had long-term
consequences. The massive frontier war with the French and their Indian allies fostered a
sense of nationalism among the colonists that would culminate in a war for independence
from Britain. Pitt used the powerful British navy to cut off French reinforcements and
supplies to the New World—and the goods with which they bought and retreated in disarray,
abandoning most of their artillery and supplies. Brave General Braddock had several horses
shot out from under him before he was mortally wounded. George Washington, his own coat
riddled by bullets, helped other officers contain the rout and lead a hasty retreat. More than
900 British and Virginia soldiers were killed or wounded in one of the worst British defeats
of the eighteenth century. Braddock died four days later. The overconfident general’s last

3
words were prophetic: “We shall know better how to deal with them another time.” Twelve
of the surviving British soldiers left behind on the battlefield were stripped, bound, and
burned at the stake by Indians. A devastated George Washington wrote his brother that they
had “been scandalously beaten by a trifling body of men.” The vaunted redcoats “broke &
run as sheep before Hounds,” but the Virginians “behaved like Men and died like Soldiers.”
The French victory demonstrated that backwoods warfare depended on Indian allies and
frontier tactics for success.

A WORLD WAR For two years, war raged along the American frontier without becoming a
cause of war in Europe. In 1756, however, the colonial war became the Seven Years’War in
Europe. In the final alignment of European powers, France, Austria, Russia, Saxony, Sweden,
and Spain fought against Britain, Prussia, and Hanover. The onset of world war brought into
office a new British government, with the eloquent William Pitt as head of the ministry. Pitt’s
ability and assurance (“I know that I can save England and no one else can”) instilled
confidence at home and abroad.
A brilliant visionary and a superb administrator, charismatic and supremely self-confident,
Pitt decided that America should be the primary theater of conflict with France, and he sought
to bludgeon the French with overwhelming force, on land and at sea.He eventually mobilized
some 45,000 troops in North America, half of whom were British regulars and the other half
American colonists. Pitt was able to garner such substantial colonial participation by
reversing Britain’s administrative policies. His predecessors had demanded that the colonial
legislatures help fund the defense effort. Pitt decided to treat the colonies as allies rather than
subordinate possessions, offering them subsidies for their participation in the war effort.
Pitt’s America-first policy had long-term consequences. The massive frontier war with the
French and their Indian allies fostered a sense of nationalism among the colonists that would
culminate in a war for independence from Britain. Pitt used the powerful British navy to cut
off French reinforcements and supplies to the New World—and the goods with which they
bought Indian allies. Pitt improved the British forces, gave command to younger men of
ability, and carried the battle to the enemy. In 1758 the tides began to turn when the English
captured Fort Louisbourg in Canada. The Iroquois, sensing the turn of fortunes, pressed their
dependents, the Delawares, to call off the frontier attacks on English settlements.
In 1759 the war reached its climax with a series of resounding British victories on land and at
sea. Pitt ordered a three-pronged offensive against the French in Canada, along what had
become the classic invasion routes: the Niagara River, Lake Champlain, and the St. Lawrence
River. On the Niagara expedition the British were joined by a group of Iroquois, and they
captured Fort Niagara, virtually cutting the French lifeline to the interior. On Lake
Champlain, General Jeffrey Amherst took Forts George and Ticonderoga, then paused to
await reinforcements for an advance northward.
Meanwhile, the most decisive battle was shaping up at Quebec, the gateway to Canada.
There, British forces led by General James Wolfe waited out the advance of General Louis-
Joseph de Montcalm and his French infantry until they were within close range, then loosed
volleys that devastated the French ranks—and ended French power in North America for all
time. News of the British victory reached London along with similar reports from India,
where English forces had reduced French outposts one by one and established the base for
expanded British control of India.
The war in North America dragged on until 1763, but the rest was a process of mopping up.
In the South, where little significant action had occurred, belated hostility flared up between
the settlers and the Cherokee Nation. A force of British regulars and colonial militia broke
Cherokee resistance in 1761.

4
In 1760 King George II died, and the twenty-two-year-old grandson he despised ascended the
throne as George III. The new king resolved to seek peace and forced William Pitt out of
office. Pitt had wanted to declare war on Spain before the French could bring that other
Bourbon monarchy into the conflict. He was forestalled, but Spain belatedly entered the war,
in 1761, and during the next year met the same fate as the French: in 1762 British forces took
Manila in the Philippines and Havana in Cuba. By 1763 the French and the Spanish were
ready to negotiate a surrender. Britain ruled the world.

THE PEACE OF PARIS The Treaty of Paris of 1763 brought an end to the world war and
to French power in North America. Victorious Britain took all French North American
possessions east of the Mississippi River (except New Orleans) and all of Spanish Florida.
The English invited the Spanish settlers to remain and practice their Catholic religion, but
few accepted the offer. The Spanish king ordered them to evacuate the colony and provided
free transportation to Spanish possessions in the Caribbean. Within a year most of the
Spaniards sold their property at bargain prices to English speculators and began an exodus to
Cuba and Mexico.
When the Indian tribes that had been allied with the French learned of the 1763 peace
settlement, they were despondent. Their lands were being given over to the British without
any consultation. The Shawnees, for instance, demanded to know “by what right the French
could pretend” to transfer Indian territory to the British. The Indians also worried that a
victorious Britain had “grown too powerful & seemed as if they would be too strong for God
itself.” The Indians had hoped that the departure of the French from the Ohio Valley would
mean that the area would revert to their control. Instead, the British cut off the trade and
giftgiving practices that had bound the Indians to the French. General Jeffrey Amherst, the
British military governor for the western region, demanded that the Indians learn to live
without “charity.” British forces also moved into the French frontier forts. In a desperate
effort to recover their autonomy, tribes struck back, in the spring of 1763, capturing most of
the British forts around the Great Lakes and in the Ohio Valley. They also raided colonial
settlements in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, destroying hundreds of homesteads and
killing several thousand people. In the midst of the Indian attack on Fort Pitt (formerly Fort
Duquesne), General Amherst approved the distribution of smallpox-infested blankets and
handkerchiefs from the fort’s hospital to the Indians besieging the garrison. His efforts at
germ warfare were intended to “extirpate this Execrable race” of Indians.
Called Pontiac’s Rebellion because of the prominent role played by the Ottawa chief, the far-
flung Indian attacks on the frontier forts convinced most American colonists that all Indians
must be removed. The British government, meanwhile, negotiated an agreement with the
Indians that allowed redcoats to reoccupy the frontier forts in exchange for a renewal of trade
and gift giving. Still, as Pontiac stressed, the Indians asserted their independence and denied
the legitimacy of the British claim to their territory under the terms of the Treaty of Paris. He
told a British official that the “French never conquered us, neither did they purchase a foot of
our Country, nor have they a right to give it to you.” The British may have won a global
empire as a result of the Seven Years’War, but their grip on the American colonies grew ever
weaker.
In compensation for the loss of Florida, Spain received Louisiana (New Orleans and all
French land west of the Mississippi River) from France. Unlike the Spanish in Florida,
however, few of the French settlers left Louisiana after 1763. The French government
encouraged them to work with their new Spanish governors to create a bulwark against
further English expansion. Spain would hold title to Louisiana for nearly four decades but
would never succeed in erasing the territory’s French roots. The French-born settlers always
outnumbered the Spanish. The loss of Louisiana left France with no territory on the continent

5
of North America. In the West Indies, France gave up Tobago, Dominica, Grenada, and St.
Vincent. British power reigned supreme over North America east of the Mississippi River.
But a fatal irony would pursue the British victory. In gaining Canada, the British government
put in motion a train of events that would end twenty years later with the loss of the rest of
British North America. Britain’s success against France threatened the Indian tribes of the
interior because they had long depended upon playing off one European power against the
other. Now, with the British dominant on the continent, American settlers were emboldened
to encroach even more upon Indian land. In addition, victory on the battlefields encouraged
the British to tighten their imperial control over the American colonists and demand more
financial contributions to pay for military defense.Meanwhile, a humiliated France thirsted
for revenge. In London,
But a fatal irony would pursue the British victory. In gaining Canada, the British government
put in motion a train of events that would end twenty years later with the loss of the rest of
British North America. Britain’s success against France threatened the Indian tribes of the
interior because they had long depended upon playing off one European power against the
other. Now, with the British dominant on the continent, American settlers were emboldened
to encroach even more upon Indian land. In addition, victory on the battlefields encouraged
the British to tighten their imperial control over the American colonists and demand more
financial contributions to pay for military defense.Meanwhile, a humiliated France thirsted
for revenge. In London, Benjamin Franklin, agent for the colony of Pennsylvania (1764–
1775), found the French minister inordinately curious about America and suspected him of
wanting to ignite the coals of controversy. Less than three years after Franklin left London
and only fifteen years after the conquest of New France, he would be in Paris arranging an
alliance on behalf of Britain’s rebellious colonists. Benjamin Franklin, agent for the colony of
Pennsylvania (1764–1775), found the French minister inordinately curious about America
and suspected him of wanting to ignite the coals of controversy. Less than three years after
Franklin left London and only fifteen years after the conquest of New France, he would be in
Paris arranging an alliance on behalf of Britain’s rebellious colonists.

THE COLONIAL WARS

For most of the seventeenth century, the French and British empires in America developed in
relative isolation from each other, and for most of that century the homelands remained at
peace with each other. After the Restoration of 1660, Charles II and James II pursued a policy
of friendship with the French king, Louis XIV. The Glorious Revolution of 1688, however,
worked an abrupt reversal in English diplomacy.
William III, the new king, as leader of the Dutch republic, had engaged in a running conflict
against the ambitions of Louis XIV. His ascent to the throne brought England almost
immediately into a Grand Alliance against Louis in the War of the League of Augsburg,
sometimes called the War of the Palatinate or the War of the Grand Alliance and known in
the American colonies simply as King William’s War (1689–1697). This was the first of four
great European and intercolonial wars that would be fought over the next seventy-four years,
the others being the War of the Spanish Succession (Queen Anne’s War, 1702–1713), the
War of the Austrian Succession (King George’s War, 1744–1748), and the Seven Years’War
(the French and Indian War, which lasted nine years in America, from 1754 to 1763). In all
except the last, the battles in America were but a sideshow accompanying greater battles in
Europe, where British policy pivoted on keeping a balance of power with the French. The
alliances shifted from one fight to the next, but Britain and France were pitted against each
other every time.

6
Thus for much of the eighteenth century, the colonies were embroiled in global wars and
rumors of wars. The effect on much of the population was devastating. New England,
especially Massachusetts, suffered probably more than the rest, for it was closest to the
centers of French population. It is estimated that 900 Boston men (about 2.5 percent of the
men eligible for service) died in the fighting. This meant that the city was faced with assisting
a large population of widows and orphans. Even more important, these prolonged conflicts
had profound consequences for Britain that later would reshape the contours of its
relationship with America. The wars with France led the English government to incur an
enormous debt, establish a huge navy and a standing army, and excite a militant sense of
nationalism. During the early eighteenth century the changes in British financial policy and
political culture led critics in Parliament to charge that traditional liberties were being
usurped by a tyrannical central government. After the French and Indian War, American
colonists began making the same point.

THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR Of the four major wars involving the European
powers and their New World colonies, the climactic conflict between Britain and France in
North America was the French and Indian War. It began in 1754, after enterprising
Virginians during the early 1750s had crossed the Allegheny Mountains into the Ohio River
valley in order to trade with Indians and survey some 200,000 acres granted them by the king.
The incursion by the Virginians infuriated the French, and they established forts in what is
now western Pennsylvania to defend their interests. When news of these developments
reached Williamsburg, the Virginia governor sent out an emissary to warn off the French. An
ambitious young Virginia militia officer, Major George Washington, whose older brothers
owned part of the Ohio Company, a business venture to develop settlement and trade in
western Pennsylvania, volunteered for the mission. With a few companions, Washington
made his way to Fort Le Boeuf in late 1753 and returned with a polite but firm French
refusal. The Virginia governor then sent a small force to erect a fort at the strategic fork
where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers meet to form the great Ohio. No sooner had the
English started building than a larger French force appeared and ousted them.
Meanwhile, the twenty-two-year-old Washington, hungry for combat and yearing for military
glory, had been organizing a regiment of Virginians. In the spring of 1754, the tall, muscular
surveyor-turned-soldier led his 150 volunteers and Iroquois allies across the Alleghenies.
Their mission was to build a fort at the convergence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and
Ohio rivers (where the city of Pittsburgh later developed). Along the way, Washington
learned that French soldiers had beaten them to the strategic site and erected Fort Duquesne,
named for the French governor of Canada. Washington decided to make camp about forty
miles from the fort and await reinforcements. The next day the Virginians ambushed a French
detachment. Ten French soldiers were killed, one escaped, and twenty-one were captured.
The Indians then scalped several of the wounded soldiers as a stunned Major Washington
looked on. Washington was unaware that the French had been on a peaceful mission to
discuss the disputed fort. The mutilated soldiers were the first fatalities in what would
become the French and Indian War.
Washington and his troops retreated and hastily constructed a crude stockade at Great
Meadows, dubbed Fort Necessity, which a large force of vengeful French soldiers attacked a
month later, on July 3, 1754. After a daylong battle, George Washington surrendered, having
seen all his horses and cattle killed and one third of his 300 men killed or wounded. The
French permitted his surviving troops to withdraw after stripping them of their weapons.
After the Virginia regiment limped home, Washington decided to resign rather than accept a
demotion. His blundering expedition triggered a series of events that would ignite a
protracted world war. As a prominent British politician exclaimed, “The volley fired by a

7
young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire.” Back in London the
Board of Trade already had taken notice of the growing conflict in the backwoods of North
America and had called commissioners from all the colonies as far south as Maryland to a
meeting in Albany, New York, to confer on precautions. The Albany Congress (June 19–July
10, 1754), which was meeting when the first shots sounded at Great Meadows, ended with
little having been accomplished. The delegates conferred with Iroquois chieftains and sent
them away loaded with gifts in return for some half-hearted promises of support. The
congress is remembered mainly for the Plan of Union, worked out by a committee under
Benjamin Franklin and adopted by a unanimous vote of the commissioners. The plan called
for a chief executive, a kind of supreme governor, to be called the president general of the
United Colonies, appointed and supported by the crown, and a supreme assembly, called the
Grand Council, with forty-eight members chosen by the colonial assemblies. This federal
body would oversee matters of defense, Indian relations, and trade and settlement in the West
and would levy taxes to support its programs.
It must have been a good plan, Franklin reasoned, since the assemblies thought it gave too
much power to the crown and the crown thought it gave too much to the colonies. At any rate
the assemblies either rejected or ignored it. Only two substantive results came out of the
congress. Its idea of a supreme commander of British forces in America was adopted, as was
its advice that a New Yorker who was a friend of the Iroquois be made British superintendent
of the northern Indians.
In London the government decided to force a showdown in America. In 1755 the British fleet
captured Nova Scotia and expelled most of its French population. Some 5,000 to 7,000
Acadians who refused to take an oath of allegiance to the British crown were scattered
through the colonies, from Maine to Georgia. Impoverished and homeless, many of them
desperately found their way to French Louisiana, where they became the Cajuns (a corruption
of Acadians), whose descendants still preserve elements of the French language along the
remote bayous and in many urban centers.
The backwoods, however, became the scene of one British disaster after another over the next
three years. In 1755 a new British commander in chief, General Edward Braddock, arrived in
Virginia with two regiments of army regulars. Braddock was a seasoned, confident officer,
but neither he nor his red-clad British troops had any experience fighting in the wilderness.
Braddock viewed Indians with contempt, and his cocksure ignorance would prove fatal.
With the addition of some colonial troops, including a still-headstrong George Washington as
a volunteer staff officer, Braddock hacked a 125-mile road through the mountain wilderness
from the upper Potomac River in Maryland to the vicinity of Fort Duquesne. Hauling heavy
artillery to surround the French fort, along with a lumbering wagon train of supplies,
Braddock’s force achieved a great feat of military logistics and was on the verge of success
when, six miles from Fort Duquesne, the surrounding woods suddenly came alive with
Ojibwa and French soldiers in Indian costume. Beset on three sides by concealed enemies,
the British troops panicked and retreated in disarray, abandoning most of their artillery and
supplies.
Brave General Braddock had several horses shot out from under him before he was mortally
wounded. George Washington, his own coat riddled by bullets, helped other officers contain
the rout and lead a hasty retreat. More than 900 British and Virginia soldiers were killed or
wounded in one of the worst British defeats of the eighteenth century. Braddock died four
days later. The overconfident general’s last words were prophetic: “We shall know better
how to deal with them another time.” Twelve of the surviving British soldiers left behind on
the battlefield were stripped, bound, and burned at the stake by Indians. A devastated George
Washington wrote his brother that they had “been scandalously beaten by a trifling body of
men.” The vaunted redcoats “broke & run as sheep before Hounds,” but the Virginians

8
“behaved like Men and died like Soldiers.” The French victory demonstrated that backwoods
warfare depended on Indian allies and frontier tactics for success.

A WORLD WAR For two years, war raged along the American frontier without becoming a
cause of war in Europe. In 1756, however, the colonial war became the Seven Years’War in
Europe. In the final alignment of European powers, France, Austria, Russia, Saxony, Sweden,
and Spain fought against Britain, Prussia, and Hanover. The onset of world war brought into
office a new British government, with the eloquent William Pitt as head of the ministry. Pitt’s
ability and assurance (“I know that I can save England and no one else can”) instilled
confidence at home and abroad.
A brilliant visionary and a superb administrator, charismatic and supremely self-confident,
Pitt decided that America should be the primary theater of conflict with France, and he sought
to bludgeon the French with overwhelming force, on land and at sea.He eventually mobilized
some 45,000 troops in North America, half of whom were British regulars and the other half
American colonists. Pitt was able to garner such substantial colonial participation by
reversing Britain’s administrative policies. His predecessors had demanded that the colonial
legislatures help fund the defense effort. Pitt decided to treat the colonies as allies rather than
subordinate possessions, offering them subsidies for their participation in the war effort. The
colonists readily embraced this invitation to become partners in an imperial crusade, and they
contributed key resources and large numbers of men to the war effort.
Pitt’s America-first policy had long-term consequences. The massive frontier war with the
French and their Indian allies fostered a sense of nationalism among the colonists that would
culminate in a war for independence from Britain. Pitt used the powerful British navy to cut
off French reinforcements and supplies to the New World—and the goods with which they
bought Indian allies. Pitt improved the British forces, gave command to younger men of
ability, and carried the battle to the enemy. In 1758 the tides began to turn when the English
captured Fort Louisbourg in Canada. The Iroquois, sensing the turn of fortunes, pressed their
dependents, the Delawares, to call off the frontier attacks on English settlements.
In 1759 the war reached its climax with a series of resounding British victories on land and at
sea. Pitt ordered a three-pronged offensive against the French in Canada, along what had
become the classic invasion routes: theNiagara River, Lake Champlain, and the St. Lawrence
River. On the Niagara expedition the British were joined by a group of Iroquois, and they
captured Fort Niagara, virtually cutting the French lifeline to the interior. On Lake
Champlain, General Jeffrey Amherst took Forts George and Ticonderoga, then paused to
await reinforcements for an advance northward.
Meanwhile, the most decisive battle was shaping up at Quebec, the gateway to Canada.
There, British forces led by General James Wolfe waited out the advance of General Louis-
Joseph de Montcalm and his French infantry until they were within close range, then loosed
volleys that devastated the French ranks—and ended French power in North America for all
time. News of the British victory reached London along with similar reports from India,
where English forces had reduced French outposts one by one and established the base for
expanded British control of India.
The war in North America dragged on until 1763, but the rest was a process of mopping up.
In the South, where little significant action had occurred, belated hostility flared up between
the settlers and the Cherokee Nation. A force of British regulars and colonial militia broke
Cherokee resistance in 1761.
In 1760 King George II died, and the twenty-two-year-old grandson he despised ascended the
throne as George III. The new king resolved to seek peace and forced William Pitt out of
office. Pitt had wanted to declare war on Spain before the French could bring that other
Bourbon monarchy into the conflict.

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He was forestalled, but Spain belatedly entered the war, in 1761, and during the next year met
the same fate as the French: in 1762 British forces took Manila in the Philippines and Havana
in Cuba. By 1763 the French and the Spanish were ready to negotiate a surrender. Britain
ruled the world.

THE PEACE OF PARIS The Treaty of Paris of 1763 brought an end to the world war and
to French power in North America. Victorious Britain took all French North American
possessions east of the Mississippi River (except New Orleans) and all of Spanish Florida.
The English invited the Spanish settlers to remain and practice their Catholic religion, but
few accepted the offer. The Spanish king ordered them to evacuate the colony and provided
free transportation to Spanish possessions in the Caribbean. Within a year most of the
Spaniards sold their property at bargain prices to English speculators and began an exodus to
Cuba and Mexico.
When the Indian tribes that had been allied with the French learned of the 1763 peace
settlement, they were despondent. Their lands were being given over to the British without
any consultation. The Shawnees, for instance, demanded to know “by what right the French
could pretend” to transfer Indian territory to the British. The Indians also worried that a
victorious Britain had “grown too powerful & seemed as if they would be too strong for God
itself.” The Indians had hoped that the departure of the French from the Ohio Valley would
mean that the area would revert to their control. Instead, the British cut off the trade and
giftgiving practices that had bound the Indians to the French. General Jeffrey Amherst, the
British military governor for the western region, demanded that the Indians learn to live
without “charity.” British forces also moved into the French frontier forts. In a desperate
effort to recover their autonomy, tribes struck back, in the spring of 1763, capturing most of
the British forts around the Great Lakes and in the Ohio Valley. They also raided colonial
settlements in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, destroying hundreds of homesteads and
killing several thousand people. In the midst of the Indian attack on Fort Pitt (formerly Fort
Duquesne), General Amherst approved the distribution of smallpox-infested blankets and
handkerchiefs from the fort’s hospital to the Indians besieging the garrison. His efforts at
germ warfare were intended to “extirpate this Execrable race” of Indians.
Called Pontiac’s Rebellion because of the prominent role played by the Ottawa chief, the far-
flung Indian attacks on the frontier forts convinced most American colonists that all Indians
must be removed. The British government, meanwhile, negotiated an agreement with the
Indians that allowed redcoats to reoccupy the frontier forts in exchange for a renewal of trade
and gift giving. Still, as Pontiac stressed, the Indians asserted their independence and denied
the legitimacy of the British claim to their territory under the terms of the Treaty of Paris. He
told a British official that the “French never conquered us, neither did they purchase a foot of
our Country, nor have they a right to give it to you.” The British may have won a global
empire as a result of the Seven Years’War, but their grip on the American colonies grew ever
weaker.
In compensation for the loss of Florida, Spain received Louisiana (New Orleans and all
French land west of the Mississippi River) from France. Unlike the Spanish in Florida,
however, few of the French settlers left Louisiana after 1763. The French government
encouraged them to work with their new Spanish governors to create a bulwark against
further English expansion. Spain would hold title to Louisiana for nearly four decades but
would never succeed in erasing the territory’s French roots. The French-born settlers always
outnumbered the Spanish. The loss of Louisiana left France with no territory on the continent
of North America. In the West Indies, France gave up Tobago, Dominica, Grenada, and St.
Vincent. British power reigned supreme over North America east of the Mississippi River.

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But a fatal irony would pursue the British victory. In gaining Canada, the British government
put in motion a train of events that would end twenty years later with the loss of the rest of
British North America. Britain’s success against France threatened the Indian tribes of the
interior because they had long depended upon playing off one European power against the
other. Now, with the British dominant on the continent, American settlers were emboldened
to encroach even more upon Indian land. In addition, victory on the battlefields encouraged
the British to tighten their imperial control over the American colonists and demand more
financial contributions to pay for military defense. Meanwhile, a humiliated France thirsted
for revenge. In London, Benjamin Franklin, agent for the colony of Pennsylvania (1764–
1775), found the French minister inordinately curious about America and suspected him of
wanting to ignite the coals of controversy. Less than three years after Franklin left London
and only fifteen years after the conquest of New France, he would be in Paris arranging an
alliance on behalf of Britain’s rebellious colonists.

THE HERITAGE OF WAR

The triumph in what England called the Great War saw Americans celebrating as joyously as
Londoners in 1763. Colonists were proud of their partnership in British liberty, a supportive
Parliament, an ancient and revered constitution, and a prosperity fostered by wartime
spending. Most Americans, as Benjamin Franklin explained, “submitted willingly to the
government of the Crown.” He himself proudly proclaimed, “I am a BRITON.” But victory
celebrations masked festering resentments and new problems that would be the heritage of
the war. Underneath the pride in the British Empire, an American nationalism was maturing.
Colonials were beginning to think and speak of themselves more as Americans than as
English or British. With the French out of the way and vast new lands to exploit, they looked
to the future with confidence.
Many Americans had a new sense of importance after fighting a major war with such success.
Some harbored resentment, justified or not, at the haughty air of the British soldiers, and
many in the early stages of the war had lost their awe of British troops, who were so inept at
frontier fighting. At least one third of military-age New England men fought in the Seven
Years’ War. For them army life was both a revelation and an opportunity. Although they
admired the courage and discipline of British redcoats under fire, many New Englanders
abhorred the carefree cursing, whoring, and Sabbath breaking they observed among the
British troops. But most upsetting were the daily “shrieks and cries” resulting from the brutal
punishments imposed by British officers on their wayward men. Minor offenses might earn
hundreds of lashes. One American soldier recorded in his diary in 1759 that “there was a man
whipped to death belonging to the Light Infantry. They say he had twenty-five lashes after he
was dead.” The brutalities of British army life thus heightened the New Englanders’ sense of
their separate identity and of their greater worthiness to be God’s chosen people. It also
emboldened Americans to defy British rule, because the colonists no longer needed military
protection from the French.
British forces nevertheless had borne the brunt of the war and had won it for the American
colonists, who had supplied men and materials, sometimes reluctantly, and who persisted in
trading with the enemy. Molasses in the French West Indies, for instance, continued to draw
New England ships like flies. The trade was too important for the colonists to give up but was
more than British authorities could tolerate. Along with naval patrols, one important means of
disrupting this illegal trade was the use of writs of assistance, general search warrants that
allowed officers to enter any place during daylight hours to seek evidence of illegal trade.

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In 1760 Boston merchants hired the attorney James Otis to fight the writs in the courts. Otis
lost the case but in the process advanced the provocative argument that any act of Parliament
that authorized such “instruments of slavery” violated the British constitution and was
therefore void. This was a radical idea for its time. Otis sought to overturn a major tenet of
the English legal system, namely, that acts of Parliament were by their very nature
constitutional.
The peace that secured an empire in 1763 also laid upon the British government new burdens.
How should the British manage the defense and governance of their new global possessions?
What should they do about the American lands inhabited by Indians but coveted by whites?
How was the British government to pay for an unprecedented debt built up during the war
and bear the new expenses of expanded colonial administration and defense? And—the
thorniest problem of all, as it turned out—what role should the colonies play in all this? The
problems were of a magnitude and complexity to challenge men of the greatest statemanship
and vision, but those qualities were rare among the ministers of George III.

BRITISH POLITICS
In the English government during the late eighteenth century, nearly every politician was a
Whig. Whig was the name given to those who had opposed James II, led the Glorious
Revolution of 1688, and secured the Protestant Hanoverian succession in 1714. The Whigs
were the champions of individual liberty and parliamentary supremacy, but with the passage
of time Whiggism had drifted into complacency. The dominant group of landholding Whig
families was concerned mostly with the pursuit of personal gain and local questions rather
than great issues of statecraft. George III, a tall young man with full lips, bulging eyes, and an
obstinate disposition, sought at first to eliminate the Whig influence on the monarchy. Whig
politicians had dominated his grandfather, and the new king was determined to rule in his
own right. Thus he ousted the powerful William Pitt as prime minister and established his
own inner circle of obedient advisers, known as the “king’s friends.” They exercised
influence by controlling appointments to government offices; they retained their influential
positions only by ensuring that they did not contradict the cocksure king.
Throughout the 1760s the king turned first to one and then to another mediocre leader,
ineffective ministries came and went, and the government fell into instability just as the new
problems of empire required creative solutions. Ministries rose and fell usually because
somebody offended the king or somebody’s friend failed to get a government post. Colonial
policy remained marginal to the chief concerns of British politics. The result was
inconsistency and vacillation followed by stubborn inflexibility.

WESTERN LANDS
In America no sooner was peace formally arranged in 1763 than the problem of the western
lands erupted in the form of Pontiac’s Rebellion. To keep the peace on the frontier and to
keep earlier promises to the Delawares and Shawnees, officials in London postponed further
colonial settlement along the frontier. The king also issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763.
That order drew an imaginary line along the crest of the Appalachians, beyond which settlers
were forbidden to go and colonial governors were forbidden to authorize surveys or issue
land grants. It also established the new British colonies of Quebec and East and West Florida.
Yet the proclamation line was ineffective. Hardy settlers defined the prohibitions against
intrusions into Indian land and pushed across the Appalachian ridges.

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