Origins and Causes
The French and Indian War is widely thought of as little more than the North American theatre of the Seven Years War which raged in Europe from 1756 until 1762. This isn't entirely correct; this war began before the conflict overseas, and stemmed mostly from the bad blood left over after King George's War ended in 1748.
It was the last in a series of four North American conflicts, collectively and confusingly known as the French and Indian Wars. It was also the most decisive of the colonial wars; it saw the collapse of New France and essentially the elimination of external French influence in the New World.
After the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ended King George's War, tensions between the English and the French in North America never cooled off the way that they were supposed to. The treaty had restored the uneasy status quo that had existed before the war had begun -- but the main sore point was the forced cession of Louisbourg to France, after English land and sea forces had captured it in 1745.
Acadia, in the Maritimes, was populated by French-speakers who had little loyalty to France and even less interest in affairs overseas. Further south, the English had established a number of settlements based around the harbours at Chebucto (Halifax) and Annapolis. The latter were suspicious of the former, expecting that since there was no love lost between France and England in Europe the same would hold true in the colonies. Acadians, however, held firm and maintained a position of neutrality.
By the 1750s, France had claims to much of present-day eastern and central Canada, backed up by alliances with the indigenous Algonquin and Huron peoples. The colony of New France extended south along the Mississippi River all the way to Louisiana, an area explored and claimed by Chevalier de la Salle a century earlier. The English presence in the New World was limited to New England, along the eastern seaboard to Spanish-controlled Florida, and some southern areas of what are now Canada's Atlantic provinces.
The English, in an attempt to lessen the precariousness of their position perched on the edge of the continent, began to venture into French territory, pushing back the borders to claim more land for England. This incited France to authorise the construction of a series of forts along their frontiers. Natives allied with either side passed freely across the border, sometimes even living in the enemy's territory; raids were conducted by the Iroquois (allied with the English) and the Huron, each claiming that their raids were retaliatory and that their adversary was to blame.
Alliances with the aboriginal peoples were a thorn in the side of the English military commanders. Historically, many of them had been allies of the French; Jacques Cartier had established trading partnerships as early as 1534, and ever since their relationship had been mutually beneficial, for the most part. Colonists from the British Isles tended more toward ignoring them entirely -- at least, until it came to expanding settled territory, at which point the indigenous inhabitants of the land being taken were moved off it by force, if they refused to go peacefully, with no compensation.
Naturally, this made it difficult for the English to work themselves into the good graces of the Natives during times of war; it seemed as though their alliances came about less by design and more due to circumstance and luck, as conflict between the Huron and the Iroquois was far from unknown. The Huron were stalwart allies of France; thus, the Iroquois found themselves fighting on the side of the English, whether they liked it or not.
George Washington and the Ohio Valley
An area of particular interest to both the French and the English was the Ohio Valley. Not only did it lie near the boundary between French territory and English, it was also central to the fur trade; many, many aboriginal hunters trapped animals here, bringing their pelts to trading posts to exchange for goods. Possession of the valley -- and alliance with its Native inhabitants -- could well mean the difference between economic success and failure.
In the 1740s, a group from Virginia had been granted lands here by the Crown. They formed the Ohio Company for the purposes of expanding settlement west of the Allegheny Mountains; the enticing prospect of the fur trade was lucrative, but a secondary concern, at least in the early days of the Company. Trouble came when the French constructed their series of forts along the valley's edges.
In 1753, some members of the Company set out from Virginia -- led by a very young George Washington -- with a letter to the French officials who had authorised the construction of the forts, requesting that they be dismantled and that the boundary be respected, with French forces to vacate the area immediately. This suggestion was summarily ignored; but on the way back to Virginia, Washington and his men discovered and subsequently mapped out a location particularly well-suited to the building of a fort, where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet; this is the location of modern-day Pittsburgh.
After Washington returned home, crews were sent back to construct a fort. Their efforts were interrupted by a contingent of French soldiers, who ran off the workers and finished building the fort, this time for France. They renamed it Fort Duquesne; it would prove to be one of the most strategically important forts in the valley.
The lieutenant governor of Virginia, Robert Dinwiddie, sought aid from the rest of the Thirteen Colonies to reclaim Fort Duquesne and oust the French from the Ohio Valley, but his efforts were in vain. In 1754, he turned to George Washington again.
Washington by now held the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and was one of the main officers under General Edward Braddock, who was charged with leading another expedition west to the Ohio Valley. They set out from New England in spring; by the end of May the first battle had been won by Braddock, after his men had caught a group of French and Huron by surprise. Fort Necessity, constructed in a hurry near Fort Duquesne, became their headquarters.
The Opening Shots
The first real battle of the French and Indian War was on July 3, 1754, in the Great Meadows between the two forts. The battle lasted less than a day, and was a decisive victory for the French. General Braddock perished during the course of the fighting; Washington was forced to concede defeat and pull back out of the Ohio Valley region entirely.
In the east, growing English suspicion of Acadian motives and intentions eventuated in the demand that all Acadians pledge allegiance to the King of England, George II. In so doing, they would also be forced to revoke their religion -- Roman Catholicism -- and instead become Protestants. Understandably, many of them refused; this was the reason for the expulsion of the Acadians from the Maritimes. In 1755, English soldiers moved into towns and villages, forcing their residents to leave everything they owned save for what they could carry. Despite their neutrality, the Acadians were sent to Louisiana; their descendants are now known as Cajuns.
While Braddock and Washington were engaged in conflict in the west and the Acadians were being forcibly removed and sent south, preparations were being made in Albany for further conflict, which seemed to be inevitable. And it was: the first two years of the French and Indian War revolved mostly around the Ohio Valley, with neither side making much headway. Then, in 1756, the Seven Years War broke out in Europe. Predictably, it saw England pitted against France; suddenly the colonial war was very much in the public eye, and as more troops were sent from Europe to fight in North America, it became far more costly.
Fort William Henry
The second great battle of the French and Indian War came in 1757 at Fort William Henry in Lake George, New York. The English troops, under the command of Lt. Colonel George Munro, were besieged by the French, under the Marquis de Montcalm. The English troops in the fort were outnumbered by the French attackers, four to one.
Fort William Henry fell shortly after the siege began; after terms of surrender were reached, French soldiers and Huron war parties launched an attack on the English survivors, to avenge their dead. The Fort William Henry Massacre was greatly exaggerated for propaganda purposes; at the time it was claimed that 1500 were killed. Contemporary estimates place the number of dead somewhere between seventy and two hundred.
The loss at Fort William Henry was a wake-up call for English military leaders overseas. After some discussion, they decided that it would be best to commit more troops and more of the Royal Navy to the colonial war; this decision marked the turning point, as suddenly the French found themselves outnumbered and suffering losses at every turn.
A Change in Fortune, and a Series of French Military Defeats
The first truly notable English victory came at Louisbourg in 1758. With reinforcements from Europe, the invasion force consisted of thirty-nine ships with fourteen thousand men, of which nearly thirteen thousand were trained soldiers that would make up the landing force. Louisbourg was defended by ten French ships, with fewer than eight thousand men total, both within and without the fortress. They didn't stand a chance.
The siege, begun on June 8, lasted forty-eight days. When it fell, six thousand French prisoners were taken; the fortress was then burnt to the ground, opening up the St. Lawrence River that led to the heart of New France.
The battle that sealed the fate of the French presence in modern-day Canada took place in 1759 on the Plains of Abraham, outside Quebec City. After the razing of Louisbourg, the English force under General James Wolfe was free to sail up the St. Lawrence to the walled city of Quebec, which was effectively the last remaining French stronghold, defended by an army under the Marquis de Montcalm. The French force numbered just over fourteen thousand; this was roughly a quarter of the entire population of New France. General Wolfe had a landing force of 8640 troops, English, Irish, and Scottish; they were backed up from the water by thirty-nine ships with thirteen thousand crew.
Again, the French found themselves outnumbered. During the summer of 1759, the English fleet sailed up and down the St. Lawrence, with surveyors to measure the height of the cliffs and determine where an attack might best be launched. On September 10, Wolfe chose a place called Anse au Folon, at the base of the cliff on which the city is situated.
The cliff is fifty-three metres high and not easily scaled under the best of circumstances; to move an entire army from river-level to the top of the cliff was going to be difficult, but this disadvantage was outweighed by the fact that Montcalm wouldn't expect an attack from there, for that same reason. Anse au Folon stood almost undefended, compared to the areas where the cliffs flattened out.
The Battle of the Plains of Abraham
A hundred militiamen guarded the heights and the plains between the cliff and the city; they were dispatched in the early hours of September 13 by the first wave of British troops. By sunrise, over five thousand British had scaled the cliff and stood waiting on the Plains of Abraham. Montcalm, rather than staying barricaded inside Quebec's walls and waiting for support from the other half of the French army, sent his men out to meet them.
This was Montcalm's worst mistake; had he waited, reinforcements would have arrived and the British troops would be outnumbered. Instead, the French soldiers were slaughtered by Wolfe's army; though Wolfe himself was fatally wounded during the first charge, the outcome was already clear. By midday, the French had been pushed back into their fortified city; Montcalm was wounded during the retreat, and died the next day. Reinforcements arrived, but too late; now they were outnumbered by the British, and forced to scatter. Another siege ensued, but it was short-lived. Quebec was surrendered to the British on September 18.
The way inland now completely clear, the British army moved to Montreal and captured it in 1760. The French army was in disarray, and New France was in ruins.
Dénouement
The Treaty of Paris officially ended the French and Indian War in 1763. Under its terms, New France was ceded to Great Britain; France instead kept Guadeloupe, a much smaller but much more valuable colony. France also got to keep St. Pierre and Miquelon, two small islands near Newfoundland; today they still belong to France.
Shortly after the Treaty of Paris, Britain released a Royal Proclamation detailing how the conquered territory was to be handled. In part, this involved taxation of the Thirteen Colonies (without American representatives in the British Parliament), to pay back the Crown for its expenditures in defending the colonies. This was a precursor to the Intolerable Acts of the 1770s, which culminated in the American Revolutionary War and Britain's loss of her colonies in the south.
Sources:
A Brief History of the French and Indian War. http://www.philaprintshop.com/frchintx.html (17 September 2004)
Roux, Larry. A Brief History of the French and Indian War. Syracuse University. http://web.syr.edu/~laroux/history/history.html (17 September 2004)
Background of the French and Indian War. http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h608.html (17 September 2004)
The French and Indian War. Worcester Polytechnic Institute. http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Depts/MilSci/BTSI/abs_french.html (17 September 2004)
French and Indian War. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Indian_War (17 September 2004)
Braddock Expedition. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braddock_Expedition (17 September 2004)
Fort William Henry. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_William_Henry (17 September 2004)
Battle of Louisburg. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Louisburg (17 September 2004)
Battle of the Plains of Abraham. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Plains_of_Abraham (17 September 2004)
Battles of 1759-1760. National Battlefields Commission. http://www.ccbn-nbc.gc.ca/_en/batailles.php?section=1 (17 September 2004)
Francis, R. Douglas, et al. Origins: Canadian History to Confederation. Toronto: Harcourt Canada, 2000.
Elson, Henry William. History of the United States of America. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1904.
The Government of Canada has made the Plains of Abraham an official national historic site, under the National Battlefields Commission. The website for the park and its interpretive centre is at http://www.ccbn-nbc.gc.ca/_en/index.php.