1753. Friction between French and Americans on tributaries of the Alleghany, along American western frontier. Washington’s vain protest against the French seizure of Venango.
1754. Beginning of the French and Indian War in America. Washington’s attack upon Jumonville, near Great Meadows, the first action. The French compel Washington to capitulate at Fort Necessity.
1755. Braddock’s expedition against Fort Duquesne and his disastrous defeat. Abortive expeditions by the English against Niagara and Crown Point.
1756. Formal declaration of hostilities between France and England, and beginning of the Seven Years’ War. Capture of Oswego by the French.
1757. Montcalm takes Fort William Henry on Lake George.
1758. Victory of Montcalm at Ticonderoga. Reduction of Louisburg, and capture of Forts Frontenac and Duquesne by the English.
V
THE FALL OF QUEBEC, 1759
[The visits of Breton fishermen to Newfoundland in the early sixteenth century, the voyages of Cartier to the St. Lawrence in 1534 and 1541–43, the foundation of Port Royal in Acadia in 1605, and of Quebec by Champlain in 1608, were the beginnings of a French occupancy of the northern and central portions of North America which led inevitably to conflict with England and the American colonists. The title based upon Marquette’s discovery of the Mississippi in 1673, and La Salle’s exploration and claim to the whole vast valley in 1682, would have confined the English to the Atlantic seaboard. The contact between the wholly different types represented in English and French colonization caused friction which became acute when King William’s War broke out in 1689. The eight years of that war, with its profitless capture of Port Royal, Nova Scotia, were followed by Queen Anne’s War, 1702–13, and King George’s War, 1744–48, and the interval after the Treaty of Utrecht was a truce rather than peace. The French were strengthening their hold along the western frontier of the English colonists, at Fort Duquesne, and elsewhere. Braddock’s defeat in 1755, and attacks upon Crown Point and Niagara, preceded the formal declaration of hostilities between France and England in 1756, the beginning of the Seven Years’ War, involving nearly all Europe, with England and Prussia facing Russia, France, Austria, Sweden, and Saxony. In America, in 1756–57, the incompetency of Loudon and Abercrombie, the dilatory preparations to attack Louisburg, and Montcalm’s capture of Fort William Henry, made the first stage of the war a gloomy one. But Pitt’s entrance into the British cabinet as Secretary of State brought an intelligent and active prosecution of the war. The next year, 1758, witnessed the capture of Fort Frontenac on Ontario, Fort Duquesne, and Louisburg by the English and American forces.—Editor.]
The British Parliament met late in November, 1758, at a time when the nation was aglow with enthusiasm over the successes of the year—Louisburg and Frontenac in North America, and the driving of the French from the Guinea coast as the result of battles at Sénégal (May) and Gorée (November).[22] The war was proving far more costly than had been anticipated, yet Pitt rigidly held the country to the task; but not against its will, and the necessary funds were freely voted. Walpole wrote to a friend: “Our unanimity is prodigious. You would as soon hear ‘No’ from an old maid as from the House of Commons.” The preparations for the new year were on a much larger scale than before; both by land and sea France was to be pushed to the uttermost, and the warlike spirit of Great Britain seemed wrought to the highest pitch.