The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

With the opening of the Seven Years' War the two races, French and English, once more began to contend for the prize of empire in the New World. For a while the advantage in the struggle was on the side of France, though the preponderance of population was vastly on the side of the English colonies. Louis XV, however, had one general in Canada worthy of the gallant race from which he had sprung, and who strenuously endeavored to uphold the fortunes of his country. This was the Marquis de Montcalm, a cultured and far-seeing French nobleman, whose ability and enthusiasm in the profession of arms had procured for him the chief military command in Canada, and who was now seeking to expel the English from the colonial possessions of France on the Continent.

But, unfortunately for his country, Montcalm was ill-supported by Old France, and his difficulties were increased by the maladministration of affairs in the colony. Despite these drawbacks, he was for some years the means of protracting the gallant struggle in America and of bringing many disasters on the English arms.

Concentrating his forces in the neighborhood of Lake Champlain, he attacked Fort William Henry, on Lake George, and with a body of Indian auxiliaries from the Ottawa forced the English to capitulate. The victory was marred by horrible Indian atrocities on the English prisoners of war, which Montcalm was unable to prevent. During the year 1757 Montcalm acted solely on the defensive, while the English, having incompetent generals, accomplished little and failed in an attempt to wrest Louisburg from the French. The following year, however, William Pitt, "the Great English Commoner," was called to the councils of his nation, and infused new vigor into the war which had now been formally declared between the two countries. Pitt, aiming at the extinction of French power in America, fitted out a fleet of one hundred fifty sail, under Admiral Boscawen, with a land force of some fourteen thousand men, under General Amherst and Brigadier-General James Wolfe, and despatched both to Canada.

The first operation was the siege of Louisburg, which surrendered with about five thousand prisoners, and in the capture of which young Wolfe greatly distinguished himself. Later in the year the French were compelled to abandon Fort Duquesne, in the Ohio Valley, which the English now named Pittsburg, in honor of War Minister Pitt; and Frontenac (Kingston), the marine arsenal of the French at the foot of Lake Ontario, surrendered and was destroyed. The effect of these losses was disheartening to the French, though before the season's campaign closed Montcalm defeated the English, under General Abercrombie, in an attack on the French post on Lake Champlain, afterward named Ticonderoga. When the year 1759 opened, the English were ready to resume operations with spirit and effect. Amherst's army advanced upon Crown Point and Ticonderoga, from which the French retired, and Sir William Johnson captured Niagara and drove the French from the Lakes. Wolfe, now general of the forces of the St. Lawrence, sailed in June with his army from Louisburg to Quebec. The story of this eventful expedition and its result here given is by the able pen of the historian A.G. Bradley.

When the flag of Britain supplanted the emblem of France on the ramparts of Quebec the city was held by an English garrison under General Murray, and in the spring of 1760 it narrowly escaped recapture by De Levis, at the head of seven thousand men, who had come from Montreal to attack it. The timely arrival of a British fleet saved the now British stronghold, while Montreal was in turn invested, and that post and all Canada surrendered to the British Crown. Three years later the Peace of Paris confirmed the cession of the country to Britain, and closed the dominion of France in Canada.

England rang with the triumphs of her ally, Frederick of Prussia, and, by a perversion peculiarly British, the scoffing freethinker became the "Protestant hero" in both church and taproom. Pitt was omnipotent in Parliament; only a single insignificant member ever ventured to oppose him. "Our unanimity is prodigious," wrote Walpole. "You would as soon hear a 'No' from an old-maid as from the House of Commons." Newcastle was supremely happy among jobbers and cringing place-hunters under the full understanding that neither he nor his kind trespassed within the sphere of foreign politics. The estimates had exceeded all former limits, and reached for those days the enormous sum of twelve and a half millions. The struggle with France was vigorously waged, too, upon the ocean, warships, privateers, and merchantmen grappling to the death with one another in many a distant sea, while the main fleets of the enemy were for the most part blockaded in their ports by vigilant British armaments. Everywhere were exhilaration and a superb feeling of confidence, engendered by incipient successes and by the consciousness that the nation was united in purpose and that the leaders of its enterprises were not chosen because they were "rich in votes or were related to a duke."