With the colonies weakened by their exertions at St. Augustine and Cartagena, Spain struck back, attacking Frederica, Georgia, in 1742. Although outnumbered more than four to one, Oglethorpe displayed military capabilities conducting a defense that he had not exhibited while on the offensive at St. Augustine and forced the Spanish to withdraw. The war along the southern frontier then became little more than a series of minor clashes.
As major campaigning petered out in the south, it commenced in the north. In mid-January 1745 the Massachusetts general court met in secret session to hear an extraordinary proposal from Governor William Shirley: Massachusetts should mount an expedition to capture Louisbourg! Since Louisbourg commanded navigation up the St. Lawrence, its capture would ultimately mean the downfall of all of New France. If the prospect was tempting, the dangers were great. From outward appearances the city was impregnable. The channel into the harbor was narrow and guarded by two supplemental fortifications, the Grand Battery and the Island Battery, both bristling with cannons. On the land side, stout walls and a wide trench protected the fortress. However, from exchanged prisoners who had been held captive in Louisbourg, Shirley had learned that the powder supply was low, the garrison was undermanned and mutinous, the fortifications (especially the Grand Battery) were in disrepair, and excellent landing sites existed along Gabarus Bay just west of the city.
The general court approved the expedition by only a single vote and on the condition that other colonies participated. No doubt many people feared this might be another Cartagena, but New England ministers roused the populace, portraying the venture as a crusade against the “stronghold of Satan.” William Pepperrell commanded the expedition, which by any rational calculation should have failed. The badly trained and poorly disciplined 4,000-man militia army was, as one professional soldier wrote, led by “People totally Ignorant” of the military skills “necessary in such an undertaking.” Yet after a siege of about seven weeks, the fortress capitulated. The French had conducted an inept defense, failing to contest the initial landing and then abandoning the Grand Battery without a fight. The volunteers fought surprisingly well, and a British naval squadron had blockaded the fortress, preventing outside succor from relieving the city.
Louisbourg’s capture was the most brilliant military achievement by the American colonies in the pre-Revolutionary era and had far-reaching implications. Most New Englanders saw “the Finger of God” in their success and believed more firmly than ever that they were His chosen people, destined for some great purpose on earth. The capture also gave colonists confidence in their martial abilities, particularly when they contrasted their performance with the Cartagena affair. Citizen-soldiers doing God’s will seemed infinitely superior to British regulars serving an earthly sovereign.
After Louisbourg the fighting took on a pattern similar to previous colonial wars. Hoping to capitalize on the victory by attacking Canada in 1746, Governor Shirley proposed the familiar two-pronged plan to the British government. When the government tentatively approved, the colonies raised an army and eagerly awaited the promised English force. However, various delays and European commitments caused Britain to abandon the campaign. Remembering the mother country’s failure in 1709, colonists pondered anew England’s solicitude for their well-being. The colonists also tried to derail the Iroquois from their neutrality but failed. Lacking support from both England and the Iroquois, colonists launched no more major offensives. Meanwhile, the French perpetrated a few massacres but mostly dispensed death in small doses.
By 1748 the war was a stalemate. France dominated the European continent, but Britain controlled the seas and, having conquered Louisbourg, held the advantage in North America. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle angered English colonists. The guiding principle was restoration of the status quo antebellum, which meant that Britain returned Louisbourg to France. In return, as a concession to England’s interests, France withdrew from Flanders, but this did little to diminish colonial anguish. Colonists believed the mother country had callously disregarded their sacrifices and had sacrificed their security on the altar of England’s own selfish interests.
The Great War for Empire
In June 1758 an army of more than 12,000 British regulars and colonial troops commanded by the British commander in chief in North America, James Abercromby, labored along Lake Champlain toward Fort Ticonderoga, a French stronghold near the northern tip of Lake George. He planned to smash Ticonderoga and Crown Point and move into the St. Lawrence Valley. The French commander, the Marquis de Montcalm, had fewer than 4,000 troops at Ticonderoga, but they had constructed a log breastwork and covered the ground in front of it with sharpened branches pointing outward. On July 8 Abercromby hurled his force against this position in an ill-conceived frontal attack. Almost 400 Iroquois, who in their own form of warfare always tried to avoid excessive casualties, had joined the British that morning and watched incredulously as the white troops advanced into the bristling abatis and French guns. For four hours the intrepid soldiers repeatedly attacked, recoiled, reformed, and attacked again, reddening the battlefield with their scarlet coats and their blood. Finally, mercifully, having lost more than 1,600 regulars and 300 provincials, Abercromby halted the assault. Although he still possessed numerical superiority, the unnerved British commander ordered a retreat.
For the English, Abercromby’s disaster was another loss in a series of defeats in the renewed war between France and Britain. The war began in 1754 over control of the Ohio Valley. During the 1740s the English had gained de facto sovereignty in the Ohio country, but their hold was tenuous, and between 1749 and 1753 New France acquired superiority in the area, thereby strengthening the link between Canada and Louisiana. In 1754 a French expedition ousted a Virginia volunteer unit from the most strategic position in the west, the forks of the Ohio, and began building Fort Duquesne. Meanwhile, a second Virginia force, commanded by a young George Washington, marched toward the forks with orders to expel all Frenchmen from the area. But the French outnumbered Washington’s men and forced the Virginians to surrender. By exerting superior military power, New France possessed the Ohio Valley.
Although France and England remained officially at peace until 1756, the last colonial war had begun. The sparks struck in the Ohio wilderness ignited a conflagration that became the first true world war. Unlike the previous wars that began in Europe and embroiled the colonies, the Great War for Empire—also known as the French and Indian War—commenced in the colonies and engulfed reluctant parent countries. Both belligerents had been anxious to avoid another struggle while still recuperating from the previous wars’ debilitating effects.
Even before England was formally at war with France, the British ministry had ordered a series of preemptive strikes to drive back Canada’s ever-advancing military frontier. The ministry hoped to present France with such an overwhelming fait accompli that it would accept the situation rather than risk an international confrontation. The positions selected for elimination were Fort Duquesne, Niagara, Crown Point, and Fort Beausejour. Success on all fronts would oust New France from the Ohio country, sever communications between Quebec and the Great Lakes (and hence Louisiana), force the Canadians back to the St. Lawrence, and safeguard Nova Scotia.
The British government might have relied on colonists and their Indian allies to carry the military burden of this far-flung campaign, but this prospect inspired little optimism. The disunited colonies seemed incapable of concerted action, either for defense or in Indian affairs. In the summer of 1754, seven colonies sent representatives to Albany to discuss defense problems and to entice the Six Nations out of their neutrality. Although the Albany Conference proposed a Plan of Union calling for united action in defense matters and Indian relations, no colonial assembly approved the plan; and the Iroquois, far from being receptive, inclined dangerously toward France. Thus the British ministry was forced to commit regular troops to the enterprise and centralize Indian affairs under imperial control.
Early in 1755 Major General Edward Braddock arrived in Virginia with two understrength regular regiments that were to be recruited to full strength in the colonies. The commander in chief also had authority to raise two new regiments in America and to appoint qualified men to superintend Indian affairs. The British government expected Braddock’s four regiments, along with Nova Scotia’s permanent garrison, to conduct the campaign with only minimal assistance from provincial troops. However, since the colonies had begun raising men for attacks on Crown Point and Fort Beausejour, Braddock integrated these forces into his planning. A British regular officer commanded colonial troops in the Fort Beausejour area, but the commander at Crown Point was New Yorker William Johnson, whom Braddock also appointed as superintendent for northern Indians. Leading the Niagara expedition was Governor Shirley, Braddock’s second in command. The commander in chief personally headed the Fort Duquesne prong of England’s fourfold advance against Canada’s outer bastions.
The 1755 campaign resulted in one success, one semi-success, and two failures. A combined force of regulars and militiamen easily captured Fort Beausejour. Johnson’s army crawled northward and in early September defeated a French army at the Battle of Lake George. Colonists naturally lauded the victory, but Johnson failed to exploit his success and abandoned the projected Crown Point attack. Ominously, with the pressure relaxed, the French began building Fort Ticonderoga twelve miles south of Crown Point. Meanwhile Shirley’s expedition got as far as Oswego but did not advance farther before the campaigning season ended.3 Braddock suffered a greater calamity. Hacking his way through a hundred miles of uninhabited wilderness, Braddock achieved a logistical masterpiece in getting his army to within a day’s march of Fort Duquesne. But on July 9 near the Monongahela River, the British advance party unexpectedly collided with an enemy army that was hurrying from the fort to lay an ambush farther down the trail. The initial encounter surprised both sides, but the French force recovered quickly, fanned out along the flanks of Braddock’s column, and gained possession of a hill dominating the British position. The English regulars in the vanguard fell back on the main force advancing to the scene. Chaos and panic ensued as the British fought an invisible enemy hidden in the dense foliage on either side of the road. Before being fatally wounded, Braddock valiantly tried to rally his men, but the remnants of his shattered army fled from the battlefield.
The failure to take Crown Point, the abortive Niagara venture, and Braddock’s defeat established the pattern for Britain’s war effort during the next two years. Ambitious plans produced meager results, while New France seemed to succeed in every endeavor. The operations proposed by Shirley for 1756 were almost a replica of 1755, but these grandiose plans did not produce a single victory. Instead, the colonies endured a crippling setback when Montcalm demolished Oswego, severing British access to the Great Lakes. The next year was equally bad for the British. Montcalm captured Fort William Henry, and, as he had at Oswego the previous year, the French commander razed the fort and withdrew. Almost simultaneously Lord Loudoun, the new British North American commander in chief, canceled his major offensive, an assault on Louisbourg, when he learned that a French naval squadron had reinforced the harbor. British General John Forbes gloomily summarized the situation at the end of 1757, writing that “the French have these severall years by past, outwitted us with our Indian Neighbors, have Baffled all our projects of Compelling them to do us justice, nay have almost every where had the advantage over us, both in political and military Genius, to our great loss, and I may say reproach.”
Despite the succession of losses, Britain had established the preconditions for victory in North America. Beginning in midsummer 1758, its prospects brightened. Fundamental to this transformation was William Pitt’s ascent to power within the British ministry. In June 1757 he assumed control over the war effort, and by the next summer his strategic concepts prevailed. Since the late 1730s a debate had raged over which should dominate, a continental or a maritime and colonial strategy. Continental advocates argued for a large-scale military commitment in Europe. Devotees of a maritime and colonial strategy, including Pitt, asserted that the Royal Navy should sweep enemy commerce from the seas; then, using its seaborne freedom of movement to hurl superior forces into the imperial domain, England should make its primary effort against enemy colonies. In particular, Pitt believed that America was the main prize. Under his leadership the war’s foremost objective was to obtain security for the thirteen colonies. Realizing that this meant the conquest of Canada, Pitt was prepared to commit vast resources to the task.
Under Pitt’s guidance the British navy asserted its superiority in numbers and spirit, blockading French ports to prevent the departure of squadrons, reinforcements, and supplies. Since Canada depended on constant transfusions from the mother country, the French position in America became increasingly anemic. Starvation stalked the land, the economy collapsed, and when Montcalm pleaded for more troops, he received only token forces. France could not risk losing large numbers of transports to British ships patrolling the North Atlantic. By 1758 Canada’s resources were so limited that it adopted a defensive strategy, and the initiative passed to the Anglo-Americans.
In late December 1757, Pitt wrote to the colonial governors assuring them that England had “nothing more at Heart, than to repair the Losses and Disappointments of the last inactive, and unhappy Campaign.” To ensure future success Pitt dispatched massive reinforcements of regulars, and to inspire the colonists to greater efforts he promised to repay most of their expenses. His objectives for 1758 included Ticonderoga and Crown Point, Louisbourg, Fort Duquesne, and, if conditions permitted, Quebec.
Abercromby failed at Ticonderoga, but other British endeavors met with success. The Louisbourg expedition, commanded by Jeffery Amherst, succeeded. In early June he sent his men toward shore against stout defensive positions at Gabarus Bay. Brigadier General James Wolfe, leading four companies of regulars, made a lodgment and audaciously ordered his outnumbered men to attack, surprising the French and establishing a small beachhead. The defenders scurried into Louisbourg and the siege began, ending with the stronghold’s capitulation in late July. Since it was late in the campaign season, Amherst decided against attacking Quebec. Meanwhile Abercromby, following his defeat by Montcalm in July, destroyed Fort Frontenac in late August. Several months later General Forbes approached Fort Duquesne, haunted by the memory of Braddock’s defeat, hindered by transportation problems, and handicapped by difficulties with Indian allies. But when he arrived at the fort, he found it abandoned.
Although the central approach to Canada remained blocked, England had penetrated its perimeter defenses in the east and west. British targets for the next year were obvious: Niagara, to remove the last French bastion in the west; Ticonderoga and Crown Point, to open the way to Montreal; and Quebec, to rip the heart out of Canada.
British arms won victories on all fronts in 1759. The Niagara expedition captured the French position in late July, and Amherst succeeded where Abercromby had failed. With an 11,000-man army he approached Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Since the French commander in the area had only 3,000 men, Montcalm ordered him to delay the British but to retreat northward rather than lose his army in a futile defense. By early August both strongholds were in British hands. Amherst entrusted the crucial Quebec operation to Wolfe, who had performed so nobly at Louisbourg. Learning of the expedition in advance, Montcalm concentrated most of Canada’s manpower there. With an army 8,500 strong, supported by about one-fourth of the British navy, Wolfe arrived at Quebec in late June. Once he was there his real problems began. The city’s natural strength and large garrison confronted him with “such a Choice of Difficultys, that I own myself at a Loss how to [proceed].” By early September, after several unsuccessful attempts to breach Montcalm’s defenses, Wolfe was pessimistic. Deciding on a last desperate gamble, in the early-morning hours of September 13 he landed an elite force at the base of steep cliffs barely two miles from the city. In
the darkness the infantry struggled hand over hand up the precipitous slope and overwhelmed a French outpost. Within hours 4,500 redcoats had assembled on the Plains of Abraham just west of Quebec, while Montcalm hastened his regulars to the scene. In a brief midmorning battle, fought in accordance with accepted European standards, the British routed the French army. Four days later the citadel surrendered, although the French army’s escape to Montreal prevented the victory from being decisive.
The once expansive Canadian domain now consisted only of Montreal, and the stricken colony’s only chance for survival was the recapture of Quebec. In the spring of 1760 a French force made a gallant effort to reclaim the city but failed. The pitiful remnants of Canada’s army then huddled in Montreal as powerful British forces converged on it from Quebec, Lake Ontario, and Crown Point. When all three armies arrived simultaneously in early September, the Canadian governor had to surrender.
For the Common Defense Page 7
