The Seven Years’ War (The French and Indian War)

The First Man

May 28, 1754

On May 28, 1754, in the mountains of western Pennsylvania, a French officer named Jumonville was carrying a letter. It ordered the English, as the French called all British colonists, off land that both France and Virginia claimed.

A French soldier in the glen Les Anglais!

Monceau · adapted report We were sheltering from the rain. The English fired two volleys. Jumonville's interpreter called for them to stop. They stopped.

George Washington But that I know to be false, for I was the first man that approached them, and the first whom they saw; and immediately upon it, ran to their arms, and fired briskly till they were defeated.

A French survivor and Washington told different stories about the same fifteen minutes, and a third story came out later. Whoever fired first, this skirmish started a war between Britain and France that spread around the world.

Fathers

November 1753 – May 1754

Six months earlier, Virginia's governor had sent the French a letter of his own, ordering them out of the Ohio Country. The Ohio Country was the upper Ohio River valley, in today's western Pennsylvania and Ohio. His messenger was a twenty-one-year-old Virginian, George Washington, who very much wanted to be noticed. On the way, he studied the Forks of the Ohio, today's Pittsburgh, and judged it a perfect place for a fort.

Four claims overlapped at this river fork. One belonged to Virginia's Ohio Company, land investors who included the governor. Across North America, most Native nations preferred the French, who came mainly to trade, to the British, who came to farm. Tap a claim, and ask who actually lived here.

At Logstown, a Native trading town down the Ohio, Washington met the Seneca leader Tanaghrisson, whom the English called the Half King. He spoke for the Iroquois here, and he had already told the French to leave.

Tanaghrisson Fathers, both you and the English are white; we live in a country between; therefore the land belongs to neither one nor t'other.

The French commander Child, you talk foolish; you say this land belongs to you, but there is not the black of my nail yours.

At Venango, a French post on the road north, French officers drank wine with Washington and told him their plans.

Philippe-Thomas Joncaire It is our absolute design to take possession of the Ohio, and by God, we will do it.

Philippe-Thomas Joncaire The English can raise two men for our one. But they are too slow.

In fact, the British colonists outnumbered the French about twenty to one. But about the slow part, he was right.

Shingas, a leader of the Lenape, whom the English called the Delaware, saw the danger:

Shingas It is true I live here on the river side, which is the French road.

Any army coming down the river would pass right through his town.

In April 1754, about five hundred French soldiers came down the Allegheny River with cannon. The Virginians' half-built fort at the Forks surrendered without a shot, and the French built Fort Duquesne in its place.

Tanaghrisson sided with the Virginians. On the night of May 27, he led Washington's men to the French camp in the glen.

Back in the glen, according to a deserter who later talked to the French, Tanaghrisson knelt by the wounded Jumonville and said:

Tanaghrisson You are not dead yet, my father.

Then, in that account, he killed Jumonville himself. Tanaghrisson had wanted the English in this war against the French, and now they were in it.

The Word

May–November 1754

After the glen, Washington fell back to the Great Meadows, a clearing on the road toward Virginia, and built a small round fort. He named it Fort Necessity, but the woods stood within musket range of its walls.

Then about a hundred British regulars, full-time soldiers of the King's army, arrived from South Carolina under Captain James Mackay. Mackay's commission came from the King and Washington's only from Virginia, so the captain refused to take the colonel's orders. More than anything, Washington wanted a royal commission like Mackay's.

On July 3, Jumonville's older brother arrived with about seven hundred French soldiers and Native warriors.

It rained all day, the French fired from the trees, and the trenches filled with water. By dusk, thirty of Washington's men were dead and seventy were wounded.

That night the French offered terms, which said they had come to avenge the assassination of Jumonville. Washington and Mackay signed, and France later used their signatures to claim that Britain had started the war.

That fall, Virginia broke its regiment into companies. Under London's rules, any captain with a royal commission outranked a colonel without one. Washington would have dropped to captain, so he resigned.

The Deed

June–July 1754

That same summer, delegates from seven colonies met the Six Nations of the Iroquois at Albany, New York. The British needed the Iroquois as allies, but the Mohawk leader Hendrick came with complaints.

Hendrick Theyanoguin The Governor of Virginia, and the Governor of Canada are both quarrelling about lands which belong to us.

Franklin's cartoon, Join, or Die, urged the colonies to unite against France, not against Britain.

His Albany Plan proposed one joint government for the colonies, to raise troops and taxes for their defense.

Sort the plan's powers by who objected: the colonial assemblies, or London.

Benjamin Franklin The assemblies did not adopt it, as they all thought there was too much prerogative in it; and in England it was judg'd to have too much of the democratic.

Above all, each colony's assembly refused to give up its own power to tax.

At the same congress, Pennsylvania's agents bought a huge tract of land from Iroquois leaders. Pennsylvania read the deed as stretching west, toward the Ohio.

None of the Lenape who lived on that land signed it. The union failed, but the land deal went through. Still, Albany set a precedent: the colonies would meet together again, in 1765 and 1774, to resist Britain.

Inherit the Land

1755–1756 · coda: 1758

In the spring of 1755, London sent General Edward Braddock with two regiments of regulars to take Fort Duquesne. Washington rode along as an unpaid volunteer, still hoping for a royal commission.

When Benjamin Franklin warned him about Native ambushes, Braddock answered:

Maj. Gen. Edward Braddock These savages may, indeed, be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia, but upon the king's regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible they should make any impression.

As Shingas later told it, six Native leaders asked Braddock who would get the land once the French were gone.

Shingas General Braddock replied that the English should inhabit and inherit the land.

Shingas asked whether his people, as friends of the English, could still live, trade and hunt there.

Shingas No Savage should inherit the land.

Shingas If they might not have liberty to live on the land, they would not fight for it.

Braddock answered that he did not need their help.

On July 9, 1755, Braddock's army crossed the Monongahela River, about ten miles from Fort Duquesne. Past the ford, the woods opened fire. Most of the attackers were Native warriors, shooting from cover. The redcoats bunched together in the road and fired at the smoke.

George Washington The Virginians behaved like men, and died like soldiers. The regulars broke, and ran as sheep before hounds.

Braddock took a bullet in the battle and died four days later.

Braddock had said he did not need their help. That autumn, Shingas went to war against the English.

Delaware, or Lenape, war parties burned farms from Pennsylvania to Virginia, killing settlers and carrying off captives.

Four Continents

1756–1758 · world map through 1759

In 1756, two years after the glen, Britain and France formally declared war, and the fighting spread to Europe, Africa and India.

In 1757, Britain's new war minister, William Pitt, took charge and set out to win the war, whatever it cost. He aimed Britain's strength at conquering Canada and sent more ships and regiments across the Atlantic. He also promised the colonies that London would help pay for the soldiers they raised. By the end of the war in 1763, Britain's national debt had nearly doubled.

In 1757, Washington, still without a royal commission, protested to Virginia's governor:

George Washington We can't conceive, that being Americans should deprive us of the benefits of British Subjects; nor lessen our claim to preferment.

Like most colonists, he still thought of himself as a loyal British subject.

In 1758, the British officer James Wolfe helped capture Louisbourg, the French fortress guarding the St. Lawrence River.

Brig. Gen. James Wolfe The Americans are in general the dirtiest most contemptible cowardly dogs that you can conceive. There is no depending on them in action.

Washington said the regulars ran like sheep, and Wolfe called the Americans dogs, though they fought on the same side.

The war bred distrust. Many British officers judged the colonists unreliable, since some colonies had refused to send men or money. Many colonists, in turn, saw the regulars as arrogant and badly suited to fighting in the American woods.

Not One Foot of Land

1758–1759

In 1758, Britain needed the Ohio Valley nations, the Lenape, Shawnee and Mingo, to stop fighting for France. Pennsylvania's governor sent Christian Frederick Post, a Moravian missionary who spoke Lenape, and Shingas's brother Pisquetomen guided him west.

At Kuskusky, a Lenape town northwest of the Forks, the council asked Post:

Shingas Why do not you and the French fight in the old country, and on the sea? Why do you come to fight on our land?

Post told them to bring their complaints to Pennsylvania's governor and council:

Christian Frederick Post they will readily hear you; and I promise you, what they answer they will stand to.

In October 1758, in the Treaty of Easton, Pennsylvania gave back its Albany purchase west of the mountains and promised no settlement there. By late November, the Ohio nations had accepted the peace, and France had lost its most important allies.

Without those allies, the French blew up Fort Duquesne and left before General John Forbes's army arrived. Forbes named the ruins after William Pitt: Pittsburgh.

Then Shingas's brother Tamaqua sent the British a message:

Tamaqua I would tell you, in a most soft, loving and friendly manner, to go back over the mountain, and to stay there;

Instead, the British kept two hundred soldiers at the Forks through the winter. The Ohio nations had wanted British traders, not a British fort.

In 1759, Wolfe led a British army up the St. Lawrence River against Quebec, the capital of New France. Before dawn on September 13, his boats slipped past the French sentries, and his soldiers climbed the cliffs above the river.

By morning, Wolfe's army stood on the plain outside the city, and the decisive fighting lasted about fifteen minutes. Wolfe died on the field, and the French commander, Montcalm, died the next morning. Quebec surrendered five days later.

If Not Interrupted

1760–1763

In September 1760, Montreal surrendered, and New France was finished. For generations, the Native nations of the interior had played two empires against each other. Now only one was left.

In 1761, at Michilimackinac, a Great Lakes fort now in British hands, the Ojibwe leader Minweweh warned an English trader:

Minweweh Englishman, although you have conquered the French, you have not yet conquered us! We are not your slaves.

The French had kept their Native alliances alive with yearly gifts of powder, cloth and food. Britain's commander, General Jeffery Amherst, saw the gifts as a needless expense and cut them back sharply.

Gen. Jeffery Amherst but as to purchasing the good behavior either of Indians, or any Others, is what I do not understand;

In the 1763 Treaty of Paris, France gave Britain Canada and nearly all its land east of the Mississippi. Spain, France's ally, gave Britain Florida, and France gave Louisiana to Spain. France was gone from the mainland. Drag the seam to compare 1754 with 1763.

At the Forks, where Tamaqua had asked the soldiers to go back over the mountain, the British built Fort Pitt.

Christian Frederick Post I promise you, what they answer they will stand to.

In 1763, Britain decided to keep about ten thousand regular soldiers in North America, in forts like this one.

Washington never got his royal commission, and by now he wanted something else: western land. On June 3, 1763, he joined a land company that asked the Crown for two and a half million acres west of the mountains. Its articles set a deadline for settling the land,

George Washington if not interrupted by the Savages.

They already were. Pontiac's War had begun a month earlier.

Pontiac, an Odawa war leader, attacked the British fort at Detroit, and warriors from many nations rose with him. They were angry about settlers on their land and the end of the gifts, and many followed a Lenape prophet named Neolin. By midsummer they had taken eight British forts and besieged Detroit and Fort Pitt. Britain sent regular troops, not colonial militia, to put the uprising down.

In October 1763, to prevent more frontier wars, King George III issued a proclamation that drew a line along the Appalachian Mountains. The Crown reserved the land west of the line for Native nations: no settlers, and no private land purchases. But thousands of settlers ignored it, and land speculators were furious. Washington's company and its two and a half million acres were now on the wrong side of the line.

France was gone, but Britain's war debt had nearly doubled. Parliament decided that the colonists, who had gained the most from the war, should help pay for the troops guarding them. For decades, London had loosely enforced its trade laws, a policy later called salutary neglect. That policy was over. Customs officers began collecting duties, and the first new taxes on the colonies came in 1764.

The fight over who would pay for this war began the quarrel that led to the American Revolution.