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70 CONFLICTING CLAIMS OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND.

the auspices of Governor Shirley, and with aid from other colonies, chiefly of New England. It proved completely successful; and the place, after a short siege, conducted without skill, surrendered. Their exploit filled their inexperienced minds with astonishment, when they beheld the strength of the fortifications they had captured. This expedition was commanded by William Pepperell, a merchant of Maine, who was rewarded for his success by the honor of knighthood.

Encouraged by this achievement, the conquest of Canada was planned, but the offensive operations of the French compelled the English colonists to defer the attempt, until the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle put an end to hostilities, and restored Cape Breton to France.

The interests of the two nations on this continent clashed too much to allow them to remain long at peace. The limits of Nova Scotia were still contested; and, what was of far greater importance, those of Louisiana, as claimed by France, threatened the future safety of all the British provinces.

Great Britain had always claimed the lands in America which extended from the Atlantic coast discovered by Cabot to the Pacific; and such had been the extent of her colonial grants. On the other hand, France, on the ground of having first discovered the river Mississippi, claimed all the land on both sides of that vast river, from its source to its mouth, and as far east as the great Appalachian chain of mountains, so as to reduce the British settlements to a long narrow slip of territory, which has been aptly described as the cord of an immense bow, formed by the French settlements from Canada to the mouth of the Mississippi; and she prepared to secure the possession of the domain she claimed by a chain of

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posts along its eastern frontier from Quebec to New Orleans.

With the view of checking these encroachments of the French, and of having a settlement to the west of the Alleghany Mountains, the British government had, in 1749, granted five hundred thousand acres of land in the valley of the Ohio to a company formed in England and Virginia, whose ostensible purpose was to trade with the Indians. The company sent settlers to the Ohio river, and there erected a fort.

The Governor of Canada remonstrated against this intrusion, as he called it, on the dominions of France; and threatened that if the English persisted in trading with the Indians, he would arrest them. This he accordingly did, and carried his prisoners to the French fort at Presq' Isle. A road being then made by the French on the lands granted to the Ohio company, Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia despatched to the French commandant George Washington, a young officer, whose character then received its first gleam of that glory which beamed with such splendor at a later period, requesting him to withdraw from the dominions of the king of Great Britain; to which letter an unsatisfactory answer was returned.

A regiment was raised in the following year to defend the frontier. Washington, then second in command, proceeded with his small force to the West, where he encountered and defeated a party of the French under Jumonville. By the death of Colonel Fry, while on his way to join his regiment, the chief command devolved on Washington, whose fate it was to be defeated and captured by the enemy, by which turn of fortune, however, he lost no reputation at home.

The French had already erected a fort at the junction

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CONVENTION AT ALBANY.

of the Monongahela and Alleghany, which they called Fort Duquesne, and which subsequently became the site of the flourishing city of Pittsburg. War was now inevitable, and both parties began to prepare for it.

The British ministry instructed the colonial Governors to remove the French from the Ohio, by force, if necessary; and they also recommended union among the colonies for their natural defence. A convention of delegates from seven of the colonies accordingly assembled at Albany to hold a conference with the Five Nations, whose friendship would be so important in a war with France.

A plan of union-which was to have the sanction of Parliament to give it efficacy-was then recommended, by which representatives chosen by the colonies were to have power to levy forces by land and sea, lay imposts and taxes, and appoint officers; the grand council to consist of forty-eight members, distributed among eleven colonies, under a President-general to be appointed by the Crown.

The plan of this confederacy was unacceptable to all parties. It was not approved in the colonies, on account of the large powers given to the President, dependent as he would be on the Crown; and it was not approved in England, because, in the temper manifested of late in most of the colonies, an organized corporation might be dangerous to the authority of the mother country. The scheme was therefore abandoned.

To take command of the army in America the ministry appointed General Braddock, an officer of high reputation, who, by appointment, attended a general meeting of the royal governors at Alexandria, to consult on the affairs of the colonies. It was then unanimously recommended to raise a revenue in America, which all the

GENERAL BRADDOCK — WAR WITH FRANCE.

73

officers of the Crown seemed then to think was as prac ticable by the agency of Parliament, as it was just and expedient.

In the same year Braddock, with Washington as his aid, set out in his march to the west, at the head of eighteen hundred men, in two divisions, to take possession of Fort Duquesne; and when within twelve miles of the spot, in full confidence of his superiority, he was attacked by a joint force of French and Indians in ambush, and sustained a total defeat, with the loss of his own life. He fell the victim of his undue reliance on military skill and discipline, contempt of his barbarous enemy, and utter disregard to the prudent counsels of young Washington.

General Loudoun was appointed his successor, and then it was determined by the ministry to keep up a standing force in America, and to quarter the troops in the colonies without consulting their Legislatures.

War was formally declared by England in May, 1756, and the first operation in America was the capture of Fort Oswego by Montcalm, the Governor of Canada. Loudon, on his part, attempted nothing offensive, to the great disappointment and mortification of the colonies."

But William Pitt became minister, and the effect of his vigor and decision was soon manifested in America, as well as other quarters of the world. Louisburg surrendered, after a siege of eight days, to General Amherst, and Fort Oswego was recaptured by Bradstreet. But, on the other hand, an attack on Ticonderoga was repulsed by Montcalm. Fort Duquesne had been abandoned and destroyed by the French. General Forbes subsequently took possession of its site: he built a fort there,

1 I. Marshal, 410.

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CAPTURE OF QUEBEC.

and called it Fort Pitt. Fort Niagara capitulated to Sir William Johnson; and lastly, both Ticonderoga and Crown Point were abandoned by Montcalm, that he might be better able to defend Quebec.

The attack on this place had been confided to General Wolfe, who, though yet a young man, had already acquired a high reputation, and was deemed worthy of encountering the skilful and gallant Montcalm. He well justified these favorable expectations. Quebec also yielded to the British arms, and its capture was rendered more memorable by the death of the victorious general, who fell at the head of his troops; and also by the death of the French commander, Montcalm - both of them equally esteemed by their respective nations for their bravery, military skill, and devotion to their country.

Mons. De Levi, the French officer next in command, made an attempt to regain Quebec, and might have succeeded but for the opportune arrival of an English fleet in the St. Lawrence. He then withdrew his troops to Montreal, where Mons. de Vaudreil, now Governor of Canada, had collected all his forces. Unable, however, to withstand the superior force of the British, he finally capitulated. With Montreal surrendered Detroit, and all the other strong places in Canada; and thus terminated the French dominion in North America. Informal cession to Great Britain was subsequently made by the treaty of Paris.

But while the conquest of Canada annihilated the power of France in America, it tended to lessen the dependence of the British colonies on the mother country. Their collisions and wars with the French settlements and their Indian allies obviously served to bind them more closely together; but when this outward pressure was withdrawn, they would be more likely to feel and

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