U.S. History French Indian War

¶ … French and Indian War: Braddock and Thereafter

How little credit is given to a Commander, who perhaps after a defeat, in relating the cause justly lays the blame on some individual whose cowardly behav'r betray'd the whole to ruin; how little does the World consider the Circumstances, and how apt are Mankind to level their vindictive Censures against the unfortunate Chief, who perhaps merited least of the blame.

George Washington, 1755

Who would have thought it?

General Edward Braddock's dying words, 1755

The war that raged in North America through the late 1750's and early 1760's was a piece of a large struggle between England and France for dominance in world trade and naval power. The British victory in that struggle, known in Europe as the Seven Years' War, ended the long struggle among the three powers in northeastern North America: The English, the French, and the Iroquois Confederacy, it confirmed England's commercial supremacy and its control of the settled regions of North America. The war helped to establish the develoment of the frontier and the ever moving progress that was about to begin in America.

The French and the English had coexisted relatively peacefully in North America for nearly a century. But by the 1750's, as the English and French settlements grew, religious and commercial tensions began to produce new problems and new conflicts. The French had explored and claimed a large region of the continental interior, ranging from Louisiana in the South to the Great Lakes in the North. To secure their hold on these enourmous claims, they founded a whole string of communities, missions, trading posts, and fortresses. The region was enclosed by the four major cities: Montreal, Detroit, New Orleans, and Quebec, the center of the French empire in North America. The English, meanwhile, were preparing for the great population leap accross the Appalachians into Ohio and beyond. In 1749 a group of Virginian businessmen secured a grant of 500,000 acres of Ohio valley land for settlement purposes. This prompted the French, in an effort to keep the English from expansion into French lands, to construct new fortresses in the Ohio valley. This caused the english, interpreting the French activity as a threat to their western settlements, to begin making military preparations and building fortresses of their own. [1]

For the next five years, tensions between the English and the French increased, until in the summer of 1754 the governor of Virginia sent George Washington to lead a militia force into the Ohio valley to challenge French expansion.[2] Washington built a crude stockade and staged an unsuccessful attack on a French detachment. The French turned around with an assault on Fort Necessity, trapping Washington and his soldiers inside. After a third of them died in the fighting, Washington surrendered. This marked the beginning of the French and Indian War.

The French and Indian War lasted nearly nine years, and it moved forward in three distinct phases. During the first of these phases, from the Fort Necessity battle in 1754 until the expansion of the war to Europe in 1756, it was primarily a local, North American Conflict. The English did not do well these first years. There were few British naval reinforcements and so the colonists managed the war largely on their own. All indian tribes were now allied with the French. Only the Iroquois had seen themselves forced to the British side and they kept themselves as neutral as possible. [3]

In 1755, General Braddock experienced his famous encounter with death. Braddock's experience set off the eventual frontier camapign. Although he had seen little active campaigning before 1754, Braddock was reputed to have a good knowledge of European military tactics and was noted as a stern disciplinarian. He was promoted to major general in 1754 and early in 1755 arrived in Virginia as commander in chief of the British forces in North America against the French. His immediate objective was the French stronghold at the forks of the Ohio. With some 700 colonial militiamen, whom he regarded disdainfully, and over 1,400 British regulars, he moved across the Alleghenies from Fort Cumberland (now Cumberland, Md.), building a road (the foundation of the National Road) as he went. The march was so slow, however, that he feared the French would reinforce Duquesne before he could reach there. Adopting the suggestion of one of his aides-de-camp, George Washington, he left the wagons behind him with one of the two British regiments and pushed ahead with about two thirds of his total force. While crossing the Monongahela River, Braddock was met (July 9, 1755) by a force of not more than 900 men (a few French, some Canadians, and many Native Americans) under Daniel Beaujeu, who had already learned of the advance. The British regulars, as unfamiliar with Native American-style fighting as their commander (although both had been given fair warning by the colonials), bolted from their column formation under the steady fire from a ubiquitous enemy safely concealed in ravines and behind trees. The affair turned into a bloody rout. Since the Native Americans paused to collect scalps and other trophies of war, the demoralized troops were able to rejoin the rear guard and both retreated safely to Fort Cumberland. Of the 1,459 actively engaged, 977 were killed or wounded, including 63 of the 89 officers, who -- unlike the soldiers -- fought bravely. Braddock himself had four horses shot from under him before he was mortally wounded. He died four days later at Great Meadows and was buried there, near the site of Uniontown, Pa. Braddock's encounter serves to prove how apt the French were at fighting on the frontier. The French, proved superior in the complementary efforts of wilderness tactics and Indian diplomacy. Getting to the decisive battlefield with the decisive numbers of troops and supplies was, of course, only half the struggle. Proper tactics were as essential to victory as proper strategy. Although most Americans understood the nature of Indian warfare, their British overlords would never truly accommodate themselves to that reality. Reflecting on Braddock's defeat, Colonel Dunbar expressed the exasperation the British felt when fighting "an invisible enemy... this Manner of fighting confounded the people; they saw and heard fireing and the fatal consequences but few saw an Enemy. www.questia.com/14236628" (Pargellis, Loudoun in America, 165). During that battle, Braddock and his officers beat back into line those Americans who sheltered behind trees and fought Indian style. [4]

The ability of European commanders to adapt to Indian-style wilderness warfare varied considerably from one commander to the next. Braddock failed to do so; Dieskau quickly grasped what was necessary. Ideally, the leap from one mode of warfare to the other should not have been that difficult for either man. Guerrilla warfare was actually quite common in Europe-both Braddock and Dieskau had confronted it. Psychology explains their different responses to warfare in North America. By all accounts, Braddock was a rigid, unimaginative, and authoritarian personality who contemptuously disdained most advice given him. In contrast, Dieskau listened carefully to his veteran bush-fighters like Legardeur de Saint-Pierre and Louis Legardeur de Repentigny, and incorporated their experience into his strategy. In the end, of course, their similarity exceeded their differences -- both generals were defeated.[5]

It became apparent that in order to fight in a frontier war, to win the ultimate prize of the frontier, one must learn how to fight on the frontier. While it took some time, the British eventually discovered how to capitalize on the notion of frontier war, and this led to their ultimate victory in the frontier campaign.

The second phase of the struggle began in 1756 when the governments of France and England formally opened hostilities and a truly international conflict began. The fighting now spread to the West Indies, India, and Europe itself. But the principal struggle remained the one in North America where so far England had suffered nothing but frustration and defeat. Beginning in 1757, Wiliam Pitt, the English secretary of state, began to transform the war effort by bringing it for the first time fully under British control. He did this at first by forcing supplies, equipment, shelter, and manpower from the colonists. This was cause for much resentment among the colonists, who resisted these new imposition and firmly, at times even violently, resisted them. By early 1758, the friction between the British authorities and the colonists was threatening to bring the war effort to a halt. [6]

Beginning in 1758, Pitt initiated the third and final phase of the war by relaxing many of the policies that Americans had objected to. This resulted in an immediate increase in American support for the war and an increase in American enlistment. Pitt also dispatched large numbers of additional troops. Almost immediately the battle began to turn in England's favor. The French, now even more outnumbered then before and plagued by poor harvests, could no longer offer enough resistance to the British troops and American militias. In July 1758, the fortress of Louisbourg was captured by two brilliant English generals, Jeffrey Amherst and James Wolfe. And on September 13, 1759, the supposedly the unatainable city of Quebec fell to the army of General James Wolfe. This marked the beginning of the end of the American phase of the war. A year later, in September 1760, the French army formally surrendered to Amherst in Montreal. [7]

The French and Indian War had profound effects for both the British Empire and the American colonists. It is often seen as the source of much of the resentment between the English government and the colonists that eventually led to the American Revolution of 1775.

The French and Indian war had important, immediate effects on the colonies and their English mother country. Obviously, it meant great land acquirements for both American settlers and the English government. What Britain did not realize, however, was the problems this new territory would create. Never, since the days of Queen Elizabeth, had England been so unified and enthusiastic. Nationalism grew immensely after defeat of the French army. After the war ended, animosity towards England from France and their Native American allies seemed to be gone. This would prove to be very incorrect. The festivity of the war masked both the uprising nationalism of the American settlers and the thirst for revenge from the French king. The envious monarch would settle the score with England in a way that was totally unexpected.[8]

After the dust settled, England realized they had encountered a huge debt from the war and did not have a way to pay for it. Many government officials from England were already angry because of the lack of money given to them by America in order to help pay for the war. They also failed to provide large numbers of soldiers for battle. After great discussion, the Parliament decided that American colonists should be taxed in order to exercise their part in helping to cover the huge debt England had incurred. Therefore many new taxes were introduced. These taxes included the Stamp Act, the Sugar Act, the Townshend act and many others. One law that infuriated the colonists was the Royal Proclamation of 1763. This law prohibited all colonists to traverse any land west of the Allegheny Mountains. The king did this in order to protect colonists from armed Indian tribes ready to defend their land and in order to appease Chief Pontiac's army and grant them territory. The British government was not about to engage itself in more costly wars that would cost thousands of other lives.

American colonists believed this was ridiculous especially after being restrained by the French for so long.

It seemed as if the English had now taken the place of the French in trying to stop westward expansion.

The French and Indian War also unified the thirteen colonies for the first time. Before the war broke out, the thirteen colonies never had anything in common. They existed in uneasiness towards each other because of their drastic differences. The war with the French settlers and their allies provided a common bond in which they could relate with each other. The thirteen colonies realized that they alone were a force to be reckoned with and they did not need the English parliament in order to be successful.

Probably the most important effect of the war was the separate identity American colonists were associating themselves with. These people no longer thought of themselves as Europeans. This is not attributed fully to the war. Salutary Neglect also played a huge part. Even before the French and Indian War, Britain was engaging itself in many expensive battles with countries they were enemies of. They no longer had the time or resources to control the colonies the way they would have wanted to. This would prove to be very disastrous in the long run. During this time, The Thirteen Colonies were trading and setting up their own governments without the consultation of Parliament. This period extended over a time of approximately fifty years. Whole generations of people grew up with the freedom to trade with whomever they wanted. Also, local governments were being developed on towns' own accords. Therefore, when England attempted to seize control over the colonies once again, they discovered a group of people who were accustomed to governing themselves. To make matters even worse, they also found people who were willing to fight for such independence. Freedom, which at first existed as habit, now became a right.