Dan Snow's History Hit - North America's French Indian War

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

As the British and French colonies in North America expanded in the middle of the 18th century, they inevitably clashed. Fighting between the two sides and their respective Native American allies began in Ohio Country (now western Pennsylvania) in 1754. Dan Snow tells Don how the fighting began in 1754 in Ohio country (now western Pennsylvania) and spread, over almost a decade, across the disputed territory in the Great Lakes region and into New France (modern-day Canada). As a result of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the war, France's presence in North America was all but ended. They were left only with the small islands of St Pierre and Miquelon, off Newfoundland.Produced by Benjie Guy. Mixed by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer: Charlotte Long.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. One of my greatest friends, Don Wildman, is the new host of the hit podcast, American History Hit, which is a bit like Dan Snow's History Hit, but it's American. And he was in London before Christmas, we caught up, we had a good time, he brought some good Americana for my kids, we hung out, we drank warm ale, but he recorded several podcasts, including this one with me. This is from the American History Hit feed. You people know that my happy place is the Seven Years' War, the French-Indian War in North America. The Seven Years' War obviously did not last seven years, nor did the Hundred Years' War last a hundred years, but that's another story.

The Seven Years' War in North America was fought between Britain and its colonists, France and its colonists in Canada and across the Midwest, and of course the indigenous people who were living on the land now claimed by these European empires. As Britain and France's possessions in North America expanded, they inevitably clashed. Fighting between the two sides and their respective indigenous allies began in what was called the Ohio country, now pretty much western Pennsylvania. In 1754, it was started, you'll be tickled to learn, by a young, ambitious British military officer with very little experience, who accidentally seems to have lit the fuse that ignited this global conflict. His name was George Washington. It was not a hugely auspicious start for a man that would go on to become the key founder of the American Republic

and its first president. And in fact, if you want to watch a documentary all about his hapless adventures in the Ohio country on the frontier, you can go to History Hit TV because we've just released a great documentary there filmed on location on the Monongahela River and around Pittsburgh. The fighting after that spread right along the frontier through the Great Lakes and up into Canada. And the fighting also spread to West Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. Churchill described it as the First World War. At the end of the war, Britain was victorious. It was probably the most successful war in British history. The Treaty of Paris, which ended the war, saw Canada handed over entirely to the British. Well, not entirely. Two minuscule islands off Newfoundland, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, remain part of France to this day.

Anyway, this podcast is all about the Seven Years' War in North America, the French-Indian War. You listen to Don Wildman, host of American History Hit, interview me, Dan Snow. Enjoy. Welcome, Dan, to American History It. Thanks for having me. Okay, so it's a gigantic subject that's as entangled and thick and dense as the woods where it happened. How did it even start?

It's a crazy story. You know, most of the colonial era wars in North America, they start in Europe. They start in Europe with the big powers, France and Britain in this case, falling out. And then news travels across the Atlantic, and then the local colonials go after each other, seeking advantage as the home, the imperial sort of overlords are fighting.

They're like, this is completely different, this war. And I think it tells you about the changing dynamic, the changing power balance. European empires in North America start to take on a life of their own. The French are expanding across what is now Canada, down and also, of course, down through the Ohio Valley and the Mississippi, all the way to Louisiana, New Orleans. The French controlled a vast swathe of North America, thinly held, thinly populated, but they controlled it.

The Brits controlled a little teeny strip up the eastern seaboard, stretching from what is now approximately kind of Georgia up to what is now Maine. Densely populated, lots of farmers, lots of people there, but hemmed in by the mountains, hemmed in by the French. And the Brits, the American colonials, they wanted to go west. They wanted to open up this continent, drive the French out, and, you know, manifest destiny, buddy. Okay, so let me get a handle on this. You've got the English along the coast of America, the French are up in Canada. Spanish there yet?

Spanish are in Florida, so they're pushing up Mexico, Florida, but they enter the Seven Years War later on in the war. Yeah, but then there's the Native American tribes, this huge, the nations out there in the middle. The central point of all of this is the Ohio Valley. Why is that? The Ohio Valley is vital. If the Brits and the English settlers on the eastern seaboard, if they want to get west, if they want to enjoy that bounty of North America, they've got to bust through what is now western New York, western Pennsylvania, western Virginia.

You've got to go through, access the good stuff in the middle. The problem is there's all sorts of people there. There's native peoples there. And the French lay claim to that because they've got a big empire stretching from Quebec, Montreal, through Ontario, down Ohio, what is now Pittsburgh, which is a place called Fort Duquesne, all the way down the Mississippi to New Orleans. So the Brits and the French are on collision course. So the French are, it's an incursion, you know the Brits and the French are on collision course. So the French are, it's an incursion, you know, as far as the English are concerned. Yeah.

They've kind of moved in and taken too much land to make the English comfortable. Really, everybody's sort of moving in from their various realms and it's beginning to become a collision. The French build a fortification in what eventually becomes Pittsburgh, am I right? Fort Duquesne, that area. Back there in Williamsburg, the House of Burgesses, all that, they get very alarmed of that. That sort of stretches up there towards the Ohio Valley.

And off is dispatched a young, a very young British officer, at this point, yes, a major, George Washington. He had a promising start to his career. I don't know what happened to the guy. You need to fill me in. I don't know if anything ever came of this guy. So a 21-year-old George

Washington, he was a surveyor. So he was comfortable. He was from a grand gentry family on the coast. He inherited land, he inherited enslaved people. He lived the life of a kind of British, almost an aristocrat, really. But he was chosen because he was a good surveyor. He knew the land. He knew how to get around in the back country. And so he was sent out with a little expedition of militia. He was meant to deliver around in the backcountry. And so he was sent out with a little expedition of militia. He was meant to deliver a note to the French saying, please vacate this territory. Things went badly wrong. And he basically, it was a powder keg.

The British and French were rubbing up against each other all over the frontier. And it turns out that George Washington was the young man that lit the fuse. How? What happened? He, with some of his native allies, it's not clear what happened, but in a place called Jumanville Glen, which is now in western Pennsylvania, he ambushed a small party of French soldiers and killed them kind of in cold blood. The French went bananas.

They sent a punitive expedition to get Washington. There was then some back and forth. Washington ended up sort of surrendering in humiliation. His first battle, his first campaign had been a disaster. But he learned more in defeat than he did in victory, Don. I remember watching Hamilton, you know, the Broadway show. He makes a reference to this, how poorly his military career really started. Watching the men being shot at, he somehow emerges unscathed from this, which is remarkable.

Like actually a miracle. He has bullet holes through his coat on several occasions. The Brits then send a big expedition, redcoats. They send redcoats, 1755. This is unusual. Usually the fighting in North America has been colonial forces. The Brits don't want to spend money in North America. They want to spend money.

They want to fight in Belgium. That's where the Brits do their fight. In straight lines. Yeah, exactly. So they send an expedition of redcoats. General Braddock in command. And they suffer. And George Washington is a key aide of his on this expedition, back to kind of head west and try and do the same thing, clear the French out.

And they suffer one of the most crushing and infamous defeats in British history, Battle of Molongahela. They're approaching Fort Duquesne. They're approaching modern-day Pittsburgh, the forks of the Ohio. And the French and their Native American allies ambush them. And it's like full, crazy, you know, it's one of those stories of regular troops being surrounded, terrified, picked off one by one. The general himself is killed. This is annihilation. You know, you think where the classical history, think back about Varus in his forest with his Roman legions or Afghanistan more recently. This is a humiliation for the British empire. You know, it's often credited to the American revolution and then those colonists

to the guerrilla warfare that they used against the British troops. This actually starts here because we're learning it from the native Americans. That's right. It's a different kind of warfare in North America. It's standing up in bright lines and bright coats, firing musket volleys. It's not so good when there's plenty of cover, there's plenty of trees, there's plenty of hillocks. And also, there aren't the roads. There isn't. That part of western Pennsylvania is tough. They're building about a mile of road a day. It's a brutal thing. So, there isn't the big open, wide open spaces to deploy and fight conventional warfare. So, the Brits and their American colonial allies at this point are learning fast. The French, unfortunately, have learned a little quicker. But this is a different kind of war.

It's important to, I think, early on in this that we need to understand the difference between the French and Indian War and the Seven Years' War. Two totally different things, but completely related. The French-Indian War is kind of part of what then becomes the Seven Years' War, because when these shots are fired in North America, the Brits and French both reinforcements North America, French to Canada, the Brits to New York and Virginia. And then the Brits fire without a declaration of war, by the way. The Brits try and intercept one of these troop convoys. The Brits, this is terrible.

The Brits sail up and the French go, are we at war? And the British admiral goes, no, no. And then he attacks his ship and fires a massive broadside into the French. So that really is the start of it. But that's the start of a war then. North America, it's known as the French-Indian War. The war breaks out in India with the colonial possessions there. It's called the Carnatic War. War breaks out in Europe big time as giant old school European battles take place. You've got

the Brits and their allies, the Prussians fighting the French and their allies, the Austrians. It's all happening. It's all happening on the continent as well. There's fighting in the Caribbean, there's fighting in West Africa. But so the French-Indian War is the kind of bit that starts it all and the bit that rumbles on whilst all this fighting is going around the world. I'm thinking of Archduke Ferdinand, like one little thing happens and then the rest of the thing just falls apart. That's a very good point. That's a very good analogy. So, okay, but our main focus is this frontier war out here in the middle of nowhere. What's the next battle that comes along? I mean, how do they fight this war? You know what? It's grim, man. They're trying to take cannon. They're trying

to take supplies through completely impassable terrain. They've got these little pinpricks, these little forts out, for example, Fort Oswego, just north of Syracuse, New York now, right on the edge of Lake Ontario. And they, can you imagine how isolated they would have felt, you know, and they're sending letters back going, yeah, we think the French are coming. And, you know, and boats are important skill of, they call that bateau, these shallow draught vessels, canoes, and you're carrying everything by bateau, you're carrying everything, but it's expensive. People get sick. You get the men together. It's hot. I don't need to tell you that, right? It's incredibly hot in the summer. It's incredibly

cold in the winter. So your campaigning season is short. You hit the, you hit, not hit the road, you hit the river, if you like, from Albany. You try and get up to Fort Oswego. You try and get up to Lake Champlain. But you're sailed by bugs. Dysentery starts kicking in. The food runs out. It is brutal. And you're wearing wool.

And you're wearing wool. And at the end of that, just as you're at the limit of your endurance, oh, here's a massive ambush from, you know, Native American allies, the French or whatever. At first, the French were better at this than the English english the first several years were bad for the english yeah the brits have a we have a weird thing in british history we kind of start slow um no one's ever really looked into it partly because the brits spend less money on their military because they've got the royal navy so they can sit in at the start of a war you can go oopsie days you need to build our army back up if you don't have a big army in Prussia or Austria or France,

then you're losing day one. For the Brits, you can afford to kind of sit back on your haunches a bit, let the navy be the shield, and then you spend some money, you build up the troops, you start that. Britain is a commercial place. It's rich. Its industrial revolution is kicking off.

So you just need a bit of time to turn those plowshares into swords and bayonets. And then you really get going. So that's what happens in the French Indian War in North America, if you like. So the Brits lose Fort Oswego in 1756, which I've mentioned. The famous Battle of William Henry, immortalized in the last of the Mohicans, where the fort, kind of at the southern end of Lake George, it is captured by the French, by the Marquis de Montcalm with his native allies.

Many of the British prisoners are murdered. It's not quite as portrayed in the movie, but there is that kind of native American allies. The French seem to run a little wild. They kill a lot of the prisoners. They kill the kind of stragglers. It's brutal warfare. Oh, the stats are bad. 3,000 deaths on the British side, 400 for the French. That's right. The Brits are doing badly at this point. But then the British machine starts to fire up. They're sending reinforcements. They're sending ships. They're sending...

And because they're Royal Navy, they can blockade the French. The French are doing brilliantly, but they have to make do kind of what they got in Canada, which is less people, less settlers. They use Native Americans brilliantly. They use their settlers brilliantly.

These voyageurs, these backwoodsmen, they're super tough. They're great marksmen. But there aren't really enough of them. And suddenly all these redcoats start flooding in and cash. Colonial assemblies are like, we're not paying for these levies ourselves. And the Brits are like, fine, here's a ton of money. You guys, I want regiments. I want the 60th Royal American Regiment. Suddenly you've got battalions of these guys pumped out, wearing their redcoats, and then the Brits start to eye up French possessions. out wearing their red coats and then the Brits start to eye up French possessions.

I'll be back with more from Dan Snow after this short break. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Ironically, it actually has a lot to do with the creation of an American-ism, right? The feeling that we are something here for real, which, you know, marching along in an army would do that. At this time, it's for the British, but But nonetheless, what's the word I'm looking for?

It consolidates. Binds, binds. Yeah. Ironically, this is fighting for the British, but there's a feeling of becoming an American because you're in this organization together. That's right. That is it.

So the Brits spend the whole, it's so funny, the whole of French Indian world, the Brits spend the whole time complaining the American colonies won't work together. Ah, these useless colonials, only interested in their own. Well, they'd come to regret that a few years later, right? But they spend the whole time trying to encourage the people of Virginia to see that, you know what? The war might be predominantly being fought in New York at the moment, but this will benefit all of us eventually.

And it's tough, but it is absolutely part of developing an American mindset. Sure, the join or die. That's what Franklin says later. He does the famous cartoon with all the different pieces of the snake, and that's that flag. And that's what this really creates. We got to do this together, people. And that's the beginning of the end for the British in America. That's right. That's the problem. So as the French build on these successes, they actually start to threaten. If Montcalm had really gone for it, he could have threatened the settlements on the eastern seaboard, dare I say, Philadelphia, Boston.

But he doesn't. He's content just to secure the backcountry. He doesn't feel he's strong enough to launch a big assault right through the kind of built-up, you know, rich farmland, the heavily populated areas of these American colonies.

So he does not strike the killer blow, but so the Brits do. He gives the space for the British to. And with these new reinforcements, these new ships coming in, new government in London, by the way, Pitt, you'll see in Pittsburgh, the name is not a coincidence. Pitt is the kind of the secretary of state, if you like. He's the foreign secretary of this administration, and he loves North America. He sees North America in a way that previous British administrations have been obsessed, like I say, Flanders, Europe, Belgium. Pitt is the first statesman in British history to want to go all out in North America. So he sends massive, biggest expeditionary forces

ever sent abroad by the British state at this point, borrowing huge amounts of money, low interest rates. There's a financial revolution, industrial revolution going on. So he's raising money. He's sending it to North America. There's a few attempts go wrong. There's a battle at what is now called Ticonderoga, but it was Fort Carillon back there. The British throw themselves on entrenched lines and get shot down and thousands of casualties. Very familiar from later wars. But Louisbourg, that's the key. That's the first one. Louisbourg is this huge French fort. I've been there. It's a great place. Huge French fort dominating the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. The French put it right there on Cape Breton Island. It's just next to Nova Scotia. If you want to enter the St. Lawrence,

you've got to go around for Louisbourg Fort. And the Brits, it's like D-Day. They have a huge amphibious assault there, assault the beaches. They blockade the fort. They pound it with their cannon. A young man called Wolfe is there, one of the brigadiers, Brigadier General Wolfe.

He's one of the men who's learning his trade there. The American militia are with them. And they pound Louisbourg into dust. The French sink their own fleet in the harbor and surrender the fortress because no help can be got from France. So now the St. Lawrence is open. That's 1758, 1759, the St. Lawrence is open.

You can strike. You can either try and march your guys all the way through thick woodland infested with French militiamen and Native Americans, or you just sail a big old fleet straight up the St. Lawrence, right, and strike at the heart of the beast. And the big problem, St. Lawrence, you've sailed there, I've sailed there. It's a nightmare. It's one of those dangerous stretches of ocean on the planet.

The tides whip in and out. It's crazy. The weather's awful. So they get a young officer called James Cook. James Cook, a British guy. He grew up in an illiterate household of farm laborers. He entered the Navy. It proved like a kind of meritocracy for him. He was able to advance. He's a brilliant mapmaker. So he spends early 1759 making the first ever maps of the

St. Lawrence. They're beautiful. I've been to see them in the National Archives in the UK. These huge maps, amazingly detailed. So you can see using science, using all the techniques of modern engineering science now. And it allows, the following spring, General Wolfe, after his success at Louisbourg, he is sent with a huge expatriate force up to Quebec, the capital of New France. It's a bold move. You're going to strike at that. That's like the French sending a fleet to Philadelphia or Boston. It's a huge move.

And they win. They take Canada. It's a brutal summer. And he fights a campaign of terror against the surrounding French settlements. They launch one amphibious assault. It doesn't work. He almost dies of typhus that's ripping through his camp. The dysentery, it's appalling.

He kind of seems to give up in his correspondence. But they decide to launch one last assault in September of 1759 against a little bay called Anse-aux-Foulons, just west, up the St. Lawrence, just west of Quebec. They scale the heights of Abraham, the highlanders, Scottish highland troops leading the way. And in the morning, they appear on the western side of Quebec, where Montcalm, as I mentioned, the general, he was not expecting to be there. He rushes out to fight them. There's a briskly European-style battle, you know, two lines of men shooting each other. The French lose. Montcalm and Wolfe both killed, both mortally

wounded, but the British are able to take Quebec. They cling onto it through a brutal winter of 1759 to 60, and then the other tentacles of British power start to crush the French elsewhere. A force marches up past Ticonderoga, up north, straight up to Montreal. Another force comes through Les Contaux, and in 1760, amazing things happens. All three prongs of this British and colonial attack, this effort, one coming down the St. Lawrence, one coming up to Montreal, and the other coming in from the Great Lakes, they all arrive at Montreal within two weeks of each other. It's one of the most extraordinary campaigns in history. Canada falls, and the British, the British then go on to conquer islands in the Caribbean and

elsewhere, these crack troops, these American troops, now war veterans. But basically, this very brief period of history, I love this period, from 1760 to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, Britain controls an astonishing empire, up to the Arctic Circle, Hudson Bay, up to the Rocky, the whole of New France, right down the Ohio and the Mississippi to New Orleans, all of the Eastern seaboard, this gigantic British North American empire. It doesn't last. No, they got George III.

Got George III. That's the problem. It is an amazing moment. I'm panting with excitement. This whole campaign is extraordinary. It must have been electric for these colonists. You know, I'm always thinking of the poor little Americans over here. Well, it was electric. It was so electrifying for the colonists, they started to give them ideas. They got some big ideas. They thought, hang on, look, A, look how effective we've been when we

worked together. B, so no French around anymore, right? That's interesting. So we got the British overlords now want to tax us and say, hey, you owe us a bit of cash for this we're no longer scared about the french and also correctly extraordinarily the british their interests are now like we just want peace and quiet north america these colonists remember how it all started they wanted land in the west they want to exploit and explore and you know live out this these dreams of North American empire. The British like it's going to drive the indigenous peoples absolutely crazy. We've got Pontiac's revolt, other things like that. So you know what, colonials, just stay where you are on the Eastern seaboard. We've won this great victory, but we're not going to let you exploit it. That for the Americans was a red rag to the beginning of manifest destiny. How does this

resolve as a European conflict or as a North American conflict? Which stops the war? So the secret weapon for the British is that Frederick the Great, one of the great military geniuses of all time, is wrecking shop in Europe at the same time. The Prussians. So yeah, so traditionally what happens is the Brits hoover up lots of colonies in India and Canada and elsewhere. And then the French, unfortunately, devastate everyone on the continent. So there's a big old peace treaty. They'll put their powdered wigs on. They just swap bits of territory around in some nice chateau in France or Belgium. This happened at the end of the War of Austrian Succession, where the Americans had captured

Louisbourg, this big fortress, I mean, I'd meant, and it was swapped back for Bombay. The Americans were like, thanks very much for that, buddy. So, but this war, Frederick the Great was so brilliant in Europe, the Brits didn't have to swap the stuff back at the end of the war. So there was this enormous success in North America and India and Caribbean, but also in Europe. So the French had nowhere to go. In the end, to make peace, there's this great expression, the French had to choose. The French were like, we need to make peace. You've got to give us something here. Otherwise, this war's going to go on forever. Give us something. And so the Brits go, okay, you can have Canada or Guadeloupe, which now I'm half Canadian, is almost insulting to us. You've got

to remember at the time, Guadeloupe was like the, it was an island that produced sugar, grown by enslaved people and harvested by enslaved people. Phenomenally wealthy. Like it was the, almost like the Dubai or the Qatar of the time, you know, exporting all this stuff and fabulously wealthy. So the French said, you know, exporting all this stuff and fabulously wealthy. So the French said, you know, what's Canada? It's a few acres of frozen snow. So they opted for Guadeloupe, which is why to this day, Guadeloupe is still part of France,

not just a French colony, it's part of France. You spend euros there and it's a little piece of France. But they didn't take Canada. They didn't take Canada back and they lived to regret that, didn't they? Well, the Quebecois stayed. Well, that's right, the Quebecois. Now, interestingly, the Quebecois did say that British cut a deal with the Quebecois british said listen you can keep your religion

which at the time was unusual their protestants the quebecois were catholic you keep your religion we want an easy life here you swear an oath of loyalty to king george you can do what the hell now and interesting that was also unpopular with all these american colonial protestants they're like now the catholic church is rearing its ugly head within the brit Empire in North America. So all of these cracks start to appear in the relationship between the British and their American colonial population. So North America, at least the eastern third of it, is pure English. So is Canada. I mean, they got the whole thing. The French are gone, and thus begins the whole era that leads into what becomes the American Revolution. If you want to understand the American Revolution, you've got to understand the French and Indian War.

And you've got to read this guy's book. Dan Snow wrote it. It's Death or America. This man is English and Canadian. The perfect author. Have a look. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. I hope you enjoyed it. Please don't forget to like, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you next time. This podcast includes music from Epidemic Sound.