Sea Control - Sea Control 189 - Amphibious Operations in the French & Indian War with Dr. T.J. Linzy

Episode Date: July 19, 2020

Link: The Amphibious Imperative of the French & Indian War

Hey folks, Jared here. Another excellent episode for you today. We have TJ Lindsay joining us to discuss his paper on amphibious operations in the French and Indian War. You can find the article in the show notes. It's also the kickoff to Ocean Governance Week on Project Trident. So head over to simsec.org and check out all the submissions we received together with our partner, Stable Seas. We've also announced the next phase of Project Trident this week. Project Trident is your opportunity to shape the future of maritime security. Our next theme is regional strategies, and we partnered with the Yokosuka Council for Asia-Pacific Studies, the Dominican Naval Command and Staff College, and the Institute for Sicherheitspolitik in Kiel, Germany.

Submissions are due August 31st. You can find more information on our website at simsec.org. Finally, just want to advertise one time for the SimSec Podcast Network and our second podcast feed, The Bilge Pumps. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and wherever else you download your podcasts. It's a more low-key, slightly less serious approach to current events in the maritime domain and naval history by three historians. Check them out wherever you download your podcasts. With that, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security.

Hello, Hashimates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. Today, we're discussing the article, The Amphibious Imperative of the French and Indian War, with its author, Dr. T.J. Lindsay. The article was published in Marine Corps University Journal, Volume 10, Number 2, in 2019. T.J., thanks so much for agreeing to come on today. Thank you, Jared. So before we go into your background, I want to say there's a lot of caveats that we have whenever we do one of these podcasts. So any statements today are personal opinions and not representative of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. All that said, TJ, would you mind by telling us a little bit about your background and how this article came to be? Absolutely. I'll start with where I'm at, which is I'm a historian for the United States Air Force. And as you've just said, everything I say is my personal opinion and does not reflect

the opinion of the Air Force, especially on amphibious matters, as we're talking about here. My background, I was an Army officer for seven years, most of that time with the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in the late 80s and early 90s. After that, I got out of the Army and married an Englishwoman and spent most of my adult life in Europe, predominantly in England, but also working in France, Estonia, and the Netherlands. working for commercial organizations, primarily in the e-commerce space.

Worked for Amazon, Skype, Spotify, and a few others. Many more that you wouldn't have recognized, but 25 years of my life had been spent in the commercial environment. But then I went back to school in 2008, got a master's and a PhD in military history from King's College London War Studies Department, primarily working with Professor Andrew Lambert, that your sea folks will readily recognize.

And after doing that and successfully accomplishing that in the area between 1755 and 1815, frontier warfare predominantly with British and American Indians and their connections and what went on during that time. So what we're talking about today is at the very beginning of that field for me. And over the time then, I've become very interested again in military history, which I'd always loved. And then when the chance came to take a job with the Air Force as a historian, I took it and quit being self-employed and started being employed by the government again after almost a 30-year absence. So let me ask this. Army background, Air Force background, how do you get – where does the amphibious piece come into this?

Where do you get interested in amphibious operations? You know, I don't know if other people have this problem or this luck or whatever you want to call it, but my career has taken many twists and turns. And for whatever reason, I wrote a couple articles that grabbed some interest of some Marine Corps officers. And then they started asking a few more things, which made me look into a few more things, which then gave me more ideas for articles. And so that's mainly where it pitched. But I guess the simplest answer I can give on that is in this period in North America, the Native Americans conducted a lot of amphibious operations.

They wouldn't have called it that. No British officer or American officer would have called that at the time. But when you traverse long spaces in canoes to conduct warfare, that's amphibious operations. So I think it just became a natural part of what I did. thanks so to get into the article now i think it's best to start with how the french and indian war began and this was part of a larger conflict between the french and british worldwide but where did it start and why well this one this war was unusual most of the french and british colonial wars had started in europe and then kind of spread to north america predominantly ones like what was called Queen Anne's War, the War of Spanish Secession, the King George's War.

There were several around the turn of the century, between the 1600s and the 1700s, all the way into the 1740s. But those would start in Europe, additional power struggles. And then most of what that warfare would look like in North America would be localized forces in tandem with native forces, and they would fight on the frontiers. This one was different. This one started in North America by someone that everyone will recognize. I think most people probably heard this story. George Washington, as a young Virginia militia major, was sent into the area around the forks of the Ohio to negotiate for Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia. The French weren't about to give up the area. So a year later, in 1754, George Washington takes a force

into that area to try to forcibly remove the French from the forks of the Ohio. What the French would have called Fort Duquesne, we would later call, or what the British would later call Fort Pitt, and what we call Pittsburgh. As he went in there, he had a native force with him. As with most European forces that would go into the frontier, they would at one point or another find out that their native forces also had objectives they were trying to accomplish. And one of the objectives that that native force with George Washington was trying to accomplish was to get their competitive native groups out of the forks of the Ohio so that they could take it. In doing that, then Washington encountered a small French force where after they had had a quick firefight and Washington had won, one of his Native American allies killed a French officer. that brought swift retribution from the French in the name of another larger force led by the

brother of the French officer, both named Jumonville. You might have heard of Jumonville Glen, which is where all of this happened. They came back, defeated Washington at Fort Necessity. Washington signed what he thought was a very standard capitulation agreement, which was generous, but it was also kind of normal back then, where you were allowed to leave as long you agreed not to fight anymore. What he'd actually signed was an admission of guilt that he had assassinated this gentleman's brother. So this kicks off in Europe then when they realize what's happened. And the British, not too happy about this because they didn't want this fight in North America, really had no choice but to back Washington and Dinwiddie and to send forces.

So that's literally how it began. The war in Europe, also known as the Seven Years War, began a couple years later. But for the first time, really, a significant number of British forces were to come to North America, which, as we all know, then leads to a lot more problems after this war in the lead up to the American Revolution. Absolutely. So when I think about operational art, I usually take the Naval War Colleges approach and that of Dr. Milan Viga's Space, Time, and Force. So how would you describe the space that the British and French are going to engage in in North America at this point? Probably the best word you could use is unknown. The French knew it better than the British did, but still you're talking about a frontier

wilderness. No roads, and it's kind of hard to remember this sometimes. There are no roads to it. The natives know it very well, but if you don't have proper native alliances in that area, you're kind of stumbling around in the dark. Like I said, the French knew it a lot better through their trade networks into the Ohio Valley. But unknown would be the best name for that space, especially from the British perspective. But it was truly a wilderness. No roads. Logistics became the biggest issue that everyone had to work with. So you mentioned the lack of roads. Is the primary lines of communication here then via the waterways? They were not in this early phase of the war. Later on, they were. Certainly for the French, they were. The St. Lawrence River, Great Lakes, the major rivers in the interior of the Ohio are all controlled by the French at this point or through their native alliances.

For the British, as you may well know, then there are no rivers that go over the Appalachian Mountains. So you may follow a river for a while, but you can't follow it forever. You basically have to cut bush in order to get through it, which is what happened in 1755 with Major General Braddock, who creates the Braddock Expedition, along with three other campaigns during that season. But they're literally hacking their way through the wilderness in order not just for the troops to get through, but they're hacking away for all the huge logistical trains that the British were used to bringing. Of course, in Europe, there were road networks and there weren't nearly the virgin forests that we're talking about. There were mountains, obviously, in the Alps and the Carpathians, but it wasn't normally the way you were trying to enter a battle space. So it took them a very, very long time to cut this road.

They were being watched the entire time by the native allies of the French and what the French call the Troupes de la Marine, which were their regular marine forces stationed in the New World. very adept at both amphibious warfare from their time with the navy but also over the years had become very adept at guerrilla warfare that the native americans practiced in this area so as braddock cut his way through there then it is taking so long and one of the great ironies about this is he probably would have won if he hadn't gotten frustrated at the very end and at the very end, he created a separate group he called a flying column that ran out in front of the rest of his troops in his logistical train. And that flying column was what was ambushed. And as that ambush descended into a retreat, the retreating soldiers ran into the group behind them. And

throughout all the chaos is when the French decimate Braddock's forces there, including Braddock, who dies and is buried on the road on the way back. Also with him as an aide-de-camp was now Colonel George Washington, who is, and we'll talk about this in a little bit, I think. He was a colonel, but he was an aide-de-camp because at the time, the British forces would not recognize properly the local rank in the Americas, in the colonies. So rather than take a troop command, which would have been at a captain level or something like that, he came along as an aide to camp, an advisor to Braddock about the road, or not the road, cutting the road in the way that you get there. But he's there and he kind of organized the retreat and led it back into

Virginian settlements. So we talked about lines of communication on the continent. What about back to Europe, particularly for the French? Does the British have an established naval advantage at this point. How are the French able to communicate back to the old world, if you will? Well, they did it the same way the British did. They were just a lot worse at it. It's the bottom line. As Professor Lambert always says, there's a difference between a maritime nation and a land power with a navy. And that's the best way to describe this. The British owned the sea. They knew this area. The French knew the area as well because, of course, they're supplying most of their settlements on the St. Lawrence through this way, but they also know that they have a lot of

maneuvering to stay away from the British. So by luck, a lot of the time, some get through there through some skilled navigation and seamanship, some get through, but a lot of them are stopped by the British. And in the end, that is the great advantage that the British have, is that ability to control that Northern Atlantic, and especially eventually being able to control the entrance to the St. Lawrence. So there's also a massive disparity in forces available on the ground, particularly if you consider the local population. What were the forces available to the British and the French? Yeah, so early on, as far as population, the French had around 60,000 people settled at the time. The English colonies had around 2 million

people. So pure availability of manpower, British on the advantage. When they first start, the British, and this is what I talk about in the paper a lot, really arrogance is what gets the British. With so many advantages, they take for granted that they're going to be able to do what they want. And that arrogance comes in two forms. One is their naval ownership of the seas. The other is their very low opinion of colonist warfare capabilities. And they view the French as just being like their colonists, as militias and not being very good at it. And, of course, they just do not understand the ground they're fighting on. So arrogance leads them into a lot of these problems.

And I'm sorry, can you bring the question again? By making that point, I forgot what the question was. I was just asking what the forces available to the British and the French were. But I think you pretty covered that. The following follow-on question that was, you know, the British, despite this massive advantage in manpower, they performed exceptionally poorly early on. I think you've covered why the British performed poorly, but what were the French doing to maximize their advantages? Yeah, and this kind of comes to the leadership issue as well. Early on, they're being led by a French governor named Valdroul and his brother, who goes by the name Rigaud most of the time. And pardon my French.

It's terrible, but I'm pronouncing it the way I read it. Yeah, it's better than mine, so no complaints from my end. They were both born in North America. So the leadership early on in the war for the French were troop-delivered Marine officers who knew the warfare there. They were trained in the European way, but they had spent so much time in North America that they understood, especially the native way of war. They understood how to traverse the area. They knew it better is the bottom line. And that was their strength and their ability to maneuver with small forces in the Native American way.

Their knowledge that these large forces that the British had sent over and they sent the British sent to under underformed regiments from Ireland. And a normal British regiment would be about 600 men. These probably had somewhere in the range of 400 to 500, and they were topped up with local militia to it. And so it wasn't a huge force, probably somewhere between 1,000 to 1,200 that the British were sending in and there. The French were operating as normal, small little companies or troops of men that would reconnoiter the area, track the enemy, and look for a great place for an ambush. And that was the Indian way of war, and it became the French and Indian way of war through that time. So that was their real advantage, was experience in this type of warfare and knowledge of the ground. So at what point then did the British realize that the European way of war is not going to be successful here? Yeah, and that's a great, you know, there is a standard view of this era, which is the European way of war doesn't work here. There's a couple of people who kind of dispute that.

There's an author named Guy Chet who actually says that the European way of war did translate to North America. and he uses a lot of different examples where it did. Namely, you know, times during the Revolutionary War where Washington's forces were fighting British forces in pretty standard ways. I think what a lot of people think about when they think about the North American way of war is they're thinking about militias, they're thinking about rangers, and those certainly existed. So what the British eventually find is they need to do a little bit of everything. And this occurrence hits them somewhere locally in 1756. So after the major early losses, and then a new commander, Lord Loudon, comes over in 1756.

They learn that if they're going to fight the way they want to, they're going to have to build a better logistical system and understand the ground better. But number two, you had some local commanders like Thomas Gage, who will show up again in the American Revolution, who at the time is a lieutenant colonel and starts developing a light infantry force, the 80th Light Infantry, modeling it largely off the ranger forces that had been so successful in the American Northeast, most famous of which being Roberts Rangers. but there were a lot of others. And they learned to travel lighter. They had formations, but they were far looser formations. And the real advantage that the British start developing during this timeframe, again, very locally at this point, is using both. Using the light to reconnoiter, do route reconnaissance, and keep them from being surprised, but marching in behind them, what looks like European forces at that point. So it's kind of a hybrid at this point. They realize back in London in the summer of 1757, when Pitt the Elder becomes the head of

the Southern Department, which is effectively the British person responsible for running the North American colonies. They start realizing that there's something that had to be done different. Part of that means money. Part of that means improving the logistical chain. Part of it is learning how to fight differently in certain circumstances. And part of that, one of the big things Pitt did in showering all this money on North America was to make sure that local militia leaders were treated much better than they had been. They still weren't equals, but in the past, the militia leader, let's say he was a colonel in one of the state militias. If he was a colonel, he was on par with the lowest-ranking British Army officer. So if the lowest-ranking officer was a captain, then he was on par with that captain. What Pitt put into place was that these colonels, lieutenant colonels or whatever in the militia, held their rank. If there was a British Army officer of the same rank, the British Army officers still outranked them, but they weren't subject to much more junior officers.

So it increased the amount of militia volunteerism that joined into it. They were paid better. So you really start getting this hybrid version of more troops from Europe. You get this development of light infantry tactics. And then you get this more engagement from the local forces in the colonies. who also of course know the ground better and then finally then what we'll get into here in a second then is this final development of using the most of the british naval power to deliver these forces in the right place at the right time yeah absolutely so now on the subject of butchering

french i'll ask you what happened at rocafort and what was the effect on the british military Absolutely. So Rookfort is on the French coast, for those that don't know. It's on the Bay of Biscay, the big bay there in between France and Spain. When Pitt came in, in the summer of 1757, most of the thought about using the British Navy more effectively was on what he called his descents policy of descending on the coast of France and conducting raids and taking out forts along that area. One of those was due to be an amphibious operation in 1757, in late 1757, where the British were going to land an amphibious, a large amphibious force at Roquefort. What had happened there then was there was a lot of confusion about who owned the operation and when the operation got handed over.

The British Army commander that was on the boats was not sure if he wanted to land or not, kept trying multiple tries. Then they would find it was too shallow, the weather played a part, all the things that affect amphibious operations that we know of today. but what really found was is that the British way of conducting a council of war at the last second right before an attack would kick off had some advantages but it also has some significant disadvantages when you would have people who wanted to do it those who didn't want to do it confusion of who would take over when and then you add in the weather you add in the signaling You add in all the things that make an amphibious operation very difficult to do, and then you have a recipe for disaster or indecision. That's really what happened at Roquefort.

Previous to that, earlier on in 1756, the British had actually executed an admiral, John Bing, for not attacking Menorca aggressively enough in the Mediterranean. So in the spring of that year, you have Bing being executed on the quarterdeck of a British ship. So this stuff was being taken very seriously at the time. This was, you know, not fighting really wasn't an option for these guys. So Mordaunt, the general that was in charge of the Roquefort operation, comes back and is put on trial for court-martial. Luckily for him, he doesn't suffer the same fate as Bing does. But the entire trial where he argues why he did what he did, other people giving criticisms of what he did, kind of brings it all out into the open that the British say we need a better way to do this. All these people have good points.

Some of them are not so good. But in the end, we just need to be much clearer of what we want to happen with these amphibious operations. So the biggest thing that comes out of Roquefort is an acknowledgment that they need to be much more methodical about amphibious operations. Now, you mentioned in the article that the British had extensive experience with the army being carried aboard Royal Navy vessels. That didn't necessarily translate to having amphibious experience, did it? Exactly. There's a great quote. I think it comes from World War I. So long after this period, I think it's Earl Gray who'd said it. I think he was chief of the Admiralty at the time, is that the British Army is a bullet to be fired by the British Navy.

And probably still true today, even. That's the nature of a maritime power. That's the way they think about things. And so really, when they start focusing on this, they kind of realize that, hey, everybody's been on a boat. Everybody knows how to get somewhere on a boat. And yes, we've even conducted some good amphibious operations, but it was probably by luck that were those were successful. And our ability to call them off whenever we weren't confident is no longer an option.

If we decide we want to amphibiously attack an area, especially one that's across the Atlantic, if we decide to call that off, we wasted an enormous amount of effort, resources, So we need to be able to do this and well, and we need to plan it out appropriately and put aggressive young officers in place in order to make this happen. So what causes the British to realize that an amphibious strategy in North America is going to be, as you said, imperative? Yes, I think they finally realized that we can stop most things or not say most things, but a majority of things getting across and supporting the French.

But in reality, we need to shut down the St. Lawrence, first of all, and then we need to shut down some of the supply forts along the Great Lakes that are supplying these inland forts and these inland French forces. So this becomes the primary objective of the Pitt government, is to shut all of that down and finally reduce them all to a handful of places along the St. Lawrence, and basically creating a large pincer movement, one taking over from the entrance of the St. Lawrence, one coming up. Actually, it's a pincer movement with a shot up the middle as well. The other one coming up the Great Lakeside and the one coming up the Lake Champlain, Lake George Corridor

through those areas. And it really becomes obvious that in order to do this, they needed to amass an enormous amount of troops, an enormous flotilla that could deliver these troops, and they just could not afford another failure like Roquefort or anywhere else. So that puts in mind that they need to begin planning at the highest, highest levels. And that's Pitt, the army general named Ligonier, and the Royal Navy representative back in London, whose name escapes me at this very point. But they began planning back in London, what will be needed. And one of the people who's involved in a lot of this planning is Admiral Boscoen, who will execute it for the Navy around the interest to the St. Lawrence Seaway, or as we call Seaway now, St. Lawrence River,

and Lewisburg. So us historians will love what one thing that I read on this was they took this very seriously. They called in witnesses to come in and talk to them about amphibious operations. They said, what worked, what didn't work? And they planned it in great detail there. And then they handed over to people who understood exactly what the strategic objectives were. There was no room for misconception about what was the goal here. Bosco then, who luckily for him, in the great sense of what we call joint, he had began his career as a British Army engineer. So he probably understood the British Army better than any other naval officer did at

the time. So he took took all of this to heart. And this is when we get right up to the point of going into Lewisburg. So I don't know if you have a direct question you want to address with that. That's kind of what leads us to this point. Yeah, I do have a direct question for Lewisburg because there is an awesome quote here. And this is actually the quote that made me curious enough to want to turn this into a podcast. So the first major expedition of the new regime here is going to be against the fortress of Lewisburg in Nova Scotia. Before we talk about how that campaign unfolded, I'm just going to quote from the paragraph that I just talked about previously. It's most British amphibious doctrine that would prevail for 50 years was developed off the coast of Halifax in May 1758. Force organization, signaling, synchronization, command handover, supply disembarkation, flatboat management, artillery support, among many other concerns, were all planned and coordinated in that month.

You go on to quote the British historian Hugh Bosco, the descendant of the admiral that you just mentioned. Fourteen regiments, artillery and rangers, two-thirds of the British regulars in America and the fleets were transformed into cohesive expeditionary force in 18 days in Halifax in May 1758. So what was that amphibious doctrine and how did the British address all the elements that you mentioned? Absolutely. So by the way, there's a great article on this. Let me give you the exact name of it. It's called The Methodology of British Amphibious Operations During the Seven Years War and

American Wars by a gentleman named David Surrett, spelled S-Y-R-E-T-T. That's where I get most of my information on. But during this time off of Halifax, you have James Wolfe, who's later going to become the hero of Quebec and pretty much ends the war in Quebec. But at this point, he's going to lead the ground forces for Jeffrey Amherst, who's the British Army commander. But Amherst is coming on different ships and will arrive late. but the force off of Halifax, which came from lots of different places that had been in North America and wintered there through a very cold winter there off the shore of Halifax. And what made this even more complicated is they had forces coming from everywhere. They had

Scottish Highland regiments coming across. They had Irish regiments. They had Royal American regiments. They had people coming from everywhere and militia. It was a true mixed force. So this was not only impressive in the sense that it was amphibious, it was impressive in the sense that they pulled all these disparate forces together, some of which who had only ever fought in Europe and just showed up on a boat and started fighting in North America. But Wolfe, along with Boscoen, they formed a joint staff on the ships off the coast of Halifax and began practicing and planning all of the things that would be needed. And some of the specifics that went on here were reconnoitering, landing, you know, things that we quite often think of as being normal these days,

you know, really weren't normal back then. Reconnoitering the landing sites, the capability of getting there with different size ships, how many flat boats you would need, who would control the flat boats, when would they turn over command to someone else, when were the landing forces, When were they under naval command? When were they under army command? How did you keep them together so that their regimental integrity would land on the beach somewhat together? And some of this was some of the problems they'd seen back at Roquefort. You'd have forces, and the Navy kind of controlled how they got deployed. The Navy would control how they would be supplied in the future. Well, the Army then started asserting itself and saying that, hey, got it, you're going to deliver us, we're under you when we're on the sea, but when it comes to us landing, then it's us, and we want to be delivered in a certain way. We want our units to be largely together. We want our own signaling between our units that we're not going to just use your signaling for everything. So they had a separate set of flags they would use for this. Each one of the supply boats would actually have an Army officer on it to make a decision from an Army point of view when it would follow up and go from that. So there was a lot of planning on board. What was Army guys and the Marine guys would call sand table planning, you know, how things happen. So all this, you know, in the modern world, this sounds like, you know, yeah, of course you did that. Well, it wasn't back then. And this is where it was largely developed. and you can trace virtually every amphibious concept today back to this era and how these

things would hand over, who had it, who made the decisions and when. So that's really what developed in this time just before Lewisburg and the fact that they all came together with the limited communications they had at the time. Really this month's worth of serious planning And I always imagine this being the equivalent of the D-Day planning, you know, that's all happening during May of 1994. You got people all over the place climbing cliffs, practicing with, you know, hooks and ladders and landing craft being used in new ways. The spacing of the landing craft, who would be able to call off the landing once people were in the flatboats. All of that was being planned during this time. And that's why I call the amphibious doctrine for the next 50 years all developed in that one place off the coast of Halifax.

Yeah, and for the listener, we're actually recording this on June 7th, the day after the 76th anniversary of the D-Day landings in 1944. So having just watched one television special after another for the last few days, it's really fun to be having this conversation with you right now. How did the Lewisburg operation ultimately unfold then? yeah so um lewisburg ends up being kind of the big scrimmage they didn't know it at the time but it ends up not in the end not being all that difficult but that doesn't mean that it didn't have its problems they had all this stuff planned out they did run into fog that delayed they had reconnoitered the beaches wolf had sent some rangers from robert's rangers although robert rogers was not present he was actually down at ticonderoga with abercrombie but his brother was

there, and much of the rest of the force was there, who had gone in and recognized the landing beaches. But even then, people weren't sure. Now, these new young officers like Wolfe and Amherst had been appointed specifically by Pitt to kind of go around. These much older officers who had been in play at Roquefort, they almost lost their nerve. But at the end, after a little bit of dithering they do commit and uh everything goes pretty well except as they're about to land they start taking very heavy fire from the french and at one point wolf calls off the landing and is trying to signal everyone to turn around however a couple of boats that have some rangers on it find a little side beach that's protected from the french fire and they wave off saying we're

not coming back, we're going. And Wolfe, being the good small unit commander that he is, decides to follow. He decides to let his junior officers make that decision at the time. They follow it, and sure enough, that beach, although very small, is protected. And they're able to unload there very, very quickly, and then flank the French garrison that's defending the beach. And then from that point on, it just becomes a standard European siege, which follows after that. so at the same time the british are enjoying the success at lewisburg what's unfolding at fort carillon and then again i'm sure i'm going to have a french listener tell me that my french is merited but carillon however you pronounce it later known as ticonderoga and what will become

upstate new york absolutely well there you have this huge force under abercrombie you've got the light infantry all the things they had learned they continue to do however the french commander there who's still a very formidable force, Montcalm, but heavily overwhelmed, sets up an abatis-laced defense. And Abercrombie, not wanting to be like the previous generals and not attacking heartily enough, throws forces at it over and over and over again. And Montcalm had just created a great defensive position and any other force would have given up and retreated. Abercrombie's sure that he will be fired unless he does throw everything at it, continues to throw at it, and the British take great losses at Ticonderoga or Carillon. And really, you kind of have the

dichotomy at this point. That's kind of the end of the early years for the British on land, everything after this and in large part because of their ability to conduct amphibious operations gets far better at this point but side by side uh they are uh they are really the dividing point and one of the main reasons why abercrombie did it was because of poor communications with amherst or slow communication shall i say uh that he really didn't know if amherst had taken louis Berg or not. And he was afraid that if Amherst hadn't taken Lewis Berg, and if he hadn't taken Carillon, that it was all over. So, you know, action is the byword right now. And as one significant small sidelight to that, though, he was spreading his hopes a little bit. He spent,

He set a very small force under Lieutenant Colonel John Bradstreet, who took this small force of British regulars, militia, and American Indians to attack Fort Frontenac, right at the top of Lake Ontario. And this guy, I think, is one of the great unsung heroes of the French and Indian War. He was basically a logistician, and he had helped Lord Loudoun set up this great logistical network the year before. But he was also pretty good at handling Native American allies. And he kept a secret. Well, no one else seemed to be able to keep a secret from the French and the Indians during this war and literally descended on this small fort that was essential to supplying French forces in the interior and basically took it hardly without firing a shot, loaded up all of his boats with booty and burned everything else and came back. So one small, small part of the Abercrombie push on the interior was supremely successful.

And that was also an amphibious operation, just using whale boats and canoes, bateaux, as the French would have called them at the time, attack and just literally showed up. And his amphibious advantage there was total surprise in landing there. So, again, I make the distinction between seaborne amphibious operations versus riverine or lake-borne operations, and there was a lot of all of that in this war. So then what is the French dilemma after the campaigns of 1758 and 1759? And it truly is a dilemma, and it's the one that they knew existed from the beginning. And within the French leadership, sometimes when you talk about this, it's easy to focus too much on the British and how many problems they had and disagreements and differences of opinion. Same was going on with the French. You had Vadrul and Rigaud, the brothers that I mentioned earlier. Early on, they knew that unless they could force this fight into the British colonies, that they could never win European-style warfare if they got pushed back and started having their communication supply chains cut.

So that was their goal, is that wherever there was a big force trying to attack, you tried to harass them and ambush them, just like they did early on. And during that time, those years of 1756 and 1757, it needs to be noted that the American frontier was on fire. The French and allied Native American forces were attacking every settlement up and down the Appalachian Ridge. And at one point there in Pennsylvania, their controlling area that's within 200 miles of the Atlantic seaboard. So that was their entire goal, was to keep the war near the colonies, the British colonies. The British, of course, wanted to go the other way. And again, in fact, there's a term I want to bring up here as part of this. The term is called Military Europe, and it's a term by Stephen Conway, who's written a lot about, and a lot of my PhD research was around honor and what European officers, who they would respond to. And the reality was most of these European officers, they could do whatever they wanted to in North America, but when they went back to Europe, that's where their reputation resided.

That's where their honor resided. And so many of them, especially the British early on, wanted to make sure they maintained their military honor of treating prisoners appropriately, giving the honors of war during a siege. And it was that struggle with that military, European military dogma that really caused them a problem. Well, the French had the same. When Montcalm came over, he was much more of a European-style officer. He wanted to use the Native Americans a lot less. He wanted to stop them from committing what the Europeans considered atrocities of attacking civilians, not taking prisoners, killing prisoners, torturing prisoners. And he was trying to stop all of that, mainly after Fort William Henry, which everybody probably remembers from the last of the Mohicans movie, you know, where the British and the American forces actually give up. And they're supposed to be given the honors of war. And as they're leaving, the French Native American allies attack them. So Macomb is really worried about his European reputation and his honor. So he scales back this. And at this point, then he starts losing some of those advantages that the French had held prior to that. And at this point, then, when he starts losing, Ticonderoga or Carillon being one of the exceptions,

but as he starts losing outpost on the frontier and starts losing Lewisburg, he has to start falling back. And even though he wins at Carillon, he realizes he can't take another attack like that. So he falls back into the three major cities along the, they were hardly more than villages back then, but still Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal. all. And he drops back on it. But even though these are strong points, really what the French are doing now is playing for time. They're hoping that the war might end in Europe and they might be able to still hold on to Canada by keeping the British from taking these strong points.

So that's really how it starts pushing back. But the British are really in the forefront now. They really have all of the advantages of owning the supply chains into the St. Lawrence, pushing up through the Lake Champlain, Lake George Corridor, starting to push up through the Eastern Great Lakes to that area. So they really have the pincer with the shot up the middle planned for the following year of 1759. The last remaining French stronghold then is the fortress at Quebec. How did the British go about using amphibious operations to invest the fortress? Yeah. So with a great deal of luck is the short answer, even though they had these great plans. And what I love about this is some fantastic names pop up during this. They were reconnoitering the St. Lawrence, which, you know, I'm no seaman, but I'm told is you have to know what you're doing. especially back then when you were under sail, navigating these places with the shoals and the islands and everything through there. The primary reconnoiter for the British Navy,

the Royal Navy at this time, is a guy named James Cook, you know, as a young officer who's doing this. So they know the river very well, but they're out at this point, they're outnumbered by the French who have all consolidated into these three little areas here, about two to one. And these are very strong fortresses at Quebec, lesser case at Montreal, but still very, very formidable to approach. All throughout the summer of 1759, Amherst, by the way, is now the commander of British forces in North America. He's doing the same thing the British have been planning since the beginning, is this three-pronged assault coming up into this area, but finally starting to make some headway. James Wolfe, who had commanded the landing operation at Lewisburg under Amherst, is now the commander of this independent command coming down in the summer of 1759, down the

St. Lawrence, down to Quebec. And as he gets down there then, the French basically will not engage him. So they start what begins as a harassment campaign, really starts turning into what can only really be called atrocities. by the British. They were basically roaming around all of these French and Indian villages in that area and just slashing and burn trying to tempt Montcalm out to battle. He knows that that's the end of him if he does it, so he stays. And the British get more, throughout the summer, get more and more drastic. Wolfe, who has never been a really healthy guy, some people now looking

back on it think he probably had some kind of bout of rheumatoid arthritis, but he's not well at all. He's not sleeping. Some people say that maybe he's becoming a little bit stir-crazy being on the boats this whole time and not getting what he wants. His junior officers are telling him we got to call this off. We can't do this. This is not going our way. We need to wait until we can get them out of these fortresses. He goes against them during this time and decides on an incredibly risky strategy of landing above Quebec after having fainted to land much higher up. So kind of just stretched out the French forces a little bit. A force led by another famous name, Antoine de Bougainville. Again, pardon my French on that. But later, you know, you have Cook, who's later

exploring the Pacific for the British. And you have Bougainville, who's later exploring the Pacific for the French. But he's leading this land force and he thinks the British are going to land much further up. But over this one night, then late in the summer, then Wolf decides that he's going to land on this Foulon beach that's got this steep hill up it. And so much could have gone wrong here. So much. The landing, it was at night. The forces didn't get all delivered at the same place at the same time. But you had a handful of really strong officers who took the initiative, who didn't follow the road up, which the French had blocked off and climbed up pretty much sheer cliffs. And again, kind of a foretaste of the Rangers at Pointe du Hoc on D-Day come up and

surprise the French force that's guarding this. And as soon as they find this and as daylight is coming. Wolf disembarks everybody, gets everybody onto this beach, gets them all up this incredibly narrow defilement up to the Plains of Abraham. And as Montcalm, as dawn comes, Montcalm looks out there and there's the British force right outside of this Quebec. And I think a lot of people probably know what follows on from there is both Wolf and Montcalm are killed in the battle with the British take Quebec, mainly through the surprise, and a lot of the other things that we've talked about as well. The British have some Native American allies now. They've gotten much better at that diplomacy as well. They're firing from the wood lines, attacking the French force. So the

amphibious, the command and control, taking the initiative, using Native American allies, using the light infantry approach mixed in with the European approach as the Plains of Abraham ends up being a fairly standard European battle when it comes right down to it. But there was all kinds of things that set that up. So the British, and there was one point there, I wish I could remember this quote specifically, but there is a quote where the, I think it was Ligonier from back in london says what every military man knows these days is that chance plays a part local conditions plays a part all of those things were kind of going against the british and luck was with them that morning is all you can really say they'd done all the planning and and you you just know

that if they hadn't done all of that coordination in halifax and performed it at lewisburg and were competent at it, they wouldn't have had that chance. As the great golfer Lee Trevino used to say, he said, the more I practice, the luckier I get. That's exactly what happened here. This thing could have fallen apart and been a total disaster for the British, but it wasn't because of that initiative. A little bit of desperation on Wolfe's part. At the same time, Amherst is still pushing up. The other two prongs coming up through there, they eventually take down Montreal finally. And that's where we get to the end of the French and Indian part of the Seven Years' War, which goes on a little bit longer in Europe, finally settled by the Treaty of Paris in 1763.

So we've covered a lot of these lessons already, but are there any additional lessons for modern commanders of amphibious operations, be they at the tactical or strategic levels? I don't think there's many that we haven't covered. I mean, I think that initiative issue, Whether or not you talk about light infantry, special forces as we call them today, working with allies, all of it require initiative at some point. Sometimes it goes wrong, but rarely does it go right if it's not used. And I think you could point to a lot of the problems the British had early on is just having a bunch of senior officers. And I guess it happens at the beginning of every war. A bunch of senior officers who have fought a certain way and they're looking for the next battle to be a certain way.

And sometimes you've got to bring on people who are willing to take those chances. You know, the planning goes along with it. But these were great risks being taken in these operations. Great cost, huge logistical chains. But still at the front of it, it takes one guy like Wolf to say, no, we're going. and i guess that's the final one but the same thing had happened with brad street as i mentioned earlier at front neck same thing you can you could find a hundred of these when you start reading about rogers rangers or george rogers clark during during the western theater of the

american revolution as he says a few men boldly instructed can do great things i think amphibious operations more than a lot of things require those kind of special operations mentality. Well, that's unfortunately all the time that we have for today. I'd like to thank my guest, Dr. T.J. Lindsay, for joining us. T.J., where can we find you online and what are you working on next? Find me at tjlindsay.com. That's my name. That's Tango, Juliet, Lima, India, November, Zulu, yankee.com. And I do some other military history work on another website I call battlefieldbiker.com. I ride around motorcycles to historical battlefields, including one on the D-Day, if people are interested in that. I did one a few years ago where I ride around the D-Day

beaches specifically around Pointe du Hoc and the Ranger operation there. Next thing I'm working on is working with the Navy and the Marines again. An article on naval integration of the Pacific squadron during the Mexican-American War. And that should be coming out in the Journal of Advanced Military Studies in the autumn. Just closing that one up. I'm also working on a larger article, going back to the Air Force picture, an article on John Paul Stapp, the doctor that led most of the Air Force experiments on high altitude and high speed ejections from aircraft and how to survive those things at one point known as the fastest man on earth by experiencing 42 g's on a sled in in the new mexico desert so that's that's what i'm working on now but thank you very much

for the time today it's been it's been great uh and i hope we provide some stuff there for for people to look for yeah absolutely and we'll have links to the i was able to find the seret article as we were speaking there we'll have links to your websites as well when we put this up hopefully we'll be able to discuss that naval integration of the Pacific Squire and the Mexican-American War in the future. For our listeners, thank you for tuning in and we'll see you next week.

Thank you. Jimbo now.