![]() ![]() The League had played a key role in renewing hostilities with the French at Lachine, and they didn’t care one way or the other about agreements made at Ryswick: they had their own agenda. ![]() That was not the case, however, for the rest of the Iroquois. They were not about to desert this asset and commitment. For the Mohawk, located farthest east, the British position at Fort Albany (formerly Fort Orange) was regarded as part of a deepening pact. This was a theme that was repeated throughout the 18th century when colonial conflicts would be fought mostly by locals and settled abroad by the mother countries after the fact.Ī key outcome of the War of the League of Augsburg was the appearance of sharp divisions within the Haudenosaunee League. The War of the League of Augsburg lasted nine years in Europe and the outcomes in North America were decided at the treaty table in 1697 (in the Treaty of Ryswick), not on the battlefield. ![]() France and England were consumed with sectarian wars involving, among others, the Protestant alliance between England and the Netherlands against their common Catholic foe, France. The European powers were too preoccupied with their own conflicts to wade in on either side, which is much of the reason that there was no decisive result. Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville captained several naval sorties into Hudson Bay in an effort to root out the English HBC, but the outcomes of these battles were continually undone the next season. They retreated with nothing to show for their efforts. It was in this latter conflict that Massachusetts’ future governor, Sir William Phips, demanded Frontenac’s surrender, to which the latter offered to reply from the “mouths of my cannon and muskets.” Phips’s forces found Quebec a challenging opponent, and they became anxious about the coming winter and freeze-up on the river. The English colonists responded with a naval assault that captured the Acadian capital of Port-Royal and then a failed attempt to take Quebec. This was a bloody, no-holds-barred campaign in which civilians and children were not spared. By destabilizing the English colonial frontier, Frontenac hoped to sever the connection between his two enemies, and he was eventually successful. The raids were lightning-fast and terrifying. The French forces by this time had adopted guerrilla tactics favoured by the Algonquin and the nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The governor, Count Frontenac, responded with raids against the settlements of the Iroquois and those of their English allies. While it is true that the French, to take one side, sought out and nurtured alliances with Aboriginal partners in their struggle to contain the British and their colonists, it is also true that Aboriginal nations had their own agendas and welcomed the French into their crusades, regardless of the European context.Īs described in Chapter 5, the Haudenosaunee launched attacks against Canada in the late 1680s, one of which was a spectacular assault on Lachine. Some of these conflicts become apparent in the historical record only when they folded neatly into intercolonial or inter-imperial wars. Whether it was the Beaver Wars or the Wabanaki Wars or battles too small to acquire a name, Aboriginal communities in northeastern North America were struggling to adjust to a world in which trade relationships were changing, epidemics were devastating their numbers, and aggressive neighbours (European or Aboriginal) were impinging on their lands. Aboriginal nations were in an almost constant state of resistance against European intruders in these years. This is, however, a two-dimensional view in a three-dimensional world. Nevertheless, the French record against the British in North America is remarkably good. Many of the young Canadiens who might act as a colonial regiment were off trading for furs in the spring and summer - precisely when they were needed most at home for defence. What settlement existed in New France was stretched out and difficult to defend, certainly compared to the more urban and compact colonies to the south. The population in the English colonies grew at a much faster rate so that by 1760 they were 20 times larger than New France. The colonies all depended on naval support, and England’s Royal Navy was larger than that of France or Spain by 1660. Intercolonial Rivalries, Imperial Ambitions, and the ConquestĪny odds-maker looking at the prospects for French victory against the English in the colonial wars from the 1620s on would have to call it a long shot. ![]()
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