1758: The British Turn the Tide

As 1758 began, the French and Indian War (1754-63; known in Europe as the Seven Years' War) had caused three years of frustration and disappointment for the British. The French had launched successful offensive attacks and taken control of two important British forts: Fort Oswego on Lake Ontario and Fort William Henry on Lake George. In addition, Indian (Native American) raids had created suffering and hardship for settlers along the western frontier of the American colonies. Meanwhile, British forces had failed in their attempts to capture Fort Duquesne at the Forks of the Ohio River, Fort St. Frédéric on Lake Champlain, and the port city of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island.

One major factor in the collapse of the British war effort was the lack of cooperation between John Campbell, fourth earl of Loudoun (1705-1782), the commander-in-chief of British forces in North America, and the leaders of the American colonies. Loudoun had terrible problems dealing with the colonists throughout his two years as commander-in-chief. Colonial leaders always resisted giving him the money, supplies, and manpower he demanded. Loudoun always responded by threatening to use force to get what he wanted. He never tried to compromise or work together with the colonies to achieve his goals. Over time, the colonists came to view Loudoun as a threat to their rights and freedom, and they grew determined to resist him in any way possible.

The problems between Loudoun and the Americans reached a peak in early 1758. Many colonists thought that they should have the same rights as British citizens. They also believed the colonial governments should not have to answer to a military leader. Men in New England not only refused to volunteer to serve in Loudoun's army, they also began holding violent protests against army recruiting. In February, colonial leaders held a meeting to decide amongst themselves how many troops to provide for Loudoun's upcoming military campaigns. They thought Loudoun's demands were unreasonable and did not take local conditions and laws into account. But as commander-in-chief, Loudoun felt he should decide how many men each colony should provide. He saw this meeting as a direct challenge to his authority. As this struggle continued into March, Loudoun received word from Great Britain that he had been removed from command.

Pitt takes over the British war effort

Major General James Abercromby (1706-1781), who had served as Loudoun's second-in-command, became the top British officer in North America. (His last name was sometimes spelled Abercrombie.) But the man in charge of the war effort was William Pitt (1708-1788; see entry), an ambitious and influential politician who had become secretary of state in the British government. Before this time, most British leaders had felt that the war in North America was less important than the war in Europe. But Pitt recognized that England was too small to become a dominant power in Europe on its own. He decided that the key to defeating the French was to build a vast British empire that stretched around the world. If England controlled colonies that produced sugar, timber, cotton, grains, metals, and other goods that people needed, then it would be a very powerful nation.

Based on this new idea, Pitt decided to avoid using British troops in Europe, where France was strongest. Instead, he provided a great sum of money to help his European allies build up their armies to fight France. Pitt's main strategy for defeating France involved attacking its colonies around the world. He planned to send thousands of British troops to North America and launch an invasion of Canada. An important part of this plan involved using the powerful British Navy to control shipping across the Atlantic Ocean. This measure would prevent France from supplying its colonies from overseas. Another part of Pitt's plan involved gaining the support of the American colonists for the war effort. He did this by reversing many of the policies that had caused problems for Loudoun. Instead of ordering the colonies around and forcing them to provide money and troops, Pitt began treating them like allies and asking for their help. He offered money to the colonial governments in exchange for their aid in the invasion of New France. He also made sure that colonial officers in the army held the same status as British officers of the same rank.

People across the American colonies greeted Pitt's new policies with a burst of patriotic enthusiasm. Massachusetts Colony, for example, had refused to give Loudoun twenty-one hundred troops. But after Pitt changed the policies, the colony voted to provide seven thousand troops. Altogether, the American colonies agreed to provide twenty-three thousand soldiers to help force the French out of North America. Unlike before, when the colonial troops consisted mostly of men from the lower classes who were forced to serve, these troops were made up mostly of volunteers who came from higher social classes and education levels.

Pitt came up with a three-part plan for the invasion of Canada. The first part of the plan involved capturing the fortified (strengthened and secured by forts) port city of Louisbourg (located on the Atlantic coast, north of Maine), which Loudoun had failed to accomplish in 1757. Louisbourg guarded the entrance to the St. Lawrence River, which was the main water route to the major Canadian cities of Quebec and Montreal. The second part of Pitt's plan involved capturing Fort Carillon (known as Ticonderoga by the British) at the north end of Lake George. This French stronghold blocked a possible invasion route up Lake Champlain into Canada. The third part of Pitt's plan involved capturing Fort Duquesne in the Ohio Country. This French fort served as a supply base for the Indian raids that plagued the western frontier of the American colonies.

These three military operations would involve the largest forces that had ever fought in North America. The Louisbourg expedition, under Major General Jeffery Amherst (1717-1797; see entry), would include fourteen thousand troops. General Abercromby would use twenty-five thousand men to attack Fort Carillon and defend the northern border of New York. The attack on Fort Duquesne, led by Major General John Forbes (1710-1759; see entry), would involve seven thousand soldiers. The total forces were about equally split between regular British Army soldiers and irregular colonial troops.

Problems in New France

As the British were preparing for an all-out invasion of Canada, the French were suffering a series of setbacks in their North American war effort, due in large part to the fact that the French military and political leaders in the colony of New France did not get along. Louis-Joseph, marquis de Montcalm-Gozon de Saint-Véran (1712-1759; see entry), was the commander of French and Canadian armed forces. Pierre François de Rigaud, marquis de Vaudreuil (1698-1778; see box in chapter 5), was the governor general of New France. The two men disagreed over the use of Indian allies, strategies for conducting the war, and who should get credit for victories. In addition, Montcalm was disgusted by the corruption he saw in the government of New France. He believed that Vaudreuil and his cabinet stole money and supplies from France that should have gone to the army.

Montcalm needed all the help he could get from France because the French Canadian population was simply too small to provide enough food, supplies, and soldiers to defend Canada against the British. The British population in North America was ten times larger than the French population. In fact, the fifty thousand troops that Pitt planned to use in his invasion of Canada was equal to about two-thirds of the entire population of New France. Montcalm commanded only about twenty-five thousand total troops, including French regulars and Canadian militia. Most of the Indians who had supported the French in the early years of the war were no longer actively involved.

In addition, Canada was experiencing extreme food shortages during this time. These shortages occurred due to a series of poor harvests and the increasing success of the British Navy in preventing supplies from reaching the colony from France. Food shortages affected not only the army, but also people in the cities of New France. Finally, the French government had its hands full fighting the war in Europe. This situation prevented the French from throwing their full support behind Montcalm's forces in North America.

Abercromby loses the Battle of Ticonderoga

Despite the problems facing New France, Montcalm managed to hand the British another embarrassing defeat in mid-1758. After stationing some of his forces along New York's northern border, Abercromby moved fifteen thousand troops into position for the attack on Fort Carillon in early July. The attack itself would be led by a field general, Lord George Augustus Howe (1724-1758). Howe was an excellent soldier who was trained in wilderness warfare, and his troops respected him for his fairness and bravery. Howe gathered his forces—which included nine thousand colonial troops and six thousand British soldiers—at the ruins of Fort William Henry. They made their way north across Lake George in one thousand small boats and landed on the northwestern shore on July 6. Howe planned to march through the woods and approach Fort Carillon from the rear.

As some of the men set up camp, Howe led a small party forward to gather information about the French forces. They ended up running into a group of 350 French soldiers and exchanging gunfire. Howe was shot in the chest and killed. Abercromby took over command of the remaining forces, but the inexperienced general had trouble deciding what to do. He wasted several days sending out scouts and changing plans, and his lack of leadership caused the army to lose the order and discipline it had shown under Howe. In addition, the delay in the British offensive gave French forces time to prepare for the attack.

When Abercromby finally moved forward, he attacked the fort exactly where Montcalm expected him to. The French had used the extra time to build a huge wall of logs on a ridge behind the fort. They placed shooting platforms along the top of the wall. Then they created a barrier called an abatis on the slope leading up to the wall. The abatis was made by cutting down hundreds of trees and letting them fall so that the treetops formed a tangled mess facing the enemy forces. The troops then sharpened the branches so that they formed a barrier as effective as rolls of barbed wire.

Although Abercromby was aware of these defenses, he chose to make his attack from this direction anyway. He sent wave after wave of British soldiers toward the fort, where they either became tangled in the abatis or were shot by the French. A few British soldiers made it through the defenses and scaled the wall, only to be stabbed by the sharp bayonets attached to the French guns. Even though the French forces were outnumbered fifteen thousand to four thousand, they managed to hold off seven British charges. By the time Abercromby finally ordered a retreat, two thousand of his men were dead or wounded.

The defeat at Ticonderoga (see box) was terribly humiliating for the British. In fact, it was probably the second-worst incident of the war, after the defeat of British commander-in-chief Edward Braddock (1695-1755; see entry) on the Monongahela River in 1755. Abercromby's forces bitterly criticized the general for his shameful performance, calling him "Mrs. Nanny Cromby" or "Granny." Historians also place the blame for the defeat on Abercromby for attempting to storm a well-defended position instead of choosing another option. For example, Abercromby could have brought his cannons and artillery forward and battered the French defenses. He also could have sent troops up nearby Mount Defiance, which towered above the fort, and sent artillery fire down into it. Finally, he could have forced the fort to surrender by cutting off the supply road to Fort St. Frédéric on Lake Champlain. Instead, he was defeated by an army only a fraction of the size of his own.

Amherst captures Louisbourg

As it turned out, however, Abercromby's defeat in the Battle of Ticonderoga was the only dark spot for the British war effort in North America in 1758. The British came back with three important victories to turn the tide of the war in their favor. Around the same time that Abercromby was moving his forces into place for the attack on Fort Carillon, Major General Jeffery Amherst was transporting twelve thousand troops (mostly regular British Army) up the Atlantic coast by ship for an attack on Louisbourg. Defending the city were thirty-two hundred regular French Army soldiers and some armed residents under Augustin de Drucour (1703-1762), the governor of Louisbourg. In addition, Louisbourg's sheltered harbor was full of French warships.

Amherst planned to lay siege to Louisbourg. A siege is a military strategy that involves surrounding a target, cutting it off from outside help and supplies, and using artillery to break down its defenses. The first British forces landed on June 8, and a month later they had surrounded Louisbourg and begun pounding it with artillery fire. "There is not a house in the place that has not felt the effects of this formidable [strong] artillery," a French officer wrote in his diary. "From yesterday morning till seven o'clock this evening we reckon that a thousand or twelve hundred bombs, great and small, have been thrown into the town, accompanied all the time by the fire of forty pieces of cannon, served with an activity not often seen." The British finally broke through Louisbourg's defenses and forced the city to surrender on July 26.

Bradstreet captures Fort Frontenac

A few days after Abercromby's defeat at Ticonderoga, one of his young officers, Lieutenant Colonel John Bradstreet (c. 1711-1774), convinced the general to add a fourth part to the British Army's plan for the year. Bradstreet wanted to lead an attack on Fort Frontenac, an important French trading base located at the east end of Lake Ontario. The fort provided supplies to Fort Duquesne and other western forts, as well as to the Indians of the Ohio Country. It also served as a base for the French warships that patrolled Lake Ontario. Finally, the fort provided a vital communications link between Quebec and French settlements to the west.

In August, Bradstreet began moving up the Mohawk River with about five thousand of Abercromby's troops. To keep the French from learning about the mission, Bradstreet pretended that they were going to rebuild Fort Bull, a British fort that had been located at the Great Carrying Place—a spot where Indians carried their canoes between the Mohawk and Onondaga Rivers. He only revealed the true mission once the troops had arrived at the Great Carrying Place. Then his men continued across Lake Ontario by boat and landed near the French stronghold. Bradstreet was surprised that the fort offered very little resistance as his men moved their cannons into position for an assault on August 27. The French surrendered a few hours after the British began firing on the fort.

As it turned out, Fort Frontenac contained only about one hundred French troops, plus some women and children. The rest of the French forces had gone to help defend Fort Carillon against Abercromby's attack. But the fort was stuffed with valuable trade goods—including furs, food, clothing, weapons, and ammunition—that were intended to supply Fort Duquesne and the western Indians. Bradstreet and his men collected everything they could carry and destroyed the rest. They also took control of the French ships that had patrolled Lake Ontario. They allowed the French soldiers and their families to return to Montreal, with the agreement that they would arrange for the release of an equal number of British prisoners of war. When Brad-street returned from his successful mission, the ambitious young officer tried to convince Abercromby to push their advantage and attack the French forts at Niagara and Detroit. But the old general refused and allowed his troops to go home for the winter. In September, Pitt removed Abercromby from command and named Amherst the top British officer in North America.

French surrender Fort Duquesne

The third part of Pitt's plan—the expedition to attack Fort Duquesne—also got underway during the summer of 1758. The forces consisted of fifteen hundred British regulars and forty-eight hundred colonial troops under Major General John Forbes. Forbes was a brilliant officer cursedwith terrible health. He suffered from a painful skin condition that made it difficult for him to move, and he also caught a serious intestinal illness called dysentery. As a result, the only way for him to advance with his troops was by riding in a hammock strung between two horses. One of the officers accompanying Forbes was George Washington (1732-1799; see entry), who had first visited the Forks of the Ohio during his diplomatic mission in 1753.

Forbes and his army made their way slowly through Pennsylvania toward Fort Duquesne, building a road and a series of defensive outposts along the way. On September 14, an advance party of eight hundred men led by Major James Grant (1720-1806) came within a mile of the French fort. French soldiers and Indian warriors came pouring out of the fort and attacked Grant's forces. Washington's Virginia regiment fought bravely and allowed the remaining British troops to retreat. Still, three hundred men were killed, wounded, or captured in the battle.

The Indians who had taken part in the attack collected their trophies and went home, leaving only three hundred French soldiers to defend Fort Duquesne. Forbes was about to abandon his mission when he learned that Bradstreet had captured Fort Frontenac and destroyed the supplies that were headed for Fort Duquesne. Figuring that the French must be running low on supplies, Forbes decided to wait and prepare for another attack. In November, he ordered a full-scale attack on Fort Duquesne. As his men approached the fort, however, they heard a series of explosions. The French had realized that they could not defend the fort against the British attack. They decided to destroy it rather than allow it to fall into enemy hands.

The British built a new fort at the Forks of the Ohio and called it Fort Pitt. The success of Forbes's mission cut the connection between the French colonies along the Mississippi River and those in Canada and claimed the Ohio Country for Great Britain. Forbes returned to Philadelphia, where he died a few months later. Around this same time, Washington ended his involvement in the war. Convinced that the destruction of Fort Duquesne would bring peace to the Virginia frontier, Washington resigned from the Virginia militia and returned to his estate to begin a political career.

War continues in Europe and around the world

Pitt and other British leaders were pleased to hear about the victories over the French in North America. But they soon had to focus their attention on the war in Europe. Great Britain's ally, King Frederick (1712-1786) of Prussia, had been fighting against Russia and Austria and appeared weak. Pitt had been reluctant to send British troops to help Frederick. But he eventually agreed to send enough men to hold the port of Emden on the North Sea, which Prince Ferdinand (1721-1792) of Brunswick (King Frederick's brother-in-law) had captured from the French.

The British added several more victories around the world to their total for 1758. They took control of a series of French trading posts along the west coast of Africa. They also attacked the island of Martinique in the Caribbean, which was valuable to France because of its sugar exports. Pitt hoped that he would be able to exchange Martinique for the captured British military base on the Mediterranean island of Minorca if the French and British eventually tried to negotiate peace.

A British Soldier Describes the Battle of Ticonderoga

The Battle of Ticonderoga was a terrible defeat for the British. General James Abercromby sent wave after wave of soldiers to attack Fort Carillon, a French stronghold that was protected by a large log wall. Most of these soldiers were killed or wounded by the French defenders of the fort. Even though the British outnumbered the French fifteen thousand to four thousand, the attack failed and left two thousand British soldiers dead or wounded. In the following excerpt from a war memoir, a British soldier remembers the scene of the battle:

Our orders were to [run] to the breast work [wall] and get in if we could. But their lines were full, and they killed our men so fast, that we could not gain it. We got behind trees, logs and stumps, and covered ourselves as we could from the enemy's fire. The ground was strewed with the dead and dying. It happened that I got behind a white-oak stump, which was so small that I had to lay on my side, and stretch myself; the [musket] balls striking the ground within a hand's breadth of me every moment, and I could hear the men screaming, and see them dying all around me. I lay there some time. A man could not stand erect without being hit, any more than he could stand out in a shower, without having drops of rain fall upon him; for the balls came by handsfull. It was a clear day—a little air stirring. Once in a while the enemy would cease firing a minute or two, to have the smoke clear away, so that they might take better aim. In one of these intervals I sprang from my perilous [dangerous] situation, and gained a stand [position] which I thought would be more secure, behind a large pine log, where several of my comrades had already taken shelter but the balls came here as thick as ever. One of the men raised his head a little above the log, and a ball struck him in the centre of the forehead.… We lay there till near sunset and, not receiving orders from any officer, the men crept off, leaving all the dead, and most of the wounded.

Source: Perry, David. Recollections of an Old Soldier … Written by Himself. Windsor, VT: 1822 (later published in Magazine of History 137, 1928).