I. France Finds a Foothold in Canada
Like England and Holland, France was a latecomer in the race for colonies.
It was convulsed in the 1500s by foreign wars and domestic strife.
In 1598, the Edict of Nantes was issued, allowing limited toleration to the French Huguenots.
When King Louis XIV became king, he took an interest in overseas colonies.
In 1608, France established Quebec, overlooking the St. Lawrence River.
Samuel de Champlain, an intrepid soldier and explorer, became known as the “Father of New France.”
He entered into friendly relations with the neighboring Huron Indians and helped them defeat the Iroquois.
The Iroquois, however, did hamper French efforts into the Ohio …show more content…
New France Fans Out
New France’s (Canada) one valuable resource was the beaver.
Beaver hunters were known as the coureurs de bois (runners of the woods) and littered the land with place names, including Baton Rouge (red stick), Terre Haute (high land), Des Moines (some monks) and Grand Teton (big breasts).
The French voyageurs also recruited Indians to hunt for beaver as well, but Indians were decimated by the white man’s diseases, and the beaver population was heavily extinguished.
French Catholic missionaries zealously tried to convert Indians.
To thwart English settlers from pushing into the Ohio Valley, Antoine Cadillac founded Detroit (“city of straits”) in 1701.
Louisiana was founded, in 1682, by Robert de LaSalle, to halt Spanish expansion into the area near the Gulf of Mexico.
Three years later, he tried to fulfill his dreams by returning, but instead landed in Spanish Texas and was murdered by his mutinous men in 1687.
The fertile Illinois country, where the French established forts and trading posts at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes, became the garden of France’s North American empire.
III. The Clash of Empires
King William’s War and Queen Anne’s …show more content…
VII. Pitt’s Palms of Victory
In this hour of British trouble, William Pitt, the “Great Commoner,” took the lead.
In 1757, he became a foremost leader in the London government and later earned the title of “Organizer of Victory”
Changes Pitt made…
He soft-pedaled assaults on the French West Indies, assaults which sapped British strength, and concentrated on Quebec-Montreal (since they controlled the supply routes to New France).
He replaced old, cautious officers with younger, daring officers
In 1758, Louisbourg fell. This root of a fort began to wither the New France vine since supplies dwindled.
32 year-old James Wolfe, dashing and attentive to detail, commanded an army that boldly scaled the cliff walls of a part protecting Quebec, met French troops near the Plains of Abraham, and in a battle in which he and French commander Marquis de Montcalm both died, the French were defeated and the city of Quebec surrendered.
The 1759 Battle of Quebec ranks as one of the most significant engagements in British and American history, and when Montreal fell in 1760, that was the last time French flags would fly on American soil.
In the Peace Treaty at Paris in