King George's War

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(1744-48) a precursor to the French and Indian War (1754-63), and an outgrowth of British and French antagonisms in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48). British colonists named the sporadic conflicts with their French counterparts in Canada after the English sovereign. Its most notable event, the New Englanders' capture of Fort Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island on June 17, 1745, was negated when the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle returned the fort to French control. See also King William's War.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

King George'S War (1744–1748). Nominally at peace from 1713 to 1744, France and England conflicted over boundaries of Acadia in Canada and northern New England and over claims in the Ohio Valley. When the War of Jenkins's Ear (England's commercial war with Spain, 1739–1743) merged into the continental War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748), England and France declared war on each other. The French at Louisburg (Cape Breton Island) failed in an early attack in which they attempted to take Annapolis (Port Royal). In retaliation, New Englanders captured Louisburg and planned, with English aid, to attack Quebec and Montreal simultaneously. Seven colonies cooperated to raise forces in 1746, but the promised English aid did not arrive, and the colonials finally disbanded the next year.

Meanwhile, France sent a great fleet in June 1746 to recapture Louisburg and devastate English colonial seaports. However, assorted fiascoes—including storms, disease, and the death of the fleet's commander—frustrated the attempt. British squadrons defeated a second French fleet on the open sea in 1747. Gruesome raids along the New England–New York borders by both conflicting parties and their Indian allies characterized the remainder of the war, with no result except a temporary check on frontier settlement. Weary of futile and costly conflict, the warring parties signed the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in October 1748, granting mutual restoration of conquests but leaving colonial territorial disputes unresolved.

Bibliography

Merrell, James H. Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier. New York: Norton, 1999.

White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1615–1815. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

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King George's War
Part of the War of Austrian Succession
Date 1744 – 1748 Location North America Result Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle Status quo ante bellum
Belligerents
France  New France First Nations allies	Great Britain British America Iroquois Confederacy

v • d • e King George's War Canso – Fort Anne – Louisbourg – Grande-Pré – Fort at Number 4

King George's War is the name given to the operations in North America that formed part of the 1744–1748 War of the Austrian Succession. It was the third of the four French and Indian Wars.

The War of Jenkins’s Ear officially began when a Spanish commander chopped off the ear of English merchant captain Robert Jenkins and told him to take that to his king, George II. War broke out in 1739 between the Spain and Britain, but was confined to the Caribbean Sea and the British colony of Georgia. This escalated into King George’s War in 1744, when the French allied themselves with Spain.

In 1745, British colonial forces in the Siege of Louisbourg captured the strategic French Fortress Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. On November 28, 1745 the French with their Indians allies destroyed the village of Saratoga, New York, killing and capturing more than one hundred of its inhabitants. All of the English settlements north of Albany were accordingly abandoned. In July 1746 an Iroquois and intercolonial force assembled in northern New York for a retaliatory attack against Canada; however, the British regulars never arrived and the attack was called off. The colonial troops camped at Albany for the winter, but the following year again failed to launch their expedition. In 1748, Indian allies of the French attacked Schenectady, New York.

The war took a heavy toll on the northern colonies. The losses of Massachusetts men alone in 1745-46 has been estimated as 8% of that colony's adult male population.

Aftermath

According to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, the Fortress of Louisbourg was returned to France three years later, in exchange for the city of Madras in India, captured by the French from the British. The peace treaty, which restored all colonial borders to their pre-war status, did little to end the lingering enmity between France, Britain, and their respective colonies, nor did it resolve any territorial disputes. Austria shifted its allegiance in 1754, with the outbreak of the French and Indian War, which spread to Europe two years later as the Seven Years' War.

See also

• Fort at Number 4
• Jonathan Moulton
• John Goffe
• Thomas Stickney
• Plausawa
• Nicolas Orontondi

External links

• King George's War on U-S-History.com

Source: The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People (fifth edition) by: Boyer, Clark, Kett, Salisbury, Sitkoff and Woloch

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