Author’s Introduction

It is the nature of great events to obscure the great events that came before them.  The Seven Years War in Europe is seen but dimly through revolutionary convulsions and Napoleonic tempests; and the same contest in America is half lost to sight behind the storm-cloud of the War of Independence.  Few at this day see the momentous issues involved in it, or the greatness of the danger that it averted.  The strife that armed all the civilized world began here.  “Such was the complication of political interests,” says Voltaire, “that a cannon-shot fired in America could give the signal that set Europe in a blaze.”  Not quite.  It was not a cannon-shot, but a volley from the hunting-pieces of a few backwoodsmen, commanded by a Virginian youth, George Washington.

To us of this day, the result of the American part of the war seems a foregone conclusion.  It was far from being so; and very far from being so regarded by our forefathers.  The numerical superiority of the British colonies was offset by organic weaknesses fatal to vigorous and united action.  Nor at the outset did they, or the mother-country, aim at conquering Canada, but only at pushing back her boundaries.  Canada—­using the name in its restricted sense—­was a position of great strength; and even when her dependencies were overcome, she could hold her own against forces far superior.  Armies could reach her only by three routes,—­the Lower St. Lawrence on the east, the Upper St. Lawrence on the west, and Lake Champlain on the south.  The first access was guarded by a fortress almost impregnable by nature, and the second by a long chain of dangerous rapids; while the third offered a series of points easy to defend.  During this same war, Frederic of Prussia held his ground triumphantly against greater odds, though his kingdom was open on all sides to attack.

It was the fatuity of Louis XV. and his Pompadour that made the conquest of Canada possible.  Had they not broken the traditionary policy of France, allied themselves to Austria, her ancient enemy, and plunged needlessly into the European war, the whole force of the kingdom would have been turned, from the first, to the humbling of England and the defence of the French colonies.  The French soldiers left dead on inglorious Continental battle-fields could have saved Canada, and perhaps made good her claim to the vast territories of the West.

But there were other contingencies.  The possession of Canada was a question of diplomacy as well as of war.  If England conquered her, she might restore her, as she had lately restored Cape Breton.  She had an interest in keeping France alive on the American continent.  More than one clear eye saw, at the middle of the last century, that the subjection of Canada would lead to a revolt of the British colonies.  So long as an active and enterprising enemy threatened their borders, they could not break with the mother-country, because they needed her help.  And if the arms of France had prospered in the other hemisphere; if she had gained in Europe or Asia territories with which to buy back what she had lost in America, then, in all likelihood, Canada would have passed again into her hands.