Colonial Hostilities: Canadians

An effort was made by the French to recapture the place, but their fleet was scattered by a storm, while a deadly epidemic broke out among the soldiers and marines. Acadia was at the same time assailed by the Canadians, with considerable success. A force of five hundred New England militia, sent to oppose them, was attacked by the French and Indians, and nearly half the men killed or wounded, and the rest forced to surrender.

Beginning with the autumn of 1745, the frontiers of the British plantations themselves were cruelly ravaged in twenty-seven successive raids of the Canadians during three years. Fort Massachusetts, fifteen miles above Fort St. Frederic, surrendered to M. Rigaud, who, with seven hundred colonists and savages, devastated the country for fifty miles beyond. M. Corne de St. Luc attacked Fort Clinton, and signally defeated an American corps. Saratoga was taken, and its people massacred. Fort Bridgman was taken by De Lery. In a word, the frontier-line, from Boston to Albany, being no longer tenable, the inhabitants fled into the interior, and left their lands at the discretion of the enemy.

A treaty of peace was concluded October 7, 1748. By its stipulations the British and French mutually gave up whatever territory each had taken, and greatly to the dissatisfaction of the English colonists, Cape Breton, with its fortress, was surrendered to its old masters, and the vigorous effort of the New-Englanders thus rendered useless. From that time peace prevailed in Europe, but hardly in America, hostilities scarcely ceasing during the interval from the treaty to the outbreak of the French and Indian War.