The War for the New World

The Seven Years War as it was fought in the New World has always fascinated students of military history. Its stage-the wilderness of the American north-east, at a time when its vast forests and lakes were sparsely populated by settlers from Britain and France and ever threatened by the fierce indigenous Indian tribes, each with its particular loyalty or enmity-conjures a drama of colour and romance which has found its way into fiction and the cinema. Yet this was a brutal contest-often fought with little mercy-and one which despite its intimacy was fought for the highest of stakes-the dominance of continental America and the premiership of world power. Here is the story of that confrontation-from burning cabins and stockades to massacre. From lightning raids by daring forest rangers to the storming of besieged fortresses and cities. This is the French and Indian War-an account of how the New World became a mostly English speaking one and how France lost its opportunity to be the dominant world power of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.