was to receive a large sum every year from the royal treasury towards the expenses of the colonial government, besides the monopoly of trade to and from the colony. In return, he was to send a certain number of vessels and settlers, year by year, in order to keep up and to increase the colonial settlements, (1712.) A faint flush of vigor seemed to overspread the struggling colony.

Western

ments. Indiana.

Meanwhile the settlements in the north-west had settle- been extended. The missions of Kaskaskia, (about 1695,) and Cahokia, (about 1700,) in our Illinois, and the settlement of Vincennes, in our Indiana, (about 1705,) had confirmed the occupation of that region. A military post was planted at Detroit, the central point in the great are now formed by the French possessions, (1701.) But we have reached a period when the French possessions were beginning to be contracted. The war in the north, to which we must recur, had ended with the surrender, according to the treaty of Utrecht, of Acadie to England, (1713.) What was thus cut off at the end of the line was more than equal, in point of population and of settlement, to all that had been added to the middle or to the lower end.

Loss of
Acadie.

Forts:

Ohio.

Nor was there any reaction to compensate for the Pennsyl- loss. Canada, it is true, roused herself, building vania and forts upon New York territory, at Niagara, (1726,) and Crown Point, (1731.) Western Pennsylvania was dotted with fortifications, at the same time that others were raised through the Ohio valley, (1753.) But the most to be gained by these posts was a communication with the valley of the Mississippi and with Louisiana, where there was little to make the communication of any sensible importance.

Louisiana, soon resigned by Antoine Crozat, had passed under the control of the Company of the West, otherwisc

ny: New

Mississip- known as the Mississippi Company, (1717.) Durpi Compa ing the frenzy of its speculations, both the colony Orleans. and the mother country were inflated, merely to collapse with disappointment and disaster. Otherwise, the only office rendered by the company to the colony was the establishment of its capital at New Orleans, (1718-23.) The company soon returned the colony upon the royal hands, (1730.)

Our narrative ends with the final outbreak of hosMissouri: tilities between the French and the English in America, (1754.) Forty years had passed since

the thirteen of France.

the treaty of Utrecht began the rupture of the French possessions; but how much was there still left! Beyond the limits of the United States the domains of the French were far more valuable, within the same limits they were far more extensive, than those of England. Over and above the colonies and posts that have been mentioned, the first essays were made, at the epoch in question, towards the occupation of our Missouri. Counting by the states of a later period, we have thirteen of French * to match with the thirteen of English parentage.

Enough has been said, however, to explain how and weak- easily the French possessions were extended by adventure, and yet how slightly they were either held or developed by actual settlement. The French dominion was as weak as it was vast. It spread over America like a cloud brilliant with the morning sunshine; but, unsubstantial as a cloud, it was swept by the breeze and rent asunder by the storm.

Wars

CHAPTER VII.

FRENCH WARS.

THE earliest wars in which the colonies of with In- France engaged were those with the Indians. dians in They were also the longest. From the time

when Champlain headed a war party of Algonquins against the Five Nations of New York, (1609,) this great confederacy was at war with the French, some intervals of peace excepted, for more than a century. To describe the descents upon the Canadian settlements, the wild cries and the wilder deeds of battles, the waste and the agony of homes, would be but to repeat our previous sketches of Indian warfare. Not until the treaty of Utrecht restored peace for a time between France and England did the Five Nations, then the allies of the English, bury the tomahawk that had so long gleamed above the heads of the French, (1713.)

In the south.

Later wars with Indians broke out in the south. The Natchez were beaten, (1729-30,) but the Chickasaws could not be subdued, (1736-40.) These conflicts, however, were of moment chiefly to Louisiana. They did not affect the destinies of the French possessions generally.

Except the brief contest with the Spaniards of tween the Florida, described in the last chapter but one, the and the French had no wars to conduct against any EuroEnglish. pean race besides the English in America. This,

The

it is true, was enough for the French to contend with. Enemies for ages past in Europe, these nations turned to America in rivalry and contention. It was to outvie each other, in a great degree, that they made their settlements; claiming the same lands at the beginning, and extending themselves in the same directions as time went on. strife between the two great combatants began at an early period, as long ago related, when England, or rather England's colony of Virginia, destroyed the French settlement of St. Sauveur, (1613.) Continued by England herself, (1628-30,) war produced no effect; her conquests, as was mentioned, being surrendered, (1632.)

Indeci

The wars of the next half century were not a sive wars. whit more decisive. One, during the English commonwealth, (1652-56,) reduced Acadie for a time beneath the sway of England. Another, after the restoration, (1666-67,) brought about nothing except a proposal to the New England colonies that they should conquer Canada. Peace restored Acadie, as far as the Penobscot, to France, leaving once more no results from the passion and the hostility that had been aroused.

Acts of violence did not cease on either side. William's An English trader on Lake Huron was seized, as a trespasser, by the French, (1687.) At the other extremity of New France, the governor of New England, Sir Edmund Andros, made an assault upon the trading post of a Frenchman on the Penobscot, (1688.) Each race was determined to hold, and, if possible, to increase its own. A fresh trial of their strength - the fourth in all, but the first in which the colonies of either nation took an active part - began with the war called King William's by the English colonists, (1689.) As far as concerned England, then under William III., the chief cause of the war was the support given by Louis XIV. to the lately dethroned James II. But Louis had excited in one way or another the greater part of Europe. England was supported by the German Empire, Holland, Spain, and Savoy. From Europe the strife extended to Asia, as well as to America.

The difference between the contending parties in acter and America soon appeared. On one side was the mother country rather than the colony, the strength of France rather than the weakness of Canada and Acadie. On the other side was the increasing vigor of New England and New York, supported at one time by grants from Maryland and Virginia, and thus presenting an array of colonies, rather than a single mother-land. Both sides were alike in the allies gathered from the forest and the prairie; the Indians of Canada, Acadie, and Maine following the French, while the English were assisted by the forays of the Five Nations along the Canadian lines. Indeed, the war was more of an Indian than of a European one in character. It began with the descents of French and Indian war parties upon Schenectady in New York, Salmon Falls and Casco in New England, (1690.) An expedition from Massachusetts against Acadie, and another, partly from New England and partly from New York, against Canada, were more regular operations, (1690.) The latter scheme was prepared in a convention of delegates from Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New York, held in the last-named colony; and although Canada was not invaded, the plans all failing, the colonies were united, at least for a season, by new bonds. The Massachusetts force, under Sir William Phips, succeeded in ravaging Acadie, and even in seizing the eastern part of Maine, where a fort was presently constructed at Pemaquid, (1692;) but this was retaken in a few years by the French under D'Iberville, (1696,) the same who