Day of Decision: The Battle of Quebec 1759

Background

The French and Indian War was the nine year conflict between Great Britain and her allies and France and her allies in North America. It was only one theatre in a world war known as the Seven Years War which raged in such places as India, the Caribbean, and Europe, among other places. The North American portion of the conflict was caused by competing claims by Britain and France to the vast territories of North America and its resources. The conflict started in North America and spread subsequently world wide.

The first action of the French and Indian War started with an expedition led a Major of the Virginia Militia, one George Washington, to negotiate colonial boundaries with the French in 1754. Washington and his small force of Virginia Militia wound up confronting the French at Fort Duquesne (modern day Pittsburgh.) A French officer named Joseph Coulon de Jurnonville was killed in a small skirmish. Washington retreated a few miles and erected Fort Necessity. The French drove Washington and his men out of this fort.

The following year, 1755, saw the disastrous expedition led by General Edward Braddock against Fort Duquesne. Leading a force of British regulars and American militia in the European style, with fixed lines of advance, Braddock was ambushed just a few miles away from Fort Duquesne by a mixed force of French regulars, Canadian militia, and Indians. Braddock and many of his men were killed in the ensuing battle. George Washington, who was with the expedition, took command and managed to lead the survivors to safety.

1756 saw the election of a new British government, under Prime Minister William Pitt. The tide began to turn in North America as French colonial outposts began to fall to the British. In 1758, the huge French fortress of Louisbourg, which guarded the entrance to the St, Lawrence River on Cape Breton Island, fell after a forty eight day siege. The rest of France’s North American territories, including Quebec, was open to British conquest.

The Quebec Campaign