Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: Did England fight France during the Seven Years' War?
The Seven Years' War was a global conflict fought between 1756 and 1763. It involved every European great power of the time and spanned five continents, affecting Europe, the Americas, West Africa, India, and the Philippines. The conflict split Europe into two coalitions, led by the Kingdom of Great Britain (including the Kingdom of Prussia, the Kingdom of Portugal, the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and other small German states) on one side and the Kingdom of France (including the Austrian-led Holy Roman Empire), the Russian Empire (until 1762), the Kingdom of Spain, and the Swedish Empire on the other. Meanwhile, in India, some regional polities within the increasingly fragmented Mughal Empire, with the support of the French, tried to crush a British attempt to conquer Bengal. The war's extent has led some historians to describe it as "World War Zero", similar in scale to other world wars.[5]
Stanley Kubrick's film Barry Lyndon (1975) is based on the Thackeray novel. The events in the early chapters of Voltaire's Candide are based on the Seven Years' War; according to Jean Starobinski, ("Voltaire's Double-Barreled Musket", in Blessings In Disguise (California, 1993) p.85), all the atrocities described in Chapter3 are true to life. When Candide was written, Voltaire had been opposed to militarism; the book's themes of disillusionment and suffering underscore this position The board games Friedrich and, more recently, Prussia's Defiant Stand and Clash of Monarchs are based on the events of the Seven Years' War The Grand strategy wargame Rise of Prussia covers the European campaigns of the Seven Years' War The novel The Last of the Mohicans (1826) by James Fenimore Cooper and its subsequent adaptations are set in the Northern American Theatre of the Seven Years' War The Partisan in War (1789), a treatise on light infantry tactics written by Colonel Andreas Emmerich, is based on his experiences in the Seven Years' War. The Seven Years' War is the central theme of G.E. Lessing's 1767 play Minna von Barnhelm or the Soldiers' Happiness. Numerous towns and other places now in United States were named after Frederick the Great to commemorate the victorious conclusion of the war, including Frederick, Maryland, and King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. The fourth scenario of the second act in the RTS Age of Empires III is about this military conflict, with the player fighting alongside the French against the British. In Ubisoft's video game Assassin's Creed III, early missions in the main story/campaign centred around the Assassin/Templar Haytham Kenway are set during the North American campaigns of the French and Indian War. Additionally, the prequel Assassin's Creed Rogue, released in 2014, is set within the timescale of the Seven Years' War. Several installments of Diana Gabaldon's fictional Lord John series (itself an offshoot of the Outlander series) describe a homosexual officer's experiences in Germany and France during the Seven Years' War. In particular, the short story "Lord John and the Succubus" occurs just before the Battle of Rossbach, and the novel Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade centers around the Battle of Krefeld.
As long as Great Britain and France remained at peace in Europe, and as long as the precarious balance in the American interior survived, British and French colonies coexisted without serious difficulty. However, beginning in earnest following the Glorious Revolution in England (1688), the simmering dynastic, religious, and factional rivalries between the Protestant British and Catholic French in both Europe and the Americas triggered four "French and Indian Wars" fought largely on American soil (King William's War, 1689–97; Queen Anne's War, 1702–13; King George's War, 1744–48; and, finally the Seven Years' War, 1756–63). Great Britain finally removed the French from continental North America in 1763 following French defeat in the Seven Years' War. Within a decade, the British colonies were in open revolt, and France retaliated by secretly supplying the independence movement with troops and war materials.
After Congress declared independence in July 1776, its agents in Paris recruited officers for the Continental Army, notably the Marquis de Lafayette, who served with distinction as a major general. Despite a lingering distrust of France, the agents also requested a formal alliance. After readying their fleet and being impressed by the U.S. victory at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777, the French on February 6, 1778, concluded treaties of commerce and alliance that bound them to fight Britain until independence of the United States was assured.
Originally settled by Maritime Archaic Indians, the Miramichi River valley was controlled by the Mi'kmaq Nation at the time of European discovery. As part of Acadia under French colonial control, the region saw little French settlement. The Mi'kmaq from the Miramichi River valley sided with France during the wars between Britain and France from 1689 to 1763, sometimes sending raiding parties into New England to attack settlements during the Seven Years' War.
Meanwhile, George III had given up on subduing America while Britain had a European war to fight. He did not welcome war with France, but he believed that Britain had made all necessary steps to avoid it and cited the British victories over France in the Seven Years' War as a reason to remain optimistic. Britain tried in vain to find a powerful ally to engage France, leaving it isolated, preventing Britain from focusing the majority of her efforts in one theater, and forcing a major diversion of military resources from America. Despite this, the King determined never to recognize American independence and to ravage the colonies indefinitely, or until they pleaded to return to the yoke of the Crown. Mahan argues that Britain's attempt to fight in multiple theaters simultaneously without major allies was fundamentally flawed, citing impossible mutual support, exposing the forces to defeat in detail.
The main tenets of the Peace of Westphalia were:
The treaties did not entirely end conflicts arising out of the Thirty Years' War. Fighting continued between France and Spain until the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. The Dutch-Portuguese War had begun during the Iberian Union between Spain and Portugal, as part of the Eighty Years' War, and went on until 1663. Nevertheless, the Peace of Westphalia did settle many outstanding European issues of the time.
Starting in 1721, many Christian Algonquins began to settle for the summer at Kahnesatake, near Oka. The Mohawk Nation was then considered one of the Seven Nations of Canada. Algonquin warriors continued to fight in alliance with France until the British conquest of Quebec in 1760 during the Seven Years' War. After the British took over colonial rule of Canada, their officials sought to make allies of the First Nations. Fighting on behalf of the British Crown, the Algonquins took part in the Barry St Leger campaign during the American Revolutionary War.
In 1654, the New England Confederation voted to invade New Netherland to support the Commonwealth during the First Anglo-Dutch War. Massachusetts refused to join which severely undermined the Confederation. Cromwell sent naval reinforcements but the war ended while they were organizing their forces. This expedition was retooled to target Nova Scotia, the former Scottish colony that was ceded to French Acadia years earlier by Charles I. Cromwell claimed the Treaty of Suza and Treaty of Saint-Germain were invalid and that the French did not pay the purchase money. Nova Scotia was taken without significant resistance by Robert Sedgwick. This became an international incident since England and France were at peace but the French were busy fighting the Spanish and ceded the territory to England to secure the Commonwealth as an ally. England returned it to France in 1670 as according to the 1667 Treaty of Breda.
Thoroughbreds began to be imported to France in 1817 and 1818 with the importation of a number of stallions from England, but initially the sport of horse racing did not prosper in France. The first Jockey Club in France was not formed until 1833, and in 1834 the racing and regulation functions were split off to a new society, the "Societe d'Encouragement pour l'Amelioration des Races de Chevaux en France", better known as the Jockey-Club de Paris. The "French Stud Book" was founded at the same time by the government. By 1876, French-bred Thoroughbreds were regularly winning races in England, and in that year a French breeder-owner earned the most money in England on the track. World War I almost destroyed French breeding because of war damage and lack of races. After the war, the premier French race, the Grand Prix, resumed and continues to this day. During World War II, French Thoroughbred breeding did not suffer as it had during the first World War, and thus was able to compete on an equal footing with other countries after the war.
Britain held a dominant position at the negotiations, as they had during the last seven years seized Canada, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominica, Pondicherry, Senegal, and Belle Île from the French and Havana and Manila from the Spanish. Only one British territory, Menorca, was in enemy hands. Despite suffering a year of defeats, Spain was prepared to fight on—something which their French allies were opposed to. Bute proposed a suggestion that France cede her remaining North American territory of Louisiana to Spain to compensate Madrid for its losses during the war. This formula was acceptable to the Spanish government, and allowed Britain and France to negotiate with more legroom. France and Spain both considered the treaty that ended the war as being closer to a temporary armistice rather than a genuine final settlement, and William Pitt described it as an "armed truce". Britain had customarily massively reduced the size of its armed forces during peacetime, but during the 1760s a large military establishment was maintained—intended as a deterrent against France and Spain.
The Triple Alliance of 1596 (full title: Tract of alliance between England, France and the United Netherlands), was an alliance between England, France and the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. The Republic joined as a third party to an earlier agreement between England and France, but the alliance did in fact not take effect until the Republic joined. By signing the treaty, France and England were the first states to recognize the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands as an independent state. The three parties in the alliance were all at war with Spain. There had been attempts to convince magnates from the Holy Roman Empire to join the alliance, but they did not want to enter the war against Spain. The alliance, along with other things, agreed to help maintain their respective armies. The alliance was in effect for only a few years.
Quebec City was the headquarters of many raids against New England during the four French and Indian Wars. In the last war, the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War), Quebec City was captured by the British in 1759 and held until the end of the war in 1763. It was the site of three battles during Seven Years' War: the Battle of Beauport, a French victory (31 July 1759); the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, in which British troops under General James Wolfe defeated the French General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm on 13 September 1759 and shortly thereafter took the city; and the final Battle of Sainte-Foy, a French victory (28 April 1760). France ceded New France, including the city, to Britain in 1763.
The Alliance had its heyday during the Seven Years' War when France and Austria joined forces to fight the mutual enemy of Prussia. Following the allies' defeat in that war, the intimacy of the alliance weakened, and by the 1780s it had become something closer to a formality—when Austria briefly considered the idea of entering the American War of Independence on Britain's side against France. By the time of the French Revolution—when France first declared itself a constitutional monarchy, and then overthrew and executed its king—it had collapsed entirely and Austria actively tried to restore the French monarchy by going to war with the new French Republic.
Britain held a dominant position at the negotiations, as they had during the last seven years seized Canada, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominica, Pondicherry, Senegal, and Belle Île from the French and Havana and Manila from the Spanish. Only one British territory, Menorca, was in enemy hands. Despite suffering a year of defeats, Spain was prepared to fight on—something which their French allies were opposed to. Bute proposed a suggestion that France cede her remaining North American territory of Louisiana to Spain to compensate Madrid for its losses during the war. This formula was acceptable to the Spanish government, and allowed Britain and France to negotiate with more legroom.
Western New York's land was acquired from the Iroquois through the Nanfan Treaty, which ceded the territory to England at the end of the Beaver Wars in 1701. At the time, four of the British colonies (Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut) laid claim to the unsettled territory, as did New France until the Seven Years' War. Most of Western New York was officially off-limits to all of the colonies as a result of the establishment of an Indian Reserve over the area following the Seven Years' War. By the 1780s, only New York and Massachusetts still maintained their claims to the territory, which was separated from mainland New York by a Preemption Line.
Bounties for indigenous captives or their scalps appeared in the legislation of the American colonies during the Susquehannock War (1675–77). New England offered bounties to white settlers and Narragansett people in 1675 during King Philip's War. By 1692, New France also paid their native allies for scalps of their enemies. In 1697, on the northern frontier of Massachusetts colony, settler Hannah Dustin killed ten of her Abenaki captors during her nighttime escape, presented their ten scalps to the Massachusetts General Assembly, and was rewarded with bounties for two men, two women, and six children. There were six colonial wars with New England and the Iroquois Confederacy fighting New France and the Wabanaki Confederacy over a 75-year period, starting with King William's War in 1688. All sides scalped victims, including noncombatants, during this frontier warfare. Bounty policies originally intended only for Native American scalps were extended to enemy colonists.
England and France were in the concluding stages of the Hundred Years War. The French did not wish to lose their advantage in the fight by sending knights and the English were in no position to do so. Spain was in the final stages of the Reconquista. The Holy Roman Empire, never centralized enough behind the Hohenstaufen to unite the principalities, had exhausted what could be spared at Varna. Further fighting among the German princes and the Hussite wars seriously reduced the willingness of most to perform a crusade. Poland and Hungary were key participants at Varna and the defeat there along with the Polish–Teutonic Wars kept them busy and unwilling for further commitments.
As far back as the High Middle Ages, following the Norman invasion of Ireland, some Gaels acted as mercenary "ceithearnach" recruited by Anglo-Norman lords to fight in their various feudal campaigns. As various different forces grappled for control of land, some of the Gaelic factions joined with some of the Norman factions fighting side by side, either out of "ad hoc" self-interest or as a mercenary action. As part of this they fought not only in Ireland, but also in England during the Wars of the Roses and in France during the Hundred Years' War. In his work on the Hundred Years' War, Desmond Seward mentions that the Earl of Ormond had raised Irish kern and Gallowglass to fight for Henry V Plantagenet, King of England, where they were present at the 1418 Siege of Rouen.
The fight for control over Ohio Country led to the French and Indian War, which began as the North American phase of the Seven Years' War (which did not technically begin in Europe until 1756). The war began with the defeat of a Virginia militia contingent led by Colonel George Washington by the French troupes de la marine in the Ohio valley. As a result of that defeat, the British decided to prepare the conquest of Quebec City, the capital of New France. The British defeated France in Acadia in the Battle of Fort Beausejour (1755) and then Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) (which also administered Île Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island) with the Siege of Louisbourg (1758).
The Chronicle begins in the year 1340 at which time Jean de Venette talks about the revelations of a (unnamed) priest who was held prisoner by the Saracens for 13 years and freed in 1309 who foretold of a vision of a great famine which would occur in 1315 and other horrible things which were to happen thereafter. Venette states that he was seven or eight in this year and indeed the famine did occur exactly as predicted and lasted two years. He then tells the background of the fight for the crown of France after the death of Philip the Fair and the claims of Edward I of England to that throne, thus describing the background to the beginning of the Hundred Years' War. His history is detailed and precise. He also describes the Battle of Crecy in 1356, The Peasant's War, and the siege of Calais, again with great detail.
Prince Rupert had a varied career. He was a soldier from a young age, fighting against Spain in the Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648), and against the Holy Roman Emperor in Germany during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). Aged 23, he was appointed commander of the Royalist cavalry during the English Civil War, becoming the archetypal Cavalier of the war and ultimately the senior Royalist general. He surrendered after the fall of Bristol and was banished from England. He served under Louis XIV of France against Spain, and then as a Royalist privateer in the Caribbean. Following the Restoration, Rupert returned to England, becoming a senior English naval commander during the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch wars, engaging in scientific invention, art, and serving as the first governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. Rupert died in England in 1682, aged 62.
The Treaty of Paris (1763) was signed on 10 February 1763 by the kingdoms of Great Britain, France and Spain, with Portugal in agreement, after Britain's victory over France and Spain during the Seven Years' War. The signing of the treaty formally ended the French and Indian Wars and marked the beginning of an era of British dominance outside Europe. The two nations returned much of the territory that they had each captured during the war, but Britain gained much of France's possessions in North America. The treaty did not involve Prussia and Austria as they signed a separate agreement, the Treaty of Hubertusburg, five days later.
England was spared invasion during the Hundred Years' War against France and Castile, but it was plagued by 32 years (1455–1487) of civil wars known as the Wars of the Roses. The Lancastrian branch of the House of Plantagenet, which had overthrown the direct royal line in 1399, was embroiled in fighting against the Yorkist wing of the dynasty.
New France and New England were at war with one another three times during the 18th century. The second and third colonial wars, Queen Anne's War and King George's War, were local offshoots of larger European conflicts—the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–13), the War of the Austrian Succession (1744–48). The last, the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War), started in the Ohio Valley. The "petite guerre" of the Canadiens devastated the northern towns and villages of New England, sometimes reaching as far south as Virginia. The war also spread to the forts along the Hudson Bay shore.
During the French and Indian War (the North American theater of the Seven Years' War), British colonial officers suspected Acadians were aligned with France after finding some Acadians fighting alongside French troops at Fort Beausejour. Though most Acadians remained neutral during the French and Indian War, the British, together with New England legislators and militia, carried out the Great Expulsion (Le Grand Dérangement) of the Acadians during the 1755–1764 period. They deported approximately 11,500 Acadians from the maritime region. Approximately one-third perished from disease and drowning. The result was what one historian described as an ethnic cleansing of the Acadians from Maritime Canada. Other historians indicate that it was a deportation similar to other deportations of the time period.