"There is no hope of repose for our thirteen colonies, as long as the French are masters of Canada," said Benjamin Franklin, on his arrival in London in 1754.

He was already laboring, without knowing it, at that great work of American independence which was to be his glory and that of his generation; the common efforts and the common interest of the thirteen American colonies in the war against France were the first step towards that great coalition which founded the United States of America.
The union with the mother-country was as yet close and potent: at the instigation of Mr.Fox, soon afterwards Lord Holland, and at the time Prime Minister of England, Parliament voted twenty-five millions for the American war.

The bounty given to the soldiers and marines who enlisted was doubled by private subscription; fifteen thousand men were thus raised to invade the French colonies.
Canada and Louisiana together did not number eighty thousand inhabitants, whilst the population of the English colonies already amounted to twelve hundred thousand souls; to the twenty-eight hundred regular troops sent from France, the Canadian militia added about four thousand men, less experienced but quite as determined as the most intrepid veterans of the campaigns in Europe.

During more than twenty years the courage and devotion of the Canadians never faltered for a single day.
Then began an unequal, but an obstinate struggle, of which the issue, easy to foresee, never cowed or appeased the actors in it.

The able tactics of M.de Vaudreuil, governor of the colony, had forced the English to scatter their forces and their attacks over an immense territory, far away from the most important settlements; the forts which they besieged were scarcely defended.