THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS

The author of this latest volume in the Mainstream of America series (edited by Lewis Gannett),- historian, military engineer, and curator at Fort Ticonderoga, has subtitled his remarkable book The Story of Battles and Forts in the Wilderness; with this story he is as familiar as with his own garden. The French and Indian Wars, and they were many fading into each other, were based on the long struggle for control of the American continent. They began in the 1690's with French forays into British territory and ended, in the ""real"" French and Indian War, with the capture of Quebec by Wolfe in and the of New France -- Canada -- to England in 1762. Throughout the wars the French with their unstable and ferocious Indian allies raided and burned and scalped, kidnapping women and children, destroying towns such as Deerfield, and at Fort William Henry mas surrendered soldiers. Although the English retaliated, their final victory was gained by infuriated colonists and trained troops from England, aided by the incredible corruption of French high officials. Writing of the vast expanse of water- ways and forests over which the wars raged, the author tells also of forts such as Louisbourg and , where now stands, scene of the Braddock tragedy, of on Lake Champlain, and others; he writes of Acadia, of naval engagements between lake gunboats, and of the leaders on both sides, Frontenac and Montcalm and Wolfe, the forgotten Governor Shirley and the amazing John Bradstreet of Massachusetts, of Sir William Johnson and his Indian friends. Blessedly unobscured by footnotes, filled with little-known detail and written with knowledge and humor, this book belongs in all libraries of the period, American and Canadian alike. It will delight professional and amateur students of pre-Revolutionary American history and will appeal to non-historical readers who merely enjoy a good book.