s winter came on, he broke up
his camp and sent his men to their homes. The colonies had no permanent
military equipment. Each autumn their forces were dissolved to be
reorganized again in the following spring, a lame method of waging war.

For three years longer in the valley of the Ohio, as elsewhere, the
star of France remained in the ascendant. It began to decline only when,
farther east, on the Atlantic, superior forces sent out from England
were able to check the French. During the summer of 1758, while Wolfe
and Boscawen were pounding the walls of Louisbourg, seven thousand
troops led by General Forbes, Colonel George Washington, and Colonel
Henry Bouquet, pushed their way through the wilds beyond the Alleghanies
and took possession of the Ohio. The French destroyed Fort Duquesne and
fled. On the 25th of November the English occupied the place and named
it "Pitts-Bourgh" in honor of their great war minister.

CHAPTER VII. The Expulsion Of The Acadians

We have now to turn back over a number of years to see what has been
happening in Acadia, that oldest and most easterly part of New France
which in 1710 fell into British hands. Since the Treaty of Utrecht
in 1713 the Acadians had been nominally British subjects. But the
Frenchman, hardly less than the Jew, is difficult of absorption by other
racial types. We have already noted the natural aim of France to recover
what she had lost and her use of the priests to hold the Acadians to
her interests. The Acadians were secure in the free exercise of their
religion. They had no secular leaders and few, if any, clergy of their
own. They were led chiefly by priests, subjects of France, who, though
working in British territory, owned no allegiance to Great Britain, and
were directed by the Bishop of Quebec.

For forty years the question of the Acadians remained unsettled.
Under the Treaty of 1713 the Acadians might leave the country. If they
remained a year they must become British subjects. When, however, in
1715, two years after the conclusion of the treaty, they were required
to take the oath of allegiance to the new King, George I, they declared
that they could not do so, since they were about to move to Cape Breton.
When George II came to the throne in 1727, the oath was again demanded.
Still, however, the Acadians were between two fires. Their Indian
neighbors, influenced by the French, threatened them with massacre if
they took the oath, while the British decl