King George's War
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King George's War is the name given to the operations in North America that formed part of the 1740–1748 War of the Austrian Succession. The name "King George's War" is only used in the United States. In Britain, Canada, and France, this war is considered a theatre of the War of the Austrian Succession, with no separate name. It was the third of the four French and Indian Wars.
The War of Jenkins’s Ear officially began when a Spanish commander chopped off the ear of the English captain Robert Jenkins and told him to take that to his king, George II. War broke out in 1739 between the Spanish and British and was confined to the Caribbean Sea and the British colony of Georgia. This escalated into King George’s War in 1744 when the French joined the side of Spain.
In 1745, British colonial forces in the Siege of Louisbourg captured the French Fortress Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. On November 28, 1745 the French with their Indians allies destroyed the village of Saratoga, New York killing and capturing more than one hundred people. All the settlements north of Albany became deserted. In July, 1746 an Iroquois and intercolonial force assembled in northern New York for an attack against Canada, but the regulars never arrived and the attack was called off. The troops were kept camped at Albany the entire winter. Again, in 1747 the troops at Albany never managed to start their expedition. In 1748, Indian allies of the French attacked Schenectady, New York.
The losses of Massachusetts men in 1745-1746 has been estimated as 8% of the colony's adult men.
[edit] Aftermath
The Fortress of Louisbourg was returned to France under the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle three years later, in exchange for the city of Madras in India, which the French had captured from the British. The peace treaty, which restored all colonial borders to their pre-war status, did little to halt the enmity between France, Great Britain, and their colonies, nor did it resolve their territorial disputes. Austria shifted its allegiance from Great Britain to France, as Great Britain became allied with Prussia and the Russian Empire. Fighting resumed between the British and French in North America in 1754 with the outbreak of the French and Indian War, which spread to Europe two years later as the Seven Years' War.
