Seven Years War
Part 13: Seven Years War
Note: This post on this alternate Seven Years War will focus mainly on North America, as butterflies have not hit Europe to a significant enough extent to change the war over there. Anyway, here’s to the update.
After the War of Austrian Succession in Europe, European politics and diplomacy underwent a huge reversal. France and Austria, traditionally rivals, entered an alliance, while Britain and Prussia did the same. However, this TL is not primarily European-focused, and the war’s result in Europe was quite similar to OTL, so let’s get back to North America.
Both the British and the French had their own advantages in the North American theater of the war. On the one hand, the Brits had a vast, vast population advantage of 10:1, but the French on the other hand had more native allies and had held off the British in other colonial conflicts.
There were two main fronts in the North American Theater of the Seven Years War: The Coastal and Frontier Theaters. The Coastal Theatre was fought East of the Appalachians, while the Frontier theatre was fought west of the mountains.
In the coastal theatre, the British militias had a numerical advantage, and the British Royal Navy was superior to the French Navy, so the British made advances on the coastal plains, both with victories on the land as well as the Royal Navy bombarding coastal settlements into surrender, culminating with the capture of the capital of La Floride, Ville-Marie in 1758.
On the frontier, though, it was a more even fight. Here, the British did not have the vast numerical advantage that they did in settled areas, and the French had more native allies, notably the Salaguis and Mascoquis. The British militia made an offensive down through the Great Valley/Grande Vallée, capturing the French trading post of Mûreposte along the way, towards the French fort and outpost of Rocheville. However, the militia was held back by a combined force of Frenchmen and Natives. An attempted British invasion of the Mouth of the Mississippi also failed, so the scores were rather close to even in this game of war.
During the peace negotiations, the British offered to let the French keep the Atlantic coast, while giving the Brits the Mississippi Valley (even though the British seized the Atlantic Coast, while they failed to take the Mississippi Valley during the war). However, the French for some reason decided to cede the incredibly profitable Caribbean Sugar Islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique to the British, who had taken it during the war, in exchange for keeping both the Atlantic Coast and Mississippi Valley (yes, this wouldn’t have happened in reality, but it’s my TL and I want a large French North America ITTL), while also keeping the even more profitable sugar colony of Saint-Domingue.