PREFACE.
THE year 1757 was the nadir of the English cause during the Seven Years' War in America. Not only had it thus far distinctly the worse, — having lost the control of the West at Fort Duquesne in 1755, and that of Lake Ontario at Oswego in 1756, and gained only a desert frontier on the east by depopulating one of its own provinces,—but the disasters had seemingly taught the government nothing. They had not even loosed the hold of political "pulls" and jobbery which was the curse of all the administrative services. For two years a set of very unfit commanders, appointed by court or family influence, with the King's son Cumberland as military dictator, played ducks and drakes with the English chances of gaining the chief heritage of the Western Hemisphere; and they would have lost it altogether but for the provincials whom they despised, belittled, and defamed — largely for their own repute and promotions, and to the fatal misleading of English judgment as to an easy suppression of provincial revolt a few years later.
From the war's "big picture" (above) to the sometimes mundane found in the day to day activities:
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