The Handy Boston Answer Book. Samuel Willard Crompton

man’s advice where wilderness warfare was concerned. On July 8, 1755, the French and their Indian allies ambushed Braddock and his men on the banks of the Monongahela River, just shy of present-day Pittsburgh. Braddock’s defeat was a colossal failure for the British military in North America; for the next three years, many frontier towns, from New England to the Carolinas, were endangered.

How were Bostonians involved in General Edward Braddock’s defeat by the French in 1755?

      In the summer of 1755, even before Braddock’s defeat became common knowledge, a New England force helped capture French Fort Beauséjour in present-day Nova Scotia. The Anglo-American conquest led to the expulsion of many Acadian settlers of Nova Scotia, some of whom ended up in Louisiana and became known as “Cajuns.” Boston was also involved in the sending of troops to attack Fort Crown Point in upstate New York and Fort Niagara, hard by the falls of that name. The really big event of that year was the earthquake, however.

      An illustration depicts the British preparing to bury General Edward Braddock, who died fighting the French in the Ohio Valley.

      Was there an earthquake in Boston in the 1700s?

      At 4:15 A.M. on November 18, 1755, Bostonians were awakened first by a rumbling and then by a series of terrific shakes. Centered off Cape Ann, the quake of 1755 lasted only four minutes, but during that time roughly 1,500 chimneys in Boston collapsed. Almost no one was killed because the good Yankees of Boston were just beginning to stir when the quake occurred. The following two months were a time of accusation investigation, and popular discourse, as everyone who was anyone attempted to put his spin on the matter.

      Several old-time Puritan ministers claimed that God was angry at New England. A handful of others asserted that the quake stemmed from a combination of divine and natural causes. And a small number of leading men—including Professor John Winthrop IV—declared it a truly natural event. To them it was obvious that God could bring about an earthquake any time he desired, but that the rules of the natural world made sense on a logical level. The really big surprise came when Bostonians learned that Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, had been swamped by a terrible earthquake, followed by a tsunami, on November 1, 1755.

      How was Voltaire connected to the 1755 earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal?

      Nearly 40,000 Portuguese died on November 1, 1755, leading many European scientists and philosophers to question previously held beliefs. Voltaire, for example, abandoned the “feel-good” philosophy of the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who claimed that we live in the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire felt strongly enough about the tragedy that he wrote Candide, a novel, to demonstrate his displeasure with those that asserted all was well.

      For Americans in general, and Bostonians in particular, the Lisbon quake appeared to be validation of what Leibniz had proposed. Boston had seen a great quake, but no one was killed. Lisbon saw an even greater one in which many thousands lost their lives. Surely, it meant that the Almighty had a special interest in the preservation of Boston and, indeed, America.

      How did the French and Indian War proceed?

      The defeat in western Pennsylvania was balanced by an Anglo-American victory at the Battle of Lake George in September 1755. Anyone who examined the map of North America could see that the French held a major advantage in terms of holding “interior lines.” It was, and is, much easier to traverse the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes than to concentrate troops from the original Thirteen Colonies. At the same time, however, the Anglo-American colonists possessed an enormous advantage in terms of population and the size of their military. There were perhaps two million people in the thirteen colonies, compared to less than 80,000 in Canada and Nova Scotia.

      France did reasonably well in the first two years of the war. The Marquis de Montcalm (1712–1759) arrived as the new military commander in 1756; he proceeded to capture Fort Oswego, and then Fort William Henry, at the southern end of Lake George. In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Fort William Henry, there was concern, even in Boston, that the French and Indians would run amok over the entire New England frontier. When Montcalm and his army withdrew to Canada, calm returned, and this time it was the icy calm that comes before the final resolution. New Englanders in general, and Bostonians in particular, were determined that Canada must fall.

      Could the American colonists ever have conquered French Canada on their own?

      It was possible but not likely. The colonists had a vastly greater population, and plenty of arms and ammunition, but they lacked unity. It was up to Old England, therefore, to apply the final pressure and bring about the final victories. In 1758 General Jeffrey Amherst—after whom Amherst College is named—captured Fortress Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. Bostonians, naturally, pointed out this would have been unnecessary if the motherland had simply left Louisbourg in their possession. The following year, 1759, General Amherst captured Fort Ticonderoga and then Crown Point, as he took control of the Lake Champlain Valley. Meanwhile, British General James Wolfe sailed up the St. Lawrence River to besiege Québec.

      Again Bostonians pointed out that their own plans had been much simpler. If the daring adventure of Sir William Phips had succeeded in 1690, there would now be no need to attack Québec City. But the British did their job with consummate thoroughness. After a siege of three months, General Wolfe brought his men to the Plains of Abraham, on the western side of the city. The climactic battle lasted only fifteen minutes, but it endured that England would capture Québec, and eventually possess all of Canada. General Wolfe died during the battle; the Marquis de Montcalm died of his wounds several days later.

      How did Bostonians receive the news of Québec’s fall?

      They could not have been more exuberant. Only one last campaign was required, and when it ended with the capture of Montréal in September 1760, the French and Indian War was well and truly over.

      One sermon after another, delivered from the pulpits of Boston churches, proclaimed the end of the war and freedom from fear. For almost three generations, Bostonians and their country cousins had lived in fear of French invasion, Indian attack, or some combination of the two.

      Are there any testimonials as to how Bostonians felt at the reduction of French Canada?

      Many exist in the form of sermons and broadsides (large printed sheets that circulated as “extras”). One of the best-known is entitled simply “Canada Subjected—A New Song.”

      The Savages lay down their arms.

      The French do cease to raise alarms.

      Now Canada is fallen down

      Before the troops of GEORGE’s crown.

      When did the transition from one monarch to another take place?

      King George II died suddenly in October 1760, and the British throne immediately passed to his twenty-two-year-old grandson, King George III. At the time of his accession, George III was popular, both in England and the colonies, not least because he spoke English as his first language.

      What does “Yankee” mean?

      The derivation of this word is uncertain. Some historians believe that the word was given to the colonists by the Native Americans, some of whom used “Yen-geez” to describe someone who did not speak very much. Others assert that Yankee is a word developed in New England, and its appearance indicated a difference between the Bostonians of around 1770 and those from a century earlier. What can be said with confidence is that the word Yankee has come to mean a New Englander who is tight with his money.

      Later, during the Civil War, Yankee became a derogatory term, meaning a Northerner who came south to disturb and disrupt the lives of the Confederates. Sometime during the nineteenth century, Yankee also became the term used by many foreigners, English men and women especially, to describe