"A Few Acres of Snow": The Saga of the French and Indian Wars

by Robert Leckie

Overview

"Leckie is a gifted writer with the ability to explain complicatedmilitary matters in layperson's terms, while sustaining the dramainvolved in a life-and-death struggle. His portraits of the keyplayers in that struggle . . . are seamlessly interwoven with hisexciting narrative." -Booklist"As always, [Leckie] describes themaneuvers, battles, and results in telling detail with a cinematicstyle, and his portraits . . . are first-rate."-The Dallas MorningNews"Leckie's accounts of battles, important individuals, and therole of Native Americans bring to life the distant drama of theFrench and Indian Wars."-The Daily Reflector

With his celebrated sense of drama and eye for colorful detail,acclaimed military historian Robert Leckie charts the long, savageconflict between England and France in their quest for supremacy inpre-Revolutionary America. Packed with sharply etched profiles ofall the major players-including George Washington, Samuel deChamplain, William Pitt, Edward Braddock, Count Frontenac, JamesWolfe, Thomas Gage, and the nobly vanquished Marquis deMontcalm-this panoramic history chronicles the four great colonialwars: the War of the Grand Alliance (King William's War), the Warof the Spanish Succession (Queen Anne's War), the War of theAustrian Succession (King George's War), and the decisive Frenchand Indian War (the Seven Years' War). Leckie not only providesperspective on exactly how the New World came to be such a fiercelycontested prize in Western Civilization, but also shows us exactlywhy we speak English today instead of French-and reminds us howeasily things might have gone the other way.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780471390206
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	09/11/2000
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	623,192
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

ROBERT LECKIE is the author of over thirty books on military history, including George Washington's War: The Saga of the American Revolution, None Died in Vain: The Saga of the Civil War, and most recently, Okinawa: The Last Battle of World War II.

Read an Excerpt

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Table of Contents

Partial Table of Content:

A CONTINENT IS DISCOVERED.

Christopher Columbus.

The Colonizing Contest Begins.

PRELUDE TO WARS.

Samuel de Champlain.

War in the Wilderness.

King Louis XIV of France.

Iroquois Revenge and King Philip's War.

WAR OF THE GRAND ALLIANCE, 1688-1697: (KING WILLIAM'S WAR).

Count Frontenac.

Frontenac and the Fur Trade.

Canada the Quarrelsome.

Sir William Phips Wins and Loses.

WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION, 1701-1714: (QUEEN ANNE'S WAR).

Anne Succeeds William.

WAR OF THE AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION, 1740-1748: (KING GEORGE'SWAR).

The "Milishy" Take Louisbourg.

SEVEN YEARS' WAR, 1756-1763: (FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR).

George Washington.

Defeat and Death of Braddock.

Washington: Patriot, Planter, Politician.

Retribution.

Selected Bibliography.

Index.

Editorial Reviews

Leckie's accounts of battles, important individuals, and the role of Native Americans bring to life the distant drama of the French and Indian Wars.

The Daily Reflector

As always, [Leckie] describes the maneuvers, battles, and results in telling detail with a cinematic style, and his portraits . . . are first-rate.

Dallas Morning News

Prolific historian Leckie (From Sea to Shining Sea: From the War of 1812 to the Mexican War; The Saga of America's Expansion, LJ 11/15/93) examines the epic struggle of the British and French for the ultimate control of North America. Beginning with Columbus, Leckie takes us through nearly 300 years of exploration, Colonial wars, and conflict culminating in the French and Indian War. The result is a soundly researched narrative of American history from 1492 to 1763. The interaction of settlers, Indians, traders, kings, and politicians is presented clearly, but this is no book for the casual reader. One learns how both personal and nationalistic feelings influenced politics and warfare at the time; like the other periods he has documented, Leckie calls this period in our history a "saga." The book would serve well as a textbook on pre-Revolutionary America and is appropriate for serious students and researchers. Recommended for large public libraries and special collections in American history.--David M. Alperstein, Queens Borough P.L., Jamaica, NY

Library Journal

This latest entry in Leckie's ever-expanding series of popular military histories of the US (Okinawa: The Last Battle of World War II, 1995, etc.) displays both the author's idiosyncratic research methods and his tenuous grip on the principles of historiography. Beginning with a lengthy, superfluous account of the career of Christopher Columbus, Leckie proceeds by identifying the principal players and events in the violent pageant of the struggle for dominion in the New World—especially in Canada, a territory dismissed by Voltaire as "a few acres of snow." Although Leckie relates colorful anecdotes about such compelling figures in the French and Indian Wars as Samuel de Champlain, Count Frontenac, George Washington, and Marquis Montcalm (he includes some harrowing and gory accounts of the tortures administered by the American Indians to unlucky Jesuit missionaries and slow-footed farmers, some of whom were roasted and eaten), he fails to achieve an effective narrative balance. He does not appear to have any sort of principle to guide his choice and arrangement of details. A sentence that begins with Columbus in Reykjavik ends in 1950 with the US Navy in the port of Seoul; halfway through a perfunctory chapter called "Heroines of Both Frontiers," Leckie abruptly drops his discussion of courageous women and returns to battles and brutality and Real Men. Some sloppiness in writing and editing leave stylistic faults such as clichés ("kill two birds with one stone"), and use of awkward folksy locutions ("not worth a polliwog's tail"). Finally, there are weird diatribes against the "starry-eyed American liberals" of today and against Oliver Cromwell, whom he twice identifies asa "hymn-singing swine."

Kirkus Reviews