By Stephen Brumwell

Motorists crossing the Lake Champlain Bridge between New York and Vermont pass near the ruins of a fortress that was once a scourge of the colonial American frontier. Only the inconspicuous foundations of Fort St. Frederic survive at Crown Point, N.Y. Completed in 1737, the formidable structure was dominated by a four-story citadel that bristled with cannons and towered over the surrounding wilderness like a medieval keep.

Built by French troops from Canada during a rare interlude of peace with the English colonists to the south, Fort St. Frederic became the base for multiple strikes against New York and New England when warfare resumed in 1744. In November 1745, for example, French raiders and their indigenous allies departed from the fort to destroy the settlement of Saratoga, N.Y., killing dozens and abducting many more.

The conflict in which Fort St. Frederic established its sinister reputation was known to the English colonists as King George's War, an offshoot of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48). King George's War (named after the British monarch, George II) followed a pattern established by two previous North American confrontations that grew out of contests started in Europe: The War of the League of Augsburg (1688-97) triggered King William's War, and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14) begot Queen Anne's War.

With "King George's War and the Thirty-Year Peace," Michael G. Laramie completes a trilogy of finely detailed and well-researched narratives that shed light on conflicts typically overshadowed by the French and Indian War (1754-63). That clash between Britain and France reversed the pattern: It started in America, in the Ohio Valley, then spread to Europe and beyond.

Despite his title, Mr. Laramie emphasizes that the term "peace" is a misnomer when applied to the three decades that preceded the outbreak of King George's War. Although there were no formal hostilities between Britain and France, violence was common enough. In the second decade of the 18th century, pirates such as Stede Bonnet and Edward Teach ("Blackbeard") operated off the Carolinas and were only suppressed after bloody naval engagements. The 1720s saw skirmishes between English settlers on the borders of Maine (at that time part of Massachusetts) and the pro-French tribes of the Wabanaki Confederacy to the northeast.

There were also rising tensions with the continent's third imperial power, Spain, especially after the foundation of Georgia in 1732 was deemed a threat to neighboring Spanish Florida. During the War of Jenkins' Ear (named after the alleged mutilation of a British smuggler by Spanish coast guards), nine colonies contributed men to an "American Regiment" that suffered heavy casualties at the 1741 siege of Cartagena, in present-day Colombia.

Meanwhile, Georgia's founder, James Oglethorpe, led an unsuccessful expedition in 1740 to capture St. Augustine, the northern outpost of Florida, but redeemed his reputation by repulsing a Spanish counterattack upon his colony in 1742. Depicted by Mr. Laramie as a mercurial character who veered from indecisiveness to vigorous action, Oglethorpe benefited from the martial prowess of his Creek and Chickasaw allies.

Although Britain and France had already been fighting in Europe, war between them wasn't officially declared until 1744. King George's War opened with French attacks on the British colony of Nova Scotia. The French had asserted their claim to the region decades earlier by commencing construction of a fortified port at Louisbourg, on Cape Breton Island, which guarded the Gulf of St. Lawrence and protected access to the New France settlements of Quebec and Montreal.

Louisbourg was a base for French privateer vessels to prey upon Britain's lucrative cod fisheries off Newfoundland as well as the maritime trade of New England. William Shirley, the colonial governor of Massachusetts, gained widespread local support when he proposed attacking it. This was, as Mr. Laramie points out, "an aggressive and extremely risky plan" that had to be implemented before anticipated French reinforcements arrived.

In May 1745 a force of 4,000 New Englanders, led by the Maine merchant William Pepperrell and supported by a British naval squadron under Adm. Peter Warren, got ashore, subjected Louisbourg to bombardment and forced its surrender six weeks later. The unexpected colonial victory boosted regional pride and generated celebratory pamphlets and sermons. "When reports reached the shores of New England," Mr. Laramie notes, "church bells rang for hours announcing the news."

As the War of the Austrian Succession dragged on, however, Shirley's stunning coup was countered by setbacks elsewhere. In 1746 the French captured Madras, the major British settlement in India. Distracted by the Jacobite rebellion that erupted in Scotland in 1745, Britain struggled to stem French gains in the strategically vital Low Countries (modern Belgium and the Netherlands).

By late 1747 the virtual collapse of Britain's unenthusiastic ally, the Dutch Republic, threatened to tilt the balance of power irrevocably in favor of the French. Louisbourg was Britain's only bargaining chip, and had to be relinquished in exchange for French withdrawal from the Netherlands. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, signed in October 1748, ended the global war and returned various captured territories to their former owners.

Shirley had been convinced that the rivalry between Britain and France in North America could only be settled by eradicating French control of Canada. His conviction proved prescient: Although the French and Indian War began badly for Britain, the tide turned in 1758 when Louisbourg was captured again, and this time demolished. The following year, with the Anglo-Americans on the march, the French abandoned and destroyed Fort St. Frederic. New France capitulated in 1760. A mere 15 years later, Britain's American colonies revolted against the Mother Country that had defeated the old enemy that had menaced them for generations.

--Mr. Brumwell is the author of "Turncoat: Benedict Arnold and the Crisis of America Liberty."

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July 29, 2025 13:38 ET (17:38 GMT)

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