The war did not begin well for the British. However, his adversaries in the Cabinet outmaneuvered him by making the plans public, thus alerting the French Government and escalating a distant frontier skirmish into a full-scale war. When news of Washington's failure reached British Prime Minister Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle, he called for a quick undeclared retaliatory strike. British colonial forces, led by lieutenant colonel George Washington, attempted to expel the French in 1754, but were outnumbered and defeated by the French. The French had constructed a number of forts in this region in an attempt to strengthen their claim on the territory. The border between French and British possessions was not well defined, and one disputed territory was the upper Ohio River valley. (See Incidents Leading up to the French and Indian War and Albany Plan)

In 1753, prior to the outbreak of hostilities, Great Britain controlled the 13 colonies up to the Appalachian Mountains, but beyond lay New France, a very large, sparsely settled colony that stretched from Louisiana through the Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes to Canada. In North America, the war pitted France, French colonists, and their Native allies against Great Britain, the Anglo-American colonists and the Iroquois Confederacy, which controlled most of upstate New York and parts of northern Pennsylvania. The French and Indian War resulted from ongoing frontier tensions in North America as both French and British imperial officials and colonists sought to extend each country's sphere of influence in frontier regions. The war provided Great Britain enormous territorial gains in North America, but disputes over subsequent frontier policy and paying the war's expenses led to colonial discontent, and ultimately to the American revolution. The French and Indian War began in 1754 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763.

The French and Indian War was the North American conflict that was part of a larger imperial conflict between Great Britain and France known as the Seven Years' War. French and Indian War/Seven Years' War, 1754-1763

1755 old frontier mod