Louis Antoine de Bougainville - Seven Years' War (French and Indian War)

Seven Years' War (French and Indian War)

Further information: France in the Seven Years War

In 1756 he went to Canada as captain of dragoons and aide-de-camp to the Marquis de Montcalm. He took an active part in the capture of Fort Oswego in 1756 and in 1757 at the Battle of Fort William Henry. He was wounded in 1758 at the successful defence of Fort Carillon. He sailed back to France the following winter, under orders from the marquis to obtain additional military resources for the colony; during this crossing, he continued familiarising himself with the ways of the sea, skills that would later serve him well. Having distinguished himself in the war against Britain, he was rewarded with the cross of St Louis and returned to Canada the following year with the rank of colonel, but with little supplies to show for his trip - the metropolitan authorities having decided that "When the house is on fire, one does not worry about the stables".

During the pivotal year of 1759 (see Seven Years' War and French and Indian War), he participated in the defence of the capital of New France, the fortified Quebec City. With a small elite troop under his command, among which the Grenadiers and the Volontaires à cheval, he patrolled the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, upstream from the city, all summer long stopping the British several times from landing and thus cutting communications with Montreal. He was not given sufficient time, however, to rally his troops and attack the British rear when they successfully climbed up to the Plains of Abraham and attacked Quebec on September 13.

Following the death of the Marquis de Montcalm and the fall of Québec on 18 September - after the colonel's aborted attempt to resupply the besieged city - Bougainville was dispatched to the western front by his new commanding officer, the Chevalier de Lévis and attempted to stop the British advance from his entrenchments at Île-aux-Noix. He was among the officers who accompanied Lévis to Saint Helen's Island off Montreal for the last French stand in North America before the general capitulation of 1761. Of the war, Bougainville wrote in his journal: "It is an abominable kind of war. The very air we breathe is contagious of insensibility and hardness".

Shipped back to Europe along with the other French officers, all deprived of military honours by the victors, Bougainville was prohibited from taking up any further active duty against the British under the terms of surrender. He spent the remaining years of the Seven Years' War (1761 to 1763) as a diplomat and helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris that eventually conceded most of New France to the British Empire.