ure of Quebec practically meant the conquest of Canada, which, with
Newfoundland, etc., was ceded to Great Britain; and though there were
troubles on the Pennsylvanian frontier, to suppress which a regiment of
Highlanders was despatched, nothing of real importance occurred till
the revolt of the American Colonies in 1774.

More stress is laid on this portion of the army’s story, because the
war was between sections of the same race, and because much came of it.
Great Britain commenced the American contest that at first seemed so
unequal, under some disadvantages, none the less. The result of a long
period of military inactivity was, as it always has been and will be,
most materially felt. There were few old, or at least veteran, soldiers
in the ranks who had been under fire, and the younger officers were
equally inexperienced. This was natural to expect after

    “The cankers of a calm world and a long peace,”

but it was at the bottom of both the want of skill with which
this singular war was conducted, and the want of appreciation, at
first certainly, of how such an enemy as the army of the colonists
should be tactically met. It was to be a war in which bush-fighting
and skirmishing were to be the leading features, as Braddock’s
disaster long years before and the defeat at Ticonderoga had already
conclusively proved. But the British leaders were to learn the fact,
they might have foreseen, in the “only school fools learn in, that of
experience.”

In order to understand the reason for the want of uniformity and union
in the desultory campaigns that followed each other, a glance at the
map is necessary. It will be seen there that when hostilities broke
out, the seat of war was practically cut in two by the Hudson, at the
mouth of which was New York; and beyond Albany, up stream, a series
of forts guarded the line of approach from Canada by way of Quebec,
Lake Champlain, and Saratoga. This general line, therefore, cut the
confederation into two unequal parts, and separated the, at first, more
resolute