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Treaty of Paris February 10, 1763
Unlike Quebec, Montreal had no natural defenses The next target of the British forces was Montreal. With his troops deserting and low on provisions, Governor Vaudreuil surrendered Montreal and all of Canada to the British in September 8, 1760 . Amherst refused to allow the French to surrender with the honors of war and the French burned their battle flags rather than turn them over to the British . The war dragged on for another two years after the capture of Montreal, until the Treaty of Paris was signed between France, England and Spain on Feb. 15, 1763 . King George III does some very odd things, but then who is to argue with the king?
In September of 1760, Pierre François de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal, the King's Governor of New France, negotiated a surrender with British General Jeffrey Amherst. General Amherst granted Vaudreuil's request that any French residents who chose to remain in the colony would be given freedom to continue worshiping in their Roman Catholic tradition, continued ownership of their property, and the right to remain undisturbed in their homes. The British provided medical treatment for the sick and wounded French soldiers and French regular troops were returned to France aboard British ships with an agreement that they were not to serve again in the present war.King Louis XV .
With the Fall of New france, Governer Vaudreuil and other military and civilian officals departed to France, where many were accused of corruption and placed in the Bastille . Trails began in 1761Vaudreuil and seven others were acquitted, others were fined, banished or imprisoned .
Signatories of the Treaty of Paris
Consequences of the French and Indian War
The Treaty of Paris elevated Great Britain to the strongest power in Europe with the largest world empire .A long dream of the English colonists to stop the combined French and Indian attacks was realized .The West lay open, and the Indians stood alone and could no longer count on as being courted as allies, playing one nation against the other .It was inevitable that the Americans would expand into Indian lands .
The war changed economic, political, and social relations between Britain and its colonies. It plunged Britain into debt, which the Crown chose to pay off with increased tax money from its colonies, which led to the Stamp Act crisis and further trouble with the colonists . In the 70 years of conflict with France in North America, England had to bring in regular troops from the homeland, as the colonists would rather join the local miltia.A special regiment of regulars was created for the Americans, but it had little appeal. Men would rather join the militia, with a bounty for joining, the ability to elect officers and shorter term of duty . No colonists in their right mind would join the British Navy .
Weapons changed little during the French and English colonial wars in North America. Rifled barrels were an improvement over smooth bores, but the Europeans were slow to adopt them .Tactics of the Indians and the Rangers were used more and more as the war went on, then forgotten by the British. Braddock's defeat was to be repeated by Burgoyne in 1777 and Pekenham in New Orleans in 1815 . The Americas , however, eagerly used the rifle, long used in hunting and employed Ranger methods against the tradition bound redcoats .
The war revealed the internal fault of the French and Spanish colonial mindest . Their colonies were a closed society under four old authorities : the king, church,nobility and monopoly .Those not satisfied at home could not escape to the colonies. The colonists were over regulated, the French Parliament had no real governing powers and there was no Glorious Revolution as in England to limit the king's power . In New France, there was no representative assembly, no competing sects, critical newspapers and education was controlled by the church .In Paris, the whole idea of the colony was called into question, it did not return a profit and less and less resources were sent to maintain it as the war went on .The English companies that were first sent to North America also faced this problem, and many colonies reverted to the crown. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 asserted the supremacy of the constitution over the monarchy. Influenced by this, the colonists began to try to limit the power of the royal governors and strove for increasing self-government against a Parliment that was felt to them to have arrogated to itself the same absolute power against which it had fought.This spirit of self-dependence was lacking in New France .
The British were also keen on keeping the peace in North America, especially on the colonies' western frontiers, so in an effort to appease the various Indian tribes the Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued, prohibiting colonists from engaging in further expansion west of the Appalachian Mountains. In taking these measures the British government failed to appreciate that by eliminating the French threat in North America the British had in fact removed one of the strongest incentives the colonies had for retaining their links with Great Britain. Unpopular taxes, restrictions on colonial expansion and concessions given to Quebec's Catholic population all contributed to the beginning the American Revolutionary War.
By the time of the French and Indian War, the Englishman was almost a foreigner to the third and fourth generation Americans of the colonies. They became conscious of their separateness whenever they cooperated with the British military . Montcalm himself predicted that soon the colonists would try to breakaway from the homeland . With the French menace removed, the Americans began to reexamine their imperial relations . Britain, also began to reexamine the relationship, now with an expanded empire and an immense war debt .
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