[Sidenote: _French raids on Wells, Casco Bay, Deerfield, and Haverhill._] It was in Europe that the battle of the American colonies was fought, in Flanders and at Blenheim, rather than on the St. Lawrence or on the coasts of Acadia and New England. There was fighting in America, but it was in the main fighting of the same indecisive kind as had gone before--murder, pillage, and the like; and history repeated itself with singular fidelity. On May 4, 1702, war was declared: in August, 1703, the old work of raiding the New England frontier was resumed. The settlement at Wells, which had suffered before, was the first to suffer again; the neighbouring settlements, as far as Casco Bay, were marauded by the Abenaki Indians; and the fort at Casco was hard beset, until relieved by an armed vessel from Massachusetts. In the following year, at the end of February, 1704, the village of Deerfield was attacked by night by some 250 French and Indians. It stood on the Connecticut river, on the north-western frontier of Massachusetts, and at the date of the attack contained in all nearly 300 human beings. Of them about fifty were killed, and over 100 were carried off, among the latter being the minister of the place, John Williams, who survived to tell a tale of almost incredible loss and suffering in a narrative entitled _The Redeemed Captive returning to Sion_. A similar {139} attack was made, in 1708, on the village of Haverhill on the Merrimac river, which cost the lives of about fifty villagers; and one after another the border settlements, during these troubled years, were infested by savages appearing from and disappearing in the backwoods under cover of night. The authors of the outrages were the French rulers of Canada; their agents were in the main converted Indians; the series of raids was not so much the spontaneous movement of natives against white men, as a crusade against heretics, prompted and led by Europeans, and carried out by Indian warriors on the lines of Indian warfare. There was much vicarious suffering. The past inroads of the Iroquois into Canada led to years of retaliation on New England: retaliation on New England induced the New Englanders in their turn to attack Acadia. [Sidenote: _Port Royal threatened by Major Church and Colonel March._]