A. G. BRADLEY'S recent work, _The Fight with France for North America_ (1900). {250} CHAPTER IX THE CONQUEST OF CANADA [Sidenote: _The Seven Years' War._] In May, 1756, Great Britain declared war against France. In June, France declared war against Great Britain. The war between these two nations formed part of the Seven Years' War, one of the most widely extended and, in its results, one of the most decisive in history. In the first number of the _Annual Register_, for the year 1758,[1] Edmund Burke wrote: 'The war, into which all parties and interests seem now to be so perfectly blended, arose from causes which originally had not the least connexion, the uncertain limits of the English and French territories in America, and the mutual claims of the houses of Austria and Brandenburg on the Duchy of Silesia.' After three years of the war, in September, 1759, Horace Walpole wrote in his laughing style, 'I believe the world will come to be fought for somewhere between the north of Germany and the back of Canada.'[2] [Footnote 1: p. 2.] [Footnote 2: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, vol. iii, p. 249 (Letter of Sept. 13, 1759).] [Sidenote: _Numerical superiority of the English in America._] On the continent of Europe, Great Britain had Frederick of Prussia for an ally; on the other side were France, Austria, Russia, and Sweden. Beyond the Atlantic, a French population in Canada, Acadia, and Louisiana of less than 90,000 souls was ranged against British colonies with a population at least thirteen times as numerous. One or other of the larger British colonies, taken alone, was better peopled with white colonists than Canada. {251} [Sidenote: _Official corruption in Canada._] [Sidenote: _Bigot and his gang._]