From the treaty of Utrecht in 1713 to the “Old French War,” 1744-48, peace prevailed. In the latter war many inhabitants of the village were killed in skirmishes or cut down by skulking Indians in the service of the French. In one skirmish, or rather massacre, at Beukendal, three miles northwest of Schenectady, twenty men were killed and thirteen captured and carried away. Then came the last French war, from 1753 to 1763. The English now had posts at Fort Hunter, Fort Schuyler, Fort Johnson and Oswego on the west, at Fort Ann and Fort Edward on the north. Sir William Johnson and others had established settlements up the Mohawk Valley. Sir William was general superintendent of Indian affairs and a Major-General in the English service. His influence over the Iroquois was commanding; his early victory at Lake George was important; the English carried the war into the French territory. Schenectady enjoyed immunity from attack, and was enabled, besides maintaining a garrison in its fort, to send its quotas of troops to distant service, one company assisting in the English siege and capture of Havana in 1762. The treaty of Paris in 1763, by which the French yielded the dominion of North America to the English, seemed to promise a lasting peace. But the War of the Revolution came on. Our Indian allies, the Iroquois, remained faithful to their long allegiance to the English Crown, and became our enemies under the leadership of Sir John Johnson, who, succeeding to the estate and title of his father, Sir William, adhered to the Crown, under which both became ennobled. Schenectady was again threatened, from the side of Canada, but by its former friends and allies. Aside from its contribution of six companies to the patriot cause, its position made it the base from which those who adhered to the English cause sought to send aid and comfort to the enemy. General Washington came here early in the struggle, and made arrangements for the frontier defence.[19] The Schenectady patriots appointed a committee of vigilance and safety, who, as the one hundred and sixty-two written pages of their records show, repressed with strong hand and scant ceremony the slightest evasions of the orders of Congress and of the military authorities, and all attempts at treasonable intercourse with the enemy. Finally American independence was won, and Schenectady, after nearly a century of unrest, enjoyed the blessing of permanent peace. The forts and stockade soon disappeared. [Illustration: UNION COLLEGE, 1795.] Meantime the little village had steadily grown, becoming a chartered borough in 1765, and advancing to the dignity of a city in 1798. Schenectady received its first officially carried mail on the 3d day of April, 1763,—Benjamin Franklin being the colonial postmaster-general,—founded the Schenectady Academy in 1784, which became Union College in 1795, and read its first newspaper, _The Schenectady Gazette_, January 6, 1799.