The Iroquois pressed the French with so much vigour that in 1689 they even laid siege to Montreal. But by 1696 the French, assisted by all the Algonquin tribes within reach, and led by their warlike viceroy, Count Frontenac, one of the most picturesque figures in American history, at length succeeded in getting the upperhand and dealing the Long House a terrible blow, from the effects of which it never recovered. The league remained formidable, however, until the time of the revolutionary war. In 1715 its fighting strength was partially repaired by the adoption of the kindred Iroquois tribe of Tuscaroras, who had just been expelled from North Carolina by the English settlers, and migrated to New York. After this accession the league, henceforth known as the Six Nations, formed a power by no means to be despised, though much less bold and aggressive than in the previous century. After administering a check to the Iroquois, the French and Algonquins kept up for more than sixty years a desultory warfare against the English colonies. Whenever war broke out between England and France, it meant war in America as well as in Europe. Indeed, one of the chief objects of war, on the part of each of these two nations, was to extend its colonial dominions at the expense of the other. France and England were at war from 1689 to 1697; from 1702 to 1713; and from 1743 to 1748. The men in New York or Boston in 1750, who could remember the past sixty years, could thus look back over at least four-and-twenty years of open war; and even in the intervals of professed peace there was a good deal of disturbance on the frontiers. A most frightful sort of warfare it was, ghastly with torture of prisoners and the ruthless murder of women and children. The expense of raising and arming troops for defence was great enough to subject several of the colonies to a heavy burden of debt. In 1750 Massachusetts was just throwing off the load of debt under which she had staggered since 1693; and most of this debt was incurred for expeditions against the French and Algonquins. [Sidenote: Difficulty of getting the English colonies to act in concert.]