You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Hello and thank you for joining the American Revolution.

This week episode 16 the Treaty of Paris and the John Wilkes affair.

So last week the British crushed the Cherokee uprising on the Carolina frontier

and the new Butte ministry began picking off French and then Spanish colonies in the West Indies and

around the world, all the while looking for some way to end the war before Britain

drowned in debt. Although the war in the North American continent had essentially

ended in 1760, General Amherst would have one final tussle with the French in 1762.

With the French gone other than small contingents in Louisiana and the Mississippi

Valley and with the British Navy preventing any cross-Atlantic attacks Amherst focused the bulk of his limited resources on the Ohio

Valley and the Great Lakes region, where Indians were likely to be his greatest problems.

He also looked further west to Detroit and the Illinois Valley to make sure those Western tribes were aware that the French were gone forever and that they would be working with the British going forward.

As a result, a pacified region like New York, working with the British going forward.

As a result, a pacified region like Newfoundland

had only a token force of 300 regulars.

In May 1762, a few French ships slipped past the British blockade, a force of about 800 French regulars,

landed on St. John's and late June.

The British garrison on the island was focused on preventing enemy ships from

using the waters. When the French landed on the other side of the island and attacked by land,

they took the local garrison by surprise, and occupied Fort William relatively easily.

Now you might ask why the French landed only a few hundred troops on an island isolated

without any support or hope of reinforcement given the continuing British blockade.

Certainly 800 French troops were not going to retake Canada.

...