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The Seven Years’ War was one of many conflicts between Britain and France between the 18th and 19th centuries, and lasted from 1754 to 1763… which is a nine year period. Thanks historians. Truly you are the masters of naming things. Although, to be fair, the War did have like a dozen different names. The Americans called it the French and Indian War, the Prussians called it the Third Silesian War, and, my personal favorite, the Swedes called it the Pomeranian War. Because I guess they thought puppies would make things seem less bleak. The War did have a fair amount of involvement across the world, so much so that Winston Churchill himself referred to it as the First World War, but the most famous events occurred in the American colonies and so that's where we'll focus on here.

The main cause of the War was money. Britain wanted more of it in order to dominate over the rest of the world and colonies are a great way to make money because they both produce and consume finished goods overseas. The Brits decided they needed more land to fuel their colonial economy and thus started pushing westward into territory that was populated mostly by Native American tribes and French fur trappers. The French were much much more likely to cooperate with the Natives and learn their languages and trade fairly with them, as opposed to the British who pretty much just said “Let's kill them all and take the land”. As you can imagine, this made a lot of tribes side with the French when war finally broke out. The French side of things also had another ally in the Assassins, who had grown considerably in the colonies after being refounded by a Canadian merchant named John de la Tour in the 1740s. De la Tour died in the Siege of Louisburg in 1745, but not before passing the Mentorship off to Achilles Davenport, who ended up leading the colonial Assassins throughout the 1750s. The Templars had been taking advantage of the political turmoil to find Precursor sites and artifacts. Most famously Haytham Kenway was sent to Boston in July 1754 to meet five fellow Templars: William Johnson, John Pitcairn, Thomas Hickey, Benjamin Church, and Charles Lee, who helped him in his search for a Temple.

Around that same time, the Assassin Shay Cormac was assigned to infiltrate the Albany Congress, during which Benjamin Franklin was giving his famous “Join or Die” speech, to kill a Templar named James Wardrop and reclaim his Precursor Box. Shay met up with Assassin Hope Jensen and the two brought the Box, as well as the Voynich Manuscript, to Benjamin Franklin later in the month while he was conducting an experiment with electricity. The Pieces of Eden revealed a map leading to a Temple in Lisbon, and Shay was sent out to find it. Haytham's search continued as well, and in the winter he met a Kanien’kehá:ka woman named Kaniehtí:io, “Ziio” for short, whom he had helped rescue from a slaver months before. She mistook him for an Assassin ally and agreed to help him find the Temple if he helped kill a Templar named Edward Braddock, a British general with a murderous streak. Haytham himself hated Braddock and agreed. In the summer of 1755, Braddock led an expedition to oust the French and their Native allies from the land and claim it for the British. He had already failed to fight French forts the previous year when his fellow soldier, George Washington, built and abandoned Fort Necessity after losing a terrible battle. Now on his way to Fort Duquesne, Haytham, Ziio, and their allies ambushed Braddock’s men and killed Braddock. Ziio then showed Haytham the Temple entrance, only to find that his key didn't work. They compensated for this failure by having a… lovely night. Ziio then dumped Haytham after finding out he was a Templar, and they never spoke again. Their son was born in 1756.

Meanwhile, Shay returned to the Davenport Homestead in 1756, his heart filled with rage due to the fact that his interference with the Lisbon Temple triggered an earthquake that nearly wiped out the city. Shay mistakenly thought Achilles made him do it on purpose, and subsequently betrayed the Assassins. They shot him down and he fell into the ocean, miraculously waking up in New York City weeks later. There he met Colonel George Monro, a Templar, who earned his trust and recruited him unofficially. The two friends along with fellow Templar and famous explorer Christopher Gist began to help the British army beat back the French. In August 1757, Monro led his forces against French troops in Fort William McHenry, who were commanded by Louis-Joseph de Montcalm. The local Natives rallied behind the Wolastoqiyik Assassin, Kesegowaase, and they tried to massacre the British once Monro surrendered. Monro was saved by Shay, but the Assassins ultimately killed the colonel in Albany on November 3, 1757. Shay killed Kesegowaase that day and was soon officially inducted into the Templar Order.

Shay led a massive purge of the Assassins in the colonies as the years went on, believing it was his duty to stop them from finding another Precursor site. After helping James Cook at the Siege of Louisbourg in 1758, Shay killed famed Assassin Adéwalé. Then in 1759, he killed Hope Jensen in New York. He then began to track down Louis-Joseph Gaultier, Chevalier de la Vérendrye, famed explorer and Assassin. He attacked his ship in the North Atlantic and tossed him into the icy waters after learning that the Box was in the hands of Shay’s childhood best friend and Assassin, Liam O'Brien, who was setting sail up to the Arctic with Achilles to enter the Temple. The Templars cornered the Assassins in the Temple, which collapsed around them, and Shay was forced to kill Liam. Achilles was spared by Haytham upon Shay’s request, but Haytham still crippled the Mentor, sending him limping home alone with all his Assassins dead and gone. Shay had found out from Liam that Chevalier had sent the Box off somewhere secret, and so Haytham assigned him to reclaim it, a task that would take many many years.

With the Assassins annihilated, the British were able to crush the last thread of French and Native resistance. By 1759, they had captured Forts Duquesne, Ticonderoga, and Louisbourg, and in September of that year they captured Quebec after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. Montreal surrendered the next year. There were a few other battles as time passed, such as when George Washington burnt down several innocent Native villages including the one in which Ziio lived and thus leaving her son Ratonhnhaké:ton without a mother, simply because the general had minor suspicions of them supporting the French which had little evidence to back up. And then the War officially ended with a British victory with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The French lost all their colonies in North America except for the extremely valuable sugar producing islands of the Caribbean, and the British claimed it all for themselves. The Natives tragically got nothing but more bullets in their flesh because the British were terrible people back then.

So why was this tragically-outcomed war so important? Well, it's mostly for what it triggered afterwards. Many Americans grow up in class talking about how the War led to the British imposing new taxes on their American colonies in order to pay off the war debt without consulting the colonists and inspiring them to rebel, but we're actually going to put that off for just a moment. First let's talk about how it affected the people outside of those 13 colonies. Obviously the dozens of Native tribes were now being openly oppressed by the British government and were either widely murdered, kicked off their lands, or both, a tragedy that will never be forgiven. The French colonists in North America also got a bad run. For example, from 1755 to 1764, 11,500 French Acadians were forced out of their homes once the British came in during what became known as the Expulsion. Hundreds didn't survive the deportation, but those who did mostly settled in Louisiana and became Cajuns. Louisiana had been transferred over into the hands of the Spanish government, and many colonists wouldn't stand for it. The 13 colonies weren't the only place where rebellion filled up people's hearts. Louisiana was about to fight it's own demons.

And it's there that the Assassins would make their comeback. The struggle to fight Templar tyranny was far, far from over.

Description

The Seven Years’ War was one of many conflicts between Britain and France between the 18th and 19th centuries, and lasted from 1754 to 1763… which is a nine year period. Thanks historians. Truly you are the masters of naming things. Although, to be fair, the War did have like a dozen different names. The Americans called it the French and Indian War, the Prussians called it the Third Silesian War, and, my personal favorite, the Swedes called it the Pomeranian War. Because I guess they thought puppies would make things seem less bleak. The War did have a fair amount of involvement across the world, so much so that Winston Churchill himself referred to it as the First World War, but the most famous events occurred in the American colonies and so that's where we'll focus on here.

The main cause of the War was money. Britain wanted more of it in order to dominate over the rest of the world and colonies are a great way to make money because they both produce and consume finished goods overseas. The Brits decided they needed more land to fuel their colonial economy and thus started pushing westward into territory that was populated mostly by Native American tribes and French fur trappers. The French were much much more likely to cooperate with the Natives and learn their languages and trade fairly with them, as opposed to the British who pretty much just said “Let's kill them all and take the land”. As you can imagine, this made a lot of tribes side with the French when war finally broke out. The French side of things also had another ally in the Assassins, who had grown considerably in the colonies after being refounded by a Canadian merchant named John de la Tour in the 1740s. De la Tour died in the Siege of Louisburg in 1745, but not before passing the Mentorship off to Achilles Davenport, who ended up leading the colonial Assassins throughout the 1750s. The Templars had been taking advantage of the political turmoil to find Precursor sites and artifacts. Most famously Haytham Kenway was sent to Boston in July 1754 to meet five fellow Templars: William Johnson, John Pitcairn, Thomas Hickey, Benjamin Church, and Charles Lee, who helped him in his search for a Temple.

Around that same time, the Assassin Shay Cormac was assigned to infiltrate the Albany Congress, during which Benjamin Franklin was giving his famous “Join or Die” speech, to kill a Templar named James Wardrop and reclaim his Precursor Box. Shay met up with Assassin Hope Jensen and the two brought the Box, as well as the Voynich Manuscript, to Benjamin Franklin later in the month while he was conducting an experiment with electricity. The Pieces of Eden revealed a map leading to a Temple in Lisbon, and Shay was sent out to find it. Haytham's search continued as well, and in the winter he met a Kanien’kehá:ka woman named Kaniehtí:io, “Ziio” for short, whom he had helped rescue from a slaver months before. She mistook him for an Assassin ally and agreed to help him find the Temple if he helped kill a Templar named Edward Braddock, a British general with a murderous streak. Haytham himself hated Braddock and agreed. In the summer of 1755, Braddock led an expedition to oust the French and their Native allies from the land and claim it for the British. He had already failed to fight French forts the previous year when his fellow soldier, George Washington, built and abandoned Fort Necessity after losing a terrible battle. Now on his way to Fort Duquesne, Haytham, Ziio, and their allies ambushed Braddock’s men and killed Braddock. Ziio then showed Haytham the Temple entrance, only to find that his key didn't work. They compensated for this failure by having a… lovely night. Ziio then dumped Haytham after finding out he was a Templar, and they never spoke again. Their son was born in 1756.

Meanwhile, Shay returned to the Davenport Homestead in 1756, his heart filled with rage due to the fact that his interference with the Lisbon Temple triggered an earthquake that nearly wiped out the city. Shay mistakenly thought Achilles made him do it on purpose, and subsequently betrayed the Assassins. They shot him down and he fell into the ocean, miraculously waking up in New York City weeks later. There he met Colonel George Monro, a Templar, who earned his trust and recruited him unofficially. The two friends along with fellow Templar and famous explorer Christopher Gist began to help the British army beat back the French. In August 1757, Monro led his forces against French troops in Fort William McHenry, who were commanded by Louis-Joseph de Montcalm. The local Natives rallied behind the Wolastoqiyik Assassin, Kesegowaase, and they tried to massacre the British once Monro surrendered. Monro was saved by Shay, but the Assassins ultimately killed the colonel in Albany on November 3, 1757. Shay killed Kesegowaase that day and was soon officially inducted into the Templar Order.

Shay led a massive purge of the Assassins in the colonies as the years went on, believing it was his duty to stop them from finding another Precursor site. After helping James Cook at the Siege of Louisbourg in 1758, Shay killed famed Assassin Adéwalé. Then in 1759, he killed Hope Jensen in New York. He then began to track down Louis-Joseph Gaultier, Chevalier de la Vérendrye, famed explorer and Assassin. He attacked his ship in the North Atlantic and tossed him into the icy waters after learning that the Box was in the hands of Shay’s childhood best friend and Assassin, Liam O'Brien, who was setting sail up to the Arctic with Achilles to enter the Temple. The Templars cornered the Assassins in the Temple, which collapsed around them, and Shay was forced to kill Liam. Achilles was spared by Haytham upon Shay’s request, but Haytham still crippled the Mentor, sending him limping home alone with all his Assassins dead and gone. Shay had found out from Liam that Chevalier had sent the Box off somewhere secret, and so Haytham assigned him to reclaim it, a task that would take many many years.

With the Assassins annihilated, the British were able to crush the last thread of French and Native resistance. By 1759, they had captured Forts Duquesne, Ticonderoga, and Louisbourg, and in September of that year they captured Quebec after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. Montreal surrendered the next year. There were a few other battles as time passed, such as when George Washington burnt down several innocent Native villages including the one in which Ziio lived and thus leaving her son Ratonhnhaké:ton without a mother, simply because the general had minor suspicions of them supporting the French which had little evidence to back up. And then the War officially ended with a British victory with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The French lost all their colonies in North America except for the extremely valuable sugar producing islands of the Caribbean, and the British claimed it all for themselves. The Natives tragically got nothing but more bullets in their flesh because the British were terrible people back then.

So why was this tragically-outcomed war so important? Well, it's mostly for what it triggered afterwards. Many Americans grow up in class talking about how the War led to the British imposing new taxes on their American colonies in order to pay off the war debt without consulting the colonists and inspiring them to rebel, but we're actually going to put that off for just a moment. First let's talk about how it affected the people outside of those 13 colonies. Obviously the dozens of Native tribes were now being openly oppressed by the British government and were either widely murdered, kicked off their lands, or both, a tragedy that will never be forgiven. The French colonists in North America also got a bad run. For example, from 1755 to 1764, 11,500 French Acadians were forced out of their homes once the British came in during what became known as the Expulsion. Hundreds didn't survive the deportation, but those who did mostly settled in Louisiana and became Cajuns. Louisiana had been transferred over into the hands of the Spanish government, and many colonists wouldn't stand for it. The 13 colonies weren't the only place where rebellion filled up people's hearts. Louisiana was about to fight it's own demons.

And it's there that the Assassins would make their comeback. The struggle to fight Templar tyranny was far, far from over.