King William's War (1689-1698)
King William's War was the American phase of the War of the League of Augsburg in Europe, the first of a series of European conflicts that echoed across the distant American frontier for the better part of a century. The Dutch king, William of Orange, and Mary, the daughter of King James II of England, both of them Protestants, assumed the throne of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1689, as King William III and Queen Mary II. War with Louis XIV and Catholic France soon followed, in which William formed a Protestant alliance with the Dutch and with several German states. The conflict spread to North America where English and French competition for the fur trade in the Saint Lawrence Valley and Hudson's Bay led to the outbreak of hostilities. Count Frontenac, the French governor, ordered French forces and their Kanawake and Abenaki allies to raid English border settlements in New York and New England, establishing a pattern that would be repeated many times for the next seventy-five years. In response to the French raids, New England forces were sent north to capture or harrass French settlements. The Treaty of Ryswick (1697) restored all captured territories. [Peckham 25-56]