Nobility Lost: French & Canadian martial cultures, Indians & the end of New France by Christian Ayne Crouch (review)

Tackling the voluminous historical literature on the Seven Years’ War is a daunting challenge for even the most ambitious and hardened historian. And yet Christian Ayne Crouch’s first book, Nobility Lost, offers a refreshing perspective by recasting the war as a French Atlantic conflict. Crouch contends that the arrival of French troupes de terre (army regulars) in North America in 1756, introduced a martial culture that clashed with that of the troupes franches de la marine (colonial troops). Moreover, she argues that opposing understandings of French honour and the role of Indigenous allies changed the nature of the war and played a central role in determining its final outcome and legacy.

Crouch begins the book by disentangling herself from various nationalist historiographical terminologies, such as the French and Indian War and the War of Conquest. Building on what Louise Dechêne referred to as a sixteen-year war, Crouch discards the more widely used “Seven Years’ War” for a longer view of the conflict dating back to the 1740s. Chapter One begins with the fallout from the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle at the end of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48), and how Canadian marine officers and French army officers sought to defend the crown, albeit in different ways. Crouch asserts that marines sought to protect the territory of New France, while army officers defended the French aristocracy and the nobility of the king. In France, peace stifled the ambitions of nobles who sought honour and advancement in the army as a way to curry favour and influence at Versailles. Meanwhile in North America, Canadian marine officers had to deal with the reality of a continuing conflict over the contested borderlands of Ohio Country. Marines worked to solidify Native alliances and to protect New France and secure colonial trade, all while seeking to establish their own noble lineages through land, trade, and intermarriage with elite Canadian military and merchant families.

Chapter Two focuses on escalating violence in Ohio Country, largely picking up from where the previous chapter left off. Attempts to establish effective colonial control over the region led to increased Native violence, which Crouch contends served French metropolitan and colonial interests, but also resulted in dependence on Indigenous alliances. The raid on Pickawillany in 1752, the murder of Jumonville in 1754, and de Villier’s triumph at Fort Necessity are all used to examine French/Canadian and Indigenous understandings of violence in Ohio Country, and to foreshadow the conflict of martial cultures post-1755.

Chapters Three and Four argue that France-Indigenous alliances and metropolitan notions of honourable war lay at the heart of growing discord between army and marine officers. Denying of the spoils of war at Oswego frustrated Native allies and Canadian marines, while the “massacre” of Fort William Henry shocked army officers and led them to question the need for Native allies. Crouch contends that the defence of Fort Carillon—a resounding victory without Native allies that employed European military tactics against a larger force—convinced army officers like Montcalm and Lévis that metropolitan tactics would secure victory and enhance aristocratic and royal honour. Moreover, Crouch effectively ties these events to transatlantic communication with the Ministries of the Navy and Army, the revolving door of wartime ministers, and various manoeuvrings at the court of Versailles. All of this is used to explain the ascendency of metropolitan martial culture and tactics, the eventual loss of Native support, the abandonment of Fort Duquesne, the defeat at Quebec and the eventual capitulation of Montreal.

Chapters Five and Six focus on the radically different experiences of marine and army officers following the war. Canadian marine officers, who returned to France in 1760, arrived with few ties to the French aristocracy and court at Versailles. The loss of New France and l’Affaire du Canada impugned the honour of Canadian officers, while resettlement in Tourraine and the disbandment of the troupes de la marine left...