The Northeast Coast campaign of 1703, also known as the Six Terrible Days, occurred amid ongoing territorial disputes between New France and English colonial settlements. The border area between Acadia and New England remained contested following inconclusive battles during King William's War in the 1690s. New France defined the western border of Acadia as the Kennebec River in what is now southern Maine, while the English Province held competing claims to the same territory. This unresolved dispute provided the context for the first major French offensive campaign of Queen Anne's War in New England.
Alexandre Leneuf de La Vallière de Beaubassin commanded the French forces in this campaign, which lasted from 10 August to 6 October 1703. His army consisted of approximately 500 troops composed of French colonial forces and members of the Wabanaki Confederacy of Acadia, including 200 Mi'kmaq and indigenous forces from Norridgewock. The campaign targeted English settlements on the coast of present-day Maine between Wells and Casco Bay, in the Portland, Maine area. During the operation, the French and their allies burned more than 15 leagues of New England country and killed or captured more than 150 people.
The campaign resulted in significant damage to English colonial infrastructure and settlement patterns. While English colonists managed to protect some of their settlements, numerous others were destroyed and abandoned. The impact on the region was severe enough that historian Samuel Drake reported Maine had "nearly received her death-blow" as a result of the campaign. The destruction and abandonment of settlements demonstrated the vulnerability of English colonial positions in the northeastern frontier during this period of warfare.
European colonization of North America accelerated after 1600, with England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands establishing competing settlements along the Atlantic coast, the St. Lawrence River, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi Valley. The first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia (1607) struggled with starvation and conflict; the Plymouth colony (1620) and the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630) followed. By the mid-1700s, thirteen English colonies stretched along the Atlantic seaboard, governed through a mix of royal charters, proprietary grants, and elected assemblies. The colonial economy depended on tobacco in Virginia and Maryland, rice and indigo in the Carolinas, and maritime trade in New England — all increasingly reliant on enslaved African labor after 1619. Conflict with Indigenous peoples over land was continuous, punctuated by major wars including King Philip's War (1675–1676) in New England and the Yamasee War (1715–1717) in the South. The French and Indian War (1754–1763), part of the global Seven Years' War, ended French power in North America and left Britain deeply in debt — triggering the taxation disputes that would lead to revolution.
More than 150 English colonists killed or captured
Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in the US, drawing on NRHP records, battlefield archives, census history and geological data to tell the full story of a place.