The siege of Fort at Number Four (7–9 April 1747) was a frontier action at present-day Charlestown, New Hampshire,
during King George's War. The Fort at Number 4 (named so because it was located in the fourth of a series of recently surveyed township land parcels), was unsuccessfully besieged by a French and Native force under the command of Ensign Joseph Boucher de Niverville. The British defenders were alerted to the presence of the besiegers by their dogs, and were well-prepared to defend the fort. They successfully fought off attempts to burn the fort down, and turned down demands that they surrender. Some of Boucher de Niverville's Natives, short on provisions, attempted to bargain with the fort's defenders for supplies, but were rejected.
In the 1720s, during Dummer's War, the Province of Massachusetts Bay constructed Fort Dummer at present-day Brattleboro, Vermont. In the following years, settlers from Massachusetts, who had laid claim to the territory, moved up the Connecticut River, establishing small frontier settlements. The most northerly of these, 34 miles (55 km) north of Fort Dummer and located at the site of present-day Charlestown, New Hampshire, was called Number Four. In 1741, King George II declared that the territory belonged to the Province of New Hampshire. Massachusetts withdrew its protection from both Fort Dummer and Number Four, and New Hampshire, none of whose existing settlements were near these places, also refused to provide protection. In 1744, settlers constructed the Fort at Number 4, to provide for their own protection.
Massachusetts reluctantly agreed to provide some militia forces to the area when King George's War broke out. During the summer of 1746, Number Four was repeatedly attacked by French and Native raiding parties organized by the authorities of New France, and these militia had provided timely defense. The severity of the attacks, however, prompted the settlers to abandon Number Four, which remained unoccupied during the winter of 1746–47. The fort was then occupied by Captain Phineas Stevens and 30 provincial militia in the spring of 1747. Stevens brought with him several dogs, which provided early warning of the arrival of strangers.
The Marquis de Beauharnois, New France's governor, had waged a war against the frontiers of the northern British colonies (New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Nova Scotia) since the fall of Louisbourg in 1745 had dried up supplies of important trade goods and provisions. In early 1747, one of the parties he sent south consisted of 10 French troupes de la marine (the colonial troops) and 60 Abenaki warriors under the command of Ensign Joseph Boucher de Niverville. Some English accounts of the action report Boucher de Niverville's claims that he had several hundred men; they also incorrectly identify the party leader as "General Debeline".
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.
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