The Battle of Fort Bull was a French attack on the British-held Fort Bull on 27 March 1756, early in the French and Indian War. The fort was built to defend a portion of the waterway connecting Albany, New York to Lake Ontario via the Mohawk River.
Lt. Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry led his command consisting of forces from the Troupes de la Marine, Canadien militia, and Indian allies on an attack against Fort Bull on 27 March 1756. Shielded by trees they sneaked up to within 100 yards (91 m) of the fort. Léry ordered a charge at the fort with bayonets. They stuck their muskets into the narrow openings in the fort and shot the defenders. Léry repeatedly asked for their surrender. Finally, the gate was crashed in and the French and Indians swarmed in, killing everyone they saw. The French soldiers looted what they could and set the powder magazines on fire. The fort was burned to the ground.
The establishment of Fort Oswego (modern Oswego, New York) in the 1720s on the south shores of Lake Ontario (called Lac de Frontenac by the French) represented the first British toehold in what until then had been a "French lake", and was regarded as a major threat by the French. The French had dominated the Great Lakes and with it the lucrative fur trade, and were determined to keep the Great Lakes for themselves. However, the 1720s-30s were a period of Anglo-French détente in Europe with both the duc d'Orleans, the Regent for the boy king Louis XV in France, and Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole in Britain, being committed to a policy of peace. Though the French protested at the establishment of Fort Oswego, saying the Great Lakes were part of New France, neither Paris nor London wanted a war over a fort in far-away North America, and so the matter rested for the moment. Versailles and Whitehall both agreed to an understanding that the British would not build any more forts on the Great Lakes in exchange for which the French tolerated Fort Oswego. Fort Oswego was a remote frontier post located in the wildness, and in the words of the Canadian historian René Chartrand its "Achilles heel" was its supply lines. The period of Anglo-French détente and peace which both Walpole and the duc d'Orleans pursued gave way to a period of war in the middle 18th century. France and Britain went to war in the inconclusive War of the Austrian Succession which was followed by the Seven Years' War, which began in North America in 1754 when the Virginia militia under the command of George Washington made a very unsuccessful attempt to expel the French from the Ohio river valley.
Following the failure of aggressive British campaign plans in 1755, a chain of forts along the Mohawk River riverway connecting the Hudson River to Lake Ontario were garrisoned during the winter of 1755–1756. The largest garrison was left at Fort Oswego, at the end of the chain, which depended on the others for its supplies. Two forts along the Oneida Carry were a key element of this supply chain. The Oneida Carry traversed an unnavigable section between what is now Rome, New York and Wood Creek that was between one and six miles long, depending on seasonal water levels. Wood Creek in its turn flowed into Oneida Lake, which flowed into the Oswego river that ran into Lake Ontario. On the other side of the Oneida Carrying Place was the Mohawk river, which flowed into the Hudson river, which in its turn flowed into the Atlantic Ocean. Fort Williams, on the Mohawk, was the larger of the two, while Fort Bull (modern Rome, New York), several miles north of Fort Williams on Wood Creek, was little more than a palisade surrounding storehouses. Fort Bull was garrisoned by a small number of men from Shirley's Regiment under William Bull, and held large quantities of military stores, including gunpowder and ammunition, destined for use in the 1756 campaign. Shirley's Regiment was a British Army regiment raised in New England with the majority of the soldiers coming from the colonies of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island Plantation, and Connecticut.
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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