|
1704 England, Queen Anne, last monarch of the Stuart line, is seated
on the Protestant throne of England. Both her father (King James II) and
brother (James the Pretender) are renowned for the huge stables of
mistresses they keep. Small wonder any European ruler hops out of bed
long enough to go to the bathroom, never mind attend to state business.
Anne is a chip off the old block, pregnant 18 times. None of her children
survive infancy. Historians do not call her a dunce flat-out, instead words
like “her intellectual limitations” and “easy to influence” creep into
descriptions of her. She detests Roman Catholics with all the vehemence of
a convert. Protestant zeal is stoked up and England rushes headlong into
the tired old Catholic-Protestant “I hate you ... No I hate you more .. I
double hate you ...” war raging in Europe on and off since the Reformation
(with embers still aglow in Twenty-first Century Ireland.) These wars all drift
across the Atlantic where the buckskin clad woodsmen drop the high
sounding European labels and simply call a spade a spade. Europe’s War
of the League of Augsburg, 1689-1697, is dubbed, King William’s War when
it reaches America. War of the Spanish Succession, 1701-1714, becomes
Queen Anne’s War. The War of the Austrian Succession, 1739-1748, is
changed to King George’s War. The Seven Years’ War, yet another
cataclysmic European World War, drifts over from Europe and becomes a
pivotal moment in American history; the matter-of-fact colonial label says it
all, The French and Indian War.
|