In 1666, during the contest between Charles II. and Louis XIV., it was proposed to march the New England troops across the country by the Kennebec or Penobscot, and attack Quebec; but the terrors and difficulties of crossing “over rocky mountains and howling deserts” were such as to deter them from undertaking the campaign.

In 1689, Count Frontenac, governor of Canada, made a descent into New York to assist the French fleet in reducing that province.  His line of march was by the river Sorrel and Lake Champlain.  An attack upon Montreal by the Iroquois soon forced him to return; but in the following January a party of French and Indians left Montreal in the depth of a Canadian winter, and after wading for two and twenty days, with provisions on their backs, through snows and swamps and across a wide wilderness, reached the unguarded village of Schenectady.  Here a midnight war-whoop was raised, and the inhabitants either massacred or driven half-clad through the snow to seek protection in the neighboring towns.

In 1690, a congress of the colonies, called to provide means for the general defence, assembled at New York, and resolved to carry war into Canada:  an army was to attack Montreal by way of Lake Champlain, and a fleet to attempt Quebec by the St. Lawrence.  The former advanced as far as the lake, when the quarrels of the commanding officers defeated the objects of the expedition.  The Massachusetts fleet of thirty-four vessels, (the largest carrying forty-four guns each,) and two thousand men, failed to reduce Quebec, though the defences of that place were then of the slightest character, and armed with only twenty-three guns.

In 1704, and again in 1707, Port Royal was attacked by costly expeditions fitted out by the eastern colonies; and again, in 1709, a land force of fifteen hundred men advanced against Montreal by Lake Champlain; but nothing of importance was effected by either expedition.

In 1711, Lord Bolingbroke planned the conquest of Canada.  The land forces, numbering five thousand men in all, were separated into two distinct armies, the one sent against Detroit, and the other against Montreal by Lake Champlain; while a fleet of fifteen ships of war, forty transports, and six store-ships, carrying a land force of six thousand five hundred men, was to attack Quebec.  The maritime expedition failed to reach its destination, and after losing a part of the fleet and more than a thousand men in the St. Lawrence, this part of the project was abandoned.  Nor was any thing important accomplished by either division of the land forces.

The same plan of campaign was followed in 1712.  An army of four thousand men marched against Montreal by Lake Champlain, but on hearing of the failure of the naval expedition and of the concentration of the French forces on the river Sorel, they retired towards Albany.