Raid on Grand Pré

Raid on Grand Pré
Part of Queen Anne's War
Colonel Benjamin Church, the "Father of American ranging"
Date 24–26 June (3–5 July New Style) 1704 Location Grand-Pré, Acadia (present-day Nova Scotia) Result New England victory
Belligerents
Mi'kmaq militia Acadian militia	New England
Commanders and leaders
unknown	Benjamin Church John Gorham (Grandfather of John Gorham) Winthrop Hilton Cyprian Southack
Strength
unknown	500 New England volunteers and native warriors
Casualties and losses
about 6 killed, unknown wounded 45 captured	6 killed, unknown wounded

The Raid on Grand Pré was the major action of a raiding expedition conducted by New England militia Colonel Benjamin Church against French Acadia in June 1704, during Queen Anne's War. The expedition was in retaliation for a French and Indian raid against the Massachusetts frontier community of Deerfield earlier that year.

Departing Boston on 25 May 1704 with 500 provincial militia and some Indian allies, the expedition reached the Minas Basin on 24 June, after raiding smaller settlements at Penobscot Bay and Passamaquoddy Bay. Although he lost surprise due to the famously high tides of the Bay of Fundy, Church quickly gained control of Grand-Pré, and spent three days destroying the town and attempting to destroy the dikes and levees that protected its croplands. The croplands were flooded by salt water, but the local Acadians quickly repaired the dikes after the raiders left, and the land was returned to production. Church continued his raiding expedition, striking at Beaubassin and other communities before finally returning to Boston in late July.

When the War of the Spanish Succession (also called Queen Anne's War) widened to include England in 1702, it spawned conflict between the colonies of England and France in North America.Joseph Dudley, the governor of the English Province of Massachusetts Bay (which then included present-day Maine), sought in June 1703 to ensure the neutrality of the Abenakis who occupied the frontier between Massachusetts and New France. In this he was unsuccessful, because New France's Governor Philippe de Rigaud Vaudreuil, knowing he would have to rely on Indian support for defense against the more numerous English, had already encouraged the Indians to take up the hatchet. Following the Wabanaki Confederacy of Acadia military campaign against the New England frontier during the summer of 1703, the English colonists embarked on largely unsuccessful retaliatory raids against Abenaki villages. This prompted the Abenakis to participate in a raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts under French leadership in February 1704. The severity of this raid (more than 50 villagers killed and more than 100 captured) prompted calls for revenge, and the veteran Indian fighter Benjamin Church offered his services for an expedition against the French colony of Acadia (roughly present-day Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and eastern Maine).

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