Raid on Haverhill

Raid on Haverhill
Part of Queen Anne's War
Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville, French commander
Date 29 August 1708 Location Haverhill, Province of Massachusetts Bay Result French victory
Belligerents
New England	French colonists  Algonquin  Montagnais
Commanders and leaders
Simon Wainwright † Major Turner Samuel Ayer †	Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville Chief Escumbuit
Strength
70+ militia	250 native warriors and French Canadian militia
Casualties and losses
16 killed, 14–24 militia and inhabitants captured	9 killed 18 wounded

The Raid on Haverhill was a military engagement that took place on August 29, 1708 during Queen Anne's War. French, Algonquin, and Abenaki warriors under the command of Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville descended on Haverhill, then a small frontier community in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. In the surprise attack, 16 people were killed and another 14 to 24 were taken captive. A rapid militia muster gave chase, and in a skirmish later in the day, nine of the French and Indian party were killed and some of their prisoners escaped.

Haverhill was not the original target of the raiders. Expecting a larger Indian contingent, French authorities planned to engage in a series of raids on the communities of the Piscataqua River. However, the unwillingness of some Indian tribes to participate in the expedition forced the French to reduce the scope of the operation and choose an easier target. The raid was more costly to the French than previous frontier raids like that in 1704 on Deerfield, Massachusetts because the province had been warned of the raiders' advance.

When Queen Anne's War (as the War of the Spanish Succession was called in the colonies of British America) broke out in 1702, it sparked war on the already tense frontier between the English colonies of New England and the colonies of New France, including Acadia and Canada. French military officers from the troupes de la marine, the defense force of New France, often led parties of Indians from their settlements along the Saint Lawrence River south to the northern frontiers of New England, which then included small communities in what is now northern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire and Maine.

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