Engraving entitled: "Defeat of General Braddock, in the French and Indian War, in 1755." The print shows Indians armed with rifles in a forest with British soldiers seen in the background. General Edward Braddock (1695-1755) was a English soldier and commander-in-chief for the 13 colonies at the start of the French and Indian War (1754-1763). He led a disastrous expedition against the French-occupied Ohio Country in 1755, in which he lost his life. The French and Indian War was fought by Great Britain and France over disputed territories in North America from 1754 to 1763. Struggles for supremacy had been going on for many decades between France and England in the New World, but hostilities intensified in the early 1750s as both English and French settlers attempted to colonize land in the Ohio River Valley and each thought they owned the rights to the land. Both France and England wanted to extend their "world empires" into the Ohio River Valley and each recruited Native American tribes to fight on their side.