Palatinate Forest
The Palatinate Forest (, ), sometimes also called the Palatine Forest, is a low-mountain region in southwestern Germany, located in the Palatinate in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The forest is a designated nature park () covering 1,771 km and its highest elevation is the Kalmit (673 m).
Battle of Fort Bull
After the destruction of Fort Bull and the fall of Fort Oswego, the westernmost frontier of the British Empire in North America was now Fort Herkimer and the German Flatts settlement (modern Herkimer, New York) inhabited by settlers from the Palatine region of the Holy Roman Empire and other states on the Middle Rhineland in what is now modern Germany. As the largest contingent of the German settlers came from the Electorate of the Palatine, they were popularly called the Palatines, regardless if they came from the Palatine or not. To reinforce the threatened frontier, several British Army were rushed up, much to the annoyance of the Palatine settlers who complained to the Oneida Indians that the presence of British troops was likely to bring fresh French attacks and hence fighting that might devastate their settlements. Unlike the frontier in Pennsylvania and in the Ohio river valley, where white settlers and the Indians had bloodstained relations, leading to hundreds of murders, relations between whites and Indians in Kanienkeh were friendly; between 1756-1774 only 5 whites were killed by the Indians while 6 Indians were killed by the British Army or settlers. The Palatine settlers sent messages to Vaudreuil via the Oneida, proclaiming their wish to be neutral in the Seven Years' War, saying that they cared neither for the British nor the French, and only wished to live in peace. An Oneida Indian passed on a message to Vaudreuil in Quebec City, saying: "We inform you of a message given to us by a Nation that is neither English, nor French nor Indian and inhabitants the lands around us...That Nation has proposed to annex us to to ["sic"] itself in order to afford each other mutual help and protection against the English". Vaundreuil in reply stated "I think I know that nation. There is reason to believe they are the Palatines". Vaudreuil went on to say that neutrality was not an option for anyone in this war, and if the Palatine settlers wanted peace, they should submit to the King of France at once. On 12 November 1757, the principle Palatine settlement, German Flatts, was destroyed in a night attack by 200 Mississauga and Canadian Iroquois Indians plus 63 "troupes de la Marine" and New France militiamen, which marked the end of the Palatine effort at neutrality in the Seven Years' War.