1753, 1754
Washington
Towards the end of spring the vanguard of the expedition sent by
Duquesne to occupy the Ohio landed at Presquisle, where Erie now stands.
This route to the Ohio, far better than that which Céleron had followed,
was a new discovery to the French; and Duquesne calls the harbor "the
finest in nature." Here they built a fort of squared chestnut logs, and
when it was finished they cut a road of several leagues through the
woods to Rivière aux Boeufs, now French Creek. At the farther end of
this road they began another wooden fort and called it Fort Le Boeuf.
Thence, when the water was high, they could descend French Creek to the
Allegheny, and follow that stream to the main current of the Ohio.
It was heavy work to carry the cumbrous load of baggage across the
portages. Much of it is said to have been superfluous, consisting of
velvets, silks, and other useless and costly articles, sold to the King
at enormous prices as necessaries of the expedition.[127] The weight of
the task fell on the Canadians, who worked with cheerful hardihood, and
did their part to admiration. Marin, commander of the expedition, a
gruff, choleric old man of sixty-three, but full of force and capacity,
spared himself so little that he was struck down with dysentery, and,
refusing to be sent home to Montreal, was before long in a dying state.
His place was taken by Péan, of whose private character there is little
good to be said, but whose conduct as an officer was such that Duquesne
calls him a prodigy of talents, resources, and zeal.[128] The subalterns
deserve no such praise. They disliked the service, and made no secret of
their discontent. Rumors of it filled Montreal; and Duquesne wrote to
Marin: "I am surprised that you have not told me of this change. Take
note of the sullen and discouraged faces about you. This sort are worse
than useless. Rid yourself of them at once; send them to Montreal, that
I may make an example of them."[129] Péan wrote at the end of September
that Marin was in extremity; and the Governor, disturbed and alarmed,
for he knew the value of the sturdy old officer, looked anxiously for a
successor. He chose another veteran, Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, who had
just returned from a journey of exploration towards the Rocky
Mountains,[130] and whom Duquesne now ordered to the Ohio.
[Footnote 127: Pouchot, _Mémoires sur la dernière Guerre de l'Amérique
Septentrionale_, I. 8.]
[Footnote 128: _Duquesne au Ministre, 2 Nov. 1753_; compare _Mémoire
pour Michel-Jean Hugues Péan_.]
[Footnote 129: _Duquesne à Marin, 27 Août, 1753_.]
[Footnote 130: _Mémoire ou Journal sommaire du Voyage de Jacques
Legardeur de Saint-Pierre._]
Meanwhile the effects of the expedition had already justified it. At
first the Indians of the Ohio had shown a bold front. One of them, a
chief whom the English called the Half-King, came to Fort Le Boeuf and
ordered the French to leave the country; but was received by Marin with
such contemptuous haughtiness that he went home shedding tears of rage
and mortification. The Western tribes were daunted. The Miamis, but
yesterday fast friends of the English, made humble submission to the
French, and offered them two English scalps to signalize their
repentance; while the Sacs, Pottawattamies, and Ojibwas were loud in
professions of devotion.[131] Even the Iroquois, Delawares, and
Shawanoes on the Alleghany had come to the French camp and offered their
help in carrying the baggage. It needed but perseverance and success in
the enterprise to win over every tribe from the mountains to the
Mississippi. To accomplish this and to curb the English, Duquesne had
planned a third fort, at the junction of French Creek with the
Alleghany, or at some point lower down; then, leaving the three posts
well garrisoned, Péan was to descend the Ohio with the whole remaining
force, impose terror on the wavering tribes, and complete their
conversion. Both plans were thwarted; the fort was not built, nor did
Péan descend the Ohio. Fevers, lung diseases, and scurvy made such
deadly havoc among troops and Canadians, that the dying Marin saw with
bitterness that his work must be left half done. Three hundred of the
best men were kept to garrison Forts Presquisle and Le Boeuf; and then,
as winter approached, the rest were sent back to Montreal. When they
arrived, the Governor was shocked at their altered looks. "I reviewed
them, and could not help being touched by the pitiable state to which
fatigues and exposures had reduced them. Past all doubt, if these
emaciated figures had gone down the Ohio as intended, the river would
have been strewn with corpses, and the evil-disposed savages would not
have failed to attack the survivors, seeing that they were but
spectres."[132]
[Footnote 131: _Rapports de Conseils avec les Sauvages à Montreal,
Juillet, 1753. Duquesne au Ministre, 31 Oct. 1753_. Letter of Dr.
Shuckburgh in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, VI. 806.]
[Footnote 132: _Duquesne au Ministre, 29 Nov. 1753_. On this expedition,
compare the letter of Duquesne in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 255, and the
deposition of Stephen Coffen, _Ibid._, VI. 835.]
Legardeur de Saint-Pierre arrived at the end of autumn, and made his
quarters at Fort Le Boeuf. The surrounding forests had dropped their
leaves, and in gray and patient desolation bided the coming winter.
Chill rains drizzled over the gloomy "clearing," and drenched the
palisades and log-built barracks, raw from the axe. Buried in the
wilderness, the military exiles resigned themselves as they might to
months of monotonous solitude; when, just after sunset on the eleventh
of December, a tall youth came out of the forest on horseback, attended
by a companion much older and rougher than himself, and followed by
several Indians and four or five white men with packhorses. Officers
from the fort went out to meet the strangers; and, wading through mud
and sodden snow, they entered at the gate. On the next day the young
leader of the party, with the help of an interpreter, for he spoke no
French, had an interview with the commandant, and gave him a letter from
Governor Dinwiddie. Saint-Pierre and the officer next in rank, who knew
a little English, took it to another room to study it at their ease; and
in it, all unconsciously, they read a name destined to stand one of the
noblest in the annals of mankind; for it introduced Major George
Washington, Adjutant-General of the Virginia militia.[133]
[Footnote 133: _Journal of Major Washington. Journal of Mr. Christopher
Gist._]
Dinwiddie, jealously watchful of French aggression, had learned through
traders and Indians that a strong detachment from Canada had entered the
territories of the King of England, and built forts on Lake Erie and on
a branch of the Ohio. He wrote to challenge the invasion and summon the
invaders to withdraw; and he could find none so fit to bear his message
as a young man of twenty-one. It was this rough Scotchman who launched
Washington on his illustrious career.
Washington set out for the trading station of the Ohio Company on Will's
Creek; and thence, at the middle of November, struck into the wilderness
with Christopher Gist as a guide, Vanbraam, a Dutchman, as French
interpreter, Davison, a trader, as Indian interpreter, and four woodsmen
as servants. They went to the forks of the Ohio, and then down the river
to Logstown, the Chiningué of Céloron de Bienville. There Washington had
various parleys with the Indians; and thence, after vexatious delays, he
continued his journey towards Fort Le Boeuf, accompanied by the friendly
chief called the Half-King and by three of his tribesmen. For several
days they followed the traders' path, pelted with unceasing rain and
snow, and came at last to the old Indian town of Venango, where French
Creek enters the Alleghany. Here there was an English trading-house; but
the French had seized it, raised their flag over it, and turned it into
a military outpost.[134] Joncaire was in command, with two subalterns;
and nothing could exceed their civility. They invited the strangers to
supper; and, says Washington, "the wine, as they dosed themselves pretty
plentifully with it, soon banished the restraint which at first appeared
in their conversation, and gave a license to their tongues to reveal
their sentiments more freely. They told me that it was their absolute
design to take possession of the Ohio, and, by G----, they would do it;
for that although they were sensible the English could raise two men for
their one, yet they knew their motions were too slow and dilatory to
prevent any undertaking of theirs."[135]
[Footnote 134: Marin had sent sixty men in August to seize the house,
which belonged to the trader Fraser. _Dépêches de Duquesne_. They
carried off two men whom they found here. Letter of Fraser in _Colonial
Records of Pa._, V. 659.]
[Footnote 135: _Journal of Washington_, as printed at Williamsburg, just
after his return.]
With all their civility, the French officers did their best to entice
away Washington's Indians; and it was with extreme difficulty that he
could persuade them to go with him. Through marshes and swamps, forests
choked with snow, and drenched with incessant rain, they toiled on for
four days more, till the wooden walls of Fort Le Boeuf appeared at last,
surrounded by fields studded thick with stumps, and half-encircled by
the chill current of French Creek, along the banks of which lay more
than two hundred canoes, ready to carry troops in the spring. Washington
describes Legardeur de Saint-Pierre as "an elderly gentleman with much
the air of a soldier." The letter sent him by Dinwiddie expressed
astonishment that his troops should build forts upon lands "so
notoriously known to be the property of the Crown of Great Britain." "I
must desire you," continued the letter, "to acquaint me by whose
authority and instructions you have lately marched from Canada with an
armed force, and invaded the King of Great Britain's territories. It
becomes my duty to require your peaceable departure; and that you would
forbear prosecuting a purpose so interruptive of the harmony and good
understanding which His Majesty is desirous to continue and cultivate
with the Most Christian King. I persuade myself you will receive and
entertain Major Washington with the candor and politeness natural to
your nation; and it will give me the greatest satisfaction if you return
him with an answer suitable to my wishes for a very long and lasting
peace between us."
Saint-Pierre took three days to frame the answer. In it he said that he
should send Dinwiddie's letter to the Marquis Duquesne and wait his
orders; and that meanwhile he should remain at his post, according to
the commands of his general. "I made it my particular care," so the
letter closed, "to receive Mr. Washington with a distinction suitable to
your dignity as well as his own quality and great merit."[136] No form
of courtesy had, in fact, been wanting. "He appeared to be extremely
complaisant," says Washington, "though he was exerting every artifice to
set our Indians at variance with us. I saw that every stratagem was
practised to win the Half-King to their interest." Neither gifts nor
brandy were spared; and it was only by the utmost pains that Washington
could prevent his red allies from staying at the fort, conquered by
French blandishments.
[Footnote 136: "La Distinction qui convient à votre Dignitté à sa
Qualité et à son grand Mérite." Copy of original letter sent by
Dinwiddie to Governor Hamilton.]
After leaving Venango on his return, he found the horses so weak that,
to arrive the sooner, he left them and their drivers in charge of
Vanbraam and pushed forward on foot, accompanied by Gist alone. Each was
wrapped to the throat in an Indian "matchcoat," with a gun in his hand
and a pack at his back. Passing an old Indian hamlet called Murdering
Town, they had an adventure which threatened to make good the name. A
French Indian, whom they met in the forest, fired at them, pretending
that his gun had gone off by chance. They caught him, and Gist would
have killed him; but Washington interposed, and they let him go.[137]
Then, to escape pursuit from his tribesmen, they walked all night and
all the next day. This brought them to the banks of the Alleghany. They
hoped to have found it dead frozen; but it was all alive and turbulent,
filled with ice sweeping down the current. They made a raft, shoved out
into the stream, and were soon caught helplessly in the drifting ice.
Washington, pushing hard with his setting-pole, was jerked into the
freezing river; but caught a log of the raft, and dragged himself out.
By no efforts could they reach the farther bank, or regain that which
they had left; but they were driven against an island, where they
landed, and left the raft to its fate. The night was excessively cold,
and Gist's feet and hands were badly frost-bitten. In the morning, the
ice had set, and the river was a solid floor. They crossed it, and
succeeded in reaching the house of the trader Fraser, on the
Monongahela. It was the middle of January when Washington arrived at
Williamsburg and made his report to Dinwiddie.
[Footnote 137: _Journal of Mr. Christopher Gist_, in _Mass. Hist. Coll.,
3rd Series_, V.]
Robert Dinwiddie was lieutenant-governor of Virginia, in place of the
titular governor, Lord Albermarle, whose post was a sinecure. He had
been clerk in a government office in the West Indies; then surveyor of
customs in the "Old Dominion,"--a position in which he made himself
cordially disliked; and when he rose to the governorship he carried his
unpopularity with him. Yet Virginia and all the British colonies owed
him much; for, though past sixty, he was the most watchful sentinel
against French aggression and its most strenuous opponent. Scarcely had
Marin's vanguard appeared at Presquisle, when Dinwiddie warned the Home
Government of the danger, and urged, what he had before urged in vain on
the Virginian Assembly, the immediate building of forts on the Ohio.
There came in reply a letter, signed by the King, authorizing him to
build the forts at the cost of the Colony, and to repel force by force
in case he was molested or obstructed. Moreover, the King wrote, "If you
shall find that any number of persons shall presume to erect any fort or
forts within the limits of our province of Virginia, you are first to
require of them peaceably to depart; and if, notwithstanding your
admonitions, they do still endeavor to carry out any such unlawful and
unjustifiable designs, we do hereby strictly charge and command you to
drive them off by force of arms."[138]
[Footnote 138: _Instructions to Our Trusty and Well-beloved Robert
Dinwiddie, Esq., 28 Aug. 1753._]
The order was easily given; but to obey it needed men and money, and for
these Dinwiddie was dependent on his Assembly, or House of Burgesses. He
convoked them for the first of November, sending Washington at the same
time with the summons to Saint-Pierre. The burgesses met. Dinwiddie
exposed the danger, and asked for means to meet it.[139] They seemed
more than willing to comply; but debates presently arose concerning the
fee of a pistole, which the Governor had demanded on each patent of land
issued by him. The amount was trifling, but the principle was doubtful.
The aristocratic republic of Virginia was intensely jealous of the
slightest encroachment on its rights by the Crown or its representative.
The Governor defended the fee. The burgesses replied that "subjects
cannot be deprived of the least part of their property without their
consent," declared the fee unlawful, and called on Dinwiddie to confess
it to be so. He still defended it. They saw in his demand for supplies a
means of bringing him to terms, and refused to grant money unless he
would recede from his position. Dinwiddie rebuked them for "disregarding
the designs of the French, and disputing the rights of the Crown"; and
he "prorogued them in some anger."[140]
[Footnote 139: _Address of Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddie to the Council
and Burgesses, 1 Nov. 1753._]
[Footnote 140: _Dinwiddie Papers._]
Thus he was unable to obey the instructions of the King. As a temporary
resource, he ventured to order a draft of two hundred men from the
militia. Washington was to have command, with the trader, William Trent,
as his lieutenant. His orders were to push with all speed to the forks
of the Ohio, and there build a fort; "but in case any attempts are made
to obstruct the works by any persons whatsoever, to restrain all such
offenders, and, in case of resistance, to make prisoners of, or kill and
destroy them."[141] The Governor next sent messengers to the Catawbas,
Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Iroquois of the Ohio, inviting them to take
up the hatchet against the French, "who, under pretence of embracing
you, mean to squeeze you to death." Then he wrote urgent letters to the
governors of Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, Maryland, and New Jersey,
begging for contingents of men, to be at Wills Creeks in March at the
latest. But nothing could be done without money; and trusting for a
change of heart on the part of the burgesses, he summoned them to meet
again on the fourteenth of February. "If they come in good temper," he
wrote to Lord Fairfax, a nobleman settled in the colony, "I hope they
will lay a fund to qualify me to send four or five hundred men more to
the Ohio, which, with the assistance of our neighboring colonies, may
make some figure."
[Footnote 141: _Ibid. Instructions to Major George Washington, January,
1754._]
The session began. Again, somewhat oddly, yet forcibly, the Governor set
before the Assembly the peril of the situation, and begged them to
postpone less pressing questions to the exigency of the hour.[142] This
time they listened; and voted ten thousand pounds in Virginia currency
to defend the frontier. The grant was frugal, and they jealously placed
its expenditure in the hands of a committee of their own.[143]
Dinwiddie, writing to the Lords of Trade, pleads necessity as his excuse
for submitting to their terms. "I am sorry," he says, "to find them too
much in a republican way of thinking." What vexed him still more was
their sending an agent to England to complain against him on the
irrepressible question of the pistole fee; and he writes to his London
friend, the merchant Hanbury: "I have had a great deal of trouble from
the factious disputes and violent heats of a most impudent, troublesome
party here in regard to that silly fee of a pistole. Surely every
thinking man will make a distinction between a fee and a tax. Poor
people! I pity their ignorance and narrow, ill-natured spirits. But, my
friend, consider that I could by no means give up this fee without
affronting the Board of Trade and the Council here who established it."
His thoughts were not all of this harassing nature, and he ends his
letter with the following petition: "Now, sir, as His Majesty is pleased
to make me a military officer, please send for Scott, my tailor, to make
me a proper suit of regimentals, to be here by His Majesty's birthday. I
do not much like gayety in dress, but I conceive this necessary. I do
not much care for lace on the coat, but a neat embroidered button-hole;
though you do not deal that way, I know you have a good taste, that I
may show my friend's fancy in that suit of clothes; a good laced hat and
two pair stockings, one silk, the other fine thread."[144]
[Footnote 142: _Speech of Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddie to the Council
and Burgesses 14 Feb., 1754._]
[Footnote 143: See the bill in Hening, _Statutes of Virginia_, VI. 417.]
[Footnote 144: _Dinwiddie to Hanbury, 12 March, 1754; Ibid., 10 May,
1754._]
If the Governor and his English sometimes provoke a smile, he deserves
admiration for the energy with which he opposed the public enemy, under
circumstances the most discouraging. He invited the Indians to meet him
in council at Winchester, and, as bait to attract them, coupled the
message with a promise of gifts. He sent circulars from the King to the
neighboring governors, calling for supplies, and wrote letter upon
letter to rouse them to effort. He wrote also to the more distant
governors, Delancey of New York, and Shirley of Massachusetts, begging
them to make what he called a "faint" against Canada, to prevent the
French from sending so large a force to the Ohio. It was to the nearer
colonies, from New Jersey to South Carolina, that he looked for direct
aid; and their several governors were all more or less active to procure
it; but as most of them had some standing dispute with their assemblies,
they could get nothing except on terms with which they would not, and
sometimes could not, comply. As the lands invaded by the French belonged
to one of the two rival claimants, Virginia and Pennsylvania, the other
colonies had no mind to vote money to defend them. Pennsylvania herself
refused to move. Hamilton, her governor, could do nothing against the
placid obstinacy of the Quaker non-combatants and the stolid obstinacy
of the German farmers who chiefly made up his Assembly. North Carolina
alone answered the appeal, and gave money enough to raise three or four
hundred men. Two independent companies maintained by the King in New
York, and one in South Carolina, had received orders from England to
march to the scene of action; and in these, with the scanty levies of
his own and the adjacent province, lay Dinwiddie's only hope. With men
abundant and willing, there were no means to put them into the field,
and no commander whom they would all obey.
From the brick house at Williamsburg pompously called the Governor's
Palace, Dinwiddie despatched letters, orders, couriers, to hasten the
tardy reinforcements of North Carolina and New York, and push on the raw
soldiers of the Old Dominion, who now numbered three hundred men. They
were called the Virginia regiment; and Joshua Fry, an English gentleman,
bred at Oxford, was made their colonel, with Washington as next in
command. Fry was at Alexandria with half the so-called regiment, trying
to get it into marching order; Washington, with the other half, had
pushed forward to the Ohio Company's storehouse at Wills Creek, which
was to form a base of operations. His men were poor whites, brave, but
hard to discipline; without tents, ill armed, and ragged as Falstaff's
recruits. Besides these, a band of backwoodsmen under Captain Trent had
crossed the mountains in February to build a fort at the forks of the
Ohio, where Pittsburg now stands,--a spot which Washington had examined
when on his way to Fort Le Boeuf, and which he had reported as the best
for the purpose. The hope was that Trent would fortify himself before
the arrival of the French, and that Washington and Fry would join him in
time to secure the position. Trent had begun the fort; but for some
unexplained reason had gone back to Wills Creek leaving Ensign Ward with
forty men at work upon it. Their labors were suddenly interrupted. On
the seventeenth of April a swarm of bateaux and canoes came down the
Alleghany, bringing, according to Ward, more than a thousand Frenchmen,
though in reality not much above five hundred, who landed, planted
cannon against the incipient stockade, and summoned the ensign to
surrender, on pain of what might ensue.[145] He complied, and was
allowed to depart with his men. Retracing his steps over the mountains,
he reported his mishap to Washington; while the French demolished his
unfinished fort, began a much larger and better one, and named it Fort
Duquesne.
[Footnote 145: See the summons in _Précis des Faits_, 101.]
They had acted with their usual promptness. Their Governor, a practised
soldier, knew the value of celerity, and had set his troops in motion
with the first opening of spring. He had no refractory assembly to
hamper him; no lack of money, for the King supplied it; and all Canada
must march at his bidding. Thus, while Dinwiddie was still toiling to
muster his raw recruits, Duquesne's lieutenant, Contrecoeur, successor
of Saint-Pierre, had landed at Presquisle with a much greater force, in
part regulars, and in part Canadians.
Dinwiddie was deeply vexed when a message from Washington told him how
his plans were blighted; and he spoke his mind to his friend Hanbury:
"If our Assembly had voted the money in November which they did in
February, it's more than probable the fort would have been built and
garrisoned before the French had approached; but these things cannot be
done without money. As there was none in our treasury, I have advanced
my own to forward the expedition; and if the independent companies from
New York come soon, I am in hopes the eyes of the other colonies will be
opened; and if they grant a proper supply of men, I hope we shall be
able to dislodge the French or build a fort on that river. I
congratulate you on the increase of your family. My wife and two girls
join in our most sincere respects to good Mrs. Hanbury."[146]
[Footnote 146: _Dinwiddie to Hanbury, 10 May, 1754._]
The seizure of a king's fort by planting cannon against it and
threatening it with destruction was in his eyes a beginning of
hostilities on the part of the French; and henceforth both he and
Washington acted much as if war had been declared. From their station at
Wills Creek, the distance by the traders' path to Fort Duquesne was
about a hundred and forty miles. Midway was a branch of the Monongahela
called Redstone Creek, at the mouth of which the Ohio Company had built
another storehouse. Dinwiddie ordered all the forces to cross the
mountains and assemble at this point, until they should be strong enough
to advance against the French. The movement was critical in presence of
an enemy as superior in discipline as he was in numbers, while the
natural obstacles were great. A road for cannon and wagons must be cut
through a dense forest and over two ranges of high mountains, besides
countless hills and streams. Washington set all his force to the work,
and they spent a fortnight in making twenty miles. Towards the end of
May, however, Dinwiddie learned that he had crossed the main ridge of
the Alleghanies, and was encamped with a hundred and fifty men near the
parallel ridge of Laurel Hill, at a place called the Great Meadows.
Trent's backwoodsmen had gone off in disgust; Fry, with the rest of the
regiment, was still far behind; and Washington was daily expecting an
attack. Close upon this, a piece of good news, or what seemed such, came
over the mountains and gladdened the heart of the Governor. He heard
that a French detachment had tried to surprise Washington, and that he
had killed or captured the whole. The facts were as follows.
Washington was on the Youghiogany, a branch of the Monongahela,
exploring it in hopes that it might prove navigable, when a messenger
came to him from his old comrade, the Half-King, who was on the way to
join him. The message was to the effect that the French had marched from
their fort, and meant to attack the first English they should meet. A
report came soon after that they were already at the ford of the
Youghiogany, eighteen miles distant. Washington at once repaired to the
Great Meadows, a level tract of grass and bushes, bordered by wooded
hills, and traversed in one part by a gully, which with a little labor
the men turned into an entrenchment, at the same time cutting away the
bushes and clearing what the young commander called "a charming field
for an encounter." Parties were sent out to scour the woods, but they
found no enemy. Two days passed; when, on the morning of the
twenty-seventh, Christopher Gist, who had lately made a settlement on
the farther side of Laurel Hill, twelve or thirteen miles distant, came
to the camp with news that fifty Frenchmen had been at his house towards
noon of the day before, and would have destroyed everything but for the
intervention of two Indians whom he had left in charge during his
absence. Washington sent seventy-five men to look for the party; but the
search was vain, the French having hidden themselves so well as to
escape any eye but that of an Indian. In the evening a runner came from
the Half-King, who was encamped with a few warriors some miles distant.
He had sent to tell Washington that he had found the tracks of two men,
and traced them towards a dark glen in the forest, where in his belief
all the French were lurking.
Washington seems not to have hesitated a moment. Fearing a stratagem to
surprise his camp, he left his main force to guard it, and at ten
o'clock set out for the Half-King's wigwams at the head of forty men.
The night was rainy, and the forest, to use his own words, "as black as
pitch." "The path," he continues, "was hardly wide enough for one man;
we often lost it, and could not find it again for fifteen or twenty
minutes, and we often tumbled over each other in the dark[147]." Seven
of his men were lost in the woods and left behind. The rest groped their
way all night, and reached the Indian camp at sunrise. A council was
held with the Half-King, and he and his warriors agreed to join in
striking the French. Two of them led the way. The tracks of the two
French scouts seen the day before were again found, and, marching in
single file, the party pushed through the forest into the rocky hollow
where the French were supposed to be concealed. They were there in fact;
and they snatched their guns the moment they saw the English. Washington
gave the word to fire. A short fight ensued. Coulon de Jumonville, an
ensign in command, was killed, with nine others; twenty-two were
captured, and none escaped but a Canadian who had fled at the beginning
of the fray. After it was over, the prisoners told Washington that the
party had been sent to bring him a summons from Contrecoeur, the
commandant at Fort Duquesne.
[Footnote 147: _Journal of Washington_ in _Précis des Faits_, 109. This
Journal, which is entirely distinct from that before cited, was found by
the French among the baggage left on the field after the defeat of
Braddock in 1755, and a translation of it was printed by them as above.
The original has disappeared.]
Five days before, Contrecoeur had sent Jumonville to scour the country
as far as the dividing ridge of the Alleghanies. Under him were another
officer, three cadets, a volunteer, an interpreter, and twenty-eight
men. He was provided with a written summons, to be delivered to any
English he might find. It required them to withdraw from the domain of
the King of France, and threatened compulsion by force of arms in case
of refusal. But before delivering the summons Jumonville was ordered to
send two couriers back with all speed to Fort Duquesne to inform the
commandant that he had found the English, and to acquaint him when he
intended to communicate with them.[148] It is difficult to imagine any
object for such an order except that of enabling Contrecoeur to send to
the spot whatever force might be needed to attack the English on their
refusal to withdraw. Jumonville had sent the two couriers, and had
hidden himself, apparently to wait the result. He lurked nearly two days
within five miles of Washington's camp, sent out scouts to reconnoitre
it, but gave no notice of his presence; played to perfection the part of
a skulking enemy, and brought destruction on himself by conduct which
can only be ascribed to a sinister motive on the one hand, or to extreme
folly on the other. French deserters told Washington that the party came
as spies, and were to show the summons only if threatened by a superior
force. This last assertion is confirmed by the French officer Pouchot,
who says that Jumonville, seeing himself the weaker party, tried to show
the letter he had brought.[149]
[Footnote 148: The summons and the instructions to Jumonville are in
_Précis des Faits_.]
[Footnote 149: Pouchot, _Mémoire sur la dernière Guerre_.]
French writers say that, on first seeing the English, Jumonville's
interpreter called out that he had something to say to them; but
Washington, who was at the head of his men, affirms this to be
absolutely false. The French say further that Jumonville was killed in
the act of reading the summons. This is also denied by Washington, and
rests only on the assertion of the Canadian who ran off at the outset,
and on the alleged assertion of Indians who, if present at all, which is
unlikely, escaped like the Canadian before the fray began. Druillon, an
officer with Jumonville, wrote two letters to Dinwiddie after his
capture, to claim the privileges of the bearer of a summons; but while
bringing forward every other circumstance in favor of the claim, he does
not pretend that the summons was read or shown either before or during
the action. The French account of the conduct of Washington's Indians is
no less erroneous. "This murder," says a chronicler of the time,
"produced on the minds of the savages an effect very different from that
which the cruel Washington had promised himself. They have a horror of
crime; and they were so indignant at that which had just been
perpetrated before their eyes, that they abandoned him, and offered
themselves to us in order to take vengeance."[150] Instead of doing
this, they boasted of their part in the fight, scalped all the dead
Frenchmen, sent one scalp to the Delawares as an invitation to take up
the hatchet for the English, and distributed the rest among the various
Ohio tribes to the same end.
[Footnote 150: Poulin de Lumina, _Histoire de la Guerre contre les
Anglois_, 15.]
Coolness of judgment, a profound sense of public duty, and a strong
self-control, were even then the characteristics of Washington; but he
was scarcely twenty-two, was full of military ardor, and was vehement
and fiery by nature. Yet it is far from certain that, even when age and
experience had ripened him, he would have forborne to act as he did, for
there was every reason for believing that the designs of the French were
hostile; and though by passively waiting the event he would have thrown
upon them the responsibility of striking the first blow, he would have
exposed his small party to capture or destruction by giving them time to
gain reinforcements from Fort Duquesne. It was inevitable that the
killing of Jumonville should be greeted in France by an outcry of real
or assumed horror; but the Chevalier de Lévis, second in command to
Montcalm, probably expresses the true opinion of Frenchmen best fitted
to judge when he calls it "a pretended assassination."[151] Judge it as
we may, this obscure skirmish began the war that set the world on
fire.[152]
[Footnote 151: Lévis, _Mémoire sur la Guerre du Canada_.]
[Footnote 152: On this affair, Sparks, _Writings of Washington_, II.
25-48, 447. _Dinwiddie Papers. Letter of Contrecoeur_ in _Précis des
Faits. Journal of Washington, Ibid. Washington to Dinwiddie, 3 June,
1754_. Dussieux, _Le Canada sous la Domination Française_, 118. Gaspé,
_Anciens Canadiens, appendix_, 396. The assertion of Abbé de
l'Isle-Dieu, that Jumonville showed a flag of truce, is unsupported.
Adam Stephen, who was in the fight, says that the guns of the English
were so wet that they had to trust mainly to the bayonet. The Half-King
boasted that he killed Jumonville with his tomahawk. Dinwiddie highly
approved Washington's conduct.
In 1755 the widow of Jumonville received a pension of one hundred and
fifty francs. In 1775 his daughter, Charlotte Aimable, wishing to become
a nun, was given by the King six hundred francs for her "trousseau" on
entering the convent. _Dossier de Jumonville et de sa Veuve, 22 Mars,
1755_. _Mémoire pour Mlle. de Jumonville, 10 Juillet, 1775_. _Résponse
du Garde des Sceaux, 25 Juillet, 1775_.]
Washington returned to the camp at the Great Meadows; and, expecting
soon to be attacked, sent for reinforcements to Colonel Fry, who was
lying dangerously ill at Wills Creek. Then he set his men to work at an
entrenchment, which he named Fort Necessity, and which must have been of
the slightest, as they finished it within three days.[153] The Half-King
now joined him, along with the female potentate known as Queen
Alequippa, and some thirty Indian families. A few days after, Gist came
from Wills Creek with news that Fry was dead. Washington succeeded to
the command of the regiment, the remaining three companies of which
presently appeared and joined their comrades, raising the whole number
to three hundred. Next arrived the independent company from South
Carolina; and the Great Meadows became an animated scene, with the
wigwams of the Indians, the camp-sheds of the rough Virginians, the
cattle grazing on the tall grass or drinking at the lazy brook that
traversed it; the surrounding heights and forests; and over all, four
miles away the lofty green ridge of Laurel Hill.
[Footnote 153: _Journal of Washington_ in _Précis des Faits_.]
The presence of the company of regulars was a doubtful advantage.
Captain Mackay, its commander, holding his commission from the King,
thought himself above any officer commissioned by the Governor. There
was great courtesy between him and Washington; but Mackay would take no
orders, nor even the countersign, from the colonel of volunteers. Nor
would his men work, except for an additional shilling a day. To give
this was impossible, both from want of money, and from the discontent it
would have bred in the Virginians, who worked for nothing besides their
daily pay of eightpence. Washington, already a leader of men, possessed
himself in a patience extremely difficult to his passionate temper; but
the position was untenable, and the presence of the military drones
demoralized his soldiers. Therefore, leaving Mackay at the Meadows, he
advanced towards Gist's settlement, cutting a wagon road as he went.
On reaching the settlement the camp was formed and an entrenchment
thrown up. Deserters had brought news that strong reinforcements were
expected at Fort Duquesne, and friendly Indians repeatedly warned
Washington that he would soon be attacked by overwhelming numbers. Forty
Indians from the Ohio came to the camp, and several days were spent in
councils with them; but they proved for the most part to be spies of the
French. The Half-King stood fast by the English, and sent out three of
his young warriors as scouts. Reports of attack thickened. Mackay and
his men were sent for, and they arrived on the twenty-eighth of June. A
council of war was held at Gist's house; and as the camp was commanded
by neighboring heights, it was resolved to fall back. The horses were so
few that the Virginians had to carry much of the baggage on their backs,
and drag nine swivels over the broken and rocky road. The regulars,
though they also were raised in the provinces, refused to give the
slightest help. Toiling on for two days, they reached the Great Meadows
on the first of July. The position, though perhaps the best in the
neighborhood, was very unfavorable, and Washington would have retreated
farther, but for the condition of his men. They were spent with fatigue,
and there was no choice but to stay and fight.
Strong reinforcements had been sent to Fort Duquesne in the spring, and
the garrison now consisted of about fourteen hundred men. When news of
the death of Jumonville reached Montreal, Coulon de Villiers, brother of
the slain officer, was sent to the spot with a body of Indians from all
the tribes in the colony. He made such speed that at eight o'clock on
the morning of the twenty-sixth of June he reached the fort with his
motley following. Here he found that five hundred Frenchmen and a few
Ohio Indians were on the point of marching against the English, under
Chevalier Le Mercier; but in view of his seniority in rank and his
relationship to Jumonville, the command was now transferred to Villiers.
Hereupon, the march was postponed; the newly-arrived warriors were
called to council, and Contrecoeur thus harangued them: "The English
have murdered my children, my heart is sick; to-morrow I shall send my
French soldiers to take revenge. And now, men of the Saut St. Louis, men
of the Lake of Two Mountains, Hurons, Abenakis, Iroquois of La
Présentation, Nipissings, Algonquins, and Ottawas,--I invite you all by
this belt of wampum to join your French father and help him to crush the
assassins. Take this hatchet, and with it two barrels of wine for a
feast." Both hatchet and wine were cheerfully accepted. Then Contrecoeur
turned to the Delawares, who were also present: "By these four strings
of wampum I invite you, if you are true children of Onontio, to follow
the example of your brethren;" and with some hesitation they also took
up the hatchet.
The next day was spent by the Indians in making moccasons for the march,
and by the French in preparing for an expedition on a larger scale than
had been at first intended. Contrecoeur, Villiers, Le Mercier, and
Longueuil, after deliberating together, drew up a paper to the effect
that "it was fitting (_convenable_) to march against the English with
the greatest possible number of French and savages, in order to avenge
ourselves and chastise them for having violated the most sacred laws of
civilized nations;" that, thought their conduct justified the French in
disregarding the existing treaty of peace, yet, after thoroughly
punishing them, and compelling them to withdraw from the domain of the
King, they should be told that, in pursuance of his royal orders, the
French looked on them as friends. But it was further agreed that should
the English have withdrawn to their own side of the mountains, "they
should be followed to their settlements to destroy them and treat them
as enemies, till that nation should give ample satisfaction and
completely change its conduct."[154]
[Footnote 154: _Journal de Campagne de M. de Villiers depuis son Arrivée
au Fort Duquesne jusqu'à son Retour au dit Fort_. These and other
passages are omitted in the Journal as printed in _Précis des Faits_.
Before me is a copy from the original in the Archives de la Marine.]
The party set out on the next morning, paddled their canoes up the
Monongahela, encamped, heard Mass; and on the thirtieth reached the
deserted storehouse of the Ohio Company at the mouth of Redstone Creek.
It was a building of solid logs, well loopholed for musketry. To please
the Indians by asking their advice, Villiers called all the chiefs to
council; which, being concluded to their satisfaction, he left a
sergeant's guard at the storehouse to watch the canoes, and began his
march through the forest. The path was so rough that at the first halt
the chaplain declared he could go no farther, and turned back for the
storehouse, though not till he had absolved the whole company in a body.
Thus lightened of their sins, they journeyed on, constantly sending out
scouts. On the second of July they reached the abandoned camp of
Washington at Gist's settlement; and here they bivouacked, tired, and
drenched all night by rain. At daybreak they marched again, and passed
through the gorge of Laurel Hill. It rained without ceasing; but
Villiers pushed his way through the dripping forest to see the place,
half a mile from the road, where his brother had been killed, and where
several bodies still lay unburied. They had learned from a deserter the
position of the enemy, and Villiers filled the woods in front with a
swarm of Indian scouts. The crisis was near. He formed his men in
column, and ordered every officer to his place.
Washington's men had had a full day at Fort Necessity; but they spent it
less in resting from their fatigue than in strengthening their rampart
with logs. The fort was a simple square enclosure, with a trench said by
a French writer to be only knee deep. On the south, and partly on the
west, there was an exterior embankment, which seems to have been made,
like a rifle-pit, with the ditch inside. The Virginians had but little
ammunition, and no bread whatever, living chiefly on fresh beef. They
knew the approach of the French, who were reported to Washington as nine
hundred strong, besides Indians. Towards eleven o'clock a wounded
sentinel came in with news that they were close at hand; and they
presently appeared at the edge of the woods, yelling, and firing from
such a distance that their shot fell harmless. Washington drew up his
men on the meadow before the fort, thinking, he says, that the enemy,
being greatly superior in force, would attack at once; and choosing for
some reason to meet them on the open plain. But Villiers had other
views. "We approached the English," he writes, "as near as possible,
without uselessly exposing the lives of the King's subjects;" and he and
his followers made their way through the forest till they came opposite
the fort, where they stationed themselves on two densely wooded hills,
adjacent, though separated by a small brook. One of these was about a
hundred paces from the English, and the other about sixty. Their
position was such that the French and Indians, well sheltered by trees
and bushes, and with the advantage of higher ground, could cross their
fire upon the fort and enfilade a part of it. Washington had meanwhile
drawn his followers within the entrenchment; and the firing now began on
both sides. Rain fell all day. The raw earth of the embankment was
turned to soft mud, and the men in the ditch of the outwork stood to the
knee in water. The swivels brought back from the camp at Gist's farm
were mounted on the rampart; but the gunners were so ill protected that
the pieces were almost silenced by the French musketry. The fight lasted
nine hours. At times the fire on both sides was nearly quenched by the
showers, and the bedrenched combatants could do little but gaze at each
other through a gray veil of mist and rain. Towards night, however, the
fusillade revived, and became sharp again until dark. At eight o'clock
the French called out to propose a parley.
Villiers thus gives his reason for these overtures. "As we had been wet
all day by the rain, as the soldiers were very tired, as the savages
said that they would leave us the next morning, and as there was a
report that drums and the firing of cannon had been heard in the
distance, I proposed to M. Le Mercier to offer the English a
conference." He says further that ammunition was falling short, and that
he thought the enemy might sally in a body and attack him.[155] The
English, on their side, were in a worse plight. They were half starved,
their powder was nearly spent, their guns were foul, and among them all
they had but two screw-rods to clean them. In spite of his desperate
position, Washington declined the parley, thinking it a pretext to
introduce a spy; but when the French repeated their proposal and
requested that he would send an officer to them, he could hesitate no
longer. There were but two men with him who knew French, Ensign
Peyroney, who was disabled by a wound, and the Dutchman, Captain
Vanbraam. To him the unpalatable errand was assigned. After a long
absence he returned with articles of capitulation offered by Villiers;
and while the officers gathered about him in the rain, he read and
interpreted the paper by the glimmer of a sputtering candle kept alight
with difficulty. Objection was made to some of the terms, and they were
changed. Vanbraam, however, apparently anxious to get the capitulation
signed and the affair ended, mistranslated several passages, and
rendered the words _l'assassinat du Sieur de Jumonville_ as _the death
of the Sieur de Jumonville_.[156] As thus understood, the articles were
signed about midnight. They provided that the English should march out
with drums beating and the honors of war, carrying with them one of
their swivels and all their other property; that they should be
protected against insult from French or Indians; that the prisoners
taken in the affair of Jumonville should be set free; and that two
officers should remain as hostages for their safe return to Fort
Duquesne. The hostages chosen were Vanbraam and a brave but eccentric
Scotchman, Robert Stobo, an acquaintance of the novelist Smollett, said
to be the original of his Lismahago.
[Footnote 155: _Journal de Villiers_, original. Omitted in the Journal
as printed by the French Government. A short and very incorrect abstract
of this Journal will be found in _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X.]
[Footnote 156: See Appendix C. On the fight at Great Meadows, compare
Sparks, _Writings of Washington_, II. 456-468; also a letter of Colonel
Innes to Governor Hamilton, written a week after the event, in _Colonial
Records of Pa._, VI. 50, and a letter of Adam Stephen in _Pennsylvania
Gazette, 1754_.]
Washington reports that twelve of the Virginians were killed on the
spot, and forty-three wounded, while on the casualties in Mackay's
company no returns appear. Villiers reports his own loss at only twenty
in all.[157] The numbers engaged are uncertain. The six companies of the
Virginia regiment counted three hundred and five men and officers, and
Mackay's company one hundred; but many were on the sick list, and some
had deserted. About three hundred and fifty may have taken part in the
fight. On the side of the French, Villiers says that the detachment as
originally formed consisted of five hundred white men. These were
increased after his arrival at Fort Duquesne, and one of the party
reports that seven hundred marched on the expedition.[158] The number of
Indians joining them is not given; but as nine tribes and communities
contributed to it, and as two barrels of wine were required to give the
warriors a parting feast, it must have been considerable. White men and
red, it seems clear that the French force was more than twice that of
the English, while they were better posted and better sheltered, keeping
all day under cover, and never showing themselves on the open meadow.
There were no Indians with Washington. Even the Half-King held aloof;
though, being of a caustic turn, he did not spare his comments on the
fight, telling Conrad Weiser, the provincial interpreter, that the
French behaved like cowards, and the English like fools.[159]
[Footnote 157: Dinwiddie writes to the Lords of Trade that thirty in all
were killed, and seventy wounded, on the English side; and the
commissary Varin writes to Bigot that the French lost seventy-two
killed and wounded.]
[Footnote 158: _A Journal had from Thomas Forbes, lately a Private
Soldier in the King of France's Service_. (Public Record Office.) Forbes
was one of Villiers' soldiers. The commissary Varin puts the number of
French at six hundred, besides Indians.]
[Footnote 159: _Journal of Conrad Weiser_, in _Colonial Records of Pa._,
VI. 150. The Half-King also remarked that Washington "was a good-natured
man, but had no experience, and would by no means take advice from the
Indians, but was always driving them on to fight by his directions; that
he lay at one place from one full moon to the other, and made no
fortifications at all, except that little thing upon the meadow, where
he thought the French would come up to him in open field."]
In the early morning the fort was abandoned and the retreat began. The
Indians had killed all the horses and cattle, and Washington's men were
so burdened with the sick and wounded, whom they were obliged to carry
on their backs, that most of the baggage was perforce left behind. Even
then they could march but a few miles, and then encamped to wait for
wagons. The Indians increased the confusion by plundering, and
threatening an attack. They knocked to pieces the medicine-chest, thus
causing great distress to the wounded, two of whom they murdered and
scalped. For a time there was danger of panic; but order was restored,
and the wretched march began along the forest road that led over the
Alleghanies, fifty-two miles to the station at Wills Creek. Whatever may
have been the feelings of Washington, he has left no record of them. His
immense fortitude was doomed to severer trials in the future; yet
perhaps this miserable morning was the darkest of his life. He was
deeply moved by sights of suffering; and all around him were wounded men
borne along in torture, and weary men staggering under the living load.
His pride was humbled, and his young ambition seemed blasted in the bud.
It was the fourth of July. He could not foresee that he was to make that
day forever glorious to a new-born nation hailing him as its father.
The defeat at Fort Necessity was doubly disastrous to the English, since
it was a new step and a long one towards the ruin of their interest with
the Indians; and when, in the next year, the smouldering war broke into
flame, nearly all the western tribes drew their scalping-knives for
France.
Villiers went back exultant to Fort Duquesne, burning on his way the
buildings of Gist's settlement and the storehouse at Redstone Creek. Not
an English flag now waved beyond the Alleghanies.[160]
[Footnote 160: See Appendix C.]