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A CHARMING FIELD FOR AN ENCOUNTER

The Story
of George Washington's

Fort Necessity

by Robert C. Alberts
Illustrated

by Daniel Maffia

Office of Publications

National Park Service

Department of the Interior

U.S.

Washington, D.C. 1975

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Alberts, Robert C.

A CHARMING FIELD FOR AN ENCOUNTER

1.

2.
I.

Necessity, Fort, Battle, 1754.

Washington, George, Pres. U.S. 1732-1799E199.A33 937.2'6 75-619131

Title

CHARMING

FIELD
FOR

AN

ENCOUNT ER

THIS

IS

THE STORY OF FORT NECESSITY

remarkable men who met and fought at a remote

frontier stockade in the year 1754, of the historic events
that took place there, of the developments that led up to
those events, of the great American leader who there was
trained and tested. The two engagements fought at and
near Fort Necessity were the opening shots of the bloodiest
of the

America it was called

the French and Indian War, and it changed the history of
the continent. Elsewhere it was known as the Seven Years'
War, and it changed the history of much of the rest of the
conflict of the 18th century. In North

world.
A distinguished

American

historian,

Lawrence Henry

Gipson, considered this the most important of all the wars

the United States has fought. "It was destined," he wrote,
"to have the most momentous consequences to the American people of any war in which they have been engaged
down to our own day consequences therefore even more
momentous than those that flowed from the victorious
Revolutionary War or from the Civil War. For it was to determine for centuries to come, if not for all time, what civilization
what governmental institutions, what social and
economic patterns would be paramount in North America. It was to determine likewise whether Americans were
to be securely confined ... to a long but narrow ribbon of

between the coastline and a not too distant

mountain chain, and whether their rivals, the French then
considered to be the greatest military power in the world
and in control of the Appalachians were to remain a
permanent and effective barrier to any enjoyment of the
vast western interior of the continent."
territory lying

The

story begins in Alexandria, Va., on April 2, 1754.

There on a Tuesday morning, Lt. Col. George
Washington mounted his best horse, gave a command, and to the sound of a single drummer marched a
column of troops westward out of the city. Among his regimental papers he carried orders from Gov. Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia commanding him and his men to
occupy, fortify, and defend the Upper Ohio Valley against
a French army advancing southward from Canada. The
march led to Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley, to
Wills Creek (Cumberland) in western Maryland, and on to
the Great Meadows in southwestern Pennsylvania where
Fort Necessity would soon stand. It led to frustration, to
short-lived victory, to fame clouded by censure, and to
perhaps the bitterest defeat George Washington was ever
to know.
As he started with his men toward the western mountains, Colonel Washington was wearing the uniform of an
officer of the Virginia militia

red coat with white lace

and breeches, black boots, a black threecornered hat. He was only 22 years old, but a giant of a
man, standing, by one reliable account, 6 feet 4 /? inches.
A figure of commanding presence and reserved demeanor, an expert and graceful horseman, he undoubtedly
made an impressive appearance to those in Alexandria
who were watching.
His troops were less impressive. Some were in the regimental uniform, but many wore combinations of uniform,
civilian cloth, breeches, and buckskin hunting shirts. There
were 132 men in the ranks, formed into two companies
commanded by Capt. Peter Hogg, 51 years old, and
Capt. Jacob Van Braam, 24, recently arrived from
Holland. The companies had a total of five lieutenants or
ensigns, two sergeants, six corporals, a drummer, a surgeon-major, and a gentleman volunteer from Sweden
named Carolus Gustavus de Spiltdorph. Several creaking
farm wagons carried the equipment and supplies, including tents for some, but not all, of the men.
Washington had spent some difficult weeks recruiting,
equipping, and training his two companies. We honor
cuffs, red vest

these

men today

for valiant service to their country, but

we

must recognize, as did Washington, that most of them

were "self-willed and ungovernable
loose, idle persons that are quite destitute of house and home." They
bore names representative of 18th-century America: Bibby
Brooke, Michael Scully, Abner and Southy Hazlip, Peter
Effleck, Mathew Nevison, Argyle House, Demsey Simmons, John Biddlecome, Ezekial Richardson, Godfrey and
Christopher Bomgardner.
The men carried smoothbore muskets with an effective
range of about 60 yards, but few had bayonets. The
legend has somehow grown up that all colonial Americans
owned rifles, were expert Indian fighters, and, like Hawkeye in James Fenimore Cooper's The Deerslayer, could
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the head of a squirrel at 200 yards. The facts were

in the language of the Pennsylvania

otherwise. Rifles,

Dutch country where they were made, were "seldom."

Few of these men had even seen, much less battled with,
an Indian. Many were far from expert in the use of the

weapons they carried.

Their pay was low: eightpence, the monetary equivalent
of 15 pounds of leaf tobacco, per day. Most had enlisted
because Governor Dinwiddie had promised them that
200,000 acres of good frontier land would be divided
among deserving volunteers, with a special tax benefit for
15 years. But now that land was in imminent danger of
being taken over by the French, and these two companies,
though still untrained and ill-equipped, were being hurried
to the rugged and remote western frontier to head off an
army of professional soldiers many times their number.
Washington was already familiar with the country he
was to march through, occupy, and defend. As a commissioned county surveyor at 18, he had helped to survey an
extensive area in the Shenandoah Valley where he now
owned several hundred acres near present-day Charles
Town, W.Va. Just 6 months before, during the winter of
1753-54, Governor Dinwiddie had sent him to deliver a
notice of trespass to French officers in command of forts
being built on and above the Allegheny River. Young
Washington had a burning ambition for recognition, and
this difficult and dangerous mission to a strange and hostile country gave him an opportunity to make a name for
himself.

On that earlier trip he had engaged Jacob Van Braam

as his French interpreter. A 24-year-old native of Holland,
where he reputedly had served as a lieutenant in the
Dutch army, Van Braam had come to America in 1752 and
settled in Fredericksburg, Va. There he taught fencing and
French (though, in light of subsequent events, one wonders how well) and was a fellow-member with Washington
in Masonic Lodge No. 4. At Wills Creek Washington also
employed four "servitors," a trader who spoke an Indian
tongue, and, as guide, the renowned fur trader, surveyor,
and explorer Christopher Gist. Three years before, in
1750-51, Gist had spent 7 months exploring the western
country for the Ohio Company, a private, speculative land
corporation made up of an "association of gentlemen" in
Virginia and England.
Washington and his seven aides traveled northwestwardly from Wills Creek through the valley that held a
pleasant open area called the Great Meadows and on to
the Forks of the Ohio (the site of present-day Pittsburgh).
At Logstown, an Indian trading center 13 miles down the
Ohio River (near present-day Ambridge, Pa.), Washington
conferred with two Iroquois chieftains who ruled the Indians of the Ohio Valley: Tanacharison, called the Half
King,

and Monacatootha, called Scarroyady by the

< Every Thing

being ready, we began our march according to

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Shawnees over whom he presided. (Monacatootha

7 men and taken
the design of a
tomahawk, and on each of his cheeks a bow and arrow.)
The Half King agreed to accompany the mission to the

boasted that
1 1

prisoners.

in

30

On

fights

he had

his chest

French outposts with three

killed

was carved

of his retainers.

The party, now numbering eight whites and four Indians,

emerged from the forest at Venango (now Franklin, Pa.) at
the point 60 miles south of Lake Erie where French Creek
empties into the Allegheny. The commandant there said
Washington must see his superior at Fort Le Boeuf
(now Waterford), another 40 miles to the north. At dinner

that

that evening, served

in

a confiscated English trading store,

the French officers, flushed with wine, boasted that they

intended, by God, to take and hold the Ohio Valley. They

granted that the English could raise twice as many men as
they could, but the English were certain to move too slowly
to stop them.
Washington continued on to Fort Le Boeuf with his
aides and his Indians, led by a Captain La Force, French
commissary of stores (quartermaster), whom he was to
meet again 4 months later, in April 1754, under less agreeable circumstances. Washington delivered Dinwiddie's
letter demanding the "peaceable departure" of the
French. The French commander was polite, but his written

was firm: "As to the summons you send me to retire,

do not think myself obliged to obey it."
The first half of his mission accomplished, Washington
decided to hurry home by forced marches. He put Van
Braam in charge of his exhausted horses, his followers,
reply
I

< Washington

's

map

of his 1753 trip to the Ohio Valley.

and

his

baggage, and started

On

way

off

on foot with

Gist.

It

was

Forks he was fired on by

an Indian. Crossing the Allegheny on a makeshift raft, he
was thrown into the river. He was rescued by Gist, and
they spent a freezing night in wet clothes on an island.
Just short of Wills Creek Washington met an oncoming
pack train of 17 horses carrying "materials and stores" for
a fort the Virginians were going to build on the Ohio. He
delivered the French reply in Williamsburg on January 16,
1754, having traveled almost a thousand miles in 1 1 weeks.
not a dull

trip.

the

to the

Governor Dinwiddie now had written evidence of

French intentions. He forwarded the reply to London, and
he put Washington's 6,000-word journal of his mission into
a pamphlet for circulation around the colonies, making the
young author known throughout America and England.
The British government gave Virginia 10,000 of ordnance
supplies and authorized the American colonies to mount a
joint program to hold back the French along the western

and northern frontier.

Such was the situation on that day in April 1754 when
Colonel Washington led his soldiers out of Alexandria on
his second journey into the Ohio Valley.

ANGLO-FRENCH RIVALRY for

Hundreds of volumes have been

the

OHIO VALLEY

written to describe

and

in-

between ranee and

England for supremacy in the region of the upper Ohio
River. The basic issues, however, were quite simple.
The French owned Canada to the farthest western extension of the Great Lakes; they owned the Louisiana Territory as far south as the Gulf of Mexico; and they were
determined to oivn all of the immense area lying between. In
1749 they sent a large armed force on a 2,000-mile expedition to visit the Indian tribes, drive out the English traders,
and bury lead plates claiming the lands drained by the Ohio
terpret the mid-18th-century struggle

River and

all its tributaries

in short, all the territory ivest

of the Appalachian Mountains. By the spring of 1754, they

were building a chain of forts on Lake Erie, French Creek,

and the upper Allegheny River and were headed for the
Forks of the Ohio.
England and her American colonies, of course, had their
own plans. They, too, claimed ownership of the Ohio Valley
and the right to control the Indian fur trade. But they lacked
the magnificent system of rivers that connected French

Jfis&<*m4

Quebec, Niagara, Detroit, the Illinois country, the Forks of

and Neiv Orleans. Indeed, to reach the Ohio from
Philadelphia or Williamsburg they had to cross seven mountain ridges that stretched north and south across 60 backbreaking miles. But they were hundreds of miles closer than
the French; and, unlike Canada, the American colonies ivere
filing up with immigrants hungry to own and settle the
lands on the western frontier. The French saw this thrust of
settlers to the west as an attempt to drive a barrier between
them and the Indians, and between their possessions in
the Ohio,

Canada and Louisiana.

The Ohio Company of Virginia was eager to help Americans settle in the Ohio Valley. The British Crown had
granted the company l/2 -million acres m ^ at: region, and it
intended to develop the land for thousands of families. The
company had already built warehouses at Wills Creek and at
Red Stone Creek on the Monongahela River (at present-day
Brownsville, Pa.), and in 1154

it

was the moving force

be-

hind the attempt to fortify the Forks of the Ohio against

French encroachments.
This familiar situation of two powers competing for land,
trade, and strategic advantage was complicated by other conflicting interests. Virginia and Pennsylvania each claimed the
lands of the Upper Ohio Valley, and, indeed, they later
(111 4) very nearly engaged in a comic-opera war to possess
them. The merchants of those tivo colonies were bitter rivals
for the Indian trade. And the Indians themselves claimed
the Ohio country as a hunting ground open to all friendly
tribes but owned by none.

The number

not more than

of Indians was not large
200,000 altogether east of the Mississippi and not more

than 2,100 warriors in the Six Nations Iroquois Confederation of Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas,
and Tuscaroras. But the few warriors ivere as elusive as

sharks in the sea, and at that time and in those circumstances

they held the balance of poiver between the French and the
English.

The Iroquois Indians had been allies of the British for

years, and they were blood enemies of those Canadian
Indians who had sided with the French. They ivere depen150

dent on British trade goods, which were of better quality,

greater variety, and priced lower than those of the French:
cooking utensils, tools, edged weapons, firearms, mirrors,
blankets, clothing, 'mouth organs," and scores of other
marvels of the white man's culture. Now, however, in this
impending tear betiveen two nations of white men, the
Iroquois resolved to remain neutral and at peace with both
rt

at least until they

saw which

side

would win.

The

small force that Washington led into the Upper

Ohio Valley comprised two of six companies of Vir-

ginia volunteers recruited for the expedition. Of the

other four, one

company

was already

33 armed frontiersmen and 8

work building a stockade at the

Forks of the Ohio. Capt. Adam Stephen was raising another company in Winchester. Capts. Andrew Lewis and
Robert Stobo were at Alexandria with the remaining companies and would soon leave to join Washington on the
frontier. These six units together made up the Virginia
artisans

at

Regiment under the overall command of Col. Joshua Fry,

Washington functioning as second in command. According to the plan, Dinwiddie's agents would have an
adequate number of horses and vehicles waiting for the
regiment at Winchester and other provisions and supplies

with

at Wills

Creek.

New York promised

to contribute two companies, North

Carolina 350 men, Maryland 200 men. South Carolina
would send an Independent Company that is, a company
of Americans enlisted, trained, and paid as regular troops
of the British Army but not attached to any British regiment. Pennsylvania would not furnish any troops, since it
had no militia and its assembly was controlled by peaceloving Quakers, but the governor promised 10,000
with
the restriction that it be used only to purchase grain.
Finally, Dinwiddie had convinced himself that he could
persuade the southern Indian tribes Catawbas, Cherokees, and Chickasaws
to send 1 ,000 warriors to join in

fighting the

French and Canadian Indians.

Regiment
substance and good reputation in the Virginia colony, though their military experience was limited.
Except for an ensign and a lieutenant, all were older than
he. Five were natives of Scotland.
Peter Hogg (pronounced Hogue), captain, was the
oldest at 51 A native of Edinburgh, he had arrived in the
American colonies about 1745. It is probable that he had
seen service in Scotland's rebellion against England in
that year. He had married a few days before he joined
Washington's force in Alexandria.
Adam Stephen, 30, senior captain, had been educated
in medicine at the University of Edinburgh and had served
as a surgeon on a British hospital ship. He joined the
Scots rebellion in 1745, emigrated to America, and set up
a practice of medicine and surgery at Frederick, Md.
Capt. Andrew Lewis, 34, born in North Ireland, had
come to Virginia as a boy and was now a figure of importance in Augusta County. He was noted for his great
size, his strength, and a deportment that matched Washington's for dignity and reserve. A governor of New York
exclaimed after meeting Lewis, "The earth seemed to
tremble under him as he walked."
Capt. Robert Stobo, 28, was the orphaned son of a wellto-do Glasgow merchant. After a term at the University of
Glasgow, he had invested his inheritance in merchandise,
Like Washington, the officers of the Virginia

were men

of

crossed the ocean, and set himself up as a merchant in

Petersburg, Va. When the prospect of an armed clash with
the French seemed imminent, he bought and studied a
treatise on the military art, hired 10 "servant mechanics,"
including a blacksmith and skilled hunters, and journeyed
to Alexandria to join the Ohio expedition. Captain Stobo,
who liked to travel in comfort and had the means to do so,
brought with him a wagon filled with personal supplies and
equipment and a cask holding 126 gallons of Madeira
wine.

Washington's chief aide was Maj. George Muse. He

was, with Washington, one of the four district adjutants of
militia. He had seen action in 1740 in the Briton Spanish Cartagena on the northwest coast of
Colombia in the Caribbean.
Surgeon-major of the regiment was James Craik, 24,
physician, also a graduate of the University of Edinburgh.
Dr. Craik had emigrated to Virginia in 1750.
To serve as the expedition's interpreter and adviser on
Indian affairs and to supply it with certain provisions at
Wills Creek, Governor Dinwiddie recruited George Crogh-

the Virginia
ish attack

an (pronounced CROW-an), Indian agent, trader, and land

speculator. To command a contingent of 18 American
scouts, Dinwiddie named Andrew Montour, the son of an
Oneida chief and of an educated half-Indian, half-French
mother. Montour was the leading interpreter at many
major conferences and a trusted adviser on Indian affairs
to the Pennsylvania government. He wore Indian ornaments and war paint and a strange mixture of Indian and
colonial dress.
Fifty-four-year-old

chosen
of

full

to

Joshua

Fry,

whom

Dinwiddie had

command

Colonel,

was

the Virginia Regiment with the rank

an Oxford-educated engineer, map-

maker, and former professor of mathematics at The College of William and Mary. Colonel Fry was a man of
some experience on the frontier, but he was, in Washington's opinion, too old and too fat to move with the
speed required of such a command.
Washington led his two companies into Winchester
about April 10, after a march averaging a respectable 1
miles per day. In that Scotch-Irish settlement of some 50
houses and cabins, he was welcomed by Captain Stephen
and his company. He found only a few of the wagons and
teams that had been promised, however, and in a week's

he was able to procure only 10 others. Unwilling to

more time, he set out with his three companies, now

effort

lose

totaling

159

men

in

ranks, for Wills Creek, 80 miles to the

northwest.
More trouble and worse

news awaited him there. No

pack animals, no wagons, no supplies had been delivered,
nor were any expected. Within a few hours, Ensign Edward
Ward walked into camp with an alarming story. Left in
command at the Forks of the Ohio, he had just finished
hanging the gate on the flimsy stockade when an armada
of 350 canoes and boats containing "at least one thousand" French soldiers appeared on the Allegheny River.
The Frenchmen took up positions with military precision,
trained several of their 18 cannon on the stockade, and
offered Ensign Ward a choice: surrender within one hour
or be bombarded and attacked by overwhelming numbers.
Ward surrendered. He and his men were permitted to
leave with their arms and tools.
Washington rented one of his horses to Ward and sent
him on to Williamsburg with his story. A few hours later
the frontiersmen in Ward's company straggled into camp.
There they assessed the situation, decided privately to
resign the military life, and departed to attend to other
matters. The six companies raised for the Virginia Regiment now numbered five those commanded by Stephen,
Van Braam, Hogg, Lewis, and Stobo.
With these developments the whole shape of the Expedition to the Ohio was changed. Washington's original
mission had been to widen a trail to Red Stone Creek into
a wagon road and to reinforce and defend the English fort
at the Forks. Now a French force of superior numbers was

13

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established there and would have to be driven out by an

army vastly larger than anyone in Williamsburg or London
had contemplated. At this point, on the basis of the new
information supplied him by Ward, Dinwiddie might well
have made a complete reassessment of what he and the
Virginia

Regiment were getting

into.

He

did not.

Despite overwhelming odds, Washington and his officers resolved to push on to the mouth of Red Stone Creek
on the Monongahela River. There they would wait for the
army and supplies which Dinwiddie had assured them in
letters from Williamsburg would soon follow. "We will endeavor to make the road sufficiently good for the heaviest
artillery to pass," Washington wrote the governor, "and
when we arrive at Red-stone Creek fortify ourselves as
strongly as the short time will allow." This, he felt, would
"preserve our men from the sorry consequences of inaction and encourage our [Indian] allies to remain on our
side."

He put a detachment of men on road building on April

25 and 6 days later left Wills Creek with the rest of the
regiment to join in the work. This was the hardest kind of
labor through rough and wild terrain, and progress was
slow sometimes no more than 2 miles in a day. Over the
next 3 weeks the men cut a road over the Great Savage
Mountain, 2,850 feet above sea level with an ascent of almost 2 miles. They worked their way through a still, dark
forest known as Shades of Death, forded Casselman's
River at the "Little Crossing," and drove their road across
what is now the Maryland-Pennsylvania border. They
crossed Negro Mountain (2,908 feet), forded the Youghiogheny River at the "Great Crossing," climbed Laurel
Mountain (2,400 feet), and descended to a plateau some
1 ,700 feet above sea level.
Washington left the regiment at the Great Crossing to
explore the Youghiogheny in the hope that it might be
navigable northward to where it joined the broad, deep
Monongahela (at present-day McKeesport). With a lieutenant, three men, and an Indian guide, by means of
canoe, raft, and wading, he proceeded 10 miles downriver
to the "Turkeyfoot," where Casselman's River, Laurel Hill
Creek, and the Youghiogheny come together (at presentday Confluence, Pa.). Some 8 miles farther on "we came
to a fall [Ohiopyle Falls], which continued rough, rocky
and scarcely passable, for two miles, and then fell, within

the

space

of

fifty

He turned back

yards, nearly forty feet perpendicular."

knowledge that the

Youghiogheny, even at high stage and even with portages,
could not be used as a water course to the Forks of the
with the disappointing

Ohio.

On

or about

May 24

the regiment reached the Great

Meadows, 50 miles northwest of Wills Creek. This was an

open area of long grass and low bushes from 200 to 300

< The
and
(I

great difficulty

and

labour, that

alter the roads, prevents

Day ....

George Washington

it

requires to

our Marching above

ammend
2, 3,

or 4 Miles

yards wide and perhaps 2 miles long, fairly level, lying in

a wide valley between Laurel Mountain to the east and
Chestnut Ridge, the last barrier to the Monongahela,
looming on the west. The Meadows offered a rare benefit
in that heavily forested country: pasture for the horses and
cattle that were expected to come with the main body of
troops. For this reason, among others, Washington chose
it as an ideal base of operations and halfway station between the fortified positions at Wills Creek and Red Stone
Creek.
He placed his wagons and pitched his tents between
two shallow gullies that might serve as natural entrenchments. The ground was marshy in spots. Great Meadows
Run, a twisting, weed-grown stream some 10 feet wide in
places, and a smaller branch later known as Indian Run,
crossed the area; the camp was begun within the triangle
where the two streams joined. The site was bordered by
two low hills covered with forests of hardwood trees,
mostly white oak. It was, Washington informed Dinwiddie
with youthful extravagance, "a charming field for an
Encounter."
Despite his extended forward position, Washington was
able to maintain frequent communication with the outside
world. To Dinwiddie he sent regular reports of his progress
and, especially, of his problems. He wrote of supply shortages, lack of reinforcements, and dissatisfaction among
officers and men at their hard work, low pay, and meager
diet. From Dinwiddie he received letters filled with promises, advice, orders, and reproaches for "ill-timed complaints." To the camp came scouts with information,
deserters from the French forces, Indian runners with
messages from the Half King, and Indian spies with news
of activities at Fort Duquesne, the newly built French fort
at the Forks of the Ohio. American traders and trappers,
driven out by the French advance, passed through on their
way east, full of accounts of French conduct, strength, and
intentions.

was

Many

of the intelligence reports

Washington

armed French contingents sent out, or about to be sent out, to attack and
destroy him. Indeed, Washington, his officers, and his advisors took
for granted that the armed French seizure of
territory far removed from French bases, and in an area
where they had never traded, was an act of war.
On the third day at the Meadows, Christopher Gist rode
in with news that 50 marauding French soldiers under
Captain La Force had just marched through his settlement
receiving at this time

warned

of

it

and "would have killed a cow and broken everything in

his house if they had not been prevented by two Indians"
he had left on guard there. Washington immediately sent
on
out Captain Hogg and 75 men
nearly half his force

a reconnaissance.

About 8 p.m. an Indian brave named Silverheels arrived

message from the Half King, who was encamped

about 6 miles away (at the site now known as Washington's Springs). The chief had seen the tracks of the
with a

16

Frenchmen and thought he knew where they were hiding.

at once assembled 40 men under Captain
Stephen, Captain-Lieutenant Van Braam, and Lt. Thomas
Waggener and set out to join the Indians and confront the
Washington

enemy

force.

Silverheels led them,

in

Washington's words, on a

"march through heavy rain, with the night black as pitch

and by a path scarcely wide enough for a man. We were
often led astray for 15 and 20 minutes before we could
find the path again, and often we would jostle each other
without being able to see. We continued our march all
night long." Seven men lost their way on the trail.
Daylight was breaking when the file reached the Half
King. Monacatootha was with him, but they had only 10 or
1 1 warriors, only a few of whom had firearms. The chiefs
agreed to join the attack and sent out two scouts to reconnoiter the French position. The men ate whatever ration
they carried and dried and primed their flintlocks. The
officers and the two chiefs laid out their plan of operation.
The scouts returned and led the force to a point where

down on the unguarded, unsuspecting enemy

Jumonville Glen). Washington counted more
than 30 French soldiers encamped at the bottom of a
small, narrow, secluded ravine in the forest, thick with
rocks and boulders. It was about 7 a.m. The men were preparing their breakfast. Some were only half dressed.
they looked

camp (now

Stephen deployed his men at the left edge of the ravine.

Washington posted the rest of the command on the more
exposed position on the right. The Indians crept to a point
on the far side of the French.
Exactly what happened next is still uncertain, and in
1754 became, with grave consequences, a matter of
partisan international dispute. The account most historians, French and Canadian as well as British and American, now accept is that in placing his men Washington
accidentally let himself be seen at the edge of the ravine.
Some of the French soldiers saw him and called out in
alarm, pointing up in his direction. Others ran for their
muskets, stacked in a dry place beneath a rock ledge.
At that moment Washington ordered his men to fire.
The volley was echoed by Stephen's men on the left.
it

(Stephen later asserted that the fire was so nearly simultaneous that it was not possible to say who fired first.) One
of Washington's men was killed and several, including
Lieutenant Waggener, were wounded.

The French were dropping by twos and

threes.

Caught

a hopeless position, they tried to escape at the far end

of the ravine, but came upon the Indians with their drawn
tomahawks, and turned to run back toward the Virginians,
hands in the air. The engagement lasted less than 15 minutes. Washington went down to accept the surrender, but
the Indians were ahead of him, scalping the dead and
in

killing

>

and scalping the wounded. The surviving French,

ordered

my company

to fire

....

George Washington

J|;

/
1

o/b

wounded man, were given protection. The

demanded that the prisoners be turned over to

including one

Indians

Joseph Coulon de
"Jumonville" apt
confusion with ni,

them. Washington refused.

When the confusion of the encounter subsided, Washington found that he had 21 prisoners and that 10 French
soldiers lay dead, including their commander, Ensign
Coulon de Jumonville,* apparently killed by the Half
King's hatchet. One Frenchman, answering a call of nature
at the edge of the camp, escaped and walked barefooted
back to the Forks of the Ohio to tell his story. Among the
prisoners was Captain La Force, the French commissary

who

in

December had

led

Washington and Van Braam

to

Le Boeuf and had boasted that the French would drive the
English out of the Ohio Valley. In his report to Dinwiddie,
Washington called him "a bold Enterprising Man, and a
whose active Spirit
person of great sublity and cunning
leads him into all parlays."
.

Washington also learned from Van Braam that the

French officers were indignantly charging him with unprovoked attack in time of peace on members of a French
embassy. They had been sent out, they said, to find the
English, proclaim their desire for friendship, and warn
them to depart peaceably from land that belonged to
France or be forcibly ejected. They claimed that they did
not know the English were near and that they had encamped in the glen, not to hide, but because of its supply
of water. They produced credentials signed by a Captain
Contrecoeur at Fort Duquesne that seemed to support
their story. They insisted that they should be treated as
members of a diplomatic mission and not as prisoners of
war.

Other orders found

among

the French papers, however,

was

also on a reconnaissance
mission and had been sending back reports on English

indicated that Jumonville

numbers and

activities.

Washington,

his officers,

Indian allies readily concurred that Jumonville

79

and

was

his

carry-

ing

two sets of orders and had intended

set best suited the circumstances.

In his

to

use whichever

journal

Washing-

ton wrote disdainfully:

Instead of coming as an ambassador should, publicly and in

an open manner, they came with the greatest secrecy and
looked for the most hidden retreats.
They
remained
hidden there for two whole days, ivhen they were no more
than five miles from us.
They pretend that they
called to us as soon as we were discovered. This is an absolute falsehood, for I was then at the head of the file going
toward them, and I can affirm that, as soon as they saw us,
they ran for their arms without calling, which I should have
heard if they had done so.
.

He again referred to a consideration that he held to be

extremely important:
The Half King's opinion in this case is that they had evil
and that if ive had been so foolish as to let them
go, he would never help us to catch other Frenchmen.
Washington gave the French officers some of his
clothes and sent them and the other prisoners back to
Wills Creek under guard of one of his lieutenants and the
Swedish volunteer, De Spiltdorph. Dinwiddie concurred
that the Frenchmen were proper prisoners of war and congratulated his young commander on his first victory. He
designs

what had happened,

London he struggled to put

realized the larger significance of

however, and

in

his report to

the best possible light on the attack. "This

little

skirmish,"

he wrote, "was by the Half King and the Indians. We were

auxiliaries to them, as my orders to the commander of our
forces was to be on the defensive."
The incident was far from closed. The French prisoners

became pawns in a great international struggle; they were

destined to remain in Virginia a very long time. Over the
next several years the French government exploited "the
Jumonville Affair" expertly in a pamphlet* distributed
throughout Europe to prove that the English had committed the first act of aggression in the Ohio Valley. Of
Washington's "little skirmish," Horace Walpole, eminent
man of letters and son of a British prime minister, wrote,
"The volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of
America set the world on fire."

20

* Memoire contenant le precis

avec leur pieces justified
pour servir de repose aux obser
vations envoyees, par les minisl
d'Angleterre. dans les course di
rEur pe
faits.

/X

fter

the defeat of Jumonville, Washington assumed

French would send out a force to attack

that the

.Z
him, and he straightaway set about to build a
stockade to protect his men and supplies. He chose as the
site the triangle of the two streams in the narrow part of
the Great Meadows.
He had his men select some 75 oak trees 9 to 10 inches
in diameter, cut them into logs about 10 feet long, and
split them lengthwise in half. He had another detachment
dig a trench about 2 /2 feet deep to form a circle with a
diameter of about 53 feet. The logs, with the bark still
on them, were then placed upright in the trench, edge to
edge, flat side out, the tops axed to a point. Fifty or more
smaller unsplit logs about 7 feet long were placed behind
these to close the gaps and to serve as gun rests. The
trench was filled in and the earth impacted. A gate 3 /2
feet wide, faced to the west, was hung between two
whole upright timbers.
In the center of the stockade the men built a low log
storehouse about 14 feet square, the roof of which was
covered with bark and hides. In this structure they placed
the powder, provisions, and several kegs of rum. Dr.
James Craik, the regimental surgeon-major, would use
this as an aid station when he arrived with the regiment's
other two companies.
The stockade would hold up to one company of 50
men; the others would fight from trenches and embankments that surrounded the structure. Washington wrote to
Dinwiddie on June 3: "We have just finished a small
palisado'd fort in which, with my small numbers, shall
not fear the attack of 500 men." The next day he "had
1

prayers

in

the fort."

The Half King had come to the Meadows on June 2 at

the head of 80 to 100 Indians. It was a dubious reinforcement, for many of those who came were women, children,
and old men. Only half the braves were in a condition to
fight, and everyone expected to be fed from the regiment's
insufficient and dwindling stores. The Half King declined
the suggestion that he send all but his warriors to the English settlements. He had dispatched Monacatootha, carrying the scalps of Jumonville's dead, to persuade the Ohio
tribes to go on the warpath against the French, and he
would wait until he learned the results of that mission.
Washington, fortunately, was able to replenish his larder
with barrels of flour bought from a trader returning
though he paid an outrageous price.

east,

More substantial reinforcements marched into camp on

June 9 the other two companies of the Virginia Regiment, totaling 110 men and five officers, commanded by
Andrew Lewis and Robert Stobo. They were led by Maj.
George Muse, for the stout Colonel Fry, commander of the
regiment, had fallen off his horse and was mortally injured.
With the contingent came Captain Montour carrying a belt

>

We

have, with Nature' s assistance, made a

clearing the Bushes out of these Meadows,

for an EnCOUnter.

George Washington

good Intrenchment, and, by

prepaid a charming field

&

.':

Jnfriift

*m
4\>

of

wampum

came

from Dinwiddie to the Half King. Croghan

with lame excuses for his failure to supply the provi-

sions he had contracted

for.

and medals

He rode

with a

wagon

filled

Dinwiddie had
intended to distribute these at Winchester at a Grand
Council of the chiefs of the friendly tribes, and he had invested in a splendid uniform and written a speech for the
occasion. But the chiefs did not choose to go to Winchester, and after waiting 1 6 days, the governor turned
over the presents to Croghan and returned to Williamswith presents

for the Indians.

burg, furious at Indian duplicity, at the inefficiency and

corruption of army contractors, and at the "lethargy and
supineness" that had kept the other colonial governors

from

fulfilling their

promises

of

support for the Ohio

Expedition.

Muse brought

from Dinwiddie which anWashington was appointed to the rank of full colonel, replacing the lamented
Colonel Fry in command of the Virginia Regiment. Muse
was appointed a lieutenant colonel and Stephen a major.
Col. James Innes of North Carolina, now on his way north

nounced a number

with

300

letters

of promotions.

British regulars,

was

the

new commander

in

chief

of the expedition.

The Great Meadows and its stockade were now the

center of new and broadened activities, of scenes that
excite the mind with their color and drama. A person can
stand at the edge of the clearing today, look across the
sweep of land, then rougher and more swampy than it is

camp as it must have appeared in

would not have been an orderly scene by
present military standards. There were cattle and horses
grazing; men performing their housekeeping chores;
smoke rising from the scattered cooking fires where small
groups kept a pot boiling. We can picture detachments
marching out with axes, saws, sledges, and rigging to
now, and imagine the

June

24

of 1754.

It

work on the road; crowds gathering around any messenger newly arrived from Wills Creek or Winchester or
Williamsburg; and Indians wandering sharp-eyed through
the camp or dozing in front of their wigwams at the edge
of the woods.
The day after the arrival of the fourth and fifth companies, the regiment fell out in formation for ceremonies
honoring the Indian allies. The Half King and his braves
appeared in a group, appropriately attired, decorated, and
painted for the occasion. Washington, in dress uniform,
read the speech Dinwiddie had not been able to deliver at
Winchester. He presented Dinwiddie's belts of wampum
and distributed his presents. He conferred on the Half King
the English name Dinwiddie, meaning "The Head of Everything," and hung around his neck a crescent-shaped silver medallion called a "gorget," showing the features of
British coat of arms on
Seneca matriarch who came
with the Half King, desired that her young son be received
into the council and be honored with an English name.
Washington decorated him with a gorget and named him
Fairfax, which he said meant "First of the Council." Since
Colonel Muse had brought several kegs of rum contributed
by Dinwiddie,
may be supposed that every man and the

King George

the other.

on one side and the

II

Queen

Aliquippa, a

it

Indian matron received a dram.

Within four or five more days, Capt.

James Mackay
camp at the head of
well-armed men of the South

(pronounced-MACK-ee) rode

into

100 smartly uniformed,

Carolina Independent Company. They brought with them
60 head of cattle, some powder and ball, and 5 days'
ration of flour.

Dinwiddie had repeatedly cautioned Washington that

Captain Mackay held a commission signed by the King,
that his men, though citizens of South Carolina and
Georgia, were British Regulars, and that they expected
"suitable regard." Washington and his officers, therefore,
were to "show them particular esteem" and would be
answerable "for any
consequences of an unhappy
ill

disagreement."

Washington welcomed Mackay in a formal, military

manner and did not presume to give him orders. Mackay
picked his own campsite and mounted his own guard;
Washington did not inspect them. Washington sent over
the password and the countersign; Mackay returned them
with the information that he could not accept them from a
colonial officer.

The two men met and "reasoned calmly" over thorny

problems of protocol and rank. Mackay was not unfriendly,
but on these points he was inflexible: a royal commission
of any rank took precedence over any commission of any
rank signed by a colonial governor; and in any matters
that involved both his company and the Virginia Regiment,
he would give the orders. Washington replied as politely

25

P^FSESS^^
%-w^.-

*\

'*'
1

,
f

*tm

1/5

'/>

Wy

^^f^"'

|r
C"^

>
.

-i^^f

'

'X

-*'


as he could that it was obviously improper for a South
Carolina captain to give orders to a Virginia regiment.
Mackay did not agree. He further declared that he would
not permit his men to join in the road building or any
other non-military labor unless they were paid the one
shilling a day extra customarily allowed for such service.
Washington described Mackay's conduct to Dinwiddie at
some length, and concluded: "I can very confidently say
that his absence would tend to the public advantage." He
would leave Mackay and his company at the Meadows, he
said, and "continue to complete the work we have begun
with my poor fellows; we shall have the whole credit, as

none others have assisted."

On the morning of June 16, Washington had his men
swivel guns
load on the wagons nine small cannon
that Muse's companies had brought with them. He formed
his regiment, mounted his horse, and gave the command
to march. We can be sure that the Carolina troops and the
Indians stopped whatever they were doing to watch the
departure. The first company had scarcely entered the

woods when the order was given to halt. One

wagons had broken down on the rough road.

of the
In

his

Washington wrote, "[We] were

extremely embarrassed."
The regiment pushed on to Gist's Plantation, which lay
on a foothill west of Chestnut Ridge (near present-day
Mount Braddock), at the end of a 13-mile road that had
taken 14 days to build. This was the Ohio Company's first
planned settlement, where 150 families were to be placed
on a large tract of 2,500 acres.
Washington made his headquarters in one of Gist's
buildings. He sent Captain Lewis with 60 men to continue
the road to Red Stone Creek, only 16 miles to the northwest. And he prepared for a meeting with the Ohio Valley
Indians he had invited to Gist's.
About 40 braves showed up, several of them uninvited
Mingoes (Ohio Valley Iroquois) who announced belligerently that they were there to report on the conference
for the French. The meeting lasted 3 days, and despite the
best counsel from Croghan, Montour, the Half King, and
Monacatootha, it ended in failure. Washington had too
few gifts and too little food to offer; the French were clearly
the stronger military force; and the Six Nations Council at
Onondaga had ordered the Ohio tribes to remain neutral
in this quarrel between the white men over who should
own the Indians' land. The Indians disappeared into the
forests. The Half King and his warriors returned to their
camp at the Meadows and, despite the pleas of Montour
and Croghan, refused to rejoin the Virginians.
Work continued on the road for another 10 days, though
the men were becoming weak and
from their hard
labors on a diet of parched corn and tough, lean, unsalted,
freshly slaughtered beef. On Thursday evening, June 27,
journal that evening

ill

<

called the Indians together by the advice of the Half -King,

presented one of the medals, and desired him to wear it in remembrance

of his great father, the

King

of

England ....

George Washington

or the next morning, an Indian

camp

messenger

trotted into

with grim news. Chief Monacatootha, a faithful

ally,

had burned the village at Logstown, put his 200 people

into canoes, and started up the Ohio and the Monongahela
to seek English protection. Stopping at Fort Duquesne to
reconnoiter, he learned that the French had received
reinforcements and fresh supplies and were about to move
south to attack.

Washington trusted the information, and he sent word

Captain Lewis to bring in his road builders. He also sent
a messenger to Captain Mackay at the stockade inviting
him to move forward to Gist's Plantation. Then Washington
put his own men to preparing the settlement against an

to

assault.

Mackay and his soldiers arrived in a hurry about 2

o'clock Saturday morning. A second Indian runner came
in about the same time with word that a very large force of
French and Indians had left Fort Duquesne the day before
and was paddling and poling its way up the Monongahela
to Red Stone Creek.
Washington called a council of officers "to consider
what was most prudent and necessary to be done in the
present situation of affairs." The discussion ended in a

28

unanimous

resolution "that

it

was absolutely necessary

to

Meadows and remain there." Each

signed his name to the minutes of

return to our Fort at the

of the Virginia officers

the council.
The Virginia Regiment and the Independent

Company

broke camp around noon on Saturday and began to

prepare for the 13-mile retreat over the mountain.
Unfortunately, Washington had sent all but two of his
wagons and teams back to Fort Necessity for the longpromised supplies, and now he lacked means to transport
his food, tents, tools, powder, cannon, and ammunition.
He appropriated two wagons and teams belonging to
Croghan and threw out the furs and trade goods they
contained. Some powder, ball, and shot were loaded on
the officers' horses; the rest

woods. Teams

was buried

men were assigned

or scattered

in

the

each other
in carrying the nine swivel guns. Washington paid $16 to
several of his men to carry his personal baggage. A
detachment started the cattle on the march.
Mackay's troops took no part in these preparations;
they still would not break the rules of their trade by
performing such labor without extra pay.
The column plodded wearily up the west side of Chestnut Ridge, then turned due south through narrow mountain
defiles.
proceeded southeast along Chestnut Ridge and
down Chalk Hill. The rest stops became longer and more
frequent; the distances covered between them became
shorter. Montour's woodsmen and the last few Indian
of

to spell

It

scouts disappeared. Several Virginians deserted, either to

go over to the French or to try to make their way back
alone to the eastern settlements. The column took almost
2 days to cover the 1 3 miles.
One hope kept the men on their feet and driving
forward: the thought that there would be supplies, food,
and reinforcements waiting for them at the stockade,
which had now been given the name Fort Necessity. But
when they staggered into the clearing of the Meadows,
they met with a stunning shock. There were no supplies,
no reinforcements only their own drivers with their own

empty wagons.
a council meeting at the fort, Washington and the
decided the men were in no condition to march
another 50 miles to Wills Creek. They would stay at Fort
Necessity, and if the French came that far to attack, they
In

officers

would

fight.

Shortly thereafter several

wagonloads

of flour arrived

from Wills Creek. The drivers brought word that two

companies of regular soldiers from New York had left ship
at Alexandria 20 days earlier. Even at a moderate rate of
march, they should soon be arriving at Fort Necessity with
fresh troops, heavy cannon, and provisions.
Washington distributed a ration of flour, sent an express
rider to Colonel Innes with an urgent plea for help, and
put the men to strengthening the fort. This time Mackay's

29

troops joined in the work. The trenches were extended and

improved. The swivel guns, capable of firing scatter shot
effectively from 100 to 200 yards, were emplaced. The
Half King watched these preparations, advised Washington
to continue to retreat to Wills Creek, and silently
disappeared with all his braves.
The French had in fact left Fort Duquesne at 10 o'clock
Friday morning with a force of 600 French and Canadian
soldiers and some 100 Indians
Hurons, Abenakis,
Nipissings, Algonquins, Ottawas, French Iroquois, and
some Delawares who a few weeks earlier had been allies
of the English. Their leader was Capt. Louis Coulon de
Villiers, older half-brother of the slain Ensign Jumonville.
His orders were to "march against the English ... in
order to avenge ourselves and chastise them for having
violated the most sacred laws of civilized nations."
Villiers beached his canoes and boats at Red Stone
Creek, inspected the deserted Ohio Company warehouse,
and, thinking of the rough terrain ahead of him, decided
to leave there under guard his wheeled vehicles, cannon,
and reserve provisions. He wished to travel fast and light
and to engage the English before they could be reinforced.
At dawn on Monday, July 1 as the English were nearing
the end of their retreat to Fort Necessity, Villiers started
over the mountain trail to Gist's plantation. He encountered
the road that had been so hastily abandoned 3 days earlier.
In camp that night he reviewed his situation and very
nearly decided to turn back to Fort Duquesne. His intelligence reports told him that an English force of 5,000 men
was on its way to Washington's aid. His Indians were
nervous at being so deep in enemy territory and were
threatening to desert; the Algonquins did in fact leave

him. But at that

moment

a deserter

named John Ramsey,

from the company that Adam Stephen had raised and

commanded, walked into camp and freely told of the
weakened condition and poor prospects of the English.

pushed on, camped at Gist's settlement, and at

dawn on Wednesday, July 3, left on the last leg of the

Villiers

march. Five miles from Fort Necessity he halted his

column and walked to the glen where his brother and nine
of his command had been killed and scalped. In his report
he wrote simply, without expression of emotion, "Here
I

saw some bodies

30

still

remaining."

yn arly on the morning of Wednesday, July

A-/ one

of

Washington's scouting

1754,

3,

parties, supporting a

JL-/ wounded

sentry, returned to Fort Necessity with

information that the French were only 4 miles away. (The
scouts were afflicted either with bad vision or an attack of

described the enemy as "a heavy,

naked.") Work was speeded up in an
effort to complete the entrenchments. Rain was falling.
The French emerged (fully clothed) in three columns
from the wooded hillside on the southwest side of the fort,
along the wagon road to Gist's Plantation. They halted,
formed an irregular skirmish line, and began to advance
across the open field.
Washington and Mackay had a force of fewer than 400
men, only 284 of whom were fit for combat. Despite the
odds against them, they placed their men in dressed ranks
before the trenches, ready to repel a charge. As the
French advanced, the English stood as firm as trained,
disciplined veterans, and they did not panic at the French
war cries and "dismal Indian yells" or at a force more
than twice as numerous as their own. As ordered, they
held their fire. Major Stephen discharged several ineffective rounds from the swivel guns.
The French halted several hundred paces from the fort
and fired a fruitless volley. Still the English held their fire.
The French reloaded, continued to advance, and fired
again. At this point Washington and Mackay decided that
the enemy did not intend to charge across the open field,
and they ordered their men to take up positions in the
trenches. Responding like the veterans they were, Mackay
and his company occupied the trenches most exposed
to enemy fire. After advancing to within 60 yards of the
English position, the French scattered to the woods to the
hysteria, for they

numerous body,

all

southeast, closest to the

fort.

The English now returned

fire at will.

Villiers wrote in his report of the battle: "As we were not

acquainted with the ground, we presented our flank to the
fort from which they began to cannonade us.
The
Indians, as we also, set up the cry, and advanced to meet
them: but they gave us not time to make our discharge:
they filed off, and withdrew into an entrenchment which lay
next to their fort. We then set about investing the fort: it
was advantageously enough situated in a meadow, the
wood of which was within musket shot of it. We came as
close to them as it was possible, to the end that his
Majesty's subjects might not be exposed without necessity: the fire was pretty brisk on both sides, and
repaired
to the place which most appeared to favor a sally [from
.

the fort]."

The French took full advantage of the fact that they

could lie protected in the woods and rake the English
defenses with aimed musket balls. Some of the Indians
edged closer, but sharp fire from the swivel guns and the
men in the entrenchments made them scurry back to
cover after some casualties. None of Villiers' men ventured

31

again beyond the tree line. For a time they turned their
on the grazing animals, killing all the horses, cattle,
oxen, and even the camp dogs. The English had thought
to slaughter all their cattle but did not do so because they
lacked salt to preserve the meat.
The battle settled into a steady exchange in which
the English were at a marked disadvantage. They were
outnumbered, they could seldom see the enemy concealed
in the woods, and they had to expose themselves when
they fired from the trenches. Washington described the
contest as an "unequal fight, with an enemy sheltered
behind the trees, ourselves without shelter, in trenches full
of water, in a settled rain, and the enemy galding [galling]
us on all sides incessantly from the woods."
After their first few rounds, the swivel guns attracted a
concentrated fire that silenced them. Major Stephen
removed several of the logs in the stockade to provide a
field of fire at ground level, but, without a solid target or a
charging enemy, the swivels were ineffective, even when
loaded with case or "scatter-shot."
The trenches were now knee-deep in water and soft
mud. The damp powder and the dirt fouled the muskets,
and there were, unfortunately, only two "worm attachfire

ments" in the entire camp with which to remove the damp

charges from the musket barrels.
American casualties were mounting. Washington's
Negro servant received a wound from which he later died.
Ensign William La Peyroney (Washington's adjutant) and
the regimental sergeant-major were disabled by wounds.
Captain Lewis was twice wounded but stayed at his post.
Some of the men were injured by splinters shot away from
the posts of the stockade or from the storehouse within it.
Four men of Stobo's company were killed and seven were
wounded, the highest number of casualties incurred by
any of the five Virginia companies. Mackay's Independents

>

the Colonel gave Orders to fire, which was done with great
Alacrity and Undauntedness. Maryland Gazette. j U v 25, 1754
.

S
'C'


were suffering even heavier losses. Lieutenant Mercier of
company was wounded, continued to fight, was
wounded again, and was finally killed by a third shot as he

that

was being
In

carried to Dr. Craik's aid station in the stockade.

the face of such casualties, Colonel Muse disgraced

himself by some act of cowardice that was later much

discussed but never specifically named. One story was
that he tried to flee with his men into the protection of the
stockade.
During the afternoon the firing slackened, diminished
by the rain and dwindling supplies of ball and powder on
both sides. The combatants, in the words of the historian
Francis Parkman, "could do little but gaze at each other
through a grey veil of mist and rain." Toward evening,
however, the rate of fire increased sharply, until it was
drowned entirely by what Washington called "the most
that set everytremendous rain that can be conceived
thing afloat." Now seemed a logical time for the French
and Indians to attack with bayonet and tomahawk. "Our
.

men," Washington said, "behaved with singular intrepidity,

and we determined not to ask for quarter but with our
bayonets screwed, to sell our lives as dearly as possibly

we

could."

While waiting, some of the wretched, rain-soaked, mudcovered men discovered a source of instant courage and
good cheer. They broke open the kegs of rum in the storehouse and, along with about half the regiment, proceeded
to make themselves thoroughly drunk. Fortunately, the
French made no assault.
Instead, around 8 o'clock
30 minutes after sunset
came an incredible call from the woods: "Voulez-vous
parler?" ("Do you wish to negotiate?")

When

this was translated for him, Washington refused

He was convinced that was some trick by
which the French meant to get behind his lines and
discover the weakness of his position. The French called
again. No answer. They called again. This time Washington
called back an answer, either in his own voice or in French
by La Peyroney or Van Braam: No Frenchman would be
permitted to come within his lines. There was a lull, then
the French answer: The English could send an officer to
their lines to discuss terms. On their word of honor, he

to reply.

it

would be allowed to return safely.

Washington agreed to negotiate on those terms. La
Peyroney, despite his wound, and Van Braam left the fort
together, crossed the field, and met with Captain de
Villiers and his second in command.
In his report on the battle, Villiers took pains to give all
the reasons that would justify his decision to give quarter
to an enemy in an apparently hopeless position. He had
thought of assaulting the fort, he said, and even prepared
bundles of fagots to set afire. But his ammunition was
low, his powder damp, and his provisions almost gone.
He had no cannon with which to destroy the fort. His
French soldiers and Canadian militia were drenched from
it

34

the rain, exhausted, and "little accustomed to this military

discipline." His Indians were threatening to leave him in
the morning. He had received a report that "the beat of
drums and the firing of cannon had been heard from a

which could mean that the rumored reinforcedistance"

of 5,000 English might appear. His second in command agreed that they should parlay.
Since France and England were not at war, Villiers told
La Peyroney and Van Braam, he would show mercy and
permit the English to retire to their own territory rather than
become prisoners of war. If they refused his offer however,
and continued an "obstinate resistance," he could not
guarantee to protect them from the Indians when the fort
fell. A body of 400 braves, he said (exaggerating by 300),
would arrive in the morning. He might not be able to
control them.
La Peyroney and Van Braam returned to the stockade
and conveyed Villiers' terms to Washington. Though he
never said so, he must have felt mingled emotions of
surprise, relief, and pleasure. One-fourth of his men were
sick and another one-third lay dead or wounded. He had

ment

little

means of transportation, no hope of escape

He had no reason to expect such favorable

food, no

or victory.

treatment from the enemy.

Washington instructed the two officers to return to the

French lines and insist that the proposed terms be put in
writing. La Peyroney seems to have collapsed by this
time, for Van Braam went back alone. He was gone for
what seemed a very long time. When he returned, he
carried the surrender document written out in duplicate on
two sheets of paper. Adam Stephen described the scene
a few weeks later for the Maryland Gazette at Annapolis:
"When Mr. Van Braam returned with the French proposals,
we were obliged to take the sense of them by word of
mouth: It rained so heavily that he could not give us a
written translation of them; we could scarcely keep the
candle light to read them; they were wrote in a bad hand,
on wet and blotted paper so that no person could read
them but Van Braam who had heard them from the mouth
of the French officer."
Van Braam, reading aloud, translating as he went along,
was working in two languages not native to him; he
probably translated the French words mentally into Dutch
and then into English. He may have run quickly through
the preamble:
Capitulation granted by M. de Villiers, captain of infantry
and commander of troops of his most Christian Majesty, to
those English troops actually in the fort of Necessity which
was built on the lands of the King's dominions July the 3rd,

^As our intention

has never been to trouble the peace and good harmony that
reigns betiveen the two friendly princes, but only to

at eight o'clock in the evening, 1 734.

revenge

35

36

Here Van Braam came upon the words /'assassin. He may

never have seen the phrase before; or he may not have
known that the word assassination existed in English; or he
may not have realized that it means "to kill treacherously,
to murder by secret, planned assault." Or he may simply
have been unable to decipher the word and so supplied
what he thought should have been there in relation to the
words that followed. Even when examined today under a
good light in the Montreal archives, the word is almost
indecipherable; indeed, when a clerk-translator rendered
it into English in Williamsburg a few weeks after the battle,
he first wrote assault, then crossed his word out and wrote
killing.

any case, Van Braam, in translating the phrase

spoke some commonplace word like killing, or
death, or loss, and gave a similar reading when the verb
assassinated appeared later. No officer raised any
objection, asked any question, or made any other
comment, as some most certainly would have done if the
word assassination had been spoken.
In

I'assassin,

Van Braam continued:

.which has been done on one of our officers, bearer of a
summons, upon his party, as also to hinder any establishment
.

on the lands of the dominions of the King,

these considerations,

we

my

master;

upon

are willing to grant protection or

favor, to all the English that are in the said fort,

upon

the

conditions hereafter mentioned.

He

translated the seven conditions.

Washington and the garrison could return to their

First,

own country

in peace. The French would offer no insult

and would to the best of their ability restrain the Indians
who were with them. Second, they could take with them
all their belongings excepting their artillery and "munitions
de guerre." Third, they would be granted the honors of
war and could come out with drums beating and with one
small cannon, "wishing to show by this means that we
treat them as friends." Fourth, they must lower the English
flag. Fifth, a detachment of French would receive the
surrender of the garrison and take possession of the fort
at daybreak. Sixth, since the English had no means of
transportation, they could leave their baggage under guard
and return for it later; but they must "give their word of
honor that they will not work on any establishment either in
the surrounding country or beyond the mountains during
one year beginning from this day." (According to Stephen,
Van Braam translated the latter condition as "not to
attempt buildings or improvements on the lands of his Most
Christian Majesty," and the English officers, denying that
the French king had any lands there, thought it needless

to dispute the point.

It

was

not spelled out

who

the "they"

were who must not work west of the mountains for a year,
and the officers assumed that it referred only to the troops
left behind to guard the stores. The point is important,

< The

articles of surrender were wrote in a bad Hand, on wet and blotted

Paper so that no Person could read them but Van Braam who had
heard them from the mouth of the French Officer. Adam Stephen

because Washington returned to the area named in less

than one year and the French, by their interpretation of
the condition, charged that in so doing he broke his
parole.)
Finally, Washington was to turn over two of his captains
be held as hostages until all the prisoners he had taken
in the Jumonville engagement were delivered to Fort
Duquesne.
Washington declared at once that they must not agree
to turn over their arms and ammunition; without them they
would be at the mercy of the Indians on the return march.
Van Braam went out for the third time to meet the French
and returned with the words munitions de guerre crossed
out on both copies. Washington agreed that Captain
Mackay should sign the document first, perhaps because
of his admiration for Mackay's conduct under fire.
Captains Van Braam and Stobo either volunteered to be or
were chosen as the hostages. They were obvious choices,
since one spoke some French and both were single men

to

without family responsibilities.

Stobo presented his sword with a flourish and a little

speech to his company lieutenant, William Poulson. Van

38

Braam persuaded Washington to sell him his dress

uniform for 13, on credit. The two men gathered up some
of their belongings, made their farewells, and crossed to
the French lines. There Villiers signed both copies of the
surrender document, returned one to the escorting
English officer, and took the two hostages into custody.
Villiers'

We

made

report

was

self-congratulatory:

the English give us in their

own

hands, that they

had committed an assassination on us, in the camp of my

brother. We had hostages as sureties for the French whom
they had in their power; we compelled them to evacuate the
country as belonging to the most Christian King. We obliged
them to leave us their cannon, which consisted of nine pieces.
We had already destroyed all their horses and cattle, and
further we made them give us in their own hand that the
favor we showed them was only to prove to them how
greatly we desired to treat them as friends.
The negotiations had taken some 4 hours, and it was
now after midnight. The dog-tired soldiers on both sides
lay down to get what sleep they could before the events
of the next day.

39

The

French marched to Fort Necessity at daybreak

on July 4 and formed two facing ranks. Washington
and Mackay put their men in formation and led
them between the ranks to the sound of French drums.
The English carried their supplies and, on their backs,
their wounded comrades. The one swivel gun they were
permitted as a token of war could not be transported and
had to be left behind. They proceeded to a separate part
of the Meadows and organized for the return to Wills
Creek.

They buried their dead, 17 from Mackay's company and

13 from the Virginia companies. (It is one of the mysteries
of Fort Necessity that a thorough search with modern
methods and devices has failed to discover the graves.)
Seventy men in all were wounded. The sergeants distributed a ration of shot and powder and scattered the
rest over the wet field. They destroyed some of their
baggage, selected what they thought they could carry, and
put the remainder in a pile to be retrieved later. Somewhere, somehow during this time Washington's journal of
the expedition was lost or stolen; it ended up in French
hands.
The French marched into the fort and raised the

The number of English dead and wounded,

"raised compassion in me, notwithstanding
my resentment at the manner in which they had made
away with my brother." He found and immediately
smashed several remaining kegs of rum before the Indians
could discover them. He had his men render the swivel
guns useless and break up and burn the wagons. He had
them pull some 55 of the palisade posts from the ground,
stack them around the remaining 20 posts, and set the
entire mass on fire.
The French losses were three killed, one of whom was
an Indian, and 1 7 wounded, two of them Indians. The
fleur-de-lis.

Villiers wrote,

figures
Villiers'

seem unbelievably low, but they are found in

report to his commanding officer, and
seems
it

would give him incorrect totals. (Jean

Victor Varin, the French king's comptroller in Canada,
reported to a higher official on July 24, "We lost 2
Canadians
and had 70 wounded, most of them very
lightly.") Washington and Mackay believed that the
English had killed 300 French and Indians, including an
unlikely that he

officer of high rank; they

so informed Dinwiddie,

who

sent

the information on to London.

The surrender ceremonies were scarcely completed

when

the Indians

demanded

their traditional right to

and make captives of the defeated enemy. When

Villiers refused their demands, they became unruly. The
100 Indians who had arrived during the night were highly
excited and could scarcely be restrained. They broke open
Dr. Craik's medicine chest, which was to have been left
with the wounded, and tore apart the baggage in the pile
to be left behind. Washington complained strongly to
pillage

41

%.***

'-U ^^,..
:

MM
'

*#***

the Indian harrassment was a violation of their

agreement; Villiers did what he could to stop it, and he
released 10 Virginians who had been made prisoners by
the Indians. Washington recognized a number of
Delawares and Shawnees he had earlier received in his
camp as allies. "Sundry of them came up," he wrote in a
passage striking for the mockery it reveals, "and spoke to
us, and told us they were our brothers, and asked us how
Villiers that

we

did."

was almost 10 o'clock before Washington and

Mackay gave the command to march. The men carried
their arms and ammunition, some of their provisions, and
their wounded. They were able to go only 3 miles that day,
camping by a mountain spring in the evening. They were
harrassed by Indians when they resumed the march the
It

next day but were not openly attacked. At a suitable

left the badly wounded in the care of an
ensign, a sergeant, and 1 1 privates; they were to be picked
up in the first wagons that could be obtained. The walking-

distance, they

wounded and

the footsore moved more slowly and had

be guarded by details assigned to that duty. At least
two of the men left behind to guard the seriously wounded
were taken prisoner by the Indians, held at Fort Duquesne,
and then sent to Canada.
When the French returned to the Forks of the Ohio, they
burned Gist's settlement and all the other houses and
cabins they encountered. They arrived at Fort Duquesne
on July 7.
The main column of English reached the safety and
comfort of Wills Creek on July 9 after 5 hard days on the
road. There Washington learned that the two companies
of New York regulars he had been expecting as reinforcements had never left Alexandria. Their commander had
fallen ill, and the officers and men thoughtfully decided to
stay with him until he recovered. They probably would not
have been much help in any event, since the one barrel of
powder they had was useless and they lacked tents,
to

blankets, and provisions. The North Carolina company

had arrived in Virginia with almost no arms, but it came
well supplied with swine and beef cattle that it intended to
sell to raise money with which to buy weapons. That
company was due to arrive in Winchester almost any day.
At Wills Creek Washington had his regiment fall in for
roll call. Of the 293 officers, noncommissioned officers,
and privates who had assembled at the Great Meadows
one week earlier, 165 were in ranks and fit for duty. Thirteen men had been killed in action, 54 were reported as
wounded, 1 1 had been left on the road with the wounded,
29 of the walking disabled were presumed to be still on
the march, 19 were missing or had deserted, and 2 had
been delivered to the French as hostages.
Washington turned his regiment over to the disgraced
Colonel Muse and rode on to Williamsburg with Mackay,

< The number of the Killed on our Side was 30, and 10 wounded
Our Men behaved with singular Intrepidity.
Maryland Gazette. U v 25. 1754
.

now

his firm friend, to

render an account to Dinwiddie.

was reported as saying, "was

"Mr. Washington," Mackay

very sad company."
At

some unknown moment

after the return to Williams-

a government office, or a scholar in his

library, or simply an interested reader who understood
French, looked up from the Articles of Capitulation and
announced that they twice contained the signed confession that Washington and his Virginians had "assassiburg, a clerk

in

nated" a French emissary. The shocking news raced up

and down the eastern seaboard and sped across the
ocean. Washington was thunderstruck. His honor and his
judgment impugned, he blamed Van Braam: "We were
willfully or ignorantly deceived by our interpreter." Governor Dinwiddie did a

little

fast improvising in his report

London: "The interpreter was a poltroon, and though

an officer with us, they say he has joined the French. This
is the truth, reported by two of our officers and declared
on their honor."
Due allowance was made in the colonies for Washington's youth and inexperience and the shameful lack of
support and direction given him. There were some who
said privately that he had acted too recklessly out of a
desire for glory, but there were also some who understood
the remarkable way in which this young man, in his first
field command, had won the esteem of his officers and of
his "loose, idle fellows" and had molded them into an
effective fighting force. Dinwiddie had warned his commander not "to make any hazardous attempts against a
too numerous enemy." Now the governor convinced himself, and said so in his correspondence, that he had given
Washington specific orders not to advance until joined by
the other forces and that Washington had disobeyed him.
Washington is almost invariably criticized for positioning his fort on low ground vulnerable to musketry from
hills on two sides. The criticism is not just, for no musket
ball fired from those hills could have reached the fort with
any effect. The distance was too great. Cannon trained
down upon it, of course, would have torn it apart; but an
enemy armed with cannon could have destroyed the fort
no matter where it stood.
Washington, however, did make two mistakes, one of
them fatal. He placed the stockade on ground so wet
and poorly drained that any trenches dug for protection
were almost certain to fill up with water. And the woods on
the southeastern side of the fort came to within 60 yards
of the stockade. This meant that enemy troops would have
both protection and concealment while firing within effective musket range. A more experienced commander would
certainly have cut back the woods to ground level for another 15 or 20 yards. It should be remembered, however,
that Washington was working under adverse conditions,
and, despite his boast to Dinwiddie on June 3, designed
his fort only for temporary protection. He had no intention
to

44

Great Meadows if he could avoid

be built at Red Stone on the
Monongahela, on the far side of Chestnut Ridge.

of fighting a battle at the

it;

the real bastion

The

Virginia

was

House

to

of

Burgesses publicly commended

regiment, praised the officers "for their late gallant and

brave behavior," and gave each man a bonus of one pisits

excepted two names from

George Muse, who resigned his commission
in disgrace, and Jacob Van Braam, who, unaware of the
blame being heaped upon him by Washington and others,
was innocently playing cards with the French officers in
Fort Duquesne while waiting to be exchanged for the
tole,
its

a coin worth about $4.

It

citiation:

French prisoners.

The consequences of the defeat at Fort Necessity were

momentous. The English lost the Indians as allies and
within a few months all the tribes were either allied with
the French or were neutral; within a year they were burning and pillaging the entire western frontier. The Virginia
Regiment, the only protection for several thousand square
miles vulnerable to attack, was now demoralized and
racked by desertion. The French were strengthening their
fortification at the Forks of the Ohio. The ministry at Versailles had invaluable propaganda materials: the Articles
its embarrassing admission of guilt,
and "Colonel Washington's" private journal of the expedition. They printed both with appropriate comment in the
famous pamphlet, Memoire contenant le precise des faits.
Humiliation was piled upon humiliation. The Half King,
having taken up residence at George Croghan's trading
center in central Pennsylvania, declared, "The colonel
[Washington] was a good-natured man, but had no experience; he took upon him to command the Indians as his
slaves, and would have them every day upon the out scout
and attack the enemy by themselves, but would by no
means take advice from the Indians. He lay at one place
from one full moon to the other, and made no fortifications
at all, but that little thing upon the meadow, where he
thought the French would come up to him in an open field;
had he taken my advice, and made such fortifications as
advised him to make, he would certainly have beat the
French off. But the French acted as great cowards, and the
English as fools, in the engagement." The Half King went
on to explain that he and his Indians alone had done all
the fighting against Jumonville and his men. The Council
of Virginia ruled that Washington, in guaranteeing the return of the 21 French prisoners taken in the Jumonville
action, had exceeded his authority, since he had sent
them east and they were no longer under his jurisdiction.

of Capitulation with

When

Dinwiddie reorganized the Virginians into 8 companies of regulars with no rank higher than captain,
Washington, rather than accept a demotion, left the service and devoted himself to running his brother's estate at
Mount Vernon.

45

pitched battle at Fort Necessity did not produce

a declaration of war between France and England.
Technically, the two countries were still at peace in
Europe, but the British took steps to recover by force of
arms their territory lost to the French in North America. In
February 1755 two full regiments of British troops landed
in Virginia and in due course began a march to the Forks
of the Ohio.Their commander was Maj.Gen. Edward Braddock, veteran of 45 years of army service and commander

The

chief of all British forces in North America. He had been

chosen to head a campaign in which the British and colonial Americans would attack the French forts in Nova
Scotia as well as Fort Niagara on Lake Ontario, Crown
Point on Lake Champlain, and Fort Duquesne on the Ohio.
Braddock's regiments were supported by some 400
auxiliary Americans and Indians, including a number of
those who had marched and fought with Washington during
the Fort Necessity campaign: Andrew Montour, Monacatootha, Peter Hogg, Adam Stephen, William La Peyroney,
Dr. James Craik, Christopher Gist, Carolus Gustavus de
Spiltdorph, the gentleman adventurer from Sweden, and
in

47

now a captain and still wearing Stobo's

sword. Washington came out of retirement to serve without
pay or rank as an aide on Braddock's staff.
The army of almost 2,400 men the largest assemblage
of troops ever seen in North America
for the most part
followed Washington's "Virginia Road," leveling and
clearing it to a width of 12 feet in a magnificent feat of
engineering. After leaving Wills Creek, Braddock followed
Washington's advice and divided his force; he left the
heavier vehicles and armaments with Col. Thomas Dunbar,
William Poulson,

his second in command, and pushed ahead more rapidly

with 13 pieces of artillery, 30 days' rations, a herd of cattle,
and 1 ,459 selected men. On June 25 this column reached

and passed Fort Necessity, now overgrown with weeds,

the charred remnants of the palisades still visible. It made
camp less than 2 miles beyond the fort, beside a stream

known since as Braddock's Run.

On the morning of July 9, the force crossed the Monongahela a second time at Turtle Creek, a few miles above
the Forks of the Ohio. The column had moved with great
caution, according to the precepts of European command,
with an advance guard well out ahead, flanking parties on
each side, and scouts ranging the countryside. But the
unopposed second crossing of the river in splenband playing, banners flying, so close to the
Forks and at a place naturally suited for an ambush, led
to overconfidence and carelessness. The British units
crowded across the river and up a hillside in a massed
column before the area had been scouted and before the
high ground that commanded the route had been secured.
safe and

did array,

BRADDOCK'S ROUTE

The confidence displayed by Braddock's men was not

matched by the French. The British seemed so formidable
in their advance that the French Indians were unwilling
to fight, and the French commander at Fort Duquesne
debated with his officers whether to burn the fort and
flee or make a token resistance and surrender with the
honors of war. Capt. Daniel de Beaujeu, who had arrived
a few days earlier, persuaded the commander at the
last moment to give him field command of the French
and Canadian troops, and then won the Indians over to
joining him in an attack. He started out with 900 men,
three-fourths of them Indians. Near Turtle Creek, about

a mile short of the ford across the Jvlonongahela, they

unexpectedly ran headlong into the advancing British
column. Beaujeu was killed in the first exchange of fire.

The Canadians and the Indians began to falter and then

second in command, Capt. Jean Dumas,
achieved the most difficult feat of rallying frightened men.
They fell into positions in the woods from which they could
fire into Braddock's column from the front and both sides,
and they began to slaughter the British soldiers.
to flee. But the

Two

points cannot be made too often, since they cormisconceptions that are deeply embedded in American folklore and are still sometimes ignored by those
describing the action. Braddock was not ambushed, and
he was not defeated because he followed European military tactics on the American frontier. He was defeated,
rather, because he momentarily departed from those tactics in a fashion that would have been condemned by any
competent military leader in Europe. Had Braddock
posted skirmishers and flanking parties in an effort to
determine the exact circumstances of the enemy force
instead of blindly pushing his men forward to the sounds
of battle, the outcome might have been totally different.
rect

> The General was wounded behind

the shoulder, and into the

Breast of which he died three days after.
George Washington
.

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Braddock lost about 975 of his 1 ,459 men engaged,

more than half of them being killed. William La Peyroney
was killed and scalped, as were Will Poulson and Carolus
de Spiltdorph. Braddock himself received a mortal wound.
Washington, who distinguished himself in the engagement, helped carry the general off the field in a silk sash.
(The sash is on exhibit at Mount Vernon today.) He and
Dr. Craik were at the general's side when he died on the
retreat. They buried him in a secret grave a mile and a half
northwest of Fort Necessity.
The other half of Braddock's army, some 40 miles away
and still the largest and best-equipped armed force in
North America, destroyed most of its supplies, fled to
Wills Creek, and then marched all the way to Philadelphia
to take up "winter quarters"
in August.
Despite the affair at Fort Necessity and the clash on the

Monongahela, England and France remained "legally" at

peace until May 1756, when formal declarations of war
were proclaimed. In the months that followed, the Ohio
Valley reeled under almost incessant Indian attacks. For
more than 2 years Washington struggled with inadequate
forces to protect the Virginia frontier. In the fall of 1758,
he took command of a brigade of colonial Americans

and marched westward across the mountains of Pennstill another army, this one under Brig. Gen.
John Forbes. This time the British were successful in driving the French out of the Ohio Valley. On November 25,
1758, Washington finally achieved the goal for which he
had worked and fought for 5 years: he helped raise the
British flag over the smoking ruins of Fort Duquesne.
Duquesne fell, then Fort Niagara and Quebec, and then
Montreal in 1760. The French and Indian War ended, and
though the Seven Years War continued for another 3 years
in Europe, India, and the West Indies, British rule replaced
the French empire in North America. The Americans were
now free from any threat of French expansion and, consequently, from any need for protection from British arms.
The way was clear for the American colonies to seek their
independence.
sylvania with

53

Of

the

men who

took part

in

the Fort Necessity

campaign, many had interesting subsequent ex-

periences or careers. Robert Stobo, while a hosDuquesne, smuggled out a detailed scale
map of the fort on the back of a letter that gave an
account of French weaknesses and stated that the French
commissary, La Force, was a man too valuable to the
French to be returned. La Force and his fellow prisoners
were held in Virginia; Stobo and his fellow hostage Van
Braam were sent to Canada; and Stobo's map was given
to General Braddock. When the French came upon the
map among the general's captured papers, they courtmartialed Stobo and sentenced him to death in a trial
that attracted international attention. He made a daring
tage

at Fort

escape down the St. Lawrence River, reached the British

forces at Louisbourg in Nova Scotia, and returned to
serve on Gen. James Wolfe's staff at the siege of Quebec.
He received a hero's welcome and a 1 ,000 award in
Williamsburg, after which he finished his life as a captain
in

the regular British army.

With the fall of Montreal, Jacob Van Braam was released from 6 years of not-very-rigorous confinement. He
returned to Williamsburg, where the Burgesses, ashamed
of the obviously false charges of treachery that had been
leveled against him, received him as a friend, gave him his
back pay of 828, and awarded him an additional 500 for
his sufferings. He then made a career in the British army.
Andrew Lewis was captured during General Forbes'
1758 march on Fort Duquesne and was imprisoned in

Quebec, where he met Stobo and Van Braam. He commanded the 800-man army of American colonials that in
1 774 won a decisive victory over the Indians at Point
Pleasant on the Ohio River at the mouth of the Great Kanawha. He served as a brigadier general in the American
War of Independence, driving the English governor out of
Virginia in the early months of the war.
George Croghan, as deputy to Sir William Johnson, the
influential British Indian agent, became the second most
powerful political force and the second largest landowner
on the western frontier before 1776.
Capt. James Mackay retired from the army in 1755, built
up a good estate in Georgia, and then moved to Rhode
Island for his health. On his way back to Georgia in 1 785,
he fell
in Alexandria and died, waiting in vain for a visit
from Washington, who did not know of his arrival.
Dr. James Craik was for many years Washington's
neighbor, friend, and personal physician. He became
chief surgeon of the Continental Army during the American
Revolution and in that position warned Washington of the
plot of the "Conway Cabal" to replace him with Gen.
Horatio Gates. He was one of the attending physicians at
the death of Washington in Mount Vernon in 1799, and of
Washington's widow 3 years later.
Adam Stephen served as a major general in the Revolution. On July 20, 1776, with the British army massing its
ill

55

forces for an assault on New York City, he wrote to his old

and comrade in arms, George Washington, now
commander in chief of the American army fighting Great
Britain. He recalled the dark and humiliating events of July

friend

and 4

did not

in

1754. Washington replied:

the anniversary of the 3rd pass off without a

let

remembrance of the escape we had at the Meadows.

The same providence that protected us
will, I hope, continue his mercies, and make us happy instruments in
restoring peace and liberty.
Stephen was a hero of the Battle of Brandywine, but he
was found to be intoxicated during the Battle of Germantown, and Washington dismissed him from his command.
He had a prosperous post-war career and an active pograteful

litical life in

Virginia.

George Washington died at Mount Vernon on December 14,1 799, at the age of 67, after having rendered incomparable service to his country. He was a leader in the
Virginia opposition to British colonial policies. He was

commander

in chief of the Continental Army through 8

hard years of the American War for Independence. He was
a delegate to and presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1 787. He was the first President of the United
States. Having experienced failure, frustration, and defeat
in the frontier war of 1 754-1 758, he was admirably prepared to cope with the problems he faced for 21 years as
a national leader in war, politics, and international affairs.
He was intensely ambitious as a young man, but he lived
to reject, on principles of the highest honor, an invitation

to

56

become

dictator

and

lifetime ruler of his country.

FORT NECESSITY AFTER

1755

George Washington spent much

time, effort,

trying to convert his regiment's claims for

and money

20,000

into
1 754 service
be divided among his
men was shifted from the area around the Forks of the
Ohio to a less desirable region about 300 miles down the
Ohio River. Washington made two trips to inspect his
western land holdings in 1770 and 1784, accompanied on
each journey by his friend Dr. Craik. He eventually acquired 32,373 acres of frontier land, only 3,953 of it
awarded him as bounty land; much of the rest was bought
from the men who had served with him in 1754. In 1794,
"having, from long experience, found that landed property
at a distance from the proprietor, is attended with more
plague than profit," he offered to sell all his Ohio land

acres of bounty lands for their

actual grants.

The

territory to

holdings for $3.33 per acre.

On

his

1770

trip to

the west, Washington bought Great

Meadows, including the site of Fort Necessity, from the

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 30 pistoles (about
$120). He visited the place again in 1784. He attempted to
lease the land to a tenant farmer but never succeeded in
finding one who would stay and pay his rent. At his death
in 1799 the land was appraised at $1 ,404.
The value of the land rose considerably in 181 1 when
the Federal Government began to construct the National
Highway, following fairly closely the line of the BraddockWashington Road. (Present U.S. 40, in turn, follows the
National Highway.) The value rose again during the 1820s
when Judge Nathanial Ewing erected Mount Washington
Tavern, a large brick building near the site of Fort Necessity. One of the best, largest, and most profitable inns and
stagecoach stations on the highway, it is now part of Fort
Necessity National Battlefield.
The remains of Fort Necessity lay in the Great Meadows
for 175 years without receiving any restoration or permanent commemoration. The site was well known to historians, however, and many visitors walked down from the
National Highway or the tavern to inspect the area.
The first effort to map the remains was made in 1816 by
Freeman Lewis, a professional surveyor. By that time the

burned traces of the stockade had disappeared and only

the ridges of the entrenchments remained. Lewis plotted
these ridges in an almost triangular shape and theorized
that they marked the stockade walls. He supposed that
the mounds had been formed "by throwing up the earth
against the palisades." His assumption that the contours
of the stockade wall followed the ridges was uncritically
accepted, and from 1816 until 1953 every theory about the
size and shape of Fort Necessity was wrong.
To add to the confusion, most of those who examined
the surface remains thought they indicated a diamondshaped fort. Variations on the two basic themes often included bastions at the corners, or a bulging extension of
the north wall to cover the stream. Proponents of each

57

theme pressed

The

their convictions with fervor.

was

post-battle visitors had reported that the fort

earliest

small

and round, but most people ignored their testimony or discarded it as unreliable.
The first known disturbance of the fort site came in
1854 when a cornerstone was laid for a proposed memorial to be erected during the centennial celebration. The
memorial was never built fortunately, as it turned out.
With the stimulus of the 200th anniversary of Washing-

ton's birth, an organization of interested citizens

made

plans in 1932 to reproduce the original stockade. They

built a large square fort, basing the design on the surface
remains and a little archeological study. A firing step was
constructed around the inner wall in accord with a design

common

to frontier fortifications.

The stockade and the

2-

acre tract on which it stood were deeded to the Federal

Government in 1932. The next year the National Park Service took over the administration of this small area as Fort
Necessity National Battlefield Site. The name was later
changed to Fort Necessity National Battlefield.
In the summer of 1952, J. C. Harrington, a National Park
Service archeologist, went to Fort Necessity and began
one of the most fascinating and productive excavations in
the annals of American historical archeology.

The logs of the 1932 stockade had begun to rot in

and Harrington decided to attempt to solve some

place,

of the questions of Fort Necessity before rebuilding

it

again into its existing form. He said frankly that his aims
were modest, "with little expectation of finding more than a
few 'relics' and possibly the remains of certain entrenchments which, according to the records, lay outside a
stockade.
The chance of discovering any remnant of
the original stockade seemed very slight.
The reproduction constructed in 1932 was believed to be on the
original site, and on the whole, correct as to details."
Work began in August 1952. Since the 1932 wall had
been mistakenly placed on top of the trenches, Harrington
was of course unable to find them. "The fact," he later
wrote, "did not affect the research procedure, although
.

there

is

no denying

that

it

dampened the enthusiasm of

when the results of the first

the archeologist, particularly

season's work were completely negative."

The missing entrenchments prompted Harrington to reconsider the entire body of available information. He faced
the fact squarely that no 18th-century designer had ever
piled earth up against the outside wall of a palisade. His
report for 1952 on the preliminary excavations advanced
tentatively the theory of a circular stockade. That theory
was supported when he came upon a deposition by one
of Washington's men dated 1754. The deponent was one
John B. W. Shaw, 20 years of age, who claimed that he

had participated in the battle. Shaw was somewhat weak

on sentence structure, but his report of the battle was colorful and generally in accord with the known facts. And he

58

of "a small stocade [sic] Fort made

a circular form round a small house."
Harrington planned his 1953 excavations on the new
and bold premise that the ridges that had misled Freeman
Lewis were really the remains of the entrenchments, and
that the stockade was circular in shape within those entrenchments. That spring Harrington and his co-workers
sank three trenches across the area that such a circular
fort would have had to cross. Almost at once they discovered a section of disturbed and discolored earth; this
marked the path of the narrow trench in which the stockade wall had been set. When they reached ground water
level, each of the trench segments revealed remains of
the original post ends. In recalling that discovery, Harring-

spoke with certainty

in

approached the thrill

had when those bands of discolored earth appeared.
And when we went deeper and found the first stockade
post, would not have traded it for a Pharaoh's grave
ton said, "Nothing has ever remotely

ship."

The archeological team uncovered positive evidence

stockade was circular, about 53 feet in diameter,
with an opening to the southwest.
found post ends in
three sections, each section about 12 feet long, around
the arc of a circular wall. Further excavations showed that
the original entrenchments were on the site of the ridges
that for a century and a half had caused so much inaccurate comment.
The team uncovered a variety of small items dating from
the time of the battle, including brass buttons, gun flints,
ammunition for the swivel guns, the tip of a sword scabbard, and pieces of broken wine bottles. The most important finds, after the remains of the stockade itself, were the
musket balls. More than 100 such balls, carefully studied
and measured, revealed conclusively the type of shoulder
that the

It

weapon used.

All of the balls fall into categories used by

smooth-bore muskets and similar military weapons, laying
to rest the conjecture that rifles were used in the battle. A
representative selection of the relics uncovered during the
excavations is on display in the visitor center near the

battlefield.

On

the basis of Harrington's findings, the present stock-

ade was constructed in the spring of 1954 of split logs of

irregular length and shape. The palisades are in the exact
location of the original stockade posts. The embankments
outside the fort are authentic restorations of those built by
Washington's men as defense positions during the brief
time between their return to the fort on July 1 and the beginning of the French attack on the morning of July 3.
Besides the reconstructed stockade and Mount Washington Tavern, already discussed, there are several other
points of historical interest in the vicinity of Fort Necessity
National Battlefield. Principal among these are Braddock's

Grave, Jumonville Glen, and the National Road.

59

For half a century, General Braddock's grave remained

undisturbed beneath the road bearing his name, unknown
to the travelers and wagons passing over it. In 1804, however, a road crew repairing the trace near Orchard Spring
uncovered what they believed to be Braddock's remains.
These were reinterred on an adjacent knoll and the site is
now a detached unit of the battlefield about 1 mile west on
U.S. 40.

which Ensign Jumonville was

today relatively unchanged and proudly
bears his name. Ironically, the very obscurity which originally attracted the ill-fated French patrol to this glen has
saved it from the advance of modern civilization. Nestled
atop Chestnut Ridge, Jumonville Glen today offers a
unique opportunity to understand the true effect the landscape had on mid-1 8th-century military tactics.
Once the French threat to the Ohio Valley was eliminated, roads and trails heading westward experienced a
new surge of traffic, which reached major proportions following the American Revolution. Small trails such as the
Braddock Road, used by Washington in the Fort Necessity
campaign in 1 754 and by Braddock the next year, could
not handle these migrations. In 1806 Congress finally appropriated funds for the construction of a major highway
connecting the Eastern Seaboard with the Ohio Valley.
The National Road, one of the first federally supported
public works projects of an emerging nation, still carries
travelers westward as present-day U.S. 40.

The

tiny sheltered vale in

killed survives

60

APPENDICES
A. Articles of Capitulation
Capitulation granted by Mons. De Villier, captain of infantry and commander of troops of his most Christian
Majesty, to those English troops actually in the fort of
Necessity which was built on the lands of the King's dominions July the 3rd, at eight o'clock at night, 1754.
As our intention has never been to trouble the peace
and good harmony which reigns between the two friendly
princes, but only to revenge the assassination which has
been done on one of our officers, bearer of a summons, upon
his party, as also to hinder any establishment on the lands
of the dominions of the King, my master; upon these considerations,
all

we

are willing to grant protection or favor, to

in the said fort, upon the conditions

the English that are

hereafter mentioned.
1

We

grant the English

commander

to retire with

garrisons, to return peaceably into his

own

all

his

country, and

we promise

to hinder his receiving any insult from us

French, and to restrain as much as shall be in our power
the Savages that are with us.
2/ He shall be permitted to withdraw and to take with him
whatever belongs to them excepting the artillery, which we

reserve for ourselves.

3/ We grant them the honors of war; they shall come out
with drums beating, and with a small piece of cannon,
wishing to show by this means that we treat them as
friends.

4/ As soon as these Articles are signed by both parties

they shall take down the English flag.
5/ Tomorrow at daybreak a detachment of French shall
receive the surrender of the garrison and take possession
of the aforesaid fort.

6/ Since the English have scarcely any horses or oxen

left, they shall be allowed to hide their property, in order
that they may return to seek for it after they shall have
recovered their horses; for this purpose they shall be permitted to leave such number of troops as guards as they
may think proper, under this condition that they give their
word of honor that they will work on no establishment
either in the surrounding country or beyond the Highlands
during one year beginning from this day.
7/ Since the English have in their power an officer and two
cadets, and, in general, all the prisoners whom they took
when they assassinated Sieur de Jumonville they now
promise to send them with an escort to Fort Duquesne, situated on Belle River, and to secure the safe performance
of this treaty article, as well as of the treaty, Messrs. Jacob
Van Braam and Robert Stobo, both Captains shall be delivered to us as hostages until the arrival of our French and
Canadians herein before mentioned.

We on our part declare that we shall give an escort to

send back in safety the two officers who promise us our

61

two months and a half at the latest.

in duplicate on one of the posts of our blockhouse the same day and year as before.

French

in

Made

out

James Mackay
George Washington
Coulon de

Villiers

s Judgment on WASHINGTON
JUMONVILLE AFFAIR

B. History
in the

Scholars, historians, and patriots have been arguing for

200 years the pros and cons of Washington's conduct in
the Jumonville Affair. For the most part, opinion has followed national interest, the French and Canadians judging
him with varying degrees of severity, the English and Americans justifying his action in attacking the French force.
In the early 1940s, His Eminence, William Cardinal
O'Connell, archbishop of Boston, became interested in
the Jumonville story and took steps to search out the truth,
insofar as that was possible so long after the event. He
assigned a young priest of French-Canadian ancestry,
Gilbert Leduc, who was experienced in historical research,
to determine on the basis of available evidence what happened near the Great Meadows on May 28, 1754. Father
Leduc spent several years on a 235-page work, Washington and "The Murder of Jumonville," which was published
in 1943 by La Societe Historique Franco-Americaine.
Leduc concluded that Jumonville was engaged either in
espionage or scouting or both; that he had sent two men
back to Fort Duquesne to report on English movements;
that he did not conduct himself in the manner of a man on
a diplomatic mission; that the French had no eyewitness
account of the entire engagement and based their account
on stories told by Indians who were not there; that the
French intended to deal with Washington with force, as
they had already dealt with Ensign Ward at the Forks of
the Ohio; and that Washington could not be fairly blamed
for acting as he did.
That conclusion was supported in 1 952 by the late Dr.
Marcel Trudel, professor of Canadian History at Laval Uni-

versity

in

Quebec and

president of the Canadian Historical

an address delivered at a meeting of the

Institut d'Histoire de I'Amerique Francaise, he attested to
the soundness of Father Leduc's scholarship and research. He then cited newly discovered information in
Papiers Contrecoeur et autres Documents Concernant le
Conflit Anglo-Francaise sur I' Ohio de 1745 a 1756 (The
Contrecoeur Papers) Quebec, 1952. And he concluded
that Jumonville was "killed in an engagement, and not
assassinated, as has been claimed incorrectly for too long
a time." The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission published an abridged translation of Dr. Trudel's
address in pamphlet form in 1954; it appeared in Pennsylvania History, Vol. XXI, pp. 351-81.
Association.

62

In

for

FURTHER READING

C, The Most Extraordinary Adventures

Major Robert Stobo, Boston, 1965.

Alberts, Robert

Ambler, Charles

Chapel

Hill,

H.,

George Washington and

of

the West,

1936.

Cleland, Hugh, George Washington in the Ohio Valley,

Pittsburgh, 1955.
Flexner,

James Thomas, George Washington: The Forge

of Experience, Boston, 1965.

Freeman, Douglas Southall, George Washington, A Biography (completed by J. A. Carroll and M. W. Ashworth),
7 vols., New York, 1948-1957. Vols. 1 & 2.
Gipson, Lawrence Henry, The British Empire Before the
American Revolution, 14 vols., Caldwell, Idaho & New
York, 1936-1969. Vols.

6, 7,

&

8.

Hamilton, Charles, ed., Braddock's Defeat, Norman,

Oklahoma, 1959.
Harrington,
sity,

J.

C, New

Light on Washington's Fort

Neces-

Richmond, 1957.

McCardell, Lee, Ill-Starred General, Pittsburgh, 1958.

Parkman, Francis, Montcalm and Wolfe, 2 vols., Boston,

1884. Many paperback editions available.
Sargent, Winthrop, The History of an Expedition Against
Fort Duquesne, Philadelphia, 1855.

63

ADMINISTRATION
Fort Necessity National Battlefield is administered by the National Park
Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. A park manager, whose address
is Farmington, PA 15437, is in immediate charge. As the Nation's
principal conservation agency, the Department of the Interior has basic
responsibilities to protect and conserve our land and water, energy and
minerals, fish and wildlife, park and recreation areas, and for the wise use
of all those resources. The Department also has a major responsibility
for American Indian reservation communities and for people who live in
Island Territories under U.S. administration.

National Park Service

U.S.

DEPARTMENT of the INTERIOR

For sale by
the Superintendent of Documents
U.S. Government Printing Office

Washington.

DC 20402

Stock Number 024-005-00580- 3

irGPO 1975-587-143/4
NPS 141

UNIUERSITY OF GEORGIA LIBRARIES

charming field for an encouni

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