George Washington

by Stephen Brumwell

  The score or so of Frenchmen who escaped the carnage desperately craved the protection of Washington’s Virginians. To add to the confusion, their surviving officers were frantically protesting and waving papers under Washington’s nose: they were on a diplomatic mission to locate the English and warn them away from their king’s rightful domains, and look, here were their credentials. By instigating his unprovoked ambush, they accused, Washington had committed the heinous crime of murdering ambassadors.

  Despite the obvious parallels with his own recent mission into the Ohio Country, Washington maintained that such claims of diplomatic immunity were no more than a belated smoke screen, sent up to blur the reality: had the boot been on the other foot, with the French succeeding in surprising him, they would have dropped all such pretense as soon as they had his men in their sights. Reflecting upon the episode in his journal, he wrote: “they came secretly, and sought after the most hidden retreats, more like deserters than ambassadors.” In his report to Dinwiddie, Washington told how his own officers all agreed that the Frenchmen “were sent as spies rather than any thing else,” and they were therefore being shifted to Williamsburg as prisoners. Tanaghrisson likewise held no illusions about their objectives, concluding that they had “bad hearts.”14

  Yet, knowingly or not, Washington had gone too far. Although Dinwiddie had failed to drum home the fact, his orders from London made it clear that, while Anglo-French hostilities on the Ohio were all too likely, the imperial rivals were still officially at peace, and so the British must avoid being branded as aggressors: actual fighting was only permissible if the French were informed that they were trespassing and then refused to withdraw.15 Washington had given Jumonville no such opportunity.

  First reports of the affair, brought in by the tireless Gist, reached Williamsburg on June 12. The following day, the Virginia Gazette welcomed this “total defeat of a party of French.” The “well-timed success,” which was attributed to Washington’s “vigilance and bravery,” had “riveted” the Indians to Virginia’s cause, the newspaper crowed.16 That canny Scot, Governor Dinwiddie, was more cautious. Sensing an impending international storm, he sought to sidestep his own responsibility as the man who had ordered Washington out on his hazardous enterprise. He claimed that the Half-King and his warriors were the prime movers: they had instigated the “little skirmish,” so the Virginians were no more than their “auxiliaries,” and acting on the defensive.17

  Beyond the Old Dominion, the episode was viewed differently. As the nineteenth-century historian Francis Parkman observed in his classic history of the French and Indian War, Montcalm and Wolfe, “this obscure skirmish began the war that set the world on fire.”18 In doing so, it put North America’s history on a trajectory that few, least of all Lieutenant Colonel George Washington, could have predicted.

  On May 31, 1754, in the wake of the short but shocking explosion of violence within what became known as “Jumonville’s Glen,” George Washington wrote to his brother Jack describing his baptism of fire: he had heard the “bullets whistle” for the first time and believed there was “something charming in the sound.”19 The letter subsequently found its way across the Atlantic and into the pages of the popular monthly London Magazine, where it was perused by none other than King George II. That curmudgeonly old monarch, who had led his own British and Hanoverian troops against the French at the Battle of Dettingen in 1743 and who as a young cavalry officer had survived the far greater bloodbath of Oudenarde under John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, in 1708, quipped that the Virginian would not consider that sound quite so charming once he had heard it more often.20 In fact, it was a noise that Washington was destined to become reacquainted with all too soon.

  Washington’s letter to Dinwiddie, written after the Jumonville fight, had concluded on a pessimistic, if stoic, note. He expected the enemy to retaliate in overwhelming force at any moment. Come what may, they must be resisted, or the Indians would desert. Washington initially fell back to his old position at the Great Meadows. There he ordered his men to build a small circular stockade of split logs, subsequently extended on two sides by low banks and shallow, knee-deep ditches: this was the aptly named “Fort Necessity.” Conspicuously sited in the center of the lush expanse of grass, the rudimentary post was overlooked by hills, while woodland and scrub encroached to within 100 yards, enabling attackers to creep under cover to within comfortable musket range. Tanaghrisson was clearly unimpressed, later dismissing the fort as “that little thing upon the meadow.”21 He had been joined there by other Indians, mainly women and children, who feared French retribution for their menfolk’s role in the defeat of Jumonville’s party. Warriors were all too few, although the Half-King assured Washington that they would be coming.

  Washington now learned that the death of Joshua Fry in a riding accident had led to his own appointment as colonel of the Virginia Regiment, a heavy responsibility for an inexperienced twenty-two-year-old. But a colonial commission, however exalted, meant little when set beside one signed by King George himself. That fact was soon made abundantly clear to Washington when, in mid-June, some 300 reinforcements arrived from the east. Most of them were badly needed drafts for his own regiment, but about 100 were regulars of an independent company from South Carolina commanded by Captain James Mackay. The Scottish-born Mackay had been a British officer since 1737, seeing service on the Georgia frontier during the previous war; as a holder of the king’s commission, he was unwilling to take orders from a colonial officer, so his company remained a command distinct from Washington’s regiment, “independent” in every sense. In standing on his dignity, Mackay anticipated London’s official line on the relative seniority of regular and colonial officers: soon after, Secretary at War Henry Fox wrote to one of Mackay’s colleagues, Captain Paul Demeré, stating: “no officer who has the honor to bear the King’s Commission can be required, or ought, to act under the orders of a person who does not . . . without His Majesty’s particular order for so doing.” This blanket directive was soon after modified, but in a fashion that offered no comfort to Colonel Washington: when Crown and colonially appointed officers of the same rank served together, the regular would take command, even if the provincial officer’s commission was of “elder date”; even worse, provincial general and field officers would have “no rank” alongside their Crown-appointed counterparts. This meant that any provincial officer of the rank of major or above would be junior to a regular captain.22

  On a personal level, Washington and Mackay liked and respected each other as officers and gentlemen, but tensions inevitably arose between the professional soldiers and the amateurs. Mackay’s regulars were unwilling to toil on Washington’s road toward Fort Duquesne without the extra pay that they customarily received for such pick-and-shovel work. Washington was incensed, and when he moved westward once more, Mackay and his redcoats remained behind at Fort Necessity.

  Washington’s own progress soon came to a halt at Gist’s trading station, where a conference opened on June 18 in hopes of rallying local Indians to the British cause. Despite the presence of the experienced George Croghan, the Indian agent for Pennsylvania, during three days of speeches it became increasingly clear that the Mingos, or Ohio Valley Iroquois, were under the Confederacy’s orders to remain neutral in the Anglo-French contest; and for all their continuing protestations of friendship, the local Shawnees and Delawares were veering toward the French.23 After the conference broke up, scarcely a handful of warriors stood by Washington. Even the Half-King, Tanaghrisson, decamped to Fort Necessity and, when summoned to return, demurred with lame excuses.

  As Washington’s own support dwindled, news arrived that the French at the Forks were now stronger than ever. An Indian reported that a force of 1,200, a third of them tribal warriors drawn from as far afield at the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Valley, the rest Franco-Canadian troops and militia, were on the warpath to avenge Ensign Jumonville. The party actually numbered about 700, yet this still gave them a si
gnificant edge over the 400 or so with Washington, of whom scores were sickly. It was not simply a question of numbers. Unlike Washington’s command, the force heading toward him was composed of skilled guerrilla fighters. For the Indians, war was a way of life, its techniques of concealment and ambush readily adapted from hunting. The Canadian militiamen were also far more formidable opponents than their amateur status suggested: in contrast to the disparate English colonies, where the militia had long since lost its cutting edge, the tightly controlled and militarized society of New France ensured that its able-bodied menfolk became highly effective irregulars, fine marksmen who were as adept at paddling canoes as marching on snowshoes, capable of campaigning in all seasons across the most rugged terrain. Moreover, they were now led on by an officer with a strong personal motivation to avenge Jumonville: his elder brother, Captain Louis Coulon de Villiers.

  In response, Washington quickly fortified Gist’s storehouse with a sketchy stockade, recalled his road builders, and appealed for Mackay’s aid. The captain responded to the crisis, and another council of war was convened. As their men had less than a week’s rations and their supply lines were already dangerously stretched, the Virginian and the Scot agreed to fall back the thirteen miles to Fort Necessity. Even so, it took three days to manhandle the nine swivel guns—simple, wheelless cannon capable of being mounted on wooden fortifications—across the punishing mountainous terrain to the Great Meadows.

  When Washington arrived at the stockade, the Half-King bluntly advised him to keep going east. But the Virginians were too tired from hauling their swivels to move any farther, and there were heartening rumors that more reinforcements were drawing near. Unconvinced, Tanaghrisson and his remaining Mingos now melted into the forest, never to return. As Indian agent Conrad Weiser noted in his journal, the Half-King had become exasperated by Washington’s domineering attitude toward his Indian allies; although “a good-natured man,” he was inexperienced, always “driving them on to fight” while ignoring their sage advice.24 Indeed, the bold front maintained by Washington in an effort to win the respect of the tribes had backfired badly: his determination to stay put and slug it out with the far larger force heading his way, so hazarding his entire command, was the antithesis of Indian warfare, where fighting was typically avoided if the odds were unfavorable. Further evidence of his own reckless quest for glory, this decision ignored the specific advice of Dinwiddie, who had cautioned Washington to avoid making “any hazardous attempts against a too numerous enemy” and was clearly troubled by his advance to Redstone without awaiting the expected reinforcements.25

  At first light on July 3, 1754, an excited party of scouts jogged into Washington’s camp at the Great Meadows, dragging a wounded sentry with them. A “heavy, numerous body” of the enemy were just four miles off, they reported; all—whites and Indians alike—were stripped for action in the summer heat. By 11 a.m. the enemy was at hand.26 To Washington’s delight, the French were out in the open, apparently eager for a conventional firefight. Shouting and whooping, they opened fire from about 600 yards away—too far off to inflict any casualties. Washington drew up his men outside their unfinished entrenchments, waiting for the enemy to come within effective range. Filtering into woods just 60 yards off, the French and Indians fired again. They were now well within killing distance, and at Washington’s order his men fell back. Some of the Virginians retreated with undue haste, a fault attributed to the cowardly example of their commanding officer, Washington’s lieutenant colonel, George Muse.27 Their withdrawal left Washington and the South Carolina Independent Company dangerously isolated; although the enemy failed to exploit this opportunity, Muse’s brief loss of nerve was to haunt him for the rest of his days.

  Back behind their shallow earthworks, the defenders returned fire with muskets and swivel guns. The vulnerability of Washington’s position was now readily apparent. All too soon, bullets began slapping into the fort and its defenders, fired by men maximizing every scrap of cover and whose position was betrayed only by their muzzle flashes and gunsmoke: within easy musket range of the surrounding woods and hills, Fort Necessity was less a refuge than a deathtrap.

  As the hours dragged on, the desultory fusillade began to take its toll. Late afternoon brought misery of another kind. A rainstorm drenched the meadows, swiftly turning the defenders’ trenches into muddy streams and soaking much of their ammunition. Besides Mackay’s regulars, few carried bayonets, so a determined sortie with cold steel was not an option: in any event, the enemy’s Indians and militia would never stand to meet the shock of such a frontal assault but simply slip aside and shoot down their assailants from cover. Lashed by the enemy and the elements alike, the dejected defenders turned to their rum kegs for solace.

  With darkness, the enemy’s fire finally slackened. In the ensuing silence a Frenchman called across the sodden grass with an invitation to parley. Washington sensed a trap. Given their obvious advantages, why would the French want to talk unless this was a ploy to enable their negotiator to spy out his deployments? The Dutchman Captain Van Braam was ordered to shout a refusal. But the response indicated that the French were themselves willing to receive an emissary from the fort, so Van Braam was sent out under cover of a flag of truce. By now a third of the defenders were dead or wounded, the rest demoralized at the grim prospects before them or too drunk to care. At the start of the fight, the French had deliberately killed all the defenders’ horses and cattle and even their dogs: with no means to carry off the swivel guns, retreat was not an option; without meat on the hoof, neither was a continued defense.

  The French apparently held all the cards. Washington was therefore pleasantly surprised by Villiers’s lenient terms: if the garrison surrendered, they would be allowed to go free. Inside the tiny stockade, by the light of a spluttering candle, Van Braam haltingly translated the clauses on the rain-blotted paper for Washington and Mackay. Both officers had some minor quibbles, but Villiers quickly addressed them. It was agreed that they must deliver up the prisoners taken with Jumonville and leave two captains, Van Braam and a Scotsman, Robert Stobo, behind as hostages. In exchange, they would be granted the coveted “honors of war,” marching off with drums beating, and carrying their weapons and ammunition and even one of their swivel guns. Such surprising generosity should have raised suspicions. Neither Mackay nor Washington expressed any, and both signed the capitulation, the king’s officer writing his name above the Virginian’s.

  In fact, the French commander’s preamble contained the true explanation for his leniency. This stated: “Our intention has never been to trouble the peace and good harmony which reigns between two friendly princes, but only to avenge the assassination which has been done to one of our officers, the bearer of a summons.” That same crucial word, l’assassinat, appeared again in the main document.

  This open admission that the English had murdered an official French emissary subsequently caused an international storm. In his own defense, Washington maintained that Van Braam—whose acquaintance with English was also far from perfect—had mistranslated the crucial French words as “the death” or “the loss” of Jumonville. In reality, the point was less important than it seemed. What mattered was that at the time of the incident, Britain and France were still officially at peace: it followed therefore that Jumonville had been killed unlawfully.

  The next morning, Washington and his hungry, bedraggled, and hung-over force marched out of their muddy trenches, carrying their wounded with them. Ironically, given the future significance of that date for Washington and his countrymen, it was July 4. Despite the capitulation terms, they were systematically plundered by the “savages.” Exhausted and disheartened, the garrison plodded just three miles before encamping once more. There Washington left them, riding on to Williamsburg to deliver his personal report of the disaster.

  The word is not too strong to describe a mission that had failed at all levels and for which Washington himself bore a large share of responsibility. At twenty-t
wo, he was too young, naïve, and inexperienced for the command. His humiliating defeat and the plummeting decline in British prestige that immediately resulted swiftly drove those Ohio Indians who remained undecided into the French camp.

  In personal terms, however, these same events only enhanced Washington’s reputation as a man of honor in the eyes of his countrymen. At Fort Necessity he had demonstrated a bravery in the face of heavy odds that endeared him to his fellow Virginians, not least because the colonial press, quoting Washington’s and Mackay’s own report, inflated wildly the losses they had inflicted upon their attackers. On September 15, the House of Burgesses registered its approval by formally thanking Washington and the other officers for their bravery at Fort Necessity.28 Two names were conspicuous by their absence: the hapless Van Braam, whose flawed translation of the capitulation terms was briefly blamed for the furor over Jumonville’s “assassination,” and the wretched Muse. The Huguenot ensign William La Péronie, who would have been the obvious choice to translate the surrender terms on July 3 had he not been seriously wounded at the time, went to Williamsburg in early September to seek compensation for possessions lost at Fort Necessity. While there, he heard that Muse had not only confessed his own cowardice but compounded his dishonorable conduct by telling many of the councillors and burgesses that the rest of the officers were “as bad as he.” La Péronie had even been quizzed whether it was true that Muse had challenged Washington to a duel. The “chevalier” had answered that Muse would rather go to hell, “for had he had such [a] thing declared, that was his sure road.” If he had crossed Muse’s path himself, La Péronie assured Washington, he would have answered his impudence with his horse whip.29