No army ever slept on its arms of a night surer of a battle on the morrow than did this first English army that ever came into the west. Le Grande Villiers, thirsting for revenge, lay not five miles off, with a thousand followers who had caught his spirit.

By earliest morning light on Wednesday, July third, an English sentry was brought in wounded. The French were then descending Laurel Hill, four miles distant. They had attacked the entrenchments on Mount Braddock the morning before only to find their bird had flown, and now were pressing after the retreating redcoats and their “buckskin Colonel.”

Little is known of the story of this day within that earthen fort save as it is told in the meagre details of the general battle. There was great lack of food, but, to compensate for this, as the soldiers no doubt thought, there was much to drink! By eleven o’clock the French and Indians, spreading throughout the forests on the northwest, began firing at six hundred yards distance. Finally they circled to the southeast where the forests approach nearer to the English trenches. Washington at once drew his little army out of the fort and boldly challenged assault on that narrow neck of solid land on the south which formed the only approach to the fort.

Grape Shot found near Fort Necessity. Actual size.

But the crafty Villiers, not to be tempted, kept well within the forest shadows to the south and east—cutting off all retreat to Virginia! Realizing at last that the French would not give battle, Washington withdrew again behind his entrenchments, Mackaye’s South Carolinians occupying the rifle-pits which paralleled the two sides of the fortification.

Here the all-day’s battle was fought between the Virginians behind their breastworks and in their trenches, and the French and Indians on the ascending wooded hill-sides. The rain which began to fall soon flooded Mackaye’s men out of their trenches. No other change of position was made. And, so far as the battle went, the English doggedly held their own. In the contest with hunger and rain however, they were fighting a losing battle. The horses and cattle escaped and were slaughtered by the enemy. The provisions were being exhausted and the ammunition was spending fast. As the afternoon waned, though there was some cessation of musketry fire, many guns being rendered useless by the rain, the smoking little swivels were made to do double duty. They bellowed their fierce defiance with unwonted zest as night came on, giving to the English an appearance of strength which they were far from possessing. The hungry soldiers made up for the lack of food from the abundance of liquor, which, in their exhausted state had more than its usual effect. By nightfall half the little doomed army was intoxicated. No doubt, had Villiers dared to rush the entrenchments, the English would have been annihilated. The hopelessness of their condition could not have been realized by the foe on the hills.

But it was realized by the young Colonel commanding. And as he looked about him in the wet twilight of that July day, what a dismal ending of his first campaign it must have seemed. Fifty-four of his three hundred and four men were killed or wounded in that little palisaded enclosure. Provisions and ammunition were about gone. Horses and cattle were gone. Many of the small arms were useless. The army was surrounded by Le Grande Villiers, watchfully abiding his time. And there was comedy with the tragedy—half the tired men were under the influence of the only stimulant that could be spared. What mercy could be hoped for from the brother of the dead Jumonville? A fight to the death, or at least a captivity at Fort Duquesne or Quebec was all that could be expected—for had not Jumonville’s party already been sent into Virginia as captives?

Battle at the Great Meadows July 3d 1751
JARED SPARK’S
DRAWING IN
“WRITINGS OF
WASHINGTON”
[Select for larger version]