THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR
Sir Peter Halkett, Bart. In command of that part of Braddock's Army that marched through the present Loudoun in 1755.
We have come to the outbreak of that great world conflict between England and Prussia on the one side against France and Austria, Russia, Sweden, and Saxony on the other which Fiske, writing before the devastation of 1914, called the most memorable war of modern times and which, involving three continents, ultimately passed the vast French territories in Canada and India to the British crown. In European history the contest is known, somewhat inadequately, as the Seven Years War and gave Frederick the Great of Prussia the fateful opportunity to demonstrate his extraordinary military genius; but in America it is known as the French and Indian War from the terrible alliance that the English colonists were forced there to face.
The menace of the French control of Canada had never oppressed the imagination of Virginia as it had that of New England and New York. Distance and lack of colonial unity tended to build in the minds of the Virginia Assembly the belief that it was a matter, to the Old Dominion at least, of secondary interest; though her royal governors, and especially Dinwiddie, recognized its true and pressing danger. Virginia claimed jurisdiction over a vast and largely unknown western territory, including much of what is now western Pennsylvania and that strategic point marking the confluence of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, now covered by the city of Pittsburgh. The French in Canada were well aware of the huge military importance of this "gateway of the west" and, although at the time peace was supposed to exist between England and France, in 1753 sent a small expedition south to take possession of it. News of these Frenchmen in Virginia territory came to Governor Dinwiddie who, in turn, sent the twenty-one year old Washington, already a major in the militia of Virginia, to remonstrate and protest to their commander. On his journey Washington travelled the road to Vestal's Gap and crossed the Blue Ridge at that point. Though he faithfully delivered his message, the English protest was ignored, the French commander asserting that all that domain belonged to his King and that the English had no territorial rights west of the mountains. Thereupon the energetic Dinwiddie decided that war or no war the French should be dislodged. A regiment of 300 Virginians was organized under Colonel Joshua Fry, with Major Washington as second in command, to take possession of the disputed "gateway" and fortify it.
This expedition, too, followed the road to Vestal's Gap and Washington, as was his habit, kept a journal of his experience. By the mischance of events this journal was to be captured later by the French at Fort Necessity; but in 1756, to bolster their claim that this English expedition was an unprovoked attack against a friendly power in time of peace, they published in French so much of it as served their purpose. Unfortunately the published portion did not include the march through Piedmont; but in Washington's accounting with the Virginia government we find these items:
"1754
"Apl. 6 To expences of the Regimt at Edward
Thompson's in marching up 2″ 16.0
8 To Bacon for Do of John Vestal at
Shenandoah & Ferriges over 1.9"[63]
Edward Thompson was a Quaker who lived near the present Hillsboro and who was to leave numerous descendants in Loudoun.
From the Shenandoah the little force pressed on into Western Maryland where at Will's Creek (the present Cumberland) then a trading station of the Ohio Company, 140 miles west from their objective, Colonel Fry was stricken with an illness which, a short time later, was to prove fatal. Leaving their colonel behind, the Virginia militia, now under the command of Major Washington, advanced very slowly cutting a narrow road through the forest and sending a small force ahead to begin work on the proposed fort at the confluence of the rivers. That work was hardly begun, however, when a greatly superior force of French and Indians, arriving suddenly on the scene from the north, drove the Virginians away, took possession of the place and continued the fort's construction naming it, on completion, Fort DuQuesne after Canada's French Governor.
The retreating Virginians fell back through the woods until they joined Washington's main force, encamped at Great Meadows, and it was not long before Washington learned from his Indian scouts that a small party of enemy skirmishers was cautiously advancing to deliver a surprise attack. Washington promptly determined on a counter-surprise with such complete success that the Virginians killed Jumonville, the French leader, and nine of his followers and captured the remaining twenty-two. But Washington knew that a much larger force of French would soon attack him and that his position was precarious. With earthworks and logs he caused his men to hastily fortify their camp, grimly called by him Fort Necessity. They had not long to wait for the enemy. There soon emerged from the surrounding forest a force of six hundred French and Indians from Fort DuQuesne who, apparently not finding that the appearance of the fort or the reputation of its defenders invited an attack, settled down to a siege. Washington, though in the meanwhile reinforced, had not more than three hundred Virginians and about one hundred and fifty Indian auxiliaries; but more serious than his inequality of numbers were his rapidly dwindling supplies of food and ammunition. This was the situation which resulted in Washington's first and last surrender during his long military career. The French so little relished an attack on the fort or a longer siege that the English were allowed to march out and begin their retreat (4th of July, 1754) under arms and with full honors of war.