Peace was evidently the policy for them to pursue. By war they had nothing to gain, but much to risk. Though minutely informed of the movements of Washington, and fully conscious that he might be crushed by a single blow, that blow would be but the beginning, not the end. It would surely inaugurate a terrible war, which would call into requisition all the fleets and armies of Great Britain. It would prove the signal for a conflict which would encircle the globe.
The French commandant at Fort Duquesne, who had nothing whatever to fear from the exhausted and half-famished little band which was approaching him, decided to send a friendly party to meet Colonel Washington, and to advise his return, assuring him that he could not be permitted, without the consent of the French government, to rear a fortress upon territory which France had long considered as exclusively her own. A civilian, M. Jumonville, was sent on this peaceful mission. He took with him, as an escort through the wilderness, but thirty-four men. This renders it certain that he had no hostile designs, for he sent not one to ten of the soldiers composing the regiment of Washington.
But Washington, young, inexperienced, and in a position of great responsibility, was agitated by indescribable embarrassment. It was a dark and stormy night. Jumonville, with his feeble escort, dreaming of no danger, for France and England were at peace, and he was on a friendly mission, had reared their frail shelter camps, and were quietly sleeping around the fires. Some Indians who had been sent forward as scouts, hurried back to Washington with the information that the advance-guard of the French army was encamped at the distance of but a few miles before him. The sagacious Indian scouts very accurately described their number and their position.
They were in a sheltered glen, on the banks of the Monongahela, which was quite shut in by rocks. An invisible foe could easily creep up in the darkness and the storm, and, aided by the camp fires, could take deliberate aim, and, by one volley, kill or disable almost every one of the unsuspecting and sleeping foe. Washington, who had no doubt that this party was advancing to attack him by surprise, unfortunately, unjustly, but not with dishonorable intent, adopted a resolve which introduced a war and ushered in woes over which angels might weep. It is altogether probable that, without this untoward event, France and England would have drifted into a war for the possession of this continent. But the candid mind must admit that the responsibility of opening these dreadful vials of woe, rests with the English and not the French.[27] Washington, who had commenced intrenching himself at a place called Great Meadows, and which he described as a “charming field for an encounter,” took a strong detachment of his troops, and, leading them in person was, in an hour, on the march. The darkness was as that of Egypt. The rain fell in torrents, and the tree tops of the gigantic forest swayed to and fro in the howling gale. Savage warriors, whose eyesight seemed as keen by night as by day, led the party. Quite a band of friendly Indians joined in the enterprise, so congenial to their modes of warfare.
A march of two or three hours brought them to the glimmering fires of the French. Many of the sleepers were protected by the camps, which they had hurriedly reared. The assailants, with the noiseless, stealthy step of the panther, crept behind the rocks and into the thickets, and took careful aim at their slumbering victims. The Indians united with the English in two parties, so as entirely to surround the French, and prevent the possibility of escape.
Just as the day was beginning to dawn through the lurid skies, the signal for attack was given. A deadly volley was discharged, and the forest resounded with the yells of the Indians, so loud and hideous, that it would seem that the cry must have burst from thousands of savage throats. That one simultaneous discharge killed M. Jumonville and ten of his men. Others were wounded. The survivors sprang to their arms. But, in the gloom of the morning, no foe was visible. The assailants, entirely concealed, could take fatal aim at their victims who were revealed to them by the light of their fires. The French fought bravely. They were, however, overpowered; and after many had fallen, the survivors, twenty-one in number, several with bleeding veins and shattered bones, were taken captive. The prisoners were sent under guard to Virginia.[28]
This deplorable event, one of the greatest mistakes which was ever made, created, as the tidings spread, intense excitement throughout America, France, and England. France regarded it as one of the grossest of outrages, which the national honor demanded should be signally avenged. Though nothing is more certain than that Washington would recoil from any dishonorable deed, still it is impossible to palliate the impolicy of this act. His little army, as he well knew, was entirely in the power of the French. This act of slaughter could by no possibility extricate them, and would certainly so exasperate his foes as to provoke them to the most severe measures of retaliation.[29]
The moment the tidings reached the French commandant at Fort Duquesne, he despatched an allied force of fifteen hundred French and Indians, to avenge the wrong. Washington, as we have said, could not retreat. Neither could he fight with the slightest prospect of success. Capitulation was inevitable. But his proud spirit could not stoop to a surrender of his force until he had protected his reputation by a desperate resistance. And such is the deplorable code of honor, in war, that it is deemed chivalric for an officer to consign any numbers of sons, husbands, fathers, to a bloody death, simply that he may enjoy the renown of having fought to the bitter end.
All the energies of Washington’s little band were brought into requisition in throwing up breastworks. Appropriately he called the ramparts Fort Necessity.[30] At eleven o’clock in the morning of the 3d of July, the French and Indians, who are variously estimated at from nine to fifteen hundred, commenced the attack. Nature seemed in sympathy with the woes of man. It was a tempestuous day. The shrieks of the storm resounded through the forest, and the rain fell in torrents. And yet, far away in the solitudes beyond the Alleghanies, Frenchmen and Englishmen were all the day long killing each other, to decide the question, who should be permitted, of the human family, to rear their homes in these boundless wilds. The history of our fallen world teaches us, that the folly of man is equal to his depravity. God made this for a happy world. Man, in rebellion against his Maker, has filled it with weeping eyes and bleeding hearts.
The fratricidal strife continued until eight o’clock in the evening. Captain Vanbraam, the only one in the fort who understood French, was then sent, with a flag of truce, into the camp of the assailants to ask for terms upon which the English might capitulate. He soon returned, bringing articles “which by a flickering candle in the dripping quarters of his commander, he translated to Washington; and, as it proved, from intention or ignorance mistranslated.” In these terms, which Washington accepted, and which it is said his courier did not correctly translate, the death of Jumonville is spoken of as an “assassination.”[31]