While this was doing, Dinwiddie was toiling with tardy assemblies and their agents to organize a regiment to support the backwoodsmen. Joshua Fry was to be its colonel, with Washington as second in command. The latter, with a portion of the men, had already pushed forward to Will’s Creek, the present Cumberland. Later he advanced with 150 men to Great Meadows, where he learned that the French, who had been reinforced, had sent out a party from their new fort, marching towards him. Again he got word from an Indian—who, from his tributary character towards the Iroquois, was called Half-King, and who had been Washington’s companion on his trip to Le Bœuf—that this chieftain with some followers had tracked two men to a dark glen, where he believed the French party were lurking. Washington started with forty men to join Half-King, and under his guidance they approached the glen and found the French. Shots were exchanged. The French leader, Jumonville, was killed, and all but one of his followers were taken or slain.
The mission of Jumonville was to scour for English, by order of Contrecœur, now in command of Duquesne, and to bear a summons to any he could find, warning them to retire from French territory. The precipitancy of Washington’s attack gave the French the chance to impute to Washington the crime of assassination; but it seems to have been a pretence on the part of the French to cover a purpose which Jumonville had of summoning aid from Duquesne, while his concealment was intended to shield him till its arrival. Rash or otherwise, this onset of the youthful Washington began the war.
The English returned to Great Meadows, and while waiting for reinforcements from Fry, Washington threw up some entrenchments, which he called Fort Necessity. The men from Fry came without their leader, who had sickened and died, and Washington, succeeding to the command of the regiment, found himself at the head of three hundred men, increased soon by an independent company from South Carolina.
Washington again advanced toward Gist’s settlement, when, fearing an attack, he sent back for Mackay, whom he had left with a company of regulars at Fort Necessity. Rumors thickening of an advance of the French, the English leader again fell back to Great Meadows, resolved to fight there. It was now the first of July, 1754. Coulon de Villiers, a brother of Jumonville, was now advancing from Duquesne. The attack was made on a rainy day, and for much of the time a thick mist hung between the combatants. After dark a parley resulted in Washington’s accepting terms offered by the French, and the English marched out with the honors of war.[1123]
The young Virginian now led his weary followers back to Will’s Creek. It was a dismal march. The Indian allies of the French, who were only with difficulty prevented from massacring the wounded English, had been allowed to kill the cattle and horses of the little army; and Washington’s men had to struggle along under the burdens of their own disabled companions. Thus they turned their backs upon the great valley, in which not an English flag now waved.
Appearances were not grateful to Dinwiddie. His house of burgesses preferred to fight him on some domestic differences rather than to listen to his appeals to resist the French. He got little sympathy from the other colonies. The Quakers and Germans of Pennsylvania cared little for boundaries. New York and Maryland seemed slothful.[1124] Only Shirley, far away in Massachusetts, was alive, but he was busy at home.[1125] The Lords of Trade in London looked to William Johnson to appease and attach the Indians; but lest he could not accomplish everything, they directed a congress of the colonial representatives to be assembled at Albany, which talked, but to the liking neither of their constituents nor of the government in England.[1126]
Dinwiddie, despairing of any organized onset, appealed to the home government. The French king was diligently watching for the English ministry’s response. So when Major-General Braddock and his two regiments sailed from England for Virginia, and the Baron Dieskau and an army, with the Marquis of Vaudreuil[1127] to succeed Duquesne as governor, sailed for Quebec, the diplomates of the two crowns bowed across the Channel, and protested to each other it all meant nothing.
The English thought that with their superiority on the sea they could intercept the French armament, and Admiral Boscawen was sent to hover about the Gulf of St. Lawrence. He got only three ships of them,—the rest eluding him.