George Washington was only nineteen then, but everybody knew he was wise and brave, so they chose him to teach the soldiers near his home how to march and to fight.
Then the king and the people of England grew very uneasy at all this quarreling, and they sent over soldiers and cannon and powder, and commenced to get ready to fight in earnest. Washington was made a major, and he had to go a thousand miles, in the middle of winter, into the Indian and French country, to see the chiefs and the soldiers, and find out about the troubles.
When he came back again, all the people were so pleased with his courage and with the wise way in which he had behaved, that they made him lieutenant-colonel.
Then began a long war between the French and the English, which lasted seven years. Washington fought through all of it, and was made a colonel, and by and by commander of all the soldiers in Virginia. He built forts and roads, he gained and lost battles, he fought the Indians and the French; and by all this trouble and hard work he learned to be a great soldier.
In many of the battles of this war, Washington and the Virginians did not wear a uniform, like the English soldiers, but a buckskin shirt and fringed leggings, like the Indians.
From beginning to end of some of the battles, Washington rode about among the men, telling them where to go and how to fight; the bullets were whistling around him all the time, but he said he liked the music.
By and by the war was over; the French were driven back to their own part of the country, and Washington went home to Mount Vernon to rest, and took with him his wife, lovely Martha Washington, whom he had met and married while he was fighting the French and Indians.
While he was at Mount Vernon he saw all his horses again,—"Valiant" and "Magnolia" and "Chinkling" and "Ajax,"—and had grand gallops over the country.
He had some fine dogs, too, to run by his side, and help him hunt the bushy-tailed foxes. "Vulcan" and "Ringwood" and "Music" and "Sweetlips" were the names of some of them. You may be sure the dogs were glad when they had their master home again.
But Washington did not have long to rest, for another war was coming, the great war of the Revolution.