Unlike the previous three wars which were started in Europe and extended to the colonies in the New World, the French & Indian War started in America and spread, two years later, to Europe. In Europe, it would variously be called the Seven Years War or the Great War For Empire. The French & Indian War would be fought primarily on three fronts: the Ohio Valley in western Pennsylvania, the Fort Niagara region of New York, and Nova Scotia.
In the interim between the end of King George's War (1748) and 1754, both the French and the English were expanding their boundaries. Friction was inevitable as those boundaries pressed against each other.
The English were more aggressive than the French in expanding their boundaries. The French were primarily concerned with establishing and maintaining fur trapping and trading posts while the English were interested in increasing the size of the commonwealth. In the north, the English settlements on Nova Scotia were expanded to include the region of present-day New Brunswick and the Gaspe Peninsula. It was during this period that Lord Halifax organized the settlement of the town of Halifax by 2,500 English settlers.
The Ohio Valley was the scene of more intense expansion. The Ohio Company was established in the fall of 1748 to treat with the Indians of the Ohio Valley and purchase land and trading rights from them. At about the same time, two men, George Croghan and Conrad Weiser, traveled as representatives of the Pennsylvania General Assembly to meet with the Indians of the Ohio Valley and attempt to negotiate a treaty of peace and commerce. Virginia also had her eyes on the Ohio Valley. A group of settlers from that colony founded the settlement of Draper's Meadows. The settlement was the first permanent English settlement west of the Allegheny Divide.
On 16 March 1749, the Ohio Company received a grant of 200,000 acres of land lying between the Ohio and the Great Kanawha Rivers and the Allegheny Mountain range from the English Privy Council. A royal charter was granted by King George II on 19 May for the lands in the Ohio Valley.
On 13 June 1752, the Treaty of Logstown was signed between the Iroquois League of Six Nations, Delaware, Shawnee and Wyandot tribes and representatives of the Virginia colony and the Ohio Company. The treaty, in addition to confirming the alliance between the Indian tribes and the English, laid claim to the lands south of the Ohio River for Virginia. The Indians agree to the proposal of the English to build a fort in the region. When the French received word of the treaty, they enlisted the aid of Ottawa and Ojibway Indians and attacked the major English trading post of Pickawillany in an effort to scare off the English. In the attack the Miami chief, Demoiselle, was killed along with thirteen Indian warriors and an English trader.
The French, alarmed at the intrusion of the English into the Ohio Valley, began to construct fortifications along the major waterways and to fortify previously established trading posts. The settlement of Toronto was fortified in 1749. Fort Presque Isle (present-day Erie), Fort Le Boeuf (present-day Waterford) and Fort Venango (present-day Venango) were erected in what is present-day northwestern Pennsylvania.
Then, in a surprising turn of events, both the Iroquois and Delaware broke the Treaty of Logstown and declared themselves to be allied to the French. The show of force that the French had made in fortifying the region impressed the Indians.
On the 31st of October 1753, Robert Dinwiddie, the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia dispatched a party under the command of a twenty-one year old major named George Washington to the Ohio Valley. The party's mission was to travel to the fort at Le Boeuf to discover the intentions of the French, and to present a letter to inform the French that their fort was situated on English soil, and that they would have to leave. Washington was guided to the Ohio Valley by Christopher Gist, a notable frontiersman. His party also included Jacob Van Braam, a Dutch interpreter; Tanacharisson, i.e. Half King, an Indian sachem; and three other sachems of the Iroquois Six Nations. It took Washington and his company a few weeks to reach the Ohio Valley. They traveled to Fort Venango and then to Fort Le Boeuf.
According to George Washington in entries in his Journal dated between 31 October and 11 December 1753:
On 12 December, Washington delivered his message to the French commander, Captain Legardeur de St. Pierre de Repentigny. According to Washington:
De Repentigny suggested to Major Washington that the Virginians accompany him to Quebec to present the letter to the governor of Canada. Washington declined the offer and instead returned to Virginia, arriving at Williamsburg on the 16th of January 1754 after a very harrowing journey. (His party was ambushed and attacked by French Indians. Later, Washington fell from his raft into icy cold water when he was unbalanced attempting to push ice out of the raft's path.)
During the following spring, Governor Dinwiddie sent a party of woodsmen to construct a fortification at the confluence of the Allegheny, Ohio and Monongahela Rivers. The governor intended that two companies, of one hundred men each, to be commanded by Captain William Trent and Major George Washington. The entire expedition was to be managed by Colonel Joshua Fry. As it happened, Fry remained in Virginia, for one reason or another, and the actual management of the expedition was laid on Trent and Washington. Colonel Fry was destined to die on 31 May from a fall from his horse. He would be replaced by Governor Dinwiddie with Colonel James Innes of North Carolina, but Innes did not even reach Winchester until late in June, and no record is given of his participation in the events that were played out in western Pennsylvania.
Governor Dinwiddie issued a proclamation, sanctioned by King George II, that five thousand acres of land situated along the Ohio River would be divided among all those who participated in the expedition. The proclamation angered the General Assembly of Pennsylvania because it believed that the lands to be given away belonged rightfully to that colony and not to Virginia for the giving. (The dispute was settled when Governor Dinwiddie assured the Pennsylvania Assembly that if the boundary line between Virginia and Pennsylvania should eventually be settled, the quit-rents received for the lands would be paid to the proprietary of Pennsylvania instead of to the Crown.)
As soon as Captain Trent got a company of about fifty men raised, he set out for the lands at the forks that is occupied by the present-day city of Pittsburgh. The Virginians arrived there on 17 February, and began to construct a fort on the site. It was intended to be named Fort Prince George. They were thusly engaged yet on 16 April 1754 when a large French force, under the command of Claude Pierre Pecaudy, Sieur de Contrecoeur, appeared. At the time, Trent and his lieutenant were away, and Ensign Edward Ward was left in charge with forty-one men. George Washington, by that time (15 March), had received a Lieutenant Colonel's commission and orders to march to the forks of the Ohio, Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers to assist Trent in the construction of the English fort. Washington was at Wills Creek (present-day Cumberland, Maryland) on the 25th of April, when Ensign Ward and his men arrived there. He noted the following in his Journal:
At the time of the French takeover, the English had completed only one structure - a storage building, apparently not intended to be a defensible structure. Contrecoeur proceeded to finish the construction of the fortification begun by the English, which he enlarged and then christened, Fort Duquesne.
George Washington, in letters to Horatio Sharpe, governor of Maryland, and Governor Dinwiddie, noted the increasing numbers of French and their Indian allies in the region.
In the meantime, the Virginians courted the Catawbas and other "southern Indians" to side with them against the French.
While George Washington contemplated what his next move should be, word was received from his Indian ally, Half-King that confirmed other reports he had been receiving that a large body of French had left the Forks and were advancing toward the Virginians who were encamped at a place called the Great Meadows. Of the encounter that followed, on 28 May 1754, Washington wrote the following in his Journal:
To Governor Dinwiddie, Washington wrote on 03 June:
To his brother, John Augustine Washington, George wrote:
In what was to be the opening volley of the French and Indian War, the Virginians sustained only one man killed and, as noted by Washington in his letters, "two or three" wounded in the skirmish with the French near their camp at Great Meadows. The death of Ensign Joseph Coulon de Villiers, Sieur de Jumonville greatly enraged the French. Jumonville's brother, Louis Coulon Ecuyer, Sieur de Villiers, was summoned from Montreal to avenge his brother's death. Villiers arrived at Fort Duquesne, along with a body of Indians he had recruited along the way, on 26 June. When he arrived, he found that a company was preparing to march against the English under the command of Chevalier le Mercier. The command was transferred to Villiers instead. Before the party departed from the fort, Contrecoeur held a council with the Indians who had joined the French. They included warriors of the Abenakis, Algonquin, Delaware, Huron, the Indians of Saut St. Louis, Iroquois of La Presentation, Nipissings and Ottawas.
In the meantime, Governor Dinwiddie sent another company of men, the Independent Company of one hundred men from South Carolina, under the command of Captain James MacKay to reinforce Washington. Dinwiddie's original intention (according to a letter he sent to Washington on 25 June) was for Colonel James Innes to assume overall command of the English forces (as a result of Joshua Fry's recent death), for Washington (in the rank of Colonel, as noted in a letter dated 25 May) to be second in command, for Captain Thomas Clarke (with an independent New York company) to be third in command, and finally Captain MacKay to serve as fourth in command. MacKay, though, was an officer of the British Royal Army and was of the opinion, like most other Royal Army officers, that he should not take orders from any colonial, regardless of that colonial's rank. Washington wrote to Governor Dinwiddie on 10 June 1754 to express the situation he had been placed in. The letter reveals one of the problems that would contribute to the rift between the colonies and Great Britain two decades later.
George Washington had determined to continue with the assault on the French at Fort Duquesne. He made his way to the homestead of the noted Indian trader, Christopher Gist, some thirteen miles from the Great Meadows. In order to do so, he had to cut a road through the dense forest that covered the Laurel Hill. It took Washington's men nearly two weeks to cut the road. At Gist's homestead, Washington's troops were set to constructing entrenchments under the assumption that the French were on their way there for the next confrontation. Some forty Indians arrived at the camp, ostensibly to join the Virginians; they brought additional news from the west. They left soon after, though. It was discovered later that some of those Indians had come as spies for the French. After learning that additional reinforcements had reached Fort Duquesne, he held a council of war with his officers. At the council, held on 27 June at the home of Christopher Gist, it was decided to call for MacKay's Independent Company, still at the Great Meadows encampment to join Washington's troops. But during a subsequent meeting held the following morning, the decision was made to retreat to the Great Meadows encampment.
Washington returned to his camp at Great Meadows on 01 July and began in earnest to strengthen the fortifications that had already been constructed at that place. The men felled trees to increase the breastworks and dug trenches throughout that day. The site was okay for an encampment, but not necessarily suitable for a fort. The ground was somewhat swampy and it was surrounded by hilly ground. The troops were too fatigued to travel further, though, so it was here that Washington determined to make a stand. He named the fortification: Fort Necessity.
Early in the morning of July 2, 1754 an alarm was sounded be a sentinel who had received a wound from the approaching French forces. Around nine o'clock word was received that a force of nearly nine hundred French soldiers had been sighted not more than four miles away. By eleven o'clock the French, under the command of Coulon de Villiers, a brother of Joseph Coulon de Jumonville who was slain in the May 28 battle, arrived and took up a position within the cover of the woods about six hundred yards of the fort and began a musket fire.
Colonel Washington assembled his men on the level, open ground before the trenches to wait for the frontal assault that he assumed the French would commence. But that assault never came about. Apparently the French hoped to lure the English to come into the wooded area, and thereby take them at a disadvantage. Sensing what was up with the French, Washington ordered his men to move back into the trenches and to fire at their own discretion. It began to rain and fell heavily all day, which of course caused problems for the colonials' flint-lock muskets. On top of that, the rain was so heavy that for periods of time the combatants could not see anything but a few yards distant. The English had brought nine swivel guns with them from Gist's, but they had been mounted on the fort's rampart, and were so unprotected from the enemy's higher position on the hillside that they were practically useless. The stalemate continued until night came on; then the firing revived briskly and continued until eight o'clock that evening, when the French finally called for a parley. Coulon de Villiers, in explaining why he had called for a ceasefire, later made the statement that:
Washington feared that the request by the French was simply a ruse to be able to get one of their officers into Fort Necessity to discover their condition, so he refused the offer. Upon the second call by the French, suggesting that Washington send an officer into their ranks as a show of faith, he relented and agreed. Captain Van Braam was chosen, since he was the only person in the group who professed to be able to speak French (other than the Virginia Regiment's Ensign Chevalier de Peyrouny, who was wounded and disabled). Van Braam returned from the French camp with a written list of the articles of capitulation offered by Villiers. The articles were translated and read by Van Braam in the pouring rain, by the light of sputtering candles. Some critics later claimed that Van Braam secretly wanted to defect to the French side; they said he mistranslated one section of the articles, but who was to know? As such the English agreed to the terms and despite his lower rank, Captain MacKay insisted on signing the document first, ahead of Colonel Washington, because he held a royal commission and therefore seniority in such matters.
The part of the articles of capitulation which was deemed mistranslated was the seventh article which read, in the French: "Que comme les Anglois n'ont en leur pouvoir un officier, deux cadets, et generalement les prisoniers qu'ils nous ont fait dans l' assassinat du Sr de Jumonville..." The phrase, l' assassinat du Sr de Jumonville, was translated by Van Braam to read "the death of the Sieur de Jumonville" rather than correctly as "the assassination..." The signature of George Washington on the document was claimed by the French as proof of criminal intent because they maintained that Jumonville had been shot dead by Washington himself, who led the English column, as he attempted to read a letter from Contrecouer.
The articles of capitulation called for the removal of the English from the region, but that they should be provided with the honors of war, being permitted to take with them one of their swivel guns and all their personal property including their own hand weapons. Realizing that the English had no horses or cattle with which to carry their baggage because the Indians had killed them all, the French agreed to let them hide whatever they wished and come back for it when they could obtain the necessary animals. The French would provide a guard against the Indians pillaging such goods.
The English began their retreat from Fort Necessity the following morning, 03 July. Half-King and his warriors had decamped during the night, fearful of retaliation from the other Indian tribes for having assisted the English. As the English trudged eastward along the road that they had cut across the Alleghenies only months before, the Indians began to taunt them with threats of attack and they started plundering their baggage, but the French restored order, and the English escaped unharmed. The French returned triumphantly to Fort Duquesne, on the way burning the buildings at Christopher Gist's trading settlement and other structures that the English had built to serve as storage buildings along Redstone Creek.
