Washington Starts a War
28 MAY 1754
WASHINGTON STARTS A WAR
We know it as the French and Indian War, in Europe it was the Seven Years War between England and France. The war ignited in western Pennsylvania with control of North America as the ultimate goal. The French had established colonies in the St. Lawrence and Mississippi River valleys. French communications were maintained between these via the Ohio and Allegheny Rivers and through Lake Ontario to the St. Lawrence. The English had settled the Atlantic seaboard. But by the 1750s the English colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were expanding westward into the Ohio Valley. Now a threat to French communication, Governor Ange Duquesne de Menneville in Quebec became alarmed (himself a Naval officer and son of an Admiral). Small wonder then, that most of the engagements in the French and Indian War were fought in upstate New York, western Pennsylvania, and the Ohio and Michigan territories.
Most of the French troops in Canada were Marines from French warships calling on the colony. In an attempt to secure the strategic confluence of the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers, Governor Duquesne sent a Marine expedition under Paul Marin de La Malgue into western Pennsylvania. Neither the British nor the French had sufficient regular military strength to control the entire Ohio Valley, so both recruited Native Americans to guard their territories and in some cases fight alongside. A subordinate officer in Marin’s force, Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, was sent ahead to build and garrison what became Fort Duquesne at the spot where the Ohio, Monongehela and Allegheny Rivers meet. When Virginia’s LT Governor Robert Dinwiddie learned of this French “invasion,” he dispatched an officer in the British Colonial Militia, MAJ George Washington, with a letter to the French demanding their eviction.
Washington left the Virginia colonial capital of Williamsburg on 31 October 1753. In addition to delivering Dinwiddie’s letter, he was instructed to forge alliances with native tribes along the way as well as construct a corduroy road over which artillery could be shipped at a later date. Washington’s expedition launched from the spot where Wills Creek enters the Potomac River (present-day Cumberland, Maryland). The going was rough, but by May 1754 they had reached an open flat 87 miles southeast of Fort Duquesne that they called the Great Meadow. Here Washington learned from local Native Americans about an “800-man French force” reportedly moving down the Allegheny to reinforce Fort Duquesne. In addition, a small reconnaissance of Frenchmen under Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville had been sent from Fort Duquesne to scout Washington’s activities. At that moment, Washington learned, Jumonville was encamped not far from Great Meadow in a bowl-shaped glen in the woods. Washington called the officers of his 180 militiamen, along with their allied Indians, to a Council of War…
Continued tomorrow…
Fowler, William M., Jr. Empires at War: The French and Indian War and the Struggle for North America, 1754-1763. New York, NY: Walker and Co., 2005.
Nester, William R. The Great Frontier War: Britain, France, and the Imperial Struggle for North America, 1607-1755. Westport, CT: Preager, 2000, pp. 186-93.
O’Meara, Walter. Guns at the Forks. Pittsburgh, PA: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1979, pp. 77-92.
Site visit. Fort Necessity National Battlefield and Jumonville Glen, Farmington, PA, 30 June 2007.
Site visit. Point State Park, Pittsburgh, PA, June 1987.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: Though the spark that triggered the Seven Years War flashed in North America, the fighting spilled over into many French and English territories. Historians today site it as the first true “world war” in terms of its eventual scope.
Reminders of the French influence in western Pennsylvania can still be seen. One of the more difficult links in the French line of communication was a 50-mile portage from the headwaters of a tributary of the Allegheny River through the mountains of western Pennsylvania. That tributary is still known today as “French Creek,” and is indicated by a marker along modern Interstate 80.
