Chapter 4: A Third Journey and a
Purloined Journal
Now
a newly minted Lieutenant Colonel, George Washington departed once again for
the Ohio on April 2, 1754 in command of160 untrained and poorly equipped recruits. Once again, his French interpreter Van Braam
came with him. This time, the party was
much larger and had wagons to bring equipment along. This, in turn, meant that a road had to be cut
through the forest suitable for the wagons.
On April 20, when he reached the trading post of Colonel Cresap at the
mouth of Wills Creek on the Potomac, he got news that the fort being built by
the British on the Ohio had been surrendered to the French and renamed
Duquense. He also received a report that
the French force consisted of 1000 troops and 360 canoes.[1]
Nevertheless,
Washington forged ahead with a small force of one hundred troops with a under Colonel Fry scheduled to follow with .[2] Washington sent out letters to the
authorities in Pennsylvania and Maryland asking for more troops to join in the
fight. Troops were promised and some came
from both quarters.
Late
in the day on May 24, 1754, Washington received a report that a French force
was less than 20 miles away from his position, near the present day Nemacolin Resort
named for the Indian trail that Washington followed. The Indian chieftain known as the Half-King (Tanaghrisson)
and Washington decided to scout out the French party, which consisted of 34
French and Indians. They made contact in
the wee hours of the morning and a short and bloody engagement ensued. All of the French party, except one, were
killed or captured. Almost everything
about what happened and how the is disputed in the various French and British
accounts of the engagement.[3]
For
our purposes, it will suffice to note that the officer in charge of the French
party, Ensign Coulon de Jumonville, was among those killed, and according to
one hearsay account, in a gruesome and barbaric manner:
As this
Deponent has heard, one of them [French] fired a Gun upon which Col. Washington
gave the Word for all his Men to fire.
Several of them being killed, the Rest betook themselves to flight, but our
Indians having gone round, the French when they saw them immediately fled back
to the English and delivered up their arms desiring Quarter which was
accordingly promised them.
Some Time
after the Indians came up the Half King took his Tomahawk and split the Head of
the French Captain having first asked if he was an Englishman and having been
told he was a French Man. He then took
out his Brains and washed his Hands with them and then scalped him. All this he [Deponent] has heard and never
heard it contradicted but knows nothing of it from his own Knowledge only he
has seen the Bones of the Frenchmen who were killed in Number about 13 or 14
and the Head of one stuck upon a Stick for none of them were buried.[4]
Soon
after the incident, Washington received reinforcements under the command of
Captain James Mackay, a British regular, who asserted superiority of rank to
all colonial officers regardless of their nominal rank, including Washington.[5] It is unclear which of the two officers made
key decisions following Mackay’s arrival.
Most of the historical accounts attribute operational command to
Washington, and Washington in his own written account does not contradict that
view. Nevertheless, James Mackay’s
signature appears over Washington’s on a critical capitulation document that
had serious repercussions for Washington personally and diplomatically.
Washington’s
command, incredibly, resumed roadwork even though he must have known from his
Indian scouts that the superior French force had assembled at Fort
Duquense. It finally dawned on him, too late, that he
had to retreat. Disregarding the advice of the Half-King, Washington decided take
a stand at Great Meadow where he had his men built a defensive stockade around
a blockhouse. He named it,
appropriately, Fort Necessity.[6] The Half-King, seeing the futility of a
stockade defense in an open meadow subject to plunging fire from wooded areas
on higher ground, took his men and vanished into the forest.[7] On July 4, 1754, after a one-sided
rain-soaked battle, Washington surrendered to de Jumonville’s older step-brother,
Coulon de Villiers. He signed articles
of capitulation in French, a language in which he had no facility, that
described the death of Jumonville as an assassination.
Washington
claimed to rely entirely on the good offices of a “translator” who had limited
French and equally limited English.[8]
Chernow
surmises that the written terms were delivered in rain blotched ink and
practically indecipherable. With the
benefit of a printed copy and accurate translation, there is no mistaking the use
of the term “assassination.”
|
Savoir.
Comme notre intention n'a jamais été
de troubler la Paix et la Bonne armonie qui régnoit entre les deux Princes
amis, mais seulement de venger L'assasin
qui a été fait sur un de nos officier porteur d'une sommation et sur son
escorte, comme aussy d'empecher aucun Etablissement sur les terres du Roy mon
maitre
A Ces Considerations nous voulons bien accorder grace a tous les Anglois qui sont dans le dit fort aux conditions ci-après. [9] |
As our intention had never been to
trouble the peace and good harmony which reigns between the two friendly princes,
but only to revenge the assassination which has been done
on one of our officers, bearer of a summons, upon his party, as also to
hinder any establishment on the lands of the dominions of the King, my
master. Upon these considerations, we are willing to grant protection of
favor, to all the English that are in the said fort, upon conditions
hereafter mentioned.
|
Washington
beat a retreat to Wills Creek with his army rapidly decreasing in numbers
through desertion. Before he was allowed
to leave, the Indians and French rifled through his baggage, found and seized
his journal and sent it back to Governor Duquense. He translated the purloined journal and
forwarded it to Paris where it was published two years later. Washington denied the accuracy of the
translation, but even historians sympathetic to him do not find his defense any
stronger, but no less necessary to his reputation, than the ill-conceived
location and construction of Fort Necessity. [10] In the words of the Half-King:
[Washington] would by no means take Advice
from the Indians…he lay at one Place from one full Moon to the other and made
no Fortifications at all, but that little thing upon the Meadow, where he
thought the French would come up to him in open Field…[11]
Remarkably,
following a relatively brief period of public attacks on his competence,
Washington emerged from the disaster with his personal reputation and his
military prospects intact. He did
resign from his appointment as an adjutant in the Virginia militia, probably
because its reorganization would have reduced his rank to that of major. Dinwiddie had conferred on him a battlefield
promotion to full colonel after the successful ambush of Jumonville. Even though he resigned his commission,
Washington placed an order with his London tailor for materials for military
dress of some sort.[12]
[1] Twohig at 40.
[2] Dale Van Every, Forth
to the Wilderness: The First American Frontier 1754-1774 (1961 Quill, NY)
ISBN 0-688-07522-3 at 67. Fry was
delayed at Will’s Creek by a fall from his horse that turned fatal leaving an
untested, inexperienced and immature Washington in command.
[3] Francis Jennings, Empire
of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies & Tribes in the Seven Years War in America (1988
Norton) ISBN 0-393-30640-2 at 68-70.
[4] Sworn affidavit of John Shaw before South Carolina
governor James Glen, 21 August 1754, in Documents
Relating to Indian Affairs, 1754-1765, at 4-5 ed. Willliam L. McDowell, Jr.
(1970 Columbia, SC)
[5] Washington’s biographers all agree that Washington
deeply resented the assumed superiority of
the British regulars and that resentment shaped his life long views of
British colonial rule. Chernow at 45 and
59. In fairness, it must be noted that
Washington had absolutely no military training even though he seemed to have from the
beginning the natural instincts and personality suitable to inspire the
confidence of the men who he lead.
[6] http://www.nps.gov/fone/index.htm. Fort Necessity has been completely
reconstructed based on careful archaeological excavation, and is now a National
Historical Monument.
[7] Pennsylvanna
Gazette, 27 June 1754.
[8] Chernow at 48 citing PWC at 1:164-170.
[10] Chernow at 48-49.
[11] Pennsylvania Council Minutes 6:151-52 from the Journal of Conrad
Weiser. The Half-King took his small
band off to live near the Indian trader Croghan and died in October of the same
year.
[12] Chernow at 51.
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