9
“Set the World on Fire”
LIEUTENANT COLONEL GEORGE WASHINGTON let three days pass before he held a “Council of War” on April 23 “to consult upon what must be done on Account of the News brought by Mr. Wart,” as he spelled Ensign Ward’s name. The lieutenant colonel noted the grim facts: Captain Trent’s garrison “consisted only of Thirty-three effective Men”; Washington himself led 159; against this total, the French had more than a thousand. The council of war prudently concluded that it was “a Thing impracticable to march towards the Fort without sufficient Strength.” Yet Washington appreciated that the Half-King, whose loyalty was so important, was pleading for help. Accordingly, he emerged from the council having decided to “advance as far as Red-Stone-Creek, on Monaungahela, about Thirty-seven Miles on this Side of the Fort, and there to raise a Fortification, clearing a Road broad enough to [accommodate] all our Artillery and our Baggage, and there to wait for Fresh Orders.”
The next day, Washington wrote to Maryland governor Horatio Sharpe of his “glowing zeal” to serve king and country. He did not mention anything about his zeal to protect his family’s investment in the Ohio Company, nor did he refer to his eagerness to come to the aid of the Half-King. For his part, the Half-King was sincerely anxious for English help. Although he might have opened up negotiations with the French—certainly Legardeur de Saint-Pierre had shown himself eager to pry him from Washington’s embrace—he had a strong personal reason for doing no such thing. Years earlier, Frenchmen had killed, boiled, and eaten his father. Why they did this, we do not know, but the event (understandably) colored the Half-King’s opinion of the French and surely played a role in motivating his alliance with the English. Washington believed that the Half-King was absolutely under his control, and wrote as much to Dinwiddie. In fact, the sachem, twice Washington’s age, described the younger man to the colonial Indian agent and interpreter Conrad Weiser as “good-natured” but without “experience.” It is doubtful that he blithely trusted his fate to Washington, but he was nevertheless pleased to have persuaded him to help the Iroquois fight the French. For that is how he saw the relationship: Washington had not won him over; he had triumphed over the Virginian. Viewed more objectively, it is clear that the two men simultaneously overestimated and underestimated one another. Washington assumed he could count on the Half-King’s ability and willingness to muster all the Iroquois warriors required to evict a thousand Frenchmen from Ohio Company territory, whereas the sachem believed that, through Washington, he could summon all the Englishmen he needed to chase the French from his people’s land.
Washington did appreciate that he could not take for granted the loyalty of the anticipated Indian cohort. He believed that if he did not act soon, his Indian allies would drift away (of course, they had yet to materialize). Dinwiddie had promised him reinforcements, but, like the Half-King’s warriors, these men also had yet to arrive. Zealous though he was, Washington was unwilling to do battle with fewer than two hundred men against more than a thousand, but he hoped the bold march to Redstone Creek, a position sufficiently forward to put him within striking distance of Fort Duquesne, yet (in his inexperienced judgment) far enough away from the fort to safely await the arrival of sufficient reinforcements to make an attack feasible, would keep the alliance alive without risking too much.
The forty-mile march to Redstone would not be easy. Chestnut Ridge was a steep upthrust of the Allegheny Mountains, and it ran like a three-thousand-foot-high wall right across Washington’s proposed route. His small band of men would have to hew through Chestnut Ridge, yard by yard, a road passable by supply wagons and artillery. Putting that prospect in the back of his mind, he scribbled out a message and handed it to the Indian youth who had accompanied Ensign Ward. It was a suitably high-flown reply to the Half-King: “This young man will inform you where he found a small part of our army,” Washington wrote, “making towards you, clearing the roads for a great number of our warriors, who are ready to follow us, with our great guns, our ammunition and provisions.” In the message, Washington asked the Half-King to meet the advancing force “on the road … to assist us in council,” and then, grandiosely, signed his speech “Caunotaucarius.” It was the Mingo name the Half-King himself had bestowed on him the winter before. The name, as Washington well knew, meant “Town-taker.”
* * *
In his missive to the Half-King, George Washington created in words what he did not have in physical fact—at least not yet. His 159-man detachment he described as “part of our army,” the whole of which (he wrote) consisted of a “great number” of men accompanied by “great guns.” Shortly after he sent the messenger off with this message, the forty or so men Captain Trent had managed to enlist wandered into camp. Without consulting the lieutenant colonel or anyone else, Trent had lured them into service with the promise of two shillings a day; Dinwiddie, however, had given Washington sufficient money to pay a mere eight pence per soldier. When Washington frankly explained this to his new arrivals, they did not gripe, but they flatly refused to work. This provoked Washington to announce that he would feed no idlers, and, with that, he ordered the newcomers to get to work alongside his own detachment to clear the road to Redstone Creek. Work they would, they replied, calmly and respectfully—at the rate of two shillings per day.
The Anglo-Iroquois alliance was on the line. Indeed, the English empire in North America hung in the balance—and, with it, the fortunes of Washington and virtually every other prominent family in Virginia. Despite the stakes, Washington didn’t even have the petty cash to pay what Trent had promised. Even if he simply agreed to pay the new men two shillings on the dubious assumption that he could talk Dinwiddie into making good on the funds, he would be risking a mutiny among the eight-pence majority. Continuing to threaten the volunteers was not an option because, as volunteers, they were not subject to the strict provisions of Virginia’s militia law. Washington had no authority either to compel or to punish them. In the end, he announced that he would settle the question of payment pending instructions from Lieutenant Governor Dinwiddie; in the meantime, he ordered Captain Trent to look after “his” men and to strictly segregate them from the other troops, lest they infect the loyal majority with their discontent. Trent, however, found himself unable either to segregate or, for that matter, aggregate them. Within a matter of hours, his forty recruits drifted away, deserted, leaving Washington with his original 159 men, all of whom he pressed into the labor of widening a man-narrow trail to accommodate wagons and artillery.
On good days, the column advanced four miles, but most days were not good. The rain-drenched troops-cum-laborers were lucky to make two miles. On May 7, some twenty miles from Wills Creek, they reached the upper reaches of Casselman’s River, which Washington remembered from his surveying days as a shallow, placid stream. Rain had transformed it into a raging torrent, which no army could ford. Over the next two days, he and his men labored mightily to build a bridge strong enough to support heavy wagons and “great guns.”
Once it had finally crossed Casselman’s River, the expedition was confronted by a different kind of stream—a succession of English traders, who, like Casselman’s River, had also suffered drastic transformation. These were men who, in their uncouth way, had made a point of keeping up appearances. In better days, the beaver robes they wore shone in the sun. The men wore their beards long but clean, a pipe clenched at a jaunty angle between the teeth. Now, however, they tramped by, dirty, garments soiled, tattered, and faces—usually rosy with wind and drink—ashen. They were beaten men, trudging east from the Ohio. To Washington, they spoke numbly of their flight from the French. With a weary nod toward his meager “army,” they advised him to turn around and do the same.
While most of the traders reported seeing large numbers of Frenchmen, eight hundred or more freshly arrived to further reinforce the thousand men already at the Forks of the Ohio, one, Robert Callender, owner of three prosperous trading houses, said he’d seen no more than five Frenchmen, all at one of Christopher Gist’s trading posts. One of the five, Callender noted, was Michel Pépin, the man everyone called Commissary La Force.
The presence of that one man concerned George Washington far more than the eight hundred. Callender reported to Washington that one of the Frenchmen explained that La Force was rounding up deserters, but neither Callender nor Washington believed it. They knew that a man of La Force’s importance would not be wasting his time hunting a few AWOLs. What he would be doing is leading reconnaissance for an invasion. There are some situations in which a small number of men can do more than an army. Modern military commanders call this “asymmetric warfare”; Washington had no such phrase, but he understood the concept, and he now believed that if he could quickly overtake La Force and capture him, he might thwart—or at least delay—an entire army in its drive to invade the Ohio Country.
* * *
Callender had one more piece of news. He had spoken with the Half-King, who had received Washington’s message, had greeted it enthusiastically, and was even now marching with fifty warriors to meet Washington’s advancing column. Pleased and relieved as he was, the lieutenant colonel decided to take no chances. Having seen how the French “worked” Indians—showering them with gifts, plying them with liquor, promising them anything to draw them from the English embrace (perfunctory though that might be)—Washington detached twenty-five of his already puny number to intercept the Half-King and his fifty warriors before the French got to them first. Washington also charged the leader of this “flying column,” Captain Adam Stephen, to look for possible water routes to Redstone Creek and to keep all eyes peeled for La Force. In the meantime, Washington pressed the rest of his men to push the road through.
It was muddy, rainy work, but the slowness of it made it easy for dispatch riders to deliver the news that Colonel Fry had at last arrived at Winchester, Virginia, with a hundred men and would soon begin his march to join Washington. There was also a message from North Carolina’s governor, who promised three hundred fifty men, and from Maryland’s chief executive, who pledged two hundred. Pennsylvania decided to send no militiamen, but its assembly did vote £10,000 in aid. From Dinwiddie, Washington heard that Massachusetts governor William Shirley promised to open up an offensive against Canada with six hundred troops. It was a strategic move that would pin down French soldiers who would otherwise have been sent to garrison the captured Ohio Forks fort the French were now calling Fort Duquesne.
Perhaps it was this spate of hopeful news that motivated Washington’s bold response to the distinctly discouraging news he received on May 16, when a pair of refugee traders he encountered shook their bowed heads at the very thought of cutting a road through Chestnut Ridge. They assured Washington that they were very familiar with the ridge—and it could never be crossed by wagons, let alone artillery.
What about a water route? Washington asked.
When the men replied that they didn’t know the water routes as they knew Chestnut Ridge, Washington found reason for optimism and immediately ordered some canoes to be built so that he could explore the Youghiogheny River, which ran through Chestnut Ridge all the way to the Monongahela at Turtle Creek. He knew very well that the Youghiogheny was too shallow for heavily loaded canoes, but he had been tramping across mile after mile of rain-soaked ground, and his hunch—his hope—was that all the rain had made the Youghiogheny deep enough.
Washington was supervising canoe construction when, on May 17, he received a letter from Dinwiddie announcing the arrival in Virginia of an “independent company” from South Carolina and the anticipated arrival of two more such companies from New York. This should have been very welcome news indeed, but Washington knew that these companies were made up of British regulars commanded by officers of the regular British army. He also knew that regulars had nothing but contempt for “provincials,” as they called lieutenant colonels such as himself. That he, a provincial lieutenant colonel, would now be treated as subordinate to the lowliest regular army ensign was as hard a blow as any Washington had suffered so far. What made it worse was the additional news from Dinwiddie that a legislative committee had capped Washington’s compensation at twelve shillings and sixpence, without any allowance for officers to supplement their rations. Not only would Washington be outranked by the independent company officers, he would be outpaid by them.
We do not know whether Washington purposely shared the bad news with his subordinate officers, but at the very least he did a bad job of keeping it from them. They threatened en masse to resign their commissions upon the arrival of the higher-paid independent company officers and presented Washington with a letter to pass on to Dinwiddie. Washington could have refused to accept it but instead, on May 18, sent it, accompanied by a letter of his own. “I am heartily concerned,” he wrote, “that the officers have such real cause to complain of the Committee’s resolves; and still more to find my inclinations prone to second their just grievances.” He pointed out that “nothing prevents their throwing down their commissions … but the approaching danger, which has too far engaged their honor to recede till other officers are sent in their room, or an alteration made regarding their pay.” For himself, he asked Dinwiddie to let him serve “voluntarily … without any other reward, than the satisfaction of serving my country”; this, he wrote, was preferable to “slaving dangerously for the shadow of pay.” He closed by observing that he could not “see why the lives of his Majesty’s subjects in Virginia should be of less value, than of those in other parts of his American dominions.” Here were the stirrings of revolution in the heart of George Washington.
* * *
Writing the letter seems to have given Washington renewed enthusiasm for what was increasingly coming to seem a hopeless task. While he was willing to await reinforcement by the independent companies before making an all-out assault on Fort Duquesne, he wanted to bag La Force and his party before any regulars could horn in. Hoping to hasten the arrival of the Half-King and his party, he sent an Indian messenger to tell the Half-King that he had at headquarters a speech from Dinwiddie intended for his ears alone. The messenger sent, Washington, on May 20, climbed into a canoe with a lieutenant, three soldiers, and an Indian guide to probe the Youghiogeny.
They had progressed no more than a half mile when they encountered yet another bedraggled trader, who told them that he knew the Youghiogheny well. There was no point in going any farther, he said. Even rain swollen, the river was not consistently navigable.
Hedging his bets, Washington ordered the canoe building suspended but decided to see if the trek to Redstone Creek and the Monongahela could be made by a combination of water travel and overland portage, a process that would still be easier than hacking a road over an impassable crest. Ten miles into the journey, the Indian guide peremptorily rose to his feet and proclaimed he would go no farther. Any regular army officer would have responded with rage. Instead, militia commander Washington offered presents, which he believed to be the sovereign lubricant of Anglo-Indian relations. In return for one of his own fancy ruffled shirts and a homely match coat, the guide consented to remain. The next day, however, the voyagers encountered something Washington could not buy off. It was “a fall, which continued rough, rocky and scarcely passable, for two miles, and then fell, within the space of fifty yards, nearly forty feet perpendicular.” The conclusion was inescapable. Even combined with portages, there was no way to reach the Monongahela via the Youghiogheny.
Washington and his men turned back and by May 23 were where they had started, at the Great Crossing of the Youghiogheny. There they found that Captain Adam Stephen and the detachment of twenty-five men who had been on the scout for the past two weeks had returned. Stephen reported that they had reached the Monongahela near Redstone Creek, where they questioned a clutch of Indian traders, who reported having met “some” French troops along the Monongahela commanded by an officer calling himself Jumonville. Stephen promised one of the Indians the spectacular sum of £5 if he would journey back down to the Monongahela to spy on the French in “their” fort. The investment produced a flood of intelligence, including an “account of everything at Fort Duquesne, the number of French at that post, the number employed daily on the works [fortifications], the number sick in the hospital and what accidents had happened since their arrival at that place, the dimensions of the fort, the breadth and depth of the ditch [the moat surrounding the fort], the thickness of the ramparts, in what places it was only stockaded, with the length of the stockades.”
What a bargain!
Or was it? Neither Stephen nor Washington believed the Indian was lying, but they agreed that the only way to have secured so much detailed information was for the informant to have told the French exactly what he was about. Five English pounds had bought a double agent, and this meant that they, the hunters, were now the hunted. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to get a move on. With Captain Stephen and his command in tow, Washington and his small party left Great Crossing, marched over Laurel Hill, and, on May 24, located the main body of his troops, who, the road work being as hard as it was, had made little progress toward Redstone Creek.
They delivered to Washington a new message from the Half-King, translated—more or less—by the expedition’s semiliterate interpreter, John Davison:
To the forist, His Majesties Commander Offiverses to hom this meay concern: On acc’t of a freench armey to meat Miger Georg Wassiontton therefore my Brotheres I deesir you to be awar of them for deisin’d to strik ye forist English they see ten days since they marchd I cannot tell what nomber the half-King and the rest of the Chiefs will be with you in five days to consel, no more at present but give my serves to my Brothers the English.
As far as he could determine, this meant that the French were advancing in unknown numbers (“I cannot tell what nomber”) and the Half-King was on his way to counsel (“consel”) with Washington. By intensively grilling an Indian messenger, Washington learned that about half the French garrison had left Fort Duquesne on a mission of some sort. A short time later, another Indian trader, this one fresh from Christopher Gist’s settlement, reported having seen two Frenchmen at the settlement on May 23. He told Washington that this probably meant a strong French force was on the march.
With attack apparently imminent and the whereabouts of reinforcements unknown, Washington surveyed Great Meadows, the forest clearing on which he and his men happened to be standing at the moment. Spying a pair of gullies that ran parallel to one another, he envisioned them, somewhat wishfully, as trenches, positioned his wagons between them to form a defensive square, and ordered his men to climb down into them. Posting sentries, Washington bedded down with his men, passing the night of May 24 in the cold, wet ditches.
* * *
There was no attack. Still hopeful of capturing La Force, Washington, come morning, decided he could not afford to wait to be attacked. Even knowing he was outnumbered, he unhitched the wagons from the horses, put men on their bare backs, and sent them out to look for the French. In addition, he dispatched some foot patrols into the woods. Then, instead of digging the gullies deeper, to make them something more formidable than mere ditches, he put the rest of his men to work clearing brush. True, this exposed his position to any approaching enemy, but he wanted to see what was coming at him across what he described in a quick letter to Dinwiddie as a “charming field for an encounter.”
Still, one after the other, Washington’s scouts returned to report having seen no Frenchmen. Three more days passed before Christopher Gist rode into camp with a story to tell.
On May 26, Gist said, fifty French regulars had marched into his settlement while he was out. The two Indians who looked after things in his absence reported to him that Commissary La Force was their leader and, apparently upset by Gist’s absence, threatened to kill a cow and destroy other property. The two Indians talked him out of it, and a sullen La Force rode off along with his troops. Gist told Washington that he saw, just five miles from Great Meadows, the tracks of many white men. Moreover, Gist said, he had been told that many French canoes were now beached at Redstone Creek, empty.
Gist’s narrative transformed any fear of attack into the perception of opportunity. Washington reasoned that La Force with just fifty men was far from where they had landed, but very close to where he now was. This meant that the Frenchmen were cut off, isolated, and eminently vulnerable. In an instant, Washington ordered Captain Peter Hog to take seventy-five men and find the French. Next, he sat down to dash off a new letter to Dinwiddie, who was now at Winchester. After informing him that Captain Hog had been sent in pursuit of La Force and his detachment, he complained about a shortage of presents for the Indians—“I have been oblig’d to pay Shirts for what they [the Indians] have already done which I cannot continue to do”—and gave the letter to Gist to carry to Winchester.
About nine that evening, Silverheels, an Indian runner, arrived at Great Meadows with a message from the Half-King, who announced himself to be just six miles from Washington’s camp. He noted that he had seen the footprints of two Frenchmen.
Laying the message aside, Washington picked forty of the eighty or so men remaining in camp and led them through a rainy, moonless night to the encampment of the Half-King. Feeling their way along, the going was painfully slow, and dawn was breaking by the time Washington sighted the sachem’s shelter.
Although the Half-King was a supremely important figure in the Virginia–Pennsylvania–New York frontier, no description of him survives. Perhaps his years had dignified his appearance, or perhaps he was just prematurely aged, haggard with the signs of an illness that would kill him before winter. Whatever his appearance, Washington respected him, appreciated his importance, and was glad to see him. Surely, however, he must have been chagrined that, whereas Washington had been told to expect a fully equipped force of fifty, only Monacatoocha (the Oneida chief also known to the English as Scarouady), two warriors, and two boys carrying muskets accompanied him, along with six or seven other Indians, all unarmed. No matter. Washington omitted the usual flowery speeches and instead came directly to the point. He proposed that Half-King and his warriors join him and his men in immediately attacking La Force and his party. For his part, the Half-King instantly agreed and, without ceremony, led Washington and the others to the spot where he had seen the footprints. From here, he sent two Indians to follow the trail, locate the French camp, and report back.
The pair returned much sooner than expected. The Frenchmen were no more than a half mile off the trail, in a “bower” nestled among rocks.
* * *
Washington and the Half-King lowered themselves on their haunches and, with sticks, scratched a plan of attack into the soft Pennsylvania loam. The concept was simple. They would surround the French and attack them from all sides. The plan settled upon, Washington mustered his men, and the Half-King summoned his small entourage.
As they neared the bower, Washington saw that the approach of his left flank would be amply sheltered, but that the right would be exposed before the encirclement could be completed. He assigned Captain Stephen to command the left flank while he took the more dangerous right himself. The Half-King’s warriors were positioned to Stephen’s left, at the far left of the attack. Between seven and eight in the morning, the attackers were in position. At Washington’s wordless signal, they crept to within one hundred yards of the bower. This was the maximum effective range of the “Brown Bess” muskets of the era. Washington had read enough drill manuals to know that, ideally, fire was to be withheld until troops had closed to fifty yards; he therefore looked to his right and then to his left, ensuring that all weapons were at the ready. Satisfied that they were, he rose to his full height, drew his sword, stepped into the clearing, and gave the command in a strong, steady voice. If he followed the European custom to which he would adhere years later, during the Revolution, it was this: The army will advance! Then, at about fifty yards, it would be Fire at will!
The Frenchmen had posted no sentries. Those few soldiers loitering outside of the bower were not carrying their muskets, which, long and heavy, had been left in their place of concealment. At the sound of Washington’s voice and the sight of the soldiers rising, they dashed into the bower to fetch their weapons.
After the battle, no one could remember who had actually fired first, but everyone agreed that men started falling right away, including, among the Virginians, Lieutenant Thomas Waggener, stricken right next to Washington. He was followed by another, who fell dead instantly. Two or three more were wounded. Everyone hit was a member of the exposed right wing, Washington’s wing. The French, however, got the worst of it by far. A dozen fell, ten dying on the spot. Of the two wounded, one died soon after.
Death was the expected outcome of wounds inflicted by the musket balls of the period. About three-quarters of an inch across, made of lead, each ball weighed somewhat over an ounce. In theory, a ball fired from a properly loaded and charged weapon could inflict a wound at three hundred yards—though no competent commander would permit his soldiers to shoot their wildly inaccurate weapons from such a distance. At fifty yards, though, each ball would tear a very substantial hole through a man. Through a man. For at fifty yards, not only was the aim more accurate, but the force was most deadly. At this range, a ball usually bored both an entrance and an exit wound. Whereas the entrance trauma was little larger than the diameter of the ball, the exit injury was typically three or four inches across. Unlike a modern bullet, a lead ball does not expand on impact, but the tissue, shattered bone, and even the densely packed air the speeding ball pushes in front of it punch out a jagged exit wound that is very hard to bandage and is especially vulnerable to lethal infection. Not that Washington was thinking of flesh and blood when he wrote of the battle to his brother, John Augustine Washington, on May 31: “I can with truth assure you, I heard Bulletts whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound.”
Amid the flying lead, Washington and Stephen pressed their attack, and the French quickly gave ground. Some made a run for it. Summoned back by their commander, however, they meekly returned, hands raised. Washington understood why. The Frenchmen saw the Indians on the extreme left of the attack and, seeing them, knew in an instant that it was far better to surrender to the Virginians than to fall into the hands of the Half-King’s warriors. The French wounded could neither raise their hands in surrender nor run, and so they fell, willy-nilly, under hatchets, clubs, and scalping knives of the warriors. Washington did nothing to stop the Indians. This, he understood, was how they fought, and he feared they would fight no other way. Besides, to be wounded in the woods pretty much always meant death sooner or later, and Washington certainly did not want to burden his command with care of the enemy’s wounded; however, when the Half-King demanded the same bloody vengeance on the unhurt prisoners, all twenty-one of them, including Commissary La Force, Washington drew the line.
* * *
The fight had consumed no more than a quarter hour, cost few Virginia casualties, and inflicted total defeat on the French. The commander of the force, Joseph Coulon, sieur de Jumonville, was among the slain (the Half-King claimed credit), and La Force was a prisoner. To all appearances, George Washington’s maiden battle was a signal triumph. One French soldier (his name was Mouceau) did get away, ran to Fort Duquesne, and there made a full report.
As Washington began marching his prisoners back to Great Meadows, one of their number protested that they were not common soldiers but diplomatic aides to M. Jumonville, who was—or had been—an ambassador of France, sent to the Ohio Country at the pleasure of Louis XV to serve notice on the English that they were trespassing on his royal domain. As members of an embassy, they must not be treated as prisoners of war—anymore than they should have been shot, killed, or scalped.
Washington did not record his reply to this protest, not in his diary nor in any letter to Dinwiddie. He may have responded with what he later told Dinwiddie and others—that ambassadors do not travel with large armed contingents, that they do not roam the wilderness in stealth, and that they do not hole up in secluded bowers. Had Jumonville traveled openly, he would have been granted safe passage. On May 29, Washington wrote to Dinwiddie, “In strict justice, they [the French prisoners] ought to be hanged as spies of the worst sort.”
He was anxious that no stain dim his first battle and his first victory. For him, it was strictly personal, a point of honor. War? Act of war? He had no intention of starting a war. The French, he believed, had struck the first blow by taking the fort at the Forks of the Ohio. If anything, a war was already under way before the battle of the bower. That is not how historians have seen it. In 1822, the British diarist and letter writer Horace Walpole wrote in his Memoirs of the Reign of King George II, “The volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire.” The French and Indian War had begun.