By Dr. Carl Ekberg
French troops, both royal marines and Canadian militiamen, established themselves at the Forks of the Ohio (present-day Pittsburgh) in April 1754, and under the command of Captain Contrecoeur began work building Fort Duquesne. By May, the work site was a beehive of activity, as men and materiéls poured in from Canada, where Duquesne was governor. In late May, word arrived at the fort that “les Anglais” had sent a war party westward over the Alleghany Mountains into the watershed of the Belle Rivière (the Ohio), which meant that they were trespassing on French-claimed territory. The kingdoms of France and Great Britain were at peace, and Contrecoeur, a civilized French marine officer, dispatched Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville with a small diplomatic party to inform the English, led by an unknown youngster, George Washington, that they were trespassing on French land and to ask them, politely, to withdraw eastward back over the Alleghanies into the watershed of the Potomac.
In early June, shocking and disturbing news arrived at Contrecoeur’s headquarters at Fort Duquesne—violating the norms of all civilized nations, the English, just at dawn on May 29, ambushed Jumonville’s party (some men were still in their sleeping sacks), Washington himself firing the first shot. Most of the French who were not killed outright were wounded, and the Indians under Washington’s command dispatched them to eternity, including Jumonville, with tomahawks. Washington later wrote how much he enjoyed the whistle of bullets in his first full on experience wth frontier warfare.
The one French marine to escape this savagery carried the news back to Contrecoeur at Fort Duquesne. He immediately began preparations to wreak vengeance on the English, who, leaving the French dead to be picked apart by scavengers, were hunkered down in crudely-built Fort Necessity at Great Meadows. Contrecoeur selected Mercier to lead this revenge force of Frenchmen and their allied Indians, and he was on the cusp of departing Fort Duquesne when things changed, changed dramatically. Louis Coulon de Villiers, Jumonville’s half-brother, having descended the Alleghany River, arrived at Fort Duquesne from Canada at 8:00 am on June 26. He brought with him reinforcements and a gut full of vengeful passion. Mercier immediately stepped aside, and Contrecoeur appointed Villiers to command the gathering force of French and Indian allies.
The debacle at Fort Necessity in July 1754 is one of most compulsively studied episodes in George Washington’s life, for it was his elementary school in frontier warfare; defeat is a harsher but better schoolmaster than victory. Although not consulted by American historians of the French and Indian War, the “Journal de la Campagne” that Villiers carefully kept of his campaign against Washington “ is an indispensable source for understanding the seminal events that transpired during June and July 1754.
For three days, Villiers gathered his forces, provided two kegs of wine with which his Indians could drink and discuss plans with Contrecoeur. On June 28, Contrecoeur issued his orders that Villiers was “to pursue the English army (i.e. Washington’s forces), attack them, and, if necessary, totally destroy them in order to exact revenge for the murder (of Jumonville) that they have committed. . . . Sieur de Villiers is ordered to avoid all cruelty in so far as his authority permits”; the past phrase alluding to the limits on Villier’s power to control his Indians. This power was contingent on two things: keeping alcohol out of the Indians’ hands (and gullets), and the moral force of Villiers’s personality. Washington’s life ultimately depended on these two contingencies.
After an early morning outdoor Mass on June 29, an extraordinary force of some 600 Frenchmen and 100 Indians set out up the Monongahela River in pirogues. They carried with them a Roman Catholic priest, but no alcohol of any kind, for Villiers’s pursuit of Washington was going to be focused and sober, clear-headed and clear-eyed—and devastatingly effective. As the flotilla of pirogues ascended the Monongahela, Indian scouts and French cadets-in-training raced along the banks of the river to prevent any surprise ambushes heading upstream.
Leaving the pirogues on the bank of the Monongahela near the mouth of Redstone Creek (now Brownsville, Pa), Villiers’s force moved quickly eastward on foot, their focus riveted on Great Meadows and Washington’s stockaded fort. Villiers’s Catholic priest could not keep up the fast pace, so Villiers halted the expedition and had the priest conduct a quick service of absolution to prepare his men for battle and possible death. The Frenchmen were Roman Catholics to the core, and they were preparing, spiritually, to kill, or be killed by, vile Protestants. The accompanying Indians did not know what to make of all this incomprehensible ceremony, but were content to scratch their heads and gaze on in wonderment at the strange French religious practices.
Heading for Washington’s encampment and fort at Great Meadows, Villiers came upon the site of his brother’s murder (now memorialized as Jumonville Glen) and dryly noted that there were still remnants of corpses to be seen. But “let the dead bury the dead,” for Villiers was determined to push his dedicated pursuit of Washington as quickly as possible to its inevitable climax.
Arriving within distant eyeshot of Fort Necessity at Great Meadows, on the morning of July 3, Villliers was pleasantly surprised by Washington’s strategic ineptitude, noting that the fort was “advantageously situated.” Villiers meant that the fort’s location provided his men a perfect opportunity to fire unimpeded on Washington’s men while themselves remaining safely within the protection of the surrounding forest.
The shootin’ match was quickly over. Washington’s Virginians were ill-trained, undisciplined, dog tired, and soaking wet (It had been raining for days.); moreover, half of them were drunk, imbibing strong drink to assuage their fears about what Villiers’s Indians, who were howling in the nearby woods, might to them in their pathetic condition. Late the night of July 3, Washington prudently surrendered to Villiers, acknowledging in the written capitulation that Jumonville had been “murdered [assassiné]” when Washington attacked his party on May 27.
Washington’s men need not have worried for their lives. Villiers’s Indians were stone-cold sober, and he was absolutely determined to keep them that way, and, therefore, completely under his control. The morning of July 4, Villiers immediately seized the barrels of liquor (probably rum) in Washington’s camp and stove them in before his Indians could get to them. Delectably understating the situation, Villiers noted that “I busted up the barrels of liquor to avoid the disorders that would have inevitably transpired.” In other words, Villiers’s prudent action prevented what would have been a certain blood bath, with the French-allied Indians delightedly chopping up English flesh with their tomahawks.
July 4, 1754 was one of the luckiest days of George Washington’s life, and his luck wholly resided in the fact that Louis Coulon de Villiers was an officer and a gentleman and that he interceded quickly and forcefully to protect Washington and his men—even though his brother had met his death at their hands. Villiers would not have known at the time that it was the famous Seneca Indian, Half King, who had in fact wielded the tomahawk that killed Jumonville on that fateful dawn of May 27.
Washington’s men limped back over the Alleghenies to Will’s Creek (now Cumberland MD) to lick their wounds, wondering what had happened to bring about their pains and humiliation; and, of all things, at the hands of Roman Catholic Frenchmen, who were widely deemed to be effeminate pushovers. Washington claimed, with a fair amount of braggadoccio, in a letter to Virginia Governor Dinwiddie that “If the whole Detacht of the French behave with no more Risolution than this chosen Party did I flatter myself we shall have no grt trouble in driving them to Montreal.”
Epilogue
Washington scurried off to Williamsburg to explain things to Governor Dinwiddie, and young George certainly did have some ‘splaining to do. Dinwiddie, who was personally very fond of young Washington, accepted George’s explanations of the Fort Necessity debacle with good graces, especially after Washington claimed that his troops had killed “two or three hundred of the enemy.” That fantastical number of dead Frenchmen warmed Dinwiddie’s heart, and Washington left the governor’s office with head held high. Villiers’s factual casualty report noted two Frenchmen and one Indian dead at l’affaire Fort Necessity.