Battle of Jumonville Glen

Background

The Ohio Country, encompassing the upper reaches of the Ohio River in what today is western Pennsylvania, became a point of growing friction as British and French Canadian traders crossed paths there with increasing frequency during the 1740s and into the early 1750s. Officials governing New France responded by intensifying their campaign to push British traders and settlers out of the region, and by 1753 they had commenced building a network of forts to secure their claim.

This French buildup caught the eye of both the British and the native peoples living in the area. Although relations between the French and various Indian nations were generally cordial, the British had managed to lure many tribes into trading with them rather than the Canadians, and this success meant that the sweeping French military presence was met with mixed feelings. Tanacharison, a Mingo leader known as the Half King, emerged as a particularly outspoken opponent of the French following these developments. During a council with Paul Marin de la Malgue, who headed the French and Canadian building effort, Marin apparently flew into a rage, bellowing at the chief that he intended to proceed downriver regardless of obstacles, boasting he possessed enough strength to smash through any blockade and crush all who stood against him, and dismissing the chief's remarks as foolishness. He capped this outburst by casting aside the wampum belt Tanacharison had presented as a token of peace. Not long afterward, Marin passed away, and Jacques Legardeur de

Prelude

In the spring of 1754, Dinwiddie sent Washington back toward the frontier, directing him to hold a defensive posture but authorizing forceful measures against anyone who tried to disrupt the fortifications or the settlements: he was to restrain such offenders and, should they resist, to take them prisoner or kill and destroy them. The historian Fred Anderson has characterized these instructions, issued without London's knowledge, as nothing short of "an invitation to start a war." Washington's task was to assemble whatever supplies and provincial soldiers he could find along the way, and when he set out on April 2, his force numbered under 160 men.

As the column pushed through the frontier woods, additional recruits joined at Winchester. There Washington learned from Captain Trent that French forces were advancing. Trent also carried word from Tanacharison, who pledged warriors in support. Unwilling to jeopardize that alliance, Washington pressed forward rather than retreat. He eventually reached the Great Meadows, a site now within Fayette County, Pennsylvania, roughly 37 miles south of the forks, where he began raising a modest fort and waited for further word.

Contrecoeur's own orders barred him from launching an attack unless his men were provoked first. On May 23 he dispatched Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville, leading 35 troops made up mainly of French Canadian recruits, to determine whether Washington's men had crossed into French-claimed land and to deliver a demand that they withdraw, much like the demand Washington himself had carried to the French four months prior.

Four days later, on May 27, the settler Christopher Gist, who had traveled with Washington during the 1753 expedition, brought news that some fifty French Canadians were nearby. Washington answered by dispatching 75 men under Gist's guidance to locate them. That same evening, a message arrived from Tanacharison reporting that he had located the Canadian encampment and urging a meeting between the two leaders. Even though another party was already searching for the French Canadians, Washington set out with 40 men to join Tanacharison, who brought along twelve warriors, two of them still boys. The two leaders conferred and settled on a joint assault. Their combined force then took cover among the rocks surrounding the camp, where they judged the Canadian numbers to be no greater than forty.

Battle

What transpired in the aftermath remains disputed among historians, and the handful of firsthand accounts that survive both align and diverge on key points. On this much they concur: the fighting lasted roughly fifteen minutes, Jumonville lost his life, and nearly all his men were either slain or captured. French Canadian sources indicate that the majority of the fallen were Canadians rather than French regulars, naming Desroussel and Caron of Québec City, Charles Bois of Pointe-Claire, Jérôme of La Prairie, L'Enfant of Montréal, Paris of

Aftermath

Washington described the fighting in a letter to his brother, noting that he had heard bullets whistle through the air and confessing that the sound struck him as oddly charming. Afterward he made his way back to Great Meadows, where he pressed forward with building what would become known as Fort Necessity. Meanwhile the bodies of the fallen remained where they had fallen or lay in shallow graves, later discovered by French forces.

By June 28, 1754, Louis Coulon de Villiers, brother of the slain Jumonville, marched out of Fort Duquesne at the head of 600 men drawn from French, French Canadian, and Indian ranks. Five days later, on July 3, this force overwhelmed Fort Necessity, compelling Washington to accept terms allowing his men to withdraw while still bearing arms. The surrender document itself was drafted in French, a language Washington could not read, and the translation offered to him came from a Dutchman whose grasp of both English and French was shaky at best. Buried within its wording was a claim that Jumonville and his men had been murdered rather than killed in combat. Among the French officers taken prisoner at Jumonville Glen who survived were Pierre-Jacques Drouillon de Macé along with two cadets, Michel-Ignace Dandonneau known as Sieur du Sablé, and René Amable Boucher de Boucherville. These men were transported to Virginia and eventually put aboard ships bound for London under Dinwiddie's orders, accompanied by nineteen captured militiamen, reaching English shores on June 10, 1755. One prisoner was treated differently: Michel Pépin, known as "La Force," a gifted interpreter whom Washington had known from before the conflict. Rather than being sent overseas, he remained a captive in Williamsburg following the loss of Fort Necessity, held in a kind of exchange for Captains Robert Stobo and Jacob Van Braam, who themselves were being kept by the French as hostages.

Word of both engagements reached England that August, prompting the ministry under the Duke of Newcastle to spend several months in deliberation before deciding to launch a military expedition the next year aimed at pushing the French out. Command of this venture fell to Major General Edward Braddock. His campaign ended in defeat at the Battle of