In this preliminary campaign of the French and Indian war Washington played a brave but by no means brilliant part. He marched with the advance guard to Cumberland, there learning that the French had occupied the fort of the Ohio company on the present site of Pittsburgh, renaming it Ft. Duquesne. Never theless he struggled forward hesitantly to within about 4o m. of the French position, and erected a weak fort at Great Meadows, near what is now Confluence, Pa. With this as a base, he made a surprise attack May 28, upon an advance detachment of 30 French, killing the commander, Coulon de Jumonville, and nine others, and making the rest prisoners. This brought the whole French force upon him. They drove Washington's 35o men into the Great Meadows fort (Ft. Necessity) on July 3, besieged it with 700 men, and after nine hours compelled him to surrender. The construction of the fort was a blunder, for it lay in a water logged creek bottom, was commanded on three sides by forested elevations approaching it closely, and was too far from Washing ton's supports. The French agreed to let the disarmed colonials march back to Virginia with the honours of war, but they com pelled Washington to promise that Virginia would not build an other fort on the Ohio for a year, and to sign a paper acknowledg ing responsibility for "l'assassinat" of M. de Jumonville; a word which Washington later explained he did not rightly understand. He returned to Virginia, chagrined but proud, to receive the thanks of the house of burgesses, to be made a colonel by Dinwiddie and to find his name mentioned in the London gazettes. His re mark in a letter to his brother that "I have heard the bullets whistle ; and believe me, there is something charming in the sound," was commented on humorously by Horace Walpole and sarcastically by George II.
plan of campaign which called for his advance on Ft. Duquesne, Governor Shirley's capture of Niagara, and William Johnson's cap ture of Crown Point, brought Washington new opportunities and responsibilities. He had resigned his commission in Oct. in resentment of the slighting treatment and underpayment of colonial officers, and in especial of an untactful order of the British War Office that provincial officers of whatever rank should be subordinate to any officer holding the king's commission. But he ardently desired a part in the war ; "my inclinations," he wrote a friend, "are strongly bent to arms." When Braddock showed appreciation of his merits and invited him to join the expedition as personal aide-de-camp, with the courtesy title of colonel, he therefore accepted. His self-reliance, decision and masterful traits were quickly made as plain as his wilderness experience. At table he had frequent disputes with Braddock, who when con tractors failed to deliver their supplies attacked the colonials as supine and dishonest, while Washington defended them with warmth. His freedom of utterance is proof of Braddock's esteem. Braddock also accepted from him the unwise advice that he divide his army, leaving half of it to come up with the slow wagons and cattle-train, and taking the other half forward against Ft. Duquesne at a rapid pace. Washington was ill with fever during June, but joined the advance guard in a covered wagon on July 8, begged to lead the march on Ft. Duquesne with his Virginians and the Indian allies, and was by Braddock's side when on July 9 the army was ambushed and bloodily defeated.
In this defeat Washington displayed the combination of cool ness and determination, the alliance of unconquerable energy with complete poise, which was the secret of so many of his successes. So ill that he had to use a pillow instead of a saddle, and that Braddock ordered his body servant to keep special watch over him, he was everywhere at once. At first he followed Braddock as the general bravely tried to rally his men to push either forward or backward, the wisest course the circumstances permitted. Then he rode back to bring up the Virginians from the rear, and rallied them with effect on the flank. To him was largely due the escape of the force. His exposure of his person was as reckless as Braddock's, who was fatally wounded on his fifth horse ; Washing ton had two horses shot under him and his clothes cut by four bullets without being hurt. He was at Braddock's death-bed, helped bring the troops back, and was repaid by being appointed, in Aug. 1755, while still only 23 years old, commander of all the Virginia troops. But no part of his later service was conspicuous. Finding that a Maryland captain who held a royal commission would not obey him, he rode north in Feb. 1756, to Boston, to have the question settled by the commander-in-chief in America, Gov. William Shirley ; and bearing a letter from Dinwiddie, had no difficulty in carrying his point. On his return he plunged into a multitude of vexations. He had to protect a weak, thinly settled frontier nearly 400 m. in length with only some 700 ill-disciplined colonial troops, to cope with a legislature unwilling to support him, to meet attacks on the drunkenness and inefficiency of the soldiers, and to endure constant wilderness hardships. It is not strange that in 1757 his health failed, and in the closing weeks of that year he was so ill of a "bloody flux" that his physician ordered him home to Mount Vernon. He re covered sufficiently to command the advance guard of Gen. John Forbes when in 1758 that general marched from Virginia upon Ft. Duquesne, triumphantly captured it, and renamed it Ft. Pitt; but this done, near the end of the year he resigned.