Indignant letters written in vigorous language were, however, of little avail, and Washington prepared to shift for himself as best he might.  His Indian allies brought him news that the French were on the march and had thrown out scouting parties.  Picking out a place in the Great Meadows for a fort, “a charming field for an encounter,” he in his turn sent out a scouting party, and then on fresh intelligence from the Indians set forth himself with forty men to find the enemy.  After a toilsome march they discovered their foes in camp.  The French, surprised and surrounded, sprang to arms, the Virginians fired, there was a sharp exchange of shots, and all was over.  Ten of the French were killed and twenty-one were taken prisoners, only one of the party escaping to carry back the news.

This little skirmish made a prodigious noise in its day, and was much heralded in France.  The French declared that Jumonville, the leader, who fell at the first fire, was foully assassinated, and that he and his party were ambassadors and sacred characters.  Paris rang with this fresh instance of British perfidy, and a M. Thomas celebrated the luckless Jumonville in a solemn epic poem in four books.  French historians, relying on the account of the Canadian who escaped, adopted the same tone, and at a later day mourned over this black spot on Washington’s character.  The French view was simple nonsense.  Jumonville and his party, as the papers found on Jumonville showed, were out on a spying and scouting expedition.  They were seeking to surprise the English when the English surprised them, with the usual backwoods result.  The affair has a dramatic interest because it was the first blood shed in a great struggle, and was the beginning of a series of world-wide wars and social and political convulsions, which terminated more than half a century later on the plains of Waterloo.  It gave immortality to an obscure French officer by linking his name with that of his opponent, and brought Washington for the moment before the eyes of the world, which little dreamed that this Virginian colonel was destined to be one of the principal figures in the great revolutionary drama to which the war then beginning was but the prologue.

Washington, for his part, well satisfied with his exploit, retraced his steps, and having sent his prisoners back to Virginia, proceeded to consider his situation.  It was not a very cheerful prospect.  Contrecoeur, with the main body of the French and Indians, was moving down from the Monongahela a thousand strong.  This of course was to have been anticipated, and it does not seem to have in the least damped Washington’s spirits.  His blood was up, his fighting temper thoroughly roused, and he prepared to push on.  Colonel Fry had died meanwhile, leaving Washington in command; but his troops came forward, and also not long after a useless “independent” company from South Carolina.  Thus reinforced Washington advanced painfully some thirteen miles,