and then receiving sure intelligence of the approach of the French in great force fell back with difficulty to the Great Meadows, where he was obliged by the exhausted condition of his men to stop.  He at once resumed work on Fort Necessity, and made ready for a desperate defense, for the French were on his heels, and on July 3 appeared at the Meadows.  Washington offered battle outside the fort, and this being declined withdrew to his trenches, and skirmishing went on all day.  When night fell it was apparent that the end had come.  The men were starved and worn out.  Their muskets in many cases were rendered useless by the rain, and their ammunition was spent.  The Indians had deserted, and the foe outnumbered them four to one.  When the French therefore offered a parley, Washington was forced reluctantly to accept.  The French had no stomach for the fight, apparently, and allowed the English to go with their arms, exacting nothing but a pledge that for a year they would not come to the Ohio.

So ended Washington’s first campaign.  His friend the Half-King, the celebrated Seneca chief, Thanacarishon, who prudently departed on the arrival of the French, has left us a candid opinion of Washington and his opponents.  “The colonel,” he said, “was a good-natured man, but had no experience; he took upon him to command the Indians as his slaves, and would have them every day upon the scout and to attack the enemy by themselves, but would by no means take advice from the Indians.  He lay in one place from one full moon to the other, without making any fortifications, except that little thing on the meadow; whereas, had he taken advice, and built such fortifications as I advised him, he might easily have beat off the French.  But the French in the engagement acted like cowards, and the English like fools."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Enquiry into the Causes and Alienations of the Delaware and Shawanee Indians, etc.  London, 1759.  By Charles Thomson, afterwards Secretary of Congress.]

There is a deal of truth in this opinion.  The whole expedition was rash in the extreme.  When Washington left Will’s Creek he was aware that he was going to meet a force of a thousand men with only a hundred and fifty raw recruits at his back.  In the same spirit he pushed on; and after the Jumonville affair, although he knew that the wilderness about him was swarming with enemies, he still struggled forward.  When forced to retreat he made a stand at the Meadows and offered battle in the open to his more numerous and more prudent foes, for he was one of those men who by nature regard courage as a substitute for everything, and who have a contempt for hostile odds.  He was ready to meet any number of French and Indians with cheerful confidence and with real pleasure.  He wrote, in a letter which soon became famous, that he loved to hear bullets whistle, a sage observation which he set down in later years as a folly of youth.  Yet this boyish outburst, foolish as