came opposite the fort, where they stationed themselves on two densely wooded hills, adjacent, though separated by a small brook.  One of these was about a hundred paces from the English, and the other about sixty.  Their position was such that the French and Indians, well sheltered by trees and bushes, and with the advantage of higher ground, could cross their fire upon the fort and enfilade a part of it.  Washington had meanwhile drawn his followers within the entrenchment; and the firing now began on both sides.  Rain fell all day.  The raw earth of the embankment was turned to soft mud, and the men in the ditch of the outwork stood to the knee in water.  The swivels brought back from the camp at Gist’s farm were mounted on the rampart; but the gunners were so ill protected that the pieces were almost silenced by the French musketry.  The fight lasted nine hours.  At times the fire on both sides was nearly quenched by the showers, and the bedrenched combatants could do little but gaze at each other through a gray veil of mist and rain.  Towards night, however, the fusillade revived, and became sharp again until dark.  At eight o’clock the French called out to propose a parley.

Villiers thus gives his reason for these overtures.  “As we had been wet all day by the rain, as the soldiers were very tired, as the savages said that they would leave us the next morning, and as there was a report that drums and the firing of cannon had been heard in the distance, I proposed to M. Le Mercier to offer the English a conference.”  He says further that ammunition was falling short, and that he thought the enemy might sally in a body and attack him.[155] The English, on their side, were in a worse plight.  They were half starved, their powder was nearly spent, their guns were foul, and among them all they had but two screw-rods to clean them.  In spite of his desperate position, Washington declined the parley, thinking it a pretext to introduce a spy; but when the French repeated their proposal and requested that he would send an officer to them, he could hesitate no longer.  There were but two men with him who knew French, Ensign Peyroney, who was disabled by a wound, and the Dutchman, Captain Vanbraam.  To him the unpalatable errand was assigned.  After a long absence he returned with articles of capitulation offered by Villiers; and while the officers gathered about him in the rain, he read and interpreted the paper by the glimmer of a sputtering candle kept alight with difficulty.  Objection was made to some of the terms, and they were changed.  Vanbraam, however, apparently anxious to get the capitulation signed and the affair ended, mistranslated several passages, and rendered the words l’assassinat du Sieur de Jumonville as the death of the Sieur de Jumonville.[156] As thus understood, the articles were signed about midnight.  They provided that the English should march out with drums beating and the honors of war, carrying with them one of their swivels and all their other property; that they should be protected against insult from French or Indians; that the prisoners taken in the affair of Jumonville should be set free; and that two officers should remain as hostages for their safe return to Fort Duquesne.  The hostages chosen were Vanbraam and a brave but eccentric Scotchman, Robert Stobo, an acquaintance of the novelist Smollett, said to be the original of his Lismahago.