The confrontation at Fort Necessity in the summer of 1754 was the opening battle of the war fought by England and France for control of the North American continent.

It was also the opening episode of a worldwide struggle known in North America as the French and Indian War and elsewhere as the Seven Years’ War. It ended in 1763 with the expulsion of French power from North America and India. The action at Fort Necessity was also the first major event in the military career of George Washington and it marked the only time he ever surrendered to an enemy.

Rivals in North America
Rival claims between the French and the English to the vast territory along the Ohio River between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi approached a climax about 1750. The Ohio Company (organized in 1748 by a group of prominent Englishmen and Virginians who saw the economic and financial potential of the area) had obtained a large grant of 200,000 acres in the upper Ohio River Valley. From its post at Wills Creek, now Cumberland, Maryland, the Company planned additional settlements and started to open an 80-mile wagon road to the Monongahela River.

Meanwhile, the French, who considered the Ohio a vital link between New France (Canada) and Louisiana, advanced southward and westward, from Fort Niagara on Lake Ontario, driving out English traders and claiming the Ohio River Valley for France. In 1753, Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia learned the French had built Fort Presque Isle near Lake Erie and Fort Le Boeuf in that part of the Ohio country claimed by Virginia. He sent an eight-man expedition under George Washington to warn the French to withdraw. Washington, then only 21 years old, made the journey in midwinter of 1753-54. The French refusal to withdraw set the stage for the events that took place at Fort Necessity.

The Fort Necessity Campaign
In January 1754, even before he learned of the French refusal to abandon the Ohio Valley, Governor Dinwiddie sent a small force of Virginia soldiers to build a fort at the forks of the Ohio, where Pittsburgh now stands. The stockade was barely finished when a French force drove off the Virginians and built a larger fort on the site. The French called it Fort Duquesne in honor of the Marquis de Duquesne, who had recently become governor of New France.

In early April, George Washington, newly commissioned lieutenant colonel, started westward from Alexandria with part of a regiment of Virginia frontiersmen to build a road to Redstone Creek on the Monongahela. He was then to help defend the English fort on the Ohio. When told the fort was in French hands, he resolved to push on to Redstone Creek and await further instructions. His force was well beyond Wills Creek when Col. Joshua Fry, commanding the expedition, arrived there with the rest of the Virginia Regiment near the end of May. (When Fry died at Will Creek on May 31, Washington assumed command of the regiment and was promoted to colonel.)

The Jumonville Affair
Washington arrived at the Great Meadows, as the Fort Necessity area was then called, on May 24. Although the meadow was nearly all marsh, he believed it “a charming field for an encounter” and ordered his men to set up an encampment. Three days later, after hearing that a group of French soldiers had been spotted about seven miles away on Chestnut Ridge, Washington and 40 men set out to find them. At dawn on May 28, the Virginians reached the camp of Tanacharison, a friendly Seneca chief known as the Half King. His scouts then led them to the ravine about two miles to the north where the French were encamped.

The French, commanded by Joseph Coulon de Villiers, Sieur de Jumonville, were taken by surprise. Ten were killed, including Jumonville, one was wounded, and 21 were made prisoner. One man escaped to carry the news back to Fort Duquesne. Washington’s command suffered only one man killed and two wounded.

Fearing “we might be attacked by considerable forces,” Washington undertook to fortify his position at the Great Meadows. During the last two days of May and the first three days of June, he built a circular palisaded fort, which he called Fort Necessity.

The rest of the Virginia regiment arrived at the Great Meadows on June 9, along with supplies and nine swivel guns. Washington’s command now totaled 293 officers and men. He was reinforced several days later by about 100 men of Capt. James Mackay’s independent Company of regular British troops from South Carolina. Washington's attempts to retain his Indian allies were not successful.

While the South Carolinians remained at the Great Meadows, Washington and his Virginians spent most of June opening a road from Fort Necessity to Gist’s Plantation, a frontier settlement in the direction of the forks of the Ohio. Reports that a large force of French and Indians was advancing from Fort Duquesne, however, caused him to withdraw his men to the Great Meadows, where they arrived July 1.

The Battle of Fort Necessity
The next day, they strengthened Fort Necessity by improving the trenches outside the stockade. On the morning of July 3, a force of about 600 French and 100 Indians approached the fort. After the French took up positions in the woods, Washington withdrew his men to the entrenchments. Rain fell throughout the day, flooding the marshy ground. Both sides suffered casualties, but the British losses were greater than French and Indian losses.

The fighting continued sporadically until about 8 PM. Then Capt. Louis Coulon de Villiers, commander of the French force and brother of Jumonville, requested a truce to discuss the surrender of Washington's command. Near midnight, after several hours of negotiation, the terms were reduced to writing and signed by Washington and Mackay.

The British were allowed to withdraw with the honors of war, retaining their baggage and weapons, but having to surrender their swivel guns. The British troops left Fort Necessity for Wills Creek on the morning of July 4. From there, they marched back to Virginia. The French burned Fort Necessity and afterwards returned to Fort Duquesne.

The following year, Washington joined another British expedition to the Forks of the Ohio under the command of General Edward Braddock.

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