Washington [35]
In choosing Fort Necessity, Washington opted for a spot poorly situated to withstand an incursion. He always refused to concede its demerits and years later still defended the Great Meadows as a place “abounding in forage” and convenient for a stockade.29 An uncouth backwoods structure, covered with bark and animal skins, the fort was primarily defended by nine small cannon that spun on pivots. Because it could contain only sixty or seventy men, Washington had three-foot trenches dug around its perimeter to protect additional men and threw up earthen breastworks to bolster their position. Despite such precautions, Fort Necessity stood on low-lying grassland that was soft and boggy and would form stagnant ponds in the rain. It was also surrounded by woods and high ground that could protect marksmen within easy musket range of the fort. Significantly, the fort was open to the sky, affording no shelter from the elements.
On the morning of July 3, 1754, Washington and his men had hunkered down at the fort when frantic scouts reported that “a heavy, numerous body” of French soldiers had drawn within four miles of their camp.30 They had stopped by the glen where Jumonville was killed and discovered the unburied bodies of dead compatriots, further inflaming their rage. Later that morning, while Washington’s men scooped out trenches, this invisible force took on a sudden, terrifying shape, descending on Fort Necessity in three columns. Bullets rained down from everywhere. French and Indian soldiers “advanced with shouts and dismal Indian yells to our entrenchments,” Washington recalled, but were greeted by a “warm, spirited and constant” fire that scattered them to the woods.31 What Washington didn’t recall was that the British regulars under Mackay had stood steadfast under French fire, while the ranks of his own Virginia Regiment had broken and dived for cover.
Washington received a costly lesson in frontier fighting as swarms of French and Indians kept up a scalding fire “from every little rising, tree, stump, stone, and bush.”32 Their well-protected marksmen took clear shots from woods as little as sixty yards away. Then late in the afternoon, a torrential rain began to fall—“the most tremendous rain that can be conceived,” in Washington’s words—and it soaked both his men and their weapons, turning the fort’s floor into a treacherous mud bowl.33 Worst of all, the water pooled in the ditches, trapping soldiers in their own defenses. Exposed to the sky, the men couldn’t keep their cartridges and fire-locks dry, rendering their muskets useless. By the end of the day, the rain-drenched stockade was a horrific swamp of mangled bodies, lying in blood and rain. The appalling casualty toll—a hundred men dead or wounded—represented a full third of Washington’s soldiers. The pitiless French also butchered every cow, horse, and even dog in sight. So one-sided was the outcome that the French suffered only three dead and seventeen wounded. To put a better gloss on the bloodshed, Washington and Mackay magnified the scale of French casualties, pegging the figure as high as three hundred, as if the two sides had fought to an even draw.
The debacle was compounded by the surrender. It was nearly nightfall when the French commander signaled a willingness to talk. By that point, Washington’s men had pounced on the fort’s rum supply, and