Washington [37]
It’s also worth noting that Washington had received an invaluable education in frontier warfare. European conventional warfare stressed compact masses of troops, arrayed on open battlefields. In the New World, by contrast, the Indians had perfected a mobile style of warfare that relied on ambushing, sniping from trees, and vanishing into the forest. That June Washington noted that “the French all fight in the Indian method,” and the Fort Necessity defeat demonstrated how lethal this could be .42 Washington had seen how soldiers could defeat an enemy through speed and cunning. Two other lessons informed his later experience in the American Revolution. One was the futility of trying to hold posts that could become death traps for soldiers cooped up inside—a lesson Washington would have to relearn in the subsequent war. The other lesson, as President Washington repeated it to Indian fighters in his administration, was the resounding dictum “Beware of surprise!”43 George Washington always demonstrated a capacity to learn from missteps. “Errors once discovered are more than half amended,” he liked to say. “Some men will gain as much experience in the course of three or four years as some will in ten or a dozen.”44 It was this process of subtle, silent, unrelenting self-criticism that enabled him to rise above his early defeats.
When Washington rode into Williamsburg two weeks later, his exploits were the talk of the capital. At first he attracted criticism for his defeat and the seemingly scandalous admission that Jumonville had been “assassinated.” To protect his own reputation, Dinwiddie alleged that Washington had disobeyed his orders not to engage with the French until “the whole forces were joined in a body.”45 But he couldn’t denounce Washington without raising serious questions about his own judgment, and when he reported to London on the fiasco, he described it as a “small engagement, conducted with judgment by the officers and great bravery by our few forces.”46 Dinwiddie also condemned the “monstrous” failure of other colonies to shore up the Virginia forces—a failure that gave Washington his first powerful proof of the need for continental unity.47
In the coming weeks, condemnation of Washington gradually gave way to widespread acknowledgment that he had confronted terrifying odds at Fort Necessity. So sharp was the reversal of opinion that in early September the House of Burgesses paid special tribute to Washington and Mackay “for their late, gallant, and brave behavior in the defence of their country.”48 Governor Horatio Sharpe of Maryland, who had excoriated Washington for impulsive behavior, wrote to him and explained that, as the true story of Fort Necessity became known, public opinion had shifted in his favor, and he concluded with the reassuring words: “Your reputation again revived.”49 Thus, the ghastly frontier defeat came to be seen as a doomed but heroic defense rather than a military blunder that might have ruined Washington’s budding career.
The aftermath of Washington’s first military campaign was grievously disappointing to him. The Virginia Regiment, it was decided, would be divided into ten independent companies, with captain the top grade in each. For Washington, this would have meant an insulting demotion from his colonel’s rank. Anyone who thought