On May 28, 1754, a detachment of a regiment of Virginians under the command of George Washington got into a fight with French soldiers over in Pennsylvania. This was the beginning of the French and Indian War as we call it in the US, while Europe refers to it as the Seven Years War.
Washington and his men were in the Ohio territory to enforce British claims to what was then considered the West. The French, backed by many tribes of Native Americans, were encroaching on those claims. Virginians like to remember King James’s charter of 1609; it’s all Virginia.
Washington Irving tells the tale:
“Washington was the first upon the ground. As he advanced from among the rocks and trees at the head of his men, the French caught sight of him and ran to their arms. A sharp firing instantly took place and was kept up on both sides for about fifteen minutes. Washington and his party were most exposed and received all the enemy’s fire. The balls whistled around him. One man was killed close by him and three others wounded. The French at length, having lost several of their number, gave way and ran. They were soon overtaken.”
A few days after the battle, Washington famously described the action as, “I heard bullets whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound.” Calmness under fire in a literal sense will be a trait seen many times throughout Washington’s military career as well as metaphorically throughout his whole life.
Historian Joseph Ellis, in a biography on Washington titled His Excellency, writes,
“What actually happened at what came to be called Jumonville Glen soon became an international controversy about who fired the first shot in the French and Indian War. It has remained a scholarly debate ever since, in part because it was Washington’s first combat experience, in part because there is good reason to believe that he found himself overseeing a massacre.”
Whatever exactly happened may be lost to history or may be coldly labeled as common to the times. Whatever went down resulted in a world war as the fighting was not limited to the North American continent but also involved action in other theaters such as Europe, India, and west Africa.
After the war, the Treaty of Paris (1763) established Britian as a worldwide colonial power. Payment for the war led British Parliament to pass legislation colonial America found unacceptable, which propelled us to the American Revolution and the liberty we are celebrating during this 250th Anniversary Celebration of America.