Battle of Jumonville Glen, opening battle of the French and Indian War, fought on May 28, 1754, also noteworthy as the combat action for George Washington. Imperial ambitions brought England and France into conflict in the Ohio River Valley, forming a theater in the global Seven Years’ War, of which, it is believed, the Battle of Jumonville Glen was the inaugural fight. When the French rebuffed a warning and began building outposts, the royal lieutenant governor of Virginia, Robert Dinwiddie, sent an expedition to secure the Forks of the Ohio, leading to the Battle of Jumonville Glen. The battle was fought in an area southeast of present-day Uniontown, Pennsylvania, southeast of Pittsburgh.
In January 1754, a company of the volunteer Virginia Regiment was sent to build a fort at the strategic confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers (the “Forks,” modern-day Pittsburgh), where the Ohio River began. The Virginians were driven away by French troops, who went on to construct Fort Duquesne on the site. In response, a larger expedition was dispatched in April. Lieutenant Colonel George Washington, the regiment’s deputy commander, led the advance element. On May 24, his force reached Great Meadows, an open, marshy natural clearing about 60 miles (96 km) southeast of the Forks (near present-day Farmington, Pennsylvania) where camp was set up. Three days later, friendly Senecas informed Washington that some 50 French soldiers and Native allies were camped in a hidden ravine only 15 miles away. Convinced that the French intended to attack, Washington decided to strike first.
During the rainy night of May 27–28, Washington led a 40-man raiding party to the French location. At dawn, as they moved into position around the glen, a shot was fired. The French had not posted a picket. Surprised, they claimed they were a diplomatic, not military, corps. Led by a junior officer, Ensign Joseph Coulon de Villiers, Sieur de Jumonville, they returned the musket fire for fifteen minutes before they surrendered.
Details of what happened next have long been debated, but the end result was that Jumonville, during his captivity and interrogation, was suddenly tomahawked to death by Washington’s ally, Mingo (Iroquoian) chief Tanacharison; according to legend, Tanacharison then washed his hands in Jumonville’s brains. The rash attack spurred Tanacharison’s detachment to follow suit, whereupon nine additional captive French soldiers were scalped before a stunned Washington could intervene and stop the massacre.
Washington, only 21 years old, immediately sent a dispatch to Dinwiddie saying that the French were spies and that anything the survivors might say was to be disregarded. He then evacuated the remaining 21 French soldiers to Virginia as prisoners of war. One of the French survivors escaped into the woods, returned to Fort Duquesne, and reported on the attack. The French pilloried Washington as a war criminal, and their outrage helped spur their July 3 attack on Washington at the Battle of Fort Necessity, which ended in Washington’s sole surrender in his military career.
The “battle” of Jumonville Glen, so named by later settlers in the ensign’s honor, is more properly thought of as a skirmish at best, though one that. as the British writer Horace Walpole wrote, “set the world on fire.” In French history, it is considered not a skirmish but a massacre. Washington would insist ever after that firing on the French party was legitimate because, by concealing themselves in the ravine, they were acting as soldiers rather than as diplomats.
Losses: French and American Indian, 10 dead, 1 wounded, 21 captured; Virginian, 1 dead, 2 wounded.