| Collections | Curator's Corner
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George Washington: Assassin of diplomatic envoy?
Visitors to the History Center's new exhibit Clash of Empires: the British, French & Indian War, 1754-1763 have a unique opportunity to view the original document that sparked the first global war. For the first time in 251 years, the capitulation signed by 22-year- old George Washington at Fort Necessity on July 3, 1754, has returned to Western Pennsylvania.
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A little over a month before his surrender at Fort Necessity, Washington led about 40 Virginia soldiers in an attack on a party of French Canadians led by Ensign Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville. Jumonville was wounded in the brief skirmish, and after the firing subsided, a local Seneca Indian leader named Tanaghrisson killed the commander in a dramatic act of revenge for slights he had suffered at the hands of the French.
Although he would write jubilantly to his brother that "I heard the Bulletts whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound." Washington's troubles began almost immediately. Survivors of Jumonville's party revealed that the slain officer had been dispatched to deliver a formal summons to the Virginians to withdraw from French territory - a diplomatic mission similar to one performed the previous winter by none other than Washington himself, who had carried a letter from the governor of Virginia to the French commander in the Ohio Valley.
Chronically short of men, provisions, draft animals, and military experience, Washington pushed his tiny force toward the French Fort Duquesne, situated at the fork of land that is now Pittsburgh's Point State Park. Local Delaware, Shawnee, and Iroquois warriors refused to support the rag-tag force, and when a French and allied Indian force set out under the leadership of Jumonville's brother to exact revenge, Washington and his officers retreated to their base at Fort Necessity.
During the afternoon of July 3, 1754, both sides settled into an uneven firefight punctuated by torrential rain that turned the natural meadow surrounding Fort Necessity into a muddy killing field. By dusk, one-third of Washington's force was killed or wounded. A call for surrender from the French lines initiated discussion that led to the signing of a capitulation shortly before midnight. The surviving Virginians, together with British soldiers from South Carolina who had fought alongside Washington's men, marched out the following morning.
Washington carried with him one of two copies of the capitulation, signed by himself, British co-commander James Mackay, and French commander Louis Coulon de Villiers, the brother of the murdered Ensign Jumonville. Washington would only find out later that the document, written in French and translated orally (and poorly, he claimed) by a subordinate during the negotiations, contained references to the "assassination" of Jumonville. The French lost no time in broadcasting throughout Europe Washington's admission to assassinating a diplomatic envoy, an act made worse by the fact that Britain and France were officially at peace. The "Jumonville Affair" sparked a conflict that spread from North America to Europe, Africa, Asia, and the West Indies: the first global war.
The Fort Necessity surrender document on display in Clash of Empires is on loan from the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada. Both original documents include the notation in French "fait double sur un des postes de notre Blocus de jour et an que dessus" {made in duplicate at one of the positions of our blockade the day and year as above (i.e. July 3, 1754)} indicating that the documents were prepared within the French lines situated on the forested hills near Fort Necessity. The copy on display in Clash of Empires was carried to Virginia by Washington, and is a tangible reminder of the profound role that Washington's youthful adventures (and blunders) in Western Pennsylvania played in the formation of his character.
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