[Illustration: Great Meadows and the Site of Fort Necessity
_On this battleground in the western Pennsylvania wilderness, which marked the beginning of the French and Indian War, July 3, 1754, a force of 400 men under young Major Washington was defeated by 900 French and Indian allies, and for the first and last time in his military career Washington surrendered. He stipulated, however, that he and his troops were to have safe conduct back to civilization, and agreed not to build a fort west of the Allegheny Mountains for a year. Washington was then twenty-two years old._]
The execution of this plan was, probably, accelerated by an act of the British government. The year after the conclusion of the war, several individuals both in England and Virginia who were associated under the name of the Ohio company, obtained from the crown a grant of six hundred thousand acres of land, lying in the country claimed by both nations. The objects of this company being commercial as well as territorial, measures were taken to derive all the advantages expected from their grant, in both these respects, by establishing trading houses, and by employing persons to survey the country.
The governor of Canada, who obtained early information of this intrusion, as he deemed it, into the dominions of his most christian majesty, wrote to the governors of New York and Pennsylvania, informing them that the English traders had encroached on the French territory by trading with their Indians; and giving notice that, if they did not desist, he should be under the necessity of seizing them wherever they should be found. At the same time the jealousy of the Indians was excited by impressing them with fears that the English were about to deprive them of their country.
His threat having been disregarded, the governor of Canada put it in execution by seizing the British traders among the Twightwees, and carrying them prisoners to Presque-isle, on Lake Erie; where he was erecting a strong fort. About the same time, a communication was opened from Presque-isle, down French creek, and the Alleghany river, to the Ohio. This communication was kept up by detachments of troops, posted at proper distances from each other, in works capable of covering them from an attack made only with small arms.[146]