Anticipating the French attack, Washington fell back upon Great Meadows, and the hasty and inadequate intrenchments which he there threw up received the name of Fort Necessity. Here he awaited an assault with a short supply of ammunition and almost no provisions. Nor was his patience long tried; for nine hundred Frenchmen under Coulon de Villiers, brother of the unfortunate Jumonville, were already marching against him through the woods. Wishing to entice them to an immediate attack, Washington had arrayed his men on the open meadow before the fort; but as his opponent declined to be drawn from the cover of the surrounding hills, the Virginians also took shelter in their shallow intrenchments. A blind fusillade now began in torrents of rain and was maintained for nine hours, punctuated by the booming of a few light swivel guns upon the ramparts.
At nightfall, however, the French proposed a parley, and having weighed the chances of his little army against such overwhelming numbers, Washington agreed to capitulate. Next day the English marched out of Fort Necessity with beating drums and flying colours; but heart-sick and weary they toiled back over the mountains to Virginia, leaving the valley of the Ohio in the full possession of the enemy. Moreover, the defeat at Fort Necessity was a double blow, for it threw the fickle Indians back into the arms of the French, a consideration of great weight in border warfare.
In Europe the rival powers were still maintaining the semblance of peace, while yet secretly abetting the open enmity of their American colonies. The despatch of Major-General Braddock with two regiments of the line, although accounted for by the lips of diplomacy, was, with equally pacific assurances, promptly checkmated by France. Eighteen ships of war, carrying the six battalions of La Reine, Bourgogne, Languedoc, Guienne, Artois, and Béarn, and convoyed by an auxiliary squadron of nine battleships, were hurried off to New France under the joint command of Baron Dieskau and the Marquis de Vaudreuil, the new Governor of Quebec. As in the case of former expeditions on so large a scale, some of the vessels failed to reach their destination, and two frigates fell into the hands of Admiral Boscawen, who had secret orders to intercept this French flotilla.