This expedition, too, followed the road to Vestal's Gap and Washington, as was his habit, kept a journal of his experience. By the mischance of events this journal was to be captured later by the French at Fort Necessity; but in 1756, to bolster their claim that this English expedition was an unprovoked attack against a friendly power in time of peace, they published in French so much of it as served their purpose. Unfortunately the published portion did not include the march through Piedmont; but in Washington's accounting with the Virginia government we find these items:
"1754 "Apl. 6 To expences of the Regim^{ t} at Edward Thompson's in marching up 2´´16.0 8 To Bacon for D^{ o} of John Vestal at Shenandoah & Ferriges over 1.9"[63]
[63] _Journal of Washington 1754._ Edited by J. M. Toner M. D.
Edward Thompson was a Quaker who lived near the present Hillsboro and who was to leave numerous descendants in Loudoun.
From the Shenandoah the little force pressed on into Western Maryland where at Will's Creek (the present Cumberland) then a trading station of the Ohio Company, 140 miles west from their objective, Colonel Fry was stricken with an illness which, a short time later, was to prove fatal. Leaving their colonel behind, the Virginia militia, now under the command of Major Washington, advanced very slowly cutting a narrow road through the forest and sending a small force ahead to begin work on the proposed fort at the confluence of the rivers. That work was hardly begun, however, when a greatly superior force of French and Indians, arriving suddenly on the scene from the north, drove the Virginians away, took possession of the place and continued the fort's construction naming it, on completion, Fort DuQuesne after Canada's French Governor.
The retreating Virginians fell back through the woods until they joined Washington's main force, encamped at Great Meadows, and it was not long before Washington learned from his Indian scouts that a small party of enemy skirmishers was cautiously advancing to deliver a surprise attack. Washington promptly determined on a counter-surprise with such complete success that the Virginians killed Jumonville, the French leader, and nine of his followers and captured the remaining twenty-two. But Washington knew that a much larger force of French would soon attack him and that his position was precarious. With earthworks and logs he caused his men to hastily fortify their camp, grimly called by him Fort Necessity. They had not long to wait for the enemy. There soon emerged from the surrounding forest a force of six hundred French and Indians from Fort DuQuesne who, apparently not finding that the appearance of the fort or the reputation of its defenders invited an attack, settled down to a siege. Washington, though in the meanwhile reinforced, had not more than three hundred Virginians and about one hundred and fifty Indian auxiliaries; but more serious than his inequality of numbers were his rapidly dwindling supplies of food and ammunition. This was the situation which resulted in Washington's first and last surrender during his long military career. The French so little relished an attack on the fort or a longer siege that the English were allowed to march out and begin their retreat (4th of July, 1754) under arms and with full honors of war.