Fort Necessity: Washington's First Defeat
Pennsylvania
About four hundred yards south of here, in the meadow called Great Meadows, a twenty-two-year-old Lieutenant Colonel named George Washington ordered his men to dig a circular palisade he called Fort Necessity.
It was seventeen fifty-four, and Britain and France were racing to control the Ohio Valley. After a skirmish earlier that spring, Washington knew retaliation was coming. On July third, about six hundred French regulars and militia and one hundred Native allies under the command of Coulon de Villiers surrounded the crude fort. After nine hours of rain-soaked fighting, Washington's four hundred raw Virginia and South Carolina troops were overwhelmed. He surrendered and marched out the following morning, July fourth, with the honors of war, meaning his men kept their arms.
It was Washington's only battlefield surrender, and the shots fired here helped ignite what became the French and Indian War, the North American theater of a global conflict.
