the pinch came at last
in 1753, when the two nations met on the banks of the Ohio. The
meeting meant one of the greatest and most momentous series of wars in
the century. {285} French soldiers invaded all the settlements of the
Ohio company and drove the settlers out. The Governor of Virginia sent
an ambassador to the French officer commanding on the Ohio, and chose
as his ambassador a young Virginian gentleman then absolutely unknown
except to the small circle of his personal friends, but destined to
become one of the most famous, and most deservedly famous, men in
history. Young Mr. George Washington bore Governor Dinwiddie's message
over 500 miles through the wilderness at the peril of his life. That
expedition, says Irving, "may be considered the foundation of his
fortunes. From that moment he was the rising hope of Virginia." The
French commander informed the young envoy that he proposed to hold Ohio
and drive the English out. Back went George Washington through the
wilderness again with this discouraging reply. After that hostilities
were inevitable. The next year Washington, then lieutenant-colonel,
led a small force to the frontier, and fired the first shot against the
enemy. It is curious to think of all the results that followed from
that first shot. The fall of the French colonies in America, the
establishment of the American Republic, the French Revolution--all may,
by the simplest process of causation, be traced back to the first shot
fired by Washington's command against a petty officer on the frontier.
That shot echoes on the Plains of Abraham, at Lexington and Bunker's
Hill, at the taking of the Bastille, and with the "whiff of
grape-shot"; we may hear it at Waterloo and in the autumn horrors of
the Coup d'Etat.

France had long been ambitious of extending the domain of her colonial
empire in America. Her aim was to secure for herself the Mississippi
and Ohio valleys. Securing these meant many things to France. It
meant the connection of her Mexican colonies with Canada, but it meant
much more than this; it meant serious annoyance to England, serious
limitation to English commerce. It would make the Alleghany mountains
the western limits of the English colonies, hamper the English trade
with {286} the Indians, and expose to French attack the English on the
north, south, and west. In this year 1754, therefore, she deliberately
drove the English out of West Pennsylvania, and set up her st