already seized
English forts and were even now scouring the country for English
traders. For a week their scouts had followed Washington as spies.

Expecting instant retaliation from Fort Duquesne, Washington retreated
swiftly to his camping place at Great Meadows and cast up a log
barricade known as Fort Necessity. A few days later comes a company of
regular troops. By July 1 he has some four hundred men, but at Fort
Duquesne are fourteen hundred French. The French wait only for orders
from Quebec, then march nine hundred bushrovers against Washington.
July 3, towards midday, they burst from the woods whooping and yelling.
Washington chose to meet them on the open ground, but the French were
pouring a cross fire over the meadow; and to compel them to attack in
the open, Washington drew his men behind the barricade. By nightfall
the Virginians were out of powder. Twelve had been killed and
forty-three were wounded. Before midnight the French beat a parley.
All they desired was that the English evacuate the fort. To fight
longer would have risked the extermination of Washington's troops.
Terms of honorable surrender were granted, and the next day--the day
which Washington was to make immortal, July 4--the English retreated
from Fort Necessity. Such was the peace in the Ohio valley.

Though the peace is still continued, England dispatches in 1755 two
regiments of the line under Major General Braddock to protect Virginia,
along with a fleet of twelve men-of-war under Admiral Boscawen. France
keeps up the farce by sending out Baron Dieskau with three thousand
soldiers and Admiral La Motte with eighteen ships. Coasting off
Newfoundland, the English encounter three of the French ships that have
gone astray in the fog. "Is it peace or war?" shout the French across
decks. "Peace," answers a voice from the English deck; and
instantaneously a hurricane cannonade rakes the decks of the French,
killing eighty. Two of the French ships surrendered. The other
escaped through the fog. Such was the peace!

{227} So began the famous Seven Years' War; and Major General Braddock,
in session with the colonial governors, plans the campaign that is to
crush New France's pretensions south of the Great Lakes. Acadia, Lake
Champlain, the Ohio,--these are to be the theaters of the contest.

[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF WASHINGTON'S JOURNAL]

Braddock himself, accompanied by Washington, marches with twenty-two
hundred men ove