This was in the early fifties, and the fort was hardly transformed before
the rifles of George Washington's men were heard from the eastern barriers
disputing the claim of the French to the Ohio country. Jumonville, who was
slain among the rocks of the Laurel Mountains, in the Alleghanies (killed
in the opening skirmish of the final struggle), had a young brother, Neyon
de Villiers, a captain in Chevalier de Macarty's garrison at Fort
Chartres; and eastward he hastened, up the Ohio, to avenge his brother's
death. "M. de Wachenston" (as the name appears in French despatches) was
driven back, and so the "Old French War" in America began.
It was from this mid-continent fortress and its fertile environs that help
in arms and rations went to the support of that final struggle along the
mountains and lakes, even as far as La Salle's old Fort Niagara, where the
valiant Aubry, at the head of his Illinois expedition, fell covered with
wounds and many of his men were killed or taken prisoners. That was about
all that one in the interior of the valley heard of the battles of the
Seven Years' War out upon its edges.
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