The irascible Governor,
however, proceeded with such men and means as he could obtain.
And now in the summer of 1754 came the "overt act" which
precipitated the inevitable war. The key to the valley of the
Ohio was the tongue of land at the Forks, where the Allegheny and
the Monongahela join their waters in the Beautiful River. This
site--today Pittsburgh--if occupied and held by either nation
would give that nation the command of the Ohio. Occupied it was
for a brief hour by a small party of Virginians, under Captain
William Trent; but no sooner had they erected on the spot a crude
fort than the French descended upon them. What happened then all
the world knows: how the French built on the captured site their
great Fort Duquesne; how George Washington with an armed force,
sent by Dinwiddie to recapture the place, encountered French and
Indians at Great Meadows and built Fort Necessity, which he was
compelled to surrender; how in the next year (1755) General
Braddock arrived from across the sea and set out to take Fort
Duquesne, only to meet on the way the disaster called "Braddock's
Defeat"; and how, before another year had passed, the Seven
Years' War was raging in Europe, and England was allied with the
enemies of France.
>From the midst of the debacle of Braddock's defeat rises the
figure of the young Washington.
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