“Contrary to most tellings of this story, Washington and his troops did the best that circumstances permitted: They defied the odds and found a way to survive a no-win situation.”
By William Lidwell
ON THE morning of July 4, 1754, George Washington, then a 22-year-old lieutenant colonel in the Virginia Regiment, marched his battle-beaten troops out of a makeshift defensive structure deep in the Pennsylvania wilderness called Fort Necessity, having just accepted terms of surrender from the French commander, Captain Louis de Villiers.
Completely surrounded by French and Indian forces, Washington had little choice but to accept the unexpected offer of terms from de Villiers. With supplies running low, men who had not eaten for a week, a third of his force sick or wounded, and torrential rains impairing their defenses, prospects for any positive outcome looked grim. And to make matters worse, two of his men had deserted to the French days earlier, revealing to the enemy the dire condition Washington faced, taking even the most desperate option—bluffing to buy time—off the table.
After some ceremonial negotiation of terms, Washington signed the capitulation formally surrendering the fort. The document, which was written in French, also contained a confession for the assassination of Ensign Joseph de Jumonville, de Villiers’ younger half-brother, who had been captured with a party of French scouts in a May 28 skirmish and was in fact tomahawked by a Seneca chief known as the Tanacharison or the Half King. By adding his signature to the page, the young Washington had unwittingly confessed to the murder. To complete their victory, the French then burned Fort Necessity to the ground.
The fallout from the debacle was predictable. The British attributed the loss of the frontier outpost to Washington’s incompetence. The French used the young officer’s captured journal and unknowing confession as propaganda tools. And most of the Indians in the region, seeing Washington’s defeat as a sign of British weakness, sided with the French. Historians haven’t been much kinder.
For example, Fred Anderson writes, “The situation of the fort and its entrenchments on the valley floor, overlooked by hills, made the position dangerously vulnerable to enfilading fire. So poorly sited and so dubiously constructed was this fort that only an amateur or a fool would have thought it defensible.”1
Retired general and military historian Dave Palmer adds, “… Washington withdrew to what appeared, to his inexperienced eye, to be more defensible terrain. In a large, low clearing dominated by tree-covered higher ground, he erected a hasty fortification … as he soon learned in blood and mortification, he had erected a death trap.”2
History writer Stephen Brumwell describes young Washington as, “Woefully inexperienced, but keen to win a name for himself, in 1754 he had displayed a rashness that looked set to cost him his life and reputation when he stood and fought against the odds at Fort Necessity.”3
Author Alan Axelrod opines, “Even a commander only marginally more experienced than Washington would have avoided placing a camp or a fort adjacent to high ground he did not control. Yielding the high ground to a potential attacker is by any measure a fatally flawed tactic.”4
Are these assessments fair? Is the fall of Fort Necessity best explained by Washington’s youth and inexperience, or are such criticisms born of confirmation bias regarding his age, hindsight bias resulting from the accumulation of facts and evidence since that time, and the narrative appeal of telling the story of a young, flawed hero prior to his ascent?
The quality of decision-making can only be assessed in consideration of the options available at the time, not in consideration of theoretically preferable but unavailable options. It is by this standard that Washington’s choices and actions at and around Fort Necessity should be evaluated, independent of stereotypical shortcomings associated with age and inexperience.
To this end, there are three questions worthy of examination: (1) Was making a stand at the Great Meadows the best of available options?, (2) Was the location of Fort Necessity in the Great Meadows the best of available locations?, and (3) Was the design of Fort Necessity the best possible option given the constraints and state of knowledge at that time?
Let’s explore these points one by one.
Was making a stand at the Great Meadows the best of available options?
Near the end of June, 1754, Washington learned that a large French and Indian force had left Fort Duquesne (present-day Pittsburgh) to exact revenge for his recent attack at Jumonville Glen. At the time, the lieutenant colonel was on a road-building expedition and ill-prepared to take on an enemy column. Washington’s supplies were low and his 400 men were hungry and weak from the labouring, most having gone days without food. Worse, deserters had given the French information about the diminished condition of the British force. Washington faced an impossible situation. If he attempted a retreat, he risked being overrun by an enemy nearly twice his number and “Cut to pieces by so prodigious a Number of their Indians in our Retreat.” Making a stand was equally fraught. His options for ground upon which to mount a defense were effectively limited to the nearby Gist’s settlement, Wills Creek, or the Great Meadows.
Washington’s first choice was to withdraw to Wills Creek, but the distance was far, the terrain difficult, and the risk of being overrun en route was high. Instead, he thought it prudent to make his stand at Gist’s settlement, where he had already begun fortifications. But after convening a council of war to evaluate the overall situation and make plans, many of his officers lobbied for a return to the Great Meadows. It was reasoned that the “French could not so Easily Support themselves at the Meadow as at Gists by the reason of distance to Carry the Stores & provisions & their want of horses to do it.”
If the only reasonable chance at survival was to make a stand, they could at least pick the battlefield that would maximize their odds. More than once in military history a lesser force had thwarted a larger one by holding more advantageous terrain.
After weighing their options, the council “Unanimously Resolved that it was Absolutely necessary to Return to our Fort at the meadows & Wait there until Supply’d with a Stock of provisions Sufficient to serve us for some months.”5
Washington and his men made the 13-mile trek back to the Great Meadows on July 1 and began enhancing the entrenchments.
Upon sight of Washington’s diminutive fortifications, the Half King, the Seneca leader who had killed the French Ensign Jumonville, advised the British colonel to keep moving east. Shortly thereafter, he and his warriors disappeared into the forest never to return.6
De Villiers’s force arrived at Gist’s settlement on July 2 and saw the incomplete and abandoned fortifications. It became clear that Washington and his men had withdrawn farther out, which gave De Villiers pause: He was beyond the operational support of Fort Duquesne, uncertain about the nature of the force he might encounter, and unclear on the location of British reinforcements. Given the risk of ambush, he considered returning to Fort Duquesne. However, he changed his mind when a deserter arrived from Fort Necessity revealing Washington’s location and the poor condition of his command. With this information, De Villiers opted to march on.
Washington’s decision to fortify at the Great Meadows was not rash or undertaken without consideration of other options. The young commander demonstrated a willingness to listen to the contrary advice of his officers, including a rather prickly captain from the South Carolina Regiment named James Mackay, and ultimately changed his mind. Given the situation, the option to make a stand at the Great Meadows was carefully weighed by people who knew the landscape well, and absent an Indian spy or deserter, would have likely avoided engagement with the enemy altogether.7 As a place to dig in and fortify, the Great Meadows was not an ideal option, but it was the least bad option available.
Was the location of Fort Necessity in the Great Meadows the best of available locations?
Fort Necessity was built in the widest part of a meadow between two streams, which provided ample access to drinking water and grazing land for horses and livestock. Its position between the hills of the Great Meadows made the fort look small and vulnerable—which is why the Half King dismissed Washington as “a good natured man but [who] had no experience” and that “he made no fortifications at all, but that little thing upon the meadow.”
The fort’s position was surrounded by forested hills on three sides—the object of much of the modern criticism—but most were beyond effective musket range. A standard smooth-bore musket of the period was lethal at 300 yards, but accurate to a man-sized target at about 50 to 60 yards. It would have been possible to hit the fort from the elevated tree lines, but the range would make any fusillade ineffective.
Had the French possessed cannon or mortars, a barrage from the surrounding high positions would have been devastating, but the French did not have the means nor the time to move heavy guns from Fort Duquesne to Fort Necessity. Therefore, the high ground surrounding Necessity was of little practical consequence.8
While Washington’s troops did clear brush to create unobstructed fields of fire, they did not cut back the more proximal tree lines, another common point of criticism. There were likely some trees within 60 yards of Fort Necessity, but the best archaeological evidence suggests that these were probably old-growth oaks, eight to 10 feet in diameter. Such trees would have been hard to cut down and even harder to cut up or move. And while a standing oak of such dimensions could conceal two to three enemy soldiers, an uncleared fallen oak of this type would provide cover for many more. The decision to clear the brush but leave the trees where they stood was intentional and reasonable.9
The best evidence for the favorable placement of the fort comes from both the actions and words of De Villiers himself, a veteran of warfare in North America.
De Villiers was there for revenge, and this sentiment was fully supported by his superiors who ordered him to “avenge ourselves and chastise them for having violated the most sacred laws of civilized nations.”10 Suffice it to say that if De Villiers could have taken the fort by force, he would have. Why didn’t he? In his words, the fort was “advantageously situated.”
After an initial failed frontal attack that resulted in the death of several of the French-allied Indians, De Villiers and his troops were reduced to surrounding the fort and sniping from the tree lines. It was, by outward appearances, something of a stalemate.
After nearly nine hours of exchanging fire, De Villiers’ troops were running out of ammunition, and his Indian allies were threatening to leave the following morning for fear of arriving British reinforcements. Unable to take the fort by force and unable to hold their position much longer, they called out to Washington: “Voulez-vous parler?”
Initially, Washington suspected deception and refused. But the French were persistent, and parley the two commanders eventually did. The inauspicious fort had done its job: protected its occupants well enough to force an unlikely conversation. The terms of surrender were signed four hours later. Washington and most of his troops lived to fight another day.
Was the design of Fort Necessity the best possible one given the constraints and state of knowledge at that time?
Forts built in the wilderness could never match the scale and grandeur of those in Europe. They were too remote and too difficult to supply. Therefore, frontier fortifications were built just to the scale needed, with the supplies available, and often under the urgency of imminent attack. Despite these situational differences, the basic design of various kinds of structures for different defensive situations was universal and well-known, and Washington (or one of his men) was clearly familiar with them.
While no military engineer, the 22-year-old Washington was a surveyor by training, and so had proficiency with landscape assessment, tools of measurement, and basic architectural layout. He is known to have visited the heavily fortified Barbados with his older half-brother Lawrence in 1751 and had commented at length about the island’s defenses. He had also likely read Humphrey Bland’s, Treatise of Military Discipline, the bible of the British Army. At least one of Washington’s officers had Bland’s book with him on the 1754 campaign.11
Washington knew that he needed a fortification that could stand for several weeks, enabling him to await resupply and reinforcements. He chose to create a “pallisado fort,” which he believed could withstand “the attack of 500 men.”12
The pallisado is a storehouse surrounded by a wooden palisade or circular redoubt. A redoubt is an enclosed fortification designed to defend against attacks from any direction. Circular redoubts, such as Fort Necessity, were generally favored by military engineers, especially when a force was in a defensive posture and numerically outnumbered. A circle can enclose the maximum amount of area with the minimum amount of perimeter, which saves work, time and materials. The round configuration also allows for a 360-degree field of vision, eliminating blind spots and covering all angles of fire.13
In terms of dimensions, the stockade of Fort Necessity had a diameter of 53 feet and contained a 14-square-foot storehouse in its middle. This small diameter confirms that the stockade was not itself intended to be a defensive structure from which soldiers consolidated and fired but rather a cover for supplies and wounded. The storehouse was used to secure provisions and ammunition.
The stockade was constructed of split logs versus whole logs, presumably to maximize the use of wood and save time. Each log was sharpened to a point and seeded about two feet in the ground for a standing height of seven feet. The gaps between the logs are thought to have been covered with filler poles, placed strategically in the interior, standing about four feet tall. These shielded crouching men from fire and provided a rest for firing muskets. Remaining gaps were filled with mud, tree bark, and animal skins, except for selected gaps used for sighting and firing.14
The fort was then surrounded by earthworks, most likely made of dug earth and stacked logs, from which most of the soldiers would fight. These walls were configured in an opposing arrowhead formation, creating four lines about four feet high, with a two-foot ditch on its interior to give the soldiers standing behind it about six feet of cover. The heavy rains on the day of action would fill these ditches making them unpleasant places to defend—the men were standing and crouching in two feet of water and mud—but such is a defect inherent to all trench designs.
The longest sections of these walls faced the most proximal tree lines where Washington believed the French would attack and where he placed his most lethal weapons, two swivel guns capable of firing solid or grapeshot from 100 to 200 yards. A well-known formula for earthworks construction at the time was about two feet of space on the line per soldier, which was considered the minimum required to maneuver and fire their muskets. It was customary for British soldiers in the 18th century to fire in two ranks, one standing behind the other, meaning earthworks frontage of two feet for every two soldiers. Whether or not they could practically fire in two ranks given the rough field conditions in which they were fighting, the algorithm likely would have been applied just the same. There were 400 hundred soldiers at Fort Necessity, which by this formula would require 400 feet of earthworks. Archeological excavations indicate earthworks that are almost exactly 400 feet in length.15
The type of structure that was built given the circumstances, the short time in which it was constructed, its dimensions and layout, its parsimonious use of materials, and precise alignment to key fortification guidelines at the time all suggest that Fort Necessity was not created by some engineering naïf, but rather a qualified military engineer who applied by-the-book principles of geometry, fortification design, and best building practices of the period.
Conclusion
It is appealing to tell the romantic story of a young commander who stumbles, learns from adversity and failure, and then grows up to lead a revolution and help found the world’s greatest republic. This narrative humanizes Washington, makes him mortal, and swims against the tide of great men in history. But the evidence suggests otherwise: in the hot summer days leading up to the Battle of Fort Necessity in the Great Meadows of Pennsylvania, a 22-year-old kid demonstrated uncanny leadership, sound judgment, competent engineering, and a willingness to make hard decisions that belied his age and experience. Often in battle, as in life, one is confronted with devil’s choices: decision-making situations in which all available options are bad. In such situations, one can become mired in despair, or one can embrace the least bad option and get to work. It takes no courage or leadership to embrace a good option. Anyone can do this. But to embrace a bad option, to play a bad hand well—this is the crucible of leadership. By this measure and contrary to most tellings of this story, Washington and his troops did the best that circumstances permitted: They defied the odds and found a way to survive a no-win situation. Fort Necessity should not be remembered as a loss or a learning ground but as a foreshadowing of the greatness to come.
William Lidwell is co-author of Universal Principles of Design and the upcoming Encyclopaedia Cosmologica, among other interdisciplinary works. His current research interest is design archeology, which seeks to understand historical contexts and events by reverse-engineering the design and fabrication methods of contemporaneous artifacts.
Notes
1 Dave R. Palmer, George Washington and Benedict Arnold: A Tale of Two Patriots (Washington D.C.: Regenery Publishing, 2006).
2 Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 (New York: Vintage Books, 2000).
3 Stephen Brumwell, George Washington: Gentleman Warrior (London: Quercus Publishing, 2012).
4 Alan Axelrod, A Blooding at Great Meadows: Young George Washington and the Battle That Shaped the Man (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2007).
5 Quotes from this section are drawn from “Minutes of a Council of War, 28 June 1754,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-01-02-0075. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 1, 7 July 1748 – 14 August 1755, ed. W. W. Abbot. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983, pp. 155–157.]
6 Dixon, David. “A High Wind Rising: George Washington, Fort Necessity, and the Ohio Country Indians.” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, Vol. 74, No. 3, 2007, 316.
7 Alberts, Robert C. A Charming Field for an Encounter: The Story of George Washington’s Fort Necessity (Washington D.C.: National Park Service, 1975), 30.
8 Christian E. Fearer, “Historians missed the mark in assessing Washington’s location of Ft. Necessity,” Best Defense: FP. Dec 9, 2016.
9 Josh Freeman, “Fortification in the Wilderness: The Defenses of Fort Necessity,” https://www.nps.gov/fone/learn/historyculture/fortification-in-the-wilderness-the-defenses-of-fort-necessity.htm.
10 Hymel, Kevin M. “Fort Necessity: George Washington’s First Defeat.” Warfare History Network. 1/23/2016. https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2016/01/23/fort-necessity-george-washingtons-first-defeat/. While most accounts suggest that the Half King abandoned Washington at Fort Necessity, David Dixon argues that it was likely the Ohio Indians that fed De Villiers the false intelligence that British reinforcements were nearing Fort Necessity, promoting the offer of parley. He writes, “The one question that remains after 250 years—begging to be answered—who provided Villiers with the false intelligence that ‘it was repeated continually that drumbeats or cannon fire were heard in the distance.’ The logical answer—Ohio Country Indians who had attached themselves to the French command. Only these warriors would have been ranging throughout the forest during the battle. The Ohio Indians were astute enough to realize that Washington represented the only countervailing force to French presence in their country.”
11 Freeman, https://www.nps.gov/fone/learn/historyculture/fortification-in-the-wilderness-the-defenses-of-fort-necessity.htm.
12 The Papers of George Washington, 1748-August 1755, ed. By W.W. Abbott, Colonial Series, vol. I, Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 289. Washington to John Augustine Washington, May 28, 1755.
13 Freeman, https://www.nps.gov/fone/learn/historyculture/fortification-in-the-wilderness-the-defenses-of-fort-necessity.htm.
14 J.C. Harrington, New Light on Washington’s Fort Necessity: A Report on the Archeological Explorations at Fort Necessity National Battlefield Site, Richmond: The Eastern National Park and Monument Association, 1977.
15 Freeman, https://www.nps.gov/fone/learn/historyculture/fortification-in-the-wilderness-the-defenses-of-fort-necessity.htm.
Bibliography
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