It was now time for a daring man to show himself. Such was the young commander at Great Meadows.
"That very moment," wrote Washington in his Journal, "I sent out forty men and ordered my ammunition to be put in a place of safety, fearing it to be a stratagem of the French to attack our camp; I left a guard to defend it, and with the rest of my men set out in a heavy rain, and in a night as dark as pitch."
Perhaps a war was never precipitated under stranger circumstances. Contrecœur, commanding at Fort Duquesne, was made aware by his Indian scouts of Washington's progress all the way from the Potomac. The day before Washington arrived at Great Meadows, Contrecœur ordered M. de Jumonville to leave Fort Duquesne with a detachment of thirty-four men, commanded by La Force, and go toward the advancing English. To the English (when he met them) he was to explain he had come to order them to retire. To the Indians he was to pretend he was "traveling about to see what is transacting in the King's Territories, and to take notice
