Thread by @Plato4Now, Failure fertilizes SuccessThis is “Fort Necessity,” an hour’s drive from Pittsburgh, in [...]

Failure fertilizes Success

This is “Fort Necessity,” an hour’s drive from Pittsburgh, in the middle of a beautiful field visited by few. Here is where the first world war began. Not the First World War, that is, but the Seven Years’ War (1756-63).

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Although it eventually involved the empires of Austria, Russia, and Spain, as well as other European principalities, it was fought in North America by France and England (who called it “the French and Indian War”).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Years%27_War

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Battles were fought not only in the Americas and Europe, but also in Asia and Africa, as these two empires competed for dominance everywhere they abutted.

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England defeated the French, expelling them from India as well as North America, where the destinies of both the USA and Canada were shaped.

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For the colonies that later became the USA, the Seven Years’ War set in motion the events that would spark their Revolution. To pay for its victory, England taxed its colonists so heavily that they declared independence two decades later.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_Act_1765

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It also led to the defeat of France outside Quebec (1759), winning New France for British settlement. These northern colonies (Upper and Lower Canada) would remain loyal to the Crown while Washington led the improbable revolt down south.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Canadas

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George Washington was not a good General on the field. Americans remember his surprising victories, but typically forget his more numerous and predictable defeats.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_career_of_George_Washington

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As the Revolutionary War made clear decades later, he could use of Fabian tactics (harassing an enemy and retreating to draw him deeper into a quagmire), though only when he was forced to do so.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_strategy

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Washington’s true strength as a General was the political element—keeping his army united, provisioned, and simply in the field. Sometimes in war, as in life, the laurels go not to the best but to the one who perseveres.

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In any case, here in southwestern Pennsylvania, when Washington was only 22, his weaknesses as a commander were evident: impulsive attack, poorly fortified defensive positions. And yet, were it not for these weaknesses then, he might never have succeeded later.

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England wished to challenge France in “the Ohio country.” This was not quite Ohio, the modern state, although it included much of it. Rather, it was the basin of the Ohio River.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Country

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The headwaters of the Ohio are in western Maryland, where the rivers do not flow east to the Atlantic, but instead west to the Mississippi. In other words, the European empires were vying for the heartland of North America.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Continental_Divide

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Colonel Washington had been sent with a small detachment of Virginians to protect the construction of a British fort near the beginning of the Ohio River at the confluence of Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers.

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Today this is Pittsburgh. At the time it was controlled by France’s Fort Duquesne.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Duquesne

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What concern did Virginians have in this hinterland? First of all, before the American Civil War, Virginia was a huge colony that included what is now called “West Virginia” (which the Union captured early and incorporated as a free state).

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Secondly, the British fort would protect the interests of an outfit whose name sounds strange to us nowadays: “The Ohio Trading Company of Virginia.” Trading fur pelts with the Natives for European goods (especially guns) was big business.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Company

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Indeed, at this time the Natives exercised decisive military influence. They were many tribes, with competing interests, but often the future of European empires depended on which side the Iroquois or Odawa or Mohawk would take in a battle.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Wars

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When Tanacharison (“Half King” of the Mingo) alerted Washington that a small group of French soldiers, equal in size to his own, was encamped nearby, Washington attacked, killing or capturing nearly all of them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanacharison

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By many accounts, including one signed by Washington himself, Tanacharison was permitted to assassinate the French commander, Jumonville.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jumonville_Glen

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But there were conflicting testimonies, and Washington claimed he signed the document based on a misunderstanding of the French.

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In any case, when Jumonville’s brother, Villiers, learned of his brother’s assassination, he sought vengeance and set out from Fort Duquesne with a larger force of French and Native men, about 600.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Coulon_de_Villiers

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In the meantime, Washington brought his force up to 400 with British reinforcements and vain efforts to win over Indian allies.

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When Villiers arrived on July 3rd, however, only 300 of Washington’s men were fit to fight. He had exhausted them with the building of a road. If completed, it would connect the headwaters of the Potomac with those of the Ohio.

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/01-01-02-0004-0002

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Founders Online: Expedition to the Ohio, 1754: Narrative

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/01-01-02-0004-0002

“Fort Necessity,” which he also had them build, may have been designed less to protect his men in the case of attack than to protect his supplies (especially his rum) from his own men. When used for the former, it proved worse than useless.

https://www.liquor.com/articles/george-washington-rum/

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Drunk History: The Surprising Spirit That Fueled the American Revolution

Ready for a dose of liquor-fueled history? Learn about the role that rum played in the American Revolution and the rise of our first president, today at Liquor.com.

https://www.liquor.com/articles/george-washington-rum/

My photo at the start of this thread is of the archaeological reconstruction on site. It’s little more than a fence encircling a small hut. Here’s another, not by me this time.

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Surrounded by trees that were closer in 1754, it reminds me of Dien Bien Phu, where the French, exactly 200 years later, would likewise be defeated by natives helped by a colonial rival. (This should have warned the successors to Washington.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dien_Bien_Phu

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The whole affair was a tactical blunder not unusual in Washington’s military career. His fort was indefensible, much like the eponymous fort he failed—and never should have tried—to defend from the British two decades later.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Washington

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There weren’t enough supplies to endure even a short siege. Pouring rain rendered British muskets useless. The French and Indians sniped and shot the British all day from the cover of dry woods.

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By midnight, Villiers offered terms of conditional surrender, only because false rumors of thousands of British reinforcements warped his judgment. Washington was allowed to leave the next morning with what little remained of his men and his honor.

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The empires of France and England were now in a de facto war, although it wouldn’t be declared for another two years. England won, largely thanks to the Natives switching sides. Ironically, by this exercise of their power they lost it.

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The Natives’ only hope was to keep the European empires fighting each other. By helping make England dominant in North America, they empowered one empire to conquer them in turn.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_removal

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The British seduced them with promises to not violate their territories west of the Alleghenies, but it was obvious from the beginning that this would never be kept. Pontiac led a confederation of tribes in a doomed war against the victors.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac%27s_War

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Washington exhausted his men building that road in June, 1754 because that is why he had come in the first place: to open and secure the “West” for commerce.

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That road catalyzed the first world war, and when the war was over the British colonists—soon to be “Patriots,” and later “Americans”—resumed building it.

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The “National Road,” as they called it, was the first federal highway, allowing settlers to pour over the Alleghenies and into the Ohio country for two generations.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Road

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By the mid-19th century the railroad had made the National Road obsolete. It would return again as Highway 40, with the invention of the automobile, but the Natives never would. You drive it up and over the mountains to reach Fort Necessity.

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Washington sparked a world war, and lost its first battle ignominiously. But had he not done so, he might never have become General of the Continental Army, and President of the United States.

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For without that world war, the mother country would not have taxed its American colonies so heavily and they might never have revolted.

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Had the Half-King of the Mingo not informed Washington of Jumonville’s little camp, had Washington not rashly ambushed it and then lost predictably at Fort Necessity, he might have remained obscure.

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Had Colonel Washington succeeded in 1754, in sum, we might remember him, if at all, for helping the Ohio Company of Virginia negotiate a deal with the French, winning a great fortune trading in pelts and guns.

His failure made possible his glory.

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