The World on Fire

Britain and France had been competing for North America for nearly a century before a young Virginia militia colonel fired the shots that set the world on fire.

Three earlier wars — King William's War, Queen Anne's War, and King George's War — had reshuffled colonial borders without resolving the fundamental question: who would control the interior of North America?

By 1750, the answer appeared to be France. The French had built an arc of forts stretching from Quebec through the Great Lakes, down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans — a 3,000-mile chain that, if completed, would confine British settlement to a narrow coastal strip east of the Appalachians.

The French had something the British lacked: genuine alliances with the powerful interior Native nations. The Algonquin, Huron, Ottawa, and dozens of other nations saw the French as trading partners and military allies; the British as land-hungry settlers who wanted their territory.

The crisis came in the Ohio Valley — modern western Pennsylvania. Both empires claimed it. Virginia speculators, including the Washington family, had invested in the Ohio Company hoping to sell land there. In 1753 the French began building forts to enforce their claim.

Virginia's royal governor sent a 21-year-old militia officer named George Washington to deliver a message to the French commander: get out. The French politely declined.

The following spring, Washington returned with 160 men and orders to defend the Ohio Valley by force. When his Mingo ally Tanacharison (the Half-King) reported a French patrol camped nearby, Washington led a dawn attack. In fifteen minutes, ten Frenchmen were dead, including the commander, Ensign Jumonville.

Tanacharison killed the wounded Jumonville with a tomahawk. The French said it was a massacre of a diplomatic party. The Seven Years' War had begun.