But here’s what I didn’t tell you about this embarrassing battle and the hopelessly self-deluded man responsible for it. The year was 1754. The place was Great Meadows, located in present-day Pennsylvania. And the colonel was none other than George Washington. The events at Fort Necessity soon snowballed into the Seven Years’ War, and as English author Horace Walpole writes, “The volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America [would] set the world on fire.” It would also be the first—and last—time that Washington would ever surrender to his enemy.
