First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country

by Thomas E. Ricks

The skirmish was short and shocking. Soon ten Frenchmen lay dead or dying. One fled, while the surviving twenty-one surrendered. Among the dead was Joseph Coulon de Jumonville, the leader of the French party. “The Indians scalped the Dead,” Washington noted in his diary.43 Washington’s party suffered just one dead and two or three wounded. The fight lasted just fifteen minutes, yet marked the start of a conflict that would last almost a decade and flare around the world—the French and Indian War. The French would claim that Jumonville was on a diplomatic mission to tell the British to withdraw, but this seems doubtful given the large and armed nature of their party, and their aggressive behavior at Gist’s settlement.