Blood had been spilled between the rivals ere that. Washington was in command of the little force which had cut its way through the forest, and he did not understand that he had been sent into the West this time merely to bear a message. When, therefore, one day in May (28 May, 1754) he found a party of French lurking at his front in a thicketed glade, he did not hesitate to lead an attacking party of forty against them. The young commander of the French scouts was killed in the sharp encounter, and his thirty men were made prisoners. Men on both sides of the sea knew, when they heard that news, that war had begun. Young Washington had forced the hands of the statesmen in London and Paris, and all Europe presently took fire from the flame he had kindled. In July, Washington was obliged to retire. He had only three hundred and fifty men, all told, at the rudely intrenched camp which he had constructed in the open glade of “Great Meadows” as the best place to await reinforcements; and in July the French were upon him with a force of seven hundred. All day he fought (3 July, 1754), and in a drenching rain, the French firing from the edges of the woods, his own men in their shallow, flooded trenches in the open; but by night he knew he must give way. The French offered him an honorable capitulation, and the next day let him go untouched, men and arms, with such stores as he could carry. It was a bad beginning at winning the West from the French; and all the worse because it showed how weak the English were at such work. The danger was not Virginia’s alone; it touched all the English in America; but the colonies could not co-operate, and, when they acted at all, acted sluggishly, as if war would wait for both parties to get ready. The assemblies of Pennsylvania and New York declared very coldly that they did not see what right the English crown had to the valley of the Ohio. Maryland had been about to raise a force, but had not yet done so when the fatal day at Great Meadows came. Two “independent companies” in the King’s pay had been ordered from New York, and a like company from South Carolina; and North Carolina had sent forward three hundred and fifty men; but only the single company from South Carolina had reached Great Meadows, where Washington was, before the French were upon him. Dinwiddie and every other governor who heeded or wrote of the business told the ministers in England that they must act, and send the King’s own troops; and happily the ministers saw at last the importance of what should be won or lost in America. Troops were sent. For Europe it was the beginning of the Seven Years’ War (1755-1763), which was to see the great Frederick of Prussia prove his mastery in the field; which was to spread from Europe to Asia and to Africa; which was to wrest from the French for England both India and America. But for the colonists in America it was only “the French and Indian War.” Their own continent was the seat of their thoughts.