The French commandant at Fort Duquesne, who had nothing whatever to fear from the exhausted and half-famished little band which was approaching him, decided to send a friendly party to meet Colonel Washington, and to advise his return, assuring him that he could not be permitted, without the consent of the French government, to rear a fortress upon territory which France had long considered as exclusively her own. A civilian, M. Jumonville, was sent on this peaceful mission. He took with him, as an escort through the wilderness, but thirty-four men. This renders it certain that he had no hostile designs, for he sent not one to ten of the soldiers composing the regiment of Washington. But Washington, young, inexperienced, and in a position of great responsibility, was agitated by indescribable embarrassment. It was a dark and stormy night. Jumonville, with his feeble escort, dreaming of no danger, for France and England were at peace, and he was on a friendly mission, had reared their frail shelter camps, and were quietly sleeping around the fires. Some Indians who had been sent forward as scouts, hurried back to Washington with the information that the advance-guard of the French army was encamped at the distance of but a few miles before him. The sagacious Indian scouts very accurately described their number and their position. They were in a sheltered glen, on the banks of the Monongahela, which was quite shut in by rocks. An invisible foe could easily creep up in the darkness and the storm, and, aided by the camp fires, could take deliberate aim, and, by one volley, kill or disable almost every one of the unsuspecting and sleeping foe. Washington, who had no doubt that this party was advancing to attack him by surprise, unfortunately, unjustly, but not with dishonorable intent, adopted a resolve which introduced a war and ushered in woes over which angels might weep. It is altogether probable that, without this untoward event, France and England would have drifted into a war for the possession of this continent. But the candid mind must admit that the responsibility of opening these dreadful vials of woe, rests with the English and not the French.[27] Washington, who had commenced intrenching himself at a place called Great Meadows, and which he described as a “charming field for an encounter,” took a strong detachment of his troops, and, leading them in person was, in an hour, on the march. The darkness was as that of Egypt. The rain fell in torrents, and the tree tops of the gigantic forest swayed to and fro in the howling gale. Savage warriors, whose eyesight seemed as keen by night as by day, led the party. Quite a band of friendly Indians joined in the enterprise, so congenial to their modes of warfare.