Washington had sent a letter to Governor Dinwiddie, commending the prisoners to “the respect and favor due to their character and personal merit.” But the British Governor threw them into close confinement, and treated them with great cruelty. He also, infamously regardless of the terms of capitulation, refused to surrender them. One of the officers, La Force, attempted to escape. He was recaptured, secured with double irons, and chained to the floor of his dungeon. Washington felt deeply mortified by this obtuseness of the governor on a point of military punctilio and honorable faith; but his remonstrances were unavailing.[32] The next morning, Washington and his dejected troops commenced their forlorn march back through the wilderness. Encumbered with the wounded, who were carried on litters, but three miles were made that day. The next day they resumed their melancholy march, and, by slow stages, returned to their homes.[33] On the whole, the character of Washington did not suffer permanently from this occurrence. His extreme youth, and the untried nature of the perplexities in which he was involved, and the fact that he _supposed_ that Jumonville was approaching to attack him by surprise, disarmed the virulence of censure with all candid men. Indeed, his countrymen, somewhat oblivious of the extraordinary magnanimity of M. De Villiers, were disposed to applaud him for the military genius he had displayed in rescuing his little army from such imminent peril, and in conducting the troops back so safely to Virginia. The numbers engaged in the action at Fort Necessity, and the number killed and wounded, on the two sides, can never be known. Of the Virginia regiment alone, twelve were killed and forty-three wounded. The rank and file of every army almost necessarily includes many of the most wild and depraved of men. The adventurers who crowd to the frontiers of any country, and especially those whose tastes have led them to abandon the more cultivated regions of civilization, and to plunge into the solitudes of the wilderness, have generally been those who have wished to escape from the dominion of laws and from the restraints of religion. In the little band enlisted under the banner of Washington there were many unprincipled and profane men. His ear was constantly pained by that vulgar cursing and swearing, which was exceedingly repugnant to his refined tastes, and to his Christian principles. He could not forget that, amid the thunderings and lightnings of Sinai, the law had been proclaimed: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.”