This Day in History: 1754-05-28
On this day in 1754, Lieutenant Colonel George Washington in the British army attacked a French Diplomat and started the French and Indian Wars.
Imperial pursuits by both France and Great Britain in North America created huge tensions between the two great powers of Europe.
At the age of 22 British Colonel George Washington was camped near Fort Duquesne with 40 colonial troops. Washington’s official report of his first combat states that his men, aided by Indian [native American] warriors surrounded 32 French troops and within 10 minutes they had killed 10 (including Joseph Coulon de Jumonville), injured 1 and took and took 21 prisoners. However, it was later claimed that the Native American warriors killed and scalped the French before Washington could intervene.
Other accounts state that his men ambushed a French diplomat; Joseph Coulon de Jumonville who it was claimed surrendered and was in disputed French territories before he and some of his men were killed.
The incident, which resulted in the death of 10 French soldiers and the French diplomat at the hands of the British, initiated the French and Indian War (1754-1763). The French and Indian War was initially fought in the colonies but on the 17th of May 1756 led to the much fiercer Seven Years War which was the European arm of the war.
On the 10th of February 1763, the Seven Years’ War and the French and Indian War officially ended with the signing of the ‘Paris Treaty’. The treaty was signed by Great Britain, France and Spain officially ending the global conflict. Britain had allied itself with Prussia (the German Kingdom including parts of Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Denmark, Belgium and the Czech Republic) against France and her Allies of Saxony, Austria, Russia and Sweden to protect Hanover (which was governed by a British Ruling Dynasty) from the French. By funding its Prussian allies against the French, Great Britain was victorious in both its colonel pursuits and in Europe. France was forced to give up many of its territories to the British as part of the Paris Treaty.
The death toll of the nine-year French and Indian War is said to be 5,000 (2,000 British and 3,000 French) while estimates of the death toll from the Seven Years War (1756-1763) are estimated to be between 870,000 and 1,400,000.
After leaving the British army George Washington would go on to defeat the British in the US War of Independence (1775 – 1783) and he would become the first President and ‘Father of the United States of America’.
