The unavoidable collision finally came. The Pennsylvania and Virginia traders who had established posts in this country saw the valuable fur trade slipping away from them. The suave French priests and traders had far better success in winning the allegiance of the Indians than the brusk English and Scotch and Irish who attempted to open friendly relations with them. The lands about the Allegheny and Ohio rivers, for purposes of settlement, were the best in the world, and land speculators had been casting longing eyes over their picturesque areas for years. When England made huge grants of the lands, notably to the Ohio Company, and an effort was made for their occupancy, the French, in the spring of 1753, took armed possession and established a line of wooden forts. They built Presquile, where the city of Erie now stands; Fort LeBoef was on French Creek on the present site of Waterford, and a third was at the junction of French Creek with the Allegheny River, which they called Fort Venango, after the old Indian village alongside of which it was built. At this place the city of Franklin has since sprung up. They gave no heed to the message brought by young George Washington, who came by direction of the Governor of Virginia, to warn them to leave the country. Instead, in the following April, they sent Captain de Contrecœur, at the head of a force of five hundred Canadians, to the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, and drove out Ensign Ward who was already at work on a fort. Here they built a fort of their own which they called Fort Duquesne as a mark of respect for their governor-general, the Marquis Duquesne de Menneville.
Both Pennsylvania and Virginia claimed this land as being within their borders; but Pennsylvania took no active steps for its recovery. In Virginia, the home of the Ohio Company, however, the feeling at what was termed "French aggression" was intense. But the armed force which was raised there and sent against the French, and of which George Washington was the colonel in command, was compelled to surrender at Fort Necessity; and in the whole Mississippi valley, no flag floated save the fleur de lis of France. Soon potent influences were at work in England, and in January, 1755, General Edward Braddock was sent over to win back that which had been lost. Robert Walpole has called Braddock "desperate in fortune, brutal in his behavior, obstinate in his sentiments, yet intrepid and capable." It was the defects in his character which were largely responsible for the overwhelming disaster that befel him at
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