With men
abundant and willing, there were no means to put them into the field,
and no commander whom they would all obey.
From the brick house at Williamsburg pompously called the Governor's
Palace, Dinwiddie despatched letters, orders, couriers, to hasten the
tardy reinforcements of North Carolina and New York, and push on the raw
soldiers of the Old Dominion, who now numbered three hundred men. They
were called the Virginia regiment; and Joshua Fry, an English gentleman,
bred at Oxford, was made their colonel, with Washington as next in
command. Fry was at Alexandria with half the so-called regiment, trying
to get it into marching order; Washington, with the other half, had
pushed forward to the Ohio Company's storehouse at Wills Creek, which
was to form a base of operations. His men were poor whites, brave, but
hard to discipline; without tents, ill armed, and ragged as Falstaff's
recruits. Besides these, a band of backwoodsmen under Captain Trent had
crossed the mountains in February to build a fort at the forks of the
Ohio, where Pittsburg now stands,--a spot which Washington had examined
when on his way to Fort Le Boeuf, and which he had reported as the best
for the purpose. The hope was that Trent would fortify himself before
the arrival of the French, and that Washington and Fry would join him in
time to secure the position. Trent had begun the fort; but for some
unexplained reason had gone back to Wills Creek leaving Ensign Ward with
forty men at work upon it.
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