The Templar Meridians: The Secret Mapping of the New World by William F. Mann

Author:William F. Mann [Mann, William F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

Hearing of new French forts on the upper Allegheny River, Dinwiddie sent out a young Virginia officer, George Washington, to deliver a letter demanding that the French leave the region. Not surprisingly, the mission was a failure, but while passing through the region where the Allegheny and the Monongahela Rivers form the Ohio River, Washington noted that the point of land at the junction of the three waterways was an excellent spot for a fort. In response to Washington’s suggestion, in 1754 the British started to build what would be known as Fort Prince George at this strategic location, only to be forced out by French troops.²⁸

The French completed the fortification and renamed it Fort Duquesne. Washington, meanwhile, had been sent out with a contingent of troops to help establish British control in the west. When he heard of the surrender of Fort Prince George, he set up camp in an area known as Great Meadows, southeast of Fort Duquesne, and, after receiving a report that a nearby French contingent intended to attack his men, launched a preemptive strike against the French camp. This was the first engagement of the yet undeclared French and Indian War. Though Washington won the skirmish, he was soon defeated by a superior force sent from the fort, which left the French in command of the entire region west of the Allegheny Mountains.

The next year, 1755, was even more disastrous for the British in that Major General Edward Braddock was sent to America as commander in chief of the British forces here. Ignoring the warnings of the seasoned Washington, he quickly set in motion plans to capture Fort Duquesne, leading his troops west from Virginia in June. Meeting the French ten miles east of Fort Duquesne, the British were defeated, incurring heavy losses including Braddock himself, who died four days after the battle. Once again the French maintained their grip on the Ohio Valley. In the north, the British had better luck: They won a battle on Lake George and established two forts just south of the French fortification of Fort Frederick at Crown Point on Lake Champlain—Fort Edward on the Hudson River and Fort William Henry at the southern end of Lake George.

Amid this fighting—perhaps because of the bitter defeat of the British at Fort Duquesne—the British attitude toward the French Acadians, who for more than a century had peacefully inhabited the area now encompassing Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, changed dramatically. The Acadians were largely farmers in this “heartland” and shared the region with the Mi’kmaqs, but on July 28, 1755, they received orders that all Acadian men, women, and children were to be deported due to their refusal to sign an oath of allegiance to the king of England. The result was that thousands of Acadians were forced to move to American colonies along the middle of the coast or south to the Carolinas and Louisiana, with many perishing aboard the crowded ships before they ever saw their new homeland (fig.

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