Jacobus van Braam (b. Bergen op Zoom, in the Dutch Republic, 1 April 1729,[1] d. 1 August 1792 Charleville, France)[2] was a sword master and mercenary who trained the 19-year-old George Washington in 1751 or shortly thereafter.
According to the 1855 biography of Washington by Washington Irving: Another of Lawrence [Washington]'s campaigning comrades was Jacob Van Braam, a Dutchman by birth; a soldier of fortune of the Dalgetty order;[5] who had been in the British Army, but was now out of service, and, professing to be a complete master of fence, recruited his slender purse in this time of military excitement, by giving the Virginian youth lessons in the sword exercise.Under the instructions of [Lawrence and Van Braam] Mount Vernon, from being a quiet rural retreat, where Washington, three years previously, had indited love ditties to his "lowland beauty," was suddenly transformed into a school of arms, as he practised the manual exercise with Adjutant Muse, or took lessons on the broadsword from Van Braam.Curiously other biographers (notably, John Marshall) mention Van Braam only as "an interpreter" brought along on the preliminary diplomatic expeditions leading up to the culmination of his earlier actions against the French, and not as a longtime associate and instructor who campaigned with his brother and schooled George Washington in the art of the sword and other military matters.
The voluminous controversy, which arose in the Virginia colonial legislature over Van Braam's asserted mistranslation, could hardly have arisen in New York, where the Dutch language was generally spoken, and the Netherlanders' association of ideas with the use of the word "assassin," which was not then in the Dutch language, but common in French and English, was better understood.
[3] The ordinary meaning of this word "assassin," as used in military parlance at this time, was not that of a dastardly or prowling murderer, but rather that of a soldier who attacks suddenly without warning; and this seems to have been the method of the impetuous, young George Washington, in July 1754, when he rushed upon the French party, during which Jumonville was killed.
Dalgetty is regarded as one of Scott's finest comic characters, however he dominates so much of the story that the main plot is not really developed in detail.