Joseph Coulon de Jumonville
Jumonville was born in the seigneury of Verchères, New France (now part of Quebec), the son of Nicolas-Antoine Coulon de Villiers, a French military officer.
He served in the army during several conflicts with native groups in the western Great Lakes region where he was stationed with his father and several of his brothers.
In June 1754, Jumonville was posted to Fort Duquesne with his older half-brother, Louis Coulon de Villiers.
Tanacharison, known as the Half King and the leader of a band of new[c] Iroquoian peoples allied to the British, the Mingos, believed he was planning an ambush.
Washington treated Jumonville as a prisoner of war and extended him the customary courtesies due to a captured military officer.
He was also a representative of the Iroquois Confederacy, which stood to lose its authority over other Indian peoples in the Ohio River Valley if the French were able to assert their control.
"[5] When word reached Fort Duquesne about the incident, Jumonville's half brother, Captain Coulon de Villiers, vowed revenge.
In the surrender document, written in French, Coulon de Villiers inserted a clause describing Jumonville's death as an "assassination".
As noted above, within a month of Jumonville's death, his younger brother, Captain Coulon de Villiers, marched on Fort Necessity on 3 July and forced Washington to surrender.
Regardless, Fowler has translated the terms Van Braam eventually agreed to after consulting Washington: Capitulations granted by Mons.
As our intentions have never been to trouble the peace and good harmony which reigns between the two friendly princes, but only to revenge the assassination [emphasis added] which has been done on one of our officers, bearer of a summons, upon his party, as also to hinder any establishment on the lands of the dominions of the King, my master, upon these considerations, we are willing to grant protection or favour, to all the English that are in the said fort, upon the conditions hereafter mentioned.
[14] The terms agreed to at Fort Necessity provided a nascent notion of Jumonville as an innocent Frenchman murdered by Washington and his men.
Early research by Marcel Trudel and Donald Kent in the 1950s has demonstrated how the notion of Jumonville's killing being a murder gained currency in France, with Bishop de Pontbriand in a pastoral letter (1756) declaring: You will all remember that when we captured Fort Necessity so gloriously, hostages were given to us, as well as a promise to return the prisoners taken in the action when Monsieur de Jumonville was killed contrary to international law and by a kind of assassination.
