ut the metal came out
of the furnace of experience finely tempered, because it was by nature
of the best and with but little dross to be purged away. In addition
to all this he acquired for the moment what would now be called a
European reputation. He was known in Paris as an assassin, and in
England, thanks to the bullet letter, as a "fanfaron" and brave
braggart. With these results he wended his way home much depressed in
spirits, but not in the least discouraged, and fonder of fighting than
ever.

Virginia, however, took a kinder view of the campaign than did her
defeated soldier. She appreciated the gallantry of the offer to fight
in the open and the general conduct of the troops, and her House of
Burgesses passed a vote of thanks to Washington and his officers, and
gave money to his men. In August he rejoined his regiment, only to
renew the vain struggle against incompetence and extravagance, and as
if this were not enough, his sense of honor was wounded and his temper
much irritated by the governor's playing false to the prisoners taken
in the Jumonville fight. While thus engaged, news came that the French
were off their guard at Fort Duquesne, and Dinwiddie was for having
the regiment of undisciplined troops march again into the wilderness.
Washington, however, had learned something, if not a great deal, and
he demonstrated the folly of such an attempt in a manner too clear to
be confuted.

Meantime the Burgesses came together, and more money being voted,
Dinwiddie hit on a notable plan for quieting dissensions between
regulars and provincials by dividing all the troops into independent
companies, with no officer higher than a captain. Washington, the
only officer who had seen fighting and led a regiment, resented quite
properly this senseless policy, and resigning his commission withdrew
to Mount Vernon to manage the estate and attend to his own affairs. He
was driven to this course still more strongly by the original cause of
Dinwiddie's arrangement. The English government had issued an order
that officers holding the king's commission should rank provincial
officers, and that provincial generals and field officers should have
no rank when a general or field officer holding a royal commission was
present. The degradation of being ranked by every whipper-snapper who
might hold a royal commission by virtue, perhaps, of being the bastard
son of some nobleman's cast-off mistress was more than the temper
of Georg