Fort Duquesne, << doo KAYN, >> was built by the French in 1754 at the headwaters of the Ohio River near what is now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. French forces had driven Virginian fur traders from this site. The French named the fort after the Marquis Michel-Ange Duquesne, governor general of Canada. The Battle of the Great Meadows, in which Lieutenant Colonel George Washington and a band of Virginia militia defeated a small band of French troops, took place near the fort in 1754. This battle marked the beginning of the French and Indian War.
In 1755, the French ambushed and defeated British and Colonial American troops under General Edward Braddock near Fort Duquesne. Three years later, the French burned the fort and fled northward when theylearned that a superior British force under General John Forbes was approaching.
