thumb|right|Miniature of Fort Prince George with French troops approaching. Ensign Edward Ward (in red) can be seen talking to Captain Mercier, with an interpreter and two drummers. [[Diorama in the Fort Pitt Museum, Pittsburgh.|300px]]Fort Prince George (sometimes referred to as Trent's Fort) was an incomplete fort on what is now the site of Pittsburgh, at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. The plan to occupy the strategic forks was formed by Virginia Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie, on the advice of Major George Washington, whom Dinwiddie had sent on a mission to warn French commanders they were on English territory in late 1753, and who had made a military assessment and a map of the site. The fort was still under construction when it was discovered by the French, who sent troops to capture it. The French then constructed Fort Duquesne on the site.right|thumb|George Washington's 1754 map of the confluence of the Monongahela and the Allegheny rivers, showing the spot he felt would be an ideal location for a fort. Fraser's plantation is just south of the forks, on Turtle Creek.|220px
Background
In 1749 the British Crown awarded the Ohio Company a grant of 500,000 acres in the Ohio Country between the Monongahela and the Kanawha Rivers, provided that the company would settle 100 families within seven years. The Ohio Company was also required to construct a fort and provide a garrison to protect the settlement at their own expense. The Treaty of Logstown was intended to open up land for settlement so that the Ohio Company could meet the seven-year deadline, and to obtain explicit permission to construct a fort.
On 29 May 1751, at a council meeting at Logstown between George Croghan, Andrew Montour and representatives of the Six Nations, Croghan reported the following statement from Iroquois speaker Toanahiso:
:"We expect that you our Brothers will build a Strong House on the River Ohio, that if we should be obliged to engage in a war that we should have a Place to secure our Wives and Children...Now, Brothers, we will take two months to consider and choose out a place fit for that Purpose, and then we will send You word. We hope Brothers that as soon as you receive our Message you will order such a House to be built. Brothers: that you may consider well the necessity of building such a Place of Security to strengthen our arms, and that this, our first request of that kind may have a good effect on your minds."
Governor Hamilton used this statement as evidence to the Pennsylvania Provincial Council that they should pay for the construction of a fort at a site selected by the sachems at Logstown, arguing that unless the fort were built, the English might lose not only Indian support, but control over the fur trade in Ohio. However, the Provincial Council decided not to provide funding for a fort, arguing that fair dealings and occasional presents would hold the Indians as allies. At a meeting in Winchester, Virginia in September 1753, Native American leaders expressed willingness to cooperate with the British and repeated their request that a fort be built on the Ohio. The following summer, the Ohio Company obtained permission from the Six Nations to build Fort Prince George. Washington met with the French commander, who refused to acknowledge that the British had any claim over land in the Ohio Country. On January 6 1754, near Will's Creek, while Washington was on his way back to Williamsburg, he met "17 horses loaded with Materials and stores for a fort at the Forks of the Ohio." Within 10 days they had "finished a Store House, and a large quantity of timber hew'd, boards saw'd, and shingles made."
Capture
On March 4 1754, a French detachment under Ensign Michel Maray de La Chauvignerie discovered the fort under construction. Chauvignerie immediately reported to Claude-Pierre Pécaudy de Contrecœur at Venango, that "The scouts...took notice [of] an advanced house almost made, which is to serve as a Magazine, but because of the distance they could not know in what manner they were constructing their fort, since it was still only marked out." Governor-General Duquesne wrote immediately to Contrecœur: "From the letter from Sieur La Chauvignerie of March 11, it appears that the English are planning to settle at the mouth of [the Allegheny River], since there is already a storehouse built there. You must hasten, Sir, to interrupt and even destroy their work from the start, because their consolidation would lead us to a siege...which it would
be wise to avoid, considering the bad state of the finances of the King." Other sources also report between 500 and 600 On April 18 the French Commander sent Captain Francois Le Mercier, two drummers and an interpreter to present Ensign Ward with a summons stating that the French Army intended to lay siege to the fort, and commanded Ward to "retreat peaceably with your troops" and "not to return." Ward and his men were given one hour to leave. Ward, on advice from Tanacharison, who was present, requested that the French wait until Ward's commanding officer, Captain Trent, returned, but Contrecœur refused. Ward then asked if the British might wait until the following day to leave, and Contrecœur agreed. He then invited Ward to dine with him, and Ward accepted. At dinner, Ward politely refused to discuss military or political matters, and declined Contrecœur's offer to buy Ward's carpentry tools. Washington regarded the capture of Trent's Fort as an act of war, and prepared to advance, writing on April 20 to Governor Dinwiddie to request artillery. Counting on Tanacharison to support him with Native American warriors, he prepared to attack French troops in what would become the first battle of the French and Indian War, the Battle of Jumonville Glen.
Fort Prince George was the first of five forts to be built to control the strategic "Forks of the Ohio". Following the capture of Fort Duquesne in the 1758 Forbes Expedition, the British built Fort Pitt. Mercer's Fort was a temporary British fort built to defend against a French counterattack while Fort Pitt was being constructed. The final fort in what is now downtown Pittsburgh was an American post called Fort Lafayette, built in 1792 and located farther up the Allegheny River.
Memorialization
A historical marker commemorating Fort Prince George was placed in Point State Park in downtown Pittsburgh on May 8, 1959. A diorama depicting the fort's surrender to the French can be seen at the Fort Pitt Museum in Pittsburgh.