The French view was simple nonsense.
Jumonville and his party, as the papers found on Jumonville showed, were out on a spying and scouting expedition.

They were seeking to surprise the English when the English surprised them, with the usual backwoods result.

The affair has a dramatic interest because it was the first blood shed in a great struggle, and was the beginning of a series of world-wide wars and social and political convulsions, which terminated more than half a century later on the plains of Waterloo.
It gave immortality to an obscure French officer by linking his name with that of his opponent, and brought Washington for the moment before the eyes of the world, which little dreamed that this Virginian colonel was destined to be one of the principal figures in the great revolutionary drama to which the war then beginning was but the prologue.
Washington, for his part, well satisfied with his exploit, retraced his steps, and having sent his prisoners back to Virginia, proceeded to consider his situation.

It was not a very cheerful prospect.
Contrecoeur, with the main body of the French and Indians, was moving down from the Monongahela a thousand strong.

This of course was to have been anticipated, and it does not seem to have in the least damped Washington's spirits.