While the road-building went on, Washington pressed Tanacharison for more Indian support. However, the Half King seemed to have lost confidence in the British cause, and he and his followers soon abandoned the British camp. This complete loss of Indian support prompted Washington to withdraw his work crews back to Fort Necessity. Not long afterward, a force of 700 French and Indians surrounded the fort, and Washington was soon compelled to surrender. The surrender document that Washington signed prevented his men from returning to the Ohio Country for one year, and included an admission that Jumonville had been "assassinated". (The document was written in French, which Washington could not read, and may have been poorly translated for him.) Because the French claimed that Jumonville's party had been on a diplomatic (rather than military) mission, the "Jumonville affair" became an international incident, and the military escalation that followed blossomed into the global Seven Years' War. Although most Virginians were not particularly critical, there was rumbling about Washington's actions in other quarters. One New Yorker wrote that Washington acted rashly and that he was "too ambitious of acquiring all the honor", while London commentators dismissed the failure casually, citing a lack of colonial military experience. Governor Dinwiddie was publicly supportive of Washington, but criticized him privately, noting that some of the Virginia Regiment's problems originated in a "want of proper Command". Dinwiddie assigned command of a follow-up expedition (that never actually reached the Ohio Country) to North Carolina militia colonel James Innes. In another step that may have been calculated to clip the young colonel's wings, Dinwiddie reorganized the Virginia Regiment into separate companies, with no ranks above captain; Washington resigned rather than accept a demotion.