On April 15, 1755, British troops marching by way of the Great Road through Rockville and Clarksburg toward Frederick reached Dowden's Ordinary and were caught in a violent spring storm that turned from rain with thunder and lightning into heavy snow. Their presence there grew out of the renewed war between Great Britain and France for control of North America, known in Europe as the Seven Years' War, after George Washington's Virginia volunteers fired on a French scouting party in southeastern Pennsylvania and the French forced him from the area. In response, Major General Edward Braddock came to America in 1755 to expel the French from Fort Duquense at Pittsburgh, but because of limited supplies he split his forces, sending the 44th Regiment of Foot and his artillery to Winchester, Virginia, while about 700 troops of the 48th Regiment of Foot under Thomas Dunbar went to Frederick by this route. A few days later Braddock followed the same road, possibly stopping at Dowden's Ordinary, before his troops were attacked by a combined French and Indian force outside Fort Duquesne on July 9, 1755. Braddock was mortally wounded and died five days later, and Washington and Dunbar led the remaining British and colonial troops to safety. By 1758 the war had shifted in Britain's favor, and in 1763 France surrendered its North American territory. The war's costs then led Great Britain to impose taxes on the colonists, and colonial opposition to taxation without consent became an important cause of the American Revolution.