TITLE-PAGE OF WASHINGTON'S JOURNAL
Braddock himself, accompanied by Washington, marches with twenty-two hundred men over the Alleghenies along the old trail of the Monongahela against Fort Duquesne. Of Braddock, the least said the better. A gambler, full of arrogant contempt towards all people and things that were not British, hail-fellow-well-met to his boon companions, heartless towards all outside the pale of his own pride, a blustering bully yet dogged, and withal a gentleman after the standard of the age, he was neither better nor worse than the times in which he lived. Of Braddock's men, fifteen hundred were British regulars, the rest Virginian bushfighters; and the redcoat troops held such contempt towards the buckskin frontiersmen that friction arose from the first about the relative rank of regulars and provincials. From the time they set out, the troops had been retarded by countless delays. There was trouble buying up supplies of beef cattle among the frontiersmen. Scouts scoured the country for horses and wagons to haul the great guns and heavy artillery. Braddock's high mightiness would take no advice from colonials about single-file march on a bush trail and swift raids to elude ambushed foes. Everything proceeded slowly, ponderously, with the system and routine of an English guardroom. Scouts to the fore and on both flanks, three hundred bushwhackers went ahead widening the bridle path to a twelve-foot road for the wagons; and along this road moved the troops, five and six abreast, the red coats agleam through the forest foliage, drums rolling, flags flying, steps keeping time as if on parade, Braddock and his officers mounted on spirited horses, the heavy artillery and supply wagons lagging far behind in a winding line.
A SKETCH OF THE FIELD OF BATTLE AT BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT
What happened has been told times without number in story and history. It was what the despised colonials feared and any bushranger could have predicted. July 9, in stifling heat, the marchers had come to a loop in the Monongahela River. Braddock thought to avoid the loop by fording twice. He was now within eight miles of Fort Duquesne—the modern Pittsburg. Though Indian raiders had scalped some wanderers from the trail and insolent messages had been occasionally found scrawled in French on birch trees, not a Frenchman had been seen on the march. The advance guard had crossed the second ford about midday when the road makers at a little opening beyond the river saw a white man clothed in buckskin, but wearing an officer's badge, dash out of the woods to the fore, wave his hat, … and disappear. A moment later the well-known war whoop of the French bushrovers tore the air to tatters; and bullets rained from ambushed foes in a sheet of fire. In vain the English drums rolled … and rolled … and soldiers shouted, "The King! God save the King!" One officer tried to rally his men to rush the woods, but they were shot down by a torrent of bullets from an unseen foe. The Virginian bushfighters alone knew how to meet such an emergency. Jumping from tree to tree for shelter like Indians dancing sideways to avoid the enemy's aim, they had broken from rank to fight in bushman fashion when Braddock came galloping furiously from the rear and ordered them back in line. What use was military rank with an invisible foe? As well shoot air as an unseen Indian! Again the Virginians broke rank, and the regulars, huddled together like cattle in the shambles, fired blindly and succeeded only in hitting their own provincial troops. Braddock stormed and swore and rode like a fury incarnate, roaring orders which no one could hear, much less obey. Five horses were shot under him and the dauntless commander had mounted a fresh one when the big guns came plunging forward; but the artillery on which Braddock had pinned his faith only plowed pits in the forest mold. Of eighty officers, sixty had fallen and a like proportion of men. Braddock ordered a retreat. The march became a panic, the panic frenzied terror, the men who had stood so stolidly under withering fire now dashing in headlong flight from the second to the first ford and back over the trail, breathless as if pursued by demons! Artillery, cattle, supplies, dispatch boxes,—all were abandoned. Washington's clothes had been riddled by bullets, but he had escaped injury. Braddock reeled from his horse mortally wounded, to be carried back on a litter to that scene of Washington's surrender the year before. Four days later the English general died there. Of the English troops, more than a thousand lay dead, blistering in the July sun, maimed and scalped by the Indians. Braddock was buried in his soldier's coat beside the trail, all signs of the grave effaced to prevent vandalism.
