Yet the stubborn, doomed army held its ground until the retreat was ordered. The wounded Braddock, who pleaded, it is said, to be left upon the ground, and even begged for Croghan’s pistol with which to finish what a French bullet had begun, was placed in a cart and afterwards in a wagon and brought off the field.[45] No sooner was retreat ordered than it became an utter rout. Some fifty Indians pursued the army into the river, but none crossed it. Here and there efforts were made to stem the tide but to no purpose. The army fled back to Dunbar, who had now crawled along to Laurel Hill and was encamped at a great spring at the foot of what is now Dunbar’s Knob, half a mile north of Jumonville’s hiding place and grave. Dunbar’s situation was already deplorable, even Washington having prophesied that, though he had crossed the worst of the mountain road, he could never reach Fort Duquesne.
But as Braddock’s demoralized army threw itself upon him, Dunbar’s condition was indescribably wretched. A large portion of the survivors of the battle and of Dunbar’s own command, lost to all order, hurried on toward Fort Cumberland. Dunbar himself, now senior officer in command, ordered his cannons spiked and his ammunition destroyed and, with such horses as could be of service, began to retreat across the mountains. For this he was, and has often been, roundly condemned; yet, since we have Washington’s plain testimony that he could never have hauled his wagons and cannon over the thirty comparatively easy miles to Fort Duquesne, who can fairly blame him for not attempting to haul them over the sixty difficult miles to Fort Cumberland? To fortify himself, so far removed from hopes of sustenance and succor, was equally impossible. There was nothing Dunbar could do but retreat.
The dying Braddock, tumbling about in a covered wagon on the rough road, spoke little to the few men who remained faithfully beside him. Only once or twice in the three days he lived did he speak of the battle; and then he only sighed to himself softly: “Who would have thought it?” Once, turning to the wounded Orme, he said: “We shall better know how to deal with them another time.” During his last hours Braddock seems to have regarded his young Virginian aide, Washington, whose advice he had followed only indifferently throughout the campaign, with utmost favor, bequeathing him his favorite charger and his servant. On the night of the twelfth of July, in a camp in an Indian orchard, near what is now Braddock’s Run, a mile and more east of Fort Necessity, in Great Meadows, Edward Braddock died. In the morning he was buried in the center of the roadway. Undoubtedly Washington read the service over the Briton’s grave. When the army marched eastward it passed over the grave, obliterating its site from even an Indian’s keen eye. In 1823, when the Braddock’s Road was being repaired, what were undoubtedly his bones were uncovered, together with military trappings, etc. These were placed in the dry ground above the neighboring run, the spot being now marked by solemn pines.
Whatever Braddock’s faults and foibles, he accomplished a great feat in leading a comparatively powerful army across the Alleghenies, and had he been decently supported by the colonies, there would have been no doubt of his success. As it was, shamefully hampered and delayed by the procrastinating indifference of the colonies, deceived and defrauded by wolfish contractors, abandoned by the Indians because of the previous neglect of the Colonial governors and assemblies, nevertheless the campaign was a distinct success, until at the last moment, Fate capriciously dashed the chalice from Braddock’s lips.
The shattered army reached Fort Cumberland on July 20. The tale of disaster had preceded it. The festal fires were not kindled in Philadelphia. Now, for the first time the colonies were awakened to the true situation, and in the months following paid dearly for their supine indifference.
For with Beaujeu’s victory the French arms became impregnable on the Ohio. Braddock’s defeat brought ten-fold more wretchedness than his victory could ever have brought of advantage. After that terrible scene of savagery at Fort Duquesne on the night of the victory, when the few prisoners taken were burned at the stake, there were no wavering Indians. And instantly the frontier was overrun with marauding bands which drove back to the inhabited parts of the country every advanced settlement. All the Virginian outposts were driven in; and even the brave Moravian missionaries in Pennsylvania and New York gave up their work before the red tide of war which now set eastward upon the long frontiers.
For Shirley had likewise been beaten back from Fort Niagara, and Johnson had not captured Fort Crown Point. Two of the campaigns of 1755 were utter failures.