“On Sunday last, died, of a tedious illness, John Forbes, Esq., in the 49th year of his age, son to —— Forbes, Esq., of Petmerief, in the Shire of Fife, in Scotland, Brigadier General, Colonel of the 17th Regiment of North America; a gentleman generally known and esteemed, and most sincerely and universally regretted. In his younger days he was bred to the profession of physic, but, early ambitious of the military character, he purchased into the Regiment of Scott’s Grey Dragoons, where, by repeated purchases and faithful services, he arrived to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. His superior abilities soon recommended him to the protection of General Campbell, the Earl of Stair, Duke of Bedford, Lord Ligonier, and other distinguished characters in the army; with some of them as an aid; with the rest in the familiarity of a family man. During the last war he had the honor to be employed in the post of Quarter-Master General, in the army under his Royal Highness, the Duke, which duty he discharged with accuracy, dignity and dispatch. His services in America are well known. By a steady pursuit of well-concerted measures, in defiance of disease and numberless obstructions, he brought to a happy issue a most extraordinary campaign, and made a willing sacrifice of his own life to what he valued more—the interests of his king and country. As a man he was just and without prejudices; brave, without ostentation; uncommonly warm in his friendships, and incapable of flattery; acquainted with the world and mankind, he was well-bred, but absolutely impatient of formality and affectation. As an officer, he was quick to discern useful men and useful measures, generally seeing both at first view, according to their real qualities; steady in his measures, and open to information and council; in command he had dignity without superciliousness; and though perfectly master of the forms, never hesitated to drop them, when the spirit and more essential parts of the service required it.
“Yesterday, (14th,) he was interred in the Chancel of Christ’s Church, in this city.”
A fellow-countryman of Forbes has built beside Forbes’s Road (now Forbes Street), in the city of Pittsburg, a magnificent library. What could be more fitting or beautiful than that this brave Scotchman’s memory should be honored with a monumental pillar here on his road which “opened the Great West to English enterprise?” And let it bear the sweet human testimony of a British historian: “No general was ever more beloved by the men under his command.”[76]
CHAPTER VI
THE MILITARY ROAD TO THE WEST
There is another hero of Forbes’s Road. The rough days of that summer of 1758 were only suggestions of what was to come. Other armies than that of Forbes were to pass this way, for, be it understood at once, Forbes’s Road became the great military highway into the West. No single road in America witnessed so many campaigns; no road in America was fortified by such a chain of forts. For a generation this route from Lancaster by Carlisle, Bedford, Ligonier to Pittsburg was the most important thoroughfare to the West.
The French retired from Fort Duquesne, down the Ohio and up the Allegheny. The remainder of the war was fought far away on the St. Lawrence. Hardly a shot was fired in the West after the skirmishes at Fort Ligonier succeeding Grant’s defeat. The French at Venango and Detroit made light of Forbes’s occupation of Fort Duquesne. They had retired voluntarily and swore to return in the spring. In a dozen western posts the French bragged still of their possession of the West and of their future conquests. The Indians believed each boast.
In the next year’s campaign Quebec fell. New France passed away, and all French territory east of the Mississippi, save only a fishing station on the island of Newfoundland came into the hands of the English. But this campaign was fought in the far northeast. Of it the West and its redskinned inhabitants knew nothing. Fort Niagara was the most westerly fort which had succumbed; Fort Duquesne, technically, was evacuated. The real story of the successive French defeats was, perhaps, little heard of in the West; or, if communicated to the Indian allies there, the logical conclusion was not plain to them. How could a land be conquered where not a single battle had been fought? So far as the Indians were concerned, France was never more in possession of their western lakes and forests than then. Was not the blundering Braddock killed and his fine army utterly put to rout? Were not the French forts in the West—Presque Isle, Venango, Le Bœuf, Miami, and Detroit, secure? Fort Duquesne could be reoccupied whenever the French would give the signal. The leaden plates of France still reposed at the mouths of the rivers of the West and the Arms of the King of France still rattled in the wind which swept the land.