Night came, and under cover of the darkness the wearied soldiers cared for the wounded. Placed in the cleared center of the circle, a rude wall of sacks of flour was built around them. Here, enduring agonies of thirst, for not a drop of water could be obtained, they lay listening to the fiendish yells of the enemy—a poor cure for wounds and burning thirst.
When the necessary arrangements for the night had been completed and provision made against a night attack, Bouquet, doubtful of surviving the morrow’s battle, wrote to Sir Jeffrey Amherst a brief and concise account of the day’s fight. His report ends with these words:
“... As, in case of another engagement, I fear insurmountable, difficulties in protecting and transporting our provisions, being already so much weakened by the losses of this day, in men and horses, besides the additional necessity of carrying the wounded, whose situation is truly deplorable.”
Even before morning light, the beastly, impatient cries of the Indians began to be heard on every side, soon accompanied by a deadly fire. As on the preceding day the return fire had little effect, for the savages silently vanished at the gleam of leveled bayonets. But at ten o’clock the ring remained unbroken though the troops were already fatigued and were now crazed by torments of thirst, “more intolerable than the enemy’s fire.” The horses, often struck and completely terrified, now broke away by scores and madly galloped up and down the neighboring hills. The ranks were constantly thinning. It was plain to all that a decisive and immediate bold stroke must be made.
The commander was equal to the emergency! The confidence of the foe had grown so overbearing that Bouquet determined to stake everything upon the very recklessness of his enemies. The portion of the circle which immediately fronted the Indians, and which was composed of light infantry, was ordered to feign retreat. As this movement was accomplished, a thin line of men was thrown across the deserted position from the sides, drawing in close to the convoy. Thinking this to be a retreat, which the new line had been summoned to cover, the Indians, with cutting screams, jumped out from every side and rushed headlong toward the centre of the circle. Then, suddenly upon their rear poured the light infantry, which had made a marvelous detour through the woods. With a frightful bayonet charge and with highland yells as piercing as those of the Indians, the grenadiers, flushed with victory, drove the terrified savages through the forests. In the twinkling of an eye the outcries of the savages ceased altogether and not a living foe remained. Sixty Indian corpses lay scattered about the camp. Only one captive was taken and he was riddled with English bullets. The loss of the English amounted to eight officers and one hundred and fifteen men. This was the first English victory over the Indians of the central West. Fort Necessity, Braddock’s Field, and Grant’s Hill were now avenged. It was a late victory but was far better late than never. Fort Pitt was relieved.
What Forbes’s Road was to Pittsburg and the West in the Old French War and in Pontiac’s Rebellion it was in the Revolutionary days, 1775-83. For thirty years after it was built it was the main highway across the mountains. It is impossible to estimate the worth of this straight roadway to the Ohio; had Forbes followed Braddock’s Road to Fort Pitt, western travel ever after would have been at the mercy of the two rivers, the Youghiogheny and Monongahela, which that road crosses. In the winter months it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to have kept open communication between a line of forts and blockhouses on Braddock’s Road. This was done on Forbes’s Road throughout the half century of conflict.
At the opening of the Revolutionary War, the continental war office being at Philadelphia, Forbes’s Road became more strategic than ever in its history. It was now known as the “Pennsylvania Road,” and was the direct route to the military center of the West, Fort Pitt. Braddock’s Road—now known as the “Virginia Road”—was the main route from Virginia and Maryland. In the dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania for the region of which Fort Pitt was the center, the two routes thither were the avenues of the two contending factions. With the drowning of this quarrel in the momentous struggle precipitated in 1775, Forbes’s Road at once became preëminently important. Cattle and goods were frequently sent over Braddock’s Road as far as Brownsville and forwarded by water to Fort Pitt and the American forts on the Ohio. But far greater was the activity on Forbes’s Road. Forts Bedford and Ligonier, and a score of fortified cabins at such points as Turtle Creek, Sewickly, Bullock Pens, Widow Myers, Proctors, Brush Run, Reyburn’s, and Hannastown served to guard the main thoroughfare to the Ohio. Between these points scouts were continually hurrying, and over the narrow roadway passed the wagons and pack-horses laden with ammunition and stores. Hannastown and Ligonier became the important entrepôts between Carlisle and Fort Pitt in the Revolution. Carlisle was the important eastern depot of troops and ammunition from which both eastern and western commanders received supplies.[77] Garrisons along the Pennsylvania Road were ordered at the close of the war to report at Carlisle for their pay.[78] Hannastown, thirty miles east of Fort Pitt and three miles northeast of the present Greensburg, was the first collection of huts on the Pennsylvania Road between Bedford and Pittsburg dignified by the name of a town. At the breaking out of the Revolution it was the most important settlement in all Westmoreland County save only those about Forts Pitt and Ligonier. “These huts scattered along the narrow pack-horse track among the monster trees of the ancient forest, was that Hannastown, which occupied such a prominent place in the early history of Western Pennsylvania where was held the first court west of the Alleghany where the resolves of May 16, 1775, were passed.”[79] From this rude little cluster of huts on Forbes’s Road, deep in the Allegheny mountains, came one of the first and most spirited protests against British tyranny. From such sparks the flames of revolution were soon fanned. Hannastown “was burned last Saturday afternoon,” wrote General Irvine to Secretary of War Lincoln, July 16, 1782; “... that place is about thirty-five miles in the rear of Fort Pitt, on the main road leading to Philadelphia, generally called the Pennsylvania [Forbes’s] road. The Virginia [Braddock’s] road is yet open, but how long it will continue so is uncertain, as this stroke has alarmed the whole country beyond conception.”