*** See volume i., p. 110.
**** John Forbes was a native of Petincenet, Fifeshire, Scotland, and was educated for a physician. He entered the army in 1745. After serving as quarter-master general under the Duke of Cumberland, he was appointed brigadier general, and sent to America. The remainder of his public career is recorded in the text. The fort at Will's Creek he called Cumberland, in honor of his former commander, and the town since built there retains its name.
* See page 241.
** Speaking of this in a letter to his brother, he remarked, "By the all-powerful dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, and escaped unhurt, although death was leveling my companions on every side of me." Dr. Craik, the intimate friend of Washington through life, and who was in this battle, relates that fifteen years afterward, while traveling near the junction of the great Kenhawa and Ohio Rivers in exploring wild lands, they were met by a party of Indians with an interpreter, headed by a venerable chief. The old chief said he had come a long way to see Colonel Washington, for in the battle of the Monongahela, he had singled him out as a conspicuous object, fired his rifle at him fifteen times, and directed his young warriors to do the same, but not one could hit him. He was persuaded that the Great Spirit protected the young hero, and ceased firing at him. The Rev. Samuel Davies of Hanover (afterward president of Princeton College, New Jersey), when preaching to a volunteer company a month after the battle, said, in allusion to Colonel Washington, "I can not but hope Providence has hitherto preserved him in so signal a manner, for some important service to his country." Washington was never wounded in battle.
Movements of Forbes.—Defeat of Grant Attack on Bouquet.—Abandonment of Fort Duquesne.—Washington's Resignation.
success. Instead of following Braddock's road over the mountains, he insisted upon constructing a new one farther northward; and in September, when it was known that not more than eight hundred men were in garrison at Fort Duquesne, and the British might have been successfully beleaguring the fortress if Washington's advice had been heeded, General Forbes with six thousand men was yet east of the Alleghanies!
It was November when he reached the scene of action, and then his provisions were nearly exhausted.