The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief

by Morrison Heady

But the English officers, on the contrary, behaved themselves with a gallantry that filled Washington with astonishment and admiration. Heretofore he had seen them only in camp or on the line of march, where their habits of ease and self-indulgence had led him to doubt their having the courage and firmness to face, without shrinking, danger in such appalling forms. Unmindful of the bullets that whistled continually about their heads, they galloped up and down the broken and bleeding lines, in the vain endeavor to rally their men, and bring them again to something like order. Mounted on fine horses, and dressed in rich uniforms, they offered a tempting mark to the unseen rifles that were levelled at them from behind every tree and bush, and tuft of grass; and, ere the work of death was finished, many a gallant steed, with dangling reins and bloody saddle, dashed riderless about the field. And, as if this were not enough, many of them must needs fall victims to the unsoldierly conduct of their own men, who, forgetful of all discipline, and quite beside themselves with terror and bewilderment, loaded their pieces hurriedly, and fired them off at random, killing friends as well as foes. Nor did this most shameful part of the bloody scene end here: many of the Virginia rangers, who had already taken to the trees and bushes, and were doing good service by fighting the Indians in their own fashion, were shot down by the blundering regulars, who fired into the woods wherever they saw a puff of smoke, unable to distinguish whether it rose from a red or a white man's rifle. Upon these brave rangers the brunt of the battle fell; and indeed, had it not been for their firmness and presence of mind, their skill and address in the arts and strategems of Indian warfare, which enabled them for a time to hold the enemy in check, hardly a remnant of Braddock's fine army would have survived to behold the going-down of that summer's sun.

At the very commencement of the battle, a small party of warriors, cheered on by a French officer in a fancifully trimmed hunting-shirt, had leaped out from their covert into the road, with the view, it seemed, of cutting off those in front from the assistance of their comrades in the rear; but the regulars, who guarded the road-cutters, having discharged a well-aimed volley of musketry into their very faces, they had turned, and fled with even more haste than they had come, leaving behind them several of their number dead on the spot, and among these their dashing French leader. After that, they had taken care to keep close under cover of the grass and bushes. Now and then, however, a tall brave, grim and hideous with war-paint, with a yell of defiance would leap from his ambush, and, darting into the road, tomahawk and scalp a wounded officer just fallen; then vanish again as suddenly as if the earth had opened to swallow him up.

All this while, Col. Washington had borne himself with a firmness, courage, and presence of mind, that would have done honor to a forty-years' veteran. His two brother aides-de-camp having been wounded early in the engagement, the whole duty of carrying the general's orders had fallen on him; and nobly did he that day discharge it. Although brave men were falling thick and fast on every side, yet he shrank from no exposure, however perilous, did his duty but lead him there. Mounted on horseback, his tall and stately form was to be seen in every part of the field, the mark of a hundred rifles, whose deadly muzzles were pointed at him whithersoever he went. Two horses were shot dead under him, and his coat was pierced with bullets; but he seemed to bear about him a charmed life, and went unharmed. His danger was so great, that his friend Dr. Craik, who watched his movements with anxious interest, looked every moment to see him fall headlong to the ground; and that he came off alive seemed to him a miracle. Washington himself, with that piety which ever marked his character, laid his deliverance from the perils of that fatal day to the overruling care of a kind and watchful Providence.

Although brought thus suddenly face to face with new and untried dangers, Braddock bore himself throughout the day like the valiant man that he really was. The bullets and yells of the invisible foe he scarcely noticed, as he galloped hither and thither about the field, giving his orders through a speaking-trumpet, whose brazen voice rose loud and hoarse above the din of battle. Under the mistaken notion that a savage enemy, hid in a thicket, was to be dealt with as a civilized one in an open plain, he sought to recover his lost ground by forming his men into companies and battalions; which, however, he had no sooner done, than they were mowed down by the murderous fire from the ambush, that had never ceased. "My soldiers," said he, "would fight, could they but see their enemy; but it is vain to shoot at trees and bushes." Whereupon Washington urgently besought him to let his regulars fight the Indians in their own fashion, which would the better enable them to pick off the lurking foe with less danger to their own safety. But Braddock's only answer to this was a sneer; and some of his regulars, who were already acting upon the suggestion, he angrily ordered back into the ranks, calling them cowards, and even striking them with the flat of his sword. He then caused the colors of the two regiments to be advanced in different parts of the field, that the soldiers might rally around their separate standards. It was all in vain. In his excitement, he cheered, he entreated, he swore, he stormed: it was only a waste of breath; for the poor fellows were too disheartened and broken, too overcome by mortal fear, to rally again.

Col. Washington, seeing that the day was on the point of being lost, galloped down to the rear to see if nothing could be done with the artillery; but he found the gunners in a most disorderly plight, benumbed with terror, and utterly unable to manage their guns. What Washington did on this occasion, I had better tell you in the words of an old Pennsylvania soldier, who was there at the time, and survived the battle for half a hundred years or more; and used often, for the entertainment of your Uncle Juvinell and other little boys, to fight his battles over again as he sat smoking in his chimney corner.

"I saw Col. Washington," he would say, "spring from his panting horse, and seize a brass field-piece as if it had been a stick. His look was terrible. He put his right hand on the muzzle, his left hand on the breech; he pulled with this, he pushed with that, and wheeled it round, as if it had been a plaything: it furrowed the ground like a ploughshare. He tore the sheet-lead from the touch-hole; then the powder-monkey rushed up with the fire, when the cannon went off, making the bark fly from the trees, and many an Indian send up his last yell and bite the dust."

This, however, gave the savages but a momentary check, as he could not follow it up; there being no one by ready and willing to lend him a helping hand. The Virginia rangers and other provincial troops, who had done the only good fighting of the day, were thinned out to one-fourth their number; and the few that remained were too weary and faint to hold out longer against such fearful odds. Between the well-aimed firing of the enemy and the random shooting of the regulars, the slaughter of the English officers had been frightful: out of the eighty-six who went into the battle, only twenty-four came off unhurt. Gen. Braddock had five horses killed under him. By this time, he had given up all hope of regaining the day; and, galling as it must have been to his proud spirit, was at last forced to think of retreating as their only chance of safety. Just as he was on the point, however, of giving orders to this effect, a bullet—said by some to have been a random shot from one of his own soldiers—passed through his arm, and, lodging itself in his lungs, brought him to the ground, mortally wounded. His officers placed him in a tumbrel, or pioneer's cart, and bore him from the field, where, in his despair, he prayed them to leave him to die.

Seeing their leader fall, a fresh panic seized the army. And now followed a wild and disorderly rout, the like of which was never known before, and has never since been known, in our border-wars. The soldiers in front fell back on those in the centre; those in the centre fell back on those in the rear: till foot and horse, artillery and baggage, were jammed and jumbled together, making a scene of dismay and confusion it would be vain for me to attempt to describe. To add wings to their speed, the Indians, with a long, loud yell of fiendish triumph, now rushed from their ambush, and, brandishing aloft their murderous tomahawks, began to press hard on the heels of the terrified fugitives. The better to elude their savage pursuers, the regulars threw away their arms, the gunners abandoned their guns, and the teamsters cut their horses from the traces, and, mounting them, fled, never halting until they reached Col. Dunbar's camp,—a gallop of forty miles. A few fell under the tomahawk before the farther bank of the river could be gained. Here, luckily for the survivors, the Indians gave over the pursuit, in their eagerness to plunder the slain, and gather what else of booty might be found on the field.

Thus ended this bloody battle, or rather slaughter; for in truth it could be called nothing else. Of the sixteen hundred valiant men who had that morning, in all the bright array of gleaming arms and waving banners, marched along the banks of that beautiful river, nearly one-half, ere the sun went down, had fallen on Braddock's Hill. What made this disaster more shameful still was the weakness of the enemy's force, which did not exceed eight hundred, of whom only a fourth were French; and, of all this number, scarcely forty fell in the fight.

Col. Washington was now ordered to ride back with all speed to Dunbar's camp, to fetch horses, wagons, and hospital-stores for the relief of the wounded. Although still quite weak from his ten days' fever, which indeed had left him with no more strength than should have sufficed for the fatigues of that trying day, yet he set out on the instant, and, taking with him a guard of grenadiers, travelled the livelong night. What with those terrible sights and sounds still ringing in his ears, and flashing before his eyes; what with the thought of the many dead and dying that lay on the lonely hillside far behind, with their ghastly upturned faces, more ghastly still in the light of the moon; and what with the bitter, bitter reflection, that all this would never have been but for the pride and folly of a single man,—that ride through the dark and silent woods must have been a melancholy one indeed. He pushed on, without leaving the saddle, till late in the afternoon of the following day, when he reached Dunbar's camp; and gathering together, without loss of time, the necessaries for which he had been sent, started on his return that same night, scarcely allowing himself and men an hour for food and rest. Early next morning, he met the main division at Mr. Gist's plantation, whither they had dragged their shattered lines the evening before. From thence they all went on together to the Great Meadows, where they arrived that same day, and halted.