Braddock had shown conspicuous bravery, if not conspicuous judgment, on the battlefield. He was shot through the lungs as the retreat began, and bade his men leave him where he fell. They carried him, however, from the fight; and for four days he lingered, reaching Dunbar's camp, and dying at Great Meadows on July 13. Of 1,460 British and colonial officers and men who took part in the battle, nearly 900 were killed or wounded. Those who escaped, escaped with their lives alone. On the French side the numbers engaged appear not to have exceeded 900, three-fourths of whom were Indians. The English force included over 1,200 regulars; the battle therefore resulted in a crushing defeat of troops of the line by a smaller number of Indians, with a sprinkling of Frenchmen and Canadians, led by French officers.
| Blame for the disaster. |
The disaster was attributed to the incompetence of the General, and the bad quality of the regular troops; it was said that the few Virginians who were present fought well, in contrast to their English comrades; that, knowing bush fighting, and taking cover, they were driven into the open by Braddock, only to be shot down like the rest. These accounts must be taken with reserve; the testimony of Washington and others was prejudiced in favour of the colonial and against the British soldier; Braddock did not live to give his own version of the matter; and the two regular regiments, having been brought up to strength since their arrival in America, included many colonists in their ranks. Yet it must be supposed that, as the column neared its destination unopposed, there was some slackening of precaution, for which the General must be held to blame; while Wolfe set down the defeat to the bad conduct of the infantry, writing in strong terms of the want of military training in the English army, as compared with the armies of the continent.12
12 Wright's Life of Wolfe, p. 324.
| Bad conduct of the colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania. |
But, even if the defeat and rout on the Monongahela was due to the shortcomings of the English troops and their commander, we may well ask why troops from the mother country were needed to protect the frontiers of the two strong colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania. The whole story shows these colonies in the worst possible light. They had ample warning of the importance of securing Fort Duquesne; they allowed it to fall into the hands of the French; they threw on the mother country the onus of recovering it: they hindered Braddock rather than helped him; and, when he failed, they debited him and his men with the whole blame of failure. It was not wonderful that soldiers fresh from England should be stampeded at their first venture in forest warfare, but it was wonderful that the men on the spot should be so utterly indifferent to the calls, both of patriotism and of self-interest, as to contribute to the disaster.
| They suffer in consequence. |
Bad as was the failure, it was a blessing in disguise. The colonies concerned were for a time left to bear their own burdens; French and Indians harried their frontiers; homesteads and villages were burnt; women and children were butchered or carried into captivity. While sleek Quakers and garrulous Assembly men prated of peace and local liberties, the outlying settlements were given over to fire and sword; until the southern colonists began to learn the lesson, which New England had long since learnt, that the first duty of any community is self-defence.
| William Johnson. His influence with the Five Nation Indians. |
On the Mohawk river, about thirty miles to the north-west of Albany, there lived a nephew of Sir Peter Warren, named William Johnson. He had come out to America in 1738, when he was twenty-three years old, to manage estates which his uncle had bought on the confines of the Five Nation Indians. He lived a semi-savage life, in a house constructed as a fort and named Fort Johnson or Mount Johnson, taking to wife first a German woman, and then an Iroquois. His position among the Indians was not unlike that which the Baron de Castin had held in bygone years on the Penobscot. He knew and understood the natives and their ways, he spoke their language, and his honest dealings contrasted favourably with the rascalities of the border traders. He was a type of man, more common on the French side than on the English, who lived within, not outside, the circle of native life; and, having these versatile attributes, it is almost superfluous to add that he was an Irishman. For the rest, Johnson was a man of force and energy, whose tact and talents were by no means confined to the backwoods. He did good service to his King and country, and was not at all inclined to hide his light under a bushel. His value to the English cause in North America cannot be overestimated. His personal influence among the Mohawks counterbalanced the influence of the Frenchman Joncaire among the Senecas at the other end of the confederacy; and, being appointed Superintendent of, or Commissioner for, Indian affairs, he, and he alone, kept alive the old covenant of friendship between the English and the Five Nation Indians.