By the end of October campaigning was over for the year in the east, and in the centre; but it was not so in the west, where Brigadier-General Forbes was marching on Fort Duquesne.
| General Forbes. |
Forbes was an older man than the other English commanders, who achieved success in the war; and he seems to have been over sixty in the year 1758.38 He proved himself to be a man of great fortitude and resolution, tactful in dealing with colonists or Indians, a brave, sure, and careful soldier. His task was to give security to the harried frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania, and to clear the French out of the Ohio valley. With this end he had to collect and equip a force, the large majority of whom were provincials; to get money and men out of two colonies, which were very jealous alike of the mother country and of each other; to make choice between two conflicting routes, and to detach the Ohio Indians as far as possible from the French cause.
38 For his age see Kingsford's History of Canada, vol. iv, p. 192, note. He has been generally put down as a younger man.
| Reasons why the expedition made slow progress. |
A long time was taken over the preliminaries, and over the expedition itself, the object of which was not attained until the end of November; but the delays were not only the consequence of want of transport, and of Forbes' own ill health, they were also the result of design. The longer the English kept their enemies waiting to be attacked, the fewer those enemies were likely to be; for the Indians, and the militia of New France, did not love to keep the field for any long time together. Moreover, as Forbes wrote to Pitt,39 October and November were the best hunting months for the Indians, which they were therefore not willing to devote to war; while, on the other hand, they were months when the leaves fell and left the backwoods easier to reconnoitre and less easy for ambuscade.
39 Letter of Forbes to Pitt, Oct. 20, 1758.
| Preparation for advance. A new route taken. |
Forbes came to Philadelphia in April; and through the early summer months his force gradually assembled, and moved to the front. When the numbers were complete, they amounted to over 6,000 men, in the main southern colonists, but including a strong regiment of Highlanders. The second in command was a good man for the work, Bouquet, one of the Swiss officers of the Royal Americans. The advanced base was formed at Raestown, now Bedford, in Pennsylvania, distant about ninety miles from Fort Duquesne. It was some thirty miles north-east of Fort Cumberland, from which Braddock had started on his disastrous march; and a keen controversy arose as to whether the old route should be followed, or a new road taken. Opening a road to the Ohio meant, when the fighting was over, giving to the State, within or near whose boundaries the road ran, control of the trade. Virginia accordingly pressed for the old and more southerly route, Pennsylvania for the northern line. In spite of Washington's arguments, the latter was chosen; it was shorter and more direct, and on the whole presented fewer natural difficulties than the other. The first forty miles led due west over the main Alleghany range and the Laurel hills, to a place called Loyalhannon; and by the end of August Bouquet had a road cut to this place, a dépôt established, and preparations made for carrying on the track through fifty miles of less difficult country to Fort Duquesne.
| An advance attack on Fort Duquesne repulsed with loss. The Ohio Indians desert the French. |