Every care was being taken by the commanders; but notwithstanding, before the end came, there was in a smaller measure a repetition of Braddock's reverse. In the middle of September, Major Grant, an officer of the Highlanders, obtained permission from Bouquet to march out from Loyalhannon with between 700 and 800 men,40 for the purpose of reconnoitring Fort Duquesne. He arrived at night time close to the fort; intended a night attack, which miscarried; repeated the attempt to attack on the following day, and having broken up his force into small parties, was badly beaten and himself taken prisoner. The total British casualties numbered about 280, the survivors finding their way back to Bouquet at Loyalhannon. 'This was a most terrible check to my small army,' wrote Forbes,41 but the reverse was more than counterbalanced shortly afterwards by a success of a different kind. From the first Forbes had spared no pains to secure the friendship of the Indians; and in October, in large measure through the good offices of a Moravian missionary, a general council was held, at which the tribes of the Ohio made their peace with the English, deserting the French cause as rats leave a sinking ship.
40 Forbes' own dispatch mentions 900.
41 Forbes to Pitt, Raestown, Oct. 20, 1758.
| The final advance on Fort Duquesne. The fort abandoned by the French and occupied by the English. |
It was November before Forbes joined Bouquet at Loyalhannon. He was broken in body, but resolute to carry through the expedition, in spite of the lateness of the season. The road had been cut to within easy reach of the French fort; and, on November 18, 2,500 men, picked out of the force, advanced in three columns, carrying with them only what was absolutely necessary in the way of supplies, and their brave commander on a litter. At a day's march from Fort Duquesne, it was reported that the fort had been evacuated and burnt; and when the English reached it on the twenty-fifth, they found that the news was true. Weakened by the desertion of the Indians, and by having disbanded some of the militia, whom he could not feed, in want of the provisions which Bradstreet had intercepted at Fort Frontenac, the French commander, De Ligneris, saw no alternative but to blow up the fort, and retreat more than a hundred miles up the Alleghany to the junction of that river with French Creek, leaving the valley of the Ohio in English hands, as events proved, for ever.
| Foundation of Pittsburg. Death of Forbes. |
For the moment Forbes' chief care was to build at once on the site of Fort Duquesne a temporary stockade, which could be held by a small garrison through the winter. In the following year a permanent fort was built. The name of Fort Duquesne was exchanged for that of Fort Pitt, and the city of Pittsburg still recalls the statesman who recovered for the British colonies the rich western lands which are watered by the Ohio. 'I have used the freedom of giving your name to Fort Duquesne,' wrote Forbes to Pitt two days after he had reached the fort, 'as I hope it was in some measure the being actuated by your spirit that now makes us masters of the place.'42 The honest soldier, whom the English minister sent to do the work, and who did it when the colonies concerned should have done it for themselves, did not long survive his success. Patient and suffering, John Forbes was carried back to Philadelphia, where he died in the following March, having shown a steadfast, single-minded devotion to duty, rare even in the rich record of British soldiers.
42 Forbes to Pitt, Pittsburg, Nov. 27, 1758.
| Results of the campaign of 1758. Canada receives little help from France. |
With the English occupation of Fort Duquesne, the campaigning of 1758 in North America came to an end. It been a long season, and for England distinctly a successful though also to a certain extent a disappointing one. 'I do not reckon that we have been fortunate this year in America,' wrote Wolfe on December 1; 'our force was so superior to the enemy's that we might hope for greater success.'43 He wrote in ignorance that Fort Duquesne had been taken, but, notwithstanding, his view of the situation was the true one. At Louisbourg, Fort Frontenac, Fort Duquesne, there had been great and substantial successes. At Ticonderoga there had been a bad check; but the French had made nothing of it afterwards. They were now on the defensive and playing a losing game. Yet that more might and should have been done by the English commanders with their great superiority of numbers cannot be doubted. Had Wolfe been in Amherst's place, and Lord Howe in Abercromby's, the year 1758 might well have been the last year of French rule in North America. But the end was only postponed for a short time, the resources of Canada in men and in supplies were becoming insufficient to sustain the war: the country was practically in a state of blockade; and Bougainville, who was sent at the beginning of winter to France to plead the cause of Canada, met with little success. A very few soldiers, some supplies, and honours for the generals, were the result of his mission. France was engrossed in the war in Europe, and not as many hundreds were sent to North America as England sent thousands. Vaudreuil, in the meantime, was intriguing against Montcalm, whose genius and determination had prolonged the unequal fight, and on whom, with Levis and Bourlamaque, lay the heavy burden of defending a ruined State, and checking, at this point and at that, the flowing tide of English invasion.