The two armies were to enter the great valleys, one of the St. Lawrence, the other of the Ohio, but not in direct opposition. Dieskau was hurled back at Lake George; Braddock on the Monongahela. We must follow their fortunes.
In February, 1755, Braddock landed at Hampton, Virginia, and presently he and Dinwiddie were living “in great harmony.” A son of Shirley of Massachusetts was serving Braddock as secretary, and he was telling a correspondent how “disqualified his general was for the service he was employed in, in almost every respect.” This was after the young man had seen his father, for Braddock had gone up to Alexandria[1128] in April, and had there summoned for a conference all the governors of the colonies, Shirley among the rest, the most active of them all, ambitious of military renown, and full of plans to drive the French from the continent. The council readily agreed to the main points of an aggressive campaign. Braddock was to reduce Fort Duquesne; Shirley was to capture Niagara. An army of provincials under William Johnson was to seize Crown Point. These three movements we are now to consider; a fourth, an attack by New Englanders upon the Acadian peninsula, and the only one which succeeded, is chronicled in another chapter.[1129]
Braddock’s first mistake was in moving by the Potomac, instead of across Pennsylvania, where a settled country would have helped him; but this error is said to have been due to the Quaker merchant John Hanbury. He cajoled the Duke of Newcastle into ordering this way, because Hanbury, as a proprietor in the Ohio Company, would profit by the trade which the Virginia route would bring to that corporation. Dinwiddie’s desire to develop the Virginia route to the Ohio had doubtless quite as much to do with the choice. While plagued with impeded supplies and the want of conveyance as he proceeded, Braddock chafed at the Pennsylvanian indifference which looked on, and helped him not. He wished New England was nearer. The way Pennsylvania finally aided the doomed general was through Benjamin Franklin, whom she had borrowed of New England. He urged the Pennsylvania farmers to supply wagons, and they did, and Braddock began his march. On the 10th of May he was at Will’s Creek,[1130] with 2,200 men, and as his aids he had about him Captains Robert Orme and Roger Morris, and Colonel George Washington. Braddock invested the camp with an atmosphere little seductive to Indian allies. There were fifty of them present at one time, but they dwindled to eight in the end.[1131] Braddock’s disregard had also driven off a notorious ranger, Captain Jack, who would have been serviceable if he had been wanted.
On the 10th of June the march was resumed,—a long, thin line, struggling with every kind of difficulty in the way, and making perhaps three or four miles a day. By Washington’s advice, Braddock took his lighter troops and pushed ahead, leaving Colonel Dunbar to follow more deliberately. On the 7th of July this advance body was at Turtle Creek, about eight miles from Fort Duquesne.
FRENCH SOLDIER, 1755.
After a water-color sketch in the Mass. Archives: Documents collected in France, vol. ix. p. 425. The coat is blue, faced with red.
Parkman (vol. i. 368), speaking of the troops which came with Dieskau and Montcalm, says that their uniform was white, faced with blue, red, yellow, or violet, and refers to the plates of the regimental uniforms accompanying Susane’s Ancienne Infanterie Française. Parkman (i. p. 370) also says that the troupes de la marine, the permanent military establishment of Canada, wore a white uniform faced with black. He gives (p. 370, note) various references.
FORT DUQUESNE AND VICINITY.