HENRY BOUQUET.
From an original by Benjamin West, in the gallery of the Penna. Hist. Society.
It was fortunate for the country that there was an officer stationed at Philadelphia who fully understood the meaning of the alarming reports which were coming in from the Western posts. Colonel Henry Bouquet was a gallant Swiss officer who had been trained in war from his youth, and whose personal accomplishments gave an additional charm to his bravery and heroic energy. He had served seven years in fighting American Indians, and was more cunning than they in the practice of their own artifices.[1440] General Amherst, the commander-in-chief, was slow in appreciating the importance and extent of the Western conspiracy;[1441] yet he did good service in directing Colonel Bouquet to organize an expedition for the relief of Fort Pitt.
BUSHY RUN BATTLE, Aug. 5 and 6, 1763.
Slightly reduced from a plate in the London edition of An Historical Account, as "surveyed by Thos. Hutchins, assistant engineer." Key: 1, grenadiers; 2, light infantry; 3, battalion men; 4, rangers; 5, cattle; 6, horses; 7, intrenchment of bags for the wounded; 8, first position of the troops; X, the enemy. The small squares on the hillock near "the action of the 5th" mark "graves." The map is also in Jefferys' Gen. Topog. of N. Amer., etc. (London, 1768), and in I. D. Rupp's Early Hist of Western Penna. (Pittsburg, 1847).
The promptness and energy with which this duty was performed, under the most embarrassing conditions, make the expedition one of the most brilliant episodes in American warfare. The only troops available for the service were about five hundred regulars recently arrived from the siege of Havana, broken in health, and many of them better fitted for the hospital than the field.[1442] Orders for collecting supplies and means of transportation had been sent to Carlisle; but when the colonel arrived with the troops, nothing had been done towards their execution. Such, however, was his energy and sagacity that in eighteen days the horses, oxen, wagons, and provisions needed had been collected, and he was ready to march. As the long train moved out of Carlisle towards the west, where lay the bleaching bones of Braddock's army, the inhabitants looked on in anxious silence. The sight of sixty invalid soldiers conveyed in wagons did not add to the cheerfulness of the scene. Bouquet's most efficient soldiers were the 42d regiment of Highlanders, whom he used as flankers.[1443]