"Then you have no faith in the English army to fight Indians."
"None at all. Braddock's regulars were more terrified by the yell of the savages than they were by the cannon of the French."
"Well, then, colonel, I think we must redeem the credit of the British regulars by sending them forward at this time," answered General Forbes. "If Braddock's regulars disgraced their country and cause, as you affirm they did, it is time that Forbes's regulars should wipe out the dishonor. And that can be done only by detailing them for the work proposed."
"As you please, general," answered Washington, seeing that Forbes was determined to employ his regulars as a scouting party. "You have my opinion, and you will have my obedience as heartily. Nothing that I can do to make this expedition successful shall be withholden."
Therefore the regulars scoured the country in advance, eight hundred in number. Washington wrote again concerning the prospects under these unwise arrangements:
"The golden opportunity has been lost, perhaps never more to return. Between building a new road and sending forward regulars to meet the Indians, our hope of success is small indeed. Small parties of Indians will effectually demoralize the English by keeping them under continual alarms, and attacking them in ambuscade."
The advance party was under the command of Major Grant, a conceited, overbearing officer, who was as ignorant of Indian tactics as a baby. Besides, his extreme self-confidence made him boastful and reckless, as he subsequently found to his sorrow and shame. One of Washington's biographers says of Grant:
"He was instructed to find out all he could about the enemy, without suffering the enemy to find out more than he could help about himself, and by all possible means to avoid a battle. But instead of conducting the expedition with silence and circumspection, he marched along in so open and boisterous a manner as made it appear he meant to give the enemy timely notice of his coming, and bully him into an attack even while yet on the way. The French, keeping themselves well-informed by their spies of his every movement, suffered him to approach almost to their very gates without molestation. When he got in the neighborhood of the fort, he posted himself on a hill overlooking it, and began throwing up intrenchments in full view of the garrison. As if all this were not imprudence enough, and as if bent on provoking the enemy to come out and give him battle on the instant, whether or no, he sent down a party of observation to spy out yet more narrowly the inside plan and defences of the fort, who were suffered not only to do this, but even to burn a house just outside the walls, and then return to their intrenchments without a hostile sign betokening the unseen foe so silent, yet watchful, within.
"Early the next morning, as if to give the enemy warning of the threatened danger, the drums of the regulars beat the réveille, and the bag-pipes of the Highlanders woke the forest-echoes far and wide with their wild and shrilly din."
During all this time there was silence in the fort, and no sign of the enemy anywhere around.