Braddock's Expedition

“ In the meantime, a fleet was to sail from New England to join the first army in besieging Quebec. But the fourth and principal expedition, led by Braddock himself, was to march across Pennsylvania to Fort Duquesne, so as to [207] drive the French out of the coveted Ohio valley. This plan was very fine; but Braddock, used to the European way of fighting, little knew how to carry on war with the French and Indians in the pathless forests.
Washington now advised Braddock, his superior officer, to leave the heavy baggage and cannons behind; but the British general would not consent. ”

“ It is certainly true that, judged by the exceedingly accurate and reliable journal of Orme, the map accompanying Sargent’s History of an Expedition against Fort Du Quesne (op. 282) is in almost every instance wholly inaccurate in regard to the location of Braddock’s camps, which it represents as scattered promiscuously along the route. In scarcely a single respect, indeed, whether as to route or as to location of camps, mountains, rivers, or anything else, can it be depended upon. ”

“ Yet Cumberland’s orders were distinct to go to Niagara by way of Virginia and Fort Duquesne.
Horace Walpole’s characterization of Braddock is particularly graphic and undoubtedly just—“desperate in his fortune, brutal in his behavior, obstinate in his sentiments, intrepid and capable.” [9] The troops given him for the American expedition were well suited to bring out every defect in his character; these were the fragments of the 44th and 48th regiments, then stationed in Ireland. Being deficient (even in time of peace) , both had to be recruited up to five hundred men each. ”

“ The expedition advanced with all possible caution, but early in August, 1764, when it was yet twenty-five miles from its destination, it was set upon by a formidable Indian band at Bushy Run and threatened with a fate not unlike 16 that suffered by Braddock's little army in the same region nine years earlier. Finding the woods full of redskins and all retreat cut off, the troops, drawn up in a circle around their horses and supplies, fired with such effect as they could upon the shadowy forms in the forest. ”

“ The first expedition against Fort Duquesne (pronounced du-kane) was commanded by General Braddock, whose portrait we are able to give, showing him at the time he did not take Washington's advice in the Duquesne matter. Later we show him as he appeared after he had abandoned his original plans and immediately after not taking Washington's advice.
[Pg 116]
"The Indians," said Braddock, "may frighten Colonial troops, but they can make no impression on the king's regulars. We are alike impervious to fun or fear." ”

“ In December 1754 Commodore Keppel, a gentleman of the Albemarle family, who had sailed as midshipman with Anson and was destined to play a prominent part in coming years, left the Downs with a body of troops under command of Braddock. The expedition reached Hampton Roads by the 20th February 1755. Its disastrous end, in an ill-planned and worse-directed attack on Fort Duquesne in July of this year, is a well-known episode of our colonial history. The sending of Braddock stimulated the French Government to reinforce its garrisons in Canada. ”

“ When these two expeditions were fairly under way, news of the disastrous defeat of Braddock reached them, and completely demoralized the troops. The Indians, who were always inclined to join the winning side, deserted the ranks, and many white soldiers followed their cowardly example. The expedition under Johnson accomplished something in another direction; but both expeditions failed, so far as the proposed reduction of Niagara and Crown Point was concerned.
"A fatal mistake!" remarked Washington to Mr. Fairfax. "Such timid measures are just suited to encourage the enemy." ”

“ He did not reach Fort Cumberland himself till May 10. [6] Then he lost no time in giving his attention to the three matters which were of greatest significance to the success of his expedition,— (1) the Indian question, (2) the arrangements about wagons and provisions, (3) the construction of a road through Pennsylvania to serve as a means of connection with the base of supplies.
Of Braddock’s relations with the Indians there are many conflicting stories ”

“ No road led through the woods; so the troops were forced to cut one as they slowly went westward. Braddock was brave and honest, but harsh and brutal in manners. He could not understand the nature of a war in the woods. Like other English officers of the time, he despised American militia and their half-Indian way of fighting. Washington and the other American officers advised him to send scouts ahead to look for the enemy; but Braddock would have none of this. He marched his army through the forest in perfect alignment, with the band playing and banners flying. ”

“ This Franklin who secured Braddock horses and wagons was a prophet. And once he predicted that this “slender line” of an army would be greatly in danger of Indian ambuscade “and be cut, like a thread, into several pieces, which, from their distance, cannot come up in time to support each other.” Braddock laughed at the prophecy, but his army had not been swallowed up in the gloom of the forests two days before its line was thinner and longer than Braddock could ever have believed. ”

“ Gist and Croghan, the two best known men on the frontier, held important offices in the army. It is as easy as common to lay at the door of a defeated and dead commander all the misfortunes of a campaign; whatever Braddock’s errors, the fact remains that the colonies failed absolutely to make the least move to provide an Indian army for Braddock’s use. Nothing could have more surely promised defeat and disgrace. ”

“ The Indians and French were hidden in bushes and behind trees, and they poured volley after volley into the British ranks. The settlers wished to fight in the Indian fashion, and take cover behind the trees; but Braddock thought this mode of warfare cowardly, and so they fought in the open until so many of the British were killed that a retreat had to be sounded. Soon the retreat became a flight, and but for Washington and his Virginians, Braddock’s little army would probably have been cut off to a man. ”

“ General Braddock looked at the gaunt weather-beaten man of the woods, clad in hunting shirt and moccasins, painted and bedecked with feathers like an Indian. Truly a strange ally, he thought. "I have experienced troops," he said, "on whom I can depend." ”

“ The summer before he had two thousand defenders, but Duquesne, blindly trusting to the ephemeral league he had made with the Alleghenies, had not been liberal again. In vain Contrecœur sent messages northward to Venango and Presque Isle. Riviere aux Bœufs was as dry as the Youghiogheny. Inevitable surrender or capitulation stared the French commander in the face. Even the crowds of Indians within hail were not to be reckoned on; they were terrified at the proportions of Braddock’s army. ”

“ Cumberland, who had lost every battle but the one-sided affray of Culloden, was the brain to devise. Braddock, a brutal soldier of parade experience, whose only warfare had been in Hyde Park or Hounslow, was the hand to execute. Braddock took his troops through the American bush as if they were marching fromJuly 9, 1755. London to Windsor, and was annihilated ten miles from the French stronghold, Fort Duquesne, where now smokes toiling Pittsburg. British troops then first faced the most formidable of adversaries, an invisible foe. ”

“ Hence, in dense forest, surrounded by yelling savages, our men stood up to be shot by a foe whom they never saw till it was too late, and panic had set in amongst the few survivors. Had our troops been taught to adapt themselves to circumstances and to fight as the colonists fought, as the French in Canada had learned to fight, as the Red Indians fought, taking every advantage of cover, Braddock need not thus unnecessarily have lost nearly seventy per cent, of his force. ”

“ A murderous fire smote down the troops. The provincials, not unused to this description of warfare, sheltered themselves behind trees and fought with steady courage. Braddock, clinging to his old rules, strove to maintain his order of battle on the open ground. A carnage, most grim and lamentable, was the result. ”

“ The shots were like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky.
"The Indians," said George, in a perfectly composed voice, reining up his horse.
"I see no Indians," cried General Braddock, excitedly. "There is disorder in the ranks; have them closed up at once, and march in double-time. We will soon find the enemy."
But the firing from the invisible foe again broke forth, this time fiercer and more murderous than before. General Braddock, riding to the head of the first regiment, which had begun to waver, shouted the order for them to reform and fire. ”

“ They were gone two days, and all came in sight of the fort, but brought back no important intelligence. The Indians contrived to kill and scalp a French officer whom they found shooting within half a mile of the fort.
“The army seldom marched more than six miles a day and commonly not so much. From Stewart’s Crossing to Turtle Creek there were six encampments. During one day the army halted.
“I shall be much pleased to see Mr. Atkinson’s map. His knowledge of the ground will enable him to delineate Braddock’s route much more accurately than it can be done from any sources now available. ”

“ No advice, as it afterwards turned out, could have been more timely: but, coming from a raw provincial colonel, Braddock cast it aside with angry impatience; and when the line of march was formed, as if to show in what light esteem he held it, he ordered the rangers to the rear, to guard the baggage. Before daybreak, a large party of pioneers, or road-cutters, with a small guard of regulars, numbering in all about three hundred, had gone on before to open a passage for the army through the woods, and make the fords more passable by levelling the banks. ”

“ After a series of delays, on July 3rd Braddock unexpectedly fell in with a French force under Beaujeu on the right bank of the river Monongahela, about eight miles from Fort Duquesne. The majority of the enemy were Indians trained to forest fighting, while the English, accustomed to European methods, fought in a solid mass, their red coats affording an excellent target for their invisible foes. Braddock fought with heroic perseverance ”

“ On the eastern side of the Monongahela and west of Turtle Creek, at what is now Braddock, where the battle occurred, encouraging efforts are now on foot that promise to lead to a satisfactory settlement of the point at which the fording actually occurred, as well as of the location of the route through the battlefield and of the ground on which the British and the French troops took position. ”

“ The French captain knew the ground and Braddock did not, and the ground was admirably formed for a desperate stand against the advancing army. Burton, who was just leaving the river shore, was ordered up to support Gage on the second upland after the first fire. This brought the whole army, save four hundred men, to the second terrace between the unseen ravines on the east and west. Into these ravines poured the Indian rabble. The ravine on the east being shorter than that on the west, many savages ran through it and posted themselves in the dense underbrush on the hillside. ”

“ The impetuous Beaujeu hurried off to the Indians and unfolded his plan to them. But they were afraid of Braddock; some of them had even gone into the English camp, at Cumberland, or in the mountains, on pretense of joining the English army; they had seen the long lines of grenadiers and wagons laden with cannon.
"How, my Father," they replied, "are you so bent upon death that you would also sacrifice us? With our eight hundred men do you ask us to attack four thousand English? ”

“ Every white sail, therefore, that showed above the horizon meant the coming of a possible enemy; no day passed, in some part of which there might not chance to arise the necessity to employ every device of seamanship if escape were to be effected should the enemy prove too big to fight, or in which there was not at least the possibility of smelling powder burned in earnest.
Nor were danger and excitement necessarily ended with the ship's arrival in New York harbour. We were still fighting the French in Canada; men yet told grim tales of Braddock's defeat and of the horrors of Indian warfare. ”

“ As the first bullets poured into their ranks the British could see no foe and Braddock, deaf to the entreaties of the Virginians, insisted that his troops [94] hold their ranks in the unprotected and open clearing. The provincials scattered and fought the foe in its own manner from behind every tree and mound they could find to shelter them; but Braddock, wholly immune to fear or reason himself, continued to hold his regulars together, in his anger beating back with his sword into the ranks those seeking cover. ”

“ A worse selection than that of Major General Braddock could hardly have been made. He was a brave officer and a good soldier, but he was rough, coarse, and obstinate. He utterly despised the colonial troops, and regarded all methods of fighting, save those pursued by regular armies in the field, with absolute contempt. To send such a man to command troops destined to fight in thick forests, against an enemy skilled in warfare of that kind, was to court defeat. ”

“ Braddock was an old soldier, and he thought he knew more than his young staff-officer who had learned from experience how to fight Indians. The general laughed at the well-meant advice. Next day, as they were marching through a deep ravine, suddenly came the yells of savages and the crack of rifles. The British veterans were eager to fight, but they could see no foe. The men were shot down like sheep.
The young Virginian and his riflemen leaped behind trees and rocks and fought the Indians in their own way. ”