Fort Duquesne

“ The French continued to strengthen their outposts. Detroit was garrisoned, and forts of stone were built at Green Bay, Toronto, and La Présentation. In 1756, Fort Duquesne, at Pittsburgh, was established. It was in this year that Washington first came before the public as an actor. He led a considerable force to the west, with the view of destroying Fort Duquesne, and encountered a small body of French. The man who subsequently became a hero by concurring events, as well as by his own energy, did not, on this occasion—​if we may credit history—​act a very honorable part. ”

“ So has our country grown.
The fall of Fort Duquesne brought to a close the campaigns of 1758. The taking of this stronghold was hailed with delight by all the settlers in this section of the colonies, and they hastened to re-possess themselves of the homesteads which they had been forced to abandon during the two or three years previous.
As soon as the victory at Fort Duquesne assured peace upon the frontier for some time to come, Washington retired from the colonial troops and returned to Mount Vernon, to the large estate left by his brother, and which now demanded his attention. ”

“ I have at last collected the whole Force with which I propose to march to the Attack of Fort Duquesne, amounting to about two thousand effective Men, eleven hundred of which Number are Americans of the southern provinces, whose slothful and languid Disposition renders them very unfit for Military Service. ”

“ Without delay they fortified the Allegheny and began to coerce the natives. Driving away the carpenters of the Ohio Company from the present site of Pittsburgh, they built Fort Duquesne. The beginning of the Old French War ended what we may call the first era of the pack-horse trade.
The capture of Fort Duquesne by the English army under General Forbes in 1758 and the final conquest of New France two years later removed the French barrier and opened the way to expansion beyond the Alleghanies. Thereafter settlements in the Monongahela country grew apace. ”

“ Governor Dinwiddie immediately called together the Assembly to consider what could be done in the crisis. In the meantime he conferred with Washington respecting the way of retrieving their loss.
"Raise a force of two or three thousand men," said Washington, "and [239] reduce Fort Duquesne as soon as possible. Under the flush of this victory the French will urge the Indians on to devastation and carnage throughout the frontier. A speedy, bold, successful attack upon the fort will prevent such a calamity." ”

“ Willinawaugh paused, and all his braves muttered in applause "Ugh! Ugh!"
To the warlike Cherokee the event of a battle was not paramount. Victory or defeat they realized was often the result of fortuitous circumstance. Courage was their passion. "We cannot live without war," was their official reply to an effort on the part of the government to mediate between them and another tribe, the Tuscaroras, their hereditary enemies.
But upon this second attempt on Fort Duquesne the British had only to plant their flag, and repair the dismantled works, and change the name to Fort Pitt. ”

“ Washington knew it would be best to advance rapidly and surprise Fort Duquesne; but the army moved slowly until, at about eight miles from the fort, it was suddenly attacked by the French and Indians. [208] The British soldiers, clad in red and marching in close ranks, made fine targets for their enemies, who, as usual, hid behind every tree and rock, whence they poured a deadly fire upon them. Braddock bravely rallied his men again and again; but not knowing how to fight unseen foes, they were helplessly slain. ”

“ Besides this, Bradstreet was able to destroy the presents collected for the Western Indians and all the winter provisions for Fort Duquesne. These facts considerably assisted General Forbes, who was no less successful in his undertaking. He had to contend against the squabbles of Virginia and Pennsylvania, but he managed to get both men and money. With a force of about six thousand, for the most part settlers from the southern states, but also including a Highland regiment, he set out for Fort Duquesne. His first attack was repulsed ”

“ It was the example of the defenders of Fort Carillon staying a British army, from behind a feeble parapet, which inspired in later days the defenders of Bunker's Hill. It was the surrender of Washington at Fort Necessity, the disaster of Braddock at Fort Duquesne, which taught the future victors of Saratoga how, in an uncultivated country, to embarrass an enemy's march, cut off his supplies, do away with his apparent advantages, and finally take or destroy him. ”

“ The prisoners taken in the Jumonville affair were to be released, Capt. Van Braam and Major Stobo to be detained as hostages for their safe return to Fort Duquesne.
This defeat was disastrous to the English. There was now not an English flag waving west of the Alleghanies. Villiers went back exultant to Fort Duquesne, and Washington began his wretched march to Will's Creek. No horses, no cattle, most of the baggage must be left behind, while the sick and wounded must be carried over the Alleghanies on the backs of their weary, half starved comrades. ”

“ Three prisoners, however, who were brought in gave such an account of the weak state of the garrison at Fort Duquesne, its want of provisions and the defection of the Indians, that it was determined to push forward. The march was accordingly resumed, but without tents or baggage, and with only a light train of artillery.
Washington still kept the advance. After leaving Loyal Hannan, the road presented traces of the late defeat of Grant; being strewed with human bones. At length the army arrived in sight of Fort Duquesne, advancing with great precaution, and expecting a vigorous defence ”

“ No one believed that Fort Duquesne, far away in the forests beyond the mountains, could hold out against this formidable array. That the French, now being attacked simultaneously in the east and in the north, could send reënforcements to the Ohio was no more likely. But there still lay the Alleghenies, their crags and gorges. Could this large body of troops cross them and take provisions sufficient to support men and horses? As with Braddock, so now with Forbes, it was the mere physical feat of [Pg 76] throwing an army three hundred miles into the forests that was the crucial problem. ”

“ On the 4th of July two Indians went out to reconnoitre the country toward Fort Duquesne; and Mr. Gist also on the same day, in a different direction. 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. ”

“ His men marched to a point about half-way to Fort Duquesne, blazing a road for other troops to follow, and constructing a fort to serve as a base of supplies. There he sent out scouts to reconnoitre. They reported an advancing party of French who were ready to attack any English whom they might encounter. Washington did not wait for them to attack. He decided to attack first. Taking a force of about forty men he made a night march in the pelting rain, to surprise the enemy. It reminds us of his later famous exploit at Trenton.
"The path," he wrote, "was hardly wide enough for one man. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Then still in English, as if to reassure the pioneers—"Go Choté—Old Town—buy fur!"
The hatred died out of the fierce Indian faces. The French in the South, as has been said, had always used every art to detach the Cherokees from the British interest, and even now the men who had abandoned Fort Duquesne, escaping down the Ohio River, were sending emissaries up the Tsullakee, to the Lower Towns, there finding fruitful soil in which to sow the seeds of dissension against the English. ”

“ On July ninth, 1755, General Braddock, in command of two thousand British troops, accompanied by Colonel Washington with eight hundred Virginians, marched toward Fort Duquesne with the intention of capturing it. When within a few miles of the fort, they were surprised by a large party of French and Indians in ambush, and Braddock, who angrily disregarded Washington's advice, saw his troops slaughtered by an invisible enemy. The English and colonists lost seven hundred and seventy-seven men, killed and wounded, while the enemy's loss was scarcely fifty. ”

“ Forbes frightened the French forever from the "Forks of the Ohio" and erected Fort Pitt on the ruins of the old Fort Duquesne. In 1763 Colonel Bouquet led a second army across the Alleghenies, on Forbes's Road, relieved Fort Pitt and put an end to Pontiac's Rebellion. By the time of Forbes's expedition Braddock's Road was somewhat filled with undergrowth, and was not cut at all through the last and most important eight miles of the course to Fort Duquesne. Forbes had some plans of using this route, "if only as a blind," but finally his whole force proceeded over a new road. ”

“ If Fort Duquesne was to be captured and fortified and manned and supplied, the shortest route thither would be, as the dark days of 1764 and 1775 and 1791 proved, a desperately long road to travel.
On the other hand the building of Forbes's road in Pennsylvania was a boon which that province far less deserved than Virginia. Virginia men and capital were foremost in the field for securing the Indian trade of the Ohio; they had, nearly ten years before, secured a grant of land between the Monongahela and Kanawha, and sent explorers and a number of pioneers to occupy the land ”

“ Then came a report that five hundred French were on their way to reinforce Fort Duquêsne; and by Washington's advice Braddock decided to leave the heavy baggage, together with a guard under Colonel Dunbar, to follow as best it could, and himself to push on with a body of chosen troops. Twelve hundred men were accordingly selected, and with these and a convoy reduced to ten guns, thirty waggons, and several pack-horses, the advance was resumed. Still progress continued to be wonderfully slow. ”

“ Instead of following Braddock's road over the mountains, he insisted upon constructing a new one farther northward; and in September, when it was known that not more than eight hundred men were in garrison at Fort Duquesne, and the British might have been successfully beleaguring the fortress if Washington's advice had been heeded, General Forbes with six thousand men was yet east of the Alleghanies! ”

“ How could a land be conquered where not a single battle had been fought? So far as the Indians were concerned, France was never more in possession of their western lakes and forests [Pg 165] than then. Was not the blundering Braddock killed and his fine army utterly put to rout? Were not the French forts in the West—Presque Isle, Venango, Le Bœuf, Miami, and Detroit, secure? Fort Duquesne could be reoccupied whenever the French would give the signal. ”

“ But such paltry success could avail the French little, for Bradstreet's capture of Fort Frontenac had already decided the fate of Fort Duquêsne. The French commander, his supplies being cut off, was obliged to dismiss the greater number of his men; otherwise Forbes could hardly have penetrated to the Ohio in that year. The elements fought for the French. Heavy rain ruined Bouquet's new road; the horses being underfed and overworked kept breaking down fast ”

“ Even though there were no telegraph lines in those days, it did not take the news long to travel throughout the length and breadth of Virginia and her neighboring states, and it was felt on all sides that that whole territory would not be safe from Indian and French raids so long as Fort Duquesne remained in the hands of the French.
"Give me the authority and men to march against that fort and take possession and our frontier will be at peace," wrote Colonel Washington. "But the longer we delay the more dangerous will this situation become to us." ”

“ Washington himself supervised the cutting of Forbes’s road westward from Fort Ligonier toward Fort Duquesne. Much as he had wrangled with Bouquet as to the propriety of making a new road he was as good as his word and worked heroically for its success. Never, even in Braddock’s death-trap on the Monongahela, did he come nearer giving his life to his country. Forbes’s first check came when Grant’s command, sent forward from Fort Ligonier to reconnoitre Fort Duquesne, was cut to pieces on Grant’s Hill within sight of the French fort. Eight hundred men went on the expedition ”

“ It was not, however, until August that the Indians appeared. They were four hundred and forty-four in number, led by Captain Duquesne and other French officers, and with French and British colors flying. There were but fifty men in the fort. The situation seemed a desperate one, but under Boone's command the settlers were resolute, and to the summons to surrender, the daring commander returned the bold reply, "We are determined to defend our fort while a man of us lives."
The next proposition of Duquesne was that nine of the garrison should come out and treat with him. ”