BRADDOCK’S UNFORTUNATE EXPEDITION.

While the new Englanders were thus employed in reducing the French in Nova Scotia, preparations were made in Virginia for attacking them upon the Ohio. A fort was built, which was likewise called Fort Cumberland, and a camp formed at Will’s-Creek. On the fourteenth of January of this year, major-general Brad-dock, with colonel Dunbar’s and colonel Halket’s regiments of foot, sailed from Cork, in Ireland, for Virginia, where they all landed safe before the end of February. This general might consequently have entered upon action early in the spring, had he not been unfortunately delayed by the Virginian contractors for the army, who, when he was ready to march, had neither provided a sufficient quantity of provisions for his troops, nor a competent number of carriages for his army. This accident was foreseen by almost every person who knew any thing of our plantations upon the continent of America; for the people of Virginia, who think of no produce but their tobacco, and do not raise corn enough even for their own subsistence, being, by the nature of their country, well provided with the conveniency of water conveyance, have but few wheel carriages, or beasts of burden; whereas Pennsylvania, which abounds in corn, and most other sorts of provisions, has but little water-carriage, especially in its western settlements, where its inhabitants have great numbers of carts, waggons, and horses. Mr. Braddock should therefore certainly, in point of prudence, have landed in Pennsylvania: the contract for supplying his troops should have been made with some of the chief planters there, who could easily have performed their engagements; and if his camp had been formed near Frank’s Town, or somewhere upon the south-west borders of that province, he would have had but eighty miles to march from thence to Fort Du Quesne, instead of an hundred and thirty miles that he had to advance from Will’s-Creek, where he did encamp, through roads neither better nor more practicable than the other would have been. This error, in the very beginning of the expedition, whether owing to an injudicious preference fondly given to the Virginians in the lucrative job of supplying these troops, or to any other cause, delayed the march of the army for some weeks, during which it was in the utmost distress for necessaries of all kinds; and would probably have defeated the expedition entirely for that summer, had not the contractors found means to procure some assistance from the back settlements of Pennsylvania. But even when these supplies did arrive, they consisted of only fifteen waggons, and an hundred draft horses, instead of an hundred and fifty waggons and three hundred horses, which the Virginian contractors had engaged to furnish, and the provisions were so bad that they could not be used. However, some gentlemen in Pennsylvania, being applied to in this exigency, amply made up for these deficiencies, and the troops were by this means supplied with every thing they wanted. Another, and still more fatal error was committed in the choice of the commander for this expedition. Major-general Braddock, who was appointed to it, was undoubtedly a man of courage, and expert in all the punctilios of a review, having been brought up in the English guards; but he was naturally very haughty, positive, and difficult of access; qualities ill suited to the temper of the people amongst whom he was to command. His extreme severity in matters of discipline had rendered him unpopular among the soldiers; and the strict military education in which he had been trained from his youth, and which he prided himself on scrupulously following, made him hold the American militia in great contempt, because they could not go through their exercise with the same dexterity and regularity as a regiment of guards in Hyde Park, little knowing, or indeed being able to form any idea of the difference between the European manner of fighting, and an American expedition through woods, deserts, and morasses. Before he left England, he received, in the hand-writing of colonel Napier, a set of instructions from the duke of Cumberland. By these, the attempt upon Niagara was in a great measure referred to him, and the reduction of Crown Point was to be left chiefly to the provincial forces. But above all, his royal highness, both verbally and in this writing, frequently cautioned him carefully to beware of an ambush or surprise. Instead of regarding this salutary caution, his conceit of his own abilities made him disdain to ask the opinion of any under his command; and the Indians, who would have been his safest guards against this danger in particular, were so disgusted by the haughtiness of his behaviour, that most of them forsook his banners. Under these disadvantages he began his march from Fort Cumberland on the tenth of June, at the head of about two thousand two hundred men, for the meadows, where colonel Washington was defeated the year before. Upon his arrival there, he was informed that the French at Fort du Quesne, which had lately been built on the same river, near its confluence with the Monangahela, expected a reinforcement of five hundred regular troops: therefore, that he might march with a greater despatch, he left colonel Dunbar with eight hundred men, to bring up the provisions, stores, and heavy baggage, as fast as the nature of the service would permit; and with the other twelve hundred, together with ten pieces of cannon, and the necessary ammunition, and provisions, he marched on with so much expedition, that he seldom took any time to reconnoitre the woods or thickets he was to pass through; as if the nearer he approached the enemy, the farther he was removed from danger.

On the eighth of July, he encamped within ten miles of Fort du Quesne. Though colonel Dunbar was then near forty miles behind him, and his officers, particularly sir Peter Halket, earnestly entreated him to proceed with caution, and to employ the friendly Indians who were with him, by way of advanced guard, in case of ambuscades; yet he resumed his march the next day, without so much as endeavouring to obtain any intelligence of the situation or disposition of the enemy, or even sending out any scouts to visit the woods and thickets on both sides of him, as well as in front. With this carelessness he was advancing, when, about noon, he was saluted with a general fire upon his front, and all along his left flank, from an enemy so artfully concealed behind the trees and bushes, that not a man of them could be seen. The vanguard immediately fell back upon the main body, and in an instant the panic and confusion became general; so that most of the troops fled with great precipitation, notwithstanding all that their officers, some of whom behaved very gallantly, could do to stop their career. As to Braddock himself, instead of scouring the thickets and bushes from whence the fire came, with grape shot from the ten pieces of cannon he had with him, or ordering flanking parties of his Indians to advance against the enemy, he obstinately remained upon the spot where he was, and gave orders for the few brave officers and men who staid with him, to form regularly, and advance. Meanwhile his men fell thick about him, and almost all his officers were singled out, one after another, and killed or wounded; for the Indians, who always take aim when they fire, and aim chiefly at the officers, distinguished them by their dress. At last, the general, whose obstinacy seemed to increase with the danger, after having had some horses shot under him, received a musket shot through the right arm and lungs, of which he died in a few hours, having been carried off the field by the bravery of lieutenant-colonel Gage, another of his officers. When he dropped, the confusion of the few that remained turned it into a downright and very disorderly flight across a river which they had just passed, though no enemy appeared, or attempted to attack them. All the artillery, ammunition, and baggage of the army were left to the enemy, and, among the rest, the general’s cabinet, with all his letters and instructions, which the French court afterwards made great use of in their printed memorials or manifestoes. The loss of the English in this unhappy affair amounted to seven hundred men. Their officers, in particular, suffered much more than in the ordinary proportion of batteries in Europe. Sir Peter Halket fell by the very first fire, at the head of his regiment; and the general’s secretary, son to governor Shirley, was killed soon after. Neither the number of men which the enemy had in this engagement, nor the loss which they sustained, could be so much as guessed at; but the French afterwards gave out, that their number did not, in the whole, exceed four hundred men, mostly Indians; and that their loss was quite inconsiderable, as it probably was, because they lay concealed in such a manner that the English knew not whither to point their muskets. The panic of these last continued so long, that they never stopped till they met the rear division; and even then they infected those troops with their terrors; so that the army retreated without stopping, till they reached Fort Cumberland, though the enemy did not so much as attempt to pursue, nor ever appeared in sight, either in the battle, or after the defeat. On the whole, this was perhaps the most extraordinary victory that ever was obtained, and the farthest flight that ever was made.

Had the shattered remains of this army continued at Fort Cumberland, and fortified themselves there, as they might easily have done, during the rest of the summer, they would have been such a check upon the French and their scalping Indians, as would have prevented many of those ravages that were committed in the ensuing winter upon the western borders of Virginia and Pennsylvania; but, instead of taking that prudent step, their commander left only the sick and wounded at that fort, under the protection of two companies of the provincial militia, posted there by way of garrison, and began his march on the second of August, with about sixteen hundred men, for Philadelphia; where those troops could be of no immediate service. From thence they were ordered away to Albany, in New York, by general Shirley, on whom the chief command of the troops in America had devolved by the death of major-general Braddock. Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, were by these means left entirely to the care of themselves, which they might have done effectually, had they been united in their councils; but the usual disputes between their governors and assemblies, defeated every salutary plan that was proposed. Pennsylvania, the most powerful of the three, was rendered quite impotent, either for its own defence or that of its neighbours, by these unhappy contests; though, at last, the assembly of that province, sensible of the danger to which they were exposed, and seeing the absolute necessity of providing a standing military force, and of erecting some forts to defend their western frontier, passed a bill for raising fifty thousand pounds. But even this sum, small as it was, even to a degree of ridicule, considering the richness of the province and the extent of its frontier, could not be obtained; the governor positively refusing to give his assent to the act of the assembly, because they had taxed the proprietaries estates equally with those of the inhabitants, which, he said, he was ordered by his instructions, not to consent to, nor indeed any new tax upon the proprietaries: and the assembly, consisting chiefly of members whose estates lay in the eastern or interior parts of the province, as positively refusing to alter their bill. One would be apt to think, that, in a case of such urgent necessity, the governor might have ventured to give his assent to the bill under a protest, that it should not prejudice the rights of the proprietaries upon any future occasion; but as he did not, the bill was dropped, and the province left defenceless; by which means it afterwards suffered severely, to the destruction of many of the poor inhabitants upon the western frontier, and to the impressing the Indians with a contemptible opinion of the English, and the highest esteem of the French.

GEORGE II. 1727-1760