Dinwiddie had not been idle while Washington went his perilous errand. He had gotten the Burgesses together by the 1st of November, before Washington had left the back settlements to cross the wilderness, and would have gotten a liberal grant of money from them had they not fallen in their debates upon the question of the new fee charged, since his coming, for every grant out of the public lands of the colony, and insisted that it should be done away with. “Subjects,” they said, very stubbornly, “cannot be deprived of the least part of their property without their consent;” and such a fee, they thought, was too like a tax to be endured. They would withhold the grant, they declared, unless the fee was abolished, notwithstanding they saw plainly enough in how critical a case things stood in the West; and the testy Governor very indignantly sent them home again. He ordered a draft of two hundred men from the militia, nevertheless, with the purpose of assigning the command to Washington and seeing what might be done upon the Ohio, without vote of Assembly. A hard-headed Scotsman past sixty could not be expected to wait upon a body of wrangling and factious provincials for leave to perform his duty in a crisis, and, inasmuch as the object was to save their own lands, and perhaps their own persons, from the French, could hardly be blamed for proposing in his anger that they be taxed for the purpose by act of Parliament. “A Governor,” he exclaimed, “is really to be pitied in the discharge of his duty to his King and country in having to do with such obstinate, self-conceited people!” Some money he advanced out of his own pocket. When Washington came back from his fruitless mission, Dinwiddie ordered his journal printed and copies sent to all the colonial Governors. “As it was thought advisable by his Honour the Governor to have the following account of my proceedings to and from the French on Ohio committed to print,” said the modest young major, “I think I can do no less than apologize, in some measure, for the numberless imperfections of it.” But it was a very manly recital of noteworthy things, and touched the imagination and fears of every thoughtful man who read it quite as near the quick as the urgent and repeated letters of the troubled Dinwiddie.
Virginia, it turned out, was, after all, more forward than her neighbors when it came to action. The Pennsylvania Assembly very coolly declared they doubted his Majesty’s claim to the lands on the Ohio, and the Assembly in New York followed suit. “It appears,” they said, in high judicial tone, “that the French have built a fort at a place called French Creek, at a considerable distance from the river Ohio, which may, but does not by any evidence or information appear to us to be, an invasion of any of his Majesty’s colonies.” The Governors of the other colonies whose safety was most directly menaced by the movements of the French in the West were thus even less able to act than Dinwiddie. For the Virginian Burgesses, though they would not yield the point of the fee upon land grants, did not mean to leave Major Washington in the lurch, and before an expedition could be got afoot had come together again to vote a sum of money. It would be possible with the sum they appropriated to put three or four hundred men into the field; and as spring drew on, raw volunteers began to gather in some numbers at Alexandria--a ragged regiment, made up for the most part of idle and shiftless men, who did not always have shoes, or even shirts, of their own to wear; anxious to get their eightpence a day, but not anxious to work or submit to discipline. ’Twas astonishing how steady and how spirited they showed themselves when once they had shaken their lethargy off and were on the march or face to face with the enemy. A body of backwoodsmen had been hurried forward in February, ere spring had opened, to make a clearing and set to work upon a fort at the forks of the Ohio; but it was the 2d of April before men enough could be collected at Alexandria to begin the main movement towards the frontier, and by that time it was too late to checkmate the French. The little force sent forward to begin fortifications had set about their task very sluggishly and without skill, and their commander had turned back again with some of his men to rejoin the forces behind him before the petty works he should have stayed to finish were well begun. When, therefore, on the 17th of April, the river suddenly filled with canoes bearing an army of more than five hundred Frenchmen, who put cannon ashore, and summoned the forty men who held the place to surrender or be blown into the water, there was no choice but to comply. The young ensign who commanded the little garrison urged a truce till he could communicate with his superiors, but the French commander would brook no delay. The boy might either take his men off free and unhurt, or else fight and face sheer destruction; and the nearest succor was a little force of one hundred and fifty men under Colonel Washington, who had not yet topped the Alleghanies in their painful work of cutting a way through the forests for their field-pieces and wagons.
The Governor’s plans had been altered by the Assembly’s vote of money and the additional levy of men which it made possible. Colonel Joshua Fry, whom Dinwiddie deemed “a man of good sense, and one of our best mathematicians,” had been given the command in chief, and Washington had been named his second in command, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. “Dear George,” wrote Mr. Corbin, of the Governor’s Council, “I enclose you your commission. God prosper you with it!” and the brunt of the work in fact fell upon the younger man. But three hundred volunteers could be gotten together; and, all too late, half of the raw levy were sent forward under Washington to find or make a way for wagons and ordnance to the Ohio. The last days of May were almost at hand before they had crossed the main ridge of the Alleghanies, so inexperienced were they in the rough labor of cutting a road through the close-set growth and over the sharp slopes of the mountains, and so ill equipped; and by that time it was already too late by a full month and more to forestall the French, who had only to follow the open highway of the Alleghany to bring what force they would to the key of the West at the forks of the Ohio. As the spring advanced, the French force upon the river grew from five to fourteen hundred men, and work was pushed rapidly forward upon fortifications such as the little band of Englishmen they had ousted had not thought of attempting--a veritable fort, albeit of a rude frontier pattern, which its builders called Duquesne, in honor of their Governor. Washington could hit upon no watercourse that would afford him quick transport; ’twould have been folly, besides, to take his handful of ragged provincials into the presence of an intrenched army. He was fain to go into camp at Great Meadows, just across the ridge of the mountains, and there await his Colonel with supplies and an additional handful of men.
It was “a charming field for an encounter,” the young commander thought, but it was to be hoped the enemy would not find their way to it in too great numbers. An “Independent Company” of provincials in the King’s pay joined him out of South Carolina, whence they had been sent forward by express orders from England; and the rest of the Virginia volunteers at last came up to join their comrades at the Meadows--without good Colonel Fry, the doughty mathematician, who had sickened and died on the way--so that there were presently more than three hundred men at the camp, and Washington was now their commander-in-chief. The officers of the Independent Company from South Carolina, holding their commissions from the King, would not, indeed, take their orders from Washington, with his colonial commission merely; and, what was worse, their men would not work; but there was no doubt they would fight with proper dignity and spirit for his Majesty, their royal master. The first blood had already been drawn, on the 28th of May, before reinforcements had arrived, when Washington had but just come to camp. Upon the morning of that day Washington, with forty men, guided by friendly Indians, had come upon a party of some thirty Frenchmen where they lurked deep within the thickets of the dripping forest, and, with thrust of bayonet when the wet guns failed, had brought them to a surrender within fifteen minutes of the first surprise. No one in the Virginian camp doubted that there was war already, or dreamed of awaiting the action of diplomats and cabinets over sea. The French had driven an English garrison from the forks of the Ohio with threats of force, which would certainly have been executed had there been need. These men hidden in the thickets at Great Meadows would have it, when the fight was over, that they had come as messengers merely to bear a peaceful summons; but did it need thirty odd armed men to bear a message? Why had they lurked for five days so stealthily in the forest; and why had they sent runners back posthaste to Fort Duquesne to obtain support for their diplomacy? Washington might regret that young M. Jumonville, their commander, had lost his life in the encounter, but he had no doubt he had done right to order his men to fire when he saw the French spring for their arms at the first surprise.
Now, at any rate, war was unquestionably begun. That sudden volley fired in the wet woods at the heart of the lonely Alleghanies had set the final struggle ablaze. It was now either French or English in America: it could no longer be both. Jumonville with his thirty Frenchmen was followed ere many weeks were out by Coulon de Villiers with seven hundred--some of them come all the way from Montreal at news of what had happened to France’s lurking ambassadors in the far-away mountains of Virginia. On the 3d of July they closed to an encounter at “Fort Necessity,” Washington’s rude intrenchments upon the Great Meadows. There were three hundred and fifty Englishmen with him able to fight, spite of sickness and short rations; and as the enemy began to show themselves at the edges of the neighboring woods through the damp mists of that dreary morning, Washington drew his little force up outside their works upon the open meadow. He “thought the French would come up to him in open field,” laughed a wily Indian, who gave him counsel freely, but no aid in the fight; but Villiers had no mind to meet the gallant young Virginian in that manly fashion. Once, indeed, they rushed to his trenches, but, finding hot reception there, kept their distance afterwards. Villiers brought them after that only “as near as possible without uselessly exposing the lives of the King’s subjects,” and poured his fire in from the cover of the woods. For nine hours the unequal fight dragged on, the French and their Indians hardly showing themselves outside the shelter of the forest, the English crouching knee-deep in water in their rude trenches, while the rain poured incessantly, reducing their breastworks to a mass of slimy mud, and filling all the air with a chill and pallid mist. Day insensibly darkened into night in such an air, and it was eight o’clock when the firing ceased and the French asked a parley. Their men were tired of the dreary fight, their Indian allies threatened to leave them when morning should come, and they were willing the English should withdraw, if they would, without further hurt or molestation. The terms they offered seemed very acceptable to Washington’s officers as the interpreter read them out, standing there in the drenching downpour and the black night. “It rained so hard we could hardly keep the candle lighted to read them by,” said an officer; but there was really no choice what to do. More than fifty men lay dead or wounded in the flooded camp; the ammunition was all but spent; the French strength had hardly been touched in the fight, and might at any moment be increased. Capitulation was inevitable, and Washington did not hesitate.
The next morning saw his wretched force making their way back again along the rude road they had cut through the forests. They had neither horses nor wagons to carry their baggage. What they could they burned; and then set out, sore stricken in heart and body, their wounded comrades and their scant store of food slung upon their backs, and dragged themselves very wearily all the fifty miles to the settlements at home. Two of the King’s Independent Companies from New York ought to have joined them long ago, but had gotten no farther than Alexandria when the fatal day came at the Great Meadows. North Carolina had despatched three hundred and fifty of her militiamen, under an experienced officer, to aid them, but they also came too late. It had been expected that Maryland would raise two hundred and fifty men, and Pennsylvania had at last voted money, to be spent instead of blood, for she would levy no men; but no succor had come from any quarter when it should. The English were driven in, and all their plans were worse than undone.
It was a bitter trial for the young Virginian commander to have his first campaign end so disastrously--to be worsted in a petty fight, and driven back hopelessly outdone. No one he cared for in Virginia blamed him. His ragged troops had borne themselves like men in the fight; his own gallantry no man could doubt. The House of Burgesses thanked him and voted money to his men. But it had been a rough apprenticeship, and Washington felt to the quick the lessons it had taught him. The discouraging work of recruiting at Alexandria, the ragged idlers to be governed there, the fruitless drilling of listless and insolent men, the two months’ work with axe and spade cutting a way through the forests, the whole disheartening work of making ready for the fight, of seeking the enemy, and of choosing a field of encounter, he had borne as a stalwart young man can while his digestion holds good. He had at least himself done everything that was possible, and it had been no small relief to him to write plain-spoken letters to the men who were supposed to be helping him in Williamsburg, telling them exactly how things were going and who was to blame--letters which showed both how efficient and how proud he was. He had even shown a sort of boyish zest in the affair when it came to actual fighting with Jumonville and his scouts hidden in the forest. He had pressed to the thick of that hot and sudden skirmish, and had taken the French volleys with a lad’s relish of the danger. “I heard the bullets whistle,” he wrote his brother, “and believe me there is something charming in the sound.” But after he had stood a day in the flooded trenches of his wretched “fort” at Great Meadows, and fought till evening in the open with an enemy he could not see, he knew that he had been taught a lesson; that he was very young at this terrible business of fighting; and that something more must be learned than could be read in the books at Mount Vernon. He kept a cheerful front in the dreary retreat, heartening his men bravely by word and example of steadfastness; but it was a sore blow to his pride and his hopes, and he must only have winced without protest could he have heard how Horace Walpole called him a “brave braggart” for his rodomontade about the music of deadly missiles.
He had no thought, however, of quitting his duty because his first campaign had miscarried. When he had made his report at Williamsburg he rejoined his demoralized regiment at Alexandria, where it lay but an hour’s ride from Mount Vernon, and set about executing his orders to recruit once more, as if the business were only just begun. Captain Innes, who had brought three hundred and fifty men from North Carolina too late to be of assistance at the Meadows, and who had had the chagrin of seeing them take themselves off home again because there was no money forthcoming to pay them what had been promised, remained at Will’s Creek, amidst the back settlements, to command the King’s provincials from South Carolina who had been with Washington at the Meadows, and the two Independent Companies from New York, who had lingered so long on the way; and to build there a rough fortification, to be named Fort Cumberland, in honor of the far-away Duke who was commander-in-chief in England. Dinwiddie, having such hot Scots blood in him as could brook no delays, and having been bred no soldier or frontiersman, but a merchant and man of business, would have had Washington’s recruiting despatched at once, like a bill of goods, and a new force sent hot-foot to the Ohio again to catch the French while they were at ease over their victory and slackly upon their guard at Duquesne. When he was flatly told it was impossible, he turned to other plans, equally ill considered, though no doubt equally well meant. By October he had obtained of the Assembly twenty thousand pounds, and from the government at home ten thousand more in good specie, such as was scarce in the colony--for the sharp stir of actual fighting had had its effect alike upon King and Burgesses--and had ordered the formation and equipment of ten full companies for the frontier. But the new orders contained a sad civilian blunder. The ten companies should all be Independent Companies; there should be no officer higher than a captain amongst them. This, the good Scotsman thought, would accommodate all disputes about rank and precedence, such as had come near to making trouble between Washington and Captain Mackay, of the Independent Company from South Carolina, while they waited for the French at Great Meadows.
Washington at once resigned, indignant to be so dealt with. Not only would he be reduced to a captaincy under such an arrangement, but every petty officer would outrank him who could show the King’s commission. It was no tradition of his class to submit to degradation of rank thus by indirection and without fault committed, and his pride and sense of personal dignity, for all he was so young, were as high-strung as any man’s in Virginia. He had shown his quality in such matters already, six months ago, while he lay in camp in the wilderness on his way towards the Ohio. The Burgesses had appointed a committee of their own to spend the money they had voted to put his expedition afoot in the spring, lest Dinwiddie should think, were they to give him the spending of it, that they had relented in the matter of the fees; and these gentlemen, in their careful parsimony, had cut the officers of the already straitened little force down to such pay and food as Washington deemed unworthy a gentleman’s acceptance. He would not resign his commission there at the head of his men upon the march, but he asked to be considered a volunteer without pay, that he might be quit of the humiliation of being stinted like a beggar. Now that it was autumn, however, and wars stood still, he could resign without reproach, and he did so very promptly, in spite of protests and earnest solicitations from many quarters. “I am concerned to find Colonel Washington’s conduct so imprudent,” wrote Thomas Penn. But the high-spirited young officer deemed it no imprudence to insist upon a just consideration of his rank and services, and quietly withdrew to Mount Vernon, to go thence to his mother at the “ferry farm” upon the Rappahannock, and see again all the fields and friends he loved so well.
It was a very brief respite. He had been scarcely five months out of harness when he found himself again in camp, his plans and hopes once more turned towards the far wilderness where the French lay. He had set a great war ablaze that day he led his forty men into the thicket and bade them fire upon M. Jumonville and his scouts lurking there; and he could not, loving the deep business as he did, keep himself aloof from it when he saw how it was to be finished. Horace Walpole might laugh lightly at the affair, but French and English statesmen alike--even Newcastle, England’s Prime-Minister, as busy about nothing as an old woman, and as thoroughly ignorant of affairs as a young man--knew that something must be done, politics hanging at so doubtful a balance between them, now that Frederick of Prussia had driven France, Austria, and Russia into league against him. The French Minister in London and the British Minister in Paris vowed their governments still loved and trusted one another, and there was no declaration of war. But in the spring of 1755 eighteen French ships of war put to sea from Brest and Rochefort, carrying six battalions and a new Governor to Canada, and as many ships got away under press of sail from English ports to intercept and destroy them. Transports carrying two English regiments had sailed for Virginia in January, and by the 20th of February had reached the Chesapeake. The French ships got safely in at the St. Lawrence despite pursuit, losing but two of their fleet, which had the ill luck to be found by the English befogged and bewildered off the coast. The colonies were to see fighting on a new scale.
The English ministers, with whom just then all things went either by favor or by accident, had made a sorry blunder in the choice of a commander. Major-General Edward Braddock, whom they had commissioned to take the two regiments out and act as commander-in-chief in America, was a brave man, a veteran soldier, bred in a thorough school of action, a man quick with energy and indomitable in resolution; but every quality he had unfitted him to learn. Self-confident, brutal, headstrong, “a very Iroquois in disposition,” he would take neither check nor suggestion. But energy, resolution, good soldiers, and a proper equipment might of themselves suffice to do much in the crisis that had come, whether wisdom held the reins or not; and it gave the Old Dominion a thrill of quickened hope and purpose to see Keppel’s transports in the Potomac and Braddock’s redcoats ashore at Alexandria.
The transports, as they made their way slowly up the river, passed beneath the very windows of Mount Vernon, to put the troops ashore only eight miles beyond. Washington had left off being soldier for Dinwiddie, but he had resigned only to avoid an intolerable indignity, not to shun service, and he made no pretence of indifference when he saw the redcoats come to camp at Alexandria. Again and again was he early in the saddle to see the stir and order of the troops, make the acquaintance of the officers, and learn, if he might, what it was that fitted his Majesty’s regulars for their stern business. The self-confident gentlemen who wore his Majesty’s uniform and carried his Majesty’s commissions in their pockets had scant regard, most of them, for the raw folk of the colony, who had never been in London or seen the set array of battle. They were not a little impatient that they must recruit among such a people. The transports had brought but a thousand men--two half-regiments of five hundred each, whose colonels had instructions to add two hundred men apiece to their force in the colony. Six companies of “rangers,” too, the colonists were to furnish, and one company of light horse, besides carpenters and teamsters. By all these General Braddock’s officers set small store, deeming it likely they must depend, not upon the provincials, but upon themselves for success. They were at small pains to conceal their hearty contempt for the people they had come to help.
But with Washington it was a different matter. There was that in his proud eyes and gentleman’s bearing that marked him a man to be made friends with and respected. A good comrade he proved, without pretence or bravado, but an ill man to scorn, as he went his way among them, lithe and alert, full six feet in his boots, with that strong gait as of a backwoodsman, and that haughty carriage as of a man born to have his will.
He won their liking, and even their admiration, as a fellow of their own pride and purpose. General Braddock, knowing he desired to make the campaign if he might do so without sacrifice of self-respect, promptly invited him to go as a member of his staff, where there could be no question of rank, asking him, besides, to name any young gentlemen of his acquaintance he chose for several vacant ensigncies in the two regiments. The letter of invitation, written by Captain Orme, aide-de-camp, was couched in terms of unaffected cordiality. Washington very gladly accepted, in a letter that had just a touch of the young provincial in it, so elaborate and over-long was its explanation of its writer’s delicate position and self-respecting motives, but with so much more of the proud gentleman and resolute man that the smile with which Captain Orme must have read it could have nothing of disrelish in it. The young aide-de-camp and all the other members of the General’s military “family” found its author, at any rate, a man after their own hearts when it came to terms of intimacy among them.
By mid-April the commander-in-chief had brought five Governors together at Alexandria, in obedience to his call for an immediate conference--William Shirley, of Massachusetts, the stout-hearted old lawyer, every inch “a gentleman and politician,” who had of a sudden turned soldier to face the French, for all he was past sixty; James De Lancey, of New York, astute man of the people; the brave and energetic Horatio Sharpe, of Maryland; Robert Hunter Morris, fresh from the latest wrangles with the headstrong Quakers and Germans of Pennsylvania; and Robert Dinwiddie, the busy merchant Governor of the Old Dominion, whose urgent letters to the government at home had brought Braddock and his regiments to the Potomac. Plans were promptly agreed upon. New York and New England, seeing war come on apace, were astir no less than Virginia, and in active correspondence with the ministers in London. Two regiments had already been raised and taken into the King’s pay; the militia of all the threatened colonies were afoot; in all quarters action was expected and instant war. Governor Shirley, the council agreed, should strike at once at Niagara with the King’s new provincial regiments, in the hope to cut the enemy’s connections with their western posts; Colonel William Johnson, the cool-headed trader and borderer, who had lived and thriven so long in the forests where the dreaded Mohawks had their strength, should lead a levy from New England, New York, and New Jersey to an attack upon Crown Point, where for twenty-four years the French had held Champlain; and Lieutenant-Colonel Monckton, of the King’s regulars, must take a similar force against Beauséjour in Acadia, while General Braddock struck straight into the western wilderness to take Duquesne. ’Twere best to be prompt in every part of the hazardous business, and Braddock turned from the conference to push his own expedition forward at once. “After taking Fort Duquesne,” he said to Franklin, “I am to proceed to Niagara; and after having taken that, to Frontenac, if the season will allow time; and I suppose it will, for Duquesne can hardly detain me above three or four days; and then I can see nothing that can obstruct my march to Niagara.” “To be sure, sir,” quietly replied the sagacious Franklin; “if you arrive well before Duquesne with these fine troops, so well provided with artillery, the fort ... can probably make but a short resistance.” But there was the trouble. ’Twould have been better, no doubt, had a route through Pennsylvania been chosen, where cultivated farms already stretched well into the West, with their own roads and grain and cattle and wagons to serve an army with; but the Virginia route had been selected (by intrigue of gentlemen interested in the Ohio Company, it was hinted), and must needs be made the best of. There was there, at the least, the rough track Washington’s men had cut to the Great Meadows. This must be widened and levelled for an army with its cumbrous train of artillery, and its endless procession of wagons laden with baggage and provisions. To take two thousand men through the dense forests with all the military trappings and supplies of a European army would be to put, it might be, four miles of its rough trail between van and rear of the struggling line, and it would be a clumsy enemy, as fighting went in the woods, who could not cut such a force into pieces--“like thread,” as Franklin said.
The thing was to be attempted, nevertheless, with stubborn British resolution. It was the 19th of May before all the forces intended for the march were finally collected at Fort Cumberland, twenty-two hundred men in all--fourteen hundred regulars, now the recruits were in; nearly five hundred Virginians, horse and foot; two Independent Companies from New York; and a small force of sailors from the transports to rig tackle for the ordnance when there was need on the rough way. And it was the 10th of June when the advance began, straight into that “realm of forests ancient as the world” that lay without limit upon all the western ways. It was a thing of infinite difficulty to get that lumbering train through the tangled wilderness, and it kept the temper of the truculent Braddock very hot to see how it played havoc with every principle and practice of campaigning he had ever heard of. He charged the colonists with an utter want alike of honor and of honesty to have kept him so long awaiting the transportation and supplies they had promised, and to have done so little to end with, and so drew Washington into “frequent disputes, maintained with warmth on both sides”; but the difficulties of the march presently wrought a certain forest change upon him, and disposed him to take counsel of his young Virginian aide--the only man in all his company who could speak out of knowledge in that wild country. On the 19th, at Washington’s advice, he took twelve hundred men and pressed forward with a lightened train to a quicker advance, leaving Colonel Dunbar to bring up the rest of the troops with the baggage. Even this lightened force halted “to level every mole-hill, and to erect bridges over every brook,” as Washington chafed to see, and “were four days in getting twelve miles”; but the pace was better than before, and brought them at last almost to their destination.
On the 9th of July, at mid-day, they waded the shallow Monongahela, but eight miles from Duquesne, making a brave show as the sun struck upon their serried ranks, their bright uniforms, their fluttering banners, and their glittering arms, and went straight into the rough and shadowed forest path that led to the French post. Upon a sudden there came a man bounding along the path to meet them, wearing the gorget of a French officer, and the forest behind him swarmed with a great host of but half-discovered men. Upon signal given, these spread themselves to the right and left within the shelter of the forest, and from their covert poured a deadly fire upon Braddock’s advancing lines. With good British pluck the steady regulars formed their accustomed ranks, crying, “God save the King!” to give grace to the volleys they sent back into the forest; the ordnance was brought up and swung to its work; all the force pressed forward to take what place it could in the fight; but where was the use? Washington besought General Braddock to scatter his men too, and meet the enemy under cover as they came, but he would not listen. They must stand in ranks, as they were bidden, and take the fire of their hidden foes like men, without breach of discipline. When they would have broken in spite of him, in their panic at being slaughtered there in the open glade without sight of the enemy, Braddock beat them back with his sword, and bitterly cursed them for cowards. He would have kept the Virginians, too, back from the covert if he could, when he saw them seek to close with the attacking party in true forest fashion. As it was, they were as often shot down by the terror-stricken regulars behind them as by their right foes in front. They alone made any head in the fight; but who could tell in such a place how the battle fared? No one could count the enemy where they sprang from covert to covert. They were, in fact, near a thousand strong at the first meeting in the way--more than six hundred Indians, a motley host gathered from far and near at the summons of the French, sevenscore Canadian rangers, seventy odd regulars from the fort, and thirty or forty French officers, come out of sheer eagerness to have a hand in the daring game. Contrecœur could not spare more Frenchmen from his little garrison, his connections at the lakes being threatened, and he sorely straitened for men and stores. He was staking everything, as it was, upon this encounter on the way. If the English should shake the savages off, as he deemed they would, he must no doubt withdraw as he could ere the lines of siege were closed about him. He never dreamed of such largess of good fortune as came pouring in upon him. The English were not only checked, but beaten. They had never seen business like this. ’Twas a pitiful, shameful slaughter--men shot like beasts in a pen there where they cowered close in their scarlet ranks. Their first blazing volleys had sent the craven Canadians scampering back the way they had come; Beaujeu, who led the attack, was killed almost at the first onset; but the gallant youngsters who led the motley array wavered never an instant, and readily held the Indians to their easy work. Washington did all that furious energy and reckless courage could to keep the order of battle his commander had so madly chosen, to hold the regulars to their blind work and hearten the Virginians to stay the threatened rout, driving his horse everywhere into the thick of the murderous firing, and crying upon all alike to keep to it steadily like men. He had but yesterday rejoined the advance, having for almost two weeks lain stricken with a fever in Dunbar’s camp. He could hardly sit his cushioned saddle for weakness when the fight began; but when the blaze of the battle burst, his eagerness was suddenly like that of one possessed, and his immunity from harm like that of one charmed. Thrice a horse was shot under him, many bullets cut his clothing, but he went without a wound. A like mad energy drove Braddock storming up and down the breaking lines; but he was mortally stricken at last, and Washington alone remained to exercise such control as was possible when the inevitable rout came.
It was impossible to hold the ground in such fashion. The stubborn Braddock himself had ordered a retreat ere the fatal bullet found him. Sixty-three out of the eighty-six officers of his force were killed or disabled; less than five hundred men out of all the thirteen hundred who had but just now passed so gallantly through the ford remained unhurt; the deadly slaughter must have gone on to utter destruction. Retreat was inevitable--’twas blessed good fortune that it was still possible. When once it began it was headlong, reckless, frenzied. The men ran wildly, blindly, as if hunted by demons whom no man might hope to resist--haunted by the frightful cries, maddened by the searching and secret fire of their foes, now coming hot upon their heels. Wounded comrades, military stores, baggage, their very arms, they left upon the ground, abandoned. Far into the night they ran madly on, in frantic search for the camp of the rear division, crying, as they ran, for help; they even passed the camp, in their uncontrollable terror of pursuit, and went desperately on towards the settlements. Washington and the few officers and provincials who scorned the terror found the utmost difficulty in bringing off their stricken General, where he lay wishing to die. Upon the fourth day after the battle he died, loathing the sight of a redcoat, they said, and murmuring praises of “the blues,” the once despised Virginians. They buried his body in the road, that the army wagons might pass over the place and obliterate every trace of a grave their savage enemies might rejoice to find and desecrate.
He had lived to reach Dunbar’s camp, but not to see the end of the shameful rout. The terror mastered the rear-guard too. They destroyed their artillery, burned their wagons and stores, emptied their powder into the streams, and themselves broke into a disordered, feverish retreat which was a mere flight, their craven commander shamefully acquiescing. He would not even hold or rally them at Fort Cumberland, but went on, as if upon a hurried errand, all the way to Philadelphia, leaving the fort, and all the frontier with it, “to be defended by invalids and a few Virginians.” “I acknowledge,” cried Dinwiddie, “I was not brought up to arms; but I think common-sense would have prevailed not to leave the frontier exposed after having opened a road over the mountains to the Ohio, by which the enemy can the more easily invade us. The whole conduct of Colonel Dunbar seems to be monstrous.” And so, indeed, it was. But the colonies at large had little time to think of it. Governor Shirley had gone against Niagara only to find the French ready for him at every point, now that they had read Braddock’s papers, taken at Duquesne, and to come back again without doing anything. Beauséjour had been taken in Acadia, but it lay apart from the main field of struggle. Johnson beat the French off at Lake George when they attacked him, and took Dieskau, their commander; but he contented himself with that, and left Crown Point untouched. There were other frontiers besides those of Virginia and Pennsylvania to be looked to and guarded. For three long years did the fortunes of the English settlements go steadily from danger to desperation, as the French and their savage allies advanced from victory to victory. In 1756 Oswego was taken; in 1757, Fort William Henry. Commander succeeded
Washington Gage Gates
THE BURIAL OF BRADDOCK]
commander among the English, only to add blunder to blunder, failure to failure. And all the while it fell to Washington, Virginia’s chief stay in her desperate trouble, to stand steadfastly to the hopeless work of keeping three hundred and fifty miles of frontier with a few hundred men against prowling bands of savages, masters of the craft of swift and secret attack, “dexterous at skulking,” in a country “mountainous and full of swamps and hollow ways covered with woods.”
For twenty years now settlers had been coming steadily into this wilderness that lay up and down upon the nearer slopes of the great mountains--Germans, Scots-Irish, a hardy breed. Their settlements lay scattered far and near among the foot-hills and valleys. Their men were valiant and stout-hearted, quick with the rifle, hard as flint when they were once afoot to revenge themselves for murdered wives and children and comrades. But how could they, scattered as they were, meet these covert sallies in the dead of night--a sudden rush of men with torches, the keen knife, the quick rifle? The country filled with fugitives, for whom Washington’s militiamen could find neither food nor shelter. “The supplicating tears of the women, and moving petitions of the men,” cried the young commander, “melt me into such deadly sorrow that I solemnly declare, if I know my own mind, I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the butchering enemy, provided that would contribute to the people’s ease.... I would be a willing offering to savage fury, and die by inches to save a people.” It was a comfort to know, at the least, that he was trusted and believed in. The Burgesses had thanked him under the very stroke of Braddock’s defeat, in terms which could not be doubted sincere. In the very thick of his deep troubles, when he would have guarded the helpless people of the border, but could not, Colonel Fairfax could send him word from Williamsburg, “Your good health and fortune are the toast at every table.” “Our Colonel,” wrote a young comrade in arms, “is an example of fortitude in either danger or hardships, and by his easy, polite behavior has gained not only the regard but affection of both officers and soldiers.” But it took all the steadiness that had been born or bred in him to endure the strain of the disheartening task, from which he could not in honor break away. His plans, he complained, were “to-day approved, to-morrow condemned.” He was bidden do what was impossible. It would require fewer men to go against Duquesne again and remove the cause of danger than to prevent the effects while the cause remained. Many of his officers were careless and inefficient, many of his men mutinous. “Your Honor will, I hope, excuse my hanging instead of shooting them,” he wrote to the Governor; “it conveyed much more terror to others, and it was for example’ sake that we did it.” It was a test as of fire for a young colonel in his twenties.
But a single light lies upon the picture. Early in 1756, ere the summer’s terror had come upon the border, and while he could be spared, he took horse and made his way to Boston to see Governor Shirley, now acting as commander-in-chief in the colonies, and from him at first hand obtain settlement of that teasing question of rank that had already driven the young officer once from the service. He went very bravely dight in proper uniform of buff and blue, a white-and-scarlet
cloak upon his shoulders, the sword at his side knotted with red and gold, his horse’s fittings engraved with the Washington arms, and trimmed in the best style of the London saddlers. With him rode two aides in their uniforms, and two servants in their white-and-scarlet livery. Curious folk who looked upon the celebrated young officer upon the road saw him fare upon his way with all the pride of a Virginian gentleman, a handsome man, and an admirable horseman--a very gallant figure, no one could deny. Everywhere he was fêted as he went; everywhere he showed himself the earnest, high-strung, achieving youth he was. In New York he fell into a new ambush, from which he did not come off without a wound. His friend Beverly Robinson must needs have Miss Mary Phillipse at his house there, a beauty and an heiress, and Washington came away from her with a sharp rigor at his heart. But he could not leave that desolate frontier at home unprotected to stay for a siege upon a lady’s heart; he had recovered from such wounds before, had before that left pleasure for duty; and in proper season was back at his post, with papers from Shirley which left no doubt who should command in Virginia.
At last, in 1758, the end came, when William Pitt thrust smaller men aside and became Prime-Minister in England. Amherst took Louisbourg, Wolfe came to Quebec, and General Forbes, that stout and steady soldier, was sent to Virginia to go again against Duquesne. The advance was slow to exasperation in the view of every ardent man like Washington, and cautious almost to timidity; but the very delay redounded to its success at last. ’Twas November before Duquesne was reached. The Indians gathered there, seeing winter come on, had not waited to meet them; and the French by that time knew themselves in danger of being cut off by the English operations in the North. When Forbes’s forces, therefore, at last entered those fatal woods again, where Braddock’s slaughtered men had lain to rot, the French had withdrawn; nothing remained but to enter the smoking ruins of their abandoned fort, hoist the King’s flag, and re-name the post Fort Pitt; and Washington turned homeward again to seek the rest he so much needed. It had been almost a bloodless campaign, but such danger as it had brought Washington had shared to the utmost. The French had not taken themselves off without at least one trial of the English strength. While yet Forbes lay within the mountains a large detachment had come from Duquesne to test and reconnoitre his force. Colonel Mercer, of the Virginian line, had been ordered forward with a party to meet them. He stayed so long, and the noise of the firing came back with so doubtful a meaning to the anxious ears at the camp, that Washington hastened with volunteers to his relief. In the dusk the two bodies of Englishmen met, mistook each other for enemies, exchanged a deadly fire, and were checked only because Washington, rushing between their lines, even while their pieces blazed, cried his hot commands to stop, and struck up the smoking muzzles with his sword. ’Twas through no prudence of his he was not shot.
For a long time his friends had felt a deep uneasiness about his health. They had very earnestly besought him not to attempt a new campaign. “You will in all probability bring on a relapse,” George Mason had warned him, “and render yourself incapable of serving the public at a time when there may be the utmost occasion. There is nothing more certain than that a gentleman of your station owes the care of his health and his life not only to himself and his friends, but to his country.” But he had deemed the nearest duty the most imperative; and it was only after that duty was disposed of that he had turned from the field to seek home and new pleasures along with new duties. The winter brought news from Quebec of the fall of the French power in America, which made rest and home and pleasure the more grateful and full of zest.
MOUNT VERNON DAYS