1758
Fort Duquesne
During the last year Loudon, filled with vain schemes against
Louisbourg, had left the French scalping-parties to their work of havoc
on the western borders. In Virginia Washington still toiled at his
hopeless task of defending with a single regiment a forest frontier of
more than three hundred miles, and in Pennsylvania the Assembly thought
more of quarrelling with their governor than of protecting the tormented
settlers. Fort Duquesne, the source of all the evil, was left
undisturbed. In vain Washington urged the futility of defensive war, and
the necessity of attacking the enemy in his stronghold. His position,
trying at the best, was made more so by the behavior of Dinwiddie. That
crusty Scotchman had conceived a dislike to him, and sometimes treated
him in a manner that must have been unspeakably galling to the proud and
passionate young man, who nevertheless, unconquerable in his sense of
public duty, curbed himself to patience, or the semblance of it.
Dinwiddie was now gone, and a new governor had taken his place. The
conduct of the war, too, had changed, and in the plans of Pitt the
capture of Fort Duquesne held an important place. Brigadier John Forbes
was charged with it. He was a Scotch veteran, forty-eight years of age,
who had begun life as a student of medicine, and who ended it as an able
and faithful soldier. Though a well-bred man of the world, his tastes
were simple; he detested ceremony, and dealt frankly and plainly with
the colonists, who both respected and liked him. In April he was in
Philadelphia waiting for his army, which as yet had no existence; for
the provincials were not enlisted, and an expected battalion of
Highlanders had not arrived. It was the end of June before they were all
on the march; and meanwhile the General was attacked with a painful and
dangerous malady, which would have totally disabled a less resolute man.
His force consisted of provincials from Pennsylvania, Virginia,
Maryland, and North Carolina, with twelve hundred Highlanders of
Montgomery's regiment and a detachment of Royal Americans, amounting in
all, with wagoners and camp followers, to between six and seven thousand
men. The Royal American regiment was a new corps raised, in the
colonies, largely from among the Germans of Pennsylvania. Its officers
were from Europe; and conspicuous among them was Lieutenant-Colonel
Henry Bouquet, a brave and accomplished Swiss, who commanded one of the
four battalions of which the regiment was composed. Early in July he was
encamped with the advance-guard at the hamlet of Raystown, now the town
of Bedford, among the eastern heights of the Alleghanies. Here his tents
were pitched in an opening of the forest by the banks of a small stream;
and Virginians in hunting-shirts, Highlanders in kilt and plaid, and
Royal Americans in regulation scarlet, labored at throwing up
intrenchments and palisades, while around stood the silent mountains in
their mantles of green.
Now rose the question whether the army should proceed in a direct course
to Fort Duquesne, hewing a new road through the forest, or march
thirty-four miles to Fort Cumberland, and thence follow the road made by
Braddock. It was the interest of Pennsylvania that Forbes should choose
the former route, and of Virginia that he should choose the latter. The
Old Dominion did not wish to see a highway cut for her rival to those
rich lands of the Ohio which she called her own. Washington, who was
then at Fort Cumberland with a part of his regiment, was earnest for the
old road; and in an interview with Bouquet midway between that place and
Raystown, he spared no effort to bring him to the same opinion. But the
quartermaster-general, Sir John Sinclair, who was supposed to know the
country, had advised the Pennsylvania route; and both Bouquet and Forbes
were resolved to take it. It was shorter, and when once made would
furnish readier and more abundant supplies of food and forage; but to
make it would consume a vast amount of time and labor. Washington
foretold the ruin of the expedition unless it took Braddock's road.
Ardent Virginian as he was, there is no cause to believe that his
decision was based on any but military reasons; but Forbes thought
otherwise, and found great fault with him. Bouquet did him more justice.
"Colonel Washington," he writes to the General, "is filled with a
sincere zeal to aid the expedition, and is ready to march with equal
activity by whatever way you choose."
The fate of Braddock had impressed itself on all the army, and inspired
a caution that was but too much needed; since, except Washington's men
and a few others among the provincials, the whole, from general to
drummer-boy, were total strangers to that insidious warfare of the
forest in which their enemies, red and white, had no rival. Instead of
marching, like Braddock, at one stretch for Fort Duquesne, burdened with
a long and cumbrous baggage-train, it was the plan of Forbes to push on
by slow stages, establishing fortified magazines as he went, and at
last, when within easy distance of the fort, to advance upon it with all
his force, as little impeded as possible with wagons and packhorses. He
bore no likeness to his predecessor, except in determined resolution,
and he did not hesitate to embrace military heresies which would have
driven Braddock to fury. To Bouquet, in whom he placed a well-merited
trust, he wrote, "I have been long in your opinion of equipping numbers
of our men like the savages, and I fancy Colonel Burd, of Virginia, has
most of his best people equipped in that manner. In this country we must
learn the art of war from enemy Indians, or anybody else who has seen it
carried on here."
His provincials displeased him, not without reason; for the greater part
were but the crudest material for an army, unruly, and recalcitrant to
discipline. Some of them came to the rendezvous at Carlisle with old
province muskets, the locks tied on with a string; others brought
fowling-pieces of their own, and others carried nothing but
walking-sticks; while many had never fired a gun in their lives.[647]
Forbes reported to Pitt that their officers, except a few in the higher
ranks, were "an extremely bad collection of broken inn-keepers,
horse-jockeys, and Indian traders;" nor is he more flattering towards
the men, though as to some of them he afterwards changed his mind.[648]
[Footnote 647: _Correspondence of Forbes and Bouquet, July, August,
1758_.]
[Footnote 648: _Forbes to Pitt, 6 Sept. 1758_.]
While Bouquet was with the advance at Raystown, Forbes was still in
Philadelphia, trying to bring the army into shape, and collecting
provisions, horses, and wagons; much vexed meantime by the Assembly,
whose tedious disputes about taxing the proprietaries greatly obstructed
the service. "No sergeant or quartermaster of a regiment," he says, "is
obliged to look into more details than I am; and if I did not see to
everything myself, we should never get out of this town." July had begun
before he could reach the frontier village of Carlisle, where he found
everything in confusion. After restoring some order, he wrote to
Bouquet: "I have been and still am but poorly, with a cursed flux, but
shall move day after to-morrow." He was doomed to disappointment; and it
was not till the ninth of August that he sent another letter from the
same place to the same military friend. "I am now able to write after
three weeks of a most violent and tormenting distemper, which, thank
God, seems now much abated as to pain, but has left me as weak as a
new-born infant. However, I hope to have strength enough to set out from
this place on Friday next." The disease was an inflammation of the
stomach and other vital organs; and when he should have been in bed,
with complete repose of body and mind, he was racked continually with
the toils and worries of a most arduous campaign.
He left Carlisle on the eleventh, carried on a kind of litter made of a
hurdle slung between two horses; and two days later he wrote from
Shippensburg: "My journey here from Carlisle raised my disorder and
pains to so intolerable a degree that I was obliged to stop, and may not
get away for a day or two." Again, on the eighteenth: "I am better, and
partly free from the excruciating pain I suffered; but still so weak
that I can scarce bear motion." He lay helpless at Shippensburg till
September was well advanced. On the second he says: "I really cannot
describe how I have suffered both in body and mind of late, and the
relapses have been worse as the disappointment was greater;" and on the
fourth, still writing to Bouquet, who in the camp at Raystown was
struggling with many tribulations: "I am sorry you have met with so many
cross accidents to vex you, and have such a parcel of scoundrels as the
provincials to work with; _mais le vin est tiré_, and you must drop a
little of the gentleman and treat them as they deserve. Seal and send
off the enclosed despatch to Sir John by some sure hand. He is a very
odd man, and I am sorry it has been my fate to have any concern with
him. I am afraid our army will not admit of division, lest one half meet
with a check; therefore I would consult Colonel Washington, though
perhaps not follow his advice, as his behavior about the roads was
noways like a soldier. I thank my good cousin for his letter, and have
only to say that I have all my life been subject to err; but I now
reform, as I go to bed at eight at night, if able to sit up so late."
Nobody can read the letters of Washington at this time without feeling
that the imputations of Forbes were unjust, and that here, as elsewhere,
his ruling motive was the public good.[649] Forbes himself, seeing the
rugged and difficult nature of the country, began to doubt whether after
all he had not better have chosen the old road of Braddock. He soon had
an interview with its chief advocates, the two Virginia colonels,
Washington and Burd, and reported the result to Bouquet, adding: "I told
them that, whatever they thought, I had acted on the best information to
be had, and could safely say for myself, and believed I might answer for
you, that the good of the service was all we had at heart, not valuing
provincial interest, jealousies, or suspicions on single twopence." It
must be owned that, considering the slow and sure mode of advance which
he had wisely adopted, the old soldier was probably right in his choice;
since before the army could reach Fort Duquesne, the autumnal floods
would have made the Youghiogany and the Monongahela impassable.
[Footnote 649: Besides the printed letters, there is an autograph
collection of his correspondence with Bouquet in 1758 (forming vol.
21,641, _Additional Manuscripts_, British Museum). Copies of the whole
are before me.]
The Sir John mentioned by Forbes was the quartermaster-general, Sir John
Sinclair, who had gone forward with Virginians and other troops from the
camp of Bouquet to make the road over the main range of the Alleghanies,
whence he sent back the following memorandum of his requirements:
"Pickaxes, crows, and shovels; likewise more whiskey. Send me the
newspapers, and tell my black to send me a candlestick and half a loaf
of sugar." He was extremely inefficient; and Forbes, out of all patience
with him, wrote confidentially to Bouquet that his only talent was for
throwing everything into confusion. Yet he found fault with everybody
else, and would discharge volleys of oaths at all who met his
disapproval. From this cause or some other, Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen,
of the Virginians, told him that he would break his sword rather than be
longer under his orders. "As I had not sufficient strength," says
Sinclair, "to take him by the neck from among his own men, I was obliged
to let him have his own way, that I might not be the occasion of
bloodshed." He succeeded at last in arresting him, and Major Lewis, of
the same regiment, took his place.
The aid of Indians as scouts and skirmishers was of the last importance
to an army so weak in the arts of woodcraft, and efforts were made to
engage the services of the friendly Cherokees and Catawbas, many of whom
came to the camp, where their caprice, insolence, and rapacity tried to
the utmost the patience of the commanders. That of Sir John Sinclair had
already been overcome by his dealings with the provincial authorities;
and he wrote in good French, at the tail of a letter to the Swiss
colonel: "Adieu, my dear Bouquet. The greatest curse that our Lord can
pronounce against the worst of sinners is to give them business to do
with provincial commissioners and friendly Indians." A band of sixty
warriors told Colonel Burd that they would join the army on condition
that it went by Braddock's road. "This," wrote Forbes, on hearing of the
proposal, "is a new system of military discipline truly, and shows that
my good friend Burd is either made a cat's-foot of himself, or little
knows me if he imagines that sixty scoundrels are to direct me in my
measures."[650] Bouquet, with a pliant tact rarely seen in the born
Briton, took great pains to please these troublesome allies, and went so
far as to adopt one of them as his son.[651] A considerable number
joined the army; but they nearly all went off when the stock of presents
provided for them was exhausted.
[Footnote 650: The above extracts are from the _Bouquet and Haldimand
Papers_, British Museum.]
[Footnote 651: _Bouquet to Forbes, 3 June, 1758._]
Forbes was in total ignorance of the strength and movements of the
enemy. The Indians reported their numbers to be at least equal to his
own; but nothing could be learned from them with certainty, by reason of
their inveterate habit of lying. Several scouting-parties of whites were
therefore sent forward, of which the most successful was that of a young
Virginian officer, accompanied by a sergeant and five Indians. At a
little distance from the French fort, the Indians stopped to paint
themselves and practise incantations. The chief warrior of the party
then took certain charms from an otter-skin bag and tied them about the
necks of the other Indians. On that of the officer he hung the
otter-skin itself; while to the sergeant he gave a small packet of paint
from the same mystic receptacle. "He told us," reports the officer,
"that none of us could be shot, for those things would turn the balls
from us; and then shook hands with us, and told us to go and fight like
men." Thus armed against fate, they mounted the high ground afterwards
called Grant's Hill, where, covered by trees and bushes, they had a good
view of the fort, and saw plainly that the reports of the French force
were greatly exaggerated.[652]
[Footnote 652: _Journal of a Reconnoitring Party, Aug. 1758._ The writer
seems to have been Ensign Chew, of Washington's regiment.]
Meanwhile Bouquet's men pushed on the heavy work of road-making up the
main range of the Alleghanies, and, what proved far worse, the parallel
mountain ridge of Laurel Hill, hewing, digging, blasting, laying
fascines and gabions to support the track along the sides of steep
declivities, or worming their way like moles through the jungle of swamp
and forest. Forbes described the country to Pitt as an "immense
uninhabited wilderness, overgrown everywhere with trees and brushwood,
so that nowhere can one see twenty yards." In truth, as far as eye or
mind could reach, a prodigious forest vegetation spread its impervious
canopy over hill, valley, and plain, and wrapped the stern and awful
waste in the shadows of the tomb.
Having secured his magazines at Raystown, and built a fort there named
Fort Bedford, Bouquet made a forward movement of some forty miles,
crossed the main Alleghany and Laurel Hill, and, taking post on a stream
called Loyalhannon Creek, began another depot of supplies as a base for
the final advance on Fort Duquesne, which was scarcely fifty miles
distant.
Vaudreuil had learned from prisoners the march of Forbes, and, with his
usual egotism, announced to the Colonial Minister what he had done in
consequence. "I have provided for the safety for Fort Duquesne." "I have
sent reinforcements to M. de Ligneris, who commands there." "I have done
the impossible to supply him with provisions, and I am now sending them
in abundance, in order that the troops I may perhaps have occasion to
send to drive off the English may not be delayed." "A stronger fort is
needed on the Ohio; but I cannot build one till after the peace; then I
will take care to build such a one as will thenceforth keep the English
out of that country." Some weeks later he was less confident, and very
anxious for news from Ligneris. He says that he has sent him all the
succors he could, and ordered troops to go to his aid from Niagara,
Detroit, and Illinois, as well as the militia of Detroit, with the
Indians there and elsewhere in the West,--Hurons, Ottawas,
Pottawattamies, Miamis, and other tribes. What he fears is that the
English will not attack the fort till all these Indians have grown tired
of waiting, and have gone home again.[653] This was precisely the
intention of Forbes, and the chief object of his long delays.
[Footnote 653: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, Juillet, Août, Octobre 1758._]
He had another good reason for making no haste. There was hope that the
Delawares and Shawanoes, who lived within easy reach of Fort Duquesne,
and who for the past three years had spread havoc throughout the English
border, might now be won over from the French alliance. Forbes wrote to
Bouquet from Shippensburg: "After many intrigues with Quakers, the
Provincial Commissioners, the Governor, etc., and by the downright
bullying of Sir William Johnson, I hope I have now brought about a
general convention of the Indians."[654] The convention was to include
the Five Nations, the Delawares, the Shawanoes, and other tribes, who
had accepted wampum belts of invitation, and promised to meet the
Governor and Commissioners of the various provinces at the town of
Easton, before the middle of September. This seeming miracle was wrought
by several causes. The Indians in the French interest, always greedy for
presents, had not of late got enough to satisfy them. Many of those
destined for them had been taken on the way from France by British
cruisers, and the rest had passed through the hands of official knaves,
who sold the greater part for their own profit. Again, the goods
supplied by French fur-traders were few and dear; and the Indians
remembered with regret the abundance and comparative cheapness of those
they had from the English before the war. At the same time it was
reported among them that a British army was marching to the Ohio strong
enough to drive out the French from all that country; and the Delawares
and Shawanoes of the West began to waver in their attachment to the
falling cause. The eastern Delawares, living at Wyoming and elsewhere on
the upper Susquehanna, had made their peace with the English in the
summer before; and their great chief, Teedyuscung, thinking it for his
interest that the tribes of the Ohio should follow his example, sent
them wampum belts, inviting them to lay down the hatchet. The Five
Nations, with Johnson at one end of the Confederacy and Joncaire at the
other,--the one cajoling them in behalf of England, and the other in
behalf of France,--were still divided in counsel; but even among the
Senecas, the tribe most under Joncaire's influence, there was a party so
far inclined to England that, like the Delaware chief, they sent wampum
to the Ohio, inviting peace. But the influence most potent in reclaiming
the warriors of the West was of a different kind. Christian Frederic
Post, a member of the Moravian brotherhood, had been sent at the
instance of Forbes as an envoy to the hostile tribes from the Governor
and Council of Pennsylvania. He spoke the Delaware language, knew the
Indians well, had lived among them, had married a converted squaw, and,
by his simplicity of character, directness, and perfect honesty, gained
their full confidence. He now accepted his terrible mission, and calmly
prepared to place himself in the clutches of the tiger. He was a plain
German, upheld by a sense of duty and a single-hearted trust in God;
alone, with no great disciplined organization to impel and support him,
and no visions and illusions such as kindled and sustained the splendid
heroism of the early Jesuit martyrs. Yet his errand was no whit less
perilous. And here we may notice the contrast between the mission
settlements of the Moravians in Pennsylvania and those which the later
Jesuits and the Sulpitians had established at Caughnawaga, St. Francis,
La Présentation, and other places. The Moravians were apostles of peace,
and they succeeded to a surprising degree in weaning their converts from
their ferocious instincts and warlike habits; while the Mission Indians
of Canada retained all their native fierceness, and were systematically
impelled to use their tomahawks against the enemies of the Church. Their
wigwams were hung with scalps, male and female, adult and infant; and
these so-called missions were but nests of baptized savages, who wore
the crucifix instead of the medicine-bag, and were encouraged by the
Government for purposes of war.[655]
[Footnote 654: _Forbes to Bouquet, 18 Aug. 1758._]
[Footnote 655: Of the Hurons of the mission of Lorette, Bougainville
says: "Ils sont toujours sauvages autant que ceux qui sont les moins
apprivoisés." And yet they had been converts under Jesuit control for
more than four generations. The case was no better at the other
missions; and at St Francis it seems to have been worse.]
The Moravian envoy made his way to the Delaware town of Kushkushkee, on
Beaver Creek, northwest of Fort Duquesne, where the three chiefs known
as King Beaver, Shingas, and Delaware George received him kindly, and
conducted him to another town on the same stream. Here his reception was
different. A crowd of warriors, their faces distorted with rage,
surrounded him, brandishing knives and threatening to kill him; but
others took his part, and, order being at last restored, he read them
his message from the Governor, which seemed to please them. They
insisted, however, that he should go with them to Fort Duquesne, in
order that the Indians assembled there might hear it also. Against this
dangerous proposal he protested in vain. On arriving near the fort, the
French demanded that he should be given up to them, and, being refused,
offered a great reward for his scalp; on which his friends advised him
to keep close by the camp-fire, as parties were out with intent to kill
him. "Accordingly," says Post, "I stuck to the fire as if I had been
chained there. On the next day the Indians, with a great many French
officers, came out to hear what I had to say. The officers brought with
them a table, pens, ink, and paper. I spoke in the midst of them with a
free conscience, and perceived by their looks that they were not pleased
with what I said." The substance of his message was an invitation to the
Indians to renew the old chain of friendship, joined with a warning that
an English army was on its way to drive off the French, and that they
would do well to stand neutral.
He addressed an audience filled with an inordinate sense of their own
power and importance, believing themselves greater and braver than
either of the European nations, and yet deeply jealous of both. "We have
heard," they said, "that the French and English mean to kill all the
Indians and divide the land among themselves." And on this string they
harped continually. If they had known their true interest, they would
have made no peace with the English, but would have united as one man to
form a barrier of fire against their farther progress; for the West in
English hands meant farms, villages, cities, the ruin of the forest, the
extermination of the game, and the expulsion of those who lived on it;
while the West in French hands meant but scattered posts of war and
trade, with the native tribes cherished as indispensable allies.
After waiting some days, the three tribes of the Delawares met in
council, and made their answer to the message brought by Post. It was
worthy of a proud and warlike race, and was to the effect that since
their brothers of Pennsylvania wished to renew the old peace-chain, they
on their part were willing to do so, provided that the wampum belt
should be sent them in the name, not of Pennsylvania alone, but of the
rest of the provinces also.
Having now accomplished his errand, Post wished to return home; but the
Indians were seized with an access of distrust, and would not let him
go. This jealousy redoubled when they saw him writing in his notebook.
"It is a troublesome cross and heavy yoke to draw this people," he says;
"they can punish and squeeze a body's heart to the utmost. There came
some together and examined me about what I had wrote yesterday. I told
them I writ what was my duty. 'Brothers, I tell you I am not afraid of
you. I have a good conscience before God and man. I tell you, brothers,
there is a bad spirit in your hearts, which breeds jealousy, and will
keep you ever in fear.'" At last they let him go; and, eluding a party
that lay in wait for his scalp, he journeyed twelve days through the
forest, and reached Fort Augusta with the report of his mission.[656]
[Footnote 656: _Journal of Christian Frederic Post, July, August,
September, 1758._]
As the result of it, a great convention of white men and red was held at
Easton in October. The neighboring provinces had been asked to send
their delegates, and some of them did so; while belts of invitation were
sent to the Indians far and near. Sir William Johnson, for reasons best
known to himself, at first opposed the plan; but was afterwards led to
favor it and to induce tribes under his influence to join in the grand
pacification. The Five Nations, with the smaller tribes lately admitted
into their confederacy, the Delawares of the Susquehanna, the Mohegans,
and several kindred bands, all had their representatives at the meeting.
The conferences lasted nineteen days, with the inevitable formalities of
such occasions, and the weary repetition of conventional metaphors and
long-winded speeches. At length, every difficulty being settled, the
Governor of Pennsylvania, in behalf of all the English, rose with a
wampum belt in his hand, and addressed the tawny congregation thus: "By
this belt we heal your wounds; we remove your grief; we take the hatchet
out of your heads; we make a hole in the earth, and bury it so deep that
nobody can dig it up again." Then, laying the first belt before them, he
took another, very large, made of white wampum beads, in token of peace:
"By this belt we renew all our treaties; we brighten the chain of
friendship; we put fresh earth to the roots of the tree of peace, that
it may bear up against every storm, and live and nourish while the sun
shines and the rivers run." And he gave them the belt with the request
that they would send it to their friends and allies, and invite them to
take hold also of the chain of friendship. Accordingly all present
agreed on a joint message of peace to the tribes of the Ohio.[657]
[Footnote 657: _Minutes of Conferences at Easton, October, 1758._]
Frederic Post, with several white and Indian companions, was chosen to
bear it. A small escort of soldiers that attended him as far as the
Alleghany was cut to pieces on its return by a band of the very warriors
to whom he was carrying his offers of friendship; and other tenants of
the grim and frowning wilderness met the invaders of their domain with
inhospitable greetings. "The wolves made a terrible music this night,"
he writes at his first bivouac after leaving Loyalhannon. When he
reached the Delaware towns his reception was ominous. The young warriors
said: "Anybody can see with half an eye that the English only mean to
cheat us. Let us knock the messengers in the head." Some of them had
attacked an English outpost, and had been repulsed; hence, in the words
of Post, "They were possessed with a murdering spirit, and with bloody
vengeance were thirsty and drunk. I said: 'As God has stopped the mouths
of the lions that they could not devour Daniel, so he will preserve us
from their fury.'" The chiefs and elders were of a different mind from
their fierce and capricious young men. They met during the evening in
the log-house where Post and his party lodged; and here a French officer
presently arrived with a string of wampum from the commandant, inviting
them to help him drive back the army of Forbes. The string was
scornfully rejected. "They kicked it from one to another as if it were a
snake. Captain Peter took a stick, and with it flung the string from one
end of the room to the other, and said: 'Give it to the French captain;
he boasted of his fighting, now let us see him fight. We have often
ventured our lives for him, and got hardly a loaf of bread in return;
and now he thinks we shall jump to serve him.' Then we saw the French
captain mortified to the uttermost. He looked as pale as death. The
Indians discoursed and joked till midnight, and the French captain sent
messengers at midnight to Fort Duquesne."
There was a grand council, at which the French officer was present; and
Post delivered the peace message from the council at Easton, along with
another with which Forbes had charged him. "The messages pleased all the
hearers except the French captain. He shook his head in bitter grief,
and often changed countenance. Isaac Still [_an Indian_] ran him down
with great boldness, and pointed at him, saying, 'There he sits!' They
all said: 'The French always deceived us!' pointing at the French
captain; who, bowing down his head, turned quite pale, and could look no
one in the face. All the Indians began to mock and laugh at him. He
could hold it no longer, and went out."[658]
[Footnote 658: _Journal of Christian Frederic Post, October, November,
1758._]
The overtures of peace were accepted, and the Delawares, Shawanoes, and
Mingoes were no longer enemies of the English. The loss was the more
disheartening to the French, since, some weeks before, they had gained a
success which they hoped would confirm the adhesion of all their
wavering allies. Major Grant, of the Highlanders, had urged Bouquet to
send him to reconnoitre Fort Duquesne, capture prisoners, and strike a
blow that would animate the assailants and discourage the assailed.
Bouquet, forgetting his usual prudence, consented; and Grant set out
from the camp at Loyalhannon with about eight hundred men, Highlanders,
Royal Americans, and provincials. On the fourteenth of September, at two
in the morning, he reached the top of the rising ground thenceforth
called Grant's Hill, half a mile or more from the French fort. The
forest and the darkness of the night hid him completely from the enemy.
He ordered Major Lewis, of the Virginians, to take with him half the
detachment, descend to the open plain before the fort, and attack the
Indians known to be encamped there; after which he was to make a feigned
retreat to the hill, where the rest of the troops were to lie in ambush
and receive the pursuers. Lewis set out on his errand, while Grant
waited anxiously for the result. Dawn was near, and all was silent; till
at length Lewis returned, and incensed his commander by declaring that
his men had lost their way in the dark woods, and fallen into such
confusion that the attempt was impracticable. The morning twilight now
began, but the country was wrapped in thick fog. Grant abandoned his
first plan, and sent a few Highlanders into the cleared ground to burn a
warehouse that had been seen there. He was convinced that the French and
their Indians were too few to attack him, though their numbers in fact
were far greater than his own.[659] Infatuated with this idea, and bent
on taking prisoners, he had the incredible rashness to divide his force
in such a way that the several parts could not support each other.
Lewis, with two hundred men, was sent to guard the baggage two miles in
the rear, where a company of Virginians, under Captain Bullitt, was
already stationed. A hundred Pennsylvanians were posted far off on the
right, towards the Alleghany, while Captain Mackenzie, with a detachment
of Highlanders, was sent to the left, towards the Monongahela. Then, the
fog having cleared a little, Captain Macdonald, with another company of
Highlanders, was ordered into the open plain to reconnoitre the fort and
make a plan of it, Grant himself remaining on the hill with a hundred
of his own regiment and a company of Maryland men. "In order to put on a
good countenance," he says, "and convince our men they had no reason to
be afraid, I gave directions to our drums to beat the reveille. The
troops were in an advantageous post, and I must own I thought we had
nothing to fear." Macdonald was at this time on the plain, midway
between the woods and the fort, and in full sight of it. The roll of the
drums from the hill was answered by a burst of war-whoops, and the
French came swarming out like hornets, many of them in their shirts,
having just leaped from their beds. They all rushed upon Macdonald and
his men, who met them with a volley that checked their advance; on which
they surrounded him at a distance, and tried to cut off his retreat. The
Highlanders broke through, and gained the woods, with the loss of their
commander, who was shot dead. A crowd of French followed close, and soon
put them to rout, driving them and Mackenzie's party back to the hill
where Grant was posted. Here there was a hot fight in the forest,
lasting about three quarters of an hour. At length the force of numbers,
the novelty of the situation, and the appalling yells of the Canadians
and Indians, completely overcame the Highlanders, so intrepid in the
ordinary situations of war. They broke away in a wild and disorderly
retreat. "Fear," says Grant, "got the better of every other passion; and
I trust I shall never again see such a panic among troops."
[Footnote 659: _Grant to Forbes, no date._ "Les rapports sur le nombre
des Français varient de 3,000 à 1,200." _Bouquet à Forbes, 17 Sept.
1758._ Bigot says that 3,500 daily rations were delivered at Fort
Duquesne throughout the summer. _Bigot au Ministre, 22 Nov. 1758._ In
October the number had fallen to 1,180, which included Indians.
_Ligneris à Vaudreuil, 18 Oct. 1758._]
His only hope was in the detachment he had sent to the rear under Lewis
to guard the baggage. But Lewis and his men, when they heard the firing
in front, had left their post and pushed forward to help their comrades,
taking a straight course through the forest; while Grant was retreating
along the path by which he had advanced the night before. Thus they
missed each other; and when Grant reached the spot where he expected to
find Lewis, he saw to his dismay that nobody was there but Captain
Bullitt and his company. He cried in despair that he was a ruined man;
not without reason, for the whole body of French and Indians was upon
him. Such of his men as held together were forced towards the
Alleghany, and, writes Bouquet, "would probably have been cut to pieces
but for Captain Bullitt and his Virginians, who kept up the fight
against the whole French force till two thirds of them were killed."
They were offered quarter, but refused it; and the survivors were driven
at last into the Alleghany, where some were drowned, and others swam
over and escaped. Grant was surrounded and captured, and Lewis, who
presently came up, was also made prisoner, along with some of his men,
after a stiff resistance. Thus ended this mismanaged affair, which cost
the English two hundred and seventy three killed, wounded, and taken.
The rest got back safe to Loyalhannon.[660]
[Footnote 660: On Grant's defeat, _Grant to Forbes, no date_, a long and
minute report, written while a prisoner. _Bouquet à Forbes, 17 Sept.
1758. Forbes to Pitt, 20 Oct. 1758. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 1 Nov. 1758._
Letters from camp in _Boston Evening Post, Boston Weekly Advertiser,
Boston News Letter_, and other provincial newspapers of the time. _List
of Killed, Wounded, and Missing in the Action of Sept. 14. Gentleman's
Magazine_, XXIX. 173. _Hazard's Pennsylvania Register_, VIII. 141.
_Olden Time_, I. 179. Vaudreuil, with characteristic exaggeration,
represents all Grant's party as killed or taken, except a few who died
of starvation. The returns show that 540 came back safe, out of 813.]
The invalid General was deeply touched by this reverse, yet expressed
himself with a moderation that does him honor. He wrote to Bouquet from
Raystown: "Your letter of the seventeenth I read with no less surprise
than concern, as I could not believe that such an attempt would have
been made without my knowledge and concurrence. The breaking in upon our
fair and flattering hopes of success touches me most sensibly. There are
two wounded Highland officers just now arrived, who give so lame an
account of the matter that one can draw nothing from them, only that my
friend Grant most certainly lost his wits, and by his thirst of fame
brought on his own perdition, and ran great risk of ours."[661]
[Footnote 661: _Forbes to Bouquet, 23 Sept. 1758._]
The French pushed their advantage with spirit. Early in October a large
body of them hovered in the woods about the camp at Loyalhannon, drove
back a detachment sent against them, approached under cover of the
trees, and, though beaten off, withdrew deliberately, after burying
their dead and killing great numbers of horses and cattle.[662] But,
with all their courageous energy, their position was desperate. The
militia of Louisiana and the Illinois left the fort in November and went
home; the Indians of Detroit and the Wabash would stay no longer; and,
worse yet, the supplies destined for Fort Duquesne had been destroyed by
Bradstreet at Fort Frontenac. Hence Ligneris was compelled by
prospective starvation to dismiss the greater part of his force, and
await the approach of his enemy with those that remained.
[Footnote 662: _Burd to Bouquet, 12 Oct. 1758. Bouquet à Forbes, 13 Oct.
1758. Forbes to Pitt, 20 Oct. 1758. Letter from Loyalhannon, 14 Oct._,
in _Olden Time_, I. 180. _Letters from camp_, in _Boston News Letter.
Ligneris à Vaudreuil, 18 Oct. 1758. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 20 Nov.
1758._]
His enemy was in a plight hardly better than his own. Autumnal rains,
uncommonly heavy and persistent, had ruined the newly-cut road. On the
mountains the torrents tore it up, and in the valleys the wheels of the
wagons and cannon churned it into soft mud. The horses, overworked and
underfed, were fast breaking down. The forest had little food for them,
and they were forced to drag their own oats and corn, as well as
supplies for the army, through two hundred miles of wilderness. In the
wretched condition of the road this was no longer possible. The
magazines of provisions formed at Raystown and Loyalhannon to support
the army on its forward march were emptied faster than they could be
filled. Early in October the elements relented; the clouds broke, the
sky was bright again, and the sun shone out in splendor on mountains
radiant in the livery of autumn. A gleam of hope revisited the heart of
Forbes. It was but a flattering illusion. The sullen clouds returned,
and a chill, impenetrable veil of mist and rain hid the mountains and
the trees. Dejected Nature wept and would not be comforted. Above,
below, around, all was trickling, oozing, pattering, gushing. In the
miserable encampments the starved horses stood steaming in the rain, and
the men crouched, disgusted, under their dripping tents, while the
drenched picket-guard in the neighboring forest paced dolefully through
black mire and spongy mosses. The rain turned to snow; the descending
flakes clung to the many-colored foliage, or melted from sight in the
trench of half-liquid clay that was called a road. The wheels of the
wagons sank in it to the hub, and to advance or retreat was alike
impossible.
Forbes from his sick bed at Raystown wrote to Bouquet: "Your description
of the road pierces me to the very soul." And a few days later to Pitt:
"I am in the greatest distress, occasioned by rains unusual at this
season, which have rendered the clay roads absolutely impracticable. If
the weather does not favor, I shall be absolutely locked up in the
mountains. I cannot form any judgment how I am to extricate myself as
everything depends on the weather, which snows and rains frightfully."
There was no improvement. In the next week he writes to Bouquet: "These
four days of constant rain have completely ruined the road. The wagons
would cut it up more in an hour than we could repair in a week. I have
written to General Abercromby, but have not had one scrape of a pen from
him since the beginning of September; so it looks as if we were either
forgot or left to our fate."[663] Wasted and tortured by disease, the
perplexed commander was forced to burden himself with a multitude of
details which would else have been neglected, and to do the work of
commissary and quartermaster as well as general. "My time," he writes,
"is disagreeably spent between business and medicine."
[Footnote 663: _Forbes to Bouquet, 15 Oct. 1758. Ibid., 25 Oct. 1758.
Forbes to Pitt, 20 Oct. 1758._]
In the beginning of November he was carried to Loyalhannon, where the
whole army was then gathered. There was a council of officers, and they
resolved to attempt nothing more that season; but, a few days later,
three prisoners were brought in who reported the defenceless condition
of the French, on which Forbes gave orders to advance again. The wagons
and all the artillery, except a few light pieces, were left behind; and
on the eighteenth of November twenty-five hundred picked men marched for
Fort Duquesne, without tents or baggage, and burdened only with
knapsacks and blankets. Washington and Colonel Armstrong, of the
Pennsylvanians, had opened a way for them by cutting a road to within a
day's march of the French fort. On the evening of the twenty-fourth, the
detachment encamped among the hills of Turkey Creek; and the men on
guard heard at midnight a dull and heavy sound booming over the western
woods. Was it a magazine exploded by accident, or were the French
blowing up their works? In the morning the march was resumed, a strong
advance-guard leading the way. Forbes came next, carried in his litter;
and the troops followed in three parallel columns, the Highlanders in
the centre under Montgomery, their colonel, and the Royal Americans and
provincials on the right and left, under Bouquet and Washington.[664]
Thus, guided by the tap of the drum at the head of each column, they
moved slowly through the forest, over damp, fallen leaves, crisp with
frost, beneath an endless entanglement of bare gray twigs that sighed
and moaned in the bleak November wind. It was dusk when they emerged
upon the open plain and saw Fort Duquesne before them, with its
background of wintry hills beyond the Monongahela and the Alleghany.
During the last three miles they had passed the scattered bodies of
those slain two months before at the defeat of Grant; and it is said
that, as they neared the fort, the Highlanders were goaded to fury at
seeing the heads of their slaughtered comrades stuck on poles, round
which the kilts were hung derisively, in imitation of petticoats. Their
rage was vain; the enemy was gone. Only a few Indians lingered about the
place, who reported that the garrison, to the number of four or five
hundred, had retreated, some down the Ohio, some overland towards
Presquisle, and the rest, with their commander, up the Alleghany to
Venango, called by the French, Fort Machault. They had burned the
barracks and storehouses, and blown up the fortifications.
[Footnote 664: _Letter from a British Officer in the Expedition, 25 Feb.
1759, Gentleman's Magazine_, XXIX. 171.]
The first care of the victors was to provide defence and shelter for
those of their number on whom the dangerous task was to fall of keeping
what they had won. A stockade was planted around a cluster of traders'
cabins and soldiers' huts, which Forbes named Pittsburg, in honor of the
great minister. It was not till the next autumn that General Stanwix
built, hard by, the regular fortified work called Fort Pitt.[665]
Captain West, brother of Benjamin West, the painter, led a detachment of
Pennsylvanians, with Indian guides, through the forests of the
Monongahela, to search for the bones of those who had fallen under
Braddock. In the heart of the savage wood they found them in abundance,
gnawed by wolves and foxes, and covered with the dead leaves of four
successive autumns. Major Halket, of Forbes' staff, had joined the
party; and, with the help of an Indian who was in the fight, he
presently found two skeletons lying under a tree. In one of them he
recognized, by a peculiarity of the teeth, the remains of his father,
Sir Peter Halket, and in the other he believed that he saw the bones of
a brother who had fallen at his father's side. The young officer fainted
at the sight. The two skeletons were buried together, covered with a
Highland plaid, and the Pennsylvanian woodsmen fired a volley over the
grave. The rest of the bones were undistinguishable; and, being
carefully gathered up, they were all interred in a deep trench dug in
the freezing ground.[666]
[Footnote 665: _Stanwix to Pitt, 20 Nov. 1759_.]
[Footnote 666: Galt, _Life of Benjamin West_, I. 64 (ed. 1820).]
The work of the new fort was pushed on apace, and the task of holding it
for the winter was assigned to Lieutenant-Colonel Mercer, of the
Virginians, with two hundred provincials. The number was far too small.
It was certain that, unless vigorously prevented by a counter attack,
the French would gather in early spring from all their nearer western
posts, Niagara, Detroit, Presquisle, Le Boeuf, and Venango, to retake
the place; but there was no food for a larger garrison, and the risk
must be run.
The rest of the troops, with steps quickened by hunger, began their
homeward march early in December. "We would soon make M. de Ligneris
shift his quarters at Venango," writes Bouquet just after the fort was
taken, "if we only had provisions; but we are scarcely able to maintain
ourselves a few days here. After God, the success of this expedition is
entirely due to the General, who, by bringing about the treaty with the
Indians at Easton, struck the French a stunning blow, wisely delayed our
advance to wait the effects of that treaty, secured all our posts and
left nothing to chance, and resisted the urgent solicitation to take
Braddock's road, which would have been our destruction. In all his
measures he has shown the greatest prudence, firmness, and
ability."[667] No sooner was his work done, than Forbes fell into a
state of entire prostration, so that for a time he could neither write a
letter nor dictate one. He managed, however, two days after reaching
Fort Duquesne, to send Amherst a brief notice of his success, adding: "I
shall leave this place as soon as I am able to stand; but God knows when
I shall reach Philadelphia, if I ever do."[668] On the way back, a hut
with a chimney was built for him at each stopping-place, and on the
twenty-eighth of December Major Halket writes from "Tomahawk Camp:" "How
great was our disappointment, on coming to this ground last night, to
find that the chimney was unlaid, no fire made, nor any wood cut that
would burn. This distressed the General to the greatest degree, by
obliging him after his long journey to sit above two hours without any
fire, exposed to a snowstorm, which had very near destroyed him
entirely; but with great difficulty, by the assistance of some cordials,
he was brought to."[669] At length, carried all the way in his litter,
he reached Philadelphia, where, after lingering through the winter, he
died in March, and was buried with military honors in the chancel of
Christ Church.
[Footnote 667: _Bouquet to Chief Justice Allen, 15 Nov. 1758._]
[Footnote 668: _Forbes to Amherst, 26 Nov. 1758._]
[Footnote 669: _Halket to Bouquet, 28 Dec. 1758._]
If his achievement was not brilliant, its solid value was above price.
It opened the Great West to English enterprise, took from France half
her savage allies, and relieved the western borders from the scourge of
Indian war. From southern New York to North Carolina, the frontier
populations had cause to bless the memory of the steadfast and
all-enduring soldier.
So ended the campaign of 1758. The centre of the French had held its own
triumphantly at Ticonderoga; but their left had been forced back by the
capture of Louisbourg, and their right by that of Fort Duquesne, while
their entire right wing had been well nigh cut off by the destruction of
Fort Frontenac. The outlook was dark. Their own Indians were turning
against them. "They have struck us," wrote Doreil to the Minister of
War; "they have seized three canoes loaded with furs on Lake Ontario,
and murdered the men in them: sad forerunner of what we have to fear!
Peace, Monseigneur, give us peace! Pardon me, but I cannot repeat that
word too often."
NOTE: The _Bouquet and Haldimand Papers_ in the British Museum contain a
mass of curious correspondence of the principal persons engaged in the
expedition under Forbes; copies of it all are before me. The Public
Record Office, _America and West Indies_, has also furnished much
material, including the official letters of Forbes. The _Writings of
Washington_, the _Archives_ and _Colonial Records_ of Pennsylvania, and
the magazines and newspapers of the time may be mentioned among the
sources of information, along with a variety of miscellaneous
contemporary letters. The Journals of Christian Frederic Post are
printed in full in the _Olden Time_ and elsewhere.