Contrecoeur was almost decided to abandon his position without
striking a blow, and, withdrawing his men, as did his successor, in
1758, leave to the English a bloodless victory. He certainly was
prepared to surrender on terms of honorable capitulation. A solitary
gun was mounted upon a carriage to enable the garrison to evacuate with
the honors of war; it being a point of nice feeling with a defeated
soldier that he should retire with drums beating a national march, his
own colors flying, and a cannon loaded, with a lighted match. This
deprives the proceeding of a compulsory air; and to procure this
gratification, Contrecoeur made his arrangements. The British army was
so overwhelming in strength, so well appointed and disciplined, that he
perhaps deemed any opposition to its advance would be not less fruitless
than the defence of the works. However this may be, he had as yet on
July 7th announced no definite conclusion, though possibly his views
were perceptible enough to his subordinates. On that day it was known
that the enemy, whose numbers were greatly magnified, were at the
head-waters of Turtle Creek. On the 8th, where his route was changed, M.
de Beaujeu, a captain in the regulars, proposed to the commander that he
might be permitted to go forth with a suitable band to prepare an
ambuscade for the English on the banks of the Monongahela, and to
dispute with them the passage of the second ford. If we may believe
tradition, it was with undisguised reluctance that Contrecoeur
complied with this request, and even then, it is said, refused to assign
troops for the enterprise, bidding him call for volunteers as for a
forlorn hope. To that summons the whole garrison responded.
If this tale be true, Contrecoeur recanted his determination, and
wisely preferred making him a regular detachment, conditioned on his
success in obtaining the union of the Indians, who, to the number of
nearly a thousand warriors, were gathered at the place. Accordingly, the
savages were at once called to a council. These people, consisting of
bands assembled from a dozen different nations, listened with
unsuppressed discontent to the overtures of the Frenchman. Seated under
the palisades that environed the fort, or standing in knots about the
speaker, were gathered a motley but a ferocious crew. Alienated from
their ancient friends, here were Delawares from the Susquehanna eager to
speed the fatal stroke, and Shawanoes from Grave Creek and the
Muskingum; scattered warriors of the Six Nations; Ojibwas, Pottawottomis
from the far Michigan; Abenakis and Caughnawagas from Canada; Ottawas
from Lake Superior, led on by the royal Pontiac; and Hurons from the
falls of Montreal and the mission of Lorette, whose barbarous leader
gloried in a name torn from the most famous pages of Christian story.
To these reluctant auditors Beaujeu stated his designs. "How, my
father," said they in reply, "are you so bent upon death that you would
also sacrifice us? With our eight hundred men do you ask us to attack
four thousand English? Truly, this is not the saying of a wise man. But
we will lay up what we have heard, and to-morrow you shall know our
thoughts." On the morning of July 9th the conference was repeated, and
the Indians announced their intention of refusing to join in the
expedition. At this moment a runner--probably one of those dislodged by
Gage in the early dawn--burst in upon the assembly and heralded the
advent of the foe. Well versed in the peculiar characteristics of the
savages, by whom he was much beloved, and full of tact and energy,
Beaujeu took ready advantage of the excitement which these tidings
occasioned. "I," said he, "am determined to go out against the enemy. I
am certain of victory. What! will you suffer your father to depart
alone?" Fired by his language and the reproach it conveyed, they at once
resolved by acclamation to follow him to the fray.
In a moment the scene was alive with frantic enthusiasm. Barrels of
bullets and flints and casks of powder were hastily rolled to the gates:
their heads were knocked out, and every warrior left to supply himself
at his own discretion. Then, painted for war and armed for the combat,
the party moved rapidly away, in numbers nearly nine hundred strong, of
whom six hundred thirty-seven were Indians, one hundred forty-six
Canadians, and seventy-two regular troops. Subordinate to Beaujeu were
MM. Dumas and De Ligneris, both captains in the regular army, four
lieutenants, six ensigns, and twenty cadets. Though his numbers were
thus not so greatly inferior to Braddock's, it is not likely that
Beaujeu calculated on doing more than giving the English a severe check
and perhaps delaying for a few days their advance. It is impossible that
he should have contemplated the complete victory that was before him.
On the evening of July 8th the ground had been carefully reconnoitred
and the proper place for the action selected. The intention was to
dispute as long as possible the passage of the second ford, and then to
fall back upon the ravines. But long ere they reached the scene the
swell of the military music, the crash of falling trees apprised them
that the foe had already crossed the river, and that his pioneers were
advanced into the woodlands. Quickening their pace into a run, they
managed to reach the broken ground just as the van of the English came
in sight. Braddock had turned from the first bottom to the second, and
mounting to its brow was about to pass around the head of the ravines to
avoid the little morass caused by the water-course before described. His
route did not lie parallel with the most dangerous defile, where the
banks are so steep and the cover so perfect, but passed its head at an
angle of about forty-five degrees; thus completely exposing his face and
flanks from a point on the second bottom, at a hundred yards distance,
to another within thirty, where he would turn the ravine. Of course the
farther he advanced the nearer he would approach to its brink, till the
whole should finally be left behind; thus opening a line of two hundred
yards long, at an average distance of sixty, to the enemy's fire. Had he
possessed the least knowledge of these defiles, he would undoubtedly
have secured them in season, since nothing would have been easier than
their occupation by Gage's advanced party. But not a man in his army had
ever dreamed of their existence.
The arrangement of the march from the river's bank had been made as
follows: The engineers and guides and six light-horsemen proceeded
immediately before the advanced detachment under Gage, and the
working-party under St. Clair, who had with them two brass six-pounders
and as many tumbrils or tool-carts. On either flank, parties to the
number of eight were thrown out to guard against surprises. At some
distance behind Gage followed the line, preceded by the light horse,
four squads of whom also acted as extreme flankers at either end of the
column. Next came the seamen, followed by a subaltern with twenty
grenadiers, a twelve-pounder and a company of grenadiers. Then the
vanguard succeeded, and the wagon and artillery train, which began and
ended with a twelve-pounder: and the rear-guard closed the whole.
Numerous flanking-parties, however, protected each other; and six
subalterns, each with twenty grenadiers, and ten sergeants, with ten
men each, were detached for this purpose.
The greater part of Gage's command was actually advanced beyond the spot
where the main battle was fought, and was just surmounting the second
bottom, when Mr. Gordon, one of the engineers who were in front marking
out the road, perceived the enemy bounding forward. Before them, with
long leaps, came Beaujeu, the gayly colored fringes of his hunting-shirt
and the silver gorget on his bosom at once bespeaking the chief.
Comprehending in a glance the position he had attained, he suddenly
halted and waved his hat above his head. At this preconcerted signal the
savages dispersed to the right and left, throwing themselves flat upon
the ground, and gliding behind rocks or trees or into the ravines. Had
the earth yawned beneath their feet and reclosed above their heads, they
could not have more instantaneously vanished. The French--some of whom,
according to Garneau, were mounted--held the centre of the semicircular
disposition so instantly assumed; and a tremendous fire was at once
opened on the English. For a moment Gage's troops paused aghast at the
furious yells and strangeness of the onset. Rallying immediately, he
returned their fire, and halted a moment till St. Clair's working-party
came up; when he bade his men advance at once upon the centre of the
concentric line. As he drew near he was again greeted with a staggering
discharge, and again his ranks were shaken. Then in return, they opened
a fire of grape and musketry so tremendous as to sweep down every
unsheltered foe who was upon his feet, and to utterly fright the savages
from their propriety. Beaujeu and a dozen more fell dead upon the spot,
and the Indians already began to fly, their courage being unable to
endure the unwonted tumult of such a portentous detonation.
But reanimated by the clamorous exhortations of Dumas and De Ligneris,
and observing that the regulars and militia still preserved a firm
front, they returned once more to their posts and resumed the combat.
For a time the issue seemed doubtful, and the loud cries of "_Vive le
Roi!_" of the French were met by the charging cheers of the English. But
precision of aim soon began to prevail over mere mechanical discipline.
In vain the Forty-fourth continued their fire; in vain their officers,
with waving swords, led them to the charge; hidden beneath great trees
or concealed below the level of the earth, the muzzles of their pieces
resting on the brink of the ravine, and shooting with a secure and
steady aim, the majority of the enemy rested secure and invisible to
their gallant foemen.
In the mean time Braddock, whose extreme rear had not yet left the
river's bank, hearing the uproar in advance, ordered Burton to press
forward with the vanguard, and the rest of the line to halt; thus
leaving Halket with four hundred men to protect the baggage while eight
hundred engaged the enemy. But just as Burton, under a galling fire, was
forming his troops upon the ground, Gage's party gave way and
precipitately endeavored to fall into his rear; confusing men who were
confused before. The manoeuvre was unsuccessfully executed, and the
two regiments became inextricably commingled. Vainly Braddock strove to
separate the soldiers, huddling together like frightened sheep. Vainly
the regimental colors were advanced on opposite directions as
rallying-points.
"_Ut conspicuum in proelio
Haberent signum quod sequerentur milites._"
The officers sought to collect their men together and lead them on in
platoons. Nothing could avail. On every hand the officers, distinguished
by their horses and their uniforms, were the constant mark of hostile
rifles; and it was soon as impossible to find men to give orders as it
was to have them obeyed. In a narrow road twelve feet wide, shut up on
either side and overpent by the primeval forest, were crowded together
the panic-stricken wretches, hastily loading and reloading, and blindly
discharging their guns in the air, as though they suspected their
mysterious murderers were sheltered in the boughs above their heads;
while all around, removed from sight, but making day hideous with their
war-whoops and savage cries, lay ensconced a host insatiate for blood.
Foaming with rage and indignation, Braddock flew from rank to rank, with
his own hands endeavoring to force his men into position. Four horses
were shot under him, but mounting a fifth he still strained every nerve
to retrieve the ebbing fortunes of the day. His subordinates gallantly
seconded his endeavors, throwing themselves from the saddle and
advancing by platoons, in the idle hope that their men would follow; but
only to rush upon their fate. The regular soldiery, deprived of their
immediate commanders and terrified at the incessant fall of their
comrades, could not be brought to the charge, while the provincials,
better skilled, sought in vain to cover themselves and to meet the foe
upon equal terms; for to the urgent entreaties of Washington and Sir
Peter Halket, that the men might be permitted to leave the ranks and
shelter themselves, the general turned a deaf ear. Wherever he saw a man
skulking behind a tree, he flew at once to the spot and, with curses on
his cowardice and blows with the flat of his sword, drove him back into
the open road.
Wherever the distracted artillerymen saw a smoke arise, thither did they
direct their aim; and many of the flankers who had succeeded in
obtaining the only position where they could be of any service, were
thus shot down. Athwart the brow of the hill lay a large log, five feet
in diameter, which Captain Waggoner, of the Virginia Levies, resolved to
take possession of. With shouldered firelocks he marched a party of
eighty men to the spot, losing but three on the way; and at once
throwing themselves behind it, the remainder opened a hot fire upon the
enemy. But no sooner were the flash and the report of their pieces
perceived by the mob behind, than a general discharge was poured upon
the little band, by which fifty were slain outright and the rest
constrained to fly.
By this time the afternoon was well advanced and the whole English line
surrounded. The ammunition began to fail and the artillery to flag; the
baggage was warmly attacked; and a runner was despatched to the fort
with the tidings that by set of sun not an Englishman would be left
alive upon the ground. Still, gathering counsel from despair, Braddock
disdained to yield; still, strong in this point only of their
discipline, his soldiers died by his side, palsied with fear, yet
without one thought of craven flight. At last, when every aide but
Washington was struck down; when the lives of the vast majority of the
officers had been sacrificed with a reckless intrepidity, a sublime
self-devotion, that surpasses the power of language to express; when
scarce a third part of the whole army remained unscathed, and these
incapable of aught save remaining to die or till the word to retire was
given--at last, Braddock abandoned all hope of victory, and, with a mien
undaunted as in his proudest hour, ordered the drums to sound a retreat.
The instant their faces were turned, the poor regulars lost every trace
of the sustaining power of custom; and the retreat became a headlong
flight. "Despite of all the efforts of the officers to the contrary,
they ran," says Washington, "as sheep pursued by dogs, and it was
impossible to rally them."
Beneath a large tree standing between the heads of the northernmost
ravines, and while in the act of giving an order, Braddock received a
mortal wound; the ball passing through his right arm into the lungs.
Falling from his horse, he lay helpless on the ground, surrounded by the
dead, abandoned by the living. Not one of his transatlantic soldiery
"who had served with the Duke" could be prevailed upon to stay his
headlong flight and aid to bear his general from the field. Orme thought
to tempt them with a purse containing sixty guineas; but in such a
moment even gold could not prevail upon a vulgar soul, and they rushed
unheeding on. Disgusted at such pusillanimity, and his heart big with
despair, Braddock refused to be removed, and bade the faithful friends
who lingered by his side to provide for their own safety. He declared
his resolution of leaving his own body on the field; the scene that had
witnessed his dishonor he desired should bury his shame. With manly
affection, Orme disregarded his injunctions; and Captain Stewart, of
Virginia, the commander of the light-horse which were attached to the
general's person, with another American officer, hastening to Orme's
relief, his body was placed first in a tumbrel, and afterward upon a
fresh horse, and thus borne away. Stewart seems to have cherished a
sense of duty or of friendship toward his chief that did not permit him
to desert him for a moment while life remained.
It was about five o'clock in the afternoon when the English abandoned
the field. Pursued to the water's edge by about fifty savages the
regular troops cast from them guns, accoutrements, and even clothing,
that they might run the faster. Many were overtaken and tomahawked here;
but where they had once crossed the river, they were not followed. Soon
turning from the chase, the glutted warriors made haste to their
unhallowed and unparalleled harvest of scalps and plunder. The
provincials, better acquainted with Indian warfare, were less
disconcerted; and though their losses were as heavy, their behavior was
more composed. In full possession of his courage and military instincts,
Braddock still essayed to procure an orderly and soldier-like retreat;
but the demoralization of the army now rendered this impossible. With
infinite difficulty, a hundred men, after running about half a mile,
were persuaded to stop at a favorable spot where Braddock proposed to
remain until Dunbar should arrive, to whose camp Washington was sent
with suitable orders. It will thus be seen how far was his indomitable
soul from succumbing in the discharge of his duties, beneath the
unexpected burthen that had been laid upon him. By his directions Burton
posted sentries here, and endeavored to form a nucleus around which to
gather the shattered remains of the troops, and where the wounded might
be provided for.
But all was idle. In an hour's time almost every soldier had stolen
away, leaving their officers deserted. These, making the best of their
way off, were joined beyond the other ford by Gage, who had rallied some
eighty men; and this was all that remained of that gallant army which
scarce six hours before was by friend and foe alike deemed invincible.
With little interruption the march was continued through that night and
the ensuing day, till at 10 P.M. on July 10th they came to Gist's
plantation; where early on the 11th some wagons and hospital stores
arrived from Dunbar for their relief. Despite the intensity of his
agonies, Braddock still persisted in the exercise of his authority and
the fulfilment of his duties. From Gist's he detailed a party to return
toward the Monongahela with a supply of provisions to be left on the
road for the benefit of stragglers yet behind, and Dunbar was commanded
to send to him the only two remaining old companies of the Forty-fourth
and Forty-eighth, with more wagons to bring off the wounded; and on
Friday, July 11th, he arrived at Dunbar's camp. Through this and all the
preceding day men half famished, without arms and bewildered with
terror, had been joining Dunbar; his camp was in the utmost confusion,
and his soldiers were deserting without ceremony.
Braddock's strength was now fast ebbing away. Informed of the
disorganized condition of the remaining troops, he abandoned all hope of
a prosperous termination to the expedition. He saw that not only death,
but utter defeat, was inevitable. But conscious of the odium the latter
event would excite, he nobly resolved that the sole responsibility of
the measure should rest with himself, and consulted with no one upon the
steps he pursued. He merely issued his orders, and insisted that they
were obeyed. Thus, after destroying the stores to prevent their falling
into the hands of the enemy--of whose pursuit he did not doubt--the
march was to be resumed on Saturday, July 12th, toward Will's Creek.
Ill-judged as these orders were, they met with but too ready
acquiescence at the hands of Dunbar, whose advice was neither asked nor
tendered on the occasion. Thus the great mass of those stores which had
been so painfully brought thither were destroyed. Of the artillery but
two six-pounders were preserved; the cohorns were broken or buried, and
the shells bursted. One hundred fifty wagons were burned; the
powder-casks were staved in, and their contents, to the amount of fifty
thousand pounds, cast into a spring; and the provisions were scattered
abroad upon the ground or thrown into the water. Nothing was saved
beyond the actual necessities for a flying march; and when a party of
the enemy some time afterward visited the scene, they completed the work
of destruction. For this service--the only instance of alacrity that he
displayed in the campaign--Dunbar must not be forgiven. It is not
perfectly clear that Braddock intelligently ever gave the orders; but in
any case they were not fit for a British officer to give or to obey.
Dunbar's duty was to have maintained here his position, or at the least
not to have contemplated falling back beyond Will's Creek. That he had
not horses to remove his stores was, however, his after-excuse.
It was not until Sunday, July 13th, that all this was finished; and the
army with its dying general proceeded to the Great Meadows, where the
close was to transpire:
"Last scene of all,
That ends this strange, eventful history."
Ever since the retreat commenced Braddock had preserved a steadfast
silence, unbroken save when he issued the necessary commands. That his
wound was mortal he knew; but he also knew that his fame had received a
not less fatal stab; that his military reputation, dearer than his own
life to a veteran or those of a thousand others, was gone forever. These
reflections embittered his dying hours; nor were there any means at hand
of diverting the current of his thoughts or ministering to the comfort
of his body; even the chaplain of the army was among the wounded. He
pronounced the warmest eulogiums upon the conduct of his officers--who,
indeed, had merited all he could say of them--and seems to have
entertained some compunctions at not having more scrupulously followed
the advice of Washington, or perhaps at the loss of power to provide for
that young soldier's interests as thoroughly as he would have done had
he returned victorious.
At all events, we find him singling out his Virginia aide as his
nuncupative legatee, bequeathing to him his favorite charger and his
body-servant Bishop, so well known in after-years as the faithful
attendant of the patriot chief. The only allusion he made to the fate of
the battle was to softly repeat once or twice to himself, "Who would
have thought it?" Turning to Orme, "We shall better know how to deal
with them another time," were his parting words. A few moments later and
he breathed his last. Thus at about eight on the night of Sunday, July
13th, honorably died a brave old soldier, who, if wanting in temper and
discretion, was certainly, according to the standard of the school in
which he had been educated, an accomplished officer; and whose courage
and honesty are not to be discussed. The uttermost penalty that humanity
could exact he paid for his errors; and if his misfortune brought death
and woe upon his country, it was through no shrinking on his part from
what he conceived to be his duty. He shared the lot of the humblest man
who fell by his side.
So terminated the bloody battle of the Monongahela; a scene of carnage
which has been truly described as unexampled in the annals of modern
warfare. Of the 1460 souls, officers and privates, who went into the
combat, 456 were slain outright and 421 were wounded; making a total of
877 men. Of 89 commissioned officers, 63 were killed or wounded; not a
solitary field-officer escaping unhurt.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
"FORT CUMBERLAND, 18 July, 1755.
"_To Governor Dinwiddie_:
"HONBL. SIR--As I am favored with an opportunity, I should think myself
inexcusable was I to omit giving you some account of our late
Engagement with the French on the Monongahela, the 9th instant.