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.
[Illustration: GENERAL EDWARD BRADDOCK]
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
[Illustration:
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
[Illustration: WASHINGTON AND MARY PHILIPSE]
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