The Captains and lieutenants were able to restore a confused line, but it was for a few minutes only. Bulking above the heads of the crouching troops, the mounted leaders were ideal targets for the invisible marksmen. Down the officers tumbled from their steeds, dead or wounded. Most of those who escaped with their lives lost their horses. Colonel Gage kept his saddle, but he found few subordinates to help him rally men who had no idea how to fight an enemy they could not see. Now Sir John St. Clair rode up to ascertain what was happening—and got the information in the form of a bullet through his body.
In rear of what had been the right flank the fire was heavier every minute. With front and both flanks thus enveloped, the British were within a half-moon of yelling adversaries. Suddenly the rumor spread that the French and Indians were attacking the baggage train. Stunned men under triple fire from an unseen foe did not stop to ask whether the rumor had probability. They concluded instantly that if the enemy was closing on their rear, they soon would be surrounded, scalped, massacred. With one impulse, Gage’s men ran eastward, carried St. Clair’s workers along, abandoned the two six-pounders—and stumbled into the uncertain files of Burton’s vanguard which had been advancing to their support up the twelve-foot road. The situation was completely beyond the control of the few officers who remained on horseback.
Now Braddock rode up, attended by George. The General had waited only a few minutes at the point where he had halted the column. Then he had started for the front. At first he was half paralyzed by the indescribable confusion and the unfamiliar ground. Braddock could not decide, on the instant, what to do or how to do it. While he hesitated, St. Clair made his way through the press of men and called to the General for God’s sake to take the northern hill in order to keep the army from being surrounded. Before the Quartermaster could say more, he lost consciousness because of his wound.
Capt. Thomas Waggener, a veteran of Fort Necessity, had kept his men together and now undertook to lead them up the hill to the trunk of a great fallen tree that he thought he could use as a parapet. He succeeded in getting there with the loss of three men only, but to his amazement he found himself subjected to the fire of British who mistook his company for French. Some of the regular officers concluded that he and his soldiers were attempting to run away, and they discouraged those who were willing to reenforce him. In getting back under fire, the Captain lost all except thirty of his men.
Braddock at last realized that the hill must be wrested from the savages and that the two six-pounders must be recaptured. He sent George off to find officers and tell them to organize one party of 150 to charge up the hill and another party of like size to recover the cannon. George managed to stay in his saddle despite his weakness. During the action, he had two horses shot under him, but he found another and skillfully made his way through the woods. His tall figure was a mark for hidden riflemen. One of them sent a bullet through his hat; another bullet, a third, and still another slit his uniform with hot lead.
Braddock again and again undertook to rally the men, to form a line and lead them against the hidden enemy and the high ground north of the road. Nothing could be done. The survivors would not budge. At last, in desperation, he decided to withdraw to the right and east in order to cover his wagons. The General did not proceed far with this. Already five bullets had struck the horses he had ridden; now it was his turn. A missile crashed through his right arm and penetrated his lungs. After he was placed on the ground he remained conscious, but of course, could not direct the withdrawal to the wagons.
The situation was desperate but not altogether hopeless. Two hundred men were held together by uninjured commanders and by officers returning from the surgeons with bandaged wounds. These troops, keeping their heads, still were able to hold the enemy at a distance, though they were deaf to every order to mount the eminence or to rush out and put the six-pounders into action.
Those officers who had received the order to withdraw to the wagons undertook to do so and carry their commands with them. They were powerless. The men in the road stayed where they were and continued their blind fire. Orders no longer meant anything. Hopelessly the men continued to ram home their charges and to level their pieces aimlessly. Ammunition was almost exhausted; few officers remained on their feet; the cannon were deserted; the rain of bullets from hidden marksmen did not cease or even diminish. That same paralyzing, fiendish whoop of the savages rang through woods carpeted with dead and dying men. Frightened soldiers plunged past comrades of stouter heart and gave themselves to mad panic. Many of the troops threw away arms, even parts of their clothing, to speed their flight down to the river. Soon the straggling men were choking the passageway that led to the crossing.
When all hope of rallying the soldiers on the right bank was gone, George’s first duty was to get the wounded General safely across the river. Washington found a little cart that had not lost its team and into this put Braddock, who still was master of himself. In the company of the best of the troops, Washington then descended to the bank and, under fire, conveyed the hard-breathing commander over the ford. Had George looked back while he was crossing, he would have seen some battle-maddened Indians plunge into the water and kill exhausted fugitives there. Otherwise, there was no immediate pursuit. Most of the savages remained on the battlefield to plunder the wagons, rob the dead, and scalp the wounded and the slain. If the savages had not stopped to pillage, they might have confronted the survivors from the right bank at the upper ford. Had the French and their allies done that, then all the British who had escaped from the battleground might have been starved or slaughtered.
With Burton and Orme, George now shared the task of trying to restore order among the survivors. High ground was chosen, about a quarter of a mile from the river and some two hundred yards from the road—a position strong enough to be held till Colonel Dunbar came up. Burton made an appeal to the soldiers and prevailed upon the least shaken of them to serve as outposts. Braddock observed this, approved it, and directed George to ride farther back along the line of the morning advance and rally the men who had fled in that direction.
Obediently, George turned his horse’s head. Beyond the upper ford, he found Lieutenant Colonel Gage. How the commander of the advance party got that far to the rear, George did not ascertain. Gage had with him eighty men, whom he apparently had rallied and now had under some discipline. George, about sundown, recrossed the upper ford to return to Braddock. On the way back to the hill the officers had agreed to make their stronghold, George met a grim cavalcade—Braddock and such of the troops as had held to their duty after the first panic was overcome. The other soldiers had slipped away from the eminence and were trying to put more distance between them and the enemy.
Nothing remained except to retreat as quickly as possible without further loss. Colonel Dunbar was supposed to be at no great distance; he could cover the retreat and could forward provisions and liquor to the hungry and exhausted men. For sending orders to Dunbar, Braddock looked once more to young Washington. Having been on horseback for more than twelve mad hours of incredible strain, George had to set out again. He did, though he had to muster all his moral courage to undertake it.
It seemed impossible for any human being to keep his saddle after twenty-four hours and more of riding, fighting, and witnessing the horrors of the battlefield. George gripped his saddle with exhausted knees and held fast to his bridle-rein. The resolution that had carried him through the snow-covered wilderness and over the floating ice of the Allegheny did not fail him now. Late in the morning of July 10, George’s horse staggered into the area of Dunbar’s wagons, near “Rock Fort” seven miles northwest of Great Meadows, the Virginian so fatigued and overwrought that he scarcely was able to discharge his mission.
Rumor of bad news had spread through the camp after nine o’clock that day. The whisper was that Braddock’s force had been wiped out. About noon, Colonel Dunbar lost his head and ordered the drummers to beat “To arms.” Instead of bringing the men to their places, t
his spread panic among cowardly soldiers and teamsters. Some of them broke for the rear as if the enemy were about to open fire. The impulse to retreat gripped even officers. Fortunately, Dunbar recovered sufficient self-command to resolve to hold his position at least for the next night. The wagons for which George brought orders were hitched, loaded with supplies, and sent forward.
George did not go with the convoy; his powerful will could not drive his exhausted body any longer. He had to remain at Dunbar’s to rest, but, when he awakened on the morning of the eleventh, he found new anxiety in the confusion of the camp and in the virtual disappearance of all discipline. Demoralization was so general that Dunbar probably deserved credit for being able to comply with a further order from Braddock to send to him additional wagons and two companies of infantry.
In the evening, Braddock and the main body of wounded and unhurt survivors arrived at Dunbar’s Camp. The General had been transferred from the cart to a hand-litter and, when soldiers refused to carry him, he had been forced about 3 P.M. on the tenth to mount a horse. How he endured the agony of his wound on the long ride none could understand; but he retained consciousness and undertook to give orders. He directed that available teams be assigned for the wounded, the two six-pounder cannon that had been left with Dunbar, and such indispensable provisions as could be conveyed by the remaining animals. Everything else was to be destroyed. Then the crippled army was to be removed farther from the victorious enemy.
Braddock had not been talkative at any time after he left the Monongahela, but his orders and his few remarks indicated that he had suffered no loss of memory through shock and that he knew what was happening around him. “Who would have thought it?” he asked, in reference to the defeat. Now, after he had traversed approximately one mile of the road between Rock Fort and Great Meadows, he received an inquiry from Dunbar concerning some doubtful question. This seemed to make Braddock realize that he should not attempt to direct the retreat. He called Dunbar to him and in a few words turned over the command to the Colonel. About two miles west of Great Meadows, Braddock called a halt. To Orme, Braddock gave new instructions: he must acquaint Keppel promptly with what had happened, and must tell him that “nothing could equal the gallantry and good conduct of the officers nor the bad behavior of the men.” In that pride of his corps and with that shame of his troops, the General died about 9 P.M. on July 13.
George was charged with the burial of the defeated General. George had by no means recovered from his own strain but he had strength enough to perform the last services for a man who had admired him and had given him coveted opportunity. On the morning of the fourteenth, he selected a place in the road near the head of the column and there had a squad dig a short, deep trench. He chose that spot because the French Indians might hear of the death of Braddock and seek to find the grave in order that they might disinter and maltreat the body. When the ground was ready, George had the General’s corpse brought forward with such honors of war as the condition of the troops permitted. Then, when the column began to move eastward again, he had all the wagons pass over the grave and all the footmen tramp the earth down, so that no mark of the burial should remain. The device was successful. French and Indians learned that Braddock had expired but they did not find his grave.
On the brief remainder of the march to Fort Cumberland, George’s particular care was for the comfort of his fellow staff-officers, Morris and Orme, and of their traveling-companion, Colonel Burton. All three were on horse-litters, and by the morning of the sixteenth, they were safe at the fort. The wounded who reached Wills Creek numbered twenty-three officers and 364 men. The final list of casualties was to show sixty-three officers and 914 men killed or wounded, a total of 977 in a force of 1459. Virginians had sustained losses that almost destroyed the three participating companies.
These Virginia casualties became the more serious in the face of what George heard of plans. He knew by mid-July that Dunbar intended to leave Fort Cumberland and proceed to Philadelphia. This meant, as George wrote Dinwiddie, “there will be no men left here unless it is the poor remains of the Virginia troops who survive and will be too small to guard our frontiers.” More than that Washington did not say concerning Dunbar’s decision, which was based on the belief that the situation was hopeless.
On the death of Braddock, George’s appointment as a volunteer aide had come to an end. He still was willing to work to redeem the disaster, but he felt that as the army had been “drove in thus far”—to Wills Creek—he was at liberty to go home when his strength permitted. By the twenty-second, he was able to undertake the journey. On July 26 he had the joy of drawing rein on his own lawn.
All the way back to Fort Cumberland and to Mount Vernon George heard the complaints of soldiers who felt they had been led into the wilderness to be slaughtered. Officers who survived the battle had praise for their corps and contempt for the alleged cowardice of the ranks. Criticism from other sources now became audible. George began to discover what Colonial Governors and public men thought of the campaign, and for months afterward he read comment on a defeat so overwhelming that it stunned the strongest. There was no disposition to take one inclusive view in England and another in America. Different men emphasized different mistakes of strategy and tactics, but geography did not shape the critique except in two particulars. One of these concerned blame of the Colonials for failing to furnish a sufficient number of horses and wagons; the other had to do with the superior attitude most of the British officers assumed in dealing with the Colonials.
The most general complaint was of Braddock’s overconfidence in an unfamiliar country where warfare was different in almost every way from that for which he had been trained. Nearly everyone agreed that Braddock should have heeded the warnings of the Colonial officers. They told him, as plainly as they dared, that stand-up fighting and line fire would not avail in a heavily wooded country, where the men scattered and hid themselves while firing from shelter. Instead of changing his tactics, “General Braddock,” as Adam Stephen said in accurate epitome, “unhappily placed his confidence and the whole dependence on the Regiments.”
Doubtless to his last hour, Braddock believed that the failure to provide promptly the wagons, horses, flour and meat needed for the expedition denied him an early start that would have assured easy capture of Fort DuQuesne. Governor Dinwiddie was of the same mind, though he blamed Braddock, not the Colonies, for the delay. That the teams and the supplies were not placed at the disposal of Braddock when he expected them, none could deny; but so far as the Colonial governments were responsible, the reason was inexperience, not rascality. Had the Governors been informed accurately of what they could do, through contractors above the average in honesty, Braddock would have known what was practicable and what was not. It does not follow that he would have been sufficiently wise to use his wagons to establish a series of advance bases to one of which he might have withdrawn, after a disaster, without having to abandon the entire country west of the Allegheny Mountains. In war, good transportation never was a satisfactory substitute for good sense.
This, too, must be remembered: Vexatious as was the delayed arrival of the wagons, the nature of the country was such that, regardless of supplies, advance was not possible until the roads had been dried by the sun of May. Braddock at Fort Cumberland consequently did not have to chafe in idleness crying for more vehicles much more than a fortnight longer than he would have had to wait, in the best of conditions, for General Mud to retreat. Moreover, if the French figures of their own strength are correct Braddock stood on the defensive with something over 1400 men, speaking one language, to receive the attack of not more than 900 French, Canadians and Indians, a majority of whom could not communicate with one another. Delay did not give Braddock inferiority of force on the day of battle.
On the day of battle, what Braddock lacked primarily, in approaching the field, was not more wagons but more Indians. It is easy to exaggerate this failure of Braddock. Had he been diplomatic inste
ad of blunt, skillful instead of inept, he scarcely could have been expected to overcome the advantage the French had gained before he reached America. Everything indicated that the defeat of Washington at Fort Necessity in 1754 led the Shawnees and the Mingoes to conclude that the French would win the war. Even those tribes of the Six Nations that had long and friendly ties with England found it prudent to remain neutral if not openly to espouse the cause of Britain’s adversary. Braddock’s country thus had lost temporarily the support of the Indians before he so much as had a chance to woo them. He needed allies in order to win a victory; he could not hope to regain the allies until he had won the victory. It was an impossible situation.
Braddock was entirely ignorant of the type of combat that prevailed in America. What was worse, he was not a man to learn. He lacked all originality of mind and exemplified the system that produced and schooled him, a system traditional, methodical and inflexible. A man of his training was not apt to fail to do everything the regulations and the accepted tactics prescribed. It was still less likely he would do anything more. Braddock believed that the tactics in which he had been drilled for forty years were close to perfection; but he did not even apply well the tactics in which he and his troops were trained. He was inexcusably careless in not making certain that Gage had reconnoitred thoroughly before proceeding towards Fort DuQuesne from the lower ford. The result contains a warning to every soldier: Great dangers often are rendered small by vigilance; lesser dangers always are enlarged by negligence.
On either side of Braddock’s advanced parties, at the time Gage met the enemy, there chanced to be ravines sufficiently deep to serve as natural trenches for the French and Indians. These ravines were close enough to afford the enemy a perfect field of fire against the head and flanks of the British column. Braddock’s guides and engineers had not discovered them or else, finding them empty, had disregarded them. Once the French and their savage allies had occupied the gulleys without being observed, the question was whether the British would charge and clear the ground. If they did not, the only other question was that of the slaughter the British would endure before they broke and ran.
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