Soon Washington was too busy, and too ill, to write to Sally or anyone else. Early in June, Braddock’s force at last lumbered forward, moving from Will’s Creek into the dark, labyrinthian forests, initially plunging ahead on the road built by the Ohio Company, then clattering along the primitive thoroughfare that Washington’s little army had constructed the year before. The pace, however, was agonizingly slow, less than two miles each day. At this rate it would be autumn before Braddock reached his objective, and another ten to twelve weeks of supplying and maintaining an army in the midst of a primeval wilderness was not to his liking. To hasten the trek he sent much of the baggage to the rear and divided the army, sending ahead a force of twelve hundred men and all his artillery. Almost every historian who has studied this fateful campaign has suggested that Braddock acted on Washington’s counsel. That the young Virginian offered such advice is beyond dispute, but so in all likelihood, did a council of war that Braddock summoned at about the same time. Inasmuch as several British officers favored such a tactic, Braddock surely would have been more swayed by their ideas than by those of a twenty-three-year-old provincial who had suffered defeat in his only military campaign. At any rate, General Braddock took that unpropitious step on June 18. By then young Washington had fallen sick, complaining of a high fever and a splitting headache. For five days thereafter he struggled on with the column, though by the last day he was delirious at times and forced to travel in a wagon rather than on horseback. Fearing for the young man’s life, Braddock finally ordered him to the rear for rest and medical treatment.12
Washington remained behind at the British supply camp at George’s Creek for a week, quite ill at first, then too weak and depleted to do much of anything but lie in anguishing idleness. His servant cared for him during the initial period of the illness, then he too fell victim to the malady and Washington was compelled to hire a nurse. But the young Virginian wanted to be with the vanguard of the army, and late in June he hitched a ride to the front; he got as far as the Youghiogheny before an army physician examined him and refused to permit him to go any further. He languished there for five more days, fretting that he might be absent when the army reached the forks of the Ohio. All signs pointed to July 10, perhaps a day earlier even, as the date by which Braddock’s men at last would gaze upon Fort Duquesne. Washington wanted to be there when the French fortress was taken. Early in July he set out again, departing in another wagon on the slow, agonizing ride to rejoin the army. He caught up with Braddock on July 8. The army was camped just east of the Monongahela, about twelve miles from the Ohio. The mood at headquarters was buoyant. Despite their tortuously slow progress—some days the army had advanced no more than half a mile—the expedition had moved along rather safely, losing less than a dozen men to isolated Indian ambushes. On the day that Washington returned, the army had passed through a long, narrow valley, an excellent site for an attack. But nothing had happened, and now that only one more day’s march would bring them to the French bastion few any longer expected to meet stiff resistance en route. Many, in fact, did not even believe the French would defend Fort Duquesne. Washington was one of those who anticipated nothing more than a “trifling” resistance. Rather than divide their army, he conjectured that the French would transfer most of their troops to Canada, their most prized American possession.13
Braddock got his army up at 2:00 in the morning on July 9, sending Colonel Gage out with an advance party to secure the elevated points where the army would ford the Monongahela. A work party followed, its task to slope the river banks so the artillery and the wagons could make it across. Three hours later the entire force was on the move. Washington, still weak, came too, riding a horse for the first time in three weeks, though he had to strap pillows atop his saddle to ease his discomfort.14
By mid-morning Braddock’s army stretched out for almost a mile through the wilderness, a force of some 1300 men and officers, augmented by about 200 wagoners, sutlers, and batmen, as well as by nearly 50 wives and mistresses of the soldiers. Gage’s advance party consisted of almost 600 men. Scouts and guides, mostly Indians, were in the lead, followed closely by a van of approximately 20 men; 50 yards further back came the main body of this contingent, a complement that included the elite of Braddock’s army, and it in turn was followed by the work party, several artillery pieces, and a few supply wagons. This gangling force extended over 600 yards, all of it guarded on the flanks by small squads totaling nearly 200 men. One hundred yards or so behind the rear of the advance party came the main body of the army. A unit of light horse headed this contingent, followed closely by British sailors on loan to Braddock, and by “pioneers,” colonials whose job was road building. After another interval of almost 100 yards came the general and his staff, riding in front of nearly 500 men, almost all of them British regulars. This phalanx also extended over several hundred yards. Finally, a small rear guard completed this cumbrous legion, a long line of soldiery that crunched and rattled and clanged through the splendid woods.15
Throughout the morning all went well. The advance party crossed the river without incident, and the main body followed an hour or so later, likewise experiencing no difficulty. Two hours later the lead party was about a mile beyond the Monongahela. It had been a long day already; the men were hot and tired; and many were hungry as well, since no one had eaten during the past nine hours. Still, spirits were high. Word had filtered through the ranks that Braddock had scheduled an end to the day’s trek in less than two hours. Everyone knew, too, that Fort Duquesne would be reached the next day.
Suddenly, just after one o’clock, Washington and Braddock heard the crack of musket fire a half mile ahead. But the forest was so thick they couldn’t see what was happening: They must have suspected immediately that the advance party had been ambushed, though, in fact, the forward elements of Gage’s advance unit had stumbled into the advance units of a French and Indian force of nearly nine hundred men—regulars, militiamen, and braves who had been sent out from Fort Duquesne as a blocking force. Not unlike their adversary, the French and Indians had been surprised, but they recovered more quickly. Unleashing a merciless fire, much of it directed at the gaudily dressed officers, they struck down a dozen, maybe fifteen British leaders before anyone knew what had occurred. Gage and his men had returned the fire, but their losses were too heavy for them to remain in such an exposed spot. Gage ordered his men to fall back, hoping to regroup and to gain reinforcements from the principal force of the British advance party. For a moment it appeared that the clash would end less than ten minutes after it began. Instead, a panic set in among the redcoats, a frenzy that resulted when Gage’s men, retreating and firing in good order, collided with the principal force of the British advance party. All at once there was no place to go. Men were bunched together, being shot at by a concealed enemy, sometimes even shooting one another as the distraught men hurriedly ran first one way then another. The Indians, moreover, seemed to take charge from the French once the fighting began, and they raced down the British flanks pouring a devastating fire into the terrified redcoats. In no time men “dropped like Leaves in Autumn,” a British survivor later remembered. Then, too, all the horror stories about the savageness of the foe welled up in the minds of these men, especially when the Indians immediately began to scalp some of the dead and wounded. By the time Washington and Braddock reached the site of the attack, probably ten or fifteen minutes after the assault began, a “deadly Panick, . . . nothing but confusion and disobedience of orders,” as the Virginian put it, prevailed among the advance party.16
Braddock’s arrival did nothing to change the course of the battle. He, too, was unable to restore order. He displayed great valor, and, according to the accounts of several witnesses, so did his young aide. Both men rode about, exposed to the deadly fire, vainly trying to restore order. Swinging their swords, cajoling, shouting, each was an inviting target. Four, perhaps five, horses were shot from beneath the general. Two of Washington’s mounts also went d
own with wounds, one of them falling heavily upon him, for an instant trapping him until he could kick and scramble back to his feet. Each man’s coat was in tatters, filled with holes made by bullets that somehow missed. But Braddock could not stop the carnage. Not long after his arrival, in fact, the French even seized some of the British cannon, turning them on this trapped, forlorn army, increasing the terror that now gripped every man. An hour elapsed, then another. The British never counterattacked. They remained pinned down, taking heavy casualties. Virginia’s troops did attack, however. They fought well, better than the British. They scrapped the tactics of Europe and plunged into the woods to fight like the Indians, seeing the dark forest as a haven, not a danger. But these provincials received no assistance, and ultimately they died in droves. About two of every three men who served that day under the British flag were killed or wounded. Seven Virginia officers perished, while among the enlisted men “near all [were] killed,” as Washington reported. At least, he added, they had “behav’d like Men and died like Soldiers.”17
About four o’clock, nearly three hours after the holocaust commenced, Braddock was shot. A bullet slammed into his back, penetrating his lungs. Now the defeat became truly Molochan, for soon after the general fell British soldiers began to flee. The rout was on. Washington had helped to load the stricken general into the relative safety of a wagon shortly after he was hit, but minutes later the young Virginian also was forced to take flight. With three or four others, he carried Braddock nearly a mile to the east bank of the Monongahela. Along the way one of the officers tried to pay some British soldiers to help carry the wounded commander. There were no takers. Washington and his compatriots labored with their encumbrance and finally reached a safe place, but they succeeded only because the French and the Indians did not pursue the absconding British. Had the enemy given chase it is likely that almost all of Braddock’s army would have perished. Later, in fact, some British officers claimed that what remained of the army was so disorganized that it could have been overwhelmed by fewer than one hundred of the adversary. The story eventually circulated that young Washington had directed the British retreat. That was doubtful. Still later Washington himself claimed to have been the only person in the presence of Braddock who was not either wounded or killed in this action. His recollection may have been correct, for sixty-two of the ninety-six officers who fought somewhere or other during this engagement either were killed or wounded. But some officers survived, and if there was any order to this retreat it is likely that a redcoat directed the fleeing Anglo-Americans.
As shadows lengthened over the smoky, debris-littered forest, the shooting died down. The Indians—and enough French soldiers as well—had broken into the captured British rum pots. This fight was over. Behind, on the west side of the river, lay approximately five hundred British dead. Those who had not died fell into the hands of the Indians, and a long ghoulish night of torturing and slaughtering followed. East of the river, with Washington, were the survivors; about four hundred of these men were casualties. Never before had a British army met such an unmistakable disaster on American soil.18
About sunset on this horrid day Braddock momentarily drifted out of a coma and woozily surveyed the carnage. He ordered Washington to ride along the path the army had taken that morning. He was to search for runaways, then he was to hurry to the rear for reinforcements that would permit a retreat from these black, ghastly forests. For twelve hours Washington rode, while waves of nausea and anxiety and fatigue swept over him. He galloped past the screaming, pleading wounded, and, alone, he raced on into the sable wilderness. It was a terrifying scene that he never forgot. A quarter century later he still remembered the “groans, lamentation[s], and crys along the Road of the wounded.” Late the following morning he reached Dunbar’s camp, the British rear encampment, where he painfully related Braddock’s orders. Then he collapsed, for twenty-four hours slumbering as best a man could who had just lived through a nightmare.19
Still weak and tired, Washington nevertheless returned to headquarters the next day. There he found Braddock dying in great agony. Four days later the commander breathed his last. Near the rotting embers of Fort Necessity, Washington and a few others close to the general oversaw his burial, secreting his body beneath the road he had helped to blaze.20
With the death of his commander and the subsequent withdrawal of the remains of the British army from western Pennsylvania, Washington’s volunteer service was at an end. He slowly made his way home, a bitter young man. Two years of martial service had netted nothing save the further deterioration of Mount Vernon and his own near demise. As in the previous summer, Washington once again presumed that his military career was at an end. But as black as was his mood when he arrived home, his spirits suddenly were buoyed. Awaiting him was a missive in the clear, familiar hand of Sally Fairfax. She rejoiced at his safe return and proposed that if able and fit he should come to Belvoir the next day; if he was not up to that, she and two other ladies would come to his estate. The next day he purchased some watermelons to add a festive touch to the happy reunion and hurried to the Fairfax mansion.21
Nor was it very long before Washington discovered that Sally’s effusive welcome was not his only reason to rejoice. His brave conduct beside Braddock had not gone unnoticed. The late general’s aide and several other British veterans publicly lauded him as a valorous, resolute soldier. Moreover, by late summer it was apparent that Dinwiddie would be compelled to abandon his independent-companies scheme and to remodel the province’s army along the lines that had served the Virginia Regiment during the previous year. Only a centrally directed army could hope to pacify a frontier as vast as that claimed by Virginia; furthermore, the colony would have to do the work itself, for the remnants of Braddock’s army lay immobilized at Fort Cumberland, soon, in fact, to retreat to Philadelphia. Once the Virginia Regiment was reconstituted, to whom but Washington could the governor turn when he appointed a commander?
By mid-August Washington knew of “the good Opinion the Governor [and the] Assembly &c” shared of him. He also had learned that “scarce any thing else” was talked about in Williamsburg save for his heroic conduct alongside Braddock. “I think ’tis unanimously agreed, you shall command our Forces,” his cousin wrote him from the capital. Would he not come and volunteer his services?
No, he would not. Eager as Washington was to regain his former command, he wanted certain things that he had not enjoyed in 1754. Most importantly, he insisted on the right to advise and concur in the selection of all officers. A leader, he thought, succeeded or failed according to the performance of his subordinates; their selection required great care and should be left neither to chance nor partisanship. In addition, he wanted more aides than had been provided the previous year, and he demanded a military chest. To venture to the capital hat in hand, he said, would only weaken his bargaining power in securing these needs.
Thus, until late in the month he sat at Mount Vernon, watching from a distance while the assembly appropriated funds for a reorganized army of one thousand men. He came to the capital only on August 27, and then only at the urging of numerous friends. When he arrived he learned that his strategy had miscarried. Dinwiddie did indeed offer him his old command, but the governor already had named at least a dozen of the army’s sixteen captains. Washington considered the executive’s offer, then to the surprise of everyone—and to the vexation of Dinwiddie—he refused the terms. He would command only if the conditions he had outlined were met!
During the next several days these two iron-willed men and their emissaries met, haggling and negotiating. Finally, after nearly five days of what at times must have been acrimonious bargaining, they came to terms. Washington would command, he could name the two principal field officers (a lieutenant colonel and major), and he received funds for a military chest and additional aides.22 In the end Washington’s pragmatic side had won out. He accepted half a loaf rather than risk incurring the wrath of influential men who might see
his obstreperous demands as self-indulgent and inimical to the interests of Virginia; to persist, moreover, was to see his military dreams end forever. Hence, in the fall of 1755 Washington became commander of Virginia’s army. En route, however, he had stepped on the governor’s toes, further transforming what once had been a quite cordial relationship into one that was troubled, verging even on the tempestuous.
The only person who objected to his reentering the service was his mother. The fears that she had expressed earlier that year had come dangerously close to realization. Now she wrote her son beseeching him to decline Dinwiddie’s offer. He was unheeding, of course, brushing aside her intrusiveness with the impatient comment that it would “reflect dishonour upon me to refuse” the call of his province. “Honor” was a term that Washington and other Virginia gentrymen used frequently. An ill-defined term, its meaning often lay in the eye of the beholder. When Washington spoke of honorable conduct, he evidently referred to a kind of behavior that in his estimation would embarrass neither himself nor Virginia. In addition, he used the word “honor” to mean disinterested, even sacrificial service. To enter the military, therefore, was “honorable” if one did so selflessly, seeking neither profit nor advancement from the service. He no doubt believed this, although, his rhetoric aside, Washington’s conduct points to ends that were far more self-serving—and human. In fact, that summer he confessed to his half brother that he would serve again only if he believed he could “gain by it,” adding that for a “trifling Pay” his previous service had caused him to squander his health and to “suffer . . . much in my private fortune.”23
Washington plunged into his new command with vigor. While recruiting proceeded, he rode off to inspect Fort Cumberland at Will’s Creek, then to Fort Dinwiddie, a stockade 125 miles away in the southern part of the province. In three weeks he completed a whirlwind examination, then rode to Winchester where he established his headquarters. Imperturbably, he quickly fixed his control, winning the loyalty of his officers. It was no small feat. Only twenty-three, Washington had won plaudits for his valor, but he had little experience as a commanding officer. Some of his officers were equally young and green, but Adam Stephen was fifteen years his senior and Peter Hog was at least thirty years older than Washington, and both had served in Europe.
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