Historic Highways of America/Volume 4/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
THE BATTLE OF THE MONONGAHELA
SIR PETER HALKET moved out from Fort Cumberland on June 7 with a brigade comprising the 44th Regiment, two Independent Companies of New York, two companies of Virginia Rangers, one of Maryland Rangers, a total of nine hundred and eighty-four men, six hundred woodchoppers under Sir John St. Clair having been sent forward to widen and improve Washington's road. The next day but one Colonel Thomas Dunbar marched away with another brigade comprising the 48th Regiment, a company of carpenters, three companies of Virginia Rangers, and one from South and North Carolina each, a total of nine hundred and ninety-three men. On the tenth, Braddock and his aides and the rest of the army which was approximately two thousand two hundred strong—a force powerful enough to have razed Duquesne, Venango, La Bœuf, Presque Isle, and Niagara to the ground—if it could have reached them.
This Franklin who secured Braddock horses and wagons was a prophet. And once he predicted that this "slender line" of an army would be greatly in danger of Indian ambuscade "and be cut, like a thread, into several pieces, which, from their distance, cannot come up in time to support each other." Braddock laughed at the prophecy, but his army had not been swallowed up in the gloom of the forests two days before its line was thinner and longer than Braddock could ever have believed. When encamped at night, the line of wagons compactly drawn together was half a mile long; in marching order by day the army was often spread out to a length of four miles. And even in this fashion it could only creep along. Halket with the first division made only five miles in three days. In ten days Braddock had only covered the twenty-four miles to Little Crossings. The road makers followed implicitly the Indian path where it was possible; when on the high ground the road was so rugged that many wagons were entirely demolished and more temporarily disabled; when off this track in the ravines they were buried axle deep in the bogs.
To haul the wagons and cannon over this worst road ever trod Braddock had the poorest horses available. All the weak, spavined, wind-broken, and crippled beasts in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia were palmed off on Braddock by unscrupulous contractors. And horses, dead or dying, were always left with the demolished wagons. "There has been vile management in regard to horses," wrote Washington; before the army had covered one third of its journey there were not enough to draw all the wagons, the strongest being sent back each day to bring up the wagons left behind the morning before. The continuous diet of salt meat brought an epidemic of bloody flux on the army; some died, many were sick. Washington's strong system was in the grasp of a fever before Little Crossings was reached.
The situation now was desperate and would have appalled a less stubborn man than Edward Braddock. Acting on Washington's advice he here divided his army, preparing to push on to Fort Duquesne with a flying column of fourteen hundred men. Washington found the first western river almost dry and reasoned that Riviere aux Bœufs would be too dry to transport southward the reinforcements that were hurrying from Canada.
On the nineteenth, Braddock advanced with Colonel Halket and Lieutenant Colonels Burton and Gage and Major Sparks, leaving Colonel Dunbar and Major Chapman—to their disgust—to hobble on with the sick and dying men and horses, the sorry line of wagons creaking under their heavy loads. The young Virginian Colonel was left at the very first camp in a raging fever. Though unable to push on further with the column that would capture Duquesne, yet Braddock considerately satisfied the ambition of Washington by promising that he should be brought up before the attack was made. Washington wrote home that he would not miss the capture of Duquesne "for five hundred pounds!"
With the flying column were taken the Indians that were with the army but which numbered less than a dozen. Braddock has been severely blamed for his neglect of the Indians, but any earnest study of this campaign will assure the student that the commanding general was no more at fault here than for the failure of the contractors and the indifference of the colonies. He had been promised Indians as freely as stores and horses and wagons. The Indian question seems to have been handled most wretchedly since Washington's late campaign. Through the negligence of the busy-body Dinwiddie (so eager for so many unimportant matters) even the majority of the Indians who served Washington faithfully and had followed his retreating army back to Virginia were allowed to drift back to the French through sheer neglect. As none of Dinwiddie's promises were fulfilled in this respect Braddock turned in despair to Morris for such Ohio Indians as were living in Pennsylvania. There had been at least three hundred Indians of the Six Nations living in that province, but in April the Pennsylvania Assembly had resolved to "do nothing more for them"; accordingly they went westward and most of them joined the French. Morris, however, urged George Croghan to send word to the Delawares, Shawanese, Wyandots, etc., bidding them come and join Braddock's army. But Croghan brought less than fifty and Braddock was not destined to keep all of these, for Colonel Innes, commanding at Fort Cumberland, not desiring the Indian families on his hands during the absence of the fathers, persuaded Braddock that there were not enough to add to the fighting strength of the army and that a few would be as serviceable for spies as many. Nor was this bad reasoning: Braddock would have been no better off with thirty than with ten. The fact is, he was in nothing deceived more by false promises and assurances than in the matter of Indian coöperation. And was he more at fault for the lack of frontiersmen? True, he refused the services of Captain Jack and his company, but only because the latter refused to be governed by the discipline to which the rest of the army was subject; Braddock could not agree to such an arrangement and it is doubtful if Washington would have acted differently under similar circumstances. At least the Virginian had nothing to do with Captain Jack's renowned company the year before. To other border fighters Braddock gave a warm reception; Gist and Croghan, the two best known men on the frontier, held important offices in the army. It is as easy as common to lay at the door of a defeated and dead commander all the misfortunes of a campaign; whatever Braddock's errors, the fact remains that the colonies failed absolutely to make the least move to provide an Indian army for Braddock's use. Nothing could have more surely promised defeat and disgrace.
The flying column flew like a partridge with a broken wing. "We set out," wrote Washington who started with it but was compelled to stop, "with less than thirty carriages, including those that transported the ammunition for the howitzers, and six-pounders, and all of them strongly horsed; which was a prospect that conveyed infinite delight to my mind, though I was excessively ill at the time. But this prospect was soon clouded, and my hopes brought very low indeed, when I found, that, instead of pushing on with vigor, without regarding a little rough road, they were halting to level every mole-hill, and to erect bridges over every brook, by which means we were four days in getting twelve miles."
On the third of July the flying column had passed the Youghiogheny and were encamped ten miles north of it, forty miles from Fort Duquesne. It had not averaged three miles a day since leaving Little Crossings! Here a Council of War was held to decide whether to push on alone or await the coming of Dunbar and the wagons. Could the Grenadiers and their officers have seen through that narrow path to their destination, how quickly would their decision have been made, how eagerly would they have hurried on to the Ohio! Contrecœur at Fort Duquesne was in a miserable plight; every returning red-skin told of the advance of the great British army in the face of Governor Duquesne's proud boast to Vaudreuil that it was impossible for the English to cross the Alleghenies in sufficient force to cause uneasiness! Braddock, despite the utter lack of proper support from the colonies, was accomplishing the eighth wonder of the world. It was desperate work. But a Bull-dog was creeping nearer each day.
Throughout the winter the British ministry and the Court of Versailles had been exchanging the most ridiculous pretenses of peace while secretly preparing for war with dispatch. For every ill-recruited regiment King George sent to Virginia, King Louis sent two famous regiments to Canada, and they arrived there despite Boscawen, the English admiral, who captured two unimportant ships. Yet that was enough to precipitate the struggle and save more fables from the respective ambassadors; "I will not pardon the piracies of that insolent nation," exclaimed Louis—and open war was inevitable.
At his landing at Quebec Vaudreuil found not less than twelve thousand soldiers in Canada to defend the claims of his King. But that was a long frontier to man, from Quebec to New Orleans, and in April only about one thousand men were forwarded to defend the Ohio river. Of these Contrecœur had not more than three hundred, probably less. The summer before he had two thousand defenders, but Duquesne, blindly trusting to the ephemeral league he had made with the Alleghenies, had not been liberal again. In vain Contrecœur sent messages northward to Venango and Presque Isle. Riviere aux Bœufs was as dry as the Youghiogheny. Inevitable surrender or capitulation stared the French commander in the face. Even the crowds of Indians within hail were not to be reckoned on; they were terrified at the proportions of Braddock's army.
Accordingly, Contrecœur made his arrangements for a capitulation, as Washington had done one year ago. Braddock had accomplished the impossible; the Indians were demoralized and took to "cooking and counciling"; Fort Duquesne was as good as captured.
On the seventh Braddock reached Brush Fork of Turtle Creek, but the country immediately between him and the Ohio was so rough that the army turned westward and pitched its nineteenth encampment in Long Run valley two miles from the Monongahela. Here Washington came up with the army in a covered wagon, still weak but ready to move with the army in the morning and sleep in Duquesne that night. The whole army was infused with this hope as the ninth of July dawned.
For no one questioned Braddock's success if he could once throw that army across the mountains. No one knew the situation better than Washington, and early in the campaign he wrote his brother: "As to any danger from the enemy, I look upon it as trifling." In London profane wits cited Scripture (Ezekiel xxxv: 1–10) to justify the conquest of the Ohio valley: "Moreover, the word of the Lord came unto me saying, Son of man, set thy face against Mount Seir and prophesy against it, and say unto it, thus saith the Lord God: Behold, O mount Seir, I am against thee and I will stretch out mine hand against thee and I will make thee most desolate. . . . Because thou hast said, These two nations and these two countries shall be mine, and we will possess it." Already subscription papers were being passed about in Philadelphia to provide festal fires to illumine the Quaker City when the news of Braddock's victory came.
"Why, the d—l," exclaimed one of the enthusiasts to that odd man Franklin who did not sign his name at once, "you surely don't suppose the fort will not be taken?" "I don't know it will not be taken," replied the Postmaster-General, "but I know that the events of war are subject to great uncertainty." A jingling ballad in Chester County, Pennsylvania, was spreading throughout the frontier. It ran, in part:
To arms, to arms! my jolly grenadiers!
Hark, how the drums do roll it along!
To horse, to horse, with valiant good cheer;
We'll meet our proud foe, before it is long.
Let not your courage fail you:
Be valiant, stout and bold;
And it will soon avail you,
My loyal hearts of gold.
Huzzah, my valiant countrymen!—again I say huzzah!
'Tis nobly done—the day's our own—huzzah, huzzah!
March on, march on, brave Braddock leads the foremost;
The battle is begun as you may fairly see.
Stand firm, be bold, and it will soon be over;
We'll soon gain the field from our proud enemy.
A squadron now appears, my boys;
If that they do but stand!
Boys, never fear, be sure you mind
The word of command!
Huzzah, my valiant countrymen!—again I say huzzah!
'Tis nobly done—the day's our own—huzzah, huzzah!
Before daybreak on the morning of the fatal ninth Lieutenant Colonel Gage moved to the Monongahela to secure the two fords the army was to use on the last day's march. At four o'clock Sir John St. Clair with two hundred and fifty men went forward to prepare theroads. At five Braddock advanced and made the first crossing at eight o'clock. He then formed his army for a triumphant march to the second ford and on to Fort Duquesne. It had been feared that, however weak, Contrecœur would attempt to defend this ford of the Monongahela. But this fear was dissipated on receipt of the news that Gage held the second ford.
Contrecœur knew it would be foolhardy to give Braddock battle. He was in no mind to waste his men futilely. He knew an honorable capitulation was all for which he could hope. But on the 8th a captain of the regulars, M. de Beaujeu, asked leave to go out with a band to oppose Braddock's passage of the Monongahela. Reluctantly, it is said, Contrecœur gave his permission and, the whole garrison desiring to attend Beaujeu, the commander detailed him selected troops on the condition that he could obtain the assistance of the Indians who were about the fort.
The impetuous Beaujeu hurried off to the Indians and unfolded his plan to them. But they were afraid of Braddock; some of them had even gone into the English camp, at Cumberland, or in the mountains, on pretense of joining the English army; they had seen the long lines of grenadiers and wagons laden with cannon.
"How, my Father," they replied, "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 tomorrow you shall know our thoughts."
Baffled, Beaujeu withdrew while the redskinned allies of the French frittered away the hours in debate—and the spies brought word that Braddock was encamped in Long Run valley. The indomitable Beaujeu, however, went and examined the ground at the ford of the Monongahela, which Braddock would pass on the next day. On the ninth, however, the Indians brought word that they would not join in the unequal contest.
But even as they spoke an Indian scout came running down the narrow trail toward the fort. He brought the news of Braddock's advance on the Monongahela fords. Beaujeu, cunning actor, played his last card desperately and well:
"I am determined," he cried, "to go out against the enemy; I am certain of victory. What! will you suffer your father to depart alone?"
The reproach stung the savage breasts. In a moment hundreds of hoarse voices were drowning the long roll of the drums. A mad scene followed; wild with enthusiasm, casks of bullets and flints and powder were rolled to fort gates and their heads knocked out. About these the savages, even while painting themselves for the fray, came in crowds, each one free to help himself as he needed. Then came the race for the ford of the Monongahela. Down the narrow trail burst the horde of warriors, led by the daring Beaujeu dressed in savage costume, an Indian gorget swinging from his neck for good fortune. Behind him poured Delawares, Ojibways, Pottawattamies, Abenakis, Caughnawagas, Iroquois, Ottawas, led by their young King Pontiac; Shawanese, Wyandots, Hurons, led by Athanasius from the mission of Lorette, who gloried in a name "torn from the most famous page of Christian history." With the six hundred savages ran two hundred Canadians and four score French regulars.
This rabble could not have left Fort Duquesne before high noon; no wonder Beaujeu ran—fearing Braddock had passed the battle-ground he had chosen last night. In that case he despaired of delaying the advance even a single day; yet in one day the expected reinforcements might arrive from the north!
Washington rode with Braddock today, though he rode on a pillow in his saddle. In after life he often recalled the sight of Braddock's grenadiers marching beside the Monongahela in battle array, a fine picture with the thin red line framed in the fresh green of the forests. With the receipt of Gage's note, the fear of ambuscade which had been omnipresent since the army left Fort Cumberland, vanished. During that month the Indian guides, flanking squads, and woodchoppers had rushed into camp time and again calling the companies to arms; each alarm had been false. As Fort Duquesne was neared Braddock grew doubly cautious. He even attempted to leave the Indian trail which ran through the "Narrows" and which crossed the Monongahela at the mouth of Turtle Creek. When another course was found impossible for the wagons he turned reluctantly back to the old thoroughfare, but had passed the "Narrows" safely and his advance guards now held the fords. All was well.
By two o'clock Braddock was across the river, bag and baggage. Beyond, the Indian trail wound along to the uplands, skirting the heads of numerous ravines and clinging persistently, like all the trails of the Indians and buffalo, to the high ground between the brook and swamp. The ridge which the trail followed here to the second terrace was twenty rods in width, with the path near the center. On the west a deep ravine, completely hidden in the deep underbrush, lay almost parallel with the trail for a distance of over five hundred feet. On the opposite side smaller ravines also lay nearly parallel with the trail. On the high ground between these hidden ravines, and not more than two hundred feet from them, Braddock's engineers and woodchoppers widened their road for Gage's advance guard which was ordered to march on until three o'clock.
As the engineers reached the extremity of the second terrace Beaujeu came bounding into sight, the pack of eight hundred wolves at his heels. Seeing the English, the daring but dismayed Frenchman stopped still in his tracks. He was an hour too late. Attempting to surprise Braddock, Beaujeu was himself surprised. But he waved his hat above his head and the crowd of warriors scattered behind him like a partridge's brood into the forest leaves.
The French captain knew the ground and Braddock did not, and the ground was admirably formed for a desperate stand against the advancing army. Burton, who was just leaving the river shore, was ordered up to support Gage on the second upland after the first fire. This brought the whole army, save four hundred men, to the second terrace between the unseen ravines on the east and west. Into these ravines poured the Indian rabble. The ravine on the east being shorter than that on the west, many savages ran through it and posted themselves in the dense underbrush on the hillside.
Thus, in a twinkling of an eye, the Indians running southward in the two ravines and the British northward on the high ground between them, the fatal position of the battle was quickly assumed.[1] No encounter has been more incorrectly described and pictured than the Battle of the Monongahela.[2] Braddock was not surprised; his advance guard saw the enemy long before they opened fire; George Croghan affirmed that the grenadiers delivered their first charge when two hundred yards distant from the Indians, completely throwing it away. Nor did Braddock march blindly into a deep ravine; his army was ever on the high ground, caught almost in the vortex of the cross-fire of the savages hidden on the brink of the ravines on either side, or posted on the high ground to the right.[3]
The road was but twelve feet in width. Even as Burton came up, Gage's grenadiers were frightened and retreating. The meeting of the advancing and retiring troops caused a fatal confusion and delay in the narrow road. The fire from the Indians on the high ground to the right being severe, Braddock attempted to form his bewildered men and charge. It was futile. The companies were in an inextricable tangle. Finally, to reduce things to order, the various standards were advanced in different directions and the officers strove to organize their commands in separate detachments, with a hope of surrounding the savages. This, too, proved futile. The Indians on either side completely hidden in the ravines, the smoke of the rifles hardly visible through the dense underbrush, poured a deadly fire on the swarm of red-coats huddled in the narrow track. Not a rifle ball could miss its mark there. As the standards were advanced here and there, the standard bearers and the officers who followed encouraging their men to form again were shot down both from behind and before.[4] As once and again the paralyzed grenadiers broke into the forest to raid the ravines, in the vain hope of dislodging the enemy, they offered only a surer mark for the thirsty rifles toward which they ran.
The Virginians took to the trees like ducks to water, but the sight enraged Braddock, mad to have the men form in battle line and charge in solid phalanx. In vain Washington pleaded to be allowed to place his men behind the trees; Braddock drove them away with the flat blade of his sword. Yet they came back and fought bravely from the trees as was their habit. But it availed nothing to fight behind trees with the enemy on both flanks; the Virginians were, after all, no safer there than elsewhere, as the death-roll plainly shows. The provincial portion of the army suffered as heavily, if not more heavily, than any other. No army could have stood its ground there and won that battle. The only chance of victory was to advance or retreat out of range of those hidden rifles. The army could not be advanced for every step brought the men nearer the very center of that terrible cross-fire. And the Bull-dog Braddock knew not the word "retreat." That was the secret of his defeat.[5]
Soon there were not enough officers left to command the men, most of whom were hopelessly bewildered at seeing half the army shot down by a foe they themselves had never seen. Many survivors of the battle affirmed that they never saw above five Indians during the conflict. Braddock was mortally wounded by a ball which pierced his right arm and lung. Sir Peter Halket lay dead, his son's dead corpse lying across his own. Of twenty-one captains, seven were dead and seven wounded; of thirty-eight lieutenants, fifteen were wounded and eleven were dead; of fourteen second lieutenants or ensigns, five were wounded and three were dead; of fifty-eight sergeants, twenty were wounded and seventeen dead; of sixty-one corporals and bombardiers, twenty-two were wounded and eighteen dead; of eighteen gunners, eight were wounded and six were dead; of twelve hundred privates, three hundred and twenty-eight were wounded and three hundred and eighty-six were dead. Each Frenchman, Canadian, and Indian had hit his man and more than every other one had killed his man. Their own absolutely impregnable position can be realized when it is known that not twenty-five French, Canadians or Indians were killed and wounded. Among the first to fall was the hero of the day, Beaujeu; his Indian gorget could not save his own life, but it delayed the capture of Fort Duquesne—three years.
Yet the stubborn, doomed army held its ground until the retreat was ordered. The wounded Braddock, who pleaded, it is said, to be left upon the ground, and even begged for Croghan's pistol with which to finish what a French bullet had begun, was placed in a cart and afterwards in a wagon and brought off the field.[6] No sooner was retreat ordered than it became an utter rout. Some fifty Indians pursued the army into the river, but none crossed it. Here and there efforts were made to stem the tide but to no purpose. The army fled back to Dunbar, who had now crawled along to Laurel Hill and was encamped at a great spring at the foot of what is now Dunbar's Knob, half a mile north of Jumonville's hiding place and grave. Dunbar's situation was already deplorable, even Washington having prophesied that, though he had crossed the worst of the mountain road, he could never reach Fort Duquesne.
But as Braddock's demoralized army threw itself upon him, Dunbar's condition was indescribably wretched. A large portion of the survivors of the battle and of Dunbar's own command, lost to all order, hurried on toward Fort Cumberland. Dunbar himself, now senior officer in command, ordered his cannons spiked and his ammunition destroyed and, with such horses as could be of service, began to retreat across the mountains. For this he was, and has often been, roundly condemned; yet, since we have Washington's plain testimony that he could never have hauled his wagons and cannon over the thirty comparatively easy miles to Fort Duquesne, who can fairly blame him for not attempting to haul them over the sixty difficult miles to Fort Cumberland? To fortify himself, so far removed from hopes of sustenance and succor, was equally impossible. There was nothing Dunbar could do but retreat.
The dying Braddock, tumbling about in a covered wagon on the rough road, spoke little to the few men who remained faithfully beside him. Only once or twice in the three days he lived did he speak of the battle; and then he only sighed to himself softly: "Who would have thought it?" Once, turning to the wounded Orme, he said: "We shall better know how to deal with them another time." During his last hours Braddock seems to have regarded his young Virginian aide, Washington, whose advice he had followed only indifferently throughout the campaign, with utmost favor, bequeathing him his favorite charger and his servant. On the night of the twelfth of July, in a camp in an Indian orchard, near what is now Braddock's Run, a mile and more east of Fort Necessity, in Great Meadows, Edward Braddock died. In the morning he was buried in the center of the roadway. Undoubtedly Washington read the service over the Briton's grave. When the army marched eastward it pased over the grave, obliterating its site from even an Indian's keen eye. In 1823, when the Braddock's Road was being repaired, what were undoubtedly his bones were uncovered, together with military trappings, etc. These were placed in the dry ground above the neighboring run, the spot being now marked by solemn pines.
Whatever Braddock's faults and foibles, he accomplished a great feat in leading a comparatively powerful army across the Alleghenies, and had he been decently supported by the colonies, there would have been no doubt of his success. As it was, shamefully hampered and delayed by the procrastinating indifference of the colonies, deceived and defrauded by wolfish contractors, abandoned by the Indians because of the previous neglect of the Colonial governors and assemblies, nevertheless the campaign was a distinct success, until at the last moment, Fate capriciously dashed the chalice from Braddock's lips.
The shattered army reached Fort Cumberland on July 20. The tale of disaster had preceded it. The festal fires were not kindled in Philadelphia. Now, for the first time the colonies were awakened to the true situation, and in the months following paid dearly for their supine indifference.
For with Beaujeu's victory the French arms became impregnable on the Ohio. Braddock's defeat brought ten-fold more wretchedness than his victory could ever have brought of advantage. After that terrible scene of savagery at Fort Duquesne on the night of the victory, when the few prisoners taken were burned at the stake, there were no wavering Indians. And instantly the frontier was overrun with marauding bands which drove back to the inhabited parts of the country every advanced settlement. All the Virginian outposts were driven in; and even the brave Moravian missionaries in Pennsylvania and New York gave up their work before the red tide of war which now set eastward upon the long frontiers.
For Shirley had likewise been beaten back from Fort Niagara, and Johnson had not captured Fort Crown Point. Two of the campaigns of 1755 were utter failures.
- ↑ British Newspaper Accounts of Braddock's Defeat, p. 10. Pennsylvania Colonial Records, vol. vi., p. 482.
- ↑ This view of Braddock's defeat is given in the late John Fiske's recent volume, New France and New England.
- ↑ London Public Advertiser, November 3, 1755.
- ↑ London Public Advertiser, November 3, 1755.
- ↑ Cf. British Newspaper Accounts of Braddock's Defeat, p. 9. Pennsylvania Colonial Records, vol. vi., p. 482. London Public Advertiser, November 3, 1755.
- ↑ Cf. British Newspaper Accounts of Braddock's Defeat, p. 9; London Public Advertiser, November 3, 1755.