Part 12 (1/2)
It was about this time that the mob of soldiers, having been three hours under fire, and having spent their ammunition, broke away in a blind frenzy, rushed back towards the ford, ”and when,” says Was.h.i.+ngton, ”we endeavored to rally them, it was with as much success as if we had attempted to stop the wild bears of the mountains.” They dashed across, helter-skelter, plunging through the water to the farther bank, leaving wounded comrades, cannon, baggage, the military chest, and the General's papers, a prey to the Indians. About fifty of these followed to the edge of the river. Dumas and Ligneris, who had now only about twenty Frenchmen with them, made no attempt to pursue, and went back to the fort, because, says Contrecoeur, so many of the Canadians had ”retired at the first fire.” The field, abandoned to the savages, was a pandemonium of pillage and murder.[228]
[Footnote 228: ”Nous primes le parti de nous retirer en vue de rallier notre pet.i.te armee.” _Dumas au Ministre, 24 Juillet, 1756_.
On the defeat of Braddock, besides authorities already cited,--_s.h.i.+rley to Robinson, 5 Nov. 1755_, accompanying the plans of the battle reproduced in this volume (Public Record Office, _America and West Indies_, Lx.x.xIL). The plans were drawn at s.h.i.+rley's request by Patrick Mackellar, chief engineer of the expedition, who was with Gage in the advance column when the fight began. They were examined and fully approved by the chief surviving officers, and they closely correspond with another plan made by the aide-de-camp Orme,--which, however, shows only the beginning of the affair.
_Report of the Court of Inquiry into the Behavior of the Troops at the Monongahela. Letters of Dinwiddie. Letters of Gage. Burd to Morris, 25 July, 1755. Sinclair to Robinson, 3 Sept. Rutherford to----, 12 July.
Writings of Was.h.i.+ngton_, II. 68-93. _Review of Military Operations in North America_. Entick, I. 145. _Gentleman's Magazine_ (1755), 378, 426.
_Letter to a Friend on the Ohio Defeat_ (Boston, 1755).
_Contrecoeur a Vaudreuil, 14 Juillet, 1755. Estat de l'Artillerie, etc., qui se sont trouves sur le Champ de Bataille. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Aout, 1755. Bigot au Ministre, 27 Aout. Relation du Combat du 9 Juillet.
Relation depuis le Depart des Trouppes de Quebec jusqu'au 30 du Mois de Septembre. Lotbiniere a d'Argenson, 24 Oct. Relation officielle imprimee au Louvre. Relation de G.o.defroy_ (Shea). _Extraits du Registre du Fort Duquesne_ (_Ibid._). _Relation de diverses Mouvements_ (_Ibid._).
Pouchot, I. 37.]
James Smith, the young prisoner at Fort Duquesne, had pa.s.sed a day of suspense, waiting the result. ”In the afternoon I again observed a great noise and commotion in the fort, and, though at that time I could not understand French, I found it was the voice of joy and triumph, and feared that they had received what I called bad news. I had observed some of the old-country soldiers speak Dutch; as I spoke Dutch, I went to one of them and asked him what was the news. He told me that a runner had just arrived who said that Braddock would certainly be defeated; that the Indians and French had surrounded him, and were concealed behind trees and in gullies, and kept a constant fire upon the English; and that they saw the English falling in heaps; and if they did not take the river, which was the only gap, and make their escape, there would not be one man left alive before sundown. Some time after this, I heard a number of scalp-halloos, and saw a company of Indians and French coming in. I observed they had a great number of b.l.o.o.d.y scalps, grenadiers' caps, British canteens, bayonets, etc., with them. They brought the news that Braddock was defeated. After that another company came in, which appeared to be about one hundred, and chiefly Indians; and it seemed to me that almost every one of this company was carrying scalps. After this came another company with a number of wagon-horses, and also a great many scalps. Those that were coming in and those that had arrived kept a constant firing of small arms, and also the great guns in the fort, which were accompanied with the most hideous shouts and yells from all quarters, so that it appeared to me as though the infernal regions had broke loose.”
”About sundown I beheld a small party coming in with about a dozen prisoners, stripped naked, with their hands tied behind their backs and their faces and part of their bodies blacked; these prisoners they burned to death on the bank of Alleghany River, opposite the fort. I stood on the fort wall until I beheld them begin to burn one of these men; they had him tied to a stake, and kept touching him with firebrands, red-hot irons, etc., and he screaming in a most doleful manner, the Indians in the meantime yelling like infernal spirits. As this scene appeared too shocking for me to behold, I retired to my lodging, both sore and sorry. When I came into my lodgings I saw Russel's _Seven Sermons_, which they had brought from the field of battle, which a Frenchman made a present of to me.”
The loss of the French was slight, but fell chiefly on the officers, three of whom were killed, and four wounded. Of the regular soldiers, all but four escaped untouched. The Canadians suffered still less in proportion to their numbers, only five of them being hurt. The Indians, who won the victory, bore the princ.i.p.al loss. Of those from Canada, twenty-seven were killed and wounded; while the casualties among the Western tribes are not reported.[229] All of these last went off the next morning with their plunder and scalps, leaving Contrecoeur in great anxiety lest the remnant of Braddock's troops, reinforced by the division under Dunbar, should attack him again. His doubts would have vanished had he known the condition of his defeated enemy.
[Footnote 229: _Liste des Officiers, Soldats, Miliciens, et Sauvages de Canada qui out ete tues et blesses le 9 Juillet, 1755_.]
In the pain and languor of a mortal wound, Braddock showed unflinching resolution. His bearers stopped with him at a favorable spot beyond the Monongahela; and here he hoped to maintain his position till the arrival of Dunbar. By the efforts of the officers about a hundred men were collected around him; but to keep them there was impossible. Within an hour they abandoned him, and fled like the rest. Gage, however, succeeded in rallying about eighty beyond the other fording-place; and Was.h.i.+ngton, on an order from Braddock, spurred his jaded horse towards the camp of Dunbar to demand wagons, provisions, and hospital stores.
Fright overcame fatigue. The fugitives toiled on all night, pursued by spectres of horror and despair; hearing still the war-whoops and the shrieks; possessed with the one thought of escape from the wilderness of death. In the morning some order was restored. Braddock was placed on a horse; then, the pain being insufferable, he was carried on a litter, Captain Orme having bribed the carriers by the promise of a guinea and a bottle of rum apiece. Early in the succeeding night, such as had not fainted on the way reached the deserted farm of Gist. Here they met wagons and provisions, with a detachment of soldiers sent by Dunbar, whose camp was six miles farther on; and Braddock ordered them to go to the relief of the stragglers left behind.
At noon of that day a number of wagoners and packhorse-drivers had come to Dunbar's camp with wild tidings of rout and ruin. More fugitives followed; and soon after a wounded officer was brought in upon a sheet.
The drums beat to arms. The camp was in commotion; and many soldiers and teamsters took to flight, in spite of the sentinels, who tried in vain to stop them.[230] There was a still more disgraceful scene on the next day, after Braddock, with the wreck of his force, had arrived. Orders were given to destroy such of the wagons, stores, and ammunition as could not be carried back at once to Fort c.u.mberland. Whether Dunbar or the dying General gave these orders is not clear; but it is certain that they were executed with shameful alacrity. More than a hundred wagons were burned; cannon, coehorns, and sh.e.l.ls were burst or buried; barrels of gunpowder were staved, and the contents thrown into a brook; provisions were scattered through the woods and swamps. Then the whole command began its retreat over the mountains to Fort c.u.mberland, sixty miles distant. This proceeding, for which, in view of the condition of Braddock, Dunbar must be held answerable, excited the utmost indignation among the colonists. If he could not advance, they thought, he might at least have fortified himself and held his ground till the provinces could send him help; thus covering the frontier, and holding French war-parties in check.
[Footnote 230: _Depositions of Matthew Laird, Michael Hoover, and Jacob Hoover, Wagoners_, in _Colonial Records of Pa._, VI. 482.]
Braddock's last moment was near. Orme, who, though himself severely wounded, was with him till his death, told Franklin that he was totally silent all the first day, and at night said only, ”Who would have thought it?” that all the next day he was again silent, till at last he muttered, ”We shall better know how to deal with them another time,” and died a few minutes after. He had nevertheless found breath to give orders at Gist's for the succor of the men who had dropped on the road.
It is said, too, that in his last hours ”he could not bear the sight of a red coat,” but murmured praises of ”the blues,” or Virginians, and said that he hoped he should live to reward them.[231] He died at about eight o'clock in the evening of Sunday, the thirteenth. Dunbar had begun his retreat that morning, and was then encamped near the Great Meadows.
On Monday the dead commander was buried in the road; and men, horses, and wagons pa.s.sed over his grave, effacing every sign of it, lest the Indians should find and mutilate the body.
[Footnote 231: _Bolling to his Son, 13 Aug. 1755_. Bolling was a Virginian gentleman whose son was at school in England.]
Colonel James Innes, commanding at Fort c.u.mberland, where a crowd of invalids with soldiers' wives and other women had been left when the expedition marched, heard of the defeat, only two days after it happened, from a wagoner who had fled from the field on horseback. He at once sent a note of six lines to Lord Fairfax: ”I have this moment received the most melancholy news of the defeat of our troops, the General killed, and numbers of our officers; our whole artillery taken.
In short, the account I have received is so very bad, that as, please G.o.d, I intend to make a stand here, 'tis highly necessary to raise the militia everywhere to defend the frontiers.” A boy whom he sent out on horseback met more fugitives, and came back on the fourteenth with reports as vague and disheartening as the first. Innes sent them to Dinwiddie.[232] Some days after, Dunbar and his train arrived in miserable disorder, and Fort c.u.mberland was turned into a hospital for the shattered fragments of a routed and ruined army.
[Footnote 232: _Innes to Dinwiddie, 14 July, 1755_.]
On the sixteenth a letter was brought in haste to one Buchanan at Carlisle, on the Pennsylvanian frontier:--
Sir,--I thought it proper to let you know that I was in the battle where we were defeated. And we had about eleven hundred and fifty private men, besides officers and others. And we were attacked the ninth day about twelve o'clock, and held till about three in the afternoon, and then we were forced to retreat, when I suppose we might bring off about three hundred whole men, besides a vast many wounded. Most of our officers were either wounded or killed; General Braddock is wounded, but I hope not mortal; and Sir John Sinclair and many others, but I hope not mortal. All the train is cut off in a manner. Sir Peter Halket and his son, Captain Polson, Captain Gethan, Captain Rose, Captain Tatten killed, and many others. Captain Ord of the train is wounded, but I hope not mortal.
We lost all our artillery entirely, and everything else.
To Mr. John Smith and Buchannon, and give it to the next post, and let him show this to Mr. George Gibson in Lancaster, and Mr.
Bingham, at the sign of the s.h.i.+p, and you'll oblige,