Boys Book of Famous Soldiers | Page 6

heavy cannon nearly so much as he needed an insight into wilderness ways.
Just before Braddock started west on his ill-fated expedition, he conferred at Fredericktown, Maryland, with the Postmaster General of Pennsylvania, a strong, practical man, who was to obtain some greatly-needed horses and wagons for his artillery and supplies. This man, a middle-aged and rather plain sort of fellow--and the youthful Virginia colonel whom he may have met then for the first time--possibly attracted very little attention in the gaudy military array. But American history could ill have spared either Benjamin Franklin or George Washington.
We will not narrate again in detail here the oft-told story of Braddock's Defeat--how he insisted on marching across the mountains and valleys of Pennsylvania, as though on parade--with banners flying, fifes shrilling, and drums beating. It was a brave display, and such as the old General was accustomed to, in Europe. It would undoubtedly put the French and their skulking allies to instant flight!
Against such a method of warfare Washington raised his voice of counsel, but in vain. The grizzled veteran brushed him aside. Washington was for rapid marching, with scouting troops deployed on ahead.
"But this prospect," he writes, "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 molehill, and to erect bridges over every brook, by which means we were four days in getting twelve miles."
A few days before Braddock reached the vicinity of Fort Duquesne, Washington had fallen sick of a fever, and had barely recovered strength enough to rejoin the command. But the slow progress to which he refers, enabled him to do so before the attack--though he was still far from well.
As he rode up to meet the general, he could not help but admire the beauty of the scene. The troops had crossed a ford on the Monongahela, about fifteen miles from the fort, and now marched in close formation along its winding bank, as though on dress parade. But his admiration of the display only intensified his sense of danger--the sixth sense of every woodsman. He begged his general to scatter his forces somewhat, or at least send scouts ahead. But Braddock rebuked him angrily for presuming to teach English regulars how to fight.
Suddenly the sound of firing was heard at the front, although no attacking party could be seen. The soldiers had marched straight into an ambush, as Washington had feared. With whoops and yells the Indians commanded by a few French were firing from behind every rock and tree. The regulars were thrown into confusion. This type of warfare was new to them. They did not know how to answer it. The front ranks recoiled upon the others, throwing all into wild turmoil.
Washington at once threw himself into the fight--counselling, persuading, commanding. A company of Virginians, previously sneered at as "raw militia," spread themselves out as a protecting party of skirmishers. The English officers, also, be it said, displayed the utmost bravery in trying to rally their men. The general, as though to atone for his headstrong folly, seemed everywhere at once. He had two horses shot from under him, before receiving wounds in his own body, which were to prove mortal.
It was all over in a comparatively short time. The troops which had so proudly marched, with arms glittering in the sun, were put to rout by an unseen foe. That they were not almost annihilated was due to the presence of Washington and the Virginians. They fought the enemy in kind, and protected the fugitives until some sort of order could be restored.
Washington it was who collected the troops and rescued the dying general. He it was who led them back to meet the reinforcements under Dunbar. And he it was who laid the remains of Braddock in the grave, four days later, and read the burial service above him.
Again had the young soldier to taste the bitter dregs of defeat--but it was salutary, and a part of the iron discipline which was making him into the future leader.
That he had not lost any prestige by this experience, but rather gained thereby, is shown by the call that came urgently to him, soon after, to take command of all the forces of Virginia. He did not want the command, but felt that after such a vote of confidence he could not decline it. And so for three years more he struggled on, a general without an army, to protect the western frontier of Virginia against invasion. In April, 1757, he wrote:
"I have been posted for more than twenty months past, upon our cold and barren frontiers, to perform, I think I may say, impossibilities; that is, to protect from the cruel