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[viii] AUTHOR'S ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Chapter IV; the American Historical Association for permission to
quote excerpts from Military Aflairs in North America by Stanley
Pargellis; and the Clement Library, at the University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, for permission to quote from the Albemarle-Robinson
correspondence contained in the Shelburne Papers.

The author is further indebted to the British Museum, the Prin-
cipal Probate Registry, the Public Records Office, the Royal United
Service Institution, the Lord Chamberlain of St. James's Palace, the
College of Arms, the Guildhall Librarian, the Goldsmith’s Com-
pany, and the Company of Gunsmiths in London; the Scots Ancestry
Research Society and the Registrar General’s Office in Edinburgh;
the Bodleian Library at Oxford; the Victoria Art Gallery and
Municipal Libraries, of Bath; the Royal Archives, of Windsor Cas-
tle; the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, of San
Marino, California; the Newberry Library, of Chicago; the New
York Public Library; the Congressional Library at Washington,
D. C. ; the Enoch Pratt Free Library of Baltimore; the Pennsylvania
Historical Society; the Maryland Historical Society; the Virginia
Historical Society; and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

Finally, he wishes to thank Mrs. Agnes Starrett, director of the
University of Pittsburgh Press, for her patience and painstaking in
editing his manuscript; Mrs. Janetta Somerset Ridgely, of the Balti-
more Sun, for many helpful suggestions in the preparation of the
manuscript; and Miss Agnes Gosnell, of The Sun, for the tedious
task of typing both manuscript and notes. He is indebted to his
wife, Nancy Arnold McCardell, for tireless hours of research in
Baltimore, New York, and London——and most of all, for encourage-
ment to carry the project to completion.

January, 19 58 LEE MCCARDELL

[86] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

ualties in the Guards Brigade alone exceeded 700. Never before
had so many British officers been lost in a single acti0n.91 Of the
Guards alone thirty-three had been killed or wounded. Among
the slain Coldstreamers were Lieut.-Col. Samuel Needham, regi-
mental adjutant for twenty years, and Lord Cathcart’s younger
brother, Shaw, an ensign. Charles Churchill and Julius Caesar
had been wounded.92

“The second regiment of the English guards (Coldstream) . . .
must certainly have been almost entirely destroyed,” said a Paris
letter reprinted in London. “We took from them a pair of colors
and two pieces of cannon. . . .” 93

But the home battalions took disaster in their stride. Three days
after the shocking news of Fontenoy replacements embarked for
F1anders.94 Three lieutenant-colonels-—Bradd0ck not among them-
8 captains, 8 ensigns, 4 surgeons, 16 sergeants, 16 corporals, 8 drum-
mers, and 540 private men made up the contingent which took its
leave “in a very cheerful manner,” The Gentleman’s Magazine re-
ported.95

Col. James Ingoldsby of the First Foot Guards, a Cumberland
favorite and one of the scapegoats blamed for the defeat, was
court martialed. Ordered to attack a French redoubt, Ingoldsby
had procrastinated, pleading contradictory orders.93 The Duke of
Cumberland was the object of more pity than blame. Letters from
Flanders, without exception, praised his bravery and consideration
for his soldiers. He was a strict disciplinarian, insisting that officers
and men wear proper uniform, that baggage be reduced to a mini-
mum, that officers remain in the field with their commands, and
that no officer below the rank of brigadier keep a coach, chariot, or
chaise while on active service.97 He also rewarded merit. Viscount
Bury and Capt.-Lt. Julius Caesar became full captain-colonels of
the Coldstream after Fontenoy. The Co1dstream’s first major, Wil-
liam Douglas, became colonel of the 32nd foot, and Braddock suc-
ceeded Douglas as first major of the Co1dstream.93

On the night of July 4 an express from Ostend informed London
that the French had seized Ghent and Bruges, cutting off a detach-
ment of 4,000 men and surrounding the Duke's army. Next came a
message that only 500 had been captured, that the army was safe,
and that the Duke had won a victory, killing 15,000 of the enemy
and taking 5,000 prisoners.99 The King was still in Hanover. The
Lords of the Regency knew neither what to believe nor what to

]ENKINS’S EAR AND THE FORTY-FIVE [87]

do.1°° The truth was, Cumberland had retreated northward. A
French army had marched toward Ghent, capital of the Austrian
Netherlands and supply base for the allied Army. A Hanoverian
general, Baron Moltke, sent by Cumberland to relief of Ghent
with 4,000 horse and foot, had run into the French. Moltke's
cavalry had cut its way through. His infantry had retreated. Ghent
surrendered on July 6 but Moltke’s cavalry escaped, riding on to
Ostend.1°1

Ostend, a naval base, was of more importance to the allies than
all the rest of Flanders. All ordnance stores were accumulated at
Ostend.1°2 Its garrison was down to about 1,200 men, not enough
to man the enceinte of its dilapidated defenses.103 Lord Stair asked
the Lords of the Regency to give him two battalions of Foot
Guards, undertaking to hold Ostend with that many reinforce-
ments.1°4 The Regency hesitated. Forces for home defense were
down to 8,000. So ever-present were the fears of another Jacobite
invasion, that the Lords of the Regency dared not reduce their
slender home defense until they had firsthand information regard-
ing the true state of affairs abroad-——nor did they dare abandon
Ostend, so vital to the English should a quick withdrawal of Cum-
berland’s army become necessary.1°5

Casting about for a dependable man to send to Ostend, a mili-
tary man upon whose observations and judgment they might de-
pend, the Regency came up wih Col. Edward Braddock, first major
of the Coldstream Guards. He was ordered to Ostend, to look over
the situation and return as quickly as possible.1°6 Cross channel
sailing time, if the wind held, was 8 or 9 hours, 16 if the breeze
were 1ight.1°7

The summer had been rainy and the crossing probably was not
too comfortable for a middle-aged officer of the foot guards.1°3 He
found Ostend harbor, a deep, narrow basin crowded with shipping,
smelling of rope and fish and English coal smoke. Flemish speak-
ing porters swarmed the quay where the packet tied up, grabbing
for the passengers’ luggage. Uniform houses of wind-and-weather
beaten brick, with corbie-stepped gables, lined Ostend’s exactly
straight and narrow streets. If Braddock spent a night in Ostend,
he must have put up at one of two English inns where the board
floors were sanded, where the bread came in rings, and claret wine
was the cheapest.1°9

To the town's weary garrison, who probably looked as if they

[88] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

slept in their clothes, Col. Braddock’s well cocked hat and shining
buckles may have seemed out of place. But the shape of a soldier's
hat, like the dressing of his hair, was a matter of much thought at
St. James’s. The wig must come low on the sides of his face to hide
his ears. The hat, edged with gold lace, must be cocked low. The
pale blue lapels of Braddock’s long scarlet coat were fastened back
with twelve gold loops and twelve gold buttons. White lace cuffs
dangled at his wrists. His skin-tight pale blue breeches barely
showed between the bottom of his long scarlet waistcoat and the
high tops of his spotless white gaiters, reaching well above his
knees.11°

At any rate Braddock could see that Ostend was not defenseless.
On the north and west the town faced the sea, lying below high
water level in the protection of a granite-faced seawall. A morass
laced with ditches protected its landward side. The only dry-footed
approach was over sand dunes to the south, along a strand sub-
merged at flood tide when the town was almost completely encom-
passed by the sea. A double ditch filled with sea water lay around
the ramparts, enough to discourage any storming party.111

Ostend’s acting governor, General O’Conor, was a weak, worn-
out old man, who at the first hint of a French attack, had ordered
the sluice gates opened to flood the low country around Ostend.
From Brussels the Austrian Minister to Flanders, Count Kaunitz,
had countermanded this order. No one knew why.112 The strength
of Ostend’s garrison, nearly 4,000 Austrian, Dutch, Hanoverian,
and British troops, exceeded first reports. Moltke’s hussars, creat-
ing a forage problem, would be more of a hindrance than a help
in a siege.113 It was generally agreed that the addition of three
battalions of infantry and some artillery would put the place in a
better state of defense. Ostend could be supplied indefinitely from
the sea.114

Braddock returned to London with a report along these general
lines, but only one battalion of troops was sent from London. This
was a provisional battalion of foot guards. It consisted of drafts of
15 men from each of three guard battalions still in London. They
were not the pick of the lot, but rather those judged good enough
for garrison duty. Made ready for foreign service, they assembled
on the parade at St. James’s with the oldest and least efficient offi-
cers of the three battalions. Under command of Col. Rowland

J1:~;Nx1Ns’s EAR AND THE FORTY-FIVE [89]

Reynolds, of the Third Guards, they marched to Margate where
fourteen transports were waiting.115

Reynolds’s force reached Ostend on August 7.115 A few days later
French batteries of heavy ordnance, mounted on sand dunes along
the beach, brought the entrance of Ostend Harbor under an en-
filading fire that prevented further assistance from the sea. Can-
non ball and bomb shells rained into the town. The besiegers’
entrenchments drew closer, and after three days of steady bombard-
ment Ostend surrendered on terms permitting its garrison to with-
draw with honors of war. Artillery, ammunition, and provisions
laid up in the town were lost.117

An official dispatch from Ostend’s Austrian governor, General
Chanclos, itemizing the terms of the Capitulation, were waiting
for King George II when he returned to London from Hanover.
Offsetting the loss of Ostend was the capture of Louisburg, a
French stronghold in North America, by an army of New England
colonists. Tower and park guns were fired, government offices illu-
minated, bonfires lighted, and bells rung to celebrate this victory.
But Louisburg was 3,000 miles away, on the island of Cape Breton,
a place few Londoners had ever heard of.113

“Cape Breton? An Island? W0nderfull—-show it to me on the
map,” exclaimed the Duke of Newcastle.

He ran his finger over the map, found Louisburg on Cape Breton.

“So it is, sure enough,” he said, “I must go and tell the King
that Cape Breton is an island.” 119

He could also tell the King that a letter from Inverness said,
“The Young Chevalier [pretender] has certainly landed in the
highlands.”

For months Charles Edward Stuart had been reported to be
planning a summer descent on Scotland. The British defeat at
Fontenoy had made him confident of success.12° On June 22 he
had embarked at Nantes aboard an 18—gun brig La Doutelle,
loaded with 1,000 stand of arms, 1,400 or 1,500 broadswords, and
some small field pieces. At Belle Isle, in the Bay of Biscay, the brig
was joined by a 66-gun ship, the Elizabeth, and the two proceeded
in convoy. Four days at sea they were intercepted by a British man-
of-war, the Lion; and after a nine-hour engagement at close range
the Elizabeth was damaged so badly she turned back. La Doutelle
ran away, made the Irish Channel, and on July 25 anchored in
Lochnanuagh on the west coast of Scotland.121

[ 90] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

So remote was the place of his landing that weeks passed before
letters from Edinburgh removed all doubts that the young Pretender
was in Scotland.122 But the Lords of the Regency issued a procla-
mation offering £30,o00 for his capture. The war office ordered all
army officers in England and Scotland to repair immediately to
their posts.123 There was not a man to spare. The draft for the
relief of Ostend had reduced the strength of the foot guards in
London to a point where those normally on duty for 24 hours at a
time were now standing 48.124

Privy Councillors and general officers of the Army met with the
King at Kensington on Friday the thirteenth of August, 1745.125
Letters to raise the militia were dispatched to the lord lieutenants
of the counties of England and Wales. London and Westminster
militia already had been ordered to hold itself in readiness!“
Ten battalions, including the brigade of guards, had been ordered
home from Flanders, and the old Anglo-Dutch treaty had been in-
voked for the movement of 3,000 Dutch troops from Holland to
Scotland, where Sir John Cope commanded the King’s scattered
forces.197

From being an officer detached for special service, Braddock re-
verted to his regular duties as first major of the Coldstream. To
bring the guard regiments up to full strength, a bounty of 16
shillings was offered every recruit who would join up before the
24th of the month, although a special order forbade the enlistment
of Scotch, Irish, papists or vagabonds. Quarters must be provided
for oflicers and men of the battalion returning from Ostend.
Ground must be marked off in Hyde Park for the encampment of
the other battalions ordered home from Flanders.123

Transports carrying the first of these troops reached Gravesend
on Monday, September 23, 1745. Wherries brought the guards
ashore at the Tower. The Coldstream battalion, assigned tempo-
rary quarters at the Tower, formed up by companies and marched
in briskly, their white gaiters in cadence with drum beats, their
sidearms clinking.129 Not quite so smart were some of the return-
ing line regiments which had been campaigning in quagmires oil?
the paved roads of Flanders. Redcoats were wrinkled and rusty,
spatter-dashes stained, hats uncocked and boots broken from long
marches in the rain. Some were wounded. Some were lame. Many
had lost their wagons and their baggage.13°

The Gazette reported the Young Pretender and his army of

J1-:Nx1Ns’s EAR AND THE FORTY-FIVE [91 ]

Scotch rebels as having left Perth and moving southward.131 The
news was late and incomplete. As a matter of fact the rebels had
routed two green regiments of Sir John Cope’s dragoons, defeated
the remainder of Cope’s army at Prestonpans, and entered Edin-
burgh.132 An express brought Whitehall the news of Cope’s defeat
on Tuesday, September 24. It sounded incredible. A rabble of rag-
gamufiins, loosie hillskippers from the Scottish highlands armed
with claymores, Lochaber axes, and with no cannon heavier than
one-pounders, scattering an army of the King’s regulars in a ten-
minute fight? 133 In the opinion of one anonymous officer who
wrote a newspaper critique of Prestonpans:

“Rude troops breaking in upon an army by violence, is much the
same as a mad unexperienced fellow running headlong on a fine
fencer; he parries here, retreats there, plays with his adversary till
he has spent his spirits, and then disarms or dispatches him. To
suffer troops to be broke by a sudden shock, is a fatal error in the
military science.”

This expert urged army preferment of “men who rather attend
to their professions, and shine there, than at courts and levees”; al-
ways concluding, that “he who neglects this business to wait on
nods and smiles, is fitter to be a pimp in a bawdy house than to
command fleets and armies.” 134

This attack on Sir John, and a pamphlet along the same line, en-
titled “An Enquiry into the Conduct of G—---1 C--e,” were an-
swered in the London Evening Post by another oflicer who declared
the conduct of the King's oflicers at Prestonpans to have been above
reproach.135 One who had come off with honors was Peter Halkett
of Pitfirrane, an M. P. for Inverkeithen. As a lieutenant-colonel
of the 48th Foot, one of the six regiments raised in 1741, Halkett
had kept five officers and fourteen men together and firing until
the rebels offered them terms.136 Braddock would hear of Halkett
again.

Meanwhile the King ordered Marshal Wade, whom he had
named commander in chief of all forces in Britain, northward to-
ward the Scottish border with 8,000 horse and foot. Lord Tyrawley,
back from Russia, went with Wade reluctantly as his second in
command. The troops left much to be desired.137 John Wesley, an
Oxford don who was preaching a new Christian doctrine called
“Methodism," encountered some of them at Doncaster, “drunken,
cursing, swearing soldiers who surrounded us on every side.”

[92] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

“Can these wretches succeed in anything they undertake?” Wes-
ley wondered.133

There were reports of a Paptist-Jacobite plot to burn London
and massacre its inhabitants. Irish Catholics were suspected of set-
ting a series of fires. An outbreak of cattle distemper, which made
Londoners afraid to eat beef, butter, or milk, was blamed on Pap-
ists who were accused of poisoning country water supplies. Catholic
priests and servants were arrested. A detachment of Braddock’s
footguards took possession of the Lincoln Fields playhouse for a
guardroom, seventy remaining under arms day and night against
emergencies. City gates, dockyards, and the Tower were locked after
dark. Six regiments of London militia patrolled the streets.139

The militia was eager to show its strength to the King. On
October 2 5 this order was read to the Coldstream, now encamped
in Hyde Park:

“If the militia are reviewed tomorrow by His Majesty, the sol-
diers of the three regimentsof guards are to behave civilly, and not
to laugh or make game of them.”

The militia marched next day, all six regiments passing in review
before the King who stood on the terrace of the royal gardens at
St. james’s for three hours to watch them pass.14°

The Young Pretender’s army, estimated at 7,000 to 13,000 horse
and foot, took Carlisle and moved down the west coast of England
to avoid Marshal Wade.141 The Gazette printed extraordinary
twopenny editions to keep London informed of the rebels’ prog-
ress. In contrast to the King's soldiers, seldom ready to move be-
fore 9 o’clock in the morning, the Highlanders were up and on the
go at daybreak. Each man was armed with sword, target, musket,
and dirk. For provision they drove cattle with them, and each man
carried a bag of oatmeal. The grandson of James II, already a ro-
mantic figure in Jacobite eyes, was described as a melancholy young
man in a gray wig, marching on foot in Highland plaid with a
blue sash, a blue bonnet, and a white rose.142

The Duke of Cumberland, returning from Holland somewhat
heavier than he went away, made a less appealing figure. But he
brought with him five more troops of horse, a regiment of dragoons,
and four regiments of foot.143 On November 16 the King ordered
most of these toward Lancaster. The Duke, who had established a
temporary headquarters at St. James’s, was sent to Litchfield, a

JENx1Ns’s EAR AND THE FORTY-FIVE [93]

little cathedral market town in Staffordshire, where more troops,
including a brigade of foot guards, were to assemble!“

Three days before the first battalion of the Coldstream received
orders to join the Duke, Braddock was commissioned lieutenant-
colonel of the regiment.145 He had been dickering for the promo-
tion, which cost him £ 5,000, since the end of September when
Lieutenant-Colonel Churchill was appointed colonel of a regiment
of marines. The deal seems to have involved the sale of Brad-
dock’s majority to Captain Charles Russell of the First Foot
Guards, for £3,600. As lieutenant-colonel of the Coldstream, Brad-
dock became senior oflicer and acting brigadier of the guards
brigade.143

The King held a military levee at St. James’s for all the oificers
of his footguards before they marched to Litchfield. When they had
gathered he told them, in his German accent:

Gentlemen, you cannot be ignorant of the present precarious situa-
tion of our country, and though I have had so many recent instances
of your exertions, the necessity of the times and the knowledge I have
of your hearts induce me to demand your services again; so all of you
that are willing to meet the rebels, hold up your right hands; all those

who may, for particular reasons, find it inconvenient, hold up your
left. . . .147

Every right hand in the room went up. The King tried to thank
them but walked out, choked with tears.143

Litchfield was more than a hundred miles from London. Late
autumn storms had been followed by colder weather, rain turning
to snow, as the Coldstream paraded in Hyde Park the morning of
November 25 to begin its march northward.149 If and when they
met the Pretender’s army, the ranks growled, they would neither
give nor take quarter.15° They were expected to march at least ten
miles a day, resting every fourth day. From London to Barnet, to
St. Albans, to Dunstable, to Newport Pagnell Braddock’s brigade
used the same road, then the Coldstream battalion swung east-
ward, through Northampton, but rejoined the main column be-
yond Coventry.151

They made the march in eight days, over icy country roads in
wind and snow, with a convoy of wagons for their tents and bag-
gage. The first of the three battalions arrived in Litchfield on
November 30 without loss of a single man from accident or sickness.
The Duke rode out of town nearly two miles to meet the Cold-

[94] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

stream, which closed the column when it marched in two days later.

It was bitterly cold now. Straw and fires were ordered for sol-
ders who could not be quartered in the public houses. As an
added discomfort the bread supply ran out and had to be supple-
mented with biscuit.152 Litchfield, a town of only about a thousand
people, did what it could for the troops, the first to occupy it since
Civil War Royalists and Parliamentarians had fought around its
three-spired red sandstone cathedral.153

London had not forgotten the Duke’s army. The Common Coun-
cil had subscribed £ 1,000 for the purchase of knit woolen gloves,
woolen stockings, flannel waistcoats, watch coats, spatterdashes, and
blankets. A three—night benefit of the Beggar’s Opera at Drury
Lane, with Mrs. Cibber playing Polly and the tallow chandlers
providing free candles, enriched the soldiers’ relief fund by £600.
Quakers, clothmakers, skinners, drapers, fishmongers, goldsmiths,
coopers, stationers chipped in, bringing the total to £5,ooo.154

The Young Pretender occupied Manchester. His army took the
road to Macclesfield, coming straight toward the Duke. Braddock’s
foot guards moved forward, two battalions to Stafford and one to
Rugeley.155 At 11 o'clock on the night of December 2, Cumber-
land advanced with Braddock’s brigade and other troops to the
cross-roads town of Stone, 25 miles directly south of Macclesfield.
By 4 in the morning they were in position to dispute any further
advance by the rebels in that direction.156 The Pretender’s cavalry
made a feint toward the Duke, but the main column of the rebel
army took a road forking left to Derby. Cumberland fell back to
Litchfield.157

December 6, 1745 went down in history as Black Friday.153 That
day London learned the rebels had side-slipped the Duke’s army
and occupied Derby. The road south from Derby lay open and un-
defended. London closed its shops. A run on the Bank of England
was forestalled by the old device of paying off in sixpence. The
Archbishop of Canterbury made up a special prayer to be said in
all the churches. King George was reported to have ordered his
yacht anchored at the Tower stairs, ready for a quick getaway.
The Duke of Newcastle was said to have shut himself up in his
apartments, debating whether the time had come to transfer his
allegiance to the House of Stuart.159 Any day now, as the Jacobites
sang, might be

JENK1Ns’s EAR AND THE FORTY-FIVE [95]

. . . the time we see,
That the King shall enjoy his own again! 16°

The grenadier companies of the footguards, which had been left
in London, and all other unassigned regular troops and artillery were
ordered to Finchley, a northern suburb of the city. William Hogarth,
the artist, watching the confusion of soldiers, sutlers, wagons,
and camp followers pouring out along Tottenham Court turn-
pike between The King’s Head and Adam and Eve, two popular
taverns either side of the road, drew what he saw in a comic pic-
ture which he called “The March to Finchley.” 131

December 6, 1745, also was a black Friday for Charles Edward
Stuart. People had flocked along the road to see him and his kilted
Highlanders, to hear his squealing pipers, but he had failed to
incite them to revolution. Since leaving Carlisle he had been joined
by hardly two hundred men. In all Lancashire, where Catholics
and Tories abounded, only one squire had taken up arms for his
cause.132 His force was down to about 4,500. On the same day Lon-
don trembled, Charles Edward Stuart and his army marched out of
Derby, by the same route they had entered, withdrawing toward
Lancashire.163

Cumberland waited at Litchfield. This time he wanted to be sure
which way the rebels were going. He had posted Braddock’s foot
guards around his headquarters, the home of J. Inges, Esq., a justice
of the peace, with orders to draw up in the street, facing away from
the house, in case of an a1arm.164 On December 9, the Duke started
in pursuit of the retreating Pretender with two regiments of dra-
goons and a thousand infantry volunteers, including 400 foot
guards mounted on horses lent by Whigs who lived in the neigh-
boring countryside.135

In response to urgent dispatches from Newcastle, the greater part
of the Duke’s army marched south, through London, bound for
Kent and Sussex. There was still fear of a French invasion on the
south coast.163 Braddock’s brigade, minus the 400 volunteers with
Cumberland, returned to London. Their wagons, carrying sick and
lame on top of tents and baggage, did not arrive until the day after
Christmas. The half frozen Coldstream guardsmen went into winter
quarters in Finsbury and Southwark taverns and at the Tower.137

A nobleman in waiting at St. James’s showed the King a print of
Hogarth’s “March to Finch1ey,” dedicated to his Majesty. George
II examined it suspiciously. He studied the picture's central figure,

I ll-Starred General

BRADDOCK
or THE COLDSTREAM GUARDS

[96] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

a doleful grenadier beset by two pregnant women. Behind the gren-
adier an officer grabbed a milkmaid rudely and kissed her. Most
of the other soldiers in Hogarth’s print appeared to be drunk and
disorderly. Indignantly the King drew back.

“Pray, who is this Hogarth?” he asked.

“A painter, my liege.”

“. . . Does this fellow mean to laugh at my guards?"

“The picture, an please your Majesty, must undoubtedly be con-
sidered a burlesque.”

“What! A painter burlesque a soldier? He deserves to be picketed
for his insolence. Take his trumpery out of my sight!” 133

VII

FLANDERS

1745-1753

BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE went back to Scotland, the Duke's dra-
goons at his heels. Other rebels shut themselves up in Carlisle,
in an old sandbagged hencoop of a Norman castle which they sur-
rendered after two days of bombardment by Cumberland’s artil-
1ery.1 An express arrived in London with news of the surrender on
New Year's Eve, 1746.2 About 7 o’clock the following Sunday morn-
ing, January 5, Cumberland and his stall? returned to St. James's.
They had ridden hard for three days, the Duke without ever going
to bed. In spite of his weariness, his heft, and the dusty creases in
his long jack boots, no man looked better than Cumberland in a
saddle. He had the deep, upright seat of a born horseman.3

People stood in the street and cheered when he rode out of St.
_]ames’s later, rested and refreshed, in a blue coat with bright red
facing, a brass-buttoned waistcoat, his three-cornered hat at a rakish
angle. He was the conqueror of Carlisle.4 His cynical brother, the
Prince of Wales, who was entertaining at dinner, ordered a sugar
city from his confectioner as a centerpiece for the table and tried
to amuse his guests by pelting it with sugar plums. Frederick would
never be a soldier-prince.5

On Cumber1and’s recommendation Lieutenant-General Henry
Hawley had been named commander-in-chief in Scotland, taking
over the incompetent Wade's army to press pursuit of the Young

[97]

[98] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Pretender northward from Carlisle. Hawley was a hard-handed old
cavalryman who had been second in command of the horse at
Fontenoyfi But the same dragoons who had run away for Johnnie
Cope at Prestonpans ran away for Hawley at Falkirk, below Ster-
ling, where Charles Edward’s Highlanders won an unexpected vic-
tory.7

“My heart is broke,” wrote Hawley to the Duke in a personal
letter. “Such scandalous cowardice I never saw before.” 3

Thirty-one dragoons were hanged for desertion. Thirty-two foot
were shot for cowardice. Hawley became known as “Hawley the
hangman.” 9

No additional troops were sent north, but on his father’s orders
the Duke set out for Scotland with two of his aides, Bury and
Conway.10 Braddock presently heard that Conway had been given
command of the 48th foot, a regiment which Braddock would come
to know only too well in the years ahead.“

Early in February-—the Young Pretender was again in retreat but
snow had delayed his pursuit by the Duke now commanding 12
Hawley’s reorganized army-—four wagons and a coach load of pris-
oners taken at Carlisle arrived in London under guard.-13 They
were the first of many rebels whose custody, as they gradually filled
the city's jails, provided a new responsibility for Braddock’s foot
guards. That same month two transports out of Ostend, carrying a
French regiment to Scotland, were captured off the coast by a Brit-
ish man—of-war. Twenty-nine deserters from the British army in
Flanders,“ some of them foot guards, were found in the rank and
file of those aboard. Court-martialed at Whitehall, all twenty-nine
were sentenced to death. Only five——any five——were ordered exe-
cuted. The twenty-nine threw dice on a drumhead for their lives.
Five from the foot guards lost. They were shot in Hyde Park on a
Wednesday morning, April 23.15

That same day an express from Edinburgh brought Whitehall
word that the Duke of Cumberland had routed Charles Edward's
army at Culloden House, near Inverness.13 Riding hard behind the
express came Lord Bury with an oflicial dispatch.” Of the Duke’s
5,ooo soldiers, only 50 had been killed and about 250 wounded.”
But the rebel losses were never counted. Scattered in flight and
retreat, many had been ridden down and sabred by Cumberland’s
cavalry far from the battlefield. Before the battle began the Duke
had recommended the bayonet, and when it was over, one regiment

FLANDERS [ 99 ]

of foot-Barre1l’s—boasted that every one of its bayonets was blood-
ied or bent.19 Injured and dying Scots on Culloden field had their
brains bashed out with musket stocks. One lot of helplessly
wounded was said to have been burned alive in a farm shed where
they had taken refuge. Others, robbed and stripped of their cloth-
ing, lay in agony for two days among the uncollected dead on the
rainsodden moor. The Pretender escaped, dressed like a woman,
to France.-‘*0

More prisoners arrived in London from Scotland, along with
loads of captured claymores, iron-stocked pistols, and long barreled
highland muskets. Five alleged ringleaders of the rebellion, the
Earls of Cromartie and Kilmarnock, Lords Lovat and Balmerino,
and the Marquis of Tullibardine, were lodged in the Tower. Other
leaders were sent to Newgate. Rebel army officers were taken to
Marshalsea prison, and common soldiers to New Gaol, in South-
wark, and Tilbury fort. Military guards had to be provided for all
these places, as well as for several inns where rebels who had turned
King's evidence were confined. A temporary barracks was built at
New Gaol for the fifty guards on duty there.21

In the ballrooms of Westminster, hooped petticoats billowed and
swirled in a new romp, “the Culloden reel.” “Culloden” was the
title of a new ballet at Sadler’s Wells.” But lurid tales of the
Duke's cruelty, wild yarns about vanquished Scots having been fed
poisoned bread and stuffed into the holds of prison ships on stone
ballast, persisted even after his return to London. Pillage by his
soldiers had got out of hand. Houses had been burned, crops de-
stroyed, cattle driven off, and women insulted. To Jacobites and
Tories the Duke became “Billie the Butcher.” 23

The foot guards provided a detail at the execution of the first
nine rebels to be condemned. They were hanged on Kennington
Common. Each of the nine was cut down at the end of five min-
utes, before he was dead, and disembowled. His entrails were
thrown into a pile of blazing fagots and the head was chopped off.
Two traitors’ heads were impaled at Temple Bar. The guards also
provided a detachment for the old palace yard, at Westminster
Hall, where Cromartie, Kilmarnock, and Balmerino were found
guilty of treason and sentenced to death. Cromartie was pardoned.
Tullibardine died in the Tower. Old Lord Lovat was still awaiting
trial.“

At 6 o'clock Monday morning, August 18, 1746, one thousand of

[ mo] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Braddock footguards, 15 from each company, marched through the
city from the parade at St. James’s to Tower Hill. The hill, the
roofs of the houses around it, the masts of ships in the river were
covered with people, waiting to see the execution of two of the
rebel lords. At the direction of a colonel of the guards, possibly
Braddock, the black cloth over the rail of the executioner’s plat-
form was tucked up, so the crowd could see everything. One
stroke of the axe cut off Kilmarnock's head. It took three to behead
Ba1merino.25

The scaffold used in the executions was still standing nearly a
month later when Braddock assembled the first battalion of the
Coldstream on Tower Hill to embark on a secret expedition against
the French. His battalion was to be part of a body of 8,000 picked
troops rendezvousing at Plymouth under the joint command of
Admiral Richard Lestock and General James Sinclair.” The
guardsmen marched to King’s Stairs of Tower wharf where lighters
waited to carry them down the river to transports lying at Grave-
send. Standing on the wharf to watch the guards embark was the
Duke of Cumberland.”

He “spoke to every man as they passed him with the greatest
freedom," bidding them do their duty against the French, “and
generously ordered two shillings to each man,” the newspapers re-
ported later.”

Colonel Russell, now Braddock’s second major, made no protest
when one soldier's wife broke through the ranks to take a farewell
kiss of her husband. And the Duke, in spite of his reputation as a
stern disciplinarian, seemed to be amused.

“ ’Tis like you!” he called good naturedly to Russell.29

Officers and men climbed into the boats and shoved off in high
spirits, the soldiers huzzaing:

“Long live King George and the Duke of Cumberland!” 30

But the weather turned bad, the winds were wrong, and Lestock’s
fleet sailed before the transports carrying the foot guards came
within sight of Plymouth Hoe.31 Both battalions landed and en-
camped, reembarked a fortnight later and sailed for the Bay of
Biscay, then put about abruptly and headed home.” Sinclair’s force,
furnished with only such maps as it had been able to buy in the
shops of Plymouth, had landed near Quimperle, plundered a few
convents and villages, smashed the altars of several Catholic
churches, marched to Port L’Orient and broke into the magazines

FLANDERS [ 101 ]

of the French East Indian Company. From Port L’Orient they had
attacked Port Louis, apparently without plan or purpose. On the
morning of October 19 the entire expedition returned to Plymouth,
Braddock’s foot guards without having set foot on enemy soil.33

Off Dungeness the guards’ homeward-bound transports ran into
a gale that swept away knapsacks, water flasks, camp kettles, and
other field equipment stowed topside.34 On October 24 they reached
the Downs, and three days later disembarked at Deptford and the
Tower, the sick going ashore in covered barges.35 Baggage was car-
ried back to Whitehall to storerooms in the Tower, and the troops
marched to assigned winter quarters in Holborn, Finsbury, and
the East End.“

“The guards are come back too, who never went,” Walpole told
Mann in a bantering letter that ridiculed the operation from start
to finish.37 “In one single day they received four several different
orders!”

All Braddock had to show for the past six weeks, largely a cam-
paign of brandy and lemons against seasickness on a rolling trans-
port, was a contingent bill for £42.12.6, covering barge, hoy, horse
and wagon hire, and the making and mending of barrels for pow-
der and ball put into cartridges at Plymouth, and then taken out
again when the cartridges were opened up to save the powder. His
quartermaster also turned in a statement for ,I_‘153.16.4. for the re-
pair of arms damages in the Dungeness storm and the loss of equip-
ment washed overb0ard.33

Early in the spring of 1747 Cumberland opened a new campaign
against the French in the low countries. Great exertions were made
to land a preponderant force in Flanders so as to terminate the
war without further delay.39 But in the middle of April a French
column of 25,000 men under Count Lowendahl penetrated the
Dutch province of East Flanders. The French took the towns of
Hulst, Sluys, and Sas-van-Ghent, the port of Ghent. They occupied
the island of Cadsand at the mouth of the West Scheldt. The Dutch
were thrown into panic.4°

On Thursday, May 9, the second battalion of the Coldstream,
under Braddock’s command, was ordered to occupy Flushing (the
British for Vlissingen), a fortified seaport opposite French-occupied
Cadsand at the mouth of the Scheldt.“ The battalion moved out in
the usual manner-—by barge to Gravesend where tubby transports
lay at anchor.” The soldiers climbed the gangway ladders and the

[ 102 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

ships wound down London river with the tide, past flat green pas-
ture lands where the May morning mist veiled grazing cattle. Be-
yond the docks of Sheerness, where the Thames spread four miles
wide to meet the sea, a waiting escort of sloops and men-of-war
shook out their brown sails. The transports, rolling with a heavy
wallow, were not built for speed and it was the Wednesday after
the movement had been ordered before they sighted Walcheren
Island.43

Dikes twenty-five feet high hid Flushing from the sea.44 Only the
windmills, the church steeples, and the red tile roofs of the town's
higher buildings were visible to the troops aboard the transports
tacking into the Scheldt. The French held the lower bank of the
river. Every Dutch post over there had been taken. Fighting had
ceased. Three British regiments sent earlier to the aid of Hulst had
been ferried back across the Scheldt by small craft to South Bevel-
and, the next island up the river from Walcheren.“

Braddock landed his battalion at Flushing and reported to
Major-General John (Daddy) Huske, a former Coldstreamer who
had been named commander-in-chief of all British troops in the
Dutch province of Zealand.“ The French were reported to have
collected flat-bottomed boats for a descent on Zealand.“ The Prince
of Orange had toured the province to arouse its inhabitants to
self-defense. But British officers who had seen the Dutch in battle
did not anticipate much resistance should the French attempt a
river crossing.“

Farther to the east, Saxe and the Duke of Cumberland took their
times at grand maneuvers. The two armies finally clashed on July
2 at the village of Lauffeld, near Maestricht. Again Cumberland
was defeated. Saxe followed up his victory by sending Lowendahl
to besiege the town of Bergen-op-Zoom, thirty miles east of Flush-
ing on the Dutch mainland and reputedly the strongest fortress on
the continent.49 The French bombarded the town with red-hot can-
non balls, setting fire to its largest church and destroying nearly
400 of its 1,300 houses.5°

Braddock’s Coldstream battalion stood fast at Flushing where
the thick, damp air of the Zealand summer caused an almost con-
tinuous fog.51 The little seaport boasted none of the blandishments
of a garrison town. The French beans, salted fish, Dutch butter and
cheese of Walcheren island never ran out. But there was a limit to
red-coat endurance of water-filled ditches and tarred piles, of red-

FLANDERS [ 103 ]

armed Dutch girls in neat white caps, forever scouring immaculate
woodwork and polishing spotless window panes. There was trou-
ble, too, over the clipped ducats with which the soldiers were paid.
Sutlers would change them only for men who spent a shilling or
more for liquor.52

Unaccustomed to persistent fog and humidity, the battalion
swept with ague and fever. The more seriously ill were carted off
to the allied army hospital at Otterhout (Ostrout) near Breda. A
physician, sent to Flushing to make an inspection, was told that
strangers always had been subject to sickness there in the summer
time.53 An order from Henry Fox, the secretary at war, directed
Braddock to transport his entire battalion to Breda.54 The Prince
of Orange was understood to be in charge of this operation and to
be assembling a force which included Braddock’s battalion, but the
details were far from clear. Braddock’s next immediate superior,
Brigadier-General William Douglas, had died of fever in Beve-
land.55

Applying to Dutch officials for boats in which to move his men
to Breda, Braddock was told that none could be provided without
an order from the Prince of Orange. The harassed battalion com-
mander immediately dispatched an officer, Lieut.-Col. John Parsons,
to obtain the necessary order from the Prince, believed to be in the
neighborhood of Bergen. At the same time he sent an express to
the Duke of Cumberland to inform him of the death of Douglas.“

At 4 A.M. on the morning of September 16 (New Style), the sixty-
fifth day of its seige, Bergen-op-Zoom fell. It was taken by a com-
bination of treachery and surprise, according to reports reaching
Braddock." One account said a party of twelve French grenadiers
had slipped through a small breach in a ravelin, frightening away
its Dutch defenders and opening the way for a storming party of
500 who reached the center of the town before the alarm bells could
be rung. Sleepy Dutch officers, awaking to find French troops in
the marketplace outside their windows, ran away in their night-
gowns.53

Three days later Braddock was still without any word from
either the Prince or the Duke, still without transport, unable to
comply with the orders he had received from the secretary at war.
No doubt he also was under pressure by Zealanders, frightened by
the fall of Bergen, to remain where he was. In desperation he wrote
to Chesterfield, a secretary of state:

[ 104] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

My Lord:

I take the liberty to address myself to you in relation to the regi-
ments that are in this province. The sickness increases daily and some
men that were sent to the grand hospital at Otterhout and sent back
yesterday as cured are already relapsed. I have sent enclosed the opin-
ion of the Physician whom His Majesty was pleased to order hither.
I send you this because I cannot as yet put in execution the order I
received from the Secretary at War to transport the troops in this
island to Breda, the States of Zealand having absolutely refused to fur-
nish any boats till they have an order from the Prince of Orange to
whom I have dispatched an oflicer who is not yet returned.

I sent a fortnight ago an express to His Royal Highness the Duke
upon the death of Brigadier Douglas who is not yet returned and am
in great distress regarding the regiments in South Beveland. The States
of Zealand have sent to me to direct ’em to obey the orders of the
Dutch Major General there, the commanding officer there having re-
ceived the same order from the Secretary at War as I have here.

We were very much surprised here at the loss of Bergen but I be-
lieve not so much as you were in England. I am afraid when the truth
comes out it will appear a very black story.

I have this moment received a letter from the States of Zealand to
desire we may not leave these islands till there is an order from the
Prince of Orange or other troops to replace us. As I know very well
even if we had had conveyance we could not have got into Breda till
the Prince of Orange had given directions for our reception. I did
directly send an officer to him to know his pleasure. I beg your Lord-
ship's pardon for giving you this trouble and am

With all respect
My Lord
Your Lordship’s
Most Obedient
Humble Servant
E. Braddock

P.S. It is very likely our communication will be cut off with Holland
but by long sea in a very few days.
Flushing September 19th 1747 59

T But Chesterfield had no intention of becoming involved. Writing
from Whitehall a week later, he informed Col. Braddock:

Sir

I would not defer returning you my thanks for the favour of your
letter of the 19th Inst N. W., tho’ I have nothing to say to you upon
the contents of it but to refer you to the orders, which you will receive
from his Royal Highness the Duke, as to the future disposition of the
troops in the islands of Zealand.

In the mean time the King is persuaded, that no care will be want-

FLANDERS [ 1o5 ]

ing on your part for their ease and conveniency in their present sickly
condition, and approves of your care hitherto.

I am Etc.,
Chesterfield 6°

Later in the fall Braddock’s battalion was transported from
Flushing to Eyndhoven, a town about twenty miles south of Bar
le Duc, where it went into winter quarters with the rest of the al-
lied army. A draft of 128 men arrived in Flanders from the home
battalions to replace losses in the guards brigade, including those
of the Coldstream who had died of fever.“ The Duke of Cumber-
land, who was nearsighted in one eye and fearful that a fever he
had contracted in Holland would destroy the sight of the other,
issued an order that sergeants of the foot guards would leave off
wearing ruflles because he could not tell commissioned from non-
commissioned oificers. He was no longer an easy man to get along
with.“

“There are prodigious discontents in the army: the town had got
a list of a hundred and fifty officers who desired at once to resign
but I believe this was exaggerated,” Walpole said.63 “We (the Duke)
are very great and very exact disciplinarians; our partialities are
very strong, particularly on the side of aversions, and none of the
articles tally exact with British tempers. Lord Robert Bertie re-
ceived a reprimand the other day by an aide-de-camp, for blowing
his nose as he relieved the guard under a window (the Duke’s);
where very exact notice is constantly taken of very small circum-
stances.”

In May, 1748, Braddock’s battalion assembled with the rest of the
Duke's army near Roermond, north of Maestricht, which was being
beseiged by Saxe. The two armies encamped within sight of each
other and the Duke watched the French from a churchsteeple, but
the fighting was over.“ On March 11 a peace congress had met at
Aix-la-Chapelle, and by the end of April it had reached a prelimin-
ary armistice agreement. The opposing armies retired behind im-
aginary lines, that of the British extending across Brabant from
Steenberg to Roermond.65 The definitive peace treaty, signed Octo-
ber 18, ended military operations.“ The guards brigade, including
Braddock’s battalion, marched to Wilhelmstadt from where it
sailed for home nine days before Christmas." A winter gale scat-
tered their transports. Cavalry horses aboard ship died by the score,
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[ 106] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

landed at Yarmouth on December 20, and the rest of it at the
Downs on January 29, 1749.69

Braddock’s battalion had been assigned billets near the Tower
and in the Parish of St. Luke’s, Middlesex.7° As fast as they re-
turned to London all companies of the Coldstream were reduced in
strength, from 60 to 48 men.71 The haler of the older soldiers were
transferred to an invalid corps for garrison duty at the forts around
London, along the coast, and in Scotland. All told, nearly 1,300
men were discharged from the Guards brigade.” Once again the
streets of London, its parks and taverns, were packed with idle,
demobilized redcoats, a scene which carried Braddock back to the
days of his childhood, at the end of King William’s wars.73 This
time the government recognized its responsibilities. Cumberland
and Lord Halifax, president of the Board of Trade, worked out a
scheme to provide free land in Nova Scotia for all discharged sol-
diers and sailors willing to emigrate.“

For those who remained in the army there was no relaxation of
discipline. A Sergeant Hartley of the Coldstream and Drummer
John South of the First Footguards, found guilty of desertion to
the French, were sentenced to be shot in Hyde Park. The judgment
was carried out between 7 and 8 o'clock on a Monday morning, a
detachment from every company of the three regiments of the
guards brigade conducting the prisoners to the place of their ex-
ecution. Drummer South fell dead after the first volley, but the
Coldstream sergeant went down only wounded. He lay on his back,
writhing and moaning:

“Lord have mercy on my soul! . . .”

A second file of guardsmen, held in reserve, fired another round
to quiet him.75

To Walpole, unacquainted with the difficulties of eighteenth
century military discipline, harsh military punishment was repre-
hensible. He blamed the code on Cumberland, whom he nick-
named “Nolkejumskoi.” 76

“His savage temper increases every day," Walpole told George
Montagu." “George Boscawen is in a scrape with him by a court
martial, in which he is one; it was appointed on a young poor sol-
dier, who to see his friends had counterfeited a furlough of leave
only for a day. They ordered him two hundred lashes; but Nolke-
jumskoi, who loves blood like a leech, insisted it was not enough-
has made them sit three times, though everyone adheres to the first

FLANDERS [ 107]

sentence, and swears they shall sit these six months till they in-
crease the punishment.”

Occasionally the guards were called out to quell riots. One oc-
curred at a sailors’ pay office in Block street, and another at a
bawdy house in the Strand. The Haymarket theatre was wrecked
by a mob. Covent Garden was another trouble spot. An officer and
65 men were stationed at Temple Bar. But except for minor
emergencies the Coldstream was back on its routine, providing es-
corts for civil prisoners between jail and court, keeping peace at
public executions, standing sentry at St. James’s, furnishing de-
tachments for Windsor, Kensington, Hampden Court, wherever the
King happened to be residing.78

Braddock himself presently took a London house in Arlington
street, off Picadilly, within easy walking distance of St. James’s and
Whiteha1l—one of those typically narrow, vertical Georgian terrace
houses, two rooms deep, five stories high, with a modest fanlight
above its entrance.79 It was built, probably, of the yellowish gray
brick then coming into favor and stood near the foot of the street.
Arlington street had been fashionable ever since the Duchess of
Cleveland lived there. Braddock’s neighbors included Horace Wal-
pole, who lived on the east side of the street, facing Lord Carteret,
the Earl of Bath, and the Duke of Richmond, who had larger
houses with imposing porticoes and courtyards.“

Practically the entire population of Georgian London, except
bachelor lawyers who lived in “chambers” and the city’s slum
dwellers, occupied tall, narrow terrace houses, one floor for eating,
one for sleeping, a third for company, and a fourth for servants,
with a basement kitchen below street level.81 Looking to Braddock’s
personal needs was Thomas Bishop, a Coldstream guardsman who
had been with him in Flanders and was now employed as his body
servant.” Bishop could cook if necessary. But officers of the Guards
on duty at St. James’s usually breakfasted at a tavern near the
palace and dined at Pontack’s, an eating house in Abchurch street,
at White’s, or some other club.33

Braddock’s pet, George Anne Bellamy, had returned from Dub-
lin and was living with her mother in a house on Tavistock street,
off Convent Garden.84 “The Little Bellamy,” as she was called, was
small and fair, but a full-blown beauty now, her bosom ample, her
cheek bones high, her blue eyes limpid and widely spaced. She had
a sweet, flexible voice, inexhaustible spirits, and her father's Irish

[ 108] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

humour. She passed herself off for a sixteen-year old but was be-
lieved to be nearer twenty.85 Back at the Covent Garden theatre,
she was playing in Venice Preserved when the treaty of Aix-la-
Chapelle was signed.“ So demure was her manner off stage that
many actors in the company thought her a prude.37

She had become reconciled to her father. On a visit to Dublin he
had heard only the best of reports of her from his sister, a Mrs.
O'Hara, who had introduced George Anne to Dublin society. His
old friend Chesterfield, while lord-lieutenant of Ireland, had made
the Dublin theatre fashionable by attending when George Anne’s
name was on the bill.“ Tyrawley was proud to be pointed out as
the father of a beautiful young actress. He was seeing more and
more of Peg Woffington, but he promised to sup with his daughter
three or four nights a week. He still refused to have anything to
do with her mother.38

Mrs. Bellamy, retired from the stage, had been converted to
Methodism and gave herself up to gloomy meditations on death.89
Anxious to see her daughter securely married, she had picked out
a husband for her, a middle-aged Irish linen merchant, a Mr.
Crump. He was willing. Her mother pressed George Anne to accept
him.9°

“I wish, madam, you would marry himself,” said the girl in ex-
asperation. “I can have no objection to him as a father-in-law, but
have a most insuperable one to him as a husband.” 91

Peace had been declared in February 1749 with the usual fanfare
of heralds at St. James’s Gate, Charing Cross, Temple Bar, Chan-
cery Lane, Cheapside, and the Exchange. But it was not celebrated
until £14,000 worth of pinwheels, flowerpots, and skyrockets had
been set off in the Green Park at the end of April, killing two peo-
ple. The fireworks were followed by a series of semipublic jubilees,
masquerades, and garden parties lasting well into the dusty days of
a warm May. George Anne was playing in The Provoked Wife
at Covent Garden and carrying on an affair with an old admirer,
George Metham, the irresponsible young heir of an unimportant
Yorkshire baronet.” Suddenly one night her father walked into her
room.

“Pop, I’ve got you a husband,” he announced.93

“I hope then, my Lord, you have found out my choice," she said,
thinking of Metham.

But her father had found Crump, the same Mr. Crump to whom

FLANDERS [ 109 ]

her mother had tried to marry her. Apparently Tyrawley had heard
about Crump from his sister, Mrs. O’Hara. He had investigated the
linen merchant and concluded he would make a suitable match.
Everything had been settled for the marriage. George Anne was
horrified. She had planned to marry Metham, whose mother had
died, leaving him a fairly good estate. Moreover, George Anne was
pregnant.

When she stepped out on the stage that night in the character of
Lady Fanciful in The Provoked Wife, the first person she saw was
Crump, seated in the front row of the pit.

Metham stood behind the scenes, pale and dejected. She had told
him her father’s choice. When the prompter’s bell rang for the fifth
act, Metham called George Anne into a hall backstage, gathered
her up in his arms, costume and all, swept her through the door
into a waiting coach, and made off with her. Her unexpected de-
parture caused an uproar. Quin stepped out in front of the curtain
to apologize for the sudden disappearance of his leading lady.

Metham set her up in a furnished house in Leicester street. Her
father disowned her. Metham promised to marry her and later that
summer took her to York, where a few days before Christmas, she
gave birth to a son. By February 1750 she was back in London, a
thoroughly notorious woman paragraphed in all the newspapers.
Her reappearance on the stage of the Covent Garden theatre in
Venice Preserved sold out the boxes. She and Metham took a large
house beyond their means in King street, St. James’s, an establish-
ment which attracted all the cheaper fashion of town until Metham
ran out of money, exhausted his credit, and had to go back to
York where they had left their infant son with George Anne’s
mother.

Now a confirmed woman of the world, George Anne moved into
a thinly furnished house on Frith street, Soho. She still kept two
servants and a coach and four, and entertained at cards, sometimes
at a profit. She made the acquaintance of Cumberland’s friend,
Fox, the secretary at war, and of Jack Calcraft, a tall, florid, red-
headed, blue—eyed young clerk in the secretary's office. On the first
visit to her house in Frith street, Fox discovered that George Anne
was unable to pay her bills. When he had gone she found a £50
bank note under a Chelsea china figure on the mantel piece.94

Hiring a good man cook to prepare the petit soupers indispensa-
ble to the high night life of the Covent Garden district, she bor-

[ l 10 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

rowed another ,5‘ 1,000 and set up a faro bank with two friends of
her father, General Richard Wall, a good natured Irish adventurer
who was the Spanish minister in London, and Compte Haflange,
the Bavarian ambassador. She and the Marquis de Vernieul, a
French nobleman she had met through Metham, always dealt the
cards. The bank flourished. Her house became a demimonde ren-
dezvous. Army officers and other members of the diplomatic corps
dropped in.95 Braddock must have felt at home there. He had ac-
quired a reputation as a “joyous, rollicking soldier of the old fash-
ioned type, rather popular in London as a good companion and
good fellow, who loved his glass with a more than merely convivial
enthusiasm.” 96

George Anne did not give up the theatre. Young, stylish, light-
hearted, radiant in blonde beauty, she turned intensely serious on
the stage, so serious that she was not at her best in comedy but ex-
celled as Desdemona. Critics praised her expression of rapture, her
tenderness, the amorous glow of her features in passages of con-
jugal affection. Her chief fault was a strong taint of the old fash-
ioned titumti cadence in her voice. But William Rufus Chetwood,
the bookseller-dramatist-critic, said she was improving and would
cause no wonder if she soon reached the top of perfection.97

She finished that season at Covent Garden. In September—-a fine,
dry September with Kensington’s horse chestnuts in second bloom-
she joined the company at Drury Lane to play juliet to Garrick’s
Romeo while Mrs. Cibber and the dashing Barry appeared in the
same roles at Covent Garden. From September 28 until October 11
it was the only play in town, each theatre trying to outdraw the
other and papering the house, if necessary, to fill it. Mrs. Cibber’s
Juliet was a modest girl lost in an ecstasy of love. The little Bel-
lamy, radiating passion and adoration, played a slim, amorous, soft-
voiced wench impatient for her lover’s arms.93

Early in the new year, 1751, she was summoned to Leicester
House. Their Royal Highnesses, the Prince and Princess of Wales,
Thursday night habitues of the theatre, wished to do her the honor
of a command performance on her coming benefit night, March 18.
Their choice was John Hughes’ five-act tragedy, The Siege of
Damascus.” The week before George Anne’s benefit, the Prince
was taken ill. He went to bed, was blooded and blistered, seemed
better, and was sitting up on the night of March 20 when a sudden
fit of coughing seized him and he died.1°°

FLANDERS [ 1 1 1 ]

The Lord Chamberlain posted a notice fixing the period of deep
mourning from Sunday, March 31, to Sunday, June 20. Theatres
were ordered closed for two weeks. Out came the black hangings,
the sconces for the candles at Westminster, black bombazine and
tippets for the ladies at court, crepe hat bands and weepers for the
gentlemen. Col. Braddock put on a black sash. His scarlet uniform
coat was faced with black. For the Prince’s funeral, on a cold and
rainy Saturday night, April 15, guardsmen lined the way from the
House of Lords to the southwest door of the Abbey, holding lighted
torches in either hand.1°1 .

Some profane Jacobite circulated this epitaph:

Here lies poor Fred

Who was alive and is dead:
Had it been his father,

I had much rather;

Had it been his brother,

Still better than another;

Had it been his sister,

No one would have missed her;
Had it been the whole generation,
Still better for the nation;

But since ’tis only Fred

Who was alive and is dead
There’s no more to be said.1°2

Frederick’s eldest son, George, was only thirteen years old. His
mother, the Princess of Wales, was named regent with a council of
fourteen, headed by the Duke of Cumber1and.1°3 But the Duke
kept away from politics. He spent much of his time at the “Ranger's
Lodge,” a royal villa in Windsor Park, amusing himself with a
private menagerie and four Barbary horses, the gift of Hungarian
Marshal Bathyani, who had served with him in Flanders. Cumber-
land had lost none of his flesh. His weight now exceeded 250
pounds.1°4

His control over the army remained unimpaired. The King
signed all promotions and general orders, and Fox, as secretary at
war, countersigned them, but as captain general the Duke was still
in command and his stern standards of discipline continued to pre-
vail.1°5 A foot soldier sentenced by a court martial to receive a
thousand lashes on the parade at St. James’s at three different
times, may have been the poor fellow who was about to be pun-

[ 1 12 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

ished one afternoon when George Anne was walking in the park
with Braddock.

She asked Braddock to “beg off. the offender,” and apparently he
tried speaking to the oflicer in charge, Col. Alexander Drury, regi-
mental lieutenant-colonel of the First Foot Guards. Drury’s re-
sponse was not even courteous. How long was it, he asked Brad-
dock, since he had divested himself of brutality and the insolence
of his manners?

“You never knew me insolent to my inferiors,” replied Braddock.
“It is only to such rude men as yourself that I behave with the
spirit which I think they deserve.” 106

It was a bad year for George Anne. One of her best friends, a
Miss St. Leger, niece of an Irish peer, had been married after a
long courtship to Metham’s most intimate friend, Major Ralph
Burton of the 48th Foot. But Metham refused to marry George
Anne. They had separated. The break had come after a January
birthday dinner she had arranged for Metham. The dessert, ordered
from Robinson, a bon ton confectioner, had been a little more
sumptuous than she could afford. In front of their guests Metham
had embarrassed her with rude criticism of her extravagance. In a
burst of anger, which she later regretted, she vowed she would
have nothing more to do with Metham.1°7

Jack Calcraft, the war office clerk, who had become friendly with
Metham and was one of the guests at the birthday dinner, began to
take an interest in George Anne. His jealousy aroused, Metham
implored her forgiveness. At the depth of his romantic agony he
threatened to kill her and commit suicide if she refused. She clung
to her vow. Burton dissuaded him from suicide, but Metham chal-
lenged Calcraft to a duel. George Anne, on the verge of hysteria,
took refuge at the Thames river country home of friends, a Mr.
and Mrs. Gansell, whose son, William, was a captain in Braddock’s
regiment. Metham did not follow her, but Calcraft did, offering
her a marriage contract in which he promised, under bond of
£ 50,000, to make her his wife within six or seven years. He said he
could not marry her immediately because he had promised his
patron, Henry Fox, the secretary at war, “not to enter into a serious
engagement with a woman in public life.”

On the advice of old Mr. Gansell, George Anne accepted Cal-
craft’s offer. Returning to London, where she resumed an engage-
ment at Drury Lane, she went to live with Calcraft in Brewer

FLANDERS [ 1 13 ]

street, above St. James’s. Most people, Braddock and her father
among them, assumed that she had married Calcraft. They thought
him an ideal mate for an impulsive, improvident young woman,
habitually in debt. “Honest Jack” Calcraft as some called him, was
a practical fellow, the son of a Grantham town clerk, and so adept
at figures that no one doubted he would make a fortune.1°8

Calcraft had been a paymaster and contractor for the King's
troops during the last rebellion in Scotland, and had taken ad-
vantage of his clerkship in the office of the secretary at war to build
up a lucrative private business of his own as an army agent. That
is, he was an agent for army colonels who received and disbursed
all money issued by the paymaster general for the pay, clothing,
and subsistence of the regiments they commanded. The commercial
transactions involved in this system made it convenient for the
colonel to have a London business agent. For his services the agent
customarily retained a commission of ten pence in the pound, or
some £300 to £500 annually per regiment.1°9

To help Calcraft in his operations as an army agent, George
Anne made the most of her acquaintance among military men.
Both Braddock and her father could be useful here. She had al-
ready established a reputation as a hostess who set a good table,
and as an actress she was a celebrity. Officers of the first rank were
invited to dine at the house in Brewer Street. The secretary at war
himself began to drop in for meals. His wife, Lady Caroline Fox,
became the godmother of a daughter born to Calcraft and George
Anne.11°

“N0 war, no politics, no parties, no madness and no scandal,”
Walpole wrote from London to Mann at the beginning of 1753.
“In the memory of England there never was so inanimate an
age.” 111

The tranquility was deceptive. Nothing had been settled by the
Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. Its twenty-four articles were more of an
armistice than a peace. In North America, where no fixed bound-
aries had been drawn between British and French possessions, bor-
der incidents posed a constant threat of war. Two Englishmen,
Governor William Shirley, of Massachusetts, and William Mild-
may, Esq., had been named by King George to meet with two
French commissaries in Paris to discuss the boundary question. For
three years the four men toiled over maps, documents, arguments,

[ 1 14] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

and allegations. In 1753 Shirley left Paris in disgust, the issue still
unsettled.112

The London Magazine printed an account of a battle in the
Ohio valley where French and “French Indians” had destroyed a
village of the Twigtree (Twightwee) Indians who were friendly
toward the English. The Twigtree chief was boiled and eaten by
his conquerors and, according to the magazine, the “French In-
dians” scalped a white man, took out his heart and ate it, cut off his
fingers and sent them to Canada to collect a reward offered by the
French for Englishmen. Here was a matter which, if true, should
be taken up in Paris by the Earl of Albemarle, now British ambas-
sador extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the French
c0urt.113

Albemarle, who was reported to have settled down in Paris with
sixteen cooks and a new mistress, also had been appointed governor
of Virginia.114 He still held the colonelcy of the Coldstream, al-
though Braddock, as lieutenant colonel, was in active command of
the regiment.117 As a commoner, Braddock could never hope to
become the colonel of the Coldstream. Command of the household
troops was still reserved to the nobility. Albemar1e’s successor
would be chosen by the cr0wn.115

“Between you and me, what do you think made our friend Lord
Albemarle colonel of a regiment of the guards, Governor of Vir-
ginia, Groom of the Stole and Ambassador to Paris?" Lord Ches-
terfield was speaking!” “Was it his birth? No; a Dutch gentleman
only. Was it his estate? No; he had none. Was it his learning, his
parts, his political abilities and applications? You can answer these
questions as easily and as soon as I can ask them. What was it then?
Many people wondered, but I do not; for I know and will tell you.
It was his air, his address, his manners, and his graces. He pleased,
and by pleasing, he became a favorite. . . .”

But Braddock had made up his mind to have his own regiment.
He had seen enough colonels sitting around in the clubs and coffee
houses of St. James’s, drawing fat profits of as much as £600 a year
by merely clothing regiments they seldom saw. And while he was
about it, he wanted a good regiment, one in which an ensign’s
commission would bring at least £250 or £300. His own commis-
sion as regimental lieutenant-colonel of the Coldstream had a fixed
value of £ 5,000 whenever he chose to sell it.117

Before the first month of the new year of 1753 was out, the op-

FLANDERS [ 1 15 ]

portunity for which Braddock had been waiting presented itself.
The Royal Horse Guards (the Blues), had been without a colonel
since the death in 1750 of Charles Lennox, second Duke of Rich-
mond, one of Braddock’s former neighbors on the courtyard side
of Arlington street.113 On January 27, 1753, the King was pleased
to give the Blues to Sir John Ligonier, until then colonel of the
Second Dragoon Guards. The Honorable William Herbert, fifth son
of the Earl of Pembroke and colonel of the Fourteenth Foot, suc-
ceeded Ligonier as colonel of the dragoon guards. Braddock applied
for Herbert’s foot and got it, selling his Goldstream lieutenant-
colonelcy to the Co1dstream’s first major, Hedworth Lambton.119

George Anne saw another agency coming up for Calcraft. This
one, she knew, would be easy. Some agents charged exhorbitant
rates. Some, according to an old stage joke, required their colonel-
clients to carry life insurance at the rate of 8 per cent. But Brad-
dock had no qualms about Calcraft. He gave him the agency of the
Fourteenth Foot without waiting for George Anne to ask. She fig-
ured it would bring them [300 a year.12°

END OF THE ROAD

1694-1755
—--——<<©>>——-—--

EVERY SUMMER the bulldozers take another kink, another grade
out of Braddock's road. U. S. Route 40, they call it now. So
many changes have been made during the past 200 years that you
have to leave the paved highway and search the woods and fields on
either side to find the scars that mark the path it used to follow.

The original path was an Indian trail that crossed the Allegheny
Mountains from the headwaters of the Potomac at Wills Creek, to
the forks of the Ohio, now Pittsburgh. English traders blazed the
trail early in the eighteenth century and drove their packhorses
over it single file. Young Washington used it in 1753 on his mis-
sion to the French. Not until the hot, dry summer of 1755 did it
become a full fledged road. That was the summer Major General
Edward Braddock, marching a British army against the French at
Fort Duquesne, widened and graded the trail for wagons and gun
carriages.

Seven or eight miles from the forks of the Ohio, on the river
hillside of a Pittsburgh suburb which bears his name, Braddock's
army was routed in a battle with French and Indians. General
Braddock himself was wounded mortally. By cart, litter, and horse-
back he retreated with his disorganized troops over the road he had
built through the mountain wilderness.

A squat granite monument in a clump of pine trees, about a mile

[1]

VIII

(HBRALTAR

1753‘1754

.._..._...g.{@)§.;...._.........

HE FOURTEENTH, or the Buckinghamshire Regiment of Foot,
had a history that went back to Monmouth’s rebellion. Origi-
nally it had been Sir Edward Ha1es’s regiment of foot, named for
the Roman Catholic baronet who raised its first company of one
hundred musketeers and pikemen and who later helped King
James II in his first attempted flight to France} The Fourteenth
had fought in Flanders during King Wil1iam’s Wars, and in Scot-
land during the first Jacobite rebellion. Returning to England in
1742 from a fifteen-year tour of duty at Gibraltar, it had made
another campaign in Flanders and fought another Pretender in
Scotland, winning a measure of renown at F alkirk for holding its
ground when other troops panicked. It had been in the first line
at Culloden. Ordered back to Gibraltar in 1752, it was still there
when Braddock became its colonel.2
All colonial and foreign garrison service was unpopular with the
army’s rank and file. An order to proceed to Gibraltar usually
resulted in wholesale desertions. The only ones who looked for-
ward to duty there were a few hardened, cunning old soldiers
whose weakness for wine and women made them content with
chronic insobriety and common law wives. “The Rock” was noto-
rious for bad quarters, poor food, malaria, and smallpox. Five hun-
dred soldiers had died there of fever in 1727. Among the troops at

[116]

GIBRALTAR [ 1 17 ]

fear persisted that the secretary at war might forget how long
their regiment had been on “The Rock.” He seemed to have for-
gotten the Fourteenth Foot for fifteen years.3 But for a command-
ing oflicer, Gibraltar offered certain compensations. In London it
was assumed that he would make the most of opportunities to
fleece everybody he could.4 The governor of Gibraltar enjoyed
emoluments reckoned at not less than £20,000 a year, including
ground rents, permits, wharfage, and license anchorage fees.5

Maj. Gen. Humphrey Bland, one of the army’s most able and
experienced officers, had been sent to Gibraltar as its governor after
the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. Bland was a Yorkshireman, then in
his sixties, who had begun his military career under Marlborough,
serving in practically every campaign of the past half century. He
was also the author of a textbook, Treatise on Discipline, which
had become the Bible of the British army, and he lived up to its
stated principles so rigorously that two of young James Wolfe’s
friends under Bland at Gibraltar complained of “too much duty.” 6

Bland had been called home in the summer of 1752 to become
colonel of the King’s dragoons and governor of Edinburgh Castle.7
Lord George Beauclerk, colonel of the Nineteenth Foot, which was
on duty at Gibraltar until relieved by Herbert’s Fourteenth, and
then Herbert himself, severally acted as co1nmandants of the Fortress
in the absence of a new Governor. Bradd0ck’s commission as colo-
nel of the Fourteenth, announced in January, was not signed until
February 17, 17 53.8 He booked passage to Gibraltar soon after, pre-
sumably to succeed Herbert as commandant and acting governor.9

Braddock had no ties in London, except his house in Arlington
street and his attachment for George Anne Bellamy.”

At the end of a three-weeks’ voyage 11 Braddock saw the slate gray
limestone humps of Gibraltar rearing their barren crests a thou-
sand feet above the dark green sea. From the deck of his ship
the western slope of the Rock, overgrown with wild olives, looked
almost tropical after a raw, cold winter in London. The sunshine
was bright as broken glass. When Gibraltar lay in shadow, even
dappled shadow, its dark green bay was a sublunary sea. Over the
moorish castle and the town of blue-washed houses with red tile
roofs, crowded between the anchorage and the steeply climbing
mountainside, hung the faint familiar acrid odor of British sea
coal. Gibraltar had a fuel problem. Not so many years ago a British

[ 1 18] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

garrison had ripped out and burned its quarters as winter fire-
wood.”

Braddock went ashore. The guard had turned out. The drums
beat a rufHe.13 A group of officers waited on the mole to receive the
new colonel and see him to his headquarters. The narrow rubble-
paved streets, rising sharply from the seawall, were crowded with
swarthy, pock-faced Moors, Spaniards, Genoese, and Jews.“ The
governor's residence, a converted Franciscan convent, looked down
across a terraced garden of palms to the dark green sea. Spring was
a pleasant season at Gibraltar, but the summer was sticky, ener-
vating, oppressively sultry, and insufferably hot. Morning and eve-
ning parade and Sunday church services became burdensome. The
open cesspools of the town and the dead air in the lee of the moun-
tain made the place a stinking hole.15

In addition to Braddock’s own Fourteenth, the Gibraltar garri-
son consisted of another regiment of foot, the Sixth, and a company
of the royal regiment of artillery.” The Sixth, which had relieved
the Thirty-Second after the Fourteenth relieved the Nineteenth,"
was commanded by Lieut.-Gen. John Guise, a veteran of the First
Foot Guards who had seen combat at Malplaquet and Carthagena.13
In May the London Gazette announced that the King had ap-
pointed Guise, governor of Berwick, thereby eliminating the pos-
sibility of his out-ranking Braddock at Gibraltar. But any hopes
which Braddock may have had of remaining the senior oflicer there
were blasted when Maj. Gen. Thomas Fowke, a member of Cum-
berland’s staff in Flanders, was named governor of Gibraltar.19

Braddock’s entire stay at Gibraltar seems to have been a tour of
frustration. Neglected since the siege of 1727, the post had fallen
into ruin and decay. So badly constructed was the foundation of
one battery, near a new mole, that it sank until its parapet tum-
bled down. Guns were dismounted. Rubbish choked the ditches
on the land side of the works. Stores were depleted. Some of the
musket balls in the magazines, almost empty, were too big for the
calibre of the muskets Braddock’s men carried. The soldiers’ bar-
racks in the old Moorish castle, a converted nunnery, and other old
Spanish buildings of the town were rookeries.-‘*0

That winter a plague raged on the African coast. Special pre-
cautions were taken with regard to incoming British ships which
might have called at African ports. There was also some difficulty

GIBRALTAR [ 1 19 ]

with the Alcaid of Tetuan, in Morocco, a principal source of sup-
ply of provisions for Gibraltar’s garrison.-'31

Braddock seems to have consoled himself at Gibraltar with Mary
Yorke, the wife of John Yorke, a lieutenant fireworker of the royal
regiment of artillery on duty there.” Yorke had joined the regi-
ment as a cadet gunner in the summer of 1746. On a lieutenant's
pay of three shillings per day he cannot have been able to do much
for a wife living with him in a foreign garrison.23 Exactly what
Mary Yorke’s relations were to the bachelor colonel of the Four-
teenth Foot is a matter of conjecture. They may have been the same
as those of George Anne Bellamy. Braddock spoke of Mary simply
as one of his “good friends.” 24

=|= =I= =l= II! it =l=

All this while his destiny was shaping beyond the seas, in North
America, where the Marquis of Duquesne, newly appointed French
governor of Canada, had sent a force of a thousand or more men
from Montreal by way of the St. Lawrence and the lakes to occupy
the Ohio Valley.25 This was the vast tract of virgin territory west
of the Allegheny mountains which had attracted the attention of
a group of wealthy and influential Virginians interested in land
speculation. In 1747 they had formed a joint stock venture, the
Ohio Company, to take up 500,000 acres of land beyond the moun-
tains and establish trade with the Indians there.”

France claimed the Ohio country by right of discovery and ex-
ploration. The English colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania
claimed it as part of their royal grants. It had never been mapped
and its boundaries were uncertain. English and Canadian back-
woodsmen, who carried on a fur trade with the Indians, were the
only whites who had ever seen the Ohio. Among the Englishmen
there was a bad feeling as a result of rival claims on the Ohio
lands; Pennsylvania traders, by far the more aggressive, had little
use for the Virginians.”

Thomas Lee, a former acting-governor of Virginia and the presi-
dent of the Virginia colonial council, was one of the founders of
the Ohio Company, a closed corporation of fifteen to twenty part-
ners, mostly Virginians, tied together by social, political, and family
bonds.23 The non-Virginians included john Hanbury of London,
a wealthy Quaker merchant and British army contractor with
whom colonial shippers and Virginia planters dealt, and Arthur

[ 120] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Dobbs. Robert Dinwiddie, lieutenant governor of Virginia, also
was a partner. The Lee, Dobbs, and Dinwiddie interests gave the
company a semi-official status.29

At the headwaters of the Potomac river, opposite the mouth of
Wills Creek, the company built a two-story log storehouse. Thomas
Cresap, a Maryland frontiersman who had settled nearby, was au-
thorized by the company to begin clearing roads. Christopher Gist,
a Virginia scout and surveyor, was commissioned by the company
to cross the Allegheny mountains, explore the Ohio valley, and
explain to the Indian’s living there the plans and purposes of the
Ohio Company. A trail was blazed across the mountains, from
Wills Creek toward Redstone creek, on the Monongahela river,
and a dozen families built log cabins beyond the mountains at a
place called “Gist’s plantation.” 30

French reaction to this was violence, beginning at the village of
the Twightwees. English traders were robbed, killed, carried off
into captivity, and held for ransom.31 The French built a new fort
near the west end of Lake Erie. A report that they intended to
build three more on the Ohio raised the specter of a chain stretch-
ing across the back country from Canada to Louisiana.” Virginia's
Lieutenant Governor Dinwiddie wrote a letter of protest to the
commander of the new French fort, informing him that he was on
British territory and directing him to withdraw. Maj. George Wash-
ington, adjutant of the southern district of Virginia and a brother
of Lawrence Washington, first chairman or manager of the Ohio
Company, delivered the letter on December 12, 1753 to the com-
mander of a French post, Fort Le Boeuf, near Lake Erie. In the
middle of January, Washington returned to Williamsburg, the
Virginia colonial capital, with the Frenchman's reply: Dinwiddie’s
letter would be sent to the Marquis Duquesne but the commander
of the French fort would remain where he was until he received
orders to the contrary from his own general.33

Spring came to London, and with it, on March 6, 1754, death
for the right honorable Henry Pelham, first lord of the Treasury
and chancellor of the Exchequer. Henry Fox, secretary at war;
William Pitt, paymaster of the forces; and Pelhalm’s older brother,
the Duke of Newcastle, bickered and bargained among themselves
to succeed to the prime ministry. Newcastle won out after a week
of political scuflling. The Duke offered Fox the place of secretary
of state, with leadership of the House of Commons, but Fox pre-

GIBRALTAR [ 1 2 1 ]

ferred to remain secretary at war. Sir Thomas Robinson, former
ambassador to Vienna, whose command of the German language
and knowledge of continental protocol were held in high esteem
by the King, accepted the offer Fox turned down.34

On April 2 the Gazette announced Braddock’s promotion to the
rank of major-general of His Majesty's forces.35 At about the same
time a dispatch from Virginia informed Whitehall that a messenger
“sent to enquire whether the French had built forts at the back of
our settlement” had returned with word that 1,500 French regulars
had built three on lands for which several gentlement in London
and Virginia held a grant from the King.

“If the French are not soon drove off and forts built by the Eng-
lish on the Mississippi they will have such strongholds that it will
never be in our province to expel them,” said a newspaper para-
graph.36

But it was midsummer before Braddock, still at Gibraltar, could
have read in the Gentleman’s Magazine:

Account of a Journey from Vvilliamsburg to the French Fort, near
Lake Erie in Virginia.37

This was the first detailed report of Washington’s trip from Wil-
liamsburg to the French fort and of his wintry return across the
mountains. By the time Braddock read it, Washington, now the
colonel of a regiment of Virginia volunteers, had led a force of
about four hundred men back across the Alleghenies for the pur-
pose of building an English fort at the forks of the Ohio. A party
of backwoodsmen had reached the forks in April, in advance of
\/Vashington, and begun to build a stockade, when a swarm of
bateaux and canoes brought a French force down the Allegheny
River from the general direction of Lake Erie. The woodsmen
retreated. The French demolished the stockade and began on its
site a larger work which they named Fort Duquesne. Seizure of the
English stockade was regarded in Virginia as an act of war.33

Washington, whose regiment was still advancing slowly toward
the enemy, surprised and captured a small French scouting party.
During the engagement Ensign Jumonville, brother of the French
captain, Coulon de Villiers, was killed. But shortage of supplies
and lack of reinforcements obliged the Virginians to fall back to
a temporary defense which they called Fort Necessity. Here they
were attacked on July 3 and after a nine-hour fight parlayed with

[ 122] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

the French and agreed to withdraw, abandoning nine swivels and
most of their baggage. News of this disaster reached London in
August.39 The London Magazine for that month published a copy
of a letter from Washington to his brother Jack after that first en-
gagement with the French. “I heard the bullets whistle, and, be-
lieve me, there is something charming in the sound,” the colonel
wrote.

Older soldiers smiled when they read this. King George remarked
“he would not say so, if he had been used to hear many.” 40 Horace
Walpole picked up Washington’s letter and embellished it in one
of his own giving Mann the news of Washington’s defeat:

“The French have tied up the hands of an excellent farfaron, a
major Washington, whom they took and engaged not to serve for
a year. In this battle, he said, ‘Believe me, as the cannon balls flew
over my head, they made a delightful sound.’ ” 41

“Braggart” was the word Walpole used in his memoirs to de-
scribe Washington at this time.42

Dinwiddie also was writing letters—letters to Newcastle, to Rob-
inson, to Fox, and to Lord Albemarle, still titular governor of Vir-
ginia and British ambassador at Paris. In all these letters Dinwid-
die urged that regular British troops be sent to Virginia to drive
back the French.43 As a soldier, Albemarle was inclined to agree
with Dinwiddie. From Paris he wrote to the Duke of Newcastle:

Washington and such may have courage and resolution but they
have no knowledge or experience in our profession (of arms); con-
sequently there can be no dependence on them. Officers, and good
ones, must be sent to discipline the militia and to lead them on as this
nation; we may then (and not before) drive the French back to their
settlements and encroach upon them as they do at present upon us.44

In London, Newcastle talked things over with John Hanbury,
the Ohio Company’s London promoter. They called in a young
army lieutenant, Horatio Gates, a godson of Horace Walpole. Gates
had just returned home from Nova Scotia where he had served
under Col. Edward Cornwallis, governor of that colony, but was
too sensible to answer questions about the state of affairs in Vir-
ginia.45 Newcastle also talked with Arthur Dobbs, an Irish gentle-
man, newly appointed governor of North Carolina, who was about
to sail for America.“ Dobbs departed a short time later aboard the
man-of-war “Garland,” carrying £ 10,000 in specie from the home
government for Dinwiddie’s use in the defense of the colony, at

GIBRALTAR [ 1 23 ]

crown credit for a similar sum, and the assurance that two thou-
sand stands of arms be shipped to America.“ At Hanbury’s sugges-
tion Dobbs also took to Governor Horatio Sharpe of Maryland a
crown commission as a lieutenant-colonel of foot and instructions
from the King to assume command of all English forces raised in
that part of the continent.“

There was no question of the direction in which Franco-British
relations were drifting. In June the Toulon squadron had been
sighted between Cape St. Vincent and the Western Island, standing
for North America. Next came a report from Cadiz that ten French
men-of-war, lately arrived there from Toulon, had sailed west-
ward.49 The newspapers published statements that 8,000 French
troops, with their wives and children, had been sent to America
in 1752, that a shipload of cannon and ammunition had been un-
loaded at the French fortress of Louisbourg, captured by the Ameri-
can colonists in the last war but returned to France after Aix-la-
Chapelle.5° Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts, who had
conceived the capture of Louisbourg-the one noteworthy British
victory of that war-had returned to Boston, after quitting the
abortive boundary commission sessions in Paris, and organized a
force of 1,100 men to reconnoitre the Kennebec river. He built
two forts on the Kennebec to protect the northern British colonies
against French encroachments from Quebec.“

Had Newcastle been a sensible man he would have lost no time
discussing the North American situation with the Duke of Cumber-
land or other army chiefs. For months Cumberland had been con-
vinced that the French were on the road to war. He was, in a sense,
the unofficial head of a British war party. But Newcastle and his
ministry had no wish for war. Besides, Cumberland had indicated
through his friendship with Fox that he was opposed politically to
Newcastle. Not until September did Newcastle seek professional
military advice.5-"-

Admiral Lord Anson, first Lord of the Adm1ralty, held the opin-
ion that American regiments should be organized to fight the
French.53 The Captain General had considered sending sergeants
and corporals of the guards brigade to instruct colonial militia and
volunteers. But the King, who at first opposed sending any regulars
to the colonies, rejected that proposal. The plan as finally agreed
upon called for raising two regiments in America and sending over

[ 124] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

two regiments of British regulars with “a general officer of rank
and capacity.” 54

The Duke mentioned Maj.-Gen. Braddock as an oflicer of rank
and capacity suitable for the mission.55 Perhaps his old Coldstream
commander, Albemarle, had nominated Braddock. Perhaps George
Anne Bellamy, who knew A1bemarle’s daughters and daily became
more intimate with the secretary at war, helped advance the pros-
pects of her second father. Perhaps Cumberland himself, remem-
bering Braddock at Litchfield or at Flushing, needed no sugges-
tions. There was some speculation that the officer chosen to
command the expedition might later become a colonial governor.
And so, any officer who had attained the rank of major general was
regarded as being qualified to fill the post of governor, and Brad-
dock had served as acting governor of Gibraltar.“

Toward the end of summer a 6o-gun British warship, the “Dept-
ford," had dropped anchor at Gibraltar to take on supplies of fresh
water and provisions. The Right Honorable George Edgcumbe, a
tough young naval officer with excellent St. James’s connections,
was captain of the “Deptford” and acting commodore of the British
squadron in the Mediterranean.57 Braddock’s old friend, Tyrawley,
had been made governor on Minorca.53 The “Deptford” was to
call at Minorca after leaving Gibraltar for Italy. . . . The prospect
was too tempting to be resisted. Early in September the General
boarded the warship for Italy.59

On Sunday, September 22, 1754, Sir Thomas Robinson wrote
from Whitehall to the Duke of Newcastle, then down at Clare-
mont, his country seat near Epsom: 50

My Lord,

I was honored with Your Grace's letter of yesterday before I called
upon the Duke of Cumberland this morning. His Royal Highness had
been with the King. He acquainted me that he had thought of Major
General Braddock as the properest person to command the troops in
North America. That the King had mentioned sending the Highland
Regiment and the raising of independent highland companies; but
his Royal Highness was of the opinion it would be better to send
immediately 2 regiments upon the Irish establishment, and upon their
present low footings, to be complemented in America, and that, not in
Virginia only, but from the other colonies too who should furnish
their quotas of men: that the sending Highlanders already regimented
would be losing the corps were the men to remain in America and the
raising new independent companies of Highlanders would be so much
loss of time; whereas the officers of the 2 Irish regiments now proposed

GIBRALTAR [ 1 25 ]

would be sufficient with their men to discipline any new recruits to be
made in America; and His Highness believed the King would consent
to this: but His Highness said all this and everything else that may be
thought of in a military way was of no effect until His Majesty's
servants fix the bounds of the French in America-How far they shall
come and no farther, which being once done and laid down as a gov-
ernment measure whether of war or of peace, the most express and
distinct instructions should be drawn for the commander-in-chief that
he may not be liable to further reproaches, from one or the other
colony, or be sacrificed, one day or other, to the clamours of merchants
at home, or their interested correspondent abroad:—otherwise it would
not be dealing fairly with an officer of His Royal Highness’s recom-
mendation. His Highness imagined Governor Shirley has gone with
10,000 men to attack Crown Point. I explained the present operation
up the Kennebeck: His Highness thinks the operation must be in
several parts, particularly Crown Point, the regaining a footing on the
Ohio and building forts there to cut the French chain from Quebec
to the Misisipis, and still, more particularly the attacking of the French
forts upon the neck of the Peninsula at the head of the bay of Fundi
all which His Royal Highness thought we were authorized to do. . . .
He thought with respect to the fixing of quotas of money, should more
properly be left for the present commanding officer. . . .

I shall, in confining myself to a bare relation, only add at present
that as your grace wishes H. R. H. would determine something this
day, so your grace has a general oflicer and two regiments: which I
should humbly think is a preliminary to your grace’s satisfaction and
a great foundation laid for the meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday
next. . . .61

The two regiments chosen tentatively for the expedition were the
Forty-Fourth and the Forty-Eighth foot. Then in Ireland, both had
been raised in 1741 and both had seen pitched battle against the
Scots in the second Jacobite rebellion. The Forty-Fourth was com-
manded by Sir Peter Halkett, who had been with five of its com-
panies at Preston Pans. The Forty-Eighth, Conway’s old regiment,
had been at Culloden and now was commanded by Col. Thomas
Dunbar, a former lieutenant colonel of Folliott’s Eighteenth Foot.”

As the first instance in English history of any approximation of
the military occupation of a colony, the proposed expedition posed
new questions of policy regarding military colonial expenditure.
The status of the troops would be the same as if they were in a
foreign country. They would be in America at the expense of the
mother country, but they would owe their allegiance not to the
local representative of the crown, but to the general officer in
command. The home government (and consequently the Commons)

[2 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

west of Fort Necessity, is presumed to mark Braddock’s grave. No
one knows exactly where he died, but the end came at an over-
night camp somewhere in this general neighborhood, perhaps in a
thicket of crabapple trees down in a hollow along a little stream
which the old road followed behind the pines.

For two hundred years historians have denounced Edward Brad-
dock as an adventurer, a sycophant, a bully brutal in his dealings
with both soldiers and civilians. They have pictured him as a proud
and pompous redcoat, a martinet who scorned the advice of a
prescient young colonel of Virginia militia and who died of his
own pigheaded stupidity in an Indian massacre which might have
been avoided.

In truth, however, there is not much disinterested testimony to
support all the calumny heaped upon Braddock.

Here is his story. It begins before he was born.

[ 1 26] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

would hold only that measure of control which they exercised over
troops on foreign service.“

The Ohio Company's Mr. Hanbury stood to make a neat profit
on the expedition. Apparently he had advanced the £10,000 in
specie, minus a commission of 21/2 per cent, which Dobbs had
taken to Dinwiddie, and for which Hanbury would be reimbursed
by the Crown as soon as Parliament got around to army estimates.“
It was also understood that Hanbury would provide additional
funds for the deputy paymaster general who went with the troops.65

Sir Thomas handed the letter, summarizing his conference with
Cumberland, to Lord Halifax, president of the Board of Trade.“
Halifax was going down to Claremont and would take the letter
directly to Newcastle. At the same time Sir Thomas made arrange-
ments to wait upon the King next morning at Kensington Palace.
Only one thing seems to have worried the pompous secretary of
state, and that was Braddock’s reputation as something of a rounder.
Sir Thomas must take that up with the King. He did. And after
seeing the King next day, he wrote Newcastle another letter:

My Lord,

Since seeing Lord Halifax, who I know is gone to your Grace ex-
tremely well satisfied with all that has passed with respect to America,
I have been to Kensington. I had no occasion to make the King a re-
port of what happened yesterday. Whether H. R. H. had spoken to the
King before or after I had waited upon His Highness, His Majesty
recapitulated to me all most all that the Duke had said to me, ap-
plauding in the highest manner his son's great scheme, assuring him-
self, upon His Royal Highness’s words, of the sucecss of it, and show-
ing his surprise, not without the great satisfaction, how H.R.H. could
have made himself so entirely master of the subject. In a word, my
Lord, I never saw the King so entirely pleased, and could I think dis-
cern no less satisfaction below stairs. I humbly hope that all doubts, if
there are any, will be removed at or, rather, before the meeting. There
would, I should humbly presume, be no difliculty in fixing secretly in
one’s own heart an ultimatum for both operation and negotiation, for
political not imaginary boundaries, for solid not charter limits. Such
a principle, once resolved upon and adhered to will surmount every-
thing.

The King had ordered me to express His Majesty's approbation of
the Earl of Albemarle’s zeal. His Majesty has a good opinion of Mr.
Braddock’s sense and bravery and has heard he has become very
stayed. His Majesty has likewise a good opinion of Col. Dunbar, who
has been thought of, as proper, to go with his regiment in order to
supply Mr. Braddock’s place in case of accident. His Majesty is for

GIBRALTAR [ 127 ]

sparing all sorts of arms, furniture, ammunition, artillery and engi-
neers. He looks upon the whole as the highest national service. . . .67

Final arrangements were approved on Thursday, September 26,
when Newcastle, Anson, Halifax, Robinson, and Fox attended His
Royal Highness, the captain general, at St. James’s.‘‘‘3 Halifax did
not agree with the adopted plan of operations. He favored an at-
tack upon Niagara and Crown Point, to cut the French line of
communications before moving on the French fort at the forks of
the Ohio. He thought the convoy of provisions and artillery
through the woods a hazardous undertaking.” He discussed the
advisability of setting up a common fund in the colonies to pay the
cost of recruiting troops there, a fund to be available as needed to
the commander in chief of the expedition. One of the two regi-
ments of foot to be recruited in America would be commanded by
Shirley and the other by Sir William Pepperell, commander of the
1745 Louisbourg expedition. Lower ranking officers of these two
regiments would be drawn from the half-pay list. The war office
published their names on October 7 and announced they would
embark immediately.7°

Sir Thomas wrote to Albemarle, outlining the plans for the ex-
pedition. And on October 9 the Earl, acknowledging Sir Thomas’
letter and expressing hopes for success of the enterprise, replied
from Paris:

Having been told that General Braddock is in Italy, I have wrote
him a circular letter, under cover of his Majesty's several ministers and
consuls in those parts, to advise him to set out on his return to Eng-
land, immediately upon the receipt of it, but without mentioning to
him that the public service required it, but only business of the great-
est consequence to himself, but thus if my letters should be inspected
at the post offices, nothing uncommon might be concluded upon
them.“

There was no need of secrecy. Everybody who read the London
newspapers knew about the expedition. Orders had been issued by
the Duke of Dorset, lord-lieutenant of Ireland, directing all officers
of Dunbar’s and Halkett’s to repair immediately to their posts.
The two regiments, making together 900 men, were ordered to
embark at Cork as soon as transports could be ready to receive
them. Wind and weather permitting, they should reach Virginia
by the end of December. Acting Commodore Augustus Keppel,
second son of the Earl of Albemarle, would command the squadron,

[ 128 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

which would include H.M.S. “Centurion” and three 20-gun ships.
Warrants were issued to press sailors to man thirteen transports
and three ordnance ships. The transport captains were called to
the Navy olfice.”

A great number of hands was put to work, day and night, at
Woolwich and the Tower, making up cartridges and ball, fitting
arms, preparing carriages for cannon to be loaded at Chatham.
Freight vessels were contracted. Drums, accoutrements, marquees,
tents for 8,000 men were loaded aboard the ships “Isabella” and
“Mary” for Virginia. A captain, four lieutenants, 6o bombardiers
and mattrosses held themselves in readiness to embark at Wool-
wich. On October 7 the names of all officers selected for the two
American regiments were published and it was announced that
they would embark immediately at London. A Scottish baronet, Sir
John St. Clair, lieutenant colonel of Olferalls Twenty-Second Foot,
was appointed quartermaster general of the forces going to Amer-
ica with the rank of a full colonel. James Montresor, former chief
engineer at Gibraltar, was appointed chief engineer of the expedi-
tion. James Richter, Esq., was made commissary of the musters.
James Napier, master surgeon of the hospitals in Flanders, was
named director of a hospital for the expedition. Additional sur-
geons and officers of the train received orders to embark the first
of November."

The London Magazine published an ode in imitation of Horace,
dedicated “to a friend, on his embarking with other oflicers for a
winter's campaign in North America.” 74 And there was no ques-
tion as to who would win the coming fight.

“A Frenchman who piddles on fricassee of frogs can no more
encounter with an Englishman who feeds upon beef, than the frog
in the fable can swell her body to the size of an ox,” said a cocky
newspaper writer in the London Connoisseur. It was a British army
tradition that one Englishman could beat three to five French-
men.”

The West Indian war has thrown me into a new study: I read noth-
ing but American voyages, and histories of plantations and settle-
ments [V/Valpole wrote Bentley]. Among all the Indian nations I have
contracted a particular intimacy with the Ontaouanoucs . . . they pride
themselves upon speaking the purest dialect. . . . My only fear is, that
if any of them are taken prisoner, General Braddock is not the kind
of man to have proper attentions to so polite a people; I am even

GIBRALTAR [ 1 29 ]

apprehensive that he could damn them, and order them to be scalped,

in the very worst plantation accent."

Walpole also had been making inquiries about the General, who
lived on his street. “Braddock is a very Iroquois in disposition,” he
told Mann." “However, with all his brutality, he had lately been
governor of Gibraltar, where he made himself adored, and where
scarce any governor has endured before.”

In early October the noise of London's preparations for war
reached Paris. At Fontainebleu the Duke of Mirepoix, French am-
bassador to London, gave his master, Louis XV, a full report.
There was talk of a conference to settle Anglo-French difficulties.
M. Rouille, the French foreign minister, questioned Albemarle
sharply about Britain's intentions and was assured that the meas-
ures being taken in London were no different from those of France
for many years: ships, men, and arms were being dispatched to the
English settlements in America for their own protection.”

The postscript of a letter from Albemarle at Fontainebleu on
October 23, written shortly before another meeting with Rouille,
told Robinson: “I have just now received a letter from Marseilles,
which informs me that Maj.~Gen. Braddock set out from thence
for Paris the 17th instant, having been 40 days on board Com-
modore Edgcumbe in his passage from Gibraltar to that port.” 79

Braddock did not tarry in Paris. On Sunday morning, November
10, he returned to Lonclon,30 probably with the happy satisfaction
of every home—coming Englishman who once again feels the city's
firm, flat paving under foot and sees the slender spires of Wren
churches against the sky. He went directly to his house in Arlington
street. Later that day he waited on the King and the Duke of
Cumberland.“ His appointment as general and commander of all
British forces in North America, dated September 24, 1754, was
waiting for him.83 During the next three weeks he spent most of
his time at the War Office, the rebuilt Horse Guards in V/Vhitehall,
where Cumberland’s adjutant and secretary of military affairs, Col.
Napier, and other army chiefs were at work on plans for the expe-
dition. The Duke himself was there every day.83

Braddock had long and repeated interviews with the Duke. He
talked with Fox and with Newcastle, who impressed upon him the
importance of “moderation” in the “article of expense.” Napier
had accumulated a packet of letters, statistics, memoranda,
sketches of regulations, suggested orders.“ All these were being

[ 130 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

worked into a plan of campaign which later would be written up
in the shape of formal and private instructions to the commander
of the expedition. On receipt of those instructions Braddock was
to proceed without further delay to America aboard one of His
Majesty’s ships of war.35

Col. St. Clair, he was told, had gone ahead to establish maga-
zines and a park for artillery, at Wills Creek in the province of
Maryland. There would also be a flying hospital at Wills Creek
and a general hospital at Hampton, in Virginia. Orders were being
sent by the Secretary of State to the colonial governors of the vari-
ous colonies, directing them to provide victuals, quarters, and trans-
portation for Braddock’s army and to obey his orders for quarter-
ing troops, impressing carriage, and performing other services for
which the colonial governments would be expected to pay.83

Cumberland felt strongly about the French in America. He had
read that the lands of the Ohio, rich in iron ore and coal and con-
venient to water carriage, represented a greater acquisition to
France than all of Flanders. Rather than lose one foot of that
territory he said he himself would oppose the French in America.
In his talks with Braddock he emphasized the necessity of strict
discipline among the troops of his expedition. He cautioned him
against surprise and against panic which might be caused by the
Indian allies of the French.37

Parliament met on November 14. The King’s speech made no
specific mention of the war in America. Fox, the secretary at war,
presented estimates which totaled nearly ,{ 50,000 for Braddock
and his staff, the hospital, and the train that would be sent from
England, and the two regiments to be raised in America. Brad-
dock personally was to be allowed £10 per day, and the Fourteenth
Foot, still at Gibraltar, was to remain under his command. All the
estimates were approved. Mr. Hanbury would be taken care of
later.83

Both Covent Garden and Drury Lane revived The Recruiting
Ofiicer. George Anne Bellamy, who earlier in the fall had appeared
at the Garden in Volpone, kept open house in Brewer street.89 Fox,
the secretary at war, had asked George Anne to serve as his aman-
uensis-—she wrote such an excellent hand! She and the secretary
were often alone together. He named George Anne’s first son by
Calcraft, “Henry Fox Calcraft,” and thereby set the tongues to
wagging. Because of her intimacy with Fox, many officers looked

GIBRALTAR [ 1 3 1 ]

upon her as “the captain's captain,” an excellent person through
whom to seek preferment with the war office, and she picked up
agencies for her husband, one after another, from Sir John Mor-
daunt, Col. John Campbell (later Duke of Argyll), Col. Philip
Honywood, and Col. Peregrine Lascelles.9°

During the last days in London, Braddock made her house in
Brewer street a headquarters. He must have been elated by his new
command and its opportunity to achieve military distinction after
so many years of unrewarded service. But he was apprehensive. He
was sixty years old, and about to set off on a journey that would
take him 4,000 miles from home.91 He must have heard George
Anne’s bell-like laughter as she moved around the crowded card
tables in her drawing room, a graceful figure who had outdone all
the actresses in London with the quality and cut of her gowns and
petticoats--although George II was said to have complained that
her hoops were too large.” She was close to Braddock’s heart. She
might be a demi-rep but she was lovely, a quick-witted, fascinating
little blue-eyed blonde of high, inexhaustible spirit.

“If you knew what that girl could do as well as say, you would
not be surprised at anything relative to her,” said Quin.93

Braddock also thought of Mary Yorke, beside Gibraltar’s dark
green bay—and called upon his solicitor to draw up a will that
read:

IN THE NAME OF GOD AMEN. I, Edward Braddock Esqr., Major
General of His Majesty's Forces and Commander in Chief of an Expe-
dition now fitting out for America, Considering the Uncertainty of
this life and being now in Perfect Mind, Memory and Understanding,
Do make and Ordain this to be my last Will and Testament in man-
ner and Form Following (That is to say) I give, Devise and Bequeath
all my Ready Money, Securities for Money, Plate, Linen, Furniture
and all my other Personal Estate and effects whatsoever which I am
now Possessed of or Entitled to, or which I shall or may be Possessed
of Entitled to at the time of my Decease. Unto my two good Friends,
Mary Yorke the wife of john Yorke, a Lieutenant in the Royal Regi-
ment of Artillery now on Duty at Gibraltar and John Calcraft of
Brewer street in the Parish of St. James, Westminster, Esqr., and their
heirs and Assignees forever to be equally divided between them Share
and Share alike. I Do Hereby Also Give, Devise and Bequeath all and
every Real Estate I may be now Entitled to, or which I may be in Pos-
session of or Entitled to at the time of my Decease either by purchase
or otherwise unto the said Mary Yorke and John Calcraft their Heirs
and Assignees forever to be equaly (sic) Divided between them share
and Share alike. And it is my Will and Pleasure and I do hereby De-

[ 132 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

clare the same so to be that all Moneys and other Advantage whatso-
ever which may accrue to the said Mary Yorke from this my Will shall
not be subject or liable to the Debts or Controul of her said husband
John Yorke or any Future Husband but shall be to Her own separate
Use Benefit and Advantage. And I do hereby Give her full Power and
Authority to Join with the said John Calcraft in Giving Acquittances
or any other Necessary Discharges in her own Name and which shall
be good and Effectual Notwithstanding her Coverture as she cou’d or
might have done had she been Sole and Unmarried. And I do hereby
Nominate Constitute and Appoint the said Mary Yorke and the said
john Calcraft Joint Executrix and Executor of this My Will Hereby
Revoking all Former Wills by me at any time heretofore made. In
Witness whereof I have hereunto Set my Hand and Seal this Twenty-
fifth Day of November in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Seven
Hundred and Fifty Four.94

The will may not have meant exactly what it said about John
Calcraft. There is good reason to suppose that Braddock intended
to leave half of his estate to George Anne Bellamy, not to his
agent. But just as he took precautions to protect Mary Yorke
against the debts of her husband, so he may have wished to protect
the improvident George Anne against her creditors. Calcraft, whom
Braddock presumed to be George Anne's husband, was the practi-
cal head of their household. No claimants would ever close in on
him. By conveying George Anne's portion to Calcraft, his heirs and
assignees forever, Braddock probably thought he was securing it
to her.95

It was a handsome document, that will, twelve by fifteen inches,
in flourishing script. In the presence of three witnesses, Thomas
Morgan, Joseph Eddy, and James Rubins, the General signed it
boldly: E. Braddock. And in a dab of red wax behind his name he
pressed the Staffordshire Braddock family seal, argent a greyhound
coumnt with a bordure engrailed sable—the same crest which ap-
peared on his government plate supported with the royal lion and
unicorn.”

The very same day he signed his will, Braddock’s formal orders
were drawn up at St. james’s—eight long foolscap pages of detailed
instructions from the King “for our Well Beloved friend Edward
Braddock Esq., Major General of our Forces and whom we have
appointed General and Commander of our troops and forces that
are now in North America and that shall be sent or raised there,
to vindicate our just rights and Possessions in those parts.” 97

Braddock also received a set of private instructions, authorizing

GIBRALTAR [ 133 ]

him to draw on the paymaster of North America for levy money
for American recruits—-the King hoped it would not exceed £3 per
month—and a set of secret instructions directing him to begin op-
erations in the south as soon as weather would permit.98

There was a long letter from Napier, beginning:

His Royal Highness the Duke, in the several audiences he has given
you, entered into a particular explanation of every part of the service
you are about to be employed in; and as a better rule for the execu-
tion of His Majesty's instructions, he last Saturday communicated to
you his own sentiments of this affair, and since you were desirous of
forgetting no part thereof, he has ordered me to deliver them to you
in writing. . . .99

The gist of all these instructions, formal, private, and secret, was
that Braddock should drive the French from Fort Duquesne and
garrison it, and then reduce the French forts at Niagara, Ontario,
Fort Champlain, Crown Point, and Beausejour on the Nova Scotia
isthmus. If unable to command personally these operations, he was
empowered to name subordinate commanders, and he was to use his
own British regiments wherever provincial troops were unavailable.
The Ohio operation was to come first. Braddock had no choice in
overall strategy.

“As to your design of making yourself master of Niagara, which
is of the greatest consequence, his Royal Highness recommends to
you to leave nothing to chance in the prosecution of that enter-
prise,” Napier wrote.

That was the only attribution of any part of the plan to Brad-
dock.1°°

Finally came a letter from the pompous Robinson, an after-
thought, informing Braddock that the King authorized him to
summon to council of war such officers of His Majesty’s Fleet who
were of equal rank.1°1

On his last night in London, Braddock had supper at the Brewer
street house. Other guests included his aide de camp, Captain
Robert Orme, a young officer of the Coldstream Guards, and Major
Burton, of the Forty-Eight Foot, still mourning the loss of his
wife, Miss St. Leger.1°2

Before he said good night and good-bye, Braddock told George
Anne he would never see her again, that he was going with a hand-
ful of men to conquer whole nations. On a map of North America
he showed her where his troops would have to cut their way

[ 134 ] ILL—STARRED GENERAL

through miles of woods, cross mountains, and ford rivers to reach
the French forts. “Dear Pop,” he said, “we are sent like lambs to
the altar.”

As he left her house that night he pressed some folded foolscap
into George Anne’s hand. She unfolded it and looked at it by can-
dlelight when he had gone. It was his wi11.1°3

IX

COLONIAL PROBLEMS

November 1 7 54-April 1 7 5 5

 >>- 0—-—-—-

HIS MAJEsTY’s SHIP “Norwich,” a four-rater of 50 guns,1 was
anchored at Spithead in November when a courier came
down from London with a letter for her commander, Captain
Samuel Barrington.2 The Captain broke the seal, opened the letter,
and read:

By the Commissioners for
executing the oflice of
Lord High Admiral
of Great Britain 8c Ireland.
You are hereby required and directed to receive on board His Maj-
esty's Ship under your command Major General Braddock, with his
Attendants, Servants and baggage, and as soon as they are embarked,
you are to make all possible dispatch in proceeding to Virginia, where
you are to land them; Victualling the Major General, his Attendants
and Servants as the Ship’s Company while they continue on board.
You are to remain at Virginia till the arrival of the Hon. Augustus
Keppel, commander-in-chief of His Majesty's ships and vessels em-
ployed and to be employed in North America; and then follow his
directions for your farther proceedings.
Given under our hand the 19 November 1754.
Anson
Will Rowley
Chas. Townsend.
By Command of their Lordships,
J. Cleveland.3

[135]

II

ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION
OF A GUARDSMAN

1660-1710

.._.....__.q4§3}.>.._........

THIS DAY, His Majesty Charles the Second came to London, after
a sad and long exile,” John Evelyn wrote in his diary under the
date of May 29, 1660.1

Oliver Cromwell, arch-rebel and Lord Protector, had been dead
nearly two years. His Puritan Commonwealth had collapsed. The
exiled King's father, Charles I, condemned to death as a tyrant and
a traitor, had become a martyr? Every living Londoner knew the
story, how the King had stepped through a window of the White-
hall palace Banqueting Hall onto a scaffold where the executioner
waited leaning on his ax, a cold, sunny January day, eleven years
before? One blow of the ax had cut off the King's head.4

And now in 1660 that King's exiled son landing at Dover, May
23, from The Hague, had ridden up to London in a stately coach
and entered the city on his thirtieth birthday.5 Twenty thousand
soldiers marched and rode into London with him. A mounted
troop, pushing through the crowded streets at the head of the pro-
cession, brandished their swords and shouted:

“God save King Charles the Secondl”

Church bells pealed. Horns blew. Kettledrums thumped. Butch-
ers banged their knives together. Girls in crimson petticoats
screamed: “God bless King Charles!"

[3]

[ 136 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

It is not likely that Captain Barrington was elated. November
nights were growing cold and raw. The Star and Garter, over on
the point at Portsmouth within full view of his quarterdeck, pro-
vided a snug harbor with a good bottle and a glowing grate.

Braddock’s baggage arrived at Portsmouth a week later and was
put aboard the “Norwich.” But the sailing was delayed. Barring-
ton’s instructions were changed. He was directed, in another mes-
sage from the admiralty, to place himself under the command of
Keppel immediately and await further orders from him.4 Keppel
had taken Braddock to Cork aboard his flagship, the “Centurion,"
another four-rater of 50 guns, to superintend and hasten the em-
barkation of the troops.5

The two regiments, far below normal strength, had been scat-
tered from Limerick to Dublin when ordered to rendezvous at
Cork. At first it had been proposed to embark only 340 men of each
regiment with 700 stand of arms and recruit each to 7oo in America.
Later the British nucleus of each was increased to about 500 by
drafts from other regiments——the Twentieth Foot at Exeter, the
Eleventh at Salisbury, the Tenth and the Twenty-Eighth at
Limerick, the Twenty-Sixth and the Royals at Galway. Sir Peter
Halkett also picked up a few recruits in London.“

The British army had not changed much in Braddock’s lifetime.
Officers, as a group, were loose and profligate. The non-coms, as
faithful as old family servants, looked down on the privates as
scoundrels, and many were. Recruited from jails, slums, and gin
shops, the majority of the privates in the regiments of the line
were dirty, discontented, and debauched, insolent and insubordi-
nate, drinking when off duty until blind drunk. The Forty-Fourth
and the Forty-Eighth were two of the most worthless regiments in
the army. And the drafts with which their depleted ranks were
filled brought together all the least desirable soldiers of the six
other regiments from which they were drawn. Such drafts always
produced the dregs. Their Colonels had no intention of losing their
best men. And none was eager to go. They had heard that they
might remain in Virginia for three years.7

The Twentieth, commanded by Lord Bury, had marched into
Exeter to take up winter quarters at Rougemont Castle when called
upon for a draft of 100. The draft marched off to Pill, the Bristol
pilot station, where vessels lay to ferry them to Cork.3 James Wolfe,
who had just joined the Twentieth as its lieutenant-colonel, and

COLONIAL PROBLEMS [ 137 ]

who would make his name more illustrious than Braddock’s in the
coming war, was under no illusions about any soldiers in the British
infantry.

“I have a very mean opinion of the infantry in courage,’ said
Wolfe in a letter to his father at Bath, after Braddock’s defeat, but
citing early instances to back up his opinions. “I know their dis-
cipline to be bad and their valor precarious. They are easily put
into disorder, hard to recover out of it. They frequently kill theii
officers through fear, and murder one another in their confusion.” 9
And prophetically . . . “Our military education is by far the worst
in Europe. . . . It will cost us very dear sometime hence. I hope the
day is at a distance, but I am afraid it will come.”

Braddock soon discovered that his journey to Cork had been
unnecessary. There was no possibility of his speeding the embarka-
tion. Sergeants, corporals, drummers, and private men drafted from
the other regiments had been assembled for a fortnight. Twelve
wagonloads of arms from Dublin Castle had reached the neighbor-
ing port of Kinsale but the chests were still on the docks. Some of
the vessels under charter for the expedition, and due from Graves-
end on November 1, had not yet reached Ireland. Bad weather
was blamed for the delay.” Lieut.-Gen. Thomas Bligh was coming
down from Dublin to superintend the embarkation; so Keppel put
about for Spithead, arriving there December 20. He kept his broad
pennant flying from the “Centurion” but transferred Braddock to
the “Norwich.” 11

Three days before Christmas, 1754, the wind was right and the
two ships sailed together for Virginia.” Aboard the Norwich with
Braddock were his aide, Captain Orme; his secretary, William
Shirley, _Ir., son of the governor of Massachusetts; Braddock’s body
servant, Thomas Bishop, the old Coldstream guardsman who had
attended him for years; and Francis Delboux, the General’s cook.13
Cold rain, fog, and a heavy swell awaited the two ships at the end
of the English channel. Wise sea travelers always prepared them-
selves against a long voyage by laying in a supply of wine, cider,
bottled beer, brandy, sugar, and lemons for punch.” But nothing
could be done about the tempestuous North Atlantic weather
which separated the two ships on the high seas.15

Most of the troops which were to follow them embarked in cold,
clammy January rain that made the narrow streets of Cork and
the green hills enfolding its harbor look more inviting than they

9

[ 138 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

had ever looked before.” The sulky redcoats hunched their shoul-
ders against the chill. The most fortunate wore matchcoats and
flannel Waistcoats." Barges lightered the soldiers to transports an-
chored in the River Lee. Alongside the transports the barges kept
heaving and banging their fenders while the soldiers clambered up
wet, slippery gangway ladders to decks wet and slippery under drip-
ping rigging, then down other ladders into smokey between-deck
stench where they stuffed their paillasses with rancid straw. The
wardroom and cabins were reserved to oflicers.13

Underway in the same track of bad weather which the “Norwich"
and “Centurion” had taken, the transports heeled heavily, ports on
the lee under water. One man was lost from a yardarm.19 Beer,
biscuit, salt butter, salt beef, watered rum, and once a day “scald-
ings” of hot oatmeal in a wooden dish from the galley were the
standard rations. Creaking gear and clanking pump chains kept
the wretched soldiers awake all night. The weaker recovered from
seasickness only to succumb to scurvy. They got no pity from the
sailors who had a saying: “A messmate before a shipmate, a ship-
mate before a stranger, a stranger before a dog, a dog before a
soldier.” 20

Both foremast and mainmast of the “Norwich” had been sprung
by ocean gales when she sailed in through the Virginia Capes on
the afternoon of Wednesday, February 19, 1755, to give Braddock
his first glimpse of the New World.-‘*1 The scene from the vessel’s
deck was that of a noble bay with a sandy beach, almost as flat as
the mouth of the Schedlt, its rising landline flecked with patches
of melting snow. But the air was sharp. In contrast to the green
shadows of Gibraltar, the surface of this bay had a hard, cold glint.

The “Norwich” anchored a mile off shore. Barks, sloops, and
smaller craft tumbled in the shelter of the capes, but there was no
sign of the “Centurion’s” lofty, reeling head-—as those aboard the
“Norwich” remembered seeing her last. In neither the broad vistas
of the James River, stretched before them, nor the long wide face
of ocean gray behind, was there another vessel large enough to
have been a transport.”

It was too late to go ashore that day, but Braddock was rowed in
next morning and landed at Hampton, a neat town of red brick,
white wood, and plaster hip-roofed houses. Breakfast was served at
the Kings Arms, which also set out a noble dinner of ham and tur-
key, a breast of veal with fat Chesapeake Bay oysters, Madeira

COLONIAL PROBLEMS [ 1 3g ]

wine, punch, and cider. Two months’ confinement aboard ship
gave the meal an extraordinary relish.23

Two letters awaited Braddock at Hampton from St. Clair, who
had reached Virginia on January 7 with Lieut.-Col. Robert Ellison
and James Mercer, two half-pay officers assigned to service with the
two provincial regiments to be raised in America. St. Clair reported
that he had made one journey to Wills Creek, returned to Wil-
liamsburg, and had set out on another to inspect troops and look
for supplies.“

The deputy quartermaster general informed Braddock that he
had selected for the army’s proposed general hospital two small
warehouses in Hampton, the only vacant buildings in the town,
and had arranged lodgings for hospital officers and any overflow of
patients up to a total of 150. Neither carpenters nor lumber had
been available for a temporary emergency building of boards. And
there were no spare beds in the town; so St. Clair had ordered a
hundred wooden cradles to be built. He had named John Hunter
of Hampton, resident agent of the expedition.25

On Saturday, February 22, Keppel’s flagship arrived in the bay
with a sprung foremast.26 Next day the General, Commodore
Keppel, Orme, and Shirley rode up to Williamsburg, the colonial
capital.-‘*7 By English standards the countryside was a desolate,
barren overgrowth of pine woods. Night was coming on by the
time they entered Williamsburg’s broad, sandy Duke of Glouces-
ter Street. Except for the wide Palace Green leading to the Gov-
ernor’s house, a steep-roofed mansion of red brick with a cupola,
they might have been in almost any English country town.-‘*3

Negro servants came running from the gates of the Governor’s
Palace for their horses. Lieutenant Governor Dinwiddie himself
came down the six front steps of the house to meet them. His first
question must have been the inevitable: “What kind of a crossing
did you have?”

“My own voyage was troublesome,” said Braddock.” “A passage
of seven weeks in which I had very bad weather . . . very fatiguing.”

Under the drawing room candelabra the Lieutenant-Governor
and the Major General could look each other over. Dinwiddie
saw a shorter, stouter man than he had expected, but a smartly
turned out British officer in red coat, crimson sash, and gold lace,
exuding a faint odor of snuff. The General had a good face, reg-
ular features, and the unmistakable click and carriage of a guards-

[ 140] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

man. Braddock saw a blue-gray-eyed Scotsman of his own age, a
little puffy from good living, possibly a little harassed, and maybe
a little self-conscious of his embroidered buttonholes.3°

Dinwiddie was a Glasgow merchant's son who had started out in
the government service as a customs office clerk in Bermuda.31
Standing before the General and the Honorable Keppel (a younger
man with a big nose and receding chin,) 32 Dinwiddie may have
felt himself in the presence of superior people. But Albemarle’s
lieutenant governor and his former lieutenant colonel were not
too far apart. Dinwiddie represented the bureaucrat’s inflexible
devotion to royal authority; Braddock, the soldier’s blind obedience
to the King.

Dinwiddie introduced his wife and daughters, Elizabeth and
Rebecca, who probably welcomed the handsome Orme and the
younger Shirley as they had earlier welcomed St. Clair.33 The Deputy
Quartermaster General was not in town. He had set out for Win-
chester to inspect some recruits. An express was dispatched to
overtake him and fetch him back to receive his chief.34

“A very good ingineer (sic),” said Dinwiddie of St. Clair. “A very
diligent, good officer. . . . Sensible. . . . An amiable man, full of
spirits, with discretion and good judgement.” 35

The deputy quartermaster claimed to have fought in Italy with
Count Browne,36 a celebrated general in the army of the Empress-
Queen Maria Theresa, and had given the Governor's family the
impression that he had been in most of the courts of Europe.

“And his observations on them are very judicious,” said Dinwid-
die.37

With horses and guides provided by the Governor, St. Clair’s
two travelling companions from London, Ellison and Mercer, had
gone on to New England to join their regiments.“ What about the
two regiments of regulars coming from Ireland?

Braddock said they should arrive within a fortnight.-'39

Dinwiddie said he hoped they would get over the Alleghenies
and be “doing business” by the beginning of April, that they would
not tarry on their march.

“If they do,” he said, “I fear that by that time the French will be
greatly reinforced.” 40

He had received a letter for Braddock from Governor Sharpe of
Maryland, acting commander of the English forces. Enclosed in
the letter was a detailed sketch of Fort Duquesne and a note smug-

COLONIAL PROBLEMS [ 141 ]

gled out of the fort by Capt. Robert Stobo, one of two hostages left
with the French by Washington at Fort Necessity. Sharpe’s letter
also contained the journal of an English adventurer, one Thomas
Forbes, who told a story of having deserted the French garrison at
Duquesne the previous October. Both Forbes and Stobo reported
the fort undermanned by a force of not more than 400.41

Braddock must have asked about the number of Indians with
the French. How were the Indians disposed toward the English?
How many might he expect to join his expedition?

Dinwiddie said he had a man out, a fellow named Gist, the Ohio
Company's chief explorer, who knew all about the Indians and
who probably would bring in about 120 Catawbas, the best fighters
of all the tribes. Perhaps some Cherokees, too. Many of the Iro-
quois, the Indians of the Six Nations, had joined up with the
French. But the Indians wanted to be on the winning side.“

“The dress of our regulars and the number of our forces will
engage many of the Indians to join us, and many of the French
to desert,” said Dinwiddie. “If they should see our regulars appear
with some cohorns. . . . I dare say many of the Indians will leave
them.” 43

He expected the Catawbas to meet at Winchester at the end of
March to confirm a peace between northern and southern tribes.

“And I hope for some warriors from them and the Cherokees to
join our forces,” he said.“

Braddock reminded Dinwiddie that Sir Thomas Robinson had
written a circular letter to all the governors of the colonies, in-
forming them that the King expected them to supply funds, re-
cruits, and transporation for the expedition.“

Yes, the Governor had the letter and he had talked to Governor
Dobbs on Dobbs’ arrival from England in October. The Virginia
assembly had granted £20,000, and since late in the fall he had
been doing his utmost to accumulate enough beef, pork, dried cod-
fish, salt, and flour to sustain a force of 3,000 men for eight months.
He had signed contracts for 1,100 head of cattle to be delivered at
Wills Creek between June and August. He had also advertised in
the Virginia Gazette for recruits for the two regiments of regulars,
offering one guinea bounty for enlistment.“

“I have listed near a thousand men," said Dinwiddie, reeling off
his accomplishments. “If more are needed, I think they may soon

[ 142] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

be raised. I have ordered sixteen wagons to be built, but we shall
want a hundred.” 47

Everything the army needed as it advanced beyond Wills Creek
would have to be hauled over the mountains.

“Those better acquainted with these things than I am seem to
make light of it,” said the Governor.“

But the transportation of supplies had been one of Washing-
ton’s gravest problems.49 In tidewater states like Maryland and
Virginia, where networks of rivers and creeks provided cheap and
convenient transportation, there was a shortage of horses and
wagons.5° The price of a four-horse wagon at Wills Creek was
£70. The freight rate was 12 shillings per hundred weight.51

Because tobacco, the principal farm product of Virginia, was the
only crop raised in any quantity over and above domestic needs,
Dinwiddie had been obliged to seek many of his supplies outside
Virginia and there had been difficulties with some of the other
colonies. Hearing that meat and flour which he might have pur-
chased for the expedition were being sent by New York and Penn-
sylvania merchants to the French at Louisbourg, in exchange for
rum, sugar, and molasses, Dinwiddie had issued a proclamation
forbidding Virginians to trade with the enemy.52

Braddock had heard about that trade in London. In so far as it
involved shipping it was a naval matter which had already been
called to the attention of Commodore Keppel who planned to take
any measure necessary. Braddock also had heard that the govern-
ment of Pennsylvania, under the control of pacifist Quakers, had
asked to be excused from furnishing any troops “as they are not a
fighting people.” 53

Dinwiddie wagged his wig. He seems to have kept to himself on
this occasion any feeling or opinion he may have had about the
conflicting claims of Virginia and Pennsylvania for the Ohio coun-
try and their rivalry for its Indian trade.

“I want words,” he said, “to express the obdurate and incon-
sistent behavior of our neighboring colonies, not as yet awakened
from their lethargy, North Carolina, only excepted, who have voted
,5 5,000 for the expedition. Maryland assembly is now sitting.
Pennsylvania assembly adjourned without voting one farthing. . . .
I am afraid it is downright obstinacy.” 54

Although the Governor would have been quite willing to have
both the General and the Commodore as his guests, Braddock went

COLONIAL PROBLEMS [ 143]

to the Raleigh Tavern, down around the corner from the Palace
Green on the Duke of Gloucester Street.55 A large, rambling
wooden building painted white, with a dormer-windowed second
story and a leaden bust of Sir Walter Raleigh in a niche above its front
door, the Raleigh had the reputation of being one of the best
taverns in North America.“ Its proprietor, Alexander Finnie, who
planned to follow Braddock as a sutler, laid himself out to
please his distinguished guest.57

“He is (I think) a very fine oflicer and a sensible, considerate
gentleman,” was the Governor's opinion of the General after their
meeting.53

St. Clair, quite the young dashing officer in Hussar uniform,
rode back into Williamsburg next day 59 while Braddock was dic-
tating two short letters to Shirley, his secretary. One of the letters,
which would let George Anne know of his safe arrival, was ad-
dressed to Fox, the Secretary at War. It began:

Sir,

After a passage of seven weeks, in which I had very bad weather, I
arrived here where I found everything in great confusion, as I had
expected. A great deal of money had already been spent here, though

very little done. . . . Pennsylvania will do nothing, and furnisheth the
French with everything they have occasion for . . .60

The other letter was to Col. Napier, the Duke's adjutant:

Sir,

After having passed through all the dangers of the sea, from which
I escaped, I arrived here the 20th of this month. The Governor assures
me that the people are likely to be more tractable and that they see
the necessity of providing for me all the succor which they must be
obliged to furnish in an enterprise that particularly regards themselves.

So little order has reigned among them hitherto that much has been
spent in doing very little. Sir John St. Clair had arrived at this mo-
ment. This man is indefatigable. . . .61

St. Clair was quick tempered, too, inclined to find fault with
those more patient than he was.“-2 But in his first verbal report
to his commander, he had some legitimate complaints. To begin
with, there was a dearth of adequate maps. The country through
which Braddock’s expedition was to march had never been sur-
veyed topographically,63 and the only maps of the province of
Pennsylvania which St. Clair had been able to obtain were ex-
tremely sketchy, not to say inaccurate, beyond the Susquehanna

[ 144] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

river. On January 14, one week after his arrival in Virginia, St.
Clair had written to Governor Morris of Pennsylvania and asked
him to send any maps or drawings he might have of that province.
When a month had passed without any reply to his letter, St. Clair
had written a second time, repeating his request. He was still wait-
ing for an answer.“

What was called “the fort” at Wills Creek, which was to serve
as an advance base of operations for the expedition, was a stock-
ade enclosing a small piece of ground, St. Clair said. It was not
even well located. He had seen it. He had gone to Wills Creek to
inspect the post. He had met Governor Sharpe of Maryland at
the so—called fort. Sharpe, who had made two trips to Wills Creek
within the past two months, knew what was wrong with the place
as a fort and had ordered another larger work constructed on
higher ground. St. Clair had left directions for the palisading of a
house near the fort for use as a powder magazine. He had consid-
ered building cabins for Braddock’s troops but now realized that
the season would be far enough advanced for the army to live in
tents by the time it reached Wills Creek.“ The problem of forage
for the army horses still worried him.

“I am afraid we will not be able to cross the mountains till the
grass begins to shoot,” said the Quartermaster.“

The only road to Wills Creek was frightful, particularly the 85-
mile stretch from Winchester.

“The worst road I ever traveied,” said St. Clair.67

Thinking it might be possible to send artillery and supplies up
the Potomac to Wills Creek by boat from Alexandria, he and
Sharpe had come down the river by canoe, a five-day journey. Falls
and rapids, St. Clair had seen, made the Potomac an impractical
route even for canoes and batteaux between the mouth of the
Shenandoah and Rock Creek.“ The troops would have to march
to Wills Creek. Forage and other supplies would have to be hauled
most of the way by horse and wagon.

St. Clair had asked the Virginia governor to contract for horses
and Dinwiddie said he had rounded up 120 and hoped to have 2 50
soon.69 There was no immediate hurry about this, said St. Clair.
“If we had more, how are they to be fed?” 70

On his way down the Potomac 71 from Wills Creek, St. Clair
had tried to make contracts for forage. The river valley was thickly
wooded and thinly settled, but he had been told that many of the

COLONIAL PROBLEMS [ 145]

settlers at the foot of the mountains, back from the river, were
Dutch farmers who would provide wagons to carry supplies to
Wills Creek and he believed he could gather 200 wagons and 1,500
horses there by May 1.72

The country beyond Wills Creek was much the same as the Apen-
nines, where he had served with Count Brown during the War of
the Austrian Succession, said St. Clair.” He had gone two miles
the other side of what he called the “South Branch” to look at the
mountains.”

“The mouth of the Savage river is the place where we ought to
cross,” he told Braddock.75

Braddock certainly showed his quartermaster Stobo’s sketch of
Fort Dusquesne, a formidable looking bastioned fort surrounded
by a 15-foot ditch and set in the forks of the Ohio in such a manner
as to be open to land attack on only two sides.

“We shall be obliged to break ground at the fort,” said St. Clair.”

That was a professional soldier's way of saying that trenches
would have to be opened and siege operations conducted.

As to the provincial recruits needed to bring the two regiments
of British regulars up to a strength of 700 men each-—St. Clair had
reviewed some of the men enlisted by Dinwiddie. Many, by the
Governor's own admission, were idle, drunken fellows. At least
300 were not even of the proper size for a regiment of regulars.
Some of the mutinous, unruly garrison of the so-called fort at
Wills Creek, St. Clair told Braddock, were 60 to 70 years of age
and so crippled that they had “neither the legs to get up on the
heights nor to run through the valleys” if attacked. One good com-
pany of 80 men had been raised in Maryland, but the quarter-
master had dismissed more than 40 of a New York company as
invalids unfit the military service."

“The latter seem to be drafted from Chelsea,” said St. Clair.73
(Chelsea was the royal hospital for old and disabled soldiers in
London.)

St. Clair suggested that the provincial recruits least suitable for
the two regiments of regulars be organized into companies of car-
penters and rangers. Braddock approved that, fixing the organiza-
tion at two companies of carpenters and four of rangers and adding
a company of light horse.79

In anticipation of the arrival of the transports bringing his two
regiments of regulars, Braddock issued his first order in Virginia:

[4 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

John Evelyn, the diarist, stood in the Strand and watched the
King drive past. Later he watched the girls in the crimson petti-
coats dance around the maypole. Bonfires were lighted after dark.
Beeves were barbecued. Drunken soldiers staggered around the
streets, pinching women, smashing Puritans’ windows, stumbling
to their knees in the taverns to drink the new King's health and
bawl:

“Go’ bless King Charles . . . a full and a free Par1’mentl” 3

I3 # =3

The free Parliament, meeting in September, passed an act for
the “speedy disbanding of the army and garrisons of this country.” 7
England was sick of soldiers. Five years of civil war had been fol-
lowed by thirteen of military dictatorship under Cromwell.3 But
King Charles II contrived to keep, for the security of his person
and his royal household, three troops of life guards, a regiment of
horse, and two of f0otguards.9 One of the regiments of foot was
the Coldstream, organized in 1650 and commanded by “Honest
George” Monck. The regiment had its name from a little town on
the north bank of the river Tweed from where Monck had set
out to meet the King at Dover and see him safely into London.”

The only regiment of Cromwel1’s New Model to survive the
Stuart Restoration, the Coldstream, became the Coldstream Regi-
ment of Foot Guards.“ It adopted Nulli Secundus as its motto. To
repay its commander for his services in the Restoration, the King
created Monck a baron, Earl of Torrington, Duke of Albemarle, a
gentleman of the bedchamber (salary £ 1,000 a year), knight of the
garter, privy counselor, master of the horse, and captain general
(pension, £7,000 a year).12 When Monck died in 1669 he was suc-
ceeded as commander of the Coldstream by the Right Honorable
William Earl of Craven, eldest son of a former Lord Mayor of
London and a veteran of the Thirty Years’ War, in which he had
served under the great Gustavus Adolphus.”

The primary function of the Coldstream was ceremonial. It per-
formed guard duty at St. James’s Palace, an old Tudor castle of
faded red brick in St. James’s Park, the official residence of the
King's younger brother, James Duke of York. Sometimes the Cold-
stream garrisoned the “Tower” or relieved other foot guards on
duty at the royal palace at Whitehall where the King lived. A field
officer of the foot guards was always in waiting upon the King; a
detachment of foot guards followed him whenever he travelled.“

[ 146] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

No. 1

His Excellency General Braddock orders that the commanding oili-
cer of each ship upon their arrival at Hampton roads shall immedi-
ately send a return inclosed to Mr. Hunter, at Hampton, specifying
the number of sick, the time of their illness, and the nature of them.
And that every commanding officer shall with the utmost dispatch ap-
ply to Mr. Hunter for boats to carry the sick on shore which shall be
executed with all imaginable care and expedition, and that a subaltern
oflicer of each ship shall see their men safely conveyed to the place ap-
pointed for their reception, which Mr. Hunter will show them; and
that the surgeons or mates of the two regiments and the Train shall
attend the sick of our corps. Every commanding officer to take particu-
lar care that as soon as their sick are sent ashore, all the hatchways be
uncovered, scuttles opened and the platform thoroughly washed and
cleaned, no officer or soldier, except the sick, to lie ashore upon any
account. The hospital to continue on board until the General’s further
orders.3°
Many of Braddock’s first days in Williamsburg were taken up
with correspondence. In accord with his instructions he had Shirley
write to all the colonial governors, advising them of his arrival in
America, reminding them of the earlier letters they had received
from Sir Thomas directing them to give his expedition any neces-
sary assistance, including money, and asking them to meet him at
Annapolis at the beginning of April for a conference on the gen-
eral plan of campaign against the French.31

Between the optimistic Dinwiddie and the gloomy St. Clair,
Braddock had little on which to base any concrete plan. No sup-
plies had been warehoused. No common stock of money had been
raised. No transport had been organized. And as far as he could
see the prospects of obtaining much immediate help from the
other colonies were poor. New England would have her hands full
with Shirley and Pepperell. Neither Maryland nor the Carolinas
were wealthy. Rich German-Quaker Pennsylvania's refusal to be-
come aroused against the French was underscored by a letter St.
Clair received from Governor Morris on February 28, six weeks
to the day after St. Clair’s first request for Pennsylvania maps.
Morris wrote:

Such is the infatuation and obstinacy of the people I have to deal
with, or at least their representatives, that though their country is in-
vaded, yet I could not persuade them to act with vigour at this junc-
ture, or even grant the supply expected by the Crown and recom-
mended by the Secretary of State.”

COLONIAL PROBLEMS [ 147]

“The behavior of the Quakers and the Germans is intolerable,”
said Dinwiddie.33 “They have a great number of Germans among
whom there are many Roman Catholics, as also in Maryland.” 34

Braddock said he would answer Morris’ letter. At his blunt dic-
tation Shirley wrote:

I cannot help expressing the greatest surprise to find such pusil1ani-
mous and improper behavior in your assembly, and to hear of faction
and opposition when liberty and property are invaded, and an abso-
lute refusal to supply either men, money, or provision.35

Braddock warned Morris that when he billeted his troops for
the winter he might “regulate their quarters” in such a way as to
“repair by unpleasant methods” the damage done his expedition
by the action of the Pennsylvania assembly. In a softer tone he said:
“I hope you will not impute any part of this letter as being ad-
dressed or directed to you. I am perfectly satisfied of your good
intention. . . .”

This sharply worded message, sealed with red wax and inscribed
by Braddock

On His Majesty’s Service-
To the Honorable Robert Hunter Morris,
Esquire, Lieutnt Governor of His Majesty’s
Province of Pennsylvania at

Philadelphia

moved at maximum speed. It went galloping out of Williamsburg
in the saddle bag of an express carrying an order from the General
to Governor Shirley, at Boston, to pick up Lieutenant Governor
DeLancey of New York and meet Braddock at Annapolis.“
Morris, meanwhile, had complied with St. Clair’s request for
maps. Enclosed in another letter en route to Williamsburg was
“A Map of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and three Dela-
ware counties” made by Lewis Evans in 1749 and in process of
being revised for publication that summer as “A General Map of
the Middle British Colonies.” The original map did not extend
much farther west than the Conococheague. It showed a wagon road
extending west from Philadelphia to the Potomac, but only a path
over the mountains beyond Shippensburg to a point called “Black
Log." 37 The revision would show a road from Shippensburg to
Ray's Town, and trace an Indian trail used by traders from the fort

[ 148] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

at Wills Creek to Fort Duquesne, a distance of 106 miles.” This
was the route which Braddock’s army would follow, over the moun-
tains and across the Castleman and Youghiogheny rivers to the
forks of the Ohio.

St. Clair had sent a commissary to Pennsylvania to contract for
100 wagon loads of flour to be delivered at the Conochocheague
by March 20. If wanted by the army to carry these stores farther,
the wagons were to be taken into the service. St. Clair pointed out
that his maps showed no direct road by which either troops or
supplies from the northern provinces might reach Braddock’s army
on its march. Considerations of both security and supply called for
better communications, he argued. He thought the road west from
Philadelphia should be extended through Ray's Town as far as
the headwaters of the Youghiogheny. Braddock agreed.89

Braddock began to think about the artillery in his train, en route
to Virginia aboard the transports. He was to have four 12-pounders,
six 6-pounders, four 8-inch howitzers, and fifteen cohorn mortars.
If, as St. Clair anticipated, it should be necessary to lay siege to
the French fort, he might need more heavy guns. Braddock dis-
cussed this with Keppel. The Commodore said he would give him
four more 12-pounders and ordered Captain Barringer to remove
four from the upper tier of the “Norwich” and turn them over to
Mr. Hunter at Hampton, with 1,000 shot and 50 barrels of powder.9°

But Keppel had his doubts about Braddock being able to get
guns that heavy over the mountains. He recommended that the
General buy up rope for luff tackles and, while he was about it,
take along thirty stout, able-bodied seamen familiar with block-
and-tackle.91 Braddock knew, from what he had seen in Virginia,
that his army would have to cross many streams without bridges.
Floats would be needed to ferry the troops and the train over rivers
too deep to be forded.92 He gladly accepted Keppe1’s offer of a
detachment of sailors. They were organized immediately under
Lieut. Charles Spendlowe of the “Norwich” and ordered to hold
themselves in readiness to join the troops when the transports
arrived.93

A personal letter addressed to the General from George Wash-
ington of Mount Vernon, congratulating him upon his arrival in
the colonies,94 led Braddock to make inquiries: What had hap-
pened to Washington? Dinwiddie knew. The young man had re-
signed his commission when the Virginia regiment he had com-

COLONIAL PROBLEMS [ 149]

manded at Fort Necessity was broken up into separate companies.
A reorganization had been ordered because captains of independent
companies holding commissions from the King had refused to take
orders from a colonel of militia commissioned by a colonial govern-
ment. Young Washington’s pride had been hurt. He had resigned,
although he had told friends his inclinations were “strongly bent
to arms.” 95

Dinwiddie seemed to regret having entrusted the command of his
Virginia troops to so inexperienced a militia officer. He had even
suggested to Sir Thomas Robinson that he, Dinwiddie, be given
command of all forces raised in the colony, but nothing had come
of this.93 At the end of the Fort Necessity campaign, what was left
of the Virginia regiment had marched to Alexandria, badly in need
of clothing and supplies. So many had deserted, spreading reports
that the regiment had disbanded, that Washington had published
a notice in the Maryland Gazette declaring all such rumours false
and offering a reward of one pistole for any deserter taken up
within two miles of quarters, two pistoles for any picked up at a
greater distance.97 Washington himself had retired to Mount Ver-
non, the Potomac river estate he had inherited on the death of his
brother, Major Lawrence Washington, seven miles below Alex-
andria.93

At Braddock’s direction, his aide, Captain Orme, wrote to Wash-
ingtonz

Sir,

The General having been informed that you expressed some desire
to make the campaign, but that you declined it upon the disagreeable-
ness that you thought might arise from the regulation of command,
has ordered me to acquaint you that he will be very glad of your com-
pany in his family by which all inconveniences of that sort will be
obviated.

I shall think myself very happy to form an acquaintance with a per-
son so universally esteemed and shall use every opportunity of assuring
you how much I am

Sir
Your Most Obedient Servant
Robert Orme aid de camp 99

St. Clair also included Washington in a group of eminent Vir-
ginians invited to dine with Braddock at the Raleigh and discuss
the prospects of obtaining horses and supplies in Winchester for
the army.10° At this dinner Braddock saw Washington for the first

[ 150 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

‘time, a tall, thin, flat-chested Virginian with a grace, a judicious
manner, and a humorless face.1°1 He was the only man Braddock
had met who had a personal knowledge of the wilderness through
which the expedition would pass. He may have been the first to
correct Braddock’s misconception of the country which lay before
him. From the maps he had seen, Braddock had been led to be-
lieve that he had only about 15 miles of rough country to cross. He
was dumfounded when told that more than fifty miles of mountain
lay between Wills Creek and Fort Duquesne.1°2

He offered Washington a captain’s commission by brevet, the
highest he had authority to issue. Washington was not too clear in
his own mind as to what Braddock would expect of him or what
his relations might be with other members of the General’s staff.
Furthermore, he had just taken over Mount Vernon, and as a cau-
tious, thrifty, ambitious, young planter, he hesitated to become so
deeply involved in a military campaign that he would have no time
for personal business affairs. Braddock told him his time would
be his own, to think the offer over.1°3

Two transports, each carrying 10o British regulars, anchored in
the Chesapeake on Sunday, March 2, 1755. Braddock rode down
to Hampton to get a report from his troop commanders. Not above
two or three of those aboard ship were sick, he was told, and there
had been no deaths. Five more transports arrived within the next
five days with H.M.S. “Seahorse.” Sailors as well as soldiers were
sick on these vessels, scarcely a man on the “Seahorse” being fit for
duty.1°4 But that was not the sort of sickness that counted with
Braddock who had suffered a slight spell of illness himself. By
March 13, when the three ordinance ships and all but one of the
remaining transports had arrived in convoy with seven war ves-
sels,1°5 he returned to Williamsburg and dictated a long letter to
Robinson in which he said:

All the transports are arrived except the Severn, which has one com-
pany of Sir Peter Ha1kett’s regiment aboard. There is not, as yet, one
sick man amongst all the forces.1°3

The tantalizing sight of land was more than some of Keppel’s
sailors could bear. They jumped ship. Governor Dinwiddie ran an
advertisement in the Virginia Gazette, warning people against en-
tertaining or encouraging deserters, and offering 40 shillings reward
for their return.1°7

COLONIAL PROBLEMS [ 151 ]

Three were caught, and Keppel’s squadron, still anchored in
Hampton roads, gave the waterfront an object lesson in British
naval discipline. One deserter from the “Norwich,” court-martialed
and sentenced to 24 lashes on his bare back with a cat-of-nine-tails
alongside five of His Majesty's war ships, was whipped from ship
to ship. That is, he was placed in a small boat, rowed from along-
side one vessel to another and lashed within full view of all hands
who had been called on deck to see his punishment. Two deserters
from the “Centurion” were given heavier penalties of 240 and 350
lashes. The sailor sentenced to 350 got 48 alongside each of the five
ships on a Monday morning and was due the remainer on the
following Friday “or when he shall be in condition to receive
them.” 103

Braddock’s original plan—at the suggestion of St. Clair and, prob-
ably, Governor Sharpe—had been to canton his troops for a short
time in southern Maryland and Virginia towns to refresh them
after a long, hard transatlantic v0yage.1°9 But the lack of wagons
and the haphazard manner in which the transports had been loaded
changed these plans. He ordered the whole convoy up the Potomac
to Alexandria, as soon as the winds were favorable. The regulars
would disembark there, unload the ordnance ships, and encamp.11°

After January’s snow the weather had turned remarkably warm,
more like ]une.111 Mr. Hunter, the expediti0n’s agent at Hampton,
had put fresh meat aboard the ships when they anchored in the
R0ads.112 Eight hundred barrels of pork, some bacon and butter
delivered on contracts made by Dinwiddie, were shipped to Alex-
andria.113 Rare foresight on the part of the Admiralty had stowed
another 1,000 barrels of beef and ten tons of butter on His Maj-
esty’s ships as emergency rations for the tr00ps.114 These with other
supplies on which Dinwiddie expected future deliveries should
sustain an army of four thousand for six months, according to the
calculations of Braddock’s staff. But the stubborn province of
Pennsylvania, the key stone of Braddock’s logistics, showed no in-
clination to supply anything.115

In a letter replying to Braddock’s angry outburst of February
28, Governor Morris wrote:

I am, sir, almost ashamed to tell you that we have in this province
upwards of 300,000 inhabitants; that we are blessed with a rich soil
and temperate climate, and besides our own consumption raise provi-
sions enough to supply an army of 100,000 men, which is yearly ex-

[ 152 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

ported from this city, and with other commodities employes upwards
of 500 vessels, mostly owned by the merchants of our town. From a
province so circumstanced what might not reasonably have been ex-
pected, especially as we are burthened with no taxes and are not only
out of debt but have a revenue of £7000 a year and £15000 pounds in
bank, all at the disposal of the House of Assembly. And yet when their
ALL is invaded they refuse to contribute to the necessary defense of
their country, either by establishing a militia or furnishing men,
money or provisions.11°

Braddock learned of the arrival of the last of the transports, the
“Severn," on March 18.117 That day he wrote a long report to
Robinson. Knowing how tightly the King pinched pennies, the
General was worried by the colonies’ disregard for the Secretary of
State's suggestion that they establish a common fund to meet mili-
tary expenses.

“I am almost in despair of complying with it, from the jealousy
of the people and the disunion of the several colonies, as well
among themselves as one with another,” he told Sir Thomas.113
He wrote:

Governor Dinwiddie has obtained £20,000 currency and is in hopes
of prevailing upon his assembly to raise a further supply which he has
for that purpose summoned to meet on the first of May next. The
province of North Carolina has granted £8000, and Maryland six in
the currency of their respective governments. Pennsylvania, though by
far the richest and most prosperous colony of any upon the continent,
as well as most nearly interested in the event of the expedition, as yet,
contributed nothing. . . .

As soon as I can assemble the troops, provide forage, provisions and
other necessaries for their march, I shall proceed to attempt the reduc-
tion of the French forts on the Ohio; it is doubtful whether there will
be grass on the other side of the Allegheny mountains before the latter
part of April which is indeed as soon as it will probably be in my
power to be there.

But he had no doubt as to the success of his expedition. He
asked Sir Thomas to see that instructions were issued to Keppel for
the disposal of French prisoners turned over to the Commodore
by the army. To Newcastle and Halifax he dispatched shorter let-
ters, making this request of Newcastle:

As small coined silver will be greatly wanted for the payment of
troops, and as no considerable quantity of it can be got in this prov-
ince, I must beg of Your Grace to direct the contractors, Mr. Hanbury
and Mr. Tomlinson, to send over as soon as possible, if they have not

COLONIAL PROBLEMS [ 153]

already done it, four or five thousand piastrines and half piastrines
which is the more necessary as all the money already brought over by
the regimental paymasters is in Spanish gold and dollars.119

From Williamsburg, Braddock also disposed of a bombastic half-
pay captain-lieutenant, William Dalrymple, who had turned up in
Hampton to pester both him and Dinwiddie. The General sent
him to command Fort Johnson in North Carolina.12° In a letter to
Governor Dobbs, Braddock said frankly that he would not trust
Dalrymple with a hogsty and that the best thing Dobbs could do
with him would be to hang him on the first convenient tree-that
he was giving Dalrymple the command, an unimportant post, “as
a feather to get rid of him.” 121

Dinwiddie explained, in an apologetic note to Dobbs, that Dal-
rymple would have been appointed to England “but a delicacy in
regard to General Braddock prevailed. He is recommended by Lord
Halifax, Anson and several others to me and the General.” 122
Dinwiddie was not happy these days. The transports had brought
news of the death of the Earl of Albemarle at Paris on December
21. Albermarle was still titular governor of Virginia. Lieutenant
Governor Dinwiddie was anxious to keep his post.123

Even more provoking than Dalrymple, to Braddock, was the dis-
appearance from the Raleigh Tavern stable of a bay horse the
General had bought. Finnie, the embarrassed landlord, advertised
in the Gazette of March 21:

Strayed or stolen from my stable, a bay horse, belonging to his Ex-
cellency General Braddock. Was bought in Princess Anne county and
is supposed to have gone toward Hampton. Whoever brings him to me
shall have a pistole reward!“

Within the week Braddock, Keppel, and Dinwiddie set out for
Alexandria, a new Potomac river port where the convoy was un-
loading}-‘*5 The ocean-weary soldiers, who had seen Hampton only
from a distance, must have gazed in dismay at the little settlement
where their transports dropped anchor. There was not even a
church steeple to indicate that the place was a town. Most of the
houses were unpretentious wooden structures, strung along a lane
leading back from the river bank where a flatboat served as a ferry
to the opposite Maryland shore. Low tide exposed a belt of mud
flats along the Virginia side of the river.126

The largest building in sight was a three-story brick house, the
home of Col. William Fairfax, a cousin of Thomas, Sixth Lord

[ 154 ] ILL~STARRED GENERAL

Fairfax and proprietor of the Northern Neck of Virginia, which
was all the land lying between the Potomac and the Rappahannock
rivers. For years the Colonel had been resident manager of his
cousin’s vast holdings, a royal grant of Charles II, originally com-
prising more than five million acres or nearly one quarter of the
province east of the mountains.127

The next biggest building in town, a solidly constructed two-
story stone house with protruding Qlormers in its high steep roof,
was the home of Maj. John Carlyle, a Scotch merchant who did
considerable business in connection with three tobacco warehouses
at the lower end of the town.128 The Major was married to a daugh-
ter of Col. Fairfax, a magic name in colonial gentry, and had en-
joyed the profits of an army contractor while serving as commissary
of supply for Washington’s unfortunate expedition of a year ago.
Both the Colonel’s son, George, and his son-in-law, the Major, were
active members of the Ohio Company. All three were incorporators
of the new town of Alexandria, with building lots for sale on its
grid-ironed plot.129

The troops, put ashore by the transport crews, marched up the
lane from the river landing, drums thumping, fifes a-squeal. Fright-
ened hogs and geese, which had the run of the place, scattered.
Townsfolk, children, a few farmers, and Negro servants watched their
first British regulars swing past. Never before had they beheld any-
thing as gorgeous as those yellow-faced red uniforms with their big
shining buckles and white lace—slightly soiled. Never before had
they heard so many drums—twenty to each regiment. The regi-
mental colors of fringed yellow silk, emblazoned with rose-and-
thistle wreathed Roman numerals, were another curiosity.13°

The soldiers, wrinkled by cramped quarters aboard ship, their
pigtails smeared with a regulation mixture of flour and tallow,
regarded the Alexandrians with much less satisfaction. The blacks
were the first Negro slaves some of the soldiers had ever seen. But
the long confinement of a transatlantic voyage had aroused more
interest in the town. The redcoats marched past a court house, a
jail, a whipping post, and a pillory-—-grouped around the market
square. They looked for alehouses—-and saw one small tavern! No
cook shops. No pastry shops. No coffee houses. No signboards.
Along the lane leading to the site of their encampment, the edge
of a marsh to the northwest of the town, they passed not more
than half a dozen coaches and those with unmatched horses and

COLONIAL PROBLEMS [ 15 5 ]

as plain and dusty as any country carriages they had ever seen in
Ireland.131

Royal artillerymen and two infantry details were put to unload-
ing the thirteen transports and the three ordinance ships of the
convoy.132 This was more of a task than they had expected. The
weather had turned unusually warm. The ships, which also carried
arms and clothing for the Shirley and Pepperell regiments, had
been loaded in such haste that the baggage and equipment of
Braddock’s two regiments were hopelessly mixed with those of the
other two. It would be necessary, Keppel said, to make a complete
clearance of all the ships before any one regiment could be fully
equipped.133 The work began at 6 o’clock every morning and con-
tinued all day for a week.134 The mate of one of the ordinance
ships fell overboard and was badly hurt. He was bled, but he
died.135

Major Carlyle put his own house, which stood beside the market
square, at the General’s disposal, and Braddock established his
headquarters there, mounting a general’s guard of one lieutenant
and thirty privates at the gate.136 The house stood on a stone plat-
form with a terrace overlooking the river. It was a new house.
Carved in the keystone of an arch above the fanlight of its river
front entrance was the date, 1752. The General was shown to a
bedroom on the second floor, a corner room with a small fireplace,
a built-in closet for his gear, and two deep windows overlooking
the river.137

Here, on Thursday, March 27, Braddock issued his first orders
to the troops in camp. Captain Roger Morris of Dunbar’s regi-
ment was named a second aid-de-camp to His Excellency. Sir Peter
Halkett’s eldest son, Francis, a captain of the Forty-Fourth, was
appointed brigade major. As published to the troops the General’s
orders said he expected the regulars, well acquainted with military
discipline after having served under the Duke of Cumberland, to
set “the most soldier-like example” for American recruits. Any sol-
dier who deserted, even though he returned, would be hanged
without mercy. Any soldier found drunk, negligent, or disobedient
would be put on short rations. “To promote diligence and activity,”
extra salt and bread or flour would be issued.133

The next day was Good Friday. The General named Lieut.-Col.
Thomas Gage of Halkett’s Forty-fourth, president of a court mar-
tial to try James Anderson, a private of Dunbar’s regiment, prob-

ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION or A GUARDSMAN [ 5 ]

At Windsor Castle, on June 17, 1682, King Charles II signed a
commission constituting one Edward Braddock, a lieutenant in
Captain V/Villiam Wakelin’s company of the Coldstream. He became
the father of the subject of this book. The commission was one of
three authorized that day by the King, presumably to fill vacan-
cies.15

Edward Braddock, sire, appears to have been a member of a
highly respectable but undistinguished Staffordshire family whose
arms—argent a greyhound coumnt within a bordure engrailed sable
—-had been recorded by the College of Heralds in 1663.16 The arms
and pedigree of another Braddock family had been recorded in
Norfolk in 1563.17 Under such variations as Bridock, Bradock, Bre-
dock, Bredocke, Braddocke, Brideoak and Briddocke the name also
appeared occasionally in the court records and parish registers of
London and the home and midland counties. These Braddocks in-
cluded a mariner, a ferryman, a saddler, a clerk, a factor, a debtor
imprisoned at Newgate, and a Dublin alderman; all obscure and
unimportant.”

The Staffordshire Bradocks (as William Dugdale, Esquire, Norry
King-at-arms spelled the family name) 19 came from the small, re-
mote parish of Adbaston, a crossroads hamlet in the farming coun-
try between the town of Eccleshall-—known for its castle, an old
episcopal palace that retained the ancient bridges over its moat-
and the Shropshire border. Edmund Bradock, the head of the
family, was a remote ancestor of our Braddock. John Bradock, eldest
of five sons of Edmund Bradock, appears to have been sent to St.
Peter's College, Westminster, and elected to Trinity College, Cam-
bridge, in 1579.20 At least three of Edmund’s seven daughters mar-
ried neighborhood squires.21 The younger sons probably were ap-
prenticed to the trades, as was customary in the families of the
smaller gentry, and some of these sons, no doubt, went up to Lon-
don. Edmund’s fourth son had been christened Edward.”

EDWARD BRADDOCK, GRANDSIRE

Three years after the Restoration, an Edward Braddock, a twenty-
one-year old wax chandler of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, was granted
a license to marry Elizabeth Cooke, spinster daughter of Richard
Cooke, 21 farrier in the neighboring parish of St. Giles-in-the-

[ 156] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

ably on a charge of desertion. The court sentenced the soldier to
a thousand lashes.139 On Easter Sunday each regiment held divine
services at the head of its colors.14° On Monday the two regiments
were mustered, the officers in boots and the men in brown gaiters,
and inspected right down to the commissions of the newly com-
missioned officers who had been forewarned to have their papers
in their pockets.141

More than a thousand British soldiers meant trouble in any
town the size of Alexandria. Aboard ship they had complained
about their rations. Now they complained that Alexandria’s water
was unwholesome.142 And the shopkeepers’ stocks were neither large
nor varied. Throughout Virginia it was difficult sometimes to buy
such simple things as stockings and candles.143 In Alexandria it
was almost impossible for a thousand British soldiers to buy any-
thing except cider and a peach brandy called whiskey.144 “For
their encouragement, so they may do their duty like good soldiers,”
Braddock posted an Easter Sunday order that every man enlisted
or drafted into the two regiments from Ireland should be credited
with 20 shillings pay. The response to this was a rip roaring drunk.
In an effort to sober up the worst men of his regiment after nearly
a week of carousal, Sir Peter Halkett ordered seven days’ provisions
withheld from any sergeant, drummer, or private appearing in
camp under the influence.145

A few of the soldiers had brought along their wives.146 Other
female camp followers, a larger number than allowed by the gov-
ernment, had been brought over as washerwomen and hospital at-
tendants. In the absence of other women some of these became so
popular and prosperous that they entered into an agreement
among themselves not to serve as washerwomen or hospital attend-
ants for the stipulated wage of sixpence a day and their keep. The
General ordered that all who refused to work for the sixpence
wage should be turned out of camp and others hired in their
place.147

Other women arrived later from England, including a Mrs.
Browne, a merry London widow travelling with her brother, a
commissary attached to the hospital. Only after seeking lodgings
at every house in town did Mrs. Browne find a tiny room, barel-y
big enough for her bed and without so much other furniture as
a chair. In the evening the downstairs parlor of the house was

COLONIAL PROBLEMS [ 157]

cleared for the soldiers who drank cider and danced jigs. There
wasn’t a spare room in the town.148

The General’s headquarters was the central attraction. Its guard,
usually provided by a different regiment on alternate days, was a
model, with its booted lieutenant and its thirty redcoats in brown
gaiters. Under the personal attention of Bishop, his body servant,
Braddock himself cut a military figure in his rufHed cravat, a
rosette fastening the upturned brim of his hat. The drummers
turned out to salute him with the customary two ruffles, the guards
resting on their arms. The drummers also were under orders to
beat two ruffles for the Governor.149

Braddock discredited himself with the Lees of Stratford, one of
the first families of Virginia, by rejecting the tendered services of
twenty-three-year-old Richard Henry Lee, one of six sons of the late
Thomas Lee, an acting governor of Virginia and a founder of the
Ohio Company. Young Richard Henry had marched up to Alex-
andria with some of Westmoreland county’s militia, a would—be
volunteer under Braddock’s command. Evidently Richard Henry
was not too soldierly in appearance, because Braddock took one
look at him and told him to go home. The name “Lee” conveyed
nothing to Braddock. He had an insignificant lieutenant by that
name——Char1es Lee——in the Forty-Fourth.

But Mr. Richard Henry Lee was not accustomed to brusque dis-
missal. He hung around headquarters and walked down to the
river with the General, Commodore Keppel, and a group of offi-
cers. A boat from a British man-of-war, which had sailed up the
Potomac with the transports and anchored off shore, was waiting
to take the party out to the vessel. Everybody except Mr. Lee
stepped aboard the boat, and though he saw the young Virginian
standing there, Braddock ordered the oarsmen to push off. Com-
modore Keppel sensed something was wrong, told the boatmen to
wait, and invited Mr. Lee to accompany them. Mr. Lee accepted.
Braddock gave him no second thought but the Lees of Virginia
never forgave Braddock.15°

Apocryphal stories relate how the General and officers of his staff
went hunting with Washington, presumably at Mount Vernon, at-
tended by slaves and a pack of hounds, the General floundering
through the Virginia woods in his great boots, puffing and blowing
and crying out:

“Great God, sir! What would Sir Robert have said in Norfolk,

[ 158 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

to see a man hunting with a fowling piece in his hand, and a pack
of dogs actually laid on to a turkey!” 151

Sir Robert Walpole, the rough, roystering old Squire, had kept
a fine pack of hounds at Houghton, his palatial country home in
Norfolk. Two brothers of Braddock had lived in Norfolk, and it
is possible that the General had been entertained in the Hunting
Hall at Houghton, where Sir Robert and his old friend, Col.
Charles Churchill of the Coldstream, were central figures in a six-
by-eight hunting piece painted by John Wooton, an artist devoted
to dogs and horses.152

Legend grew, describing the General as having a jolly round
face, scarlet as his coat, with eyes as innocent as a baby’s. It was
said that he swaggered, swearing at every word. Such conflicting
reports have come down that he was ignorant of every point of
parade, except the merits of a bottle and the looks of a woman,
brave as bulldog, savage, lustful, prodigal, generous, gentle in soft
moods, easy of love and laughter, dull of wit, utterly unread, be-
lieving his country the first in the world and he as good a gentle-
man as any in it, and why not?153 These became legends, born of
bitterness and rancor over defeat and of provincial disdain for the
failure of a professional British soldier, often repeated by those
whose criticism of the mother country centered in the ill-starred
Braddock.

Stories have been told of Braddock, seated at the dinner table
of a great plantation—not Stratford—being helped to most dishes
more than once and forever holding out his glass for a drink.154
He certainly enjoyed good food, and the Fairfaxes, like the Car-
lyles, did their best to feed him well. A Mrs. Wardrope won his
favor with a gift of potted woodcocks and a cake.155

“I was invited to supper by a rich planter,” [one oflicer wrote home to
London] “and the heat of the climate, the dim light of the myrtle wax
candles and the number of black half naked servants that attended us
made me think of the infernal regions, and that I was at supper with
Pluto only there was no beautiful Proserpine, for the lady of the house
was more like one of the Furies; she had passed through the education
of the college of Newgate, as great numbers from thence arrive here
yearly; most being cunning jades, some pick up foolish planters; this
lady’s husband was far from a fool, but had married not only for the
charms of her person but because her art and skill was quite useful to
him in carrying on his business affairs.15°

COLONIAL PROBLEMS [ 159]

It is not unlikely that this letter-writer's estimate of his hostess
had been influenced by reading Defoe’s popular Moll Flanders.
But he had another reason for his judgment. All the newly ar-
rived British officers were buying their own horses. In this case the
host “made me pay for my supper by selling me a horse upon
honor which, soon as it was cool, showed itself dog lame and moon-
blind.” 157 Good horses were becoming scarce. There was a de-
mand for bat horses as well as mounts. The General needed a team
of six carriage horses for his coach. Virginians laughed at the Gen-
eral’s coach. They thought it ridiculous that he should take one
to war, but a coach was regulation for an officer of his rank in the
British army.158

Washington came up from Mount Vernon to see a review at the
camp and visit the General at his headquarters.159 Braddock told
him he might join the expedition at Wills Creek if he liked. Wash-
ington put himself on fairly intimate terms with the three younger
members of the General’s “family,” Roger Morris, Shirley, and
Orme.16° Morris, twenty-seven years old, had been in the army ten
years and was something of a ladies’ man.161 Shirley, the Massa-
chusetts governor's son, was a kindly and worldly-wise but moody
bache1or,162 becoming disenchanted with his post as military secre-
tary. Orme, pure Coldstream guardsman, moved in the same Lon-
don social circles as Horace Walpole and was a man who would
marry wel1.133

Orme had begun his military career as an ensign in the Thirty-
Fourth Foot under Walpo1e’s friend Conway, transferring to the
Coldstream in 1745, and now was a Coldstream lieutenant of four
years’ standing. As a lieutenant of the footguards, Orme ranked as
a captain among officers of the line regiments. This made him an
object of constant jealousy among junior officers of the expedi-
tion. Braddock, himself a veteran guardsman, confided in Orme
and often relied upon his judgment, a situation which gave cur-
rency to camp gossip about Orme being the General’s favorite!“
Naturally enough, Braddock also showed some partiality toward
Lieut.-Col. Burton, recently promoted from major, who occasion-
ally wrote to their mutual friend, George Anne Bellamy.165

Daniel Dulany, a young lawyer member of the Maryland General
Assembly, who came to Alexandria from Annapolis with Governor
Sharpe to see the troops, took an instant and intense dislike to
Orme. Dulany had been educated at Eton and Cambridge and had

[ 16o] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

studied law at the Middle Temple. He marked Orme down as an
insolent, arrogant, worthless upstart, lording it over all the other
oflicers.166 But Washington and Orme got along very well.

Sharpe and Dulany had come to Alexandria after the Maryland
assembly had been prorogued because it refused to vote any addi-
tional funds for the expedition against the French.167 Sharpe was
embarrassed. He had been instructed by Lord Baltimore, proprietor
of the Maryland colony, to show Braddock all possible respect and
obedience.163 Not only as a provincial governor, but also as a for-
mer regional commander-in-chief he was anxious to please Brad-
dock. One purpose of his journey to Alexandria was to escort
Braddock and Dinwiddie back to Annapolis for the council Brad-
dock had called there with the governors of Pennsylvania, New
York, and Massachusetts.169

Sharpe was a tall man, a bachelor in his late thirties, with a
nose as big as Keppe1’s and a firm, straight mouth-a cheerful fel-
low but not easily deceived. He had fairly good connections in
England, one brother in Parliament and another a former chap-
lain to the Prince of Wales and master of the Temple, now a pre-
bendary in Salisbury Cathedral. The new Duke of Albemarle, in a
letter to Braddock, had mentioned Sharpe favorably and Sharpe
hoped to merit the Duke’s commendation.17°

“The men are all well and hearty,” Sharpe reported after seeing
Braddock’s troops, but he found the General “somewhat dissatis-
fied” with the action of the Maryland assembly, and anxiously con-
cerned with the problem of land transport.171 No horses had been
brought from England for his army: it had been assumed they
could be procured in America. With the troops had come sixteen
artillery wagons, but many times that number would be needed to
haul general supplies. The artillery wagons, fourteen pieces of
artillery on travelling carriages, powder carts, tool tumbrils, and a
rolling forge would require practically all the horses for which
Dinwiddie had contracted. Where were the other horses and wagons
coming from for the quartermaster? Dinwiddie had promised 200
wagons and 2,500 horses by May 10 but as of April 10 Braddock
could find none for hire.172

There was also a recruit problem. Since the arrival of the two
regiments of regulars, both under strength, Braddock had received
orders from London to recruit each to a strength of 1,000 men.
They were not up to 700 each now.173 The “best” of the Virginians

COLONIAL PROBLEMS [ 161 ]

enlisted by Dinwiddie had been assigned to the two regiments, and
even the “best” left much to be desired. To fill out the ranks of
his regulars with more volunteers Braddock had had to send re-
cruiting officers into Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.174

As a group the Virginia recruits were long, lank, yellow-faced
and dirty, looking as if they were half-starved.175 Many were culls
from the thousands of “transports” shipped to the colonies from
English jails during the past ten years.176 In America, as in Eng-
land, most men joined the army only when they could find nothing
more profitable. Idle and ragged, some without shirts, some with-
out shoes, they had been waiting for Braddock at Alexandria when
he got there.177 Until tents could be brought ashore and pitched
for them they were quartered in the jail, where many, no doubt,
felt at home. Those inducted in the Virginia companies were issued
short uniform coats.

“Bobtails,” the British called them.173

“Very indifferent men,” said Braddock.179

And always there was the question of feeding them, of feeding
the whole army on a march through the wilderness. It was a simple
matter to subsist any army in Europe, even in enemy territory. The
troops foraged and lived on the countryside. But the American
countryside, from what Braddock had seen of it, was not nearly
so thickly settled as that of Europe. What did Sharpe know of the
supply situation at Wills Creek?

Well, the first time Sharpe had been there he had found the
troops without salt, flour, or blankets. But he thought that had
been corrected now. A trader named Cresap, who lived near the
fort, had bought up some 29,000 pounds of pork, about 8,000
pounds of flour, and a herd of beeves. Sharpe understood Cresap
had about 13,000 pounds of beef already cured in barrels at his
house. But he warned the General against trader-contractors.13°

“A parcel of dirty fellows,” Sharpe said.131

As for transport, he suggested that some of Braddock’s troops
cross the Potomac and march westward on a road through Mary-
land. He was confident he could find at least a hundred farmers
in Maryland who would provide horses and wagons for the army.132

A company of carpenters from the Virginia levies was ordered
to march to Wills Creek where they would be put to work by St.
Clair, who had gone ahead to repair the roads. At 7:30 o’clock
Easter Monday morning, March 31, the Virginians were under

[ 162 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

arms. The other company of carpenters and two companies of Vir-
ginia rangers were attached to Dunbar’s regiment, and the remain-
ing three companies of rangers, to Halkett’s. Six corporals of the
two regiments were assigned, one to each company, to help a lieu-
tenant of the regulars drill the provincials.183

This was to be the camp’s first busy week. The artillery haade up
sample cartridges with ball and sent them around to make sure
they fit the men’s firelocks. All infantrymen were issued two good
spare flints, twenty-four rounds of powder and ball. The new re-
cruits were read the articles of war, instructed in the use of their
arms, and warned that their firelocks must not be used as tent
poles or otherwise encumbered while on the march. The regiments
went through the exercise of wheeling up into line to fire by
platoons.184

The word was passed, in order form, for officers to provide them-
selves with bat horses but, because forage was scarce, to carry no
more baggage than necessary. It was recommended that inasmuch
as their espantoons would be useless in the woods, the officers arm
themselves with fusils. For the same reason the sergeants of the
two regiments would leave their halberts behind and carry firelock
and bayonet. To lighten their packs and enable each man to carry
seven or eight days’ rations the privates would shed shoulder belts,
waist belts, and hangers and take with them into the field only one
spare shirt, one pair of spare stockings, one spare pair of shoes,
and one pair of brown gaiters.185

Commanding oflicers of regiments are directed by His Excellency to
inform their men not to suffer themselves to be alarmed upon a march
by any straggling fires from the woods, they being of no consequence
nor liable to any inconvenience but what arise from their misbehavior.
Any soldier by leaving his company or by words or gestures expressing
fear shall suffer death and the General will greatly approve and prop-
erly reward those men who by their coolness and good discipline treat
the attempt of those fellows with the contempt they deserve.136

On Thursday, April 3, the General’s guard at headquarters was
reduced toone corporal and nine men.137 The General had gone
to Annapolis for his Governors council. With Keppel, Dinwiddie,
and Sharpe he had crossed the Potomac on the ferry in Dinwiddie’s
coach and driven through upper Marlboro to Maryland’s elegant
little capital. Orme, Shirley, Keppel’s secretary, Dinwiddie’s clerk,
and their servants rode horseback.183 They expected to meet the

COLONIAL PROBLEMS [ 163]

other governors in Annapolis over the weekend but a heavy snow
storm farther north blocked the roads between Boston and New
York, and Morris waited in Philadelphia for his colleagues, Shirley
and De Lancey.189

Sharpe entertained Braddock and his party as best he could. The
mansion he rented as a residence was equipped with a greenhouse
and surrounded by acres of gardens nearly ready to bloom. Gar-
dening was his hobby.19° His two journeys to Wills Creek and his
visit to the camp at Alexandria had given him other things to talk
about with the General, and as a former captain of Powlett’s
marines (he mentioned having served in the “twentieth regiment”)
he could speak the language of military men.191

But Braddock was restless, impatient to put his army into mo-
tion. A long weekend at Annapolis, waiting for the three northern
governors, increased his agitation. Pacing the floor of Sharpe’s
house, he asked again about those horses and wagons. Sharpe as-
sured him they would be available whenever his troops crossed the
Potomac. The logical point to cross would be at the mouth of
Rock Creek, on the Maryland side, eight miles above Alexandria.192

Braddock waited through Sunday for the Northern governors,
still delayed by that snow storm. On Monday he returned to Alex-
andria. He left instructions with Sharpe to bring the three gover-
nors to his headquarters there when they arrived. He could wait
no longer. His army was moving.193

X

LOGISTICS
April, May 1755

..._...__...;:.<@)}.:..___..__...

Am NOW, of a sudden, winter died. The salty tinge of the tide-
water country faded in the breath of early spring. Where the
tents of the regulars were pitched by the marsh, the ground was
still soft and wet and darkness brought a penetrating chill. But the
days were brighter. Early morning haze on the Potomac lost its
sting. Sunset lingered. The willows by the river turned feathery
green.

Here in Virginia the spring came later but swifter than on the
Thames. And there was no mistaking it. Old soldiers felt April in
their bones. This was the time of year, in the old days, when the
barges loaded at the Tower, and the transports dropped down
stream with troops for another campaign in Flanders.

For younger soldiers it was homesick season, breeding memories
of golden gorse in Cornwall, budding pear trees in Kent, primroses
and daffodils in the country lanes of Devon. The fresh scent of
white hawthorne blossoms and of ploughed earth out of doors, the
scrunch of sand in a patch of sunshine on an alehouse floor—that
was spring in England. '

“I reckon the day I bought my commission the most unhappy in
my life excepting that in which I landed in this country,” the ofl"1-
cer who had been sold the moonblind horse wrote home. “And
there is no comfort in the spring; none of those months of gentle,

[164]

LOGISTICS [ 1 65 ]

genial warmth. . . . As soon as the severe frosts go off the heat of
the neighboring sun brings on summer at once, one day shall be
frost and the next more scorching or sultry than the hottest dog
day in England.” 1

Virginia hospitality, the novelty of hominy, the absence of Lon-
don smoke could not make up for the fact that “the worst English
country town exceeds all they have in this whole province.” There
was no burgundy, or champagne. The claret was poor stuff, the
madeira second-rate, and the rum punch monotonous. Flat to-
bacco fields, Negro slaves and their overbearing masters made sen-
sitive, melancholy Englishmen yearn for meadows, blooming maid
servants, and sedate livery men who shunned loud laughter and
bad manners. They were tired of talk about tobacco. Could Vir-
ginians talk of nothing else? They worked too hard, aged too
quickly? “A Virginian is as old at thirty as an Englishman at sixty,”
a provincial coquette whispered behind her fan.3

The days of such whispers were numbered. On Friday, April 4,
1755, while Braddock was still in Annapolis, an advance detail of
a corporal and six men from Dunbar’s regiment had been ordered
to Frederick with hospital stores and six days’ provisions. On Mon-
day an officer and twenty men of Halkett’s were told to be ready
to march to Winchester next morning. Thirty more men were de-
tailed to load artillery wagons for Winchester and boats for Rock
Creek. The army would move in two columns—one through Fred-
erick and the other through Winchester—to ease congestion on the
roads and utilize limited colonial transport as widely as possible.4

But the detail to load stores for shipment up the river to Rock
Creek could find no boats. Impress boats, if necessary, Braddock
ordered.5 Keppel said the boats of the “Seahorse” and the “Night-
ingale,” which had sailed up the Potomac with the transports,
could be used.“ Lieut. Spendlowe’s detachment of seamen was sent
to Rock Creek to help load wagons there with the stores ferried
across the river. The sailors encamped under the trees on the
wooded Maryland shore near a boatyard where a small sailing
vessel was on the stocl<s.7

All that sunny, sultry April week,3 unseasonably warm for the
Potomac, boats plied between the Alexandria landing and the
Rock Creek boat yard, carrying army baggage and provisions. Be-
cause of the intense heat the soldiers were issued light weight
Osnabrig breeches and Waistcoats, and oflicers were ordered to pro-

[ 6] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Fields.” The bridegroom was no ordinary tradesman. He played
the harpsicon and sang so well that when he was 18 he had been
sworn a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, one of twenty choristers
paid £70 a year to sing in the King’s chapel at Whitehall.24 These
were the grandparents of the man whose story unravels in this book.

Services and prayers were read in the Chapel Royal three times
a day. The Princesses Anne and Mary, daughters of the King’s
brother, the Duke of York, by his first wife, had been confirmed
there. On holy days the King attended Chapel Royal services with
the principal nobility. The most distinguished ecclesiastics preached.
On Sundays and holy days the organ and choir were augmented by
the sackbuts, cornets, and twenty-four violins of the King’s band.
Gentlemen and children (boys) of the Chapel Roya1—-the boys in
Tudor gold and scarlet-sang the favorite hymns of the royal
family.”

In an age when advancement was largely by royal favor, the
position of a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal was no mean con-
nection for a London wax chandler. Access to the King, or at least
to his court, was a long step toward worldly success. Elizabeth
Cooke's father must have been satisfied that she was making a good
match. She was married with his consent to Edward Braddock at
St. Magdalen in Old Fish street.” The year after their marriage,
while still a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, Braddock also be-
came a member of the Westminster Abbey choir. Six years later he
was appointed master of the Abbey children,” a position which
made him responsible for their moral and Christian education as
well as their musical education.

He and his wife had at least two children of their own, a son
named Edward, and a daughter Elizabeth.”

At an early age Elizabeth married John Blow, a talented Chapel
Royal boy soprano until his voice began to crack, then organist at
Westminster Abbey and master of the Chapel Royal children, to
whom he taught music, religion, reading, writing, arithmetic, geog-
raphy, history, and the rudiments of Latin.29 In 1677 Blow was
named organist of the Chapel Royal, and from Archbishop Sancroft
received the Lambeth degree of doctor of music. Thereafter he was
known as “Dr. Blow,” and although his forte was church music, he
wrote a charming little masque, Venus and Adonis, for Mary Davis,
a mistress of the King.“

[ 166] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

vide them with bladders or thin leather to put between the lining
and crown of their hats as a protection against the sun.9

On Thursday morning, April 10, at 6 o’clock, Sir Peter Halkett
marched for Winchester with six companies of his Forty-Fourth.
He was cautioned to use no more wagons than absolutely necessary.
Four of his companies, left in Alexandria with Lieut.-Col. Thomas
Gage, would escort the train later. On Friday the General’s guard
was taken off and Dunbar’s men began to strike their tents. They
were under orders to begin crossing the Potomac for a march
through Maryland at 5 o'clock Friday morning. A sergeant and
twelve men of Dunbar’s would move the General’s baggage. All
troops would be fully equipped for the field with blankets, knap-
sacks, and haversacks, each man carrying eight days’ rations.1°

Officers were still trying to provide themselves with bat horses.“
There was a shortage of wagons, wagoners, Carters, and batmen.
Dunbar advertised in the Virginia Gazette for men willing to serve
as drivers and batmen, offering them the same pay, provisions, and
quarters as soldiers.” An order was issued:

No person whatever to press or employ any wagons without an order
from General Braddock, the Quartermaster General or his assistant.

This order to be read not only to soldiers but to oflicers, servants
and followers of the army as anyone who shall be found guilty of dis-
obeying it shall be severely punished.13

Drunken redcoats continued to be a nuisance in Alexandria.
Townsfolk complained that they abused people and hurt horses.
The four companies of Halkett’s regiment remaining in camp were
warned that any soldier found selling liquor to the rest of the men
would be “severely punished.” Any soldier’s wife caught in the act
would be drummed out of camp.“

On Sunday, April 15, Sharpe arrived in Alexandria with the
three northern governors who had not reached Annapolis until
Friday. With them was Col. William Johnson, New York agent for
Indian affairs.” Braddock and Keppel met with the governors for
their long-awaited council of war in the “Blue Room” of Carlyle
house, a crowded little parlor, high-ceilinged, with shallow win-
dowseats and blue marble fireplace facings and pilasters that were
the pride of Alexandria.”

The first proposition put forward by the General, after laying
his letter of instructions before the group, was a proposal to estab-
lish a common fund to bear the expenses of the war. Unanimously

LOGISTICS [ 167]

the governors voted this down. Their own experiences with their
assemblies during the past few months had convinced them that
such a fund could never be set up in the colonies without the aid
of Parliament. But they approved all three of Braddock’s other
proposals: (1) the appointment of Col. Johnson as an envoy to treat
with the Indians and try to persuade the Six Nations to fight as
English allies against the French, (2) simultaneous attacks upon the
French forts in Nova Scotia, at Crown Point, Niagara (“the most
important of all our actions,” Braddock said), and the Forks of
the Ohio, and (3) the construction of two 6o-ton war vessels on
Lake Ontario.

Some of the northern governors thought Braddock’s projected
march across the mountains an unnecessary hazard and expense,
considering that the enemy was more accessible from New York.
Privately they suspected some misrepresentation on the part of
Virginia was responsible for this, but there was no argument, no
protest on this point for the record. Braddock’s orders from Lon-
don were positive.”

Braddock was surprised at the importance which the governors
attached to winning over the Six Nations. Of all the subjects
brought up on the carpet this seemed to be regarded as the one of
greatest consequence. So far he had had no direct dealings with
Indians and had not troubled himself too much about them. None
had volunteered to join his expedition, but Dinwiddie thought
they would come in. The General asked Morris to do what he
could to prevail upon friendly Indians of Pennsylvania to join the
army at Wills Creek, but to leave their women and children be-
hind.13 “They will be very troublesome in camp,” he said.19

At Braddock’s dictation his secretary, young Shirley, drew up a
formal commission appointing Col. Johnson to superintend and
manage the affairs of the Six Nations and their allies. Two speeches
to the Indians were prepared. The Colonel was to take presents to
the Indians (for which the General would advance £2,000) and de-
liver the two speeches in the General’s name?“

Their conference over, Sharpe and the three northern governors
left Alexandria on Thursday morning for Annapolis.” Governor
Shirley had an army of his own to get under way. If his reunion
with his son had been brief, young Shirley had made a new and
valued friend in his father’s Pennsylvania colleague, Robert Hunter
Morris, the son of a former governor of New Jersey. Morris was

[ 168] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

nearer the age of young Shirley’s father. He and William probably
had met in England where Morris had been working on New
Jersey land claims when the Penns offered him the governorship
of their colony in 1754.29

In a letter to Newcastle, enclosing the minutes of the council,
Braddock wrote:

As very little assistance has already been offered me by the provinces
and still less is to be expected from them, it is necessary for me to ap-
prise your grace that my contingent account will be much greater than
I had persuaded myself, or than, I believe, Your Grace imagines; not
only as several articles expected from the provinces must be compre-
hended in it, but from the excessive service of labor, the great number
of stores, wagons, boats, etc., and innumerable other circumstances
peculiar to the nature of the service in America. .

Upon application from Gov. Shirley acquainting me that he had the
greatest reason to fear a mutiny from the general discontent of the
men in the two American regiments at paying for their provisions
which are allowed to all H. M.’s other regiments upon this continent
I have directed him to make no deductions from their pay on that
account till H. M.’s pleasure shall be known: and with H. M.’s views
on this head I must beg to know his pleasure whether I am to allow
provisions to Sir. Peter Halkett’s and Col. Dunbar’s regiments when
those furnished by the colonies are expended or to put them under
stoppages upon which I must beg leave to observe to Your Grace that
the duty of a soldier here is very great and that it is impossible for
them to subsist upon their pay.”

Tuesday night the weather had changed. The warm south wind
had shifted to the north. The temperature dropped. Thunder gusts
swept the Potomac. Early Wednesday morning it began to snow
and by 7 o’clock the Maryland countryside, between Rock Creek
and Frederick, was covered to a depth of 18 inches. During the
day the snow melted rapidly. But Dunbar’s regiment, on the road
to Frederick, remained in camp near Dowden’s ordinary, a dormer-
windowed country tavern, about 15 miles below the town. There
were no villages in which the troops could be billeted along the
way, only forest with occasional cabins in clearings where farmers
lived.“

Next morning Spendlowe’s sailors ferried the regiment across
the muddy Monocacy river——high and swift as a result of Wednes-
day’s snow-—on a flatboat, and on Friday the troops encamped north
of Frederick, a town of about two hundred houses, two churches
(one English and one Dutch), a stone tavern, and a one and one-half-

LOGISTICS [ 169 ]

story wooden courthouse, still under construction. Most of the towns-
folk were “Dutch” as far as the British were concerned.

“Ich weiss nicht,” was the reply to many English questions.

But the Dutch were good farmers. Food and forage were abund-
ant, at a price. Soldiers who could afford it ate well—eggs, chicken,
lamb, fresh pork, pie, and milk, a welcome variation from the
army’s salt meat and biscuit.”

St. Clair had gone ahead to Wills Creek 25 to make sure that
boats and floats had been collected for river crossings, that sup-
plies had been laid in along the way, and to look for wagons. He
reached the log fort at the foot of Wills Mountain——the fort re-
named Fort Cumberland in honor of the Captain General——about
3 o’clock Wednesday afternoon, April 16.27 The Virginia road he
had traveled from Winchester was incredibly poor for an army’s
main line of communication. A stock of flour for which Dinwiddie
had contracted in Pennsylvania, to be carted down from Lancaster
to an old Indian trader's stone storehouse at the junction of Cono-
cocheague creek and the Potomac, had not yet been delivered. And
there simply were no wagons.“

The deputy quartermaster general was tired, discouraged, and
disagreeable when he dismounted at the gate of the stockade and
was told that five men from Pennsylvania had been waiting for
him since Saturday.” From Pennsylvania? Bring them out!

Their spokesman, George Croghan, Pennsylvania’s best known
Indian trader and interpreter, introduced himself and the other
four as commissioners appointed by Governor Morris to run a road
from Carlisle to the Youghiogheny.3° That was all St. Clair needed.
He did the talking.

“He is extremely warm and angry at our province,” Croghan
wrote to Morris later that day. “He would not look at our draughts
nor suffer any representation to be made to him in regard to the
province but stormed like a lion rampant.” 31

Croghan and his party had left Carlisle on March 29, following
a trail across the mountains of western Pennsylvania to within
eighteen miles of the Three Forks of the Youghiogheny. They
thought the trail could be widened into a road. Deserted by their
guides, who had become frightened by reports that war parties
from the French fort were aprowl, the road commissioners had
turned south to Fort Cumberland. They had been kindly received
by the commandant, by Col. James Innes, a veteran of Cartagena,

[ 170] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

and Capt. john Rutherford of the independent New York com-
pany in garrison at the fort.” They were completely unprepared
for the blast which St. Clair let fly. Croghan’s letter summarized it:

He said our commission to lay out the road should have been issued
in January last upon his first letter, that doing it now is doing of noth-
ing, that the troops must march on the first of May, that the want of
this road and the provisions promised by Pennsylvania has retarded
the expedition, which may cost them their lives because of the fresh
numbers of French that’s suddenly like to be poured into the country;
that instead of marching to the Ohio he would in nine days march his
army into Cumberland county to cut the roads, press horses, wagons,
8cc; that he would not suffer a soldier to handle an axe, but by fire
and sword oblige the inhabitants to do it, and take every man that
refused to the Ohio as he had yesterday some of the Virginians; that
he would kill all kind of cattle and carry away the horses, burn the
houses 8cc and that if the French defeated them by the delays of this
province that he would with his sword drawn pass through the prov-
ince and treat the inhabitants as a parcel of traitors to his Master; that
he would tomorrow write to England by a man-of-war, shake Mr.
Penn's proprietaryship, and represent Pennsylvania as a disaffected
province; that he would not stop to impress our assembly his hands
were not tyed, and that we should find, ordering us to take these pre-
cautions and instantly publish them to our governor and assembly,
telling us he did not value anything they did or resolved, seeing they
were dilatory, retarded the march of troops and hang an arse (as he
phrased it) on this occasion, and told us to go to the General if we
pleased, who would give us ten bad words for one that he had given.

When St. Clair stopped, probably out of breath, Croghan tried
to speak.

“But all in vain,” he told Morris. “Our delays were unpardona-
ble, he would do our duty himself and never trust us, but we
should pay dearly for it; to every sentence he solemnly swore and
desired that we might believe him to be in earnest.” 33

Braddock was still in Alexandria with Colonel Gage and four
companies of Halkett’s, waiting for teams for fourteen artillery
pieces and horses and wagons for the fifteen cohorn mortars. There
was also a shortage of wagons on the Maryland shore, in spite of
Sharpe’s promises. Heavy ordnance and hospital stores had not
yet been moved from Rock Creek. Braddock sent an express to
St. Clair, at Wills Creek, to meet him in Frederick 34 and wrote a
letter to Napier in which he said:

I shall set out tomorrow for Frederick in my way to Fort Cumber-
land the new name for the fort at Wills’s Creek, where I shall join the

LOGISTICS [ 171 ]

two columns which are now upon their march at about fifty miles dis-
tance: this disposition I was obliged to make for the conveniency of
horses and wagons, by which means I employ those of Maryland which
would not be prevailed upon to cross the Potomac. I have met with
infinite difficulties in providing carriages etc., for the train nor am I
as yet quite relieved from one, a great part still continuing here which
has delayed me for some time; I shall get them dispatched tomorrow
or the next day. I am impatient to begin my march over the moun-
tains. . . . I am to expect numberless inconveniences and obstructions
from the total want of dry forage, from the being obliged to carry all
our provisions with us which will make a vast line of baggage and
which though I reduce as much as possible will nevertheless occasion
great trouble and retard me considerably. . . . I have been greatly dis-
appointed by the neglect and supineness of those assemblies of those
provinces with which I am concerned; they "promised great matters
and have done nothing whereby instead of forwarding they have ob-
structed the service. When I get to Wi1ls’s Creek I will send you . . .
whatever other information or intelligence I shall get there, it being
impractical to get any here, the people of this part of the country lay-
ing it down for a maxim never to speak the truth upon any account.35
Saying good-bye to those at the Carlyle house next morning,
Braddock tried his soldier’s best to be jovial. To a young Negro
maid named Penny, he said:
“You are only a Penny now but I hope on my return you will be
two pence.” 36
He rode into Frederick on Monday morning, April 21, with
Orme, Morris, Shirley, and a bodyguard, a small mounted troop of
Virginia horse.37 Once again the weather was fine—warm days but
cool nights with heavy dew.-38 Frederick's stone tavern, a two-story
house at the top of a hill on the far side of town, had been reserved
as a headquarters for the General. Four miles to the west lay the
Kittochtinny hills, first range of mountains crossing the line of his
march. From the tavern door they were mild mountains, almost
English in appearance, a chain of wooded humps that turned blue
in the April twilight.39
Contrary to his hopes after that long weekend at Annapolis with
the obliging Governor Sharpe, who had promised to meet him in
Frederick that evening, Braddock found no cattle corralled for
the army, no park of wagons waiting to bring up the stores remain-
ing at Rock Creek.” St. Clair, reporting to Braddock at his tavern
headquarters, brought no better news from Wills Creek. George
Ross, who said he had been appointed a Commissary for the Army,
was still waiting on his farm at the Conococheague for the flour

[ 172] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

supposed to be delivered there from Pennsylvania. The quarter-
master had found no wagons. Some of the farmers near the Cono-
cocheague were German Dunkers beset with conscientious objec-
tions to warfare. They wanted nothing to do with an army.“

“I have great promises,” said the General, perhaps with a note
of sarcasm.” “What the performances will be a little time will tell.”

Sharpe drove in from Annapolis that evening in a six-horse
chariot. Braddock laid the question of cattle, horses, and wagons
before him. The Governor had no ready answer. So limited was
his authority, to say nothing of his funds, he could only suggest
that the General try to buy beeves from the farmers around Fred-
erick and, if necessary, impress their wagons.43

The army had to have more wagons. Practically all those with
Dunbar’s column and now loaded with artillery stores had been
sent ahead to the mouth of the Conococheague from where it might
be possible to boat the stores up the Potomac to Wills Creek. The
wagons would return to Rock Creek for another haul. At that rate
it would be a month before all the stores at Rock Creek could be
transported as far as Conococheague. Wheel and hand barrows at
Rock Creek, intended for siege operations, were ordered to be left
there.“

Mindful of his instructions to cultivate harmony and friendship,
Braddock so far had taken pains to avoid any action which might
be regarded as highhanded. But now he was beginning to grow
desperate. Transports were vital to his expedition. He sent out
staff officers to show the county justices of peace copies of his orders
from the King, empowering him to impress transport for his army.
But there were not many wagons in Frederick county to impress.
Threats, entreaties, money at the rate of fifteen shillings per day
for a four-horse team with a driver, produced only about twenty-
five, and not all of those in serviceable condition.45

“This drear and desolate country,” groaned Braddock.“

Buying cattle was not too difficult. The countryside through
which the troops were marching was dotted with cowpens, patches
of woods of eighty to a hundred acres enclosed with rail fences.
Cows, calves, and steers seemed to run wild in the woods. Normally
the herdsmen did not round up their cattle for market until fall.
All the animals were lean, but the herdsmen were as eager to sell
as the army was to buy.47

While Braddock waited for St. Clair and his assistants to round

LOGISTICS [ 17 3 ]

up transport and beef, Benjamin Franklin, deputy postmaster gen-
eral of the North American colonies, and his son, William, arrived
in Frederick from Philadelphia. The elder Franklin’s immediate
business with the General was a system of special posts which Brad-
dock proposed to establish in order to speed the movement of dis-
patches between his headquarters and Annapolis, Philadelphia, and
Williamsburg, as well as letters from the army to England. Brad-
dock already had discussed this with the governors of the colonies
involved.43

Franklin, now forty-nine years old, was of Braddock’s physical
build, with a big head, steady gray eyes, and a mouth lined for
amusement.“ His popularity as a provincial journalist and his
ability at practical politics in the Pennsylvania assembly had made
him the most influential man in that colony.5° His son’s only
claim to fame was brief service as an ensign in an expedition
against Canada during the last war. It is not likely that Braddock
was aware either of the elder Franklin’s growing eminence as a
natural philosopher, or of his stature as a colonial politician. But
Sharpe, no doubt, paid due deference to the Postmaster General,
whose personal charm, quiet self confidence, and wide acquaint-
ance with public affairs can have left little doubt in the General’s
mind as to his capabilities.“

Less than a year ago Franklin had been Pennsylvania's represent-
ative at an Albany meeting to draw up a treaty with the Six Nations.
The principal Indian spokesman had been the Mohawk sachem
Hendrick, one of the four Indian kings who had visited London
when Braddock was a boy. But it was Franklin’s natural gifts for
diplomacy—a disarming simplicity and seeming humi1ity—which
had recommended him to the Pennsylvania Assembly as a special
envoy to Braddock. The assembly had been stung by Braddock’s
harsh criticism and alarmed by a warning from Keppel that trad-
ing with the enemy must cease. It could not prudently risk the con-
tinued disfavor of a general commissioned by the King as com-
mander-in-chief of all forces in Americas‘?

The Franklins stayed in Frederick for several days. Benjamin
dined with the General daily “and had full opportunity of remov-
ing all his prejudices, by the information of what the assembly
had before his arrival actually done, and were still willing to do,
to facilitate his operations." 53 The Franklins were on the point of

[ 174] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

returning to Philadelphia when the returns on the impressment
of wagons reached Braddock’s headquarters.

“The General and all the oflicers were surprised, declared the
expedition was then at an end, being impossible, and exclaimed
against the ministers for ignorantly landing them in a country
destitute of the means of conveying their stores, baggage, etc., not
less than one hundred and fifty wagons being necessary,” Franklin
remembered in later years.54

“I happened to say I thought it was a pity they had not landed
rather in Pennsylvania, as in that country almost every farmer had
his own wagon.”

Braddock snapped at this ingenuous bait.

“Then you, sir,” he said, “who are a man of interest there, can
probably procure them for us, and I beg you will undertake it.”

Franklin asked what terms he could offer the owners. Braddock
told him to suit himself, whatever he thought necessary, and gave
him [800 then and there to be disbursed in advance payments.“

“After taking Fort Duquesne,” Braddock told Franklin, outlining
his plan of campaign,“ “I am to proceed to Niagara; and, having
taken that, to Frontenac, if the season will allow time; and I sup-
pose it will, for Duquesne can hardly detain me above three or
four days; and then I can see nothing that will obstruct my march
to Niagara.”

Franklin thought about the woods and trails ahead of the Gen-
eral. In his mind he pictured Braddock’s British regulars marching
through those woods, over the mountains, a long red line weaving
among the trees and brush of the solitude that lay beyond Frederick.

“To be sure, sir,” he said “if you arrive well before Duquesne,
with those fine troops, as well provided with artillery, that place
not yet completely fortified, and as we hear with no very strong
garrison, can probably make but a short resistance. The only dan-
ger I apprehend of obstruction to your march is from ambuscades
of Indians, who by constant practice are dexterous in laying and
executing them; and the slender line, near four miles long, which
your army must make, may expose it to be attacked by surprise in
its flanks, and to be cut like a thread into several pieces, which from
their distance, cannot come up in time to support each other.”

Braddock must have smiled.57

Evidently Franklin was not a student of Bland. Because it was all
in old Humphrey’s book, Chapter VII, “General Rules for the

LOGISTICS [ 175]

marching of a regiment of foot.” Any good oflicer should be able
to quote it from memory:

When a regiment, or detachment, marches through an enclosed or
wooded country, the danger which they are to apprehend must be
from foot, and not horse; and lest a partisan party should escape the
discovery of the van guard, it would be proper to have small parties,
commanded by sergeants, marching on the flanks with orders to exam-
ine all the hedges, ditches and copses which lie near the road, those
being the places in which they generally conceal themselves.”

[And so on for three or four pages, into the subject of ambuscades.] 53

“These savages may, indeed, be a formidable enemy to your raw
American militia,” Braddock told Franklin, “but upon the King's
regulars and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible they should
make any impression.” 53

Franklin subsided, conscious of the impropriety of a printer dis-
puting military tactics with a professional soldier, and said no
more.-”9 He and his son supped with the officers of Dunbar’s Forty-
Eighth. Dunbar told them he was concerned for his subalterns. The
Forty-Eighth was a regiment of the line. Few of its oflicers were
gentlemen of independent means. In a country where the simple
luxuries were as dear as in America, many of his younger oflicers
could not afford to supply themselves even with the sugar, tea, and
wine to which they were accustomed at home and which would
soften the rigor of a campaign in the wilderness.

Franklin knew how to handle that. His son, with a firsthand
knowledge of camp life and its wants in America, drew up a list of
suggested parcels:

6 lbs. loaf sugar 1 kegg containing 20 lbs.
6 lbs. good Muscovado do good butter

1 lb. good green tea 2 doz. old Madeira wine
1 lb. good bohea do 2 gallons Jamaica spirits
6 lbs. ground coffee 1 bottle Hour of mustard
6 lbs. chocolate 2 well-cured hams

1-2 Cwt. best white biscuit 1-2 dozen dried tongue
1-2 lb. pepper 6 lbs. rice

1 quart best white wine vinegar 6 lbs. raisins

1 Gloucester cheese

Franklin enclosed the list in a letter written next mornin to a
8

Pennsylvania assembly committee, which had the disposal of some

public funds, warmly recommending the case of Dunbar’s subal-

ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION or A GUARDSMAN [7]

EDWARD BRADDOCK, FATHER

But to the ears of Edward Braddock II, perhaps watching the King’s
red—coated foot guards parade at Whitehall and St. James’s, no mu-
sic seems to have been so stirring as that of a drum. The purchase
of a commission was the established method of launching young
gentlemen upon military careers.31 An ode which his brother-in-law,
Dr. Blow, had composed in honor of the King for New Year's Day
1681, may have helped win him royal approval. At any rate, young
Braddock’s connections were good enough to obtain him a lieuten-
ancy in the elite Coldstream, a regiment generously oflicered by sons
of the aristocracy.” Thus the father of our General led the way
into the career his son, Edward III, was to follow unto death.

As a lieutenant of the Coldstream, Edward Braddock received
£73 per year, subject to systematic deductions stemming from an
arrangement under which the King farmed out the payment of his
army to a contractor who received a commission of one shilling in
every pound.33 All army officers were gentlemen and £73 per
annum were not necessarily enough to sustain the cultivated tastes
of a gentleman in wine, women, horses, and periwigs. It was as-
sumed, however, that a gentleman would have other sources of in-
come and regard his pay as an honorarium. Those who did not
were looked down upon as soldiers of fortune.34

If the low rate of pay and the purchase system combined to ex-
clude from the army nearly all but men of independent means, it
was a combination which met with general approval. The proper-
tied classes, the only people whose opinions counted in Parliament,
distrusted a standing army as a standing threat to English liberty.
They had no wish to see it commanded by either mercenaries or
courtiers dependent upon the pleasure of the crown.35

The colonel of a regiment was its proprietor in all but name. He
contracted with the government to provide his men with clothing
and equipment. By sharp practice on both accounts he was ex-
pected to clear £600 a year over and above his pay. Bribery for
promotions, a common practice, also was profitable. Captains drew
pay for all soldiers whose names appeared on their company rolls,
and in spite of periodic musters to verify written returns, rolls
were padded. This fraud and the manipulation of other reckon-
ings too often enabled the average captain to rob the government
of about £200 a year.33

[ 176] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

terns to their consideration and proposing that the officers be made
a present of these “necessaries and refreshments.” 6°

The only person the amiable postmaster general had not ap-
peased was St. Clair. The deputy quartermaster general was still
bristling.

“Sir john St. Clair complains very loudly of your not having
caused a road to be made as he desired through your province to
Wills Creek,” Braddock’s secretary, Shirley, told Robert Morris in
a short note which he gave Franklin to carry back to Pennsylvania's
governor.“

After talking with Franklin the General also wrote Morris:

It will be necessary to contract for horses and wagons in Pennsylva-
nia, and the want of a road from Philadelphia to Wills Creek will pre-
vent their joining me there as quickly and as in good condition. It is
likewise of great importance to have a free communication with your
province to facilitate the march of any assistance or convoys I may re-
quire from thence, but I don't see how I can with safety move from
Fort Cumberland till that work is finished or in great forwardness.
I must, therefore, desire you to give your orders to have it immediately
made, and if you cannot prevail on your assembly to bear the expense
of it, nevertheless have it done and I must be obliged to charge it to
the public account.“

With something less than blind loyalty to the General’s family,
young Shirley sent Morris another note, along with this letter. He
told Morris:

I think it necessary to apprize you that Sir John St. Clair has con-
ceived great resentment at your neglect (as he calls it) for his applica-
tion to you for the road. If no delay has happened in this matter
through your default, as I should not apprehend it had, I make no
doubt you will answer any letter he may write you upon it in such a
manner as a Governor of a province should do to a deputy quarter-
master general, and I would advise you in your next dispatch to the
Secretary of State to get this business in its fair and proper light.
I mention this not to make any difference between Sir John and you,
but that if he should be wrong-headed enough to take upon himself
to make any representation of it at home, your character should not
suffer for want of the truth being known.63

From Frederick the Franklins went to Lancaster, called on a
printer to arrange for the printing of handbills directed at the
farmers of Lancaster, York, and Cumberland counties:

LOGISTICS [ 177 ]

Lancaster, April 26, 1755.
Whereas, one hundred and fifty waggons, with four horses to each
waggon, and fifteen hundred saddle or pack horses, are wanted for the
service of his majesty’s forces now about to rendezvous at Wills Creek,
and his excellency General Braddock having been pleased to empower
me to contract for the hire of the same, I hereby give notice that I
shall attend for that purpose at Lancaster from this day to next
Wednesday evening, and at York from next Thursday morning till Fri-
day evening where I shall be ready to agree for waggons and teams, or
single horses. . . .

Under the signature, B. Franklin, the advertisement set forth the
terms—-fifteen shillings per diem for each wagon with four good
horses and a driver, and two shilling per diem for each able horse
with a pack--saddle, the pay to commence at the time of their join-
ing Braddock’s expedition at Will’s Creek, which must be on or be-
fore May 20, with seven days’ pay in advance to seal the bargain
at the time of contracting, if required, and the remainder from
the army paymaster when discharged.

Appended to the advertisement was a note that William Franklin
was empowered to enter into like contracts with persons in Cum-
berland county, and a letter addressed by the elder Franklin to
“Friends and Countrymen,” describing Braddock’s exasperation
with the failure of the province of Pennsylvania and its inhabitants
to supply him with horses and wagons. The letter implied that
if transport were not provided voluntarily for the expedition, an
armed force might be sent into the province to seize what was
needed.

I apprehend that the progress of British soldiers through these coun-
ties on such an occasion, especially considering the temper they are in,
would be attended with many and great inconveniences, but the king's
business must be done; so many brave troops, come so far for your de-
fense, must not stand idle through your backwardness to do what may
be reasonably expected from you. . . .

. . . If this method of obtaining the waggons and horses is not likely
to succeed, I am obliged to send word to the general in fourteen days;
and I suppose Sir John St. Clair, the hussar, with a body of soldiers,
will immediately enter the province for that purpose. . . .

No Dutchman who had immigrated to Pennsylvania within the
last generation or two had to be enlightened on the subject of hus-
sars, a type of light cavalry, originally Hungarian, that had pillaged
western Europe during a century of recurrent war. Applying that
title to Sir John St. Clair was a clever calculation by Franklin.

[ 178] ILL~STARRED GENERAL

“I cannot but honor Franklin for the last clause of his advertise-
ment,” laughed Shirley when he saw it.“

Braddock had remained with Dunbar’s regiment in Frederick,
the soldiers sweating out an April heat wave that broke with hard
showers and cold, high winds. Eighty recruits arrived from Rock
Creek with a wagontrain load of ordnance stores. Officers who had
not yet provided themselves with Negro or mulatto batmen were
instructed to take their pick from among the recruits unfit for duty,
as none suitable for soldiers could be spared. The seamen were told
to look around for packhorses to carry their baggage, since wagons
would no longer be available to them for that purpose. Transport
was too scarce.“

Governor Sharpe had remained in Frederick with Braddock after
the departure of the Franklins. After the wagon fiasco he was more
zealous than ever to perform any other possible service. Col. Wash-
ington arrived to join the General’s family. The tavern headquar-
ters were overcrowded. Accommodations for the Colonel had to be
found in a small house about half a mile away.“

At 6 o’clock Tuesday morning, April 29, the troops had resumed
their march. Lt. Spendelowe’s sailors were somewhat dejected by
having to leave behind their hammocks with other gear for which
they could find no pack animals. The army had impressed every
horse St. Clair could find, including those used by contractors who
were hauling materials for a new Frederick court house. Construc-
tion work on the building ceased as the army moved out of town.
The column made eighteen miles that day over a fairly good but
lonely road that crossed Kittochtinny and South Mountain by easy
ascents. Both mountains were heavily wooded and infested with a
species of chigre that set the soldiers to scratching. The sailors had
never seen so much game—deer, birds, rabbits. But there were few
cabins along the road and no ordinaries.67

At 3 o’clock in the afternoon the troops halted for the night at
a cabin in a clearing in the wooded valley beyond South Mountain.
At 6 next morning they marched again, crossed a succession of low
ridges called “The Devil’s Backbone,” forded the shallow Antietam
and, early in the afternoon, came out on the bank of the broad,
placid Potomac near a stone warehouse at the mouth of the Cono-
cocheague. Here the seamen were faced with their biggest ferrying
operation since Rock Creek. The river was nearly a quarter of a
mile wide, but with little current. Two floats and five bateaux were

LOGISTICS [ 179 ]

moored at the river bank. Well before the following day Dunbar’s
regiment and wagons were on the Virginia shore.“

Braddock, his staff, and bodyguard of Virginia horse did not
leave Frederick until May 1 when they set out for Winchester
where the General expected to meet the Indian chiefs, who Din-
widdie had said would hold a council there. Still itching to square
himself with Braddock, now damning the route through Frederick
as a useless diversion, Sharpe pressed the General to share his
chariot as a lighter and more comfortable conveyance for American
roads than the General’s own heavy coach.39

Sharpe left the General’s party at Swerengen’s ferry on the Po-
tomac and returned horseback to Annapolis, insisting that the Gen-
eral keep his chariot, with spare pole and axle tree, as long as he
pleased. Braddock allowed himself to be persuaded on condition
that Sharpe sell him the whole turnout.7°

Washington noted that once Dunbar’s regiment was back across
the Potomac, it proceeded to Wills Creek by the same road it would
have followed had it marched directly from Alexandria through
Winchester, as Halkett had done. Washington thought Braddock
had been imposed upon either by Sharpe or St. Clair in being in-
duced to use the Frederick road.“

Winchester, a Scotch-Irish frontier village of forty or fifty houses,
mostly log, was another disappointment.” The road up the valley
from the Potomac was no carriage road and there were no Indians
at Winchester when Braddock got there.73 Unknown to him, any
plans which may have been laid for a meeting there with the In-
dians had been cancelled.” For four hot days Braddock waited, curs-
ing Dinwiddie for having misinformed him, but reluctant to leave
until convinced that a longer stay would be a waste of time.75

“I am very happy in the General’s family, and I am treated with
a complaisant freedom which is quite agreeable,” Washington
wrote to his mother.76 He was not concerned with Indians.

In other letters from Winchester to his brother Jack and Col.
Fairfax, Washington expressed doubt that Braddock’s army would
be able to proceed beyond Wills Creek before the end of May, for
want of wagons.”

Braddock wrote to Dinwiddie, complaining that the Virginia
commissary of stores had called on him for three or four thousand
pounds to buy provisions which he had expected to find laid in
along the road or at Wills Creek. There was also a matter of £100

[ 180] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

which he had been obliged to advance to Capt. Steuart, of his
mounted Virginia bodyguard, to buy horses.78 In another letter, to
Governor Morris, Braddock enclosed a complaint from an officer
at Wills Creek who accused two Irish traders in western Pennsyl-
vania of supplying the French with gunpowder and information."

On May 7 Braddock was back on the road to Wills Creek with
his aides, his light horse bodyguard, his coach, and Sharpe's chariot,
two days’ journey behind Dunbar. Every mile the dusty, crooked
road grew worse, the mountains higher. Within one three-mile
stretch the road crossed and recrossed a shallow stream twenty
times. It crossed another, nineteen times in two miles. Sometimes
the streams were bridged. Generally they had to be forded.3°

“There is no describing the badness of the roads,” said the V/Vidow
Browne, who followed the rough, twisting route behind Braddock,
riding part of the way in a wagon.

“I am almost disjointed,” she said. She got out and walked until
her feet were blistered.31

Capt. Charles Lewis, a Virginia volunteer, admitted that the road
was bad but admired the mountains and their winding runs.

“A beautiful prospect,” he said, “and the best land I ever yet
saw.” 32

“There is nothing round us but trees, swamps and thickets,” a
less cheerful British officer wrote home. “I cannot conceive how war
can be made in such a country. There has not been ground to form
a battalion since we left the settlements. I cannot conceive how we
must do if attacked, nor how we can get up to attack; but the best
is what the General said, to reassure the old soldiers who are all
uneasy for fear of being attacked on the long march in defiles. His
Excellency with great judiciousness says, that where the woods are
too thick for as to hinder our coming at them, they will hinder
their coming at us.” 33

Snake stories began to circulate. Several soldiers, reported sick,
were said to have died from snake bites. Swampy areas along the
road were full of snakes. A more general and less exaggerated com-
plaint arose from a pest new to the Englishmen, a kind of tick, or
forest flea, which got into their legs, causing inflammation and an
unmerciful itching. The Americans knew about these tiny insects
which flourished in the mountains. They called them “chigres.” The
next tall story to sweep the column was about a soldier bitten so

LOGISTICS [ 181 ]

badly by chigres that the flesh on his leg mortified, and he was
obliged to have it amputated.“

Eighteen miles below Wills Creek a float ferried Braddock’s
party back across the Potomac from Virginia into Maryland terri-
tory, and along about 6 o’clock on the rainy day of May 8 they
overtook Dunbar’s column, encamped on the river bank around a
stockade enclosing the log house of Col. Thomas Cresap, an Indian
trader and army commissary of dubious reputation.35 Cresap was
a Yorkshireman by birth. He had emmigrated to Maryland as a
youth, fighting a private war with the colony of Pennsylvania in
an unsuccessful effort to keep title to a 5oo-acre grant from Lord
Baltimore in disputed territory. Then he had gone west, up the
Potomac, where he got along better with the Indians, who called
him “Big Spoon” because the ladle of the kettle in his cabin fire-
place was always at their service. Cresap was almost 60 now, a sort
of lengendary knave, if a person believed all he heard.85

“A rattlesnake colonel,” some said.37

One of the original partners of the Ohio Company, Cresap had
been involved in various questionable deals to build storehouses,
to open roads, and to persuade German settlers from Pennsylvania
to take up Ohio Company land. He had provided emergency sup-
plies for Washington’s expedition of the previous summer, and
now was in charge of the stone storehouse at the mouth of the
Conococheague, where the Pennsylvania overdue flour for Brad-
dock’s army was to be delivered. As far as Braddock could see,
Cresap was simply another army contractor, and the General re-
membered Sharpe's warning about all contractors being “a parcel
of dirty fellows.” 33

Braddock spent the night in Cresap’s house. As was customary
in the British army, Dunbar halted every third day to rest his
men, and May 9 was a rest day. To pass the time and amuse the
General, oflicers of the Forty-Eighth staged a horse race, no horse
over eleven hands and each to carry 14 stone. During the day Orme
discovered that some of the Virginia troops were still using tents
lent them by Sir Peter Halkett. The Virginians were supposed to
provide their own tents. The Captain got off a letter to Dinwiddie,
asking an explanation.”

Next morning, May to, the column resumed its march, a last
lap over low ridges, past the cabin of John Fraser, a Scot gunsmith,
and down across the river flats toward the high, steep slopes of

[ 182] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Wills mountain, not far ahead. Braddock, making a later start,
caught up with the troops and passed them when they halted at
noon. The drums of the Forty-Eighth beat the Grenadiers March
as the General’s coach and its mounted escort trotted by and disap-
peared up the road.9°

Dunbar formed his men in a circle. Within an hour or so, he
told them, they would arrive at Wills Creek. They would see In-
dians there, friendly Indians. It was the General’s orders that the
Indians were not to be molested, that the troops were not to have
anything to say to them, directly or indirectly, for fear of affront-
ing them. That was all. The column reformed and marched on.91

Presently they heard the sound of cannon. The seventeen booms
of a General’s salute echoed back and forth among the hills.
Braddock had reached Fort Cumberland.”

XI

FORT CUMBERLAND
May 10-29, 1755

-—----=<©»--

VEN AS strengthened and enlarged after Governor Sharpe's
E visit the previous November, Fort Cumberland was not an
imposing work. A palisade of raw green logs, stripped of their bark
and planted in the ground to stand twelve feet high, it crowned a
hill on the far side of narrow, knee-deep Wills Creek at the con-
fluence of the creek and the Potomac, now winding sharply through
the wooded mountains. Embrasures for twelve cannon and loop-
holes for small arms had been cut in the stockade, an enclosure
about two hundred yards long and fifty wide. The Union Jack hung
from its flagpole}

Six companies of Halkett’s regiment and the Virginians who had
marched with him had pitched camp on the stumpy river hillside
behind the fort.2 Directly beyond the white pattern of their tents
rose a wooded wall of mountain, leafy green, sheer, and forbidding.
Wills Creek flowed into the river from a gray rocky narrows in the
mountain wall, 1500 to 17oo feet high. Scattered along the creek
and the Maryland side of the river, at the foot of the fort-topped
hill, were half a dozen cabins and shanties. In a lonely clearing
across the Potomac, in Virginia territory, stood another large cabin,
the storehouse of the Ohio Company.3

There was no bridge. The so-called “Virginia road,” which the
army had followed, crossed Wills Creek at a stoney ford and

[183]

[ 184] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

climbed the hill on the other side of the stream to the fort’s gates‘
Tumbling away in all directions, and broken only by the bending
river, stretched a wilderness of heavily forested mountains.

“The most desolate place I ever saw,” said the Widow Brown
when she arrived.“

Harry Gordon, a Scottish engineer who had served under Cum-
berland in Flanders and had been recommended by the Duke to
Braddock as a good man for laying out and supervising road con-
struction, thought it useless to talk of putting such a place in a
posture of defence.

“Three pieces of 6-pound cannon, with the advantage the ground
would naturally give them, could knock the fort to pieces,” he
said.6

The last mile of road, cut through the trees from Cresap’s place,
had been level and shady but breathless for Dunbar’s tired, sweaty
Forty-Eighth in the burning brightness of that hot May afternoon.
The soldiers splashed through the ford, glad to wet their feet with
cold mountain water and pitched camp on the hill behind the
fort, beside Ha1kett’s regiment.7 A detachment of Dunbar’s re-
lieved the fort guard, ordered to march back to Fraser's place as a
grass guard with a squad of Virginia carpenters to build fences.
The fort provided no pasture for the army’s horses. Oflicers’ mounts,
pack animals, wagon teams were turned loose in the woods.8 Brad-
dock, who had noticed the lack of forage and grass along the road,
dispatched Matthew Leslie, an assistant quartermaster, to Pennsyl-
vania to buy oats.9

About a hundred Indians—-men, women and children—had built
huts and lean-tos of bark at the edge of the woods a quarter of a
mile from the fort. The men were tall, greasy, and naked except
for breach clouts and deerskin moccasins, their inflexible faces
daubed with red, yellow, and black paint. The outer rims of their
ears were slit and their tufts of hair stuck with feathers. The
women, shawled in sleazy blankets, were well proportioned and
seemed to have many children, the youngest bound to boards
slung on their mothers’ backs.1°

The soldiers stared at the Indians. The Indians stared at the
soldiers—from a distance, at first, spellbound by the regular move-
ments of so many men, all dressed exactly alike, in cocked hats, red
coats, white breeches, and tan gaiters, and all manipulating their
muskets in unison. After the soldiers had pitched their tents the

FORT CUMBERLAND [ 185]

boldest of the Indians peeked inside. And the soldiers, forgetting
the orders they had received back along the road, traded pennies
and buttons for bear claws. Hardened old redcoats leered at the
squaws and tried to talk to them.“

To the men of the Forty-Eighth who relieved the fort guard, the
inside of the stockade was as disappointing as the outside. During
their fourweek march from Alexandria they had subsisted almost
entirely on salt provisions. Now they looked around hopefully for
a sutler or a cookshop that might be selling cheap ale and mutton
chops. There was not even a well in the fort. The garrison lugged
its water up the hill in buckets from Wills Creek.”

The General’s tent was pitched outside the gate, but he was
lodged in a room in the fort.13 Mrs. Browne applied to C01. Innes,
the fort’s provincial commander, for quarters inside the fort. The
Colonel was glad to oblige the lady but as she later wrote in her
diary:

“I was put into a hole that I could see daylight through every
log, and a port hole for a window; which was as good a room as
any in the fort.” 14

The tired, chigger-bitten malcontents of the English army she
had followed across the ocean complained that no sane British
ministry would send British troops to campaign in such a god-
forsaken wilderness. They grumbled that they were freeborn Eng-
lishmen, not obliged to obey orders if not properly fed. Inexperi-
enced younger officers, who thought such mutterings mutinous, re-
torted that the men had been in Ireland too long, that they had
been tainted by factious popish pamphlets and Jacobite agents.15

“We will get the better of that,” said one bumptious subaltern.
“We will see which will be tired first, they of deserving punish-
ments or we of inflicting them. . . . In Europe they were better fed
than taught; now they must be better taught than fed.” 16

Braddock himself was greatly concerned about the want of fresh
meat. There were no cattle at the fort. Dinwiddie had assured him
that 500 head of beeves would be waiting, that 1,100 would be de-
livered to the army in June and August.” Maj. Charles Dick, a Din-
widdie—appointed colonial Commissary who was supposed to have
bought beef and flour and arranged for delivery to the army, could
not be found. He had gone to Williamsburg to settle his accounts.”
Braddock ordered a public market established at the fort under the
supervision of the captain of the picket, and prices fixed at a penny

[8] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

The pay of a common soldier was 8 pence a day in a regiment of
the line, 10 pence a day in the Guards. Normal peacetime enlist-
ment was for life-long service. There were no age limits, no fixed
standards of physical fitness. Beggars, vagrants, rogues, jailbirds
filled the ranks. Desertion was frequent, discipline difficult, and
punishment barbarous. Sometimes the disobedient soldier sat on
the ground, one firelock under his hams and another over his neck
being brought together forcibly by tightening a couple of cartouche
box straps. Another form of correction was “riding the horse," a
sharp wooden beam which the culprit straddled, his legs dragged
down by a 60-pound weight on each foot. And the lash was used
without mercy.37

The only army barracks were a few improvised at Somerset
House, formerly the cold and draughty, though elegant resident of
the King’s mother, Queen Henrietta Maria, on the left bank of the
Thames below Whitehall; at the Savoy, a vast stone building used
as a hospital, a little farther up the river; and at the King’s Mews,
the royal stables at Whitehall. A few troops were stationed at the
Tower. But most of the rank and file were put up in livery stables,
cheap taverns, and ale houses. Officers found lodgings wherever
they could, preferably in Westminster, near the old royal palace of
Whitehall.33

Whitehall was a rambling jumble of gables, dormers, and Tudor
chimneys hitched to a palladian building of Portland stone called
the Banqueting Hall, scene of the first Charles’ execution. A dou-
ble-towered gateway of ornamental brick, studded with terra cotta
busts and statues, opened on a maze of cobbled courtyards, a for-
mal garden, a tennis court, and a bowling green. The royal apart-
ments looked out upon the river, a privy stairway leading from
the King's lodgings to a landing stage where the royal barge put
in.39

Every morning the gay, cynical King, nicknamed “Old Rowley,"
walked in St. James’s Park, behind Whitehall, to romp with the pet
spaniels that made a stench of his bedroom. He was a great walker,
striding along at a rapid pace. Hearing that Lieut. Braddock’s
company commander, Captain Wakelin, had wagered he could
walk around St. James’s Park five time in two hours, the King
showed up one morning with his brother, the Duke of York, to
watch the captain try it and to bet on the outcome. Wakelin won.
He did five laps in an hour and forty-three minutes.“

[ 186] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

in the pound above prevailing rates to encourage “the peasants,”
as Captain Orme described the backwoodsmen who came to the
fort.“ But “the peasants” had little fresh food for sale. They dealt
almost exclusively in fiery, colorless homemade whiskey, as pop-
ular with the Indians as it soon became with the troops.”

Most of the Indians at the fort had been brought down from
Pennsylvania by George Croghan,” the same George Croghan to
whom St. Clair had denounced the Quaker colony and its governor
a month ago. Braddock had expected more Indians to be waiting
for him.

“Where are the rest?” he asked Croghan.

“I don’t know,” said the trader.

“Governor Dinwiddie told me at Alexandria that he had sent for
four hundred which would be here before me.”

“I know nothing of that,” said Croghan.”

Those he had brought down from Pennsylvania were all he could
gather at his home near Carlisle when he had received orders from
Governor Morris to take them to Braddock’s camp, Croghan said.23
He added that Captain Montour, a Virginia interpreter, was at the
fort. Maybe Montour could answer His Excellency’s question.
Braddock sent for Montour.24

Andrew Montour, an Indian whose maternal grandfather had
been a Frenchman, wore brass pendants in his ears and dressed in
grotesque colonial fashion, shirt tail out and hanging over his
trousers under a bright red satin waistcoat. His half-breed mother,
a native of Canada, had been taught that Christ was a Frenchman
crucified by the English, but Montour preferred the English to
the French. He spoke the language of both, as well as several In-
dian dialects, and the Indians held him in high esteem.25

Brought to Braddock’s tent, Montour told the General that an-
other trader-interpreter, Nathaniel Gist, had set out some time ago
to bring in the Cherokees. Whether they would come, Montour
could not say.

“What about the Delawares and the ShawneesP” Braddock asked.

Croghan had already sent a messenger, telling them to meet him
at Wills Creek?“ Braddock told him to send another message.”
Washington cautioned Braddock privately not to trust Croghan too
far. Washington had had dealings with him the previous summer.
“Not to be depended upon,” Washington told the General.”

But the Indians seemed to like Croghan. They called him “our

FORT CUMBERLAND [ 187]

brother, the Buck.” For years they had traded with him, often for
rum. And one of them, a chief variously known as Monacatootha
and Scarouady, liked his liquor well enough to stay drunk for two
days at a time. He was a tough old warrior, a veteran of thirty
fights in which he boasted of having killed seven men and taken
eleven prisoners. Into the skin of each of his cheeks was cut a crude
bow and arrow, and on his breast, a tomahawk.29

At dark all the Indians returned to their camp. Later that night
they danced around a fire, yelling to the beat of an Indian drum
and the rattle of gourds. Lieut. Spendlowe’s sailors, watching the
dancers and listening to their hideous noise, were interested mostly
in the women. Once or twice a year, the seamen were told, the
women danced with men of their own choosing, lay with them for
a week, then returned to their own husbands.3°

This information, like a current report that English traders
rarely lacked an Indian female bedfellow, passed rapidly through
the camp. Most of the soldiers had never thought of female Indians,
only of heathen warriors, paid £3 Sterling by the French for every
English scalp they took. The stern, implacable faces of the men,
apparently insensible to pleasure or pain, made it easy to believe
some of the stories told about them.31

Perhaps because Washington knew more about Indians, Indian
traders, and interpreters than any officer on his staff-—Nathaniel
Gist’s father, Christopher Gist, had been one of Washington's
guides over the mountain to the forks of the Ohio in 175_9,—Brad-
dock formally appointed the tall Virginian an aide-de-camp the
day they reached Fort Cumberland.” A sort of gentleman adven-
turer with no military responsibility except keeping an orderly
book, Washington was without rank and subject only to the Gen-
eral’s orders, but eager to learn anything professional soldiers could
teach him. One of the first things he learned about was boots. “As
wearing boots is quite the mode and mine in a declining state,” he
wrote his brother John, back in the tidewater country, “I must beg
you to procure me a pair that is good and neat.” 33

On Sunday, the day after his arrival at the fort, the General’s
guard was remounted. Braddock announced that he would hold
a levee at his tent every morning from 10 to 11 o’clock, that the
troops would immediately begin field days, and that each man
would be issued twelve rounds of powder for practice firing.“ The

[ 188] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

uproar in the Indians’ camp the previous night led to the publica-
tion of a special order inscribed in Washington's orderly book:

“It is His Excellency General Braddock’s orders that no oflicer,
soldier or others give the Indian men, women or children any rum
or other liquor or money upon any account whatever.” 35

Braddock now had had his first good look at the illimitable woods
and 2,500-foot mountains beyond Wills Creek. The narrow, unim-
proved “Virginia road” which wound away behind the Stockade,
through the trees and up the side of Wills Mountain to a gap 600
feet above the river, was not a road. It was a mountain trail, an
Indian trail, widened a little the year before by Washington as far
as he got on his way to Fort Duquesne.36 Unless it improved vastly
after its steep drop down the other side of the mountain, the trail
would be impassable for Braddock’s coach, much less a train of
artillery. A return was ordered sent in to the Major of Brigade on
the number of men among the troops who understood the spring-
ing of rocks. Three hundred were put to work on the road.37

On Monday, May 12, the General held a council of war and con-
gress for the Indians at his tent. Officers waited on him in full regi-
mentals. The General’s guard, drawn that day from Dunbar’s
Forty-Eighth, received the Indians with rested arms. Croghan cere-
moniously presented the Indians first with a string, then with a
belt of wampum, while interpreting a speech by the General. In
his speech Braddock extolled the redcoats as friends and brothers of
the Indians. He said he and his army had come from England to
settle the Indians happily in their own country and to make the
French ashamed and hungry. All misunderstandings of former times
had been buried under the great mountain behind the fort, Brad-
dock said, but any Indians who did not come into camp would be
treated as an enemy. Braddock also told the Indians, through his
interpreter, that he would have presents soon for them.38 Gage was
bringing a wagon load—red and black stockings, gold and silver
tassels, looking glasses, beads, buttons, small brass kettles, brass
wire, ribbons and men’s cheap ruffled shirts. At the end of the coun-
cil Bishop and the General’s batmen served drams around.39

Over the week-end the food situation had not improved. Brad-
dock, who understood good eating as well as any man, had two
cooks——Bishop and Delboux-—reputedly competent to produce an
excellent ragout from a pair of old army boots.4° But neither fresh
meat nor flour was available. The troops complained of mouldy

FORT CUMBERLAND [ 189]

biscuit. Twenty casks of salt beef opened that day for distribution
to the Forty-Eighth regiment were found to be dry and without
pickle.“ The soldiers refused to eat the musty, stinking meat.“
Braddock ordered the beef surveyed. Lieut. Spendlowe and Gor-
don, the engineer, condemned all twenty casks.43

The beef, drawn from supplies at the .fort, had been packed by
Col. Cresap on instructions from Maryland’s Governor Sharpe.“
Spendlowe and Gordon remembered . . . the log house with the
stockade on the river bank, the last halt before Wills Creek—the
Big Spoon, the Rattlesnake Colonel.

“A damned rascal,” said Spendlowe.“

The market which Braddock had ordered established in the
camp failed to materialize. There was no question of money. The
army was willing to buy. But any backwoodsman with as much as
a little Indian corn for sale found ready purchasers as soon as he
reached the outer picket lines of the fort. This resulted in the issu-
ance of another order: no soldier, under pain of death, should stop
anybody bringing either food or forage into camp. But none came
to market.“ No farmers, no millers, no drovers looked for markets
in the woods that far beyond the larger settlements.

That Monday ended with a gust. To many British soldiers, un-
accustomed to western Maryland weather, the thunder and light-
ning of the summer storm and the wind sweeping down the moun-
tains seemed unusually violent. Insecure tents were blown down
and their occupants drenched.“ Early next morning the sun was
out again, bright, and the day grew so excessively warm that no
effort was made to exercise the regulars until evening. Ensign
Allen of the Forty-Fourth tried to drill the American recruits in
platoon firing. British oflicers, watching the languid, unsoldierly
performance of his bob-tailed squads, said it was hopeless. Most of
the American officers seemed to be as ignorant as their men of mil-
itary fundamentals.

“Make them as useful as possible,” said Braddock in despair.43

The Americans were brigaded with the regulars. Two companies
of Virginia rangers, one of Maryland rangers, and one of Virginia
carpenters were placed under Halkett’s command, along with two
independent New York companies and a South Carolina detach-
ment which had garrisoned the fort before the other troops arrived.
The other Virginians and a North Carolina contingent, not yet

[ 190] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

accounted for but on its way to the fort, according to Dinwiddie,
were assigned to Dunbar.49

Neither regiment of regulars had been recruited yet to the
recommended strength of 1,000.50 There had been no rush of Amer-
icans to join the army. And when rattlesnake Colonel Cresap ar-
rived in camp from Annapolis with letters from Governor Sharpe
asking that eight Maryland recruits be sent back to where they came
from, he was almost as welcome as if he had delivered another bar-
rel of bad beef. In his letters, one addressed to Braddock and an-
other to Orme, Sharpe said four of the eight were convicts and the
others indentured servants, all runaways enlisted by Lieut. Brereton
of the 48th while loading stores at Rock Creek.“

Capt. William Poulson, a Scotsman commanding the company
of Virginia carpenters attached to Halkett’s brigade, waited on
Braddock to complain that he had been slandered. Reports had
been circulated that Poulson had served with the jacobites in
1745.52 The Captain previously had asked Governor Sharpe that a
court-martial inquire into his character.53 Now he made a similar
request of Braddock. A general court-martial was sitting at the
moment with Major William Sparke of Dunbar’s as its president.
But Braddock turned down Pou1son’s request. No inquiry into the
Captain’s past was necessary, he said. He did not question it. Let
Poulson’s traducers come forward or keep their mouths shut.54
Sparke’s court-martial had other things to do.

Private Luke Woodward of Dunbar’s had been arrested for de-
sertion. Three other soldiers of the same regiment were charged
with the theft of a keg of beer valued at thirty-three shillings in
colonial currency, but a priceless treasure in a wilderness without
a tavern. The court found Woodward guilty and sentenced him to
death. Braddock approved the sentence but pardoned the deserter.
The other three soldiers, found guilty of stealing the keg of beer,
were sentenced to be lashed by the drummers of the Forty-Eighth
at the head of the line.55

Discipline was becoming dlffiCl1lt. Indian women and raw fron-
tier whiskey demoralized the discontented redcoats. Some of the
soldiers had picked up women on their march from Alexandria.
Others had taken Indian squaws into their tents and were drawing
extra rations for them.“ Even officers grew scandalously fond of In-
dian women, buying their favor with money that led to quarrels
with husbands and fathers.57 One Indian girl, Bright Lightning,

FORT CUMBERLAND [ 191 ]

the daughter of a chief, White Thunder, was in a fair way to be-
come the mistress of a regiment when Braddock issued orders for-
bidding Indian women to enter the army camp.“

As a practical soldier Braddock had no intention of continuing
his march over the mountains until assured his column could be
supplied. Obviously the troops could not live upon the country,
as armies did in Europe. Before them lay nearly a hundred miles of
wooded mountains with neither towns nor cultivated countryside
to pillage. Until provided with beef, flour, forage, and with trans-
port to carry stores and supplies, the army would either remain
where it was or return to the settlements.“ .

For a short time this delay was not serious. The complete col-
umn had not yet closed. In addition to the troops reported on
their way from Carolina and others expected from New York,
Lieut.-Col. Gage was still toiling up around the dreadful bends of
that dusty mountain road from Winchester with the artillery and
forty-two wagons of powder, wheel barrows, sand bags, and other
ordnance stores Braddock thought he needed for a successful at-
tack on the French fort.“

Once Gage pulled into camp at Wills Creek, the situation of
Braddock’s army would become acute. There would be more troops,
more horses to be fed. Assuming that adequate supplies reached
Braddock by the time Gage arrived, permitting the army to re-
sume its march, the column still would be dependent upon horse
and wagon for the transport of those supplies to the troops on their
march from Fort Cumberland to Fort Duquesne. When the road
climbed the mountain behind Fort Cumberland, it swung away
from the Potomac river. Water transport was out of the question.
More teams were needed. The forty-two coming with Gage and
those already in camp were not enough to carry half the supplies
Braddock had hoped to take on the next leg of his march.“

Some of the provincial teamsters who reluctantly had hauled
stores and supplies from Alexandria to Fort Cumberland already
had gone home with their wagons. Others disappeared every night.
So did the army's horses, presumably in charge of a grass guard
but actually-—because the army had no forage—running loose in the
woods to live on leaves and underbrush or starve. The carpenters
had found fences impractical. The horse and wagon masters tried
hobbles. But horses continued to vanish after dark. And the camp

[ 192 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

was still far short of the 200 wagons and 2,500 horses Dinwiddie
had promised to have there by May 10.62

“I see no prospect of moving from this place soon, as we have
neither horses nor wagons enough and no forage except what is
expected from Philadelphia,” Washington wrote to his brother.
“Therefore, I am convinced, that the troubles and difficulties we
must encounter in passing the mountains, for the want of proper
conveniences, will equal all the difficulties of the campaign; for I
conceive the march of such a train of artillery in these roads to be
a tremendous undertaking. As to any danger from the enemy, I
look upon it as trifling, for I believe the French will be obliged to
exert their utmost force to repel the attacks to the northward
where Gov. Shirley and others, with a force of 8,000 men, will annoy
their settlements and attempt their forts.” 63

On May 13 a short string of belled packhorses came jingling up
the trail from Philadelphia, loaded with sugar, tea and some of
the other delicacies which the Franklins had purchased for Dun-
bar's officers, ostensibly the gift of a “committee.” Dunbar imme-
diately got off a note of acknowledgment to the elder Franklin:
“I am desired by all the gentlemen who the committee have been
so good as to think of in so genteel a manner, to return them their
hearty thanks.” 54

Next day another string of horses arrived with more gift-packs
for the gentlemen of the officers corps, but the ordinary soldiers
were no better off than before.

Twenty—two more casks of Cresap’s barrelled beef had been con-
demned when Major Dick, the Virginia commissary, rode in from
Williamsburg, his accounts there still unsettled.“

And where were the five hundred beeves promised by the Gov-
ernor of Virginia? General Braddock wanted to know.

Dick blamed a Virginia contractor named Hite. He told the Gen-
eral that Hite had failed to make deliveries because a Virginia
Assembly committee would not confirm his contract. Dick said the
trouble lay in the manner in which the cattle were to be weighed
up and paid for after slaughter. The contract had specified that the
so-called fifth quarter of heads, hides, and hoofs should be paid for
at the same rate as the other four. Dick spoke his mind freely
about the assembly committee refusing to approve the contract, one
point at least upon which he and Braddock were in agreement.“

Where was this fellow Hite? As Orme understood it, he had been

roar CUMBERLAND [ 193]

paid part of his money for the beeves.37 Was that true? Bring in
Hite. This was not difficult. Hite was in camp. Called to Brad-
dock’s headquarters he told the General that because of the as-
sembly’s refusal to approve his contract the agreement was void.
Braddock told him to forget contracts and drive in the cattle. The
army would pay for them. Hite said he was sorry, but he had re-
called his factors, as far away as Carolina. He could promise no
deliveries earlier than September and then only at a higher price,
one third down now.

Braddock lost his temper.“

A letter which Dick had brought him from Williamsburg did not
restore it. Dinwiddie had written: “I hope the deputy paymaster
brought along a good supply of money.” 59

The Governor’s letter was a reply to the one Braddock had writ-
ten from Winchester. It expressed regret that Captain Steuart
should have dunned him £100 for horses. Dinwiddie had given
Steuart £325 for horses-but the £100 would be repaid at Brad-
dock’s pleasure. As for the commissary calling upon the General
for three or four thousand pounds, it should be understood that
the colony of Virginia would pay for the subsistence of no troops
but its own."

Shirley took down a sharp reply from Braddock’s dictation:

What was all this nonsense about fifth quarters—hides, heads and
horns-—-in a contract to provide army beef? What did the Gov-
ernor of Virginia expect the army to eat? How was it to move with-
out wagons to carry its stores? Regardless of who was to pay for it,
Dinwiddie had permitted himself to be deceived by his own peo-
ple. There was no integrity in any of them and, apparently, their
magistrates lacked authority. A Governor should force a people
to obey his edicts.“

Garbled accounts of the General’s angry letter became the talk
of the camp.

Just as I wrote this [said one homesick British oflicer in the midst of
a letter home] we hear the best news I ever heard in my life. The Gen-
eral hath declared to the Virginians that if they do not furnish us with
wagons and provisions in two days he will march back; he has just up-
braided them for exposing the King's troops, by their bragging and
false promises. They undertook to furnish us with horses, bread and
beef, and really have given nothing but carrion for meat, Indian corn
for bread, jades for horses which cannot carry themselves. These as-
surances of furnishing everything has deceived the General hitherto,

[ 194] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

and he, out of zeal for the service, hath undergone the utmost difficul-
ties; but now it is impossible to go farther without they comply with
the promises, they are weak or wicked enough to make, for certainly
they were never able to perform them; it is surprising how much they
bragged before we left the settlements of what plenty they would fur-
nish us with at the cowpens and in the woods; these circumstances has
brought the General into the present difliculties, and he has very justly
told them, that if he marched any farther without a supply, he should
be justly charged with destroying His Majesty's troops in the deserts,
and thereby occasion the destruction of Virginia by encouraging the
French; that if he was not supplied in two days he would march back
and lay their breach of faith before His Majesty.

I now begin to hope that I shall once more have the pleasure of see
ing you and the rest of my friends. Pray acquaint my dear Mr. M---—
that I desire him not to sell my farm since I hope soon to be over.”

Satisfied that he could depend no longer upon Dinwiddie or the
Virginia commissaries for supplies but must provide them himself,
Braddock packed Washington off that night to C01. Hunter, the
agent at Hampton, with an order for £4,000 sterling. Riding down
the way toward Winchester next day, Washington met Lieut.-Col.
Gage, still on the march with two companies of Halkett’s and the
last division of the train, field pieces, howitzers, cohorns, and wag-
ons. Gage reported that he had gotten away from Alexandria only
by impressing horses, and that he found neither forage nor pasture
on the way. Drought was ruining pastures everywhere.73

Gage’s column reached the fort that afternoon. He and the
oflicers of Halkett’s two companies with him found brother officers
of their regiment dejected. Captain Bromley of the Forty-Fourth,
had just died. The camp was hot and dusty. The troops were dis-
pirited over the lack of fresh food. Salt rations were short. The
commissaries had orders to issue provisions only in strict accord
with strength returns sent the brigade major by commanders of
each unit.“

Another public congress of Indians, announced for Saturday, had
been postponed until Sunday.75 The Indians were still a problem,
drunk, sulky, and so unnaturally noisy after nightfall that another
order published that day said:

Any Indian, trader, soldier, or follower of the army who shall dare
to give liquor to any of the Indians or shall receive or purchase from
them any of their presents made to them by His Majesty through Gen-
eral Braddock, shall suffer the severest punishment a court-martial can
inflict."

FORT CUMBERLAND [ 195]

Sunday, May 18, was unusually warm." Except for occasional
gusts, no rain had fallen for weeks.“ Both Wills Creek and the
Potomac lay low on their mud-cracked banks. At 10 o’clock that
morning the drums of the Forty-Fourth beat the Dead M arch in the
lifeless air along the river flats at the head of Captain Brom1ey’s
funeral procession. A captain's guard marched before the corpse,
firelocks reversed. All the officers in camp followed, two and two.
At the grave, outside the palisaded fort on the hill, the guard
formed two lines, facing each other, rested on their arms, muzzles
downward. The coflin was carried between the lines, Bromley’s
sword and crimson sash on top. Chaplain Philip Hughes of the
Forty-Fourth read the service. The guard fired three volleys over
the grave.”

At noon the Indians gathered again at the General’s tent.3°
Braddock made a speech, urging all of them to take up the hatchet
against the French by serving his army as scouts, and asking those
with families in camp to send their wives and children home.
Rings, knives, paint, pieces of cloth, some of the presents brought
to the Fort by Gage, were handed out, along with strings and belts
of wampum. The Indians promised an answer next day. That night
they danced in their own camp and kept the sailors awake with
another “terrible noise.” 31

Walpole’s godson, Captain Horatio Gates, the young oflicer who
had served with Cornwallis in Nova Scotia and whose advice on
North American affairs had been sought by Newcastle the previous
summer, arrived at the fort next day with another independent
company from New York. They were just in time for the final
pow-wow.92 As soon as retreat had beat, the drum majors of the
two regiments marched their drummers and fifers to the artillery
park.83 The Indians congregated around the General’s marquee,
banked with red coated officers waiting to hear what they had to
say.

It took them a long time to say it, in their ceremonial fashion,
but they finally reached the point: they would take the war path
against the French. When Braddock replied, through Croghan,
that he was their friend, he would never deceive them, the Indians
seemed to go wild, bellowing war whoops, arching their bodies
into intense, grotesque postures and screaming. Croghan explained
that the French were their perpetual enemies. Braddock led the
way to the artillery park where three howitzers, three 12-pounders,

ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION or A GUARDSMAN [9]

But the park had another attraction for the King. Its gravel
paths skirted the terrace garden walls of several houses facing Pall
Mall. In one of these houses lived Nell Gwynn, whom the King was
reported to have carried off from the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane,
to become one of his many mistresses.“

Lieut. Braddock would soon discover that mere proximity to the
court was no guarantee of advancement. Regardless of his qualifi-
cations as a soldier he could never hope to rise in the world as
rapidly as favorites like John Churchill, thirty-two-year-old colonel
of the Royal Regiment of Dragoons. John was the son of Sir Win-
ston Churchill, a clerk comptroller of the Green Cloth, a depart-
ment of the royal household concerned mainly with the commis-
sariat. John Churchill had been commissioned an ensign in the
First Foot Guards in 1666. He had served in Tangiers and Flanders.
More rewarding than his military record was the fact that his sister,
Arabella, was a mistress of the Duke of York, and that his wife,
Sarah Jennings, was a court beauty and the confidante of the Duke's
younger daughter, Princess Anne. It followed that Churchill him-
self was on an intimate footing with the Duke. Churchill had an-
other advantage. He was a handsome, green eyed charmer whose
second glance set aflutter every saucy maid of honor at the court.
They whispered that he had been caught in bed with the Duchess
of Cleveland, one of the royal mistresses, who had welcomed
Charles to Whitehall on the night of his restoration.”

The King had no legitimate children. Gossips thought the Duke
of Monmouth, his favorite bastard, might be made legitimate.“
Otherwise the crown would pass to the King's brother, James Duke
of York, a Roman Catholic convert. Following the death of his first
wife in 1671, James had married the Catholic Princess Mary of
Modena.44 Two years later he had ceased attending Anglican serv-
ices in the Chapel Royal. His younger daughter by his first mar-
riage, the Princess Anne, often sat alone in the King's closet at the
chapel receiving the bows and ceremonies normally directed to-
ward the royal family. In 1684 Anne married the Protestant Prince
George of Denmark, a man of few words and those in bad French.
Anne's older sister, Mary, was the wife of William Prince of
Orange, hereditary chief of the Protestants on the continent.“

Many English Protestants feared a Popish plot to restore the
Catholic Church to English power. Thomas Otway’s play, Venice
Preserved, put these fears on the stage of the Theatre Royal in

[ 196] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

three cohorns were fired for the Indians’ benefit while the fifes
and drums of the two regiments thumped and shrilled a spirited
strain called a point of war.34

The sun went down red behind the mountains. The first stars
glittered in the east. The Indians went back to their camp where
they ate a bullock.“ Later that night they danced a war dance,
treading a large ring around two fires while the squaws and old
men not dancing beat time to a savage chant on drums of deer-
skin over small brass kettles. The redcoats stood around and
watched silently, as they had watched a cricket match by daylight
back home.“

Into the firelit ring leaped war-painted braves, their oily, naked
bodies gleaming, some wearing the heads and skins of forest beasts.
They divided into two war-whooping groups, charged each other
in mock battle with wild, unearthly cries, and ran off to leave a
single warrior flay the ground with his tomahawk. In a mimic life-
and-death struggle with an imaginary enemy, this lone warrior
finally triumphed and went through the motions of scalping his
victim. He held up a real scalp, a dry one, chanting the achieve-
ments of his tribe, the names of its warriors, the number of scalps
each had taken in feats of war against the French."

To British soldiers watching him, this was a new and terrifying
revelation of Indian character. They knew now what Americans
ment by the “scalp hal1oo,” what an Indian looked like when
painted and stripped for battle. Now they could believe all the
frontier atrocity stories they had heard. How Indians tore off
women’s breasts, shook bloody scalps of murdered husbands in
their faces, took children by the heels and beat out their brains
against a tree. How they cut off the heads of their victims, ripped
open their bellies and tore out their bowels. How they buried muti-
lated captives up to their necks and built scorching fires near their
faces until their brains boiled and their eyeballs burst and gushed
from their sockets. This was the cruel, inhuman savage, merciless
and stealthy, the ferocious enemy who lay in the woods on the
other side of the mountain, waiting.“

Earlier that day an express from Winchester had delivered a
packet from Philadelphia at the General’s headquarters.” In the
packet were a draft of Evans’s new map of Pennsylvania and two
letters, one from Morris to Braddock and the other from Richard
Peters, the Pennsylvania provincial secretary, to young Shirley.”

FORT CUMBERLAND [ 197]

Braddock was glad to see the map, although it convinced him that
a route through Shippensburg would have been shorter than the
road through Wills Creek. But the letter from Morris was disturb-
ing. After informing him what progress had been made on the new
road toward the Youghiogheny, the Pennsylvania Governor went
into the history of the project at some length, making it plain that
he did not care for the attitude of the General’s quartermaster
general. He wrote:

I should not have been so particular as to this matter had not Sir
John St. Clair taken the liberty to speak of my conduct in it in a very
improper way to the persons 1 am employed upon this service, which
may lessen me in the eyes of those I am appointed to command but
cannot in the least contribute to His Majesty's service. Had he wrote
me on this head, I should have been obliged to him, but as he took
another method I think it unbecoming me to take any other notice of
it than what I have done in answer to your letter being satisfied that
you want no proofs of my attachment to the crown or zeal for His Maj-
esty’s service.”

Shirley's letter from Peters in the Philadelphia packet was in
reply to a note which the General’s moody military secretary had
written while in low spirits. In an effort to cheer him up Peters
said:

Mr. Franklin has had excellent success and I suppose you may have
not only wagons enough but single horses, and then your march over
the bills will be pleasant-don’t take your notions of the country from

that dismal inhospitable place, Will's Creek—-the farther you advance
the more grass you will find, and a finer country.”

The two-day ultimatum reportedly served on the Virginians was
still uppermost in the minds of some of Braddock’s British subal-
terns on Tuesday, May 20, when five sober “Quakers” rode into
camp, plump men on fat horses. They went directly to the Gen-
eral’s tent and curiosity drew a group of young officers after them.93

Braddock recognized one of the five as Benjamin Frank1in’s son,
William. William had ridden ahead of the promised wagons, now
coming up the road from Conochocheague. Within two weeks after
the appearance of their advertisement, the F ranklins had dis-
bursed Braddock’s £800 and another two hundred of their own in
advance horse-and-wagon hire. They would have done even better
had not half the wagons in York county failed to pass inspection.
The wagons arrived in camp that night—ninety-one sturdy Pennsyl-
vania farm wagons. Eleven from Philadelphia were loaded with the

[ 198] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

parcels of butter, cheese, wine and spirits suggested by young
Franklin. These and twenty more pack horses were the gift of a
Pennsylvania assembly committee to Braddock’s subaltern officers
who, for the first time in weeks, sat down to a decent mess.94

“A duty so long disused that it was a tour of fatigue to the teeth,”
said one after supper.95

Dunbar wrote the elder Franklin another letter of thanks:

Your kind present is now all arrived, and shall be equally divided
tomorrow between Sir Peter Ha1kett’s subalterns and mine, which I
apprehend will be agreeable to the committee's intent. This I have
made known to the officers of both regiments who unanimously desire
me to return the generous benefactors their most hearty thanks to
which be pleased to add mine.96

Halkett wrote Franklin:

The officers of my regiment are most sensible to the favors conferred
on the subalterns by your assembly, who have made so well-timed and
so handsome a present. At their request and desire I return their thanks,
and to the acknowledgement of the officers I beg lef to add mine, which
you, I hope, will do me the favor for the whole to offer to the assembly
and assure them that we shall on every occasion do them the justice due
for so seasonable and well-judged an act of generosity.97

“Though this was good news, I did not like it,” one pessimistic
subaltern wrote home, after describing the arrival of the gift.93 “I
feared it would occasion our stay and prevent our marching back.
Besides, it was ominous, your cheese and your bacon being the bait
that draw rats to destruction.”

The same night the Pennsylvania wagons rolled into camp, a
lone Delaware Indian appeared with a story of having left the
French fort only six days past. He said the post had a garrison of
only fifty men but that a reinforcement of nine hundred was ex-
pected. When Braddock’s army had advanced across the mountains,
he said, the French planned to fall on the back settlements of the
English and massacre their inhabitants, blowing up their own fort
when the British troops appeared before it.99

“I believe this fellow is a villain,’’ said Gordon, the engineer.1°°

In view of the failure of the Delawares to answer Groghan’s
message there was no reason to trust this man. But Braddock duti-
fully passed the warning on to the governors of Maryland, Penn-
sylvania, and Virginia, at the same time informing them that if his
operation against the French was successful, he would expect them

FORT CUMBERLAND [ 199]

to be prepared to arm, man, and provision the captured work.1°1
In his letter to Sharpe he added:

As I find it impractical to take my chariot with me, if you will send
for it and the harness for the six horses I shall be much obliged to you
and you will make use of it till I want it. I shall be still more so as I
am sure it will be less damaged by good usage. than by lying still and
will also save you the trouble of sending for another to England as it
shall be at your service at your own price when I leave this part of the
world. Let your servants take care of harness and have it oiled if you
don't use it. I shall leave directions with C01. Innes to deliver chariot,
harness, spare axe] and pole to your order.1°2

The General’s secretary was disturbed by the whole Indian situa-
tion1°3 With the exception of that lone Delaware, no other member
of his tribe, no Shawnees, no Cherokees had come into camp in
response to Croghan’s messages.1°4 Replying to the personal letter
he had received from Peters, Shirley remarked that only about fifty
Indians were expected to go with the army. He added with his
usual frankness:

Upon our arrival at this fort we found Indian affairs so ignorantly
conducted by Col. Innes, to whom they were committed, that novices
as we were, we have taken ’em into our management. It is not for me
to remark what might have been done or what ought to have been
done for the security of the General’s service or for his ease in con-
ducting the present expedition (as it is called) in the most effectual
manner for the purposes intended by it. Here we are and I imagine
we will move from here in about a fortnight. The difliculties which
have unavoidably attended our motions, and such as have been occa-
sioned through ignorance in some and insolence in others are in-
numerable; with the assistance we have had from Mr. Franklin, who
is almost the only person to whom the General is indebted for either
horses or wagons, we hope to get over the mountains. Governor Mor-
ris has taken a very sensible and proper notice of Sir John St. C1air’s
behavior in his letter to the General. Sir John begins to find that he
has mistaken himself and to draw in his horns.1°5

To his friend Morris, Shirley wrote:

You have wrote very properly to the General with regard to the
road to the Youghiogheny, and set your conduct in a very fair light,
and such a one, as at least, cannot deserve censure. I am persuaded Sir
John will not be in a hurry in making representations to England. He
has received what is called in the language of the camp, a set down. . . .

It is not easy to give you a picture of the business we do, or the
manner in which it is done. I do not look upon it to be always trans-

[200] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

acted in the most masterly way, but considering all circumstances, be-

lieve it may have its merits.1°6

That rattlesnake Colonel Cresap’s son, Michael, had been told
to load the Pennsylvania wagons with the army’s flour when they
passed the stone storehouse at Conococheague. But only a few
were loaded and some of the flour was in green timber casks that
would soon turn it sour.1°7

“Had he been a French commissary he could not have acted
more to their interest,” stormed Braddock when told of young
Cresap’s failure to obey his instructions.1°3

He ordered thirty wagons back to Winchester for forage and
three hundred packhorses to Conococheague for the rest of the
flour. A detachment of light horse from the general’s bodyguard,
to escort the pack animals, was ordered to arrest Cresap and bring
him in.109 But they never found him. Someone told him they were
after him and he made off.11°

The people of Pennsylvania appreciated the protection of the
army against the French and Indians, the Quakers with young
Franklin told Braddock, but they themselves were opposed to war-
fare and thought he should try to make a treaty with the French,
as Oglethorpe had done with the Spaniards in the south. Young
Franklin shared his father's apprehensions of a surprise attack on
Braddock’s marching column by the French and Indians. He re-
minded Braddock that the deeper his army advanced into the wil-
derness, the more difficult it would become to supply him, even
after the proposed new Pennsylvania road had been cut.

Impressed by the wagon train and the gifts brought from Phila-
delphia, and noting that even the shabbier Pennsylvania teamsters
had a well-fed look in contrast to the army’s lean, lank Virginians,
Braddock’s oflicers closed in on the Quakers with questions about
their colony and their sect.111

“They are a very frugal people,” one oflicer concluded after talk-
ing to them,112 “and if not so would be as beggarly as their neigh-
bors, the Virginians.”

Next day the visitors left, young Franklin carrying a note of
thanks from Braddock to his father, and a letter from Braddock
to Governor Morris complimenting him on the zeal he was showing
for the success of the expedition. Shirley's notes to Morris and Peters
also were in the packet.113

Peters, having set out from Philadelphia to see for himself what

FORT CUMBERLAND [ 201 ]

progress had been made on the new road beyond Shippensburg,
was coming down over Sidling Hill, on the Maryland-Pennsyl-
vania, border, on his way to Wills Creek.114 The day after Franklin’s
party had gone Peters rode into camp, a pious, polished English
gentleman of fifty who had been ordained a priest in the Church
of England and whose amiability and good sense quickly endeared
him to both Orme and Shirley.115

With Peters was Sheriff John Potter of Cumberland County,
Pennsylvania, and two prisoners. On the strength of Braddock’s
complaint in his letter from Winchester to Governor Morris about
those two Irishmen trading with the French in western Pennsyl-
vania, warrants had been issued for their arrest. Potter had brought
in both men and was ready to turn them over to the army provost.
Braddock suggested that the Sheriff take them back to the Pennsyl-
vania county jail. Should a court martial find them guilty as
charged, Braddock said, he might feel obliged to punish them too

I severely.11"

The sheriff's prompt action, coming so soon after the delivery of
the Pennsylvania wagons, put Braddock on the defensive. As for
the Pennsylvania road, Peters had actually seen it under construc-
tion, 12 feet wide, now extending 20 miles west of Shippensburg
and advancing toward the Youghiogheny at the rate of almost a
mile a day. A hundred men were at work on it, and the number
would be doubled. Original plans called for a fork in the road,
one branch to Wills Creek and the other to the Turkey’s Foot on
the Youghiogheny, intersecting Braddock’s route to Fort Duquesne.
The proposed fork to Wills Creek would be useless after the army
had left Fort Cumberland, Peters said. Why not abandon the fork
and press forward with one main road? 117

Braddock was agreeable, but repeated firmly that he would not
budge from Fort Cumberland until assured by the Governor of
Pennsylvania that the road to the Turkey’s Foot would be com-
pleted in time for a summer campaign. Peters said the only way to
be sure of that would be to provide an armed escort to protect the
workmen. He doubted that they could be kept together a single
day in case of an alarm from the Indians, and Indians might be
expected to appear any time after the road crossed the mountains.
Braddock said that was no business of his. It was up to the province
of Pennsylvania to protect its own road workers.

Peters was not sure the General realized how annoying the In-

[202 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

dians could be. He ventured to say that even the army would have
its difficulties on the march, that it would need the practiced pro-
tection of both rangers and friendly Indians to get safely through
the mountains to the French fort. The General was contemptuous
of such danger, scorning the capabilities of an Indian attack. His
primary concern was logistics. He complained at length of the
failure of everybody with whom Dinwiddie had contracted for army
provisions, forage, wagons, and horses.113

In his last letter from Williamsburg, Dinwiddie had said that he
thought St. Clair was to take care of the wagons. As for beeves,
Major Dick talked too much. Governor Dobbs of North Carolina
was sending along five or six hundred cattle next month and Hite’s
contract, of course, amounted to jobbery.

“I should be sorry the expedition should suffer from trifies,”
wrote Dinwiddie. “At the same time I hate jobs. As there are large
quantities of salt provisions provided, I cannot see the march of
your forces will be delayed for want of provisions, and I doubt not
of your having a sufficient supply of beeves in a proper time.” 119

Another note from Dinwiddie to Orme, regarding the shortage of
tents for Virginia troops, suggested that the General’s aide take up
that matter with the Virginia quartermaster. The note concluded:

I hear that provisions at Fort Cumberland begin to be scarce. Surely
if Pennsylvania has performed their promise, flour cannot be wanting
and if salt provisions are wanting you know there is a good quantity at
Alexandria which can be sent if wagons can be had. My little family
join me in kind regards to you and Mr. Shirley, sincerely wishing you
health and all other felicity.12°

In spite of the arrival of Franklin's wagons, his supply situation
was still unsatisfactory, Braddock told Peters. Peters understood
that only too well after a meal in the General’s tent. The beef was
not sweet. Only the highest ranking officers in camp had butter on
their tables. Fresh meat was scanty and Peters heard a general
complaint among officers of the want of “necessaries.” 121

Peters was fairly certain that all the flour ordered from Pennsyl-
vania had been delivered by this time at Conococheague. There
might have been a delay about milling it. And if necessary that
already sent up by young Cresap in green barrels could be repacked
in dry casks and sacks. Furthermore, Governor Morris had ad-
vanced £500 to St. Clair’s assistant, Leslie, to buy army oats in the
back counties.122 But more than this was needed. Braddock pro-

FORT CUMBERLAND [203 ]

posed that Morris and Peters undertake contracts to lay in addi-
tional supplies of flour, wheat, beeves, salt beef, pork, or fish at
Shippensburg by July 1 for three thousand men, promising to be
accountable for all charges and expense.123 Peters was reluctant
to commit himself. It had been hard enough to provide flour and
bacon for the road workers at Shippensburg, to say nothing of
cooks, overseers, wagons, too1s—and whiskey to keep them happy.124

From the General’s tent Peters went over to the Indian camp to
talk to Croghan, Montour, and Scarouady. The Indians were un-
happy. They said Braddock never consulted them. Their wives
dallied with his officers, plentifully supplied with rum and money.
Even Braddock’s protege Burton was wooing a squaw with promise
of a repeater watch and other presents. Disturbed by what he
heard and saw, Peters urged Braddock to put an end to the “licen-
tiousness” which prevailed in camp, insisting that the Indian
women be sent home to Pennsylvania. The General expected a cer-
tain amount of looseness among so many soldiers but he said he
would forbid Indian women to enter the army camp.125

After Franklin’s visit the troops had been told:

It is His Excellency’s order that no sutler give any liquor to the
Indians on any account; if anyone does, he will be severely punished.

The Provost is to go his round every day through all the roads lead-
ing to the camp. Every soldier or woman that he shall meet on the
other side of the river, or beyond the advanced piquets without a pass
from the regiment or the officer commanding the company to which
they belong, he is to order his executioner to tie them up and give
them fifty lashes and march the prisoners through the camp to expose
them.

One gill of spirits mixed with three gills of water may be allowed
every man per day, which the officers of the piquet are to see delivered
out every day at 1 1 o’clock. Any sutler who shall sell any spirits to the
soldiers without an officer being present shall be sent to the Provosts.123

Now, as a result of Peters’ complaint, a further order was posted:

If any officer, soldier or follower of the army shall dare to give any
strong liquor or money to the Indian men or women, if an olficer he
shall be brought to a general court martial for disobedience to orders,
if a non-commissioned oflicer, soldier or follower of the army he shall
receive 250 lashes without a court martial.127

Shirley was occupied as the judge advocate of the court-martial
trying Lieut. McLeod of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, con-

[204] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

fined to quarters by order of General Braddock, when Peters left
the Fort after a two-day visit.123

“Make my excuse for not taking leave of Mr. Shirley,” Peters
told Orme.129

A congenial trio, the three of them looked forward to reunion
in Philadelphia when the army went into winter quarters at the
end of the campaign.13° Braddock was thinking of Philadelphia,
too. In a packet of letters Peters carried away from the fort was
this one from Braddock to Morris:

Dear Morris:

You will, by the bearer, Mr. Peters, be informed of the situation I
am in by the folly of Mr. Dinwiddie and the roguery of the assembly,
and unless the road of communication from your province is opened
and some contracts made in consequence of the power I have given, I
must inevitably be starved. Sir John St. Clair (who by the way is
ashamed of having talked of you in the manner he did) has employed,
by the advise of Governor Sharpe, a fellow at Conochocheague, one
Cresap, who behaved in such a manner in relation to the Pennsylvania
flower that had he been a French commissary he could not have acted
more to their interest. In short, in every instance but my contract for
the Pennsylvania wagons, I have been deceived and met with nothing
but lies and villany. I hope, however, in spite of this that we shall pass
a merry Christmas together.

E. Bmddock.131

In another note to Morris, separately sealed, young Shirley
wrote:

. . . I don’t know what description Mr. Peters will give you of our
camp and the principal persons in it, but as this goes in his packet I
will give you mine, grounded upon the observation of several months.
We have a G-—- most judiciously chosen for being disqualified for the
service he is employed in, in almost every respect. He may be brave
for ought I know and he is honest in pecuniary matters. But as the
King said of a neighboring governor of yours when proposed for the
command of the American forces about a twelfth month ago, and rec-
ommended as a very honest man though not remarkably able, “a little
more ability and a little less honesty upon the present occasion might
serve our turn better.”

It is a joke to suppose that secondary officers can make amends for
the defects of the first. The main spring must be the mover. The
others in many cases can do no more than follow and correct a little its
motions. As to them, I don’t think we have much to boast. Some are
insolent and ignorant; others capable but rather aiming at showing
their own abilities than making a proper use of them. I have a very
great love for my friend Orme, and I think it uncommonly fortunate

1.-‘our CUMBERLAND [205 ]

for our leader that he is under the influence of so honest and capable
a man, but I wish, for the sake of the public, he had some more expe-
rience of business, particularly in America.

As to myself, I came out of England expecting that I might be
taught the business of a military secretary, but I am already convinced
of my mistake. I would willingly hope my time may not be quite lost
to me. You will think me out of humour. I own I am so. I am greatly
disgusted at seeing an expedition (as it is called) so ill-concerted origi-
nally in England and so ill-appointed, so improperly conducted since in
America; and so much fatigue and expense incurred for a purpose
which, if attended by success, might better have been left alone. I
speak with regard to our particular share.

However, so much experience I have had with the injudiciousness
of public opinion that I have no little expectation, when we return to
England, of being received with great applause. I am likewise further
chagrined at seeing the prospect of affairs in America which, when we
were at Alexandria I looked upon to be very great and promising,
through delays and disappointments which might have been pre-
vented, grown cloudy and in danger of ending in little or nothing. I
have hopes that the attempt against Niagara will succeed.

I don't know whether there is any man but yourself to whom I would
have wrote some parts of this letter or could at present have justified
myself in doing it, but there is a pleasure in unburdening oneself to
a friend. I should be glad you would burn it as soon as you have read
it. I shall be very happy to have reason to retract hereafter what I have
said here, and submit to be censured as moody and apprehensive.

I hope, my dear Morris, to spend a tolerable winter with you. Pray
take no notice of any part of this letter in your answer, for fear of
accident.132

Braddock could delay his advance no longer if the plan of cam-
paign agreed upon at Alexandria was to be carried out in accord
with his instructions. Two thousand New England troops had
sailed for Nova Scotia under convoy of three men-of-war. Gover-
nor Shirley's regiment was under orders to move from Boston to
Providence, whence transports would carry it to Albany, the ren-
dezvous for the projected attack on Crown Point. There had been
a delay in recruiting Pepperi1l's regiment, but another corps, raised
in New Jersey by Col. Philip Schuyler, was on its way to Albany.133

The last of Braddock’s own troops had closed up—two companies
of Halkett’s which had been left at Winchester and a company of
North Carolina volunteers commanded by Capt. Edward Brice
Dobbs, son of the Governor of North Carolina.134 With Dobbs’s
company was a twenty-one-year-old wagoner, Daniel Boone. Quiet,
serious, mild-mannered Boone was intensely curious about the

[ 1o] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Drury Lane the year Lieut. Braddock joined the Coldstream.“
Openly accused of conspiring against the King, the Earl of Shaftes-
bury fled to Holland. The Duke of Monmouth, named a co-con-
spirator, followed him.47 William Lord Russell was clapped into
the Tower of London, charged with having plotted to waylay the
royal coach and murder the King and his brother. In Lincoln’s
Inn Fields, a residential square where the Coldstream sometimes
paraded, the foot guards helped keep the crowd back from a
scaffold where Russell was beheaded.43

On Monday morning, February 2, 1685, the King had an apo-
plectic fit.49 He lingered four days, amid the coming and going of
doctors, bishops, bastards, mistresses, and, muffled in a cloak and
using the back stairway, a Benedictine monk who was reported to
have finally confessed him. Charles died shortly before noon, Fri-
day. At 3 o’clock the Guards paraded at Whitehall gate to hear
heralds proclaim James Duke of York, King James II. The new
King promptly renewed the commissions of all Coldstream oflicers,
including Braddock. To ingratiate himself, he granted the addi-
tional rank of lieutenant-colonel to all captains of his foot guards.5°

For the coronation of the new King, on St. George's Day, Lieut.
Braddock turned out in a brand new fold-faced scarlet coat, gold-
fringed sash, polished steel corselet studded with gold nails, red
broadcloth breeches, black turned-up hat with gold lace and a tour
of white feathers. His regiment was posted around Westminster
Abbey.51 The Co1dstream’s aging commander, Lord Craven, fol-
lowed the new King and his pale, dark-eyed Queen into the Abbey.
The Queen's purple velvet train stretched out seven yards behind
her on the blue carpet laid to the west door. Dr. Blow had resigned
as the Abbey organist but he sang with the basses of the choir that
day. As a peer of the realm, Lord Craven stood by when the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury placed the crown on the new King's head.
The crown was too big. It slipped down over the upper part of
James’s face.5-"-

A Protestant uprising to put the exiled Duke of Monmouth on
the throne had been anticipated, and nobody was surprised, early
one morning in June, when word reached London that the Duke
had landed from a Dutch ship at Lyme Regis, a small port on the
Devonshire coast. Monmouth had declared war in a wordy procla-
mation denouncing King James as a “popish usurper of the
Crown." 53 Seven companies of the Coldstream marched from Lon-

[206] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

country beyond the mountains. Any provincial soldier or frontiers-
man who had seen it found Boone an eager listener.135

Counting those sent back to Winchester and Conococheague,
nearly 2oo wagons with goo teams or pack horses, 50 provided by
Croghan, had been collected in the woods and on the flats along
the river where Boone unhitched the teams. The horses were not
the best looking beasts. All the weak, spavined, wind-broken crip-
ples of the western settlements had been rounded up by army
contractors. But provincial teamsters said work horses were not to
be judged by looks alone, that many poor in flesh were as good as
any draft animal that ever stretched a chain. A call went out for
smiths and soon their hammers rang an anvil chorus around the
forge cart of the artillery detachment.136

Carpenters, superintended by the ship's carpenter of the “Sea-
horse”—one of Spendlowe’s sailors—built a float and squared tim-
bers for a wagon bridge across Wills Creek. About a hundred wag-
ons were loaded with provisions. Extra pay, ranging from sixpence
per day for privates to three shillings for subalterns, was promised
volunteers to help dig, cut, and blast away the worst spots marked
by the engineers on the road up the mountain behind the fort.
Bakers, relieved of all other duties, sweated over oven-pits, baking
army bread of Pennsylvania flour.137

“Ha1f sand, half dirt,” they said.133

The regiments exercised daily. The mountains echoed platoon
practice firings, sometimes at the rate of three a minute.139

At a council of war held in his tent, Braddock outlined his gen-
eral plan of march to Halkett, Dunbar, St. Clair, Burton, Gage,
Sparks, and Maj. Russell Chapman of Dunbar’s regiment, asking
them to be frank in comment and criticism. He said a party of
300 men, commanded by St. Clair, would move ahead to cut and
clear the mountain road to a width of 12 feet. The companies
would march two men deep, either side of the road, baggage in the
middle, with advance and rear guards and flank parties to prevent
surprise. Sir Peter Halkett would lead the main column and Dun-
bar would bring up the rear. At night the wagons would be drawn
up in close order, the roadsides cleared of saplings and under-
brush, and tents pitched in a single row along the line of baggage,
facing outward.

Control of the column, extended along a narrow road through
the woods and encumbered by horses and baggage, was an impor-

roar CUMBERLAND [ 207]

tant part of Braddock’s plan. Troops were to turn out in the
morning when the drums beat the General. Tents would be struck
on order and horses and wagons loaded when the drummers beat
Assembly. Upon the beating of the March the column would move
forward. While on the march, he said, command would be decen-
tralized to some extent, each capain being responsible for the se-
curity of his own flank.14°

Copies of this overall plan, approved by the council of war
unanimously, were distributed to all field officers with instructions
to discuss it with their captains.

Three more Delawares who had come into camp and waited over
night to see him were received by Braddock in his tent on Wednes-
day, May 28. They asked him when he expected to move against
the French fort. Within a few days, he said. They told him they
would go home, gather more warriors, and meet him on the way-
but no one believed them.141 Nothing had been heard yet from the
Shawnees. Gist's son, sent south to bring in the Cherokees, returned
alone. He said he had fallen in with another trader, well supplied
with liquor, who persuaded the Cherokees that Gist was an im-
poster because he had no written document, no seal from the Gov-
ernor of Virginia.142

Arms and clothing had been given to the fifty warriors still in
camp, but Col. Innes advised Braddock to take no more than ten
with him on his march. They would be troublesome and of no
service, Innes said. Croghan admitted that an Indian would eat
twice as much as a white man, but thought Braddock should take
all who were willing to go as scouts to prevent surprise. Innes’
counsel prevailed. Braddock ordered all the Indians home except
ten picked as scouts. Included in the ten were Scarouady’s son,
and Montour.143

Braddock had intended to set out on the next lap of his march
with 70 days’ supply of flour and 50 days’ supply of meat, his own
calculated minimum safety of provision. Informed by the wagon
masters that there were not enough horses and wagons in camp to
carry that big a load, he called another council of war. At this meet-
ing, also attended by Orme, Braddock proposed that a party of 600
men go forward carrying eight days’ provisions for 3,200 troops,
that it march five days toward the first crossing of the Youghiogheny
——about 30 miles beyond the fort—establish a magazine there, un-
load its wagons and send them back for more supplies.144

[ 208 ] ILL-STARR]-ID GENERAL

Again the council gave Braddock its approval, but Sir Peter
Halkett, irritated by the presence of Orme, who seems to have
done most of the talking, suggested that “everybody might after-
wards sign their opinion.” Braddock was offended by this remark,
but Halkett, who probably had a line oflicer’s prejudice against
all guardsmen, made no secret of his dislike of the General’s Cold-
stream aide. He privately hinted that Orme’s advice might be the
ruin of both Braddock and the expedition, and declared that if
he ever succeeded to the command he would sack the handsome
captain of the Coldstream as an aide.145

The delay caused by this change of plans did not improve troop
discipline, which remained a problem even after the Indians left.
Gaming had got so far out of hand that it was forbidden among
enlisted men under a penalty of three hundred lashes without a
court-martial. Young Shirley, as a judge advocate, was kept busy.
Four of seventeen soldiers listed as deserters were arrested, found
guilty by the court, and sentenced to the lash. Another was tried
and found guilty of theft. He, too, got the lash, then was drummed
out of camp with a halter around his neck.146

At daybreak Thursday, May 29, an usually cool morning, St.
Clair started up the Wills Mountain road with the advance party
of 600 men under Major Chapman’s command, two field pieces, 50
wagons, a party of Indian guides, Engineer Gordon, Lieut. Spend-
lowe, and half a dozen seamen. The steepest ascent was almost a
perpendicular rock, and a drop on the other side of the mountain
was equally sharp. Three of the 50 wagons slithered off the rocky
road and were smashed.

Braddock was not at all sure, after taking another look at the
road, that it would be possible to get his heavy artillery up and
down its steep grades safely. He called Gordon back, told him to
go to work on the road again and see what he could do. Three
hundred men were detailed for pick and shovel work.147

But all troops in camp remained under orders to hold themselves
in readiness to march within twenty-four hours.143

Back at Hampton Roads, where Keppel’s squadron still lay at
anchor, Captain Samuel Hood, of the sloop Jamaica, wrote to a
friend and patron, Admiral Thomas Smith, in England:

. . . We are all in high spirits, as everything seems to go as can he wished.
. . . I could wish the French stronger than they are, as I am afraid they
will quit all the forts as fast as our troops can get to them. . . .149

XII

THE LONG MARCH
May 30-July 8, 1755
.._....._—.-q(@};:———...——

HE WARM SUNSHINE of western Maryland's early summer with-
Tered Gordon's working party on the mountain road. Even
those who had volunteered became unhappy. The sixpence per day
extra pay promised privates—drummers were to get ninepence, and
sergeants a shi11ing—wou1d be withheld, they were told, “as at
present there is no public market and of course the men will have
no opportunity of making use of the ready money.” Forbidden
whiskey was almost the only thing for sale in the camp around the
fort at the foot of the mountain}

It would be impossible to pass the entire army and all its bag-
gage over that one narrow road in a single day. Troops and train
would march in three divisions. Halkett would command the first,
taking about a hundred wagons of stores, provisions, and powder.
Burton would follow with the independent companies, artillery,
and ammunition. Dunbar, last to leave, would take all remaining
wagons and carrying horses. Innes had been appointed governor
of the fort and would resume its command on Braddock’s depar-
ture.2 Some of the wagons were loaded, ready to go.3

Back from Williamsburg with the £4,000 for which he had been
sent, Washington was elated at the prospect of getting on with the
march, but young Shirley had no heart in it.4

“I shall be very glad when the campaign is over,” said the Gen-
era1’s moody military secretary.5

Washington had had some difliculty getting the £4,000 he

[209]

[ 2 10] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

brought back to the General. A Mr. Johnson, paymaster of the
forces, had arrived in Virginia from London at the end of March
with £ 16,000 sterling. But Mr. Hunter, to whom Washington had
been sent, had gone to Philadelphia before Washington reached
Hampton. Dinwiddie had come to the rescue by providing the
necessary cash.“

And when would the men in Gordon's working party receive
their promised extra pay?

“His Excellency is so kind as to promise that he will see that
they are punctually paid whatever is due them when they arrive
in winter quarters,” said an order read to the troops.7

In other words, when they arrived in Philadelphia, at the end of
the summer's campaign!‘

“I am hurried to death,” Orme wrote hastily to Morris in the
midst of last minute preparations to march, “and want the refresh-
ments of Philadelphia.” 9

With a population of 30,000, Philadelphia was the largest town
in the colonies and, from what Braddock’s officers and men had
been told, the most desirable. Captain Thomas 0rd of the Royal
Regiment of Artillery, finding the weather warm in Philadelphia
when he arrived there from Newfoundland, on his way to join
Braddock and take command of the train, had not hesitated to ask
for a carriage for himself and wagons for thirteen non-commissioned
officers and their baggage. (The Captain was fatigued and not used
to horseback.) Leslie, St. Clair’s assistant, sent to Philadelphia to
buy forage, had enjoyed the luxury of a quarrel at a billiard table!
Braddock’s cook, Delboux, looked forward to opening a tavern in
Philadelphia when his soldiering days were done.1°

“As there will be an express going in a few days,” said a notice
from headquarters, “any officers that have any letters to send to
Great Britain are desired to give them to either the General’s aide-
de-camp or to Mr. Shirley.”11

Letters to Great Britain . . . where the English spring, almost as
dry as Maryland's in 1755, had sapped lawns and leaves to a faded
green. Rose bushes had put out fewer blossoms than usual.” The
words of a song sung to a favorite tune at Vauxhall related how

The fatal shafts unerring move,
I bow before thy altars, Love!
I feel that soft resistless flame
Glide swift through all my vital frame. . . .13

THE LONG MARCH [21 1 ]

Parliament had been prorogued. The King had gone back to
Hanover.“ The night before he went there had been a ball and
supper at Bedford House. The Duchess of Bedford probably re-
peated a phrase she had heard Lord Herford use:

“I don't think a little war would do us any harm.” 15

Captain Gates’ godfather, Horace Walpole, entertained the Bed-
fords at breakfast at Strawberry Hill. His goldfish were greatly
admired.

“The war is quite gone out of fashion and seems adjourned to
America,” 13 Walpole wrote to his friend, Richard Bentley.

To America . . . where Spendlowe and his seamen, who had gone
ahead with St. Clair, returned to Braddock’s camp by the fort on
Wills Creek. The road beyond the mountain was even worse than
that over its crest. St. Clair had advanced only about fifteen miles
when they left him.

Gordon, Spendlowe, and Burton went out next morning to look
for a better route. By 2 o'clock Spendlowe was back saying he had
found one. He had simply followed Wills Creek, up around the
foot of the mountain, through the beetling narrows of cleft gray
rock. Gordon rode out to look it over. When he came back he said
he thought it would do. It would be only a mile or two longer than
the old route over the top.”

So another working party of a hundred grumbling soldiers, with
an armed guard of thirty against possible Indian attack, marched
up the creek to open a 12-foot lane which Gordon had marked by
blazing trees along the stream. It was a fairly level route but rough,
steep, and swampy in spots. Gordon said it would be impassable in
wet weather, but it was all right now.13

Braddock was beginning to believe that he had been on the
wrong road from the start, that he should have landed his troops
at Philadelphia, and marched across Pennsylvania.19 His eagerness
and anxiety for the success of his expedition, his impatience with
provincial apathy and politics, often led him into sweeping denun-
ciation of provincial honesty which provoked both Washington
and Shirley. The General had not yet recovered from what he sar-
castically termed “the fine promises” of Sharpe and Dinwiddie.2°
Together, he said, the two governors had produced only about 200
horses and twenty wagons. Excepting Franklin, “almost the only
instance of ability and honesty I have known in these provinces,”
the General declared that until he left Frederick “the falsehood of

[212 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

every person with whom I was concerned” had been his daily ex-
perience.

Challenged by Washington or Shirley to sustain his wholesale
indictment, Braddock had this answer: “It would be endless, sir, to
particularize the number of instances of the want of public and
private faith, and the most absolute disregard of all truth which I
have met with.” 21

He had not changed his opinion of provincial recruits, now con-
stituting about 1,100 of his 2,ooo effective troops. They had so little
courage and disposition for army life “that scarce any military
service can be expected of them," he said. “It has cost indefinite
pains and labor to bring them to any sort of regularity and dis-
cipline.” 22

Mindful that provincial officers drew on their provincial govern-
ment for the expense of their recruiting, he added: “I am told they
have made a very good hand of this year's recruiting affair, al-
though I can get no proof of it.” 23

As for the fifty or so Indian warriors around the camp:

When I arrived in America [Braddock recalled], I was assured that I
might depend upon a great number of Indians from the southward,
but the bad conduct of the Governor of Virginia has turned them en-
tirely against us; in effect they [evidently he included all the colonial
governors] behaved to the Indians with so little discretion that we
must at present be at great expense to regain their confidence, and
there is no trusting even those who have embraced our cause.“

With a Virginian’s pride in all things Virginian, Washington
was annoyed when Braddock made exceptions of Franklin, Morris,
and other Pennsylvanians in his criticism of American lassitude.

“The chosen people,” Washington scoffed. “They have furnished
what their absolute interest alone induced them to do.” 25

Shirley found it easy to disagree with all professional soldiers.
His position as Braddock’s secretary burdened him with no official
responsibility. No ghosts of Johnny Cope, Hawley “the Hangman,”
or the unlucky Ingoldsby haunted his camp bed. And his friend-
ship for the governor of Pennsylvania kept him in almost constant
hot water with Braddock’s quartermaster general.-'36

In any argument at headquarters Sir John found it expedient to
side with Braddock, but he was reluctant to make an exception of
Morris among the Americans for whom he felt contempt. Sir John
never forgot that he had urged the immediate construction of a

THE LONG MARCH [213]

new road across Pennsylvania as soon as he reached Virginia. And
what happened?

“That road has not been set about until very lately,” he said,
and he held Morris responsible for the delay.

No magistrate in Virginia or, to the best of Sir John’s recollec-
tion, in Maryland, had given himself the least trouble to collect
country people to work on the roads or provide wagons for the
army.

“On the contrary,” he said, “everybody laid themselves out to put
what money they could in their pockets.” 27

Braddock’s normal anxiety as a commanding officer, his petulance
under repeated delays and disappointments, were aggravated by
the strain of a personal crisis. Approaching the end of an undistin-
guished but unblemished career, he was making his first and last
cast for fortune. A wound at Blenheim had won Lieut.-Col. Alex-
ander Spotswood, of the Earl of Bath’s Tenth Foot, the governor-
ship of Virginia.” Albemarle, the last governor of Virginia, and a
former colonel of the Coldstream, was dead. Was it too much to
hope that another Coldstreamer, defeating the French in North
America, might reap a reward similar to Spotswood’sP Morris had
heard Braddock mentioned for the government of New York. . . .29

With other members of his staff Braddock’s relations were those
of any commanding general. Lower ranking officers, who may have
resented his superiority as the veteran of an elite corp, thought
him peevish, inclined to indolence, and glad to have subordinates
take detail off his hands. With no social pretentions and his bad
habit of spilling snuff on his waistcoat, he was regarded by some
uncouth, but the fair-minded agreed he was sensible and good-
natured.3°

It was easy to understand why Orme was his favorite. Only Orme
of the Coldstream measured up completely to Braddock’s own
rigorous standards for an officer. At the same time Braddock re-
spected rank. Burton was his choice for the colonelcy of a regiment
he planned to form later of the provincial companies. Orme was
to succeed Burton as lieutenant-colonel of the Forty-Eighth. Morris,
Braddock’s aide from the Forty-Eighth, was to be Burton's lieuten-
ant-colonel, and Capt. Robert Dobson of the Forty-Eighth, another
Braddock favorite, was to be Burton's major.31 Washington was
still “Mr. Washington” but on the best of terms with Braddock,
who already had granted two requests for special favors—-the ap-

[ 2 14] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

pointment of Townsend Washington, a cousin, as an assistant com-
missary and the bestowal of an ensign’s commission in the Forty-
Eighth to young Anthony Strother, the son of one of Washington’s
friends.”

Braddock seemed to sense that he had a weak regimental com-
mander in Dunbar, who complained of ill health and wanted to
go home.33 But the old Coldstreamer knew he could depend on Sir
Peter Halkett, the long-beaked colonel of the Forty-Fourth. Halkett
had the stern, disdainful face of a pompous fellow, and he might
despise Orme, but he had held a company together against the
Scots at Preston Pans.34

Gordon’s working party, relieved from day to day by fresh de-
tails, was a week building the new road around the foot of the
mountain.35 This gave everybody ample time to get letters in that
outgoing express. Braddock wrote to Sir Thomas Robinson on
June 5, explaining the delay and warning the Secretary of State
that expenses of the expedition would exceed original estimates.”
The failure of the provincial governments to provide horses and
wagons would halve the planned capacity of his train and increase
the charges of transporting army supplies over the mountains
“many times more than double the original cost of them,” Brad-
dock wrote. St. Clair put the total figure at near £40,000. The
teamsters were getting fifteen shillings a day.

“The behavior of the governments appears to me to be without
excuse,” Braddock wrote, “but it may be some extenuation of the
guilt of the lower class of people, that upon former occasions their
assistance in public has been ill rewarded, and their payments
neglected; the bad effects of which proceeding we daily experience.”

He cited Hite’s beef contract and Dinwiddie’s bungled manage-
ment of Indian affairs as examples of his vexations. He deplored
the slothful, languid disposition of his provincial recruits, in whom
he expressed little confidence.37

To the Duke of Newcastle he sent a similar letter:

I know not, my Lord, whether to express a greater surprise at the
supineness and . . . unreasonable economy of the governments and
people of the southern colonies, or at the general falsehood and dis-
honesty that prevails amongst them; I have already acquainted your
grace that the expense attending His Majesty's service under my direc-
tion would be greater than I had apprehended, and I must here in-
form you that this inexcusable behavior of the provincial governments
will greatly increase it: the consequences of it are that I have been

THE LONG MARCH [215]

obliged to send to a great distance for forage, and to contract for and
lay in stores of every kind in order to prevent future disappointments,
and upon every occasion to comply with higher terms than I might
otherwise obtain.33

Shirley evidently showed this letter to Washington, or told him
about it, because Washington came close to repeating some of
Braddock’s phrases two days later in a letter of his own to C01.
Fairfax:

The General, by frequent breeches of contracts has lost all degree of
patience; and for want of that consideration and moderation which
should be used by a man of sense upon these occasions, will, I fear,
represent us in a light we little deserve; for instead of blaming the in-
dividuals as he ought, he charges all his disappointments to public
supineness; and looks upon the Country, I believe, as void of both
honor and honesty; we have frequent disputes on this head, which are
maintained by warmth on both sides, especially on his who is in-
capable of arguing him out; or of giving up any point he asserts, let it
be ever so incompatible with reason.39

And Shirley unburdened himself in a letter to Morris:

I wrote you some time ago a letter full of complaints, and forget at
present who it went by; the truth is I have many things that give me
much uneasiness, which I had rather tell than write to you, and which
put me almost beyond my stock of patience; I never expected the most
perfect conduct with regard to some friends of yours and mine, but I
could not have imagined it would have been so intolerable. On Monday
we move from this place with 200 wagons: how we shall get that num-
ber over such roads and through such weather as we have had for
some time past I know not, however I doubt not we shall get through
it; we compute that we shall be before Fort Duquesne in a little more
than three weeks.“

Another violent thunderstorm broke over the hot, dry mountains.
The fury of the gust split army tents,“ and other letters in the out-
going express probably carried to Great Britain more than one
account of “the heat of the country, which occasions such faintness
that the men can hardly carry their arms; and sometimes when
these heats are a little relaxed there come such storms of rain,
thunder and lightning that all the elements seem on fire; numbers
of pine trees are struck to shivers, and such effects of lightning that
if not seen one could scarcely believe.” 42

At 2 o’clock Friday afternoon, June 6, Gordon pronounced the
new road around the mountain ready. Next morning Halkett
marched with his brigade, Spend1owe’s sailors, two field pieces, and

ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION or A GUARDSMAN [ 1 1 ]

don to help put down Monmouth’s rebellion. After a rout of the
Duke’s army, at the battle of Sedgemoor, they helped take rebel
prisoners to Salisbury, returning in mid-July to London where
Monmouth was beheaded on Tower Hill.54

James used the rebellion as an excuse to increase the size of his
standing army. Thirteen thousand troops, including the Cold-
stream Guards, were encamped at Hounslow Heath on the out-
skirts of London.55 Roman Catholic recruits, the first since the
Restoration, were enlisted from Ireland. Protestant officers who ob-
jected were cashiered. In a declaration of indulgence, proclaiming
religious toleration, the King abolished religious tests for public
oflice.53 Four Roman Catholic peers were sworn in as members of
the Privy Council. A Catholic was appointed to the deanery of
Christ Church at Oxford University. The Papal Nuncio was re-
ceived in state at Windsor. Catholic schools and chapels, closed
since the Commonwealth, were reopened.57

Mass was celebrated publicly in the Chapel Royal, and the King
was so pleased by the performance of an anthem composed by an
Italian that he asked Dr. Blow if he could produce anything so
good. Blow, who had been made a member of the royal band by
the new King and appointed composer in ordinary to His Majesty,
had just completed a new anthem, “I behold and Lo!" It waslsung
the following Sunday in the Chapel Royal, Edward Braddock I
presumably in the choir. 

At the close of the service the King sent his Jesuit confessor,
Father Edward Petre, to express his approval to the Doctor. In his
own opinion, the priest added:

“The anthem was too long.”

“That’s the opinion of one fool—-I heed it not,” snapped ‘the
Doctor.53

From Holland, where he had hoped to enlist the aid of England
in a Grand Alliance against France, William of Orange watched
his father-in-law anxiously. James was 52 years old. All five of his
children by his second wife, Mary of Modena, had died soon after
birth, and she was believed beyond having any more now. That
William's Protestant wife, Mary, James’s older daughter by his first
marriage, would succeed her father, was a prospect generally taken
for granted until the incredulous news broke—at first in the coffee
houses, where all such choice morsels fel1—that James’s Catholic
Queen was going to have another baby.59

[ 2 16] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

some of the loaded supply wagons. They got caught in another
thunderstorm.43 To put some heart in his drenched men when
they reached their next camp site, a glade behind Wills Mountain,
Sir Peter told his oflicers to see that the sutler delivered one pint
of spirits to every three soldiers.“

The number of women marching with the troops was restricted
to six per company for each regiment, four or five for each of the
smaller units. No soldier's wife following the army was to be per-
mitted the luxury of a horse of her own.45 Although this order was
not enforced as rigidly as it might have been, many husbands and
wives had been separated by the time Burton marched on Sunday
with his division. At Braddock’s direction, Shirley made out a pass
for twenty-eight wives left behind, and Braddock wrote Morris a
note asking him to subsist them and promising to make the neces-
sary stoppages in their husband's pay to defray the cost of their
keep.“ One of Dunbar’s friends, Captain Rutherford, the English
officer commanding the independent New York company, remarked
that Braddock might have gotten away sooner from Fort Cumber-
land had he himself been less interested in women, but no one
else seems to have taken notice of this.47

On Sunday, June 8, Braddock wrote out a long report for Napier,
enclosing a return of all troops encamped at Wills Creek and on
the march, a total of about 2,300, or, as the General put it, “about
two thousand effectives, the greatest part Virginians very indiffer-
ent men, this country affording no better.”

“With these I flatter myself to be able to drive the French from
the Ohio,” he told the Duke's adjutant. He wrote:

It would take up too much of your time were I to tell you particu-
larly the difliculties and disappointments I have met with from the
want of honesty and inclination to forward the service in all orders of
people in these colonies, which have occasioned great delays in getting
hither, as well as my being detained here a month longer than I in-
tended. . . . Nothing can be worse than the road I have already passed
and I have an hundred and ten miles to march through an uninhab-
ited wilderness over steep rocky mountains and almost impassible
morasses. From this description which is not exaggerated you conceive
the difficulty of getting good intelligence, all I have is from the Indians
whose veracity is no more to be depended upon than that of the
borderers here; their accounts are that the number of French at the
fort at present is but small, but pretend to expect a great reinforce-
ment; this I do not entirely credit, as I am very well persuaded they
will want their forces to be northward.“

rm»: LONG MARCH [217]

Braddock was not wholly dependent upon the Indians for in-
formation on enemy movements. Robert Morris had relayed a
message from Oswego that 34 large French batteaus carrying 300
men had passed up Lake Ontario on May 13, and that more were
expected to follow. Provincial newspapers put the number at 900.49

“We shall have more to do than go up the hills to come down
again,” said Washington.”

Monday's weekly express from Winchester brought Braddock a
letter from Governor James Glen of South Carolina containing a
bill of exchange payable to Braddock for £4,000. This was the
only money raised so far by an American province to pass through
Braddock’s hands. He sent it on to Morris to reimburse him for
the forage Leslie had bought, and to be applied to future contracts.
In a postscript to the letter of transmittal Braddock wrote:

If you should have it in your power to employ some of the money
in raising recruits for me I should be obliged to you, and desire you
to send ’em after me as soon as the road from your province is opened.
I want ’em to complete the English regiments. You may allow £3 ster-
ling per man; arms and clothing will be ready for ’em, and if you
have anybody you can confide in to bring ’em up he shall be rewarded
for his service.51

That night an express from Philadelphia brought Braddock two
letters from Morris. One assured him that the supplies he had re-
quested would be gathered on the new road at Shippensburg. The
other reported 20 loads of forage purchased by Leslie, 50 fat oxen
and “a parcel of fat sheep” on their way to the army, but informed
Braddock that the 200 workmen on the new road, now at Sidling
Hill, had refused to proceed farther than Rays Town unless pro-
vided with a guard to protect them from Indians. Morris reminded
Braddock that the province of Pennsylvania maintained no militia.
It was diflicult to buy a musket in Quaker Philadelphia. If the
workmen were to be given armed protection it must be provided
by the army. Braddock grumbled, having refused such a guard to
Peters, but ordered Captain Hogg’s company of Virginia rangers
to Ray’s Town.52

Braddock had hoped to get away from Fort Cumberland on
Monday, June 9, with Dunbar’s regiment and the rest of the train.
The General’s guard, drawn from Dunbar’s Forty-Eighth and re-
duced to twelve men, one sergeant, and a corporal, was under or-
ders to remain with Braddock’s baggage. Other guards had been

[2 18] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

recalled from up the river, from the flats east of Wills Creek. Those
on duty at the fort had been told to rejoin their regiment as soon
as Col. Innes took up his duties as governor with a garrison of the
most infirm officers and men in camp. About sixty soldiers, suffer-
ing from fever and a sort of bloody flux, would remain in a hospital
at the fort.53

At the last moment on Monday, marching orders were withheld.
Burton had had trouble getting the artillery over the new road
after Saturday's rain. Dunbar’s men did not strike their tents until
Tuesday morning. The last of the officers’ field beds and portman-
teaus then were loaded into baggage wagons or roped to batsaddles,
and the twenty drums of the Forty-Eighth beat the March. This,
at last, was good-bye. Up the road went Dunbar’s Forty-Eighth.
Behind it crawled a long procession of heavily loaded wagons and
carrying horses.54

The raw road through the narrows, crossing and recrossing the
stony bed of Wills Creek, had not been cut for rapid marching.55
The tan-gaithered redcoats took it as they found it, wading the
shallows by the sheer rock walls of the deep defile. The wagons be-
hind them could move no faster than the men in front. By the old
road, over the mountain, it was four miles from the fort to the
glade where the two first divisions were encamped. Around the
foot of the mountain was a good five miles.56

Later that afternoon, when the dust had settled behind the
last of the wagons and carrying horses, Braddock got into the sad-
dle of his bay and rode after them. With him went his staff, his
mounted bodyguard of Virginia troopers, and his body servant,
Bishop.57

It had been June—]une of 17o4—when Marlborough began his
famous march to the Danube. Maj. Gen. Edward Braddock was
just about old enough to remember it. In the tradition of the great
Duke, Braddock was reputed to wear a coat of mail at times.53
Breastplates were still issued in the British army. Three sets of
armour--backs, breasts and head pieces—for the service of the en-
gineers had been listed in the stores inventoried at the Tower for
his expedition.59 With or without a breastplate the General who
rode up the road toward Fort Duquesne was a short, thickset
British officer, booted and sashed, in a brown tie-wig, who kept
reaching for loose snuff in his waistcoat pocket.“

Burton was waiting for him when the General’s party rode into

THE LONG MARCH [ 219]

the glade behind the mountain. Halkett’s regiment, the independ-
ent and provincial companies, were still there. Dunbar’s men were
shaking out their tents. The woods were fairly open, more like a
grove than a forest. There was even grass for the horses.61

But it was plain to Burton, looking up the valley toward a green
tumble of mountains ahead, that the narrow track cut through the
forest would grow harder and harder. Burton could see tree-covered
crests at least 2,400 feet high.” Guns and wagons would never make
those grades behind their present teams of small, lean, worn-out
nags.63 Five English cart horses to an eight-inch howitzer on the
hard, flat roads of Flanders was one thing. Five jades with the same
gun on a mountain Indian trail was another.“

The wagons, particularly the King's army wagons, were almost
as much of a problem as the artillery. Washington suggested fewer
wagons, more packhorses.65 Packhorses with pack saddles and sur-
cingle were the most practical means of carrying freight over these
mountains. The fur traders had learned that.63 But the pack-
horses with Braddock’s army were no better than the draft horses
of the wagon teams. Each packhorse was supposed to carry two
hundredweight, a light load for a good English horse, but many
of Braddock’s were cast-oil's, sold to army contractors by Indian
traders, Orme observed.“

“A parcel of banditti who call themselves Indian traders,"
snorted Braddock.“

“There has been vile management in regard to the horses," Wash-
ington admitted.”

At a meeting of all line olficers, held in his tent at 11 o’clock
next morning, Braddock explained the horse and wagon problem.
He recommended that all baggage except absolute necessities be
sent back to Fort Cumberland and that each officer limit himself
to one riding horse. The generosity of any officer who spared a
horse of his own for army use would not be forgotten. Such horses
should be paraded in the rear of Col. Dunbar’s regiment where
Major Sparkes would look them over. Any spare batsaddles should
be sent along with the pack horses.7°

“This is a good scheme and the way to do our business,” said
Shirley after the meeting.“

“Which is what I recommended at first,” said Washington.”

British officers were not accustomed to campaigning without
baggage wagons and bat horses, but many agreed to forego private

[ 22o] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

tents and other comforts.73 That released about 80 horses. Wash.
ington cheerfully discarded half his kit to provide another. All
told, the General and his headquarters contributed 20 more, but
the combined total of 100 was far below the required number.
Seven of the heaviest and strongest horses in the train were needed
for each howitzer, 5 for each two-pounder and 4 for each wagon,
although wagonloads were ordered reduced to 14 hundredweight
each.“

At a council of war held in the General’s tent next day it was de-
cided to send two of the six-pounders, four cohorns, and some of
the ordnance stores back to the fort. They would clear about twenty
wagons. In the train were sixteen of the King’s wagons, heavy, Eng~
lish-built wagons with a lot of ironwork, brought over from Lon-
don to carry bread or ammunition. They were just too big for the
light work horses that struggled to pull them. Between the shafts
of a King’s wagon, shafts as massive as those of an artillery timber,
a light American horse looked like a runt.75 So all sixteen of the
King’s wagons were unloaded into ordinary farm wagons and
pulled aside to be taken back to the fort by fifty of the less desirable
men from the independent and ranger companies.“

And there were still too many women around camp to suit the
General. No more than two per company would be permitted to
continue the march from here on, he decided. The brigade major
would list their names. Any woman who persisted in remaining
without authorization would be shot, said an order which nobody
believed."

Since early morning a 30-man detail had been weighing out
back-loads of flour and bacon for the carrying horses. All was to
have been in readiness by 2 o'clock that afternoon, but the task
of fitting oilcloth covers to the farm wagons that were to be used
to carry powder, and of shifting and redistributing other wagon
loads, took more time than expected. The army did not march
that day. Some of the advance pickets, not knowing how long they
might remain in the woods where they had been posted when the
column halted, built themselves shelters of boughs and bark. These
the General ordered destroyed and he forbade the erection of any
more. Nothing should interfere with the vigilance of his pickets.73

The drums beat reveille at 4 A.M., next morning, Friday, June 13.
The troops, each man with four days provisions in his haversack,
moved up the narrow forest trail two by two on either side of the

THE LONG MARCH [221 ]

long procession of limbers, gun carriages, powder carts, wagons, and
pack horses.79 The first mile of the trail was swampy but level, the
next two and a half, rough and steep. Frequent halts were called
behind the hatchetmen and carpenters who had gone ahead with
a trumbril of tools to cut and dig and bridge. The path they
cleared through the woods, breathlessly hot, damp, and gloomy,
could not properly be called a road. It went weaving among the
trees, around stumps of fallen timber, over rotting logs, rocks, and
roots of a virgin woodland whose matted boughs shut out the sum-
mer sun1ight.8°

Halkett’s brigade, leading the column, encamped for the night
at Martin’s plantation, a log cabin in a clearing by George’s Creek
at the foot of Big Savage mountain.“ Officers, men, and horses were
exhausted. They rested next day, the men getting orders to help
the wagons in any pinch over a hill.3‘~’ Sourly the soldiers surveyed
Big Savage, whose 2,900-foot humps extended the length of a thickly
timbered horizon. It was 11 o’clock that morning before Dunbar’s
straggling regiment closed in from behind. They, too, were tuckered
out.33

Braddock was far from satisfied with march discipline. Orders
were issued that hereafter the troops would turn out, accoutre, and
form two deep at the head of their respective encampments along
the road in the morning when the drums rolled the General. No
tents would be struck until specific orders had been given. As soon
as tents had been struck and loaded in the wagons with the officers’
baggage, the troops would lay on their arms until ordered to march.
They would march on the beating of the March—a beat to be taken
up by other drummers from those of Halkett’s regiment at the head
of the column. They were to face outward, two deep, at every
halt.34

The carrying horses now became a matter of concern. They had
suffered on the march to Martin’s, standing loaded in the previous
camp for an hour after the main body moved out, and bearing their
loads continuously all day. It was not practical to unload them at
every halt, and they strung the column out to a dangerous, un-
wieldy length.35

Next morning, an hour before the main column resumed its
march, the carrying horses were sent off with a guard of two com-
panies. There was no obstruction on the trail to impede pack horses
and they were ordered to continue to Little Meadows, where St.

[222] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Clair’s advance guard was encamped, ten miles beyond Martin's
plantation.“ Batmen were warned to take care to prevent their
horses eating laurel when they reached the Savage river on the
other side of Big Savage Mountain. “It is certain death to them,”
they were told.37

The first four miles of that day’s march were up and down a suc-
cession of rocky ridges. Half the main column, falling far behind
the pack train, grounded arms to help the trembling, winded teams
of hot, boney little horses drag their 12-pounders and heavy howitz-
ers over the mountain crest. The last of the wagons did not pull
away from Martin’s until almost noon and three of them, going
down the western slope of the mountain toward the Savage river,
slipped off the precipitous road and smashed to pieces against the
rocks and trees.33

The Savage river, winding through the laurel and rhododendron
of its wooded upland valley, was an insignificant stream that sum-
mer because of the drought. In the winter time, the Indians said, it
was broad and deep. The tired column that forded it that warm
June afternoon was strung out for a distance of three or four miles.
Halkett’s regiment, still leading the way, advanced only about three
miles beyond the river, camping for the night at the top of an-
other steep ascent that delayed the wagons for three hours. Next
day the regiment marched on, through three miles of dense white
pine—a gloomy track known to frontiersman as “the shades of
death”——across another boggy stream, up through the laurel thickets
of another mountain side and down into the lap of a prairie grass
plateau called Little Meadows.39

St. Clair’s vanguard was encamped here, behind an abbatis they
had built. The Quartermaster and his fifty wagons had been eight
days getting that far.9° He had stopped to blast boulders out of the
road, rarely more than 10-feet wide now, to ditch swamps, and lay
corduroy bridges. Little Meadows was a natural pasture, normally
springy, lush and green, where the fur traders stopped their pack
trains to rest. But in June 1755 the high treeless valley was dry, al-
most parched. A stream running through it had fallen to a trickle.91

Waiting for the main column to catch up with him, St. Clair had
written a letter to C01. Napier:

I am not at all surpised that we are ignorant of the situation of this
country in England, when no one except a few hunters knows it on
the spot; and their knowledge extends no farther than in following

rm: LONG MARCH [223]

their game. It is certain that the ground is not easy to be reconnoitered
for one may go twenty miles without seeing before him ten yards. . . .

What was looked on at home as easy is our most difficult point to
surmount, I mean the passage of this vast tract of mountains; had we
a country we could subsist in after we got over them, the thing would
be easy. . . .

One of our Indians who left the French fort the 8th instant tells me
that there are only 100 French and 70 Indians at that place; that they
were preparing to set out the day after to dispute the passage of the
mountains. I have seen nothing of them as yet, nor do I expect they
will come so far from home. . . .92

Miles behind Halkett’s regiment and its convoy came Dunbar
with the rest of the train. The thin, haggered, underfed little horses,
cursed and lashed by their weary drivers, were beginning to wear
out. The weakest had broken down along the way and been shot.93
The men of Dunbar’s regiment, too, were close to collapse. In nine
days they had advanced only 20 miles but they had been under arms
almost continuously, protecting the long line of wagons strung out
over three or four miles of mountain trail.94

“The soldiers guarding them were so dispersed that if we had
been attacked either in front, center or rear, the part so attacked
must have been cut off and totally dispersed before they could be
properly sustained by any other corps,” Washington wrote to his
brother Jack.95

And they were moving too slowly. Braddock knew that. He called
Washington aside. The Virginian had been over the route before.
He knew what to expect. Privately, Braddock asked him, what did
he think should be done?

“Push on,” said Washington.” But push on with a lighter col-
umn, unencumbered, taking only what was absolutely essential.
Leave the baggage and the train with the rest of the army, to fol-
low by slow marches as best they could.

“Marching to the French fort is certainly practicable with this
present convoy,” said St. Clair.97

Practicable maybe, but too slow, said Washington. Cut down the
number of wagons. Increase the carrying horses.

Everything they had heard, including the story told St. Clair
by the Indian who claimed to have left the French fort less than
two weeks ago, indicated that the enemy force on the Ohio was
weak but expecting reinforcements. These, to the best of Washing-
ton’s knowledge, could not arrive as long as the prevailing drought

[ 224] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

continued. The headwaters of the streams between Lake Erie and
the fort, Duquesne’s only means of communication with Canada,
would be too low for big canoe or batteau navigation.” Now was
the time to attack, before the weather changed.

“Push on!”

Braddock, mindful of St. C1air’s professional opinion that siege
operations would be necessary to reduce the fort, was not going to
do anything rash.

“Your greatest difliculty will be the subsisting of your troops,”
the Duke had said in his instructions. “Give your chief attention to
this.” 99

Dunbar, asked his opinion, began by saying it had been the prac-
tice of other commanders under whom he had served-

“Stuff!” interrupted Orme, who had little respect for any of Dun-
bar's former commanders and less for Dunbar. “You might as well
talk of your grandmother.”

“If she were alive,’' retorted Dunbar, resenting Orme’s interrup-
tion, “she would have more sense, more good manners, and know
as much of military matters as you do.”

“Gentlemen,” interrupted Braddock, “you are both warm.”

“General, you see the provocation I got,” said Dunbar.1°°

Next day, while the army rested, Braddock told Dunbar, Halkett,
and St. Clair that he had made up his mind to push ahead with a
light, picked detachment of his best troops.1°1 To clear and cut the
road, St. Clair would march the following morning with 4oo men,
two companies of Virginia rangers, and the Indian scouts. Brad-
dock himself would march the morning after with 550 rank and
file from the two British regiments, Spendlowe’s sailors, and Cap-
tain Stewart’s Virginia light horse troop. The men from the British
regiments would be picked from among those brought over from
Ireland”?

“The commanding officer of each regiment to be answerable to
His Excellency that this is complied with,” Washington wrote in
his orderly book. “No women to be victualled upon the detach-
ments that march tomorrow and Thursday.” 103

A cryptic order was posted in the camp area of Halkett’s Forty-
Fourth:

“At half an hour after 12 o'clock the Twenty to be at Dr. Mc-
Kenley’s tent, and any woman who shall be absent will be sent
back.” 104

THE LONG MARCH [ 225]

This time most of the women positively would be left behind.1°5

Sir Peter Halkett, Lieutenant Colonels Gage and Burton, Major
Sparke, 8 captains, 2o lieutenants, and 9 ensigns were listed by
name as the officers to go with the special detachment. St. Clair
was to take two 6-pounders and three wagons of tools. Braddock
would take the howitzers, the 12-pounders, and thirteen wagons,
one loaded with Indian presents, the others with ammunition. Each
column would carry thirty-five days’ provisions on pack horses. Dun-
bar would remain behind in command of the rest of the army, the
poorest troops and most of the wagons, to follow as fast as he
could.1°3

St. Clair marched at 4 A.M., Wednesday morning, June 18, with
Gage as his second in command, and Braddock on Thursday with
the rest of the special detachment. Braddock’s column carried the
King’s colors, Forty-Fourth Regiment, and the second color, Forty-
Eighth. Each of the wagons had a six-horse team, each howitzer a
team of nine, and each 12—pounder a team of seven sound horses.
Four hundred of the ablest carrying horses had been picked for
the detachment and about a hundred extras were taken along in
case of accident. Light horsemen of the Virginia troop led the line
of march, protected by the usual flanking parties.1°7

At least one sick man rode with Braddock’s column. Ever since
the halt at Martin’s plantation Washington had been suffering with
headaches and fever. Once he had quit his saddle for a jolting army
wagon of the train. His symptoms were those of the bloody flux,
which had hospitalized most of the sick left at Fort Cumberland,
but he was determined to go on.1°3

When the last of the special detachment had moved out of the
Little Meadows camp, Dunbar called his wagon masters to discuss
a plan of march for the rest of the force. To his dismay they told
him he had been left with only about a hundred four-horse teams
for a hundred and fifty wagons, and about a hundred and fifty
carrying horses for double that number of backloads of bacon and
flour. The only way he could follow Braddock would be to shuttle
forward as many wagons and backloads as his horses could move
at one time, then unhitch teams, unload pack horses and return
for another haul. Allowing no rest for the extra efforts of man or
beast, three days would be needed to advance his complete com-
mand the distance of a one-day march.1°9

The vexed and worried colonel thought he remembered Brad-

[ 12] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

It was a boy, born June 10, 1688. Protestant pamphleteers sug-
gested the baby was either a bastard, or a base-born imposter
slipped into the Queen's bed in a warming pan, probably with the
contrivance of all forty people who were reported to have crowded
into her bedroom and its anteroom to watch the royal delivery.
Even Princess Anne, who still lived at Whitehall, was skeptical of
the baby’s parentage. But Braddock’s regimental commander, Lord
Craven, a member of ‘the Privy Council, was one of those who
signed the infant's birth certificate. The child was christened James
Francis Edward.”

Only a few key conspirators knew that a letter, signed in cipher
by seven Protestant peers, had been sent secretly to Mary's husband,
William of Orange, inviting him to invade England. But every tav-
ern soon heard rumors of troop concentration on the Dutch coast.
Mail from Holland had been halted. Pacquet boats stopped sailing.
Londoners hummed the words of a new popular song:

The English confusion to Popery drink
Lillibulero Bullen a la . . .61

And late on a Saturday night, November 3, a horseman galloped
into Whitehall with the long awaited alarm. A Dutch fleet of six
hundred vessels, bound west, had sailed through the straits of Dover
that afternoon.” Three days later another jack-booted courier ar-
rived from the south coast: William of Orange and his army had
landed at Torbay, in Devon. Next came word that William, riding
into Exeter on a white horse, had been greeted by white-surpliced
choristers singing a Te Deum in the Exeter Cathedral. At Honiton,
a few miles east of Exeter, a young English viscount-colonel of
dragoons and men from the King's cavalry regiments had deserted
to join William.63

King James called a meeting of all ranking officers still in Lon-
don. One was General John Churchill. Another was the Duke of
Grafton, a bastard of the late King Charles, who had succeeded
Churchill as colonel of the First Regiment of Foot Guards. A third
was Lieutenant Braddock’s colonel, eighty-year-old Lord Craven
of the Coldstream. If any of his officers had any scruples about
fighting for him, said the King, he would be willing to take back
their commissions. But as officers and gentlemen he hoped they
would not repeat the shameful performance of the colonel of
dragoons at Honiton. There was no question of Craven’s loyalty.

[ 226] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

dock having said something about never being more than one
day’s march ahead of him. Was the General aware of the transport
problem he had created by going off with so many of the horses?
Never very adept at letter writing, Dunbar scratched off a note to
Braddock, explaining his situation and requesting further instruc-
tions. The courier returned with a curt reply. Dunbar was to do
his best, be on his guard, expect to be answerable for his conduct,
and not tease the General with comp1aints.11°

Braddock’s main column then was crossing the Casselman river, a
knee-deep stream of mountain water snaking down a wooded
valley west of Little Meadows. Indians and backwoodsmen called
the ford the soldiers used “the little crossing” to distinguish it from
“the great crossing” of the broader Youghiogheny river, farther
west.111

Two miles the other side of “the little crossing” the guides at
the head of the column ran back in alarm. They saidga large body
of enemy was advancing to attack. Croghan’s Indians had seen their
tracks. Actually, the guides had overtaken St. Clair’s advance party,
at work cutting a traverse road over the next ridge. To be safe,
Gage’s battalion was posted along the top of the ridge and remained
their under arms for two hours. No enemy appeared.112

From St. Clair’s men Orme heard that on the previous day Sca-
rouady had been surrounded and captured by a party of French and
Indians. The chief’s son, who was with his father, had escaped and
made his way back to the English. A rescue force led by the son had
found the chief tied to a tree. The chief said he had been left there
by the French who had been inclined to kill him but had spared
him when the Indians with the French threatened to desert and
join Braddock.113

Both columns encamped that night at the foot of the ridge where
St. Clair’s men had been working. When all the guns and wagons
had been drawn up closely along the trail, the line of tents pitched
on either side did not extend over three hundred yards. Underbrush
was cleared and pickets posted. The light horse pitched their tents
in a protective semi-circle behind the General’s, and the grenadiers
put theirs across the trail, horizontally, at either end of the en-
campment.114

The pace was still too slow to suit Washington. Too much time
was being taken to repair the road. “Halting to level every mold
hill and to erect bridges over every brook,” he complained.115

THE LONG MARCH [ 227 ]

But Braddock thought he knew what he was doing. He believed
communication essential to the conquest of an inaccessible country.
The military roads which old General VVade had built in Scotland,
after the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, had done as much to win Wade
a marshal’s baton as any battle he had fought.116 A couplet about
it was familiar to Braddock’s generation:

Had you seen these roads before they were made
You would lift up your hands and bless General Wade 117
Braddock also knew that his Virginia aide was too ill to travel
farther. He told Captain Morris to take care of this. That evening
Morris sent a note:

Dear Washington:
I am desired by the General to let you know that he marches tomor-
row and the next day but that he shall halt at the Great Meadows
two or three days. It is the desire of every particular in this family and
the General’s positive command to you not to stir but by the advice
of the person under whose care you are till you are better which we
all hope will be very soon. . . .113
The sick man was promised, on Braddock’s word of honor, that
he would be brought up to the front before the army reached the
French fort. Until then he was to put himself in the care of Dun-
bar's surgeon, Dr. Murdock, and try a dose of Dr. ]ames’s Powder,
a popular British cure-all.119

Next morning Washington was left at the overnight camp site
with a sergeant and a wagon, to wait for Dunbar.12° At daybreak
a force of a hundred redcoats had occupied the ridge to the west,
and they stayed there until all the artillery and baggage had passed.
No enemy was seen. The column, now half a mile long, marched
through a chain of rocky passes and stoney ravines whose steep turn-
ings and thicket undergrowth forced halt after halt while St. Clair’s
men chopped and dug.121

It was 7 P.M., three hours past their usual marching time, before
they reached a hollow in the mountains with either enough water
for the horses or enough open ground to erect their tents. Here, in
the heart of the Alleghenies, 2,300 feet above sea level, hemmed in
by an overtowering forest of oak and hemlock, Braddock’s task
force rested for two days while St. Clair’s men opened a zig-zag
trail over the next hump.122

Another packet of letters overtook them. One, from Robert
Morris, told Braddock that fifty-two wagons of oats and Indian corn

[ 228 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

were on their way to the army, and that the new Pennsylvania road
had reached Rays Town. Morris enclosed a letter from Oswego with
a detailed account of French troop movements up the lake from
Montreal, one force with several small cannon. Braddock wrote
Morris a note, thanking him for his trouble.123 According to Chris-
topher Gist and St. Clair’s maps, the expedition was approaching
the Turkey Foot, the confluence of the Casselman river and
Youghiogheny.124 The new Pennsylvania road was supposed to link
up with the old Virginia trail someplace near here. In a postscript
to his note of thanks, Braddock reminded Morris:

As it is not perfectly understood here in what part the road making
in your province is to communicate with that through which I am now
proceeding to Fort Duquesne, I must beg that you and Mr. Peters will
immediately settle it and send an express on purpose after me with
the most exact description of it, that there may be no mistake in a
matter of so much importance.125

A wagon from Philadelphia also caught up with Braddock near
this mountain camp, arousing more enthusiasm on the part of the
General’s cook, Delboux, than he had shown since arriving in Amer-
ica. The wagon was loaded with good things for the General’s
table.126 A note from Morris to Orme contained a complete inven-
tory “which you will order received” from the driver:

12 hams 2 chests of lemmons
8 cheeses 2 kegs of spirits
2 dozen flasks of oil 1 cask of vinegar
1o loaves of sugar 1 barrell of potatoes
1 cask of raisins 8 kegs of biscuit
1 box of spice and currents 1 box of pickles and mustard
4 kegs of sturgeon 3 tubs of butter (to be taken
1 keg of herring up at Shippensburg)

Regimental officers and soldiers subsisted largely on salt rations,
occasionally varied by wild turkey or lean deer shot along the road.
Somewhere Halkett’s mess had bought a calf for £3, and a tale-
bearer’s story that Halkett was living better than some of his oflicers,
who had exhausted their Pennsylvania parcels, led to unpleasant
words at headquarters.127 The ordinary soldiers’ fare was salt beef,
salt pork, salt fish, Fort Cumberland bread and beans. The sutler
had rum, but it was 20 shillings a gallon.123

The monotony of the forest, its leafy silence, and its woodsy
smells, were beginning to tell on the heavily uniformed British reg-

THE LONG MARCH [ 229 ]

ulars. They were weary of cramped little tents. They yearned for
taverns and straw-stuffed paillasses. They were tired of hauling on
drag ropes, helping tired horses pull a train of artillery over a
crooked mountain trail. They were tired of scratching “jiggers,” of
crawling through bushes in three-cornered hats and wide-skirted
coats. They were tired of bark dust on the back of their necks. They
were tired of the sound of hatchets, pickaxes, spades ringing out in
that godforsaken wilderness. They were tired of the dry daylight
heat, and of mountain nights so fresh that a man sometimes wished
for an extra blanket. They were tired of the whole bloody busi-
ness.129

“A desolate country uninhabited by anything but wild Indians,
bear and rattlesnakes," William Johnson, a commissariat officer
wrote home to England.13°

Orme noticed that the troops had lost a cheerfulness they had
shown earlier in their march. This was to be expected. So was a
certain coolness, indifference, and jealousy among the oflicers, denied
regulation comfort and restricted to the limited association of their
corps. Any discontent among the officers was bound to reach the
ranks, but there was no acute disciplinary problem.131

Once again Braddock cautioned his officers on vigilance, the con-
trol and disposition of flanking parties which, he said, must remain
at least a hundred yards from the line while on the march. At every
halt, however brief, the men were to form two deep, face outward
and stand shouldered.

“The officers and sergeants are to be very attentive to the beat of
the drum, taking care always to halt when they hear the long roll
at that part of the line from which they are detached, and to march
upon the beating of the long march,” said an order to correct some
of the slackness the General kept noticing.132

There was no excuse for lack of vigilance in Braddock’s book,
which was Bland’s, Chapter VII, page 132——genera1 rules for the
marching of a regiment of foot, or a detachment of men, where
there is a possibility of being attacked by an enemy:

There is not anything in which an officer shows his want of conduct
so much as in suffering himself to be surprised, either upon his post or
in marching with a body of men under his command, without being
prepared to make a proper defense, and by not having taken the nec-
essary precautions to prevent it.133

[ 230] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

When the road had been cleared for another six rough miles,
they broke camp and marched through a long defile toward what
the guides called “the great” or “the middle crossing” of the Yough~
iogheny. Three Mohawks came into the camp they made that night.
The Indians said they had left the French fort only a few days ago.
Taken to the General’s tent and questioned, they said reinforce-
ments had reached the fort from Montreal and more were ex-
pected, but provisions were scarce because low water had stopped
river navigation between the Ohio and Lake Erie. During the night
the Mohawks sneaked off, taking with them one of Croghan’s ten
Indians, a fellow who had been seen lagging on the flanks, looking
as if he wanted to desert.134

“VV e could not punish him,” said Orme, to explain what appeared
to be another bit of carelessness.135 “The Indians are so extremely
jealous that we feared it would produce a general dissatisfaction.”

At 5 next morning, June 24, they marched again and forded the
Youghiogheny, a swift-flowing mountain river of blue-green water.
The stream was a hundred yards wide but only three feet deep at
the rifile where they crossed. Along the trail, later that day, they
came upon the deserted huts of an Indian encampment which
looked as if it had just been abandoned. Croghan’s scouts estimated
that there had been about 170 French and Indians in the party.
Some of the trees around the huts had been stripped of their bark.
Scrawled in French on the bare white wood were scurrilous threats
and taunts which few of the redcoats could read.133

That afternoon Braddock’s column again overtook St. Clair’s,
and again the two detachments encamped together for the night.
The General was still dissatisfied with the operation of his outly-
ing flanking parties, commanded by subalterns and sergeants. They
were not keeping within sight of the line, he said.137 “The General
is determined to put the first officer under arrest whom he shall find
negligent in these duties,” said an order written up that night.133

Any doubt that the column now was under enemy observation
was removed next morning when three batmen, wandering beyond
the Sentinels, were shot and scalped. A horse and a Wagoner also
were killed. Immediately parties were sent out to scour the woods
and drive in any stray horses. But the scalping party had vanished.
Morbid soldiers looked on the butchery, three gory heads, and
shuddered. Obediently, at beat of drum they fell into line again

THE LONG MARCH [231 ]

and toiled across another rolling upland valley called the Great
Meadows.139

They passed the ruined palisades and feeble breastworks of Wash-
ington’s Fort Necessity, captured and destroyed by the French and
Indians the previous summer. The fort was a little thing, already
grass-grown and forlorn, at the bottom of the valley. Its location
did not recommend it to Braddock’s officers as a piece of military
engineering. The place could be swept by musket fire from almost
any of the hills around it.140

Some of the Virginians with St. Clair had been in the fight at
Fort Necessity. Presuming to speak on the subject of Indian war-
fare with more authority than British regulars, they predicted trou-
ble for anybody who depended entirely on the platoon firing drilled
into them at Alexandria and Fort Cumberland. Capt. Thomas Wag-
gener, a veteran of the past summer's campaign, now commanding
a company of rangers, was one of those who knew how the French
and their Indian allies fought. He had seen them, right here. They
had scattered, used cover, fired at will at anything that moved.141

Two miles west of the Great Meadows the trail descended so
abruptly that the sailors were obliged to get out their block and
tackle to ease guns and wagons safely down an incline. Here the
column stopped for the night, in a small stream valley overgrown
with crabapple trees. The memory of that morning's three scalp-
ings was still uppermost in soldiers’ minds. They cleared all brush
from the camp site with alacrity. The light horse and a small body
of volunteers searched the woods around the camp for any lurking
Indians. Nervous sentinels fired at every rustling. As a sporting
proposition, to ease their tension, Braddock promised five pounds
to any man who took an enemy scalp.14-‘Z

On the next day’s march a British soldier picked up a written
commission which mentioned a party under the command of Sieur
Normanville, and that night they halted among the chestnut trees
near the foot of a high, rocky cliff where the fires of another Indian
camp were still burning. On barked trees they read more French
names and taunts scrawled in charcoal.143 Waggener and Scarouady
knew the rocks of this cliff well. Just about a year ago, with Wash-
ington and the Half King, a sachem friendly to the English, they
had surprised a small party of French and Indians here. The Half
King had revenged himself with scalping knife and tomahawk on
the French who, he said, had boiled and eaten his father.144

[232 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

The trail divided at the rocks, one track running off through the
hills in a northwesterly direction, along a stream called Redstone
Creek, toward the Monongahela, and the other turning northeast,
along the crest of another high and mighty mountain range—the
last, according to the guides. The tracks of the Indians who had
abandoned the camp at the rocks also seemed to divide, some going
one way, some the other. That night ninety volunteers set out along
the creek trail, hoping to overtake the Indians who had gone in
that direction. In the morning the rest of the troops swung north-
easterly, following a route taken earlier by St. C1air’s men.145

That night, Friday, June 27, the entire force reassembled at
Christopher Gist’s deserted plantation, a stumpy clearing on the
other side of the mountain. Heaps of ashes and charred logs were
all that remained of plantation cabins burned a year ago by the
Indians. The volunteers returning from Redstone Creek had found
a quantity of provisions and a batteau, which they had destroyed,
but no enemy.146 Bacon was issued that night, and some of the
more energetic soldiers baked what they called bread before they
left Gist’s next morning. The last of the army rum, which His
Excellency was “pleased to give to the men in consideration of their
good behavior,” was doled by Leslie, the assistant Commissary. The
sutler’s price was up to four shillings a pint now, almost beyond
an olficer’s reach.147

On Friday, June 27, they were back on the west bank of the loop-
ing Youghiogheny. For the first time in a week they rested. The
French fort was only fifty miles away. An engagement with the en-
emy could be expected at any time. Some of the soldiers were grow-
ing nervous, firing at imaginary Indians. The General said there
was entirely too much shooting in an irregular and unmilitary
fashion. Even if it were necessary to fire the men's pieces when
old charges could not be withdrawn, officers should apply to the
General, through one of his aides, for permission to shoot. He
wanted no unnecessary alarms.143

Sunday, June 29, 1755, was the day Lieut.-Col. James Wolfe,
whose Twentieth Foot had been shifted from Exeter to Winchester,
in England, wrote his father:

I have some letters from Braddock’s army, giving a very favorable

account of the General’s proceedings, and of his good behavior to the
people under his command; this gives me high hopes of his success if

THE LONG MARCH [ 2 33 ]

Baron Dieskau does not arrive in time, with his succours, to stop the

progress of our arms.149

Lieut.-Gen. Baron Ludwig August von Dieskau, a German-born
cavalry oflicer who had served under Marshal Saxe, commanded
three thousand French regulars on their way to Canada. The troops
were aboard a fleet of eighteen vessels that had sailed from \Brest
on the third of May.15° Braddock knew something of this. The
weekly Maryland Gazette had been printing items about the prep-
aration of a French fleet to put to sea, 30 ships with 10 battalions,
perhaps 6,000 men. The paper said Governor Dinwiddie had told
the Virginia Burgesses that six French men-of-war with transports
had arrived at Louisburg. The Gazette also reported parts of the
Maryland colony burned up with drought. Oats and flax were hard
hit. But the weather was still against any French reinforcement of
Dusquesne by canoe.151

On the last day of June, Braddock's advanced force re-crossed
the Youghiogheny. This was “the main crossing,” twice as broad as
“the great crossing,” but a placid ford not more than three feet
deep. The river crossing was executed in precise military fashion.
An advance guard waded through the stream and posted itself on
the far bank until all baggage and artillery had cleared the ford
safely. A rear guard of four hundred redcoats was the last unit
over. The column moved only about half a mile beyond the ford,
pitching camp until St. Clair’s men could widen the trail up a high
b1uff.152

Four days’ supply of bacon and flour was issued here so that the
troops might cook and bake the victuals they would carry on the
next leg of their march. The men also drew and cleaned their
arms that day, sending damaged cartridges back to the ammunition
wagons. Fires were forbidden in front of the pickets, a precaution
against enemy Indians stealing up on them unobserved, guided by
flame or smoke.153 After dark sentries were doubled. The last
courier to come up the trail from Fort Cumberland had brought
news of an outbreak of Indian attacks in the back settlements.
About twenty people had been killed, scalped, or carried off.154

Still awaiting word as to where the new Pennsylvania road would
connect with the old road and, perhaps, with some apprehension
as to the possibility that his line of communication with Wills
Creek might be cut, Braddock wrote another letter to Morris at
Philadelphia:

[234] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

As I shall soon be in want of supplies from your province, I must
beg you would order all possible dispatch to be made use of in finish-
ing the new road as far as the Crow Foot of the Youghiogheny and
afterwards send forward to me such articles or provision as shall be in
your power.

Some of the inhabitants near Fort Cumberland having been killed
and taken prisoner by straggling parties of Indians, the people in these
parts have been deterred from coming to the camp. My chief depend-
ence must therefore be upon your province, where the road will be
secure from insults and attacks of that kind. . . . I hope soon to have
an express from you with an exact account of the place fixed upon for
the communication between the two roads.155

The five miles Braddock’s troops marched the next day were the
muddiest they had travelled. Long overdue rain had softened the
trail and they halted on the edge of a wide swamp extending up
and down a wooded valley. They were two days getting through this
muck. A lot of old timber had to be cut away before St. Clair’s car-
penters could build a bridge and lay a corduroy road.153

The rain also damaged some of the backloads of flour on the
carrying horses. Braddock sent Dunbar orders for a hundred horses
with more flour, and for some of the Pennsylvania beeves promised
by Morris, if the drovers had delivered them. St. Clair proposed
that when the advance force went into camp on July 3, they stay
there until Dunbar could bring up the train.157 Dunbar was com-
ing slowly, advancing only 6 or 7 miles every three days.153 Brad-
dock, habitually open to suggestions, called a council of war to
hear the opinion of his other field officers on St. Clair’s suggestion.
Halkett, Gage, Burton, Sparkes, St. Clair, and Orme attended.
Orme set down the circumstances for consideration:

Dunbar’s most advanced units probably were no nearer than the
Great Crossing of the Youghiogheny, eleven days’ march by the light
detachment. The road had been improved as they went along but it
was unlikely that Dunbar, short on horses, could cover the distance
within less than eleven days.

Any horses sent back to help Dunbar would be at least two days on
the way and too tired and weak to be of much assistance when they
reached him. Even if reunited the two commands would be unable to
proceed together because of the shortage of good horses.

It would be impractical to detach any more troops from Dunbar to
increase the strength of the advance column.

Dunbar was in much less danger of attack where he was than he
would be in a more advanced position.

Time lost waiting for Dunbar would further deplete existing stocks

THE LONG MARCH [5235]

of supplies and, perhaps, force another halt for re-supply farther on.
Any delay now would be to the advantage of the French who would
use the time to strengthen their defences and, in the meanwhile, might
receive reinforcements and supplies from Canada.
The conjecture was that the enemy must be weak at this time.
Otherwise he would have made some effort to defend defiles and
stream crossings which the British had passed without opposition.159

The council agreed to proceed without waiting for Dunbar.
Braddock sent for Croghan and asked him to try to persuade some
of his Indian scouts, who had stuck close to the marching troops
ever since the Great Meadows’ scalping, to range ahead and take a
look at the French fort. Croghan talked to the Indians. Neither
promises nor presents would overcome their reluctance to go that
far ahead.16°

But additional precautions were taken against surprise. The men
were told that the bell tents, ordinarily put up at every encamp-
ment to protect their arms against the weather, would no longer
be erected. From now on the soldiers would sleep with their arms
in their own tents, pitched in a single row along the trail, facing
outward. Company oflicers were instructed to inspect arms every
evening before the beating of retreat, to be sure they were in good
working order. Half of the advanced pickets would remain con-
stantly under arms with fixed bayonets, and during their two-hour
relief they should stay at their posts, lying down on their mus-
kets.131

All troops loaded with fresh cartridges when the drums beat as-
sembly next morning. That day they marched six miles through a
fairly open forest of white oak. All the way from Little Meadows
the carrying horses and their batmen, each armed with a firelock,
had been a drag, falling in behind the main body. But now that the
woods had thinned, batmen with horses were ordered to march on
the flanks, between the pickets and the line, falling in at the rear
only when the undergrowth became too thick or the trail too
narrow.162

Next day, Saturday, July 5, the troops rested again. A train of
flour-laden packhorses and a herd of beeves came up, sent forward
by Dunbar in obedience to Braddock’s order. Some of the officers’
women left behind with Dunbar came up, too.133 Croghan talked
again to his Indians and this time prevailed upon two of them to
go up the trail and look for the enemy. Christopher Gist set off

ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION or A GUARDSMAN [ 13]

Churchill, who already had made secret overtures to William,
brazenly declared that he would fight to the last drop of his blood
for the King. The Duke of Grafton was equally emphatic in his
protestation of loyalty.“

James set out by coach for Salisbury. Churchill and Grafton fol-
lowed him. Within a week, both of them, along with Princess
Anne’s husband, Prince George of Denmark, had sneaked away in
the night to join William. At Whitehall, where Braddock was on
duty with the Coldstream, sentinels were doubled over General
Monck’s old house, a dwelling in the palace yard where Anne lived
with Churchill’s wife, Sarah. But a morning came when both
women were gone. Lord Craven himself questioned the sentries.
He was told that in the middle of the night the Princess and the
General’s wife had slipped down a back stairway and left by a side
door.“

“God help me,” groaned the King when he got back from Salis-
bury. “My own children have forsaken me!” 66

“The great favorites at court, priests and Jesuits, fly or abscond,”
Evelyn wrote in his diary for December 3. “Everything, till now
concealed, flies abroad in the public prints, or is carried in the
streets. . . . It looks like a revolution.” 37

London rowdies barricaded streets, brandishing sticks tied with
orange ribbon and shouting:

“No Poperyl A free Parliament! The Protestant religion.” 38

The palace gates at Whitehall were closed. A cavalry troop kept
its horses saddled. The Chapel Royal plate taken to the home of
the Spanish Ambassador near Lincoln’s Inn Fields was stolen when
a mob broke into the embassy, sacked the house, and set it afire.69

On the night of December lo the Queen and the infant Prince
of Wales left Whitehall. Half a dozen sentries saw them go, about
2 o'clock in the morning—two men, two nurses, the Queen, and the
baby Prince. They went out through a little garden, using a master
key. A carriage was waiting for them.“

Next night the King himself left, by a secret door in his bedroom
and a private stairway. Wearing a short black periwig, an old
camlet cloak, and a pair of shabby boots, he passed himself off on
the Coldstream sentries as a servant of Sir Edward Hales, a Catholic
who commanded the Fourteenth Regiment of Foot. The King's flight
was revealed at breakfast time by the Duke of Northumberland,
another royal bastard who commanded a troop of Life Guards.

[ 2 36 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

quietly on a scouting expedition of his own.1°4 They were now
within twenty miles of the forks of the Ohio.

In the pallid dawn of the Sabbath the drums again beat reveille
in the forest. Down came the tents. Teams were hitched up. The
Redcoats fell in. A company of grenadiers tramped off with the ad-
vance guard, and the batmen led their carrying horses to either
side. At proper interval behind the grenadiers the drummers
thumped the march,-—when gunfire echoed sharply through the
woods. Somebody screamed—three men were screaming.

Enemy Indians had waylaid three stragglers behind the advance
guard. The grenadiers turned back. They were too late. Three
bodies, scalps torn and ripped from the crowns of their heads, lay
bleeding in the tangled honeysuckle and black leaf mold beside the
trail.

Firing broke out at the head of the column. Some of Croghan’s
Indians had caught sight of the scalping party and had scattered
among the trees, shooting at them. In the excitement the Virginia
rangers mistook Croghan’s men for the enemy and began shooting
at their own Indians. They shot and killed Scarouady’s son.165

They came into camp shaken that evening. The body of the
chief's son lay in an ammunition wagon. Braddock sent for Sca-
rouady and the other Indians and expressed his condolence. Officers
were asked to attend the funeral of the chief's son, held that eve-
ning. A firing squad discharged a volley over his grave. This ap-
peared to please the Indians, but they probably obtained more
genuine satisfaction from the scalp of a French officer brought back
by Croghan’s two Indian scouts, who claimed Braddock’s bounty,
the £5 he had promised for an enemy scalp. They said they had
killed the Frenchman while he was shooting game within half a
mile of Fort Duquesne.1°6

The two scouts told Braddock they had seen few tracks, few men,
and only a few boats on the river near the fort, and that no new
defenses had been built. The enemy held none of the passes along
the trail between the British camp and the fort. Gist, who also re-
turned to camp that evening, told the same story. He said he had
tried to get close to the fort the night before but had been discov-
ered and nearly captured by two Indians. The only other sign of
a human being he had seen between the camp and the fort had been
a single wisp of smoke. But Braddock relaxed none of his vigilance.

THE LONG MARCH [ 237 ]

He put out an order that during any halt, while on the march, half
of each of the advance parties should remain under arms with fixed
bayonets, the other half sitting down by their weapons.167

Next day the column advanced cautiously. Small parties occa-
sionally quit the trail to look for a crossing over Turtle Creek, a
Monongahela tributary that cut across their line of march. The
creek turned and twisted between precipitous hills which rose a
sheer three hundred feet on either side. Descent was impossible
for wagons and artillery. At Braddock’s suggestion Sir John St.
Clair rode off with a hundred men, the Indian guides and light
horse to search for a route across the gulch.163 Two hours later the
Quartermaster returned. He said he had found a ridge which ap-
parently led all the way to the fort, avoiding dangerous defiles.
Some work would be necessary to make it passable for wagons and
artillery. It was too late to begin work that day. The army encamped
for the night where it was.139

Braddock talked with Gist and the other guides, who knew the
ground between them and the French fort. They told him the
Monongahela flowed through a narrows just ahead of them, a haz-
ardous pass for a marching column. If the troops followed a trail
on this side of the river, they would have the river close to their
left and a sharp bluff on their right. At the end of the narrows
they would again face the Turtle Creek ravine. But the river was
shallow, its banks low, and it had two good fords, the guides said.
A safer and easier way for wagons and artillery, and the only route
by which they could avoid the Turtle Creek ravine, would be to
ford the Monongahela above the narrows, follow the river's com-
paratively broad and flat left bank to a second ford, below the
mouth of Turtle Creek, and recross the river there. A bend in the
river would make this route fairly direct.17°

Braddock thought the double river crossing a logical plan, but
Scarouady advised him not to enter the narrows until both sides
of the river had been thoroughly reconnoitered. The chief warned
the General that a better spot for an ambuscade could not be
found.171 Braddock thought he could take care of that. In the
morning he moved his force nearer the river bank, pitching an
overnight camp on some rising ground near a big spring, within
less than a mile of the upper ford.172

Here \/Vashington rejoined the General’s staff. His fever was
down, but he was still so weak that he had made the trip from

[238 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Dunbar’s camp in a covered wagon. At the rate Dunbar was mov-
ing, it would be another three weeks before the train caught up
with the advance. That is, if his horses held out. They were so weak
that Washington had come away doubting they would 1ast.173 “I
believe shortly he will not be able to stir at all,” he said.174

Oflicers and men at Dunbar’s camp had been stricken with the
flux. Their communication with Fort Cumberland had ceased since
the Indian raids on the settlements. In one of the most savage of
these, said to have occurred near Wills Creek, a boy had been
knocked down and scalped for dead, then regained consciousness to
see an Indian scalping his mother. Dunbar’s only brush with the
enemy had been harassing night alarms.175

Washington tried, without much success, to impress upon Brad-
dock and his staff the pecularities of Indian warfare. The Vir-
ginian doubted that platoon firing, even by regulars, was an ade-
quate defense against Indian attack. But the British officers were
confident that their men could meet any battle situation. Brad-
dock himself had a guardsman’s contempt for the French as an
enemy. Regularity and discipline were what counted. Some of Brad-
dock’s soldiers had been shocked by the scalpings they had seen,
but there was no indication they had lost their nerve.173

Even Shirley was optimistic of the outcome. So far the enemy had
shown no strength, no inclination to give battle. Awed by the ap-
proach of an overwhelming force, it was always possible they might
not stand and fight at all. Maybe the British would reach the forks
of the Ohio to find the French fort dismantled and abandoned.
There had been reports of a French withdrawal to Canada. Orme
suspected, from what scouts and observers had told him, that the
French were alarmed by Braddock’s approach.177

St. Clair suggested the feasibility of sending a detachment on a
night march to invest the fort that night, before its garrison had
time to blow it up. He begged Braddock to give him command of a
force of 400 men “to go ahead and hinder any sortie to be made on
the convoy.” But after some discussion of the distance—the fort
was still ten miles away——he agreed it might be prudent to wait
until the next camp.173

Halkett wanted Braddock to order a reconnaissance by his In-
dian scouts that night. But the camp gossip was that Halkett and
the General were not on speaking terms. Sir Peter disapproved of
the line of march, thought more men should be trained as cannon-

THE LONG MARCH [ 2 39]

eers, and had suggested that blockhouses and stockades be built
along the road they had made. According to one story Braddock
had told Halkett publicly that “he was a fool and wanted leading
strings.” Another story was that Braddock had threatened to take
away his regiment, that Halkett had retorted he was not dependent
upon it for a livelihood, and that if his honor had not been con-
cerned he would never have come on the expedition. Orme told
Washington he had had a time trying to keep peace at headquar-
ters.179

The troops received two days’ meat and two days’ flour that day.
Each soldier was to have twenty-four rounds of powder and ball.
Oflicers inspected their ammunition. Tomorrow, the men were told,
they would wear knapsacks and haversacks, and leave tents behind
for the quartermaster.18° Other orders issued before the drums beat
retreat that night were:

Lieut. Co. Gage would parade at 2 A.M. with two companies of
grenadiers, 160 rank and file from the 44th and 48th, Gates’ inde-
pendent company, two 6-pounders and proper guides. They would
pass both fords of the river and take post, after the second crossing,
to secure the passage for the rest of the troops.

St. Clare would march at 4 A.M., with 200 men to clear the way for
the baggage and artillery.

All troops except those on the night’s picket duty would draw 8c
clean their pieces and all would load with fresh cartridges at the beat-
ing of The General in the morning.131

Bishop would look to the General’s pistols, a beautiful pair of
brass-fitted flintl0cks—0fficers’ light weight holster pistols made by
Gabbitas, a Bristol gunsmith. Their shining eight-inch brass bar-
rels, belled toward the muzzle, were set in polished walnut stocks.
Engraved on the monoplate of each were the General’s initials,
“E. B.” Must have cost at least £8 or £12 the pair.182

XIII

INTO BATTLE

July 8-12, 1755

-—--——:-<©>>-—»-——-

HE MOUNTAINS crossed by the forest trail from Wills Creek to
Tthe Ohio made observation easy for the French and their In-
dian allies. They could not mistake the smoke of Braddock’s camp-
fires in the solitude of an uninhabited wilderness. In its silence
they could not lose the beat of his drums, or the peal of axes in
St. Clair’s working party, much less the blasts set off by Gordon
and his men to blow boulders from the bed of the road they were
building.

From the time the Redcoats waded across the Casselman river
their movements had been watched by the enemy.1 As the column
neared the Monongahela, runners were dispatched to the French
fort to keep its commandent advised of the progress of Braddock’s
troops and the formations in which they marched? French scouts
estimated the British to number about 3,000 men, a force “Si bien
sur leur gardes, marchant toujours en bataille,” that efforts to
harass them with small detachments had been futile.3

Pierre Claude Pecaudy, Sieur de Contrecoeur, who had occu-
pied the forks of the Ohio in the spring of 17 54 and built the fort
named for his governor, the Marquise of Duquesne, was still on the
post,4 but during the winter he had asked to be relieved. Duquesne
had sent Captain Daniel Hyacinth Mary Lienard de Beaujeu from
Quebec to replace him but asked Contrecouer to stay on at the
fort until after the expected British operations.5

[240]

INTO BATTLE [ 241 ]

Captain Beaujeu, forty-four years old, was the Canadian-born
son of a former mayor of Quebec, Louis Leinard de Beaujeu. The
father had been born at Versailles, son of an officer of the royal
guards, and had come to Canada before the end of the past century.
He had prospered, rising from an ensign to a captain of the French
marines in Canada. He had received grants of land on the Chambly
river and had been decorated with the cross of St. Louis. The elder
Beaujeu was not one of those rough, roving bushrangers content
with an Indian squaw for a wife. He had married the widow of
Charles Juchereau, sieur de St. Denis.6

Beaujeu’s second son, Daniel, born August 9, 171 1, was one of five
children. He had followed his father into the service and married a
French Canadian wife. By 1748 young Beaujeu also was a captain
of marines, sufficiently experienced in Indian affairs to attend a
Quebec conference which the French governor held with the
sachems of the Six Nations. In time young Captain Beaujeu became
the French commandant at Detroit and, later, at Niagara. He was
awarded the Cross of St. Louis.7

The French fort which he now commanded at the forks of the
Ohio was garrisoned by an inadequate force of probably less than
300 regulars and militia. Only a few small cannon, brought down
from Canada by canoe, were mounted on its ramparts. The design
of the fort, with four bastions, was more impressive than its con-
struction. Its ramparts were cribs of squared logs filled with earth.
Outside the fort, where the forest had been cleared away for the
distance of a musket shot, about 800 Indians had built wigwams
and bark sheds.3 Some were “French praying” Indians 9 from Can-
ada and the lakes where they had been baptised by French mis-
sionaries. Others were from western Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the
Ohio valley. None were reliable in time of battle.”

With or without the Indians the fort was in no condition to with-
stand the sort of siege Braddock was prepared to lay. Under these
circumstances a cautious commander had a choice of two well-
established alternatives: he could wait for Braddock’s attack, make
a token resistance, and surrender with honors of war, or he could
destroy the fort and withdraw before the attack was delivered. But
at least one of his subordinate officers, Captain Jean Dumas, was
not a cautious man. He urged Beaujeu and Contrecoeur to attack
the British before they reached the fort.“

[242] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

To arms, to arms! my jolly grenadiers!
Hark, how the drums do roll it along! . . .

were the opening verses of a ballad popular in southeastern Pennsyl-
vania’s Chester county,” a safe three hundred miles from the
French.

March on, march on, brave Braddock leads the foremost;
The battle is begun, as you can see. . . .

But out in the border country, where the battle had begun at the
end of June, with a series of Indian raids, no songs were being sung
about it. Brave Braddock was beyond the frontier, too far west to
provide any protection for settlers in the mountain valleys behind
him.

Within a fortnight, nine Virginia families had been murdered by
bands of Indians near Fort Cumberland. Twenty-six back country
Maryland settlers had been killed or carried off. The road beyond
Fort Cumberland, traveled almost daily during the past month
by teamsters, drovers and messengers, was deserted. On the trail be-
tween Dunbar and Braddock a soldier had been found scalped and
with his throat cut. The last letter received at the fort from Brad-
dock’s camp was dated July 1.13

On the third of July three Indians waylaid Arnold Virgoras, a
hired man and 18-year-old James Smith on the new Pennsylvania
road between Rays Town and the Turkey Foot. Young Smith, the
brother-in-law of a road superintendent, had been sent out to hurry
along provision wagons for the road workers. Virgoras was shot and
scalped before his eyes, and the youth was carried off a prisoner.
About 9 o’clock that night Indians attacked a fortified storehouse
used by the workmen beyond Rays Town. Next night there was an-
other alarm. Fourteen men already had deserted Captain Peter
Hogg’s understrength company of forty Virginia rangers, detached
by Braddock to guard the road cutters and their provision wagons.
Thirty frightened laborers, who had no arms, quit their job the
following morning and started home.“

On July 7, the day Braddock reached Turtle Creek, the three
Indians who had captured young Smith arrived at Fort Duquesne
with their prisoner. The boy was ready to drop after a four-day
journey over the mountains at Indian pace. Blinded with sand
and clubbed into unconsciousness when forced to run the gauntlet
through the Indian village outside the fort, he was bled and re-

INTO BATTLE [ 243]

vived in the fort hospital by a French doctor, then questioned
about the number of men at work on the new Pennsylvania road.15

Threatened with death if he lied, young Smith told the truth.
He said there were about 300. Asked if they were well armed, he
lied. He said they were, although he knew they had no more than
thirty-five guns among them, not counting those of Hogg’s rangers.
He was not asked about Braddock, but the boy wondered where
the British were. Not far away, he hoped. They were his only hope
of rescue.16

One of the Indians who had captured Smith was a Delaware who
spoke imperfect English. The youth asked him what the news was
from Braddock’s army. The Delaware replied that the Indians
spied on the British every day and showed him, by making marks
on the ground with a stick, how the soldiers were advancing in
close order, how the Indians would surround them, taking cover
behind trees.

“Shoot urn down all one pigeon,” said the Delaware.”

An ensign with a detachment of French and Indians, sent out
by Beaujeu to pinpoint Braddock’s position, had returned with
word that the British were within eight leagues of Duquesne. A
second scouting party had come back to report them within six
leagues and approaching in three columns.18 By that time Beaujeu
had made a decision: he would ambush Braddock.

But he was having trouble persuading the Indians at the fort to
help.

“What, my father, do you wish to die and sacrifice us?” one
warrior asked the French captain. “The English are more than
4,000 and we are but 800 and you wish us to attack them. You
know very well you have no hopes.”

Beaujeu argued otherwise. He was not afraid. He had a French
Canadian wife and a son to consider, too.19

“Give us until tomorrow to make up our minds,” a chief told
him.

That night, while Braddock’s troops encamped near the Monon-
gahela, the Indians at the fort held a council?”

Early next morning Smith was awakened by a great stir in the
fort. Barrels of gunpowder, bullets, and flints were rolled out of
the magazine and upended at the gate of the fort where the barrel
heads were knocked in. In the fort’s log chapel of the Assumption
of the Blessed Virgin at the Beautiful River, Beaujeu knelt in con-

[244] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

fession before the gray-robed chaplain, the Reollect Father Denys
Baron. With other French officers and soldiers the Captain re-
ceived the holy communion. Stripped to the waist, Indian fashion,
with his silver gorget around his neck, Beaujeu then led his men
from the fort, a force of about 2oo French and Canadians. Contre-
coeur was left in command of the post with what remained of its
garrison.“

“I am determined to meet the English,” Beaujeu told the Indians.

They said they had not changed their mind in council. They
would not go with him.

“What! Will you let your father go alone?” he cried. “I am cer-
tain of defeating them.” 22

Some of the more reckless braves, naked except for breech clouts,
already had daubed themselves with red, blue, black, and brown
war paint. Smith watched them, huddled at the gate of the fort. A
Huron chief, Anthanases, and another named Pontiac wavered.

As they hesitated, a party of Indian scouts who had been up the
river watching the British came into the fort. They told Beaujeu
they had left the troops near the upper ford of the Monongahela.
Apparently the British were going to follow the trail along the
river.

“You see, my friends,” said Beaujeu, turning back to the hesi-
tant chiefs, “the English are going to throw themselves into the
lion's mouth. They are weak sheep who pretend to be ravenous
wolves. Those who love their father, follow me! You need only
hide yourselves in the ravines which line the road, and when you
hear us strike, strike yourselves. The victory is ours!” A flutter of
excitement burst into a frenzy. Suddenly braves crowded around
the bullet and powder kegs at the gate, scooping in with their
powder horns, filling their bullet pouches. The Indians had
changed their minds.23

Beaujeu led the way up the forest track toward the lower ford.
Smith, watching them go, fixed the number of Indians at around
400. He wondered how they dared set out against Braddock with
so small a party, and hoped the British would send them back
aflying.24

Braddock also was on his way toward the ford. Gage had marched
with the advance guard, but not until well after daybreak. Fiddling
with tents and baggage, his men had been delayed. The light horse-
men rode ahead, over a hill and down the trail toward the Monon-

INTO BATTLE [ 245]

gahela. The grenadiers followed, four abreast, with the usual flank-
ing parties. About 7 o’clock a band of maybe thirty Indians burst
out of the bushes beside the road but scattered among the trees
before the troops could fire.25

Where Gage and his men came out on its bank, the Monongahela
was about three hundred yards wide, a shallow stream of glittering,
gurgling riflles in the hazy morning sunshine.” This was the upper
ford. The river came around a bend, a mile above the soldiers, and
turned the other way half a mile below. Cliffs and wooded hills
hemmed it in except for a stretch of bottom land where the sol-
diers were, and another flat farther down on the other side in the
wide sweep of another bend.27

If French or Indians intended to dispute the crossing, this was
the place to be ready for an attack. The light horsemen rode out
into the stream, cautiously. The water was unusually low because
of the drought, not more than a foot or two at its deepest.” The
grenadiers waded in. The pebbly river bottom was firm. The tired,
famished little horses hitched to two brass 6-pounders splashed in.
If chains slackened and heads went down to drink the teamsters
shouted and laid on their whips. This was no time, no place to
dally.

Safely across, the foot soldiers wet to their knees, Gage’s column
marched down the river bank and around its broad bend to the
second ford, generally opposite but slightly downstream from the
mouth of Turtle Creek. Here the sandy banks on either side of
the river were about twelve feet high and almost perpendicular.
Gage left his two 6-pounders on the left bank and recrossed the
river with his infantry. St. Clair, following closely with tool wagons,
carpenters, and pioneers, put his men to work sloping both banks
down to the ford so wagons and artillery could cross more easily.”

It was about 11 o'clock. Except for some footprints on the bank
at the lower ford, no sign of an enemy had been seen since Gage
flushed the Indians above the upper ford. Braddock had crossed
the upper ford about 8 o’clock with the main body, wagons, artil-
lery, packhorses and a drove of cattle.3° He and his staff had ridden
a mile or so down the west bank when they met a horseman with
a note from Gage informing Braddock that he had recrossed the
river without interference and taken a position on the right bank
commanding the lower ford.31

By the time Braddock reached the lower ford St. Clair’s working

[ 14] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

The Duke was a Lord of the Bedchamber. In the absence of the
Queen he had slept on a pallet in the King’s room. He said the
King had got up and left about 3 A.M., giving him strict orders
not to open the door of the bed-chamber until the usual hour.“

All the higher army officers in London met later that day in
Whitehall. Presumably on the advice of Lord Craven they decided
to submit to Wi1liam’s authority; but they agreed, until they knew
more about his intentions, to keep their men together and help
civil authorities maintain order.”

On the following Sunday afternoon, much to everybody’s sur-
prise, the King came riding back to Whitehall in his coach with a
mounted escort of Life Guards. He had expected to make his get-
away on a Custom House hoy moored on the Thames below the
city, but a party of Kentish fishermen had upset his plan by rob-
bing him and bringing him ashore without, at first, recognizing
him.73

His flight interrupted, James wrote a letter to the Prince of
Orange, now at Windsor, asking him to come to London for a con-
ference and telling him that St. James’s Palace would be placed at
his disposal. But the King had scarcely settled himself at Whitehall
that Sunday afternoon when a Dutch officer, Count Zulestein, and
two Dutch trumpeters cantered up to the palace gate under a flag
of truce, with William’s reply.

“Since I am here I hope he will come to St. James’s,’' the King
told the Count.

“I must plainly tell Your Majesty,” replied Zulestein, “that His
Highness the Prince will not come to London while there are any
troops here which are not under his orders.”

Zulestein rode away and the King went to bed. The Coldstream
mounted guard as usual.74

Country people coming into London for market early next morn-
ing said blue-coated Dutch soldiers had occupied the suburban
villages of Chelsea and Kensington, west of the city. All that day
the guards at Whitehall and St. James’s kept looking westward, ex-
pecting to see the Dutch. None had appeared when night fell, but
a little after 10 o'clock a Coldstream sentry at St. James’s challenged
several horsemen riding down the mall in the park.

“Stand!” cried the sentry. “For whom are you?”

“The Prince of Orange.”

One of the horsemen was Count de Solmes, an officer of Wil-

[ 246] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

party had finished on that side and crossed to complete the job of
grading an incline up the opposite bank. Braddock ordered guns
and wagons drawn up along the river and pickets posted on the
steep hillside behind.32

As far as Braddock and his aides could see, the other side of the
river was a deserted mass of wooded hills.33 Almost directly oppo-
site, just below the incline where St. Clair’s picks and shovels
clinked and grated, lay the charred logs of a cabin which both
Gist and Washington recognized as that of John Fraser, the Scot
trader and gunsmith.34 They had stopped there in December, 17 54,
on their way back to Virginia after delivering Dinwiddie’s ulti-
matum to the French commander at Fort Le Boeuf. The river had
been high then, its banks icy and deserted. The trees on the sur-
rounding hills had been brown and bare.35

Now the river valley was warm and green—-too warm to suit the
heavily uniformed Redcoats of the two regiments, momentarily
grateful for any shade.36 The hills ahead looked no cooler than
those they had been climbing for the last month. Avidly they sur-
veyed the river bank for some signs of habitation, something more
than Fraser’s cabin. After all, the French were a civilized people.
Maybe, when they reached the French fort, the British would find
at least one tavern, a decent place for a good thick slice of meat
and a stiff tot of cheap rum.37

Shortly after noon St. Clair’s workmen on the other side of the
river tossed their tools into a tumbril. The slope up the bank from

the edge of the river had been finished. Braddock sent Morris over ’

to Gage and St. Clair with orders to march on until 3 o'clock when,
it was presumed, the entire column would bivouac for the night.
They would invest the fort in the morning. The artillerymen of
the two 6-pounders, which had been guarding the ford, limbered
up their pieces and forded the river with their ammunition
wagon.-'33

Then the main body began to cross, drums beating, and fifes
playing the Grenadiers March. First went the Redcoats of Halkett’s
Forty-Fourth, bayonets a-gleam, and the great union of the King’s
colors whipping in the sunshine. Next, the sailors, barefoot, with
their pants rolled up to their knees. Then the tired artillery teams
with the 12-pounders and the heavy brass howitzers, the little horses
plunging ahead and straining at their chains to get a footing and
a start up the bank on the other side. Then the wagons, the carry-

mro BATTLE [ 247]

ing horses, the cattle, and finally the detachment of the Forty-
Eighth with its buff regimental flag—boots, bare feet, hoofs, wheels
splashing through the riflles, churning up the pebbles in a spec-
tacle calculated to dishearten any French or Indian scout looking
down from the wooded hills on either side.39

When the recrossing had been completed without the firing of a
single musket, officers and men began to think their campaign must
be almost over. If the enemy lacked courage or strength to attack
them here, where the British were at a disadvantage, would he be
so foolhardy as to risk battle on less favorable ground? 40 They
were within six or seven miles of the French fort now. Some of the
British oflicers crowed that they would not be surprised to hear an
explosion, the sound of the fort being blown up by its own garri-
son, at any moment now. The only other choice of its defenders
was to wait for Braddock’s cannon to knock it to pieces.“

Gage and his advance party had gone ahead, the grenadiers still
four abreast. Guides and horsemen from Stewart's Virginia troop
were about two hundred yards in front. The flank pickets of Grena-
diers, upon which Braddock insisted, had been put out on either
side of the trail.“ The trail curved around Fraser's house and
slanted up the hillside at an easy grade, away from the river and
through a tangle of walnut trees and bushes.43 Two companies of
carpenters in St. Clair’s working party, close behind Gage, cut away
underbrush and chopped down trees marked by Gordon, the engi-
neer, to widen the way. A covering company of rangers marched
with the carpenters, their tool cart, the two 6-pounders, and the
ammunition wagon.“

The main body, halting on the river bank near Fraser's house at
the foot of the trail, formed up in its usual marching order. Light
horse led the column. Sailors and pioneers followed the troopers
with a tumbril of tools. Then came three of the 12-pounders, the
General’s guard, and the convoy of howitzers and wagons with the
main body of troops marching two by two on either side. Twenty-
man flanking parties moved off through the woods to the right and
left. Batmen led the baggage and provision horses among the trees
between the flanking parties and the convoy, and herdsmen drove
the cattle with the carrying horses. The fourth 12-pounder tailed
the convoy, its downcast muzzle a guide for the column’s rear guard
of a hundred men commanded by Sir Peter Ha1kett.45

A quarter of a mile from the river the forest undergrowth

[ 248] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

thinned away and the woods became so open that guns and wagons
could have driven almost anywhere under the trees. Gordon was
riding ahead of Gage's grenadiers, looking for the guides, when he
saw them running back toward him, shouting.

French and Indians were coming down the trail ahead.“

Looking through the trees Gordon saw maybe three hundred
coming on the run, led by an officer dressed like an Indian except
for his hat and a silver gorget at his throat. Catching sight of the
grenadier’s red coats through the forest green, the officer snatched
off his hat and waved it at the men behind him, motioning right
and left. They scattered, the Indians war-whooping an unearthly
screech that sent a chill through Gordon.“

The vanguard of Gage’s advance party did a right-about. They
would have run back with the guides, but an officer’s command to
fix bayonets steadied them. They faced about, hurriedly formed
in line of battle across the trail.43 Front rank kneeling, they sent
an ear-splitting blast of musketry into the bushes where the enemy
had opened irregular fire.49

“God save the King!” cried a British subaltern.

Some of the older soldiers shouted a half-hearted “Huzzal”

They fired a second and a third volley into the bushes without
having seen more than one or two of the enemy. The crashing roar
of these volleys through the woods was as terrifying to French and
Indians as were the enemy’s war-whoops to the British. At the third
volley Beaujeu went down, shot through the head. Most of the
Canadians began to run. “Sauve qui pent!” 50

Some of Gage’s men also retreated. They fell back on St. Clair’s
carpenters and rangers, fifty or sixty paces behind them.“ Sir John
ran forward to see what was happening. He saw ten or twelve
British soldiers in grenadier caps lying in the road. He felt the
hard hot stab of a bullet in his own body. His shoulder blade was
broken, but he stayed on his feet.52

Gage, with bullet holes in his hat and a musket ball’s streak
across his waistcoat,53 was trying to form a platoon to advance up a
hill on the right, a double breasted slope already partly occupied
by the grenadier flanking party which had been scouring the woods
on that side of the trail. He bellowed his commands, but the sol-
diers standing in the road refused to budge. Baffled by the popping
gunfire—it was not a roar—of an enemy hidden in the woods around
them, the Redcoats kept loading and firing at trees and bushes.

INTO BATTLE [ 249]

They shot at men of their own flanking parties, at grenadiers cut
off in the first attack and now trying to rejoin the main detach-
ment.54

The wounded St. Clair managed to walk back to his Virginia
carpenters and rangers. He posted them to protect the two
6-pounders, now unlimbered, loaded with case shot, and primed.
Gage’s men also fell back.55 The 6-pounders were touched off, blast-
ing the bushes. French and Indians scrambled out of their range,
shifting farther to right and left, firing into the flanks of the now
muddled St. Clair-Gage detachments. Bullets sang and sliced
through the foliage. Black powder smoke billowed under the trees
where the Indians shrieked their raw, shrill scalp-halloo.56

The last of the grenadiers on the flank had retreated from the
hill on the right. The enemy took over that high ground undis-
puted. Other French and Indians crept back through the woods
on the left, between the trail and the river, keeping out of sight in
the undergrowth. Skulking in gullies, stretched out on their bellies
behind trees and stumps, in the bushes, anywhere they could find
concealment, they poured a demoralizing cross fire into the
bunched Redcoats behind the 6-pounders. Within a few minutes
most of Gage’s officers were killed or wounded. Polson’s company
of Virginia carpenters was almost shot to pieces.57

Indian war whoops from the rear spread fresh alarm. Somebody,
maybe the teamsters with the 6-pounder limbers back under the
trees, said the baggage had been attacked. Gage’s disorganized
grenadiers gave way. If the French and Indians were behind them,
they feared they were surrounded; they would be massacred,
scalped alive. They fell back along the trail, the carpenters and
rangers with them. The gunners manning the two 6-pounders quit
their cannon and ran.58

A quarter of a mile down the trail Braddock had halted at the
sound of the grenadiers’ first volley. He sent an aide forward.
When the firing continued, growing heavier, he knew they had
met an enemy force, that Gage’s advance party was under attack.
He ordered Burton ahead with 8oo men and the three 12-pounders
in line behind the sailors. Other teams of the convoy closed up.
The 300 men remaining with them obeyed standing orders, facing
outward with bayonets fixed, a double file on either side of the
road. Halkett’s rear guard of a hundred was extended across the

[ 2 50] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

trail behind the convoy in small detachments to protect the carry-
ing horses and the cattle.59

Burton’s battalion moved forward, but in some disorder when
the files came together after clearing the convoy which had sep-
arated them. Most of the men were four abreast, but one officer
had understood an aide—de-camp to say he should double his front
to eight. The mix-up increased under enemy rifle and musket fire
from the hill to the right. Burton halted to form a line. He ordered
his three 12-pounders posted on the lower side of the trail to pro-
tect his rear.3°

Before Burton’s battalion could wheel and shuffle into position,
Gage’s retreating grenadiers and St. Clair’s Virginia irregulars
backed into them. The narrow road through the forest became a
tangle of rangers, carpenters, grenadiers, wounded men on impro-
vised litters, mounted officers, Virginia troopers, and artillery teams.
Those behind pushed forward. Those in front pushed back. And
the fire of the unseen enemy increased on a target mass growing
bigger every moment. Fortunately many of the French and Indians
fired high.“

Braddock and his aides rode up, Bishop behind them. St. Clair
staggered toward the General.

“For God’s sake,” cried the baronet in his bloody hussar jacket,
“the rising ground on our right!”

That was the last Sir John remembered for the next hour or two.
He fainted.”

The road was jammed, the soldiers packed twelve, fourteen,
twenty deep, some facing right, some facing left.53

“Tell off a hundred and fifty men and advance up the hill,”
Braddock told Burton.“

Another party was needed on the left to support artillerymen
trying to get two of the 12-pounders into firing position.“

“March on my lads, and keep up your fire,” said an ol’ficer.°3

March where? Fire at what? The road was blocked with fright-
ened, bewildered redcoats, out of order, out of control. Bewildered
veterans of the Forty-Fourth, in yellow-faced red uniforms, were
jumbled with stupefied American recruits in blue, with surly Irish-
men who wore the white facings of the Forty-Eighth, all looking
for file leaders or sergeants or company ofiicers. Braddock had been
afraid of that, but it was too late now.37 To sort out the mixture,
the King’s colors of the Forty-Fourth and the Forty-Eighth’s regi-

mro BATTLE [251 ]

mental flag of yellow silk were advanced in opposite directions,
waved under the trees, and Burton finally got a hundred men of
the F orty-Eighth together.“

He started up the hill with them, a perfect target—a red-coated
officer on horseback-—and was promptly shot out of his saddle. The
hundred men of the Forty-Eighth draggled back to the trail, load-
ing and firing at the enemy they could not see. Another officer went
down under his horse. His men pulled him out.69

Braddock, his hat tied on with a big white handkerchief knotted
under his chin,7° roared orders at other officers to form their men
into small divisions and advance.“ The power of the British army
was its platoon fire power, its heavy rolling musketry, invincible
at Minden and Fontenoy. If the French and Indians had no line
of\battle, no exposed front to attack, they must be blown out of
the bushes.”

Captain Waggener, remembering the French at Fort Necessity,
tried to lead his Virginia rangers up the hill, using the trunk of a
great fallen tree as a parapet. He got that far with the loss of only
three men; but the British, mistaking the fire of Waggener’s con-
cealed riflemen for that of the enemy, began shooting at the rangers.
Some of the regular officers, who distrusted the provincials, thought
the rangers were trying to get away.73

Washington, like Waggener, wanted to fight the French and In-
dians on their own terms. He asked Braddock’s permission to scat-
ter three hundred men among the trees. Bill Brown, Burton’s Negro
servant, thought he heard Braddock curse and reply: “I’ve a mind
to run you through the body. We’ll sup today in Fort Duquesne
or else in hell!” 74

Then Braddock noticed that the tall Virginian had a cushion on
his saddle, and remembered that he was sick.

“Bishop,” called Braddock to the old Coldstream guardsman
behind him, “this young man is determined to go into action to-
day, although he is really too weakened by illness for such pur-
pose. Have an eye to him and render him any assistance that may
be necessary.”

“Your honor’s orders shall be obeyed,” said Bishop.75

Scarouady, who had an Indian’s respect for ambuscades and
was one of the few British scouts who had not disappeared, thought
they should retreat. Otherwise the army would be destroyed, he
said. He tried to catch Braddock’s attention. He looked around

[ 252 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

for someone to intercede with the General. St Clair had come to.
Scarouady asked him to talk to Braddock.”

“I would be of little use, being never listened to,” said St. Clair."

A few of the regulars took to the trees without being told. But
Braddock, riding back and forth, hat tied under his resolute chin,
beat them over the shoulder with the fiat of his sword, ordering
them back into line.

“Gowardsl” he cried.73

He was determined that his orders should be obeyed, that the
men should form under their officers, that they should advance in
strength, shoulder to shoulder.79

Officers pleaded with men to obey. They threatened them. The
French and Indians kept shooting.”

“One bold attack” was all Gage wanted.31

But his grenadiers had had enough of boldness. Less than a
dozen of the Forty-Fourth’s grenadier company seemed to have
escaped gunshot wound. On the troop-crowded trail men still top-
pled over, falling hard with a jingle of belt buckles and bullet
pouches and canteens, some of them gory, groaning or crying, some
silent in sudden death. And not all the grenadier caps, with their
little red flaps and white horse, had “GR” embroidered on yellow
facings of the Forty-Fourth. Some of those lying around in the
dirt had “GR” on the Forty-Eighth’s white.”

“We would fight if we could see anybody to fight with,” mut-
tered one soldier.33

Gage could not say that he himself had seen more than one or
two of the enemy. A few officers and men had seen as many as half
a dozen.84 Gordon and the guides, who had had a better view than
anyone else, estimated that they did not exceed a total of 3oo.35
But the French kept out of sight. Occasionally an Indian slithered
out of the bushes to scalp some Redcoat shot down at a safe dis-
tance, but he did his cutting quickly and vanished again in the
black gunpowder-smoked forest.“

Most of the British shooting was aimless. The Redcoats kept
firing at smoke puffs and muzzle flashes. But they had gone into
battle carrying only twenty-five 87 rounds and at times their gunfire
grew thin and unsteady. Only when enough soldiers could be lined
up to fire by platoon did the battle roar. But platoons, improvised
and then disintegrating before they advanced twenty yards, never
could be persuaded to charge the hill on the right or try to recap-

mro BATTLE [ 253]

ture the two lost 6-pounders.33 Oflicers and groups of officers
jumped out in front. Their example was unconvincing. Too many
were shot. An ensign carrying the Great Union of the Forty-Eighth
tried to lead. He was shot down. John Hamilton, the regimental
chaplain, rescued the colors. A captain of the Forty-Fourth went
down with two wounds, retrieving the King's colors dropped by
too bold an ensign of his regiment.39

Lying dead under the walnut trees were the Forty-Fourth’s colo-
nel, Sir Peter Halkett, and his younger son, James, the major of
brigade. Braddock had left the elder Halkett back on the road in
command of the convoy, but Sir Peter had ridden up to see if he
could do anything with the men of his own regiment. He knew

anic. He had met it at Preston Pans where the Scot broadsword
and lochaber ax had been as dreadful as the scalping knife and the
tomahawk. He did not agree with Braddock’s tactics. He thought
the troops should take cover, in extended order, like the enemy.”
But he tried to obey orders, to form his men into small parties, to
make them fire by platoons. He was shot through the body. His
son received a death wound going to his father’s aid, and Sir Peter’s
servant was killed while looking to see if his master’s wound was
mortal.“

Captain Tatton of the Forty-Eighth was dead, shot by the grena-
diers of his own regiment. So was Captain Chomondeley of the
Forty-Eighth.” Lieutenant Spendlowe was dead. Braddock’s secre-
tary, young Shirley, was dead, shot through the head.93 Both Orme
and Morris had been wounded, Orme, with a bullet in his thigh.
A ball had shattered Gordon’s forearm, halfway between wrist and
elbow, but the engineer was too anxious over the outcome to quit
the fie1d.94

Braddock pressed Captain Thomas Ord, commanding the Royal
Regiment of Artillery detachment with the three 12-pounders, to
clear the thickets within point blank range. Washington, dis-
mounted, his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his waistcoat,
while the General told Ord what to do, circled around, and said:

“General, be assured, even if you cut away the bushes, your
enemy can make enough of them artificially to answer the purpose
of shelter and concealment.”

“What do you think of this from a young hand, from a beardless
boy?” Braddock asked Ord.95

The beardless boy, now in the midst of his second battle with

[ 2 54 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

French and Indians, had bullet slits in his hat and coat. He was
still so weak from his illness that Bishop had lifted him out of the
saddle of the second horse shot from under him, and he was Brad-
dock’s only remaining aide until joined by Captain Dobson of the
Forty-Eighth, hastily assigned to replace the wounded Orme.96

Braddock’s sabre swipes at skulkers, to drive them back into line
and get them moving, had angered Americans unfamiliar with the
code of the British oificer corps. Some of the officers threatened men
at sword point.97 Private Tom Fausett, a big, rough Pennsylvania
backwoodsman enlisted at Shippensburg by a recruiting party for
Captain Chomondeley’s company, gripped his King's musket with
murderous intent when he saw a British officer’s sword thrust
through his brother, Joseph, when Joseph refused to face about.93

Until almost 4 o’clock, when half of his officers and men had
been killed or wounded and the persistent fire from the French and
Indians indicated that they had suffered no serious losses, there
was always a possibility that Braddock might be able to get enough
of his troops in hand to organize a counter attack and sweep the
woods.99 But as the forest battlefield became thick with dead
and disabled redcoats, Braddock reconciled himself to retreat. An
order was given to withdraw to the wagons. They would fall back
with as much of the convoy as they could save. The drums began
to beat Retreat.1°°

Four horses had been shot under Braddock during the hour and
a half he had been riding up and down the woods, trying to whip
fear-frozen foot soldiers into fighting fettle. He was about to mount
his fifth horse when a bullet struck his right arm and penetrated
his side. The pain was agonizing. He could not even sit erect.1°1

Bishop, ever close at hand, unwrapped the scarlet sash of silken
net from around the General’s waist. Almost as long as a hammock
when stretched to its full length, the sash now served its ultimate
purpose. In it the wounded Braddock was carried from the field
by Bishop, Capt. Robert Stewart of the Virginia horse, and Col.
Gage.1°2 They carried him down the trail toward the baggage con-
voy where they lifted him into a wagon.1°3

Some of the horses and drivers had been shot. The column’s rear
guard, the South Carolina detachment, had beaten off an attack,
but teamsters and batmen, standing around the horses and wagons
and howitzers, were frightened.1°4 They listened to the shooting
farther up the trail. Wounded soldiers came walking back to the

INTO BATTLE [ 255]

wagons. Half a dozen women, who had persisted in following the
troops, helped dress injuries unseen or disregarded by an over-
worked surgeon and his mates. Six of the surgeon's own party had
been killed and five wounded.1°5

Most of the shooting up front now was that of about two hun-
dred men commanded by a few officers who had either escaped in-
jury or returned to duty after having their wounds tied up.1°3
They kept loading and firing until they had exhausted all their
ammunition and all they could find in the cartouche boxes of the
dead and wounded strewn around them.1°7 For a while Ord’s can-
noneers, ramming their 12-pounders with round shot after they
had used all case shot in the ammunition wagon, kept firing, too.
But the foot soldiers gave the gunners no protection and so many
were picked off that one by one the 12—pounders were silenced.1°3

Stragglers sneaked away, down the trail through the woods to
the baggage convoy. They hung around the wagons, talking about
what they had seen——men killed and scalpedl Fresh outbursts of
musketry up the trail and a rising chorus of war whoops along the
high ground on the right sent shivers through the wagon drivers.1°9
Most of them were farmers. They had not been hired to fight, or to
get scalped. They began unhitching the best of their horses, mount-
ing and riding down the trail toward the river. One who rode
away was Daniel Boone.11°

Some of the soldiers standing around the wagons started down
the trail on foot after the wagoners. Others had a better idea.
They unhitched the remaining wagon horses. They unhooked the
horses of the four howitzer teams. Then off came the surcingles and
batsaddles of the carrying horses. Up went the batmen and any-
one else who could lay hands on a packhorse. Soldiers still on foot
began to run after those on horseback. Down the trail through the
trees toward the river they ran, throwing away muskets, bayonets,
belts.111

Washington watched some of them go.

“Sheep pursued by dogs,” he said, knowing it would be useless
to try to stop them.112

Left along the trail with more than a hundred other helpless
wounded, unable to run, was the homesick young British officer
whose disenchantment with America had begun with the Virginia
planter who sold him a moonblind horse. Shot in one leg and in

ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION OF A GUARDSMAN [ 15]

liam’s staff. He asked to be taken to Lord Craven. He told the old
Earl that three battalions of Dutch infantry and cavalry were com-
ing down the avenue behind him, that the Coldstream Guards
must be withdrawn from Whitehall. Drums were beating now
across the Park. Lighted matches of Dutch musketeers glowed in
the darkness. Craven went to the King’s apartment. James was un-
dressing for bed. He said there must be some mistake. Craven
called in de Solmes who showed the King a written order to occupy
Whitehall.

The old Earl reminded the King that he still held his commis-
sion, that as an officer and a gentleman he was perfectly willing to
stand and fight, that not withstanding his age he would rather
be cut to pieces than surrender. But the King said resistance was
useless. He told Craven to comply with William’s order and with-
draw his men. At 11 o'clock that night, a week before Christmas,
the Coldstream marched out of Whitehall, down the Strand,
through narrow Fleet street and up Ludgate Hill, past St. Paul’s.
The bells of St. Paul’s began to ring. It started to rain.75

Next morning the regiment was drawn up near the Tower of
London to receive orders to march on to Rochester.“ It was still
raining. The ranks were “not well pleased,” Evelyn noted in his
diary." Several dropped out of line, flung away their matchlocks,
unslung their accoutrements, and walked off. But the remainder
of the regiment, including Lieutenant Braddock, obeyed orders.
At Rochester they overtook the King. He had come down the
river from Whitehall in the royal barge. Three oflicers of the Cold-
stream called upon him and verbally surrendered their commis-
sions.73 Others, Edward Braddock among them, marched on down
into Kent with their dejected companies to find winter quarters,
some in Maidstone, some in Sitting Bourne, some in Dover.79 The
weather turned exceedingly cold, with long frosts and deep snow.3°

A fishing smack took King James to France. His Queen and the
baby prince had been sent ahead. The Most Catholic King of
France, Louis le Grand, compassionately installed all three royal
refugees at the Palace of St. Germain, near Paris.31 In London,
James was declared to have abdicated. On Wednesday, February
12, 1689, the kettle drums rolled and the trumpets pealed anew
under the gateway at Whitehall. Heralds proclaimed William and
Mary, King and Queen of England. William’s brigade of blue-
coated Dutch guards went on duty at Whitehall. Dutch officers

[ 256] ILL—STARRED GENERAL

the heel of his other foot so he could not even hobble, he sat at the
foot of a tree, imploring everyone who passed to help him.

The whole army seemed to be on the run, but an American who
heard him paused a moment.

“Yes, countryman,” he said, “I will put you out of your misery.
These dogs shall not burn you.”

He leveled his musket at the oflicer’s head. The terrified English-
man yelled and ducked--heard the gun roar and felt its blast but
no other pain; and knew the bullet had missed him.

Moments later a Lieut. Gray came along with men of the South
Carolina detachment. They, too, were on their way to the river
but they picked up the wounded oflicer and carried him with
them.113

Capt. John Treby of the Forty-Fourth, lay writhing on the
ground, wounded so desperately he could not crawl. Another vol-
unteer, Thomas Farrell, took Treby up on his back and carried
him toward the river.114

Near the wagon in which Braddock lay stood a small two-wheel
covered cart, which had been used on the march to carry some of
the General’s equipage. It had shafts for one horse. Washington
thought the cart a better conveyance than the wagon for the
wounded Braddock. It would be lighter, faster. He and Stewart
lifted the General into the cart.115 Croghan came up to see if he
could be of any help. Braddock looked longingly at the Irishman’s
pistols. Bishop or Washington carried the General’s pistols. Brad-
dock said he had no wish to live. Give him a pistol, look to their
own safety, and leave him on the field.116 They started for the
river with Braddock in the cart.117

One of the last to leave the battleground up in the woods was
Gordon, the engineer. Remembering the toil that had gone into
building more than a hundred miles of road, all the way over those
mountains from Wills Creek, he hated to run away now and aban-
don a whole train of artillery, a string of wagons and all those
tools to a band of wild Indians. Nobody else seemed to have
thought of saving anything but his scalp. Three bullets had crippled
Gordon's horse. He shifted his saddle to a stray without a bridle.113

When he reached the ford at the river, at the foot of the trail
near Fraser's house, he found the slope which the working party
had cut in the bank that morning choked with soldiers, some on
horseback, some on foot helping or carrying wounded. He put his

INTO BATTLE [257]

own bridleless horse over the 12-foot sandy bluff. Sand caved in and
tumbled with him as he hit the water. His horse nearly lost his
footing and Gordon nearly lost his seat, but he managed to stick
on and the horse stumbled through the shallow water toward the
opposite shore.

Forty yards out in the stream he heard Indians yell behind him.
He looked back and saw them tomahawking wounded soldiers and
struggling with some women near the wagons. Other Indians fired
at the troops crossing the river. Gordon got another bullet through
his right shoulder before he reached the other side of the stream.

A short distance up the river bank he caught up with Burton,119
Orme, Washington, and the two-wheel cart in which the General
lay. About a quarter of a mile back from the river, perhaps 200
yards off the road, was a hill where Orme thought the wounded
might be collected and protected until help came up. Burton
talked to some of the soldiers who seemed less demoralized than
others. He persuaded them to post pickets and organize a guard.12°

Braddock was in great pain but fully aware of all that was hap-
pening. He asked Washington to ride ahead to the upper ford and
try to rally more of the retreating troops. Washington rode as far
as the hill on the other side of the upper ford, where he found
Gage, who appeared to have reestablished discipline over 80 or
100 soldiers. Gage seemed to be doing everything that could be
done to halt the fleeing men, so Washington left the General’s
order with him and turned about. At sunset he recrossed the river
and unexpectedly met Burton, Orme, and the others coming up
the road with Braddock in a hand litter.121

The soldiers of Burton’s provisional guard for the General had
run away soon after Washington had left them.12‘~’ They had
changed their mind about remaining so near the lower ford, with
Indians whooping just across the river. Braddock had been placed
in a litter, because he could no longer stand the pain of being
moved in a springless cart. The bullet through his arm and side
had penetrated his lungs. But he was conscious. He could think
and talk. He asked Washington to set out immediately for Dun-
bar's camp, to send back food, rum, and hospital supplies for the
wounded. The stuff should be sent back under an escort of grena-
diers. Braddock would meet them at Gist’s plantation, or nearer if
possible.123

Still weak from his own illness, Washington had been in the sad-

[ 258] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

dle since early morning. At the end of the battle he had been doing
the work of three aides. Dunbar’s camp was forty miles away. But
Washington knew the road. With two mounted guides for company
he turned his horse about, crossed the upper ford for the fourth
time that day, and started back along the forest trail. Even that
far from the battlefield the road was dotted with dead and dying.
He would never forget the groans, the lamentations, the cries of
wounded for help as he rode past in the gathering darkness. Night
fell. There was no moon. The thick shade of the trees shut out the
starlight. Once, when they lost the trail in the dark, the guides dis-
mounted and groped around on the ground with their hands until
they left the wagon wheel ruts that marked the way.124

But Washington was not the only man living a nightmare. Late
that afternoon an Indian runner had carried tidings of the battle
back to Fort Duquesne. Young Smith was as eager as anyone to
know the outcome. Some of the older French soldiers at the fort
spoke Dutch. Smith knew enough Pennsylvania Dutch to ask them
what news the runner brought. They told him the French and
Indians had surrounded Braddock, that unless the British took to
the river not one would be alive by sundown.125

Later that evening Smith heard the scalp-halloos of a returning
war party. He looked out and saw them coming down the trail to-
ward the fort, Indians in grenadier caps, harnessed with British
bayonets and canteens, waving fresh scalps in their bloody hands,
firing muskets in the air. They were answered by yells and gun
blasts from the French and Indians at the fort, who went out to
greet the returning warriors.

Behind the first war party came a second of about a hundred
Indians with more scalps. Then a third, some riding captured
wagon horses, whooping, shooting, and waving scalps. About sun-
down another small party brought in a dozen naked prisoners,
hands tied behind their backs, faces and parts of their bodies black-
ened. Finally came the last of the pillagers, Indians ludicrously
dressed in ill-fitting red uniform coats, disarrayed scarlet sashes, the
laced hats and burnished gorgets of British officers.

One of the prisoners was tied to a stake on the river bank oppo-
site the fort. A fire was kindled at his feet. Indian tormenters kept
poking him with blazing sticks and red hot irons. The tortured
man’s cries of agony were too much for Smith. Horrified, he
climbed down from the wall of the fort and went back to his prison

mro BATTLE [ 259]

lodgings. The whooping Indians must have burned all their pris-
oners at the stake that night. Smith never again saw one of them
alive.126

Braddock must have gone through the night in spirit with Haw-
ley, whose heart was broken at Falkirk—and with Johnny Cope, at
Preston Pans, where you feinted here and parried there against
wild Scotsmen. And with old Humphrey who had written in his
book, Chapter VIII, page 132:

When an officer has had the misfortune of being beat, his honor will
not suffer by it, providing he has done his duty, and acted like a sol-
dier. But if he is surprised by neglecting the common methods used to
prevent it, his character is hardly retrievable, unless it proceeds from
his want of experience; and even in that case he will find it very
diflicult.127

Had Braddock been surprised? Had he done his duty? For a hun-
dred miles he had marched by old Humphrey’s book.

Gage had been talking to some of his soldiers. “The only excuse
I can get from them,” he said, “is that they were greatly dispirited
from fatigue they had undergone and from not receiving a suffi-
cient quantity of food, and further that they did not expect the
enemy would come down so suddenly.” 123

All night they retreated along the same dark lane of wretched
wounded that Washington had traveled ahead of them. They tried
to pick up the helpless who seemed to have a chance of surviving.
Those able to walk struggled on. Better order was established
among the soldiers after daylight, but hunger and fatigue were be-
ginning to tell. By noon, only fear of the French and Indians kept
most of them going. Orme had difficulty persuading enough men
to carry the General’s litter, at first offering thirty, then sixty, then
eighty guineas and rum punch. Braddock’s oflicers carried him for
twenty miles. About 3 o’clock in the afternoon the old Guardsman
gritted his teeth and was lifted back into a saddle.129

Gordon, whose wounds had not yet been dressed, suggested they
halt at one of the more defensible of their old camp sites and wait
there for Dunbar.13° But they kept on, hoping the relief convoy
might meet them at the main crossing of the Youghiogheny. It was
sunset of the following day, July 10, when they reached the river.
They had come more than forty miles. And no sign yet of a con-
voy. They crossed the river and went on until dark, another seven
miles, to the burned cabins of Gist’s plantation, where they

[ 260] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

dropped on the ground and slept in the open. There was not even
a tent for the General.131

Braddock was dazed with pain and weariness. “Who would have
thought it?” he murmured.132

Dunbar’s column was encamped only six miles away, in a stoney
hollow at Rock Fort, the British name for the cliff where ]umon-
ville had been killed. Early that morning a drover’s boy had started
out from there for Braddock’s advance party with a herd of cattle,
but about 9 o’clock he reappeared in Dunbar’s camp with vague
rumors of “bad news.” Apparently he had met some of the wagon-
ers and packhorse drivers who had run away at the end of the
battle. One had reached Dunbar’s camp at 5 A.M. The boy may
have seen Washington, who arrived too sick and exhausted to do
more than deliver Braddock’s orders that wagons and supplies meet
him at Gist’s.133

Three Pennsylvania wagoners saw a wounded oflicer—-one saw
two—carried through the camp on a sheet. At noon the drummers
beat To Arms. By that time rumors had bred rumors that two
officers on their way to join Braddock had found the trail blocked
by the enemy, that Braddock’s force had been wiped out by French
and Indians who had dug a trench across the road and attacked
the marching column with swivel guns; that Braddock was dead,
fallen upon by Indians and murdered after he had been placed in
a wagon wounded . . . and now the drums were beating To Arms!
The alarm spread a fringe of panic that sent a few frightened
teamsters and soldiers headlong down the trail toward Fort Cum-
berland before Dunbar’s sentries could stop them.134

About 1 o’clock Sir John St. Clair was brought into the Rock
Fort camp. He gave Dunbar his first full account of the battle.135
St. Clair was bitter. He said Braddock had fallen into a trap after
ignoring his advice to halt until Dunbar’s division came up.

“I urged strongly that no General had hitherto marched up mid-
day to the gates of the town he was besieging leading his convoy,”
said St. Clair.

“All I could say to General Braddock could not make him
stop . . . his advisers were so much prepossessed that nothing was
wanting at Fort Duquesne for the reduction of it but his pres-
ence. . . 3'13“

INTO BATTLE [ 261 ]

Dunbar said Braddock had told him that he would never be more
than a day’s march ahead.

“His orders to me was to fire a gun (a six-pounder) if I wanted
his assistance, and if he wanted mine he was to do the same.” 137

The wagons and supplies Braddock had asked of Dunbar did
not reach Gist’s until 11 o’clock next morning. Gordon and others
who had not yet seen a surgeon had their wounds dressed.133 When
everyone at Gist’s had been cared for, Braddock ordered that a
sergeant’s party should go back along the trail as far as the other
side of the Youghiogheny’s main crossing and leave food along the
road where it could be found by any soldiers who might have be-
come lost in the woods during their flight.139 Gordon again sug-
gested that an end be made of the column’s withdrawal, that Gist’s
place could be fortified with two or three redoubts to withstand
any attack the enemy was likely to make upon them. But again
this suggestion was ignored.14°

That evening Braddock and the main body of his retreating
force, both wounded and unhurt, dribbled into Dunbar’s camp.
Braddock was in no condition to talk. “We shall know better how
to deal with them another time,” was all he had to say of what had
happened!“

But he showed no signs of relinquishing command.142 Orders
came from his tent to make preparations to begin a general with-
drawal to Fort Cumberland next day. No one questioned the wis-
dom or authority of the order. His army had lost its will to fight.

Casualties were still being counted. Of sixty-nine grenadiers in
the company from Halkett’s regiment, all but eight were reported
killed or wounded. Of seventy-nine in the grenadier company from
Dunbar’s regiment, less than a dozen seemed to have escaped in-
jury. Every officer of the two companies had been killed or
wounded. Only fifteen of the sailors had come through the battle
unhurt.143 As far as Washington could make out not more than
thirty men were left of the three Virginia companies in the bat-
tle.144 Of the 1,500 officers and men who had gone into action, it
was estimated that a total of about 1,000 had been killed and
wounded. Three or four of eight women with the advance party
were missing.145

All artillery and wagons with the advance force, a hundred head
of cattle, and between four and five hundred horses had been left
on the battlefield. In one of the wagons were all the General’s pa-

[ 262 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

pers, including his secret instructions outlining the proposed plan
of campaign against the French, and, some said, a military chest
variously reported to have contained £1,000, £2,500, and £ 12,000.
Later, Johnston, the commissary officer, said the military chest and
vouchers were safe at Dunbar’s camp, where they had been left
with the train.146

The lost horses were an item of first importance to Dunbar. He
complained that Braddock had taken all the best horses when the
force was divided, and, in response to repeated requests to send
some back, had returned only those that were worn out and could
not go on. “I told him it was impossible I could get up with him
unless his Goodness would halt and send me his horses to help me,”
said Dunbar.147

But Braddock’s orders to continue the retreat left it up to Dun-
bar to find enough horses and wagons to haul the least ambulatory
of about 400 sick and wounded to Fort Cumberland. There was
only one solution: dump food, ammunition, and ordnance supplies
with which the remaining wagons of his train were loaded. It was
not necessary to consult the General, Dunbar was told. Provide
transportation for the wounded and teams for the army's only re-
maining artillery, the two brass six-pounders left with Dunbar
when the force separated at Little Meadows. If possible these guns
must be saved. Destroy everything else he could not carry.143

Older oflicers, among the few still on their feet who had not lost
their heads, looked at each other. Captain Ord, the artillery officer,
did not question the wisdom of destroying what they could not
carry rather than let it fall into enemy hands. But neither he nor
James Furnis, the commissary of stores for the Ordnance Board
with Braddock’s expedition, were going to destroy anything with-
out written orders. They were looking ahead to the day when they
might be asked for explanations, when an official return would
have to be submitted to the Ordnance Board of London. So an
order was produced-—or at least the copy of an order—signed by
Captain Dobson, still serving as the General’s aide.149

No one—not even Gordon—suggested that a stand be made at
Dunbar’s camp. Surrounded by hills, which commanded it from
all sides, it was about the worst chosen piece of ground for a de-
fensible camp site that could have been found in wild, mountainous
country.15°

Most of the next day was spent unloading wagons and disposing

INTO BATTLE [263]

of stores and provisions freighted so laboriously up from the sea
and over the mountains. The stout heads of 162 copper-hooped
barrels of gunpowder were stove in and the powder dumped in a
little stream below the camp. Fifteen hundred artillery shells were
broken open. Cannon balls, musket bullets, barrels of flour, casks
of salted meat were scattered over the ground. Pick-axes, spades,
hatchets, even the blacksmith’s tools and his horseshoe nails were
flung into the bushes. One zealot threw away the engineer’s instru-
ments and stationery. When they were through, Dunbar still had
150 wagons for which he had no horses. These wagons were ordered
burned.151 By then it was too late to break camp that day. The re-
treat was delayed until the morrow. It was just as well. A great
number of missing oflicers and soldiers, some of them wounded,
came straggling in that afternoon.

One straggler, Private Duncan Cameron, an old soldier of Hal-
kett’s regiment who had been with Gage’s advance guard, told of
having hidden in a hollow tree after peing left on the battlefield
for dead and finding himself overrun by the enemy. He said the
French had put a stop to the scalping of dead and wounded British
soldiers, that the Indians then fell to plundering army baggage,
found a small amount of rum, and got themselves drunk. There
were still other wounded stragglers back along the trail, Cameron
said, who had begged him for God’s sake to be helped along.152

All evening the battle was refought, some ofiicers blaming the
cowardice of their men for their defeat.

“I hope never to live to see that argument hold good against our
men unless some previous steps were taken to make them dilatory
in doing their duty,” was St. Clair’s pontifical opinion.153

“I can’t help thinking their misbehavior is exaggerated, in order
to palliate the blunders made by those in the direction, as they
make no allowance for regular troops being surprised,” argued one
of Dunbar’s officers.154

“It was the pride and ignorance of that General that came from
England,” said Scarouady. “He looked upon us as dogs, and
would never hear anything what was said to him. We often tried
to tell him of the danger he was in with his soldiers, but he never
appeared pleased with us, and that was the reason that a great
many of our warriors left him and would not be under his com-
mand."

[ 264] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

British soldiers, said the Indian chief, “were unfit to fight in
the woods.” 155

If Braddock made any excuses they were in confidence. But
Bishop said that while holding the General in his arms on the bat-
tlefield, he had heard him say to V/Vashington:

“Oh, my dear, had I been governed by your advice we never
should have come to this.” 153

The column had not moved far from Rock Fort next morning
when some footsore invalid discovered that one wagon of the
shortened train was loaded with powder and seven cohorns. Cap-
tain Dobson ordered a squad of pioneers to dig a pit beside the
road and bury the cohorns.157

Braddock was still giving orders. His mind was clear, but he was
in no condition to command. He was a dying man, weak from loss
of blood and the fatigue of travel in pain.153 He seems to have sug-
gested that 2oo Foot and what remained of Stewart's light horse
troop push ahead with the wounded.159 And then, about a mile
beyond the Rock Fort, he called Dunbar and told him to take com-
mand.13°

They did not march far that day. Intending to make use of their
old camp sites they had a choice of one, three-and-half miles from
the Rock Fort, or another, seven miles farther on. They chose the
nearer, halting for the night by a brook in a glade to the west of
Fort Necessity, where Braddock had encamped his advance de-
tachment three weeks before.161 Many bivouacked in the open that
night, giving their tents to the wounded.162

Dr. James Craik, a friend of Vvashington and the surgeon of
the Virginia troops, looked in on Braddock.163 Braddock knew he
had not long to live. And now that he had seen them fight, he
thought better of all Virginians. He asked that Captain Stewart of
the light horse be commended to Dinwiddie.134

To Bishop, his body servant, the General said:

“Bishop, you are getting too old for war. I advise you to remain
in America and go into the service of Mr. Washington. Be as faith-
ful to him as you have been to me.” 165

Braddock also talked to the wounded Orme. As soon as Orme was
able to write, Braddock told him, he must send an account of the
action to Henry Fox. Fox would tell George Anne. Tell Fox, said
Braddock: “The behaviour of the officers deserved the very highest
commendations.” 163

INTO BATTLE [265 ]

Orme must, of course, also inform Keppel. Orme was already
framing the letter in his mind. . . . “A few hours before his death
. . . the General directed me, sir, to tell you from him that. . . .”

“Nothing could equal the gallantry and conduct of the officers
nor the bad behavior of the men,” said Braddock!"

It was all according to the book, in which Old Humphrey had
written that when private soldiers go into battle they look for their
notions of danger to the conduct of their officers, and that “fortune
may fail us if we trust too much to her, but a prudent conduct
never will. It is true we may be overpowered and conquered, not-
withstanding all our care; but never shamefully beat if we act as
we ought; and a man may gain reputation, though he is over-
come.” 163

It was sunset. The drummers beat Retreat.

“Is it possible?” murmured Braddock.169

He had only until about 9 o'clock that night to wonder. He was
dying.17°

“All is over,” he said.171

In the morning the drums beat the General. Up the road, beyond
the head of the column, in the middle of the trail where the troops
would march, a squad of pioneers had dug the General’s grave. He
had been buried there at midnight, decently though privately, with
honors of war. And now the drums beat the March. Off moved the
column on the next stretch of its retreat, the soldiers’ boots, the
horses’ hoofs, the broad rims of the wagon wheels obliterating all
signs of the grave.

Washington had advised it to be done that way. He was fearful
that French and Indians, hearing of Braddock’s death, would try
to find his body and desecrate it.

They did hear, and they did try to find his grave. But the march-
ing column had stamped it out.172

[ 16] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

took over the coffee houses in the old palace tilt yard, formerly
monopolized by British guardsmen, lighted up their long clay
pipes, and boasted of having driven out the Redcoats.32

Trusting no Englishman too far and suspecting the Coldstream
to be thoroughly disaffected, William had no intention of bringing
Braddock’s regiment back to London. On the days fixed for the
election of a new Parliament, the new King even ordered the Red-
coats marched out of the towns in which they were quartered.”
King James had increased the Coldstream in strength from twelve
to seventeen companies. William reduced it to fourteen.“ He
took the regiment away from old Lord Craven and gave it to Co].
Thomas Talmach, a former Coldstream captain who had got into
trouble during the reign of Charles II by fighting a duel with a
Jacobite ofl"1cer.85

A few weeks later, when France declared war on Holland, Wil~
liam took advantage of a newly signed Anglo-Dutch treaty of alli-
ance to order both battalions of the Coldstream to Flanders as part
of a brigade under the turncoat Churchill, repaid for his treachery
to James with the earldom of Marlborough.“ On the arrival of
the Coldstream at Helvoetsluys, a small, fortified island town in
the dreary sand dunes of southern Holland, Lieutenant Braddock
was advanced to the rank of Captain. This was a promotion which
raised his pay, when he got it, with allowances for three servants,
to £302.26 a year. The military establishment in London, where
courtiers handled army funds, was undergoing a change of favorites.
For months both oflicers and men were paid irregularly. Some of
the officers were obliged to sell their horses.87

In all probability Captain Braddock spent the next five years in
Flanders with his regiment. During this time he may have been
married, perhaps for a second time, because in 1685 an Edward
Braddock had been married to a Dorothy Lambert at St. Mary-le-
Bone in London.“ Dorothy seems to have disappeared from sub-
sequent church records, lending conjecture to her death, possibly
in Ghent, where Coldstream officers sometimes were joined by their
wives after the regiment had gone into winter quarters. As a rule
only a few favorites, recalled out of preferment, and those officers
who were members of Parliament returned home to England for
the winter.89

The Captain’s mother, Elizabeth Cooke, died during his first
year in Flanders. She was a lady of suflicient importance to be

XIV

REQUIEM

INETEEN FRIGHTENED SETTLERS, seeking refuge from Indian war
N parties after the border outrages of June, moved into Fort
Cumberland. Some of the wives left behind by Braddock’s soldiers
were still there. They blanched at the ghastly stories the settlers
told. One man had been killed within three miles of the fort. A
boy who had been scalped alive was brought to the fort hospital.
He died four days later. The soldiers’ wives were terrified}

The widow Brown's brother was sick with fever, flux, and fits,
and her maid was ill with fever on July 7—the day Braddock
reached Turtle Creek—when a party of Indians professing to be
friendly appeared before the fort. Col. Innes ordered the gates shut.
The Indians stood outside for four hours. It was a hot Monday.
There was no water in the fort, and still no well. Mrs. Brown was
thankful when the Indians left. 111 herself before her brother and
her maid had been taken sick, she had worn herself out nursing
th€HL2

Four days later, about noon, a boy rode into the fort. He had
come from Dunbar’s camp. He said Braddock had been killed and
nearly all of Sir Peter Halkett’s regiment cut off and massacred
by French and Indians hiding in the woods four miles from the
French fort. Later in the afternoon wagoners and camp followers
arrived at Wills Creek from Dunbar’s camp with much the same
tale. But they could give Innes few details. What they told him
was what they had heard early that morning.3

[266]

REQUIEM [ 267 ]

Soldiers’ wives at the fort went into hysterics. Mrs. Brown packed
her things, expecting the Indians every hour. Her brother tried to
persuade her to leave the fort immediately and start back toward
Frederick and Winchester, but she refused to go. She would not
leave her brother.4

Col. Innes wrote a note:

Sir: I have this minute received the melancholy account 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 God I intend to make a stand here, it's highly nec-
essary to raise the militia everywhere to defend the frontiers.

Your humble servant

James I nnes

To all to whom this may concern
Fort Cumberland, July 11th, 17555

The distracted Colonel handed this note to a mounted messenger
and told him to ride east and spread the alarm. Next day a horse-
man delivered the note to Col. William Fairfax at Belvoir, the
Fairfax estate just below Mount Vernon. Fairfax made a certified
copy which he sent by express, across the Potomac and through
Marlboro, to Gov. Sharpe.“ He sent the original on to Williams-
burg; it reached Dinwiddie the night of July 14.7 The Virginia
governor could not believe what the note said. He had predicted
the French would surrender without a fight.3

A fortnight passed before another messenger from Fort Cumber-
land arrived in Williamsburg with letters for the Governor from
Washington and Orme.9 With these came a letter from Orme ad-
dressed to Napier, and as complete a casualty list as the General’s
wounded aide could compi1e.1° Dinwiddie wrote out reports of his
own to Sir Thomas Robinson and Lord Halifax, delivering the
entire packet to Commodore Keppel at Hampton Roads.“

Keppel had transferred his flag to the “Seahorse.” On July 26 the
“Seahorse” sailed for England, in company with the “Norwich”
and the “Centurion.” She put in at Portsmouth one month later.12

From his Gothic rococo villa at Strawberry Hill, Horace Walpole
already was circulating malicious gossip about the unlucky Brad-
dock.

“He has not yet sent over to claim the surname of Americus,”
Walpole had written to Bentley on August 15.13

And a few days later, in a letter to Mann:

[ 268] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

The Duke, who is now the soul of the Regency, and who on all
hands is allowed to make a great figure there, is much dissatisfied at
the slowness of General Braddock, who does not march as if he
were at all impatient to be scalped. It is said of him, that he has
had bad guides, that the roads are exceedingly difficult, and that it
was necessary to drag as much artillery as he does. This is not the
first time, as witness in Hawley, that the Duke has found that brutal-
ity did not necessarily consummate a General. I love to give you an
idea of our characters as they rise upon the stage of history. Brad-
dock is very iroquois in disposition. . . .

Walpole then proceeded to rehash the tragedy of Braddock’s
sister, Fanny. He related the story of the General’s affair with Mrs.
Upton.

“Now you are acquainted with General Braddock,” he told
Mann.”

The news of Braddock’s disaster reached Whitehall on Tuesday,
August 26. It was published next day in The Public Advertiser.
The newspaper account stated that Braddock had been defeated
by an entrenched force of 2,100 French regulars and irregulars,
and that according to rumour most of the British officers lost in
the action had been fired upon and killed by “European troops”
while attempting to rally their men.15

At a summer house she and Calcraft now maintained at Hol-
wood, about ten miles southeast of London, George Anne Bellamy
was recovering from a broken shoulder, a compound fracture of
her left arm and a broken hand—injuries received in a riding acci-
dent—when Calcraft walked into her room with a long face.

“Bad news from America!” exclaimed George Anne, prompted
by what she called her second sight.

Calcraft nodded.

“My fears are too prophetic,” she said, “and I have lost a second
father.” 16

Walpole summarized the newspaper reports in a letter to Mann.

“I have already given you some account of Braddock,” Walpole
wrote. “I may complete the poor man’s history with a few words.”

He devoted those words to the Braddock-Gumley duel.”

Fed by private letters from America, the London newspapers
chewed on Braddock’s defeat for the next two months. Especially
critical was The Public Advertiser which said Braddock was uni-
versally disliked by reason of his overbearing, rough, haughty dis-

REQUIEM [ 269]

position, and that the failure of his expedition, badly conducted
from the start, attested to his own obstinacy in insisting that his
soldiers fight in formation.“ The Gentleman’s Magazine said Brad-
dock was by natural disposition the most unfit person in the world
to command in a situation where cool circumspection and affable
behavior were necessary to success. But the magazine also printed
some verses on his death:

Beneath some Indian shrub, if chance you spy

The brave remains of murdered Braddock lie,
Soldier, with shame the guilty place survey,

And weep, that here your comrades fled away.

Then, with his brother-chiefs‘ encircled round
Possess the hero's bones of hostile ground

And plant the English "’* oak that gave his name,

Fit emblem to his valour and his fame!

Broad o’er this stream "‘”"* shall this his honors grow,
And last as long as e’er the waters flow.

"‘ His officers.
** Brad in old Saxon English is the same as broad and Brad-oke
is the same as Broad-oak.
"'”""' The Ohio.19

And this “apology for the Men who deserted General Braddock
when surprised by the ambuscade”:

Ah! Braddock why did you persuade
To stand and fight each recreant blade,
That left thee in the wood?
They knew that those who run away,
Might live to fight another day,
But all must die who stood.”

“Braddock’s defeat still remains in the situation of the longest
battle that ever was fought with nobody,” Walpole wrote Bentley
at the end of August.“

On the third day of September, John Calcraft appeared before
Andrew Colbee Ducarel, a London surrogate, to prove the Gen-
eral’s will and be sworn as an administrator of Braddock’s estate,
like powers being reserved to Mary Yorke, the other executor,
“when she shall apply for the same.” 22 Sometime later the Treas-
ury made a demand for the return of government plate left by the
General. The demand was rejected and a suit was instituted but
failed. The plate remained on George Anne’s table.23

[ 270] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Until they became fully aware of the extent of Braddock’s de-
feat, Morris and Dinwiddie both assumed that Dunbar would re-
organize the force under his command and make another attempt
to capture the French fort that summer.“ Sharpe was less opti-
mistic.25 But the least any of them expected of Dunbar was that he
would protect the frontier.” Dunbar had no such intentions. He
was going into winter quarters. He reached Fort Cumberland on
the afternoon of July 22 with three hundred wounded officers and
men. Court Martials convened. Soldiers accused of mutiny and
clesertion in the battle were lashed. On August 2 Dunbar marched
on to Philadelphia, leaving the wounded in the fort hospital.”

“I must confess the whole conduct of Col. Dunbar appears mon-
strous to me,” Dinwiddie told Sharpe.”

To the inhabitants of western Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Vir-
ginia, left to the mercy of the French and Indians, Dunbar’s with-
drawal was both cowardly and heartless.” Hot heads like Daniel
Dulaney, to whom all British officers were obnoxious, took out their
resentment on Braddock.3° Private Tom Fausset, a deserter from
the Forty-Eighth Foot after the battle, boasted that he had killed
Braddock to avenge the death of his brother.31

But even in towns as far west as Frederick, people were not re-
duced to utter panic. The Widow Brown, following Dunbar’s
column through Frederick, attended a ball there where the ladies
danced without hoops or stays, a ball which ended with a jig from
each 1ady.3-"-

As soon as he had recovered enough from his wound to travel
in the General’s coach, still at Fort Cumberland with Sharpe's
chariot, Orme started home. From Fort Cumberland he drove to
Philadelphia.” Backbiting had become an occupational disease of
his fellow officers there with Dunbar.34 Somebody--possibly Gage
or one of his friends—published an advertisement in the Pennsyl-
vania Gazette stating that the main body of Braddock’s troops had
been in confusion before going into action the day of the battle.35
Gage had applied for the colonelcy of the Forty-Fourth, vacated by
the death of Sir Peter Halkett.3° Other officers were still writing
letters home about the battle. Anxious to uphold their own rep-
utations in the shame of defeat, they used Braddock and his favor-
ites as scapegoats on whom to lay the blame for every error of the
campaign.37

It was the same with Virginians, fiercely proud of their rangers

REQUIEM [271 ]

who had suffered such heavy losses in the battle. Washington, home
again at Mount Vernon, wrote to Orme in Philadelphia:

It is impossible to relate the different accounts that was given of
our late unhappy engagement but all tended to the disadvantage of
the poor deceased General, who is censored on all hands.38

In a long and rather melancholy reply to Washington, Orme
wrote:

That part of your letter mentioning the reflections upon the Gen-
eral gives me much uneasiness though I feel a contempt for the de-
tractors which alleviates in some degree my concern. I know the igno-
rant and rascally C——- D—-- is one promoter through resentment and
malevolence and the thick headed baronet another, intending to build
his character upon the ruins of one much more amiable than his can
be. For my part I judge it a duty to vindicate the memory of a man
whom I greatly and deservedly esteemed and I think every man whom
he regarded should be his advocate, keeping literally to the facts which
must always improve the goodness of his disposition. I am convinced
the affection he bore you as well as your integrity and good nature
will make you assiduous in removing these abominable prejudices the
generality of people have imbibed and publish. It is very hard the
bluntness and openness of a man's temper should be called brutality
and that he who would hear opinions more freely than any man
should be accused of obstinacy and peremtoriness. In short in a thou-
sand particulars I find such lies and opposites that I will say no more.39

“This general was, I think, a brave man, and might probably
have made a figure as a good officer in some European war,”
Franklin wrote in his Autobiography. “But he had too much self-
confidence, too high an opinion of the validity of regular troops,
and too mean a one of both Americans and Indians.’’ 40

Recalling the circumstances of Braddock’s death in a biograph-
ical memoranda which he made twenty-eight years later, Washing-
ton wrote:

Thus died a man whose good and bad qualities were intimately
blended. He was brave even to a fault and in the regular service
would have done honor to his profession. His attachments were warm.
His enmities strong, and having no disguise, both appeared in full
force. He was generous and disinterested, but plain and blunt in man-
ner, even to rudeness.“

Later, when he had become the first President of the United
States, Washington one day got to talking about Braddock’s expe-
dition with William Findley, a Pennsylvania congressman. Findley,

[272] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

who was 14 years old at the time of Braddock’s defeat, remarked
that from the time of his Pennsylvania boyhood he had had a bad
impression of Braddock.

“True, true,” said Washington, “he was unfortunate, but his
character was much too severely treated."

Washington said he himself had gone back along the trail and
looked for Braddock’s grave, intending to erect a monument. But
the route of the road had been changed. He could not tell where
Braddock was buried.”

Sometime around 1820, workmen repairing the road dug a skele-
ton from the bank of the little stream near the site of the camp
where the General died. From metal buttons and other insignia
said to have been found in the grave, it was assumed that the bones
were Braddock’s. Those of one hand were sent to the Peale Mu-
seum, in Philadelphia.43 The others were buried again at the foot
of an oak tree beside the road. In time the oak died. The site was
enclosed with a board fence painted white. Pine trees were planted
inside the fence. The fence rotted and disappeared. Not until 1913
was a granite monument erected to mark the supposed burial place.

“Here lieth the remains of Major General Edward Braddock . . .”
says a bronze plaque on the granite, which bears the crest of the
Coldstream Guards.

10.
ll.
12.

wt-
$00

NOTES

II. ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION OF A GUARDSMAN

. Memoirs of John Evelyn, ii 148
. Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Times, 31, 125; The Stuarts, Sir Charles

Petrie, 78f’f; The Royal House of Stuart, Samuel Cowan, ii 148

. The London Times, January 29, 1949, 5 (“January 30, 1649,” G. Kitson Clark);

Evelyn, ii B2, 4

. The Works of King Charles the Martyr, Eikon Bsailike, 2o8ff
. Evelyn, ii 148-9; Diary of Samuel Pepys, i 15off; London in the Time of the

Stuarts, Sir Walter Besant, 74ff; Cowan, ii 199; Continuation of the Memoirs
of the Court of England, John Heneage Jesse, 1 207; The Life of General
Monk, Thomas Gumble, 252, 388f‘f; Royalty Restored, J. Fitzgerald Molloy,
i 24ff; Origin and Services of the Coldstream Guards, Daniel MacKinnon, i 95

. Evelyn, ii 148-9; Gumble, 252; England Under the Stuarts, John Heneage

Jesse, iii 41fl?; MacKinnon, i 12fl; Gumble, iff; Angliae Notitia, Edward
Chamberlayne, Part II, 195

. MacKinnon, 1 96; JHC viii 171-2, 318, 321
. Burnett, 54ff; Petrie, 215ff; Social England, ed. H. D. Trail], iv, 338; A Short

History of the English People, by John Richard Green, ii 165; The History
of England from the Accession of Iames II, Thomas Babington Macaulay
(Everyman’s Edition), i 1239:"; A Detection of the Court and State of England,
Roger Coke, ii 60; The Last Years of the Protectorate, Charles Harding Firth,
i 7fl, 122ff, 134ff; Oliver Cromwell and His Times, Thomas Cromwell, 425E;
Oliver Cromwell, John Banks, 174

. MacKinnon, 1 986; A History of the British Army, J. W. Fortescue, i 2899:‘;

Burnet, 78-9

MacKinnon, i 853; Gumble, 1721f

Fortescue, i 291; Gumble, 402

MacKinnon, i 95; Angliae Notitia, 250, 251; Burnett, 66; England Under the
Stuarts, John Heneage Hesse, iii 41fE

. MacKinnon, i 129ff, 201
. Ibid., 105, 114ff; Angliae Notitia, 1684, 135; The Origin and History of the

First or Grenadier Guards, F. W. Hamilton, i 4fE, 143; The Military Forces
of the Crown, Charles M. Clode, i 364

[273]

[274]
15.
16.

17.
18.

19.
20.
21.
22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.
28.

29.
30.
. Clode, ii, 75ff
32.
33. I 0

. Clode, i 106; ii 115-6; Fortesque, i 315; English Social History, G. M.

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

English Army Lists and Commission Registers, Charles Dalton, i 296; Calen-
dar of State Papers, (Domestic Series), 1682, F. H. Blackbourne Daniell, ed. 251
Stafiordshire Pedigrees (Harleian Society Publications, Vol. 63), 31; seal on
the will of Edward Braddock, Esq., late Major General of His Majesty's Forces,
Principal Probate Registry, London.

The Visitation of Norfolk (Harleian Society Publications, V01. 32), 46

A Register of the Parish of St. Peter's Upon Cornhill (HSP, Register Section,
Vol. 1), 184; The Parish Registers of St. Michael, Cornhill (HSP, RS, V01. 7),
212; The Registers of Christ Church, New gate (HSP, RS, Vol. 21), 284; The
Registers of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury (HSP, RS, Vol. 61), 44-5-6-7;
The Register of St. Martin-in-the-Fields (HSP, RS, V01. 66), 287, 289; The
Register of St. Lawrence Jewry (HSP, RS, V01. 70), 113, 135; The Registers
of St. Michael Bassishaw (HSP, RS, V01. 73), 101; Allegations for Marriage
Licenses Issued by Dean and Chapter at Westminster (HSP, Vol. 23), 232;
Allegations for Marriage Licenses, Etc. (HSP, V01. 25), 109, 193, 209; Allega-
tions for Marriage Licenses, Etc. (HSP, Vol. 26), 318; Calendar of Marriage
Licenses Issued by the Faculty Ofiice (Index Library, British Record Society,
Vol. 33), 19, 96, 161; Calendar of Marriage License Allegations in the Registry
of the Bishop of London (I L, BRS, V01. 62), 78, 162; Calendar of Marriage
License Allegations, Etc. (IL, BRS, Vol. 66), 18, 24; Administrations in the
Archdeaconry of Northampton (IL, BRS, Vol. 70), 124; Calendar of State
Papers (Domestic Series), Charles II: Addenda, 1660-1685, F. H. Blackburne
Daniell ed., 419; Calendar of State Papers (Domestic Series), May 1690-October
1691, John Hardy ed., 445-6; Calendar of Treasury Books, prepared by
William Shaw, ix Part 5 1910, Part 4 1831, 1935; x (1935) Part 2 691; xxi
(1952) Part 2 422

Stafiordshire Pedigrees, 31

A List of Scholars of St. Peter’s College, Westminster, Joseph Welch, 18
Stafiordshire Pedigrees, 72, 116, 260

Ibid., 31

Allegations for Marriage Licenses Issued by the Vicar General of the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury (HSP, Vol. 33), 105-6

“The Will of Edward Braddock of the Parish of St. Margaret's, 1708,”
Principal Probate Registry, London; The Marriage, Baptismal and Burial
Registers of the Collegiate Church or Abbey of St. Peter, Westminster (HSP,
Vol. 10), 263n; Angliae Notitia, 1682, 234, 288; The Old Cheque Book of
the Chappel Royal from 1561 to 1744, edited from original manuscript
etc., Edward F. Rimbault, printed by the Camden Society, 12

Angliae Notitia 1682, 229; Whitehall, W. J. Loftie, 68; Letter from the Lord
Chamber1ain’s oflice, St. James’s Palace, July 27, 1956

Allegations for Marriage Licenses Etc. (HSP, V01. 33), 106

Westminster Registers (HSP, Vol. 10), 263n

I bid. (The Will of the elder Edward Braddock of St. Margaret's [Op. Cit. 24]
mentions a granddaughter, Arabella Braddock. There is no record of his son,
Edward, having had a daughter by that name, hence the uncertainty about
the number of the elder Bradd0ck’s children.)

Allegations for Marriage Licenses Etc. (HSP 23), 232; Cheque-Book, 15
DNB, ii 723f‘r'; Westminster Registers, 266n; Cheque Book, 16. 23

MacKinn0n, ii, 464ff
Ibid., ii 385, 405ff; Fortescue, i 310E

Trevelyan, 309

NOTES

[275]

. Clode, i 36-7, 67-8
. Traill, 512E; Fortescue, i 316ff
. MacKinnon, ii 384-5; Fortescue, i 318; Social England, H. D. Traill, iv 5129:";

Historical Memoirs of His Late Royal Highness William Augustus Duke of
Cumberland, 467; Macaulay, 1 713

. MacKinnon, 1 161fE; The Microcosm of London, ii 162; Clode, i 57ff, 221ff

. Loftie, 151$; Memoirs of Count Grammont, Anthony Hamilton, i 142

. Jesse (England Under the Stuarts), ii 493; Molloy, i 203; MacKinnon, i 167

. Theatre Royal Drury Lane, W. J. Macqueen Pope, 44lf; The Story of Nell

Gwynn, Cecil Chesterton, 61f‘f; Nell Gwynn, Lewis Melville, 194E; The Story
of Nell Gwynn, Peter Cunningham, xxxv, 55ff; Evelyn, ii 339; Some Account
of the English Stage, the Rev. John Genest, i 380if

. Macaulay, i 3531f; Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, William Coxe,

i iff; Grammont, ii 1516; Burnet, 486; A Brief Relation of State Afiairs from
September 1678 to April 1714, Narcissus Luttrell, i 242

. Macaulay, i 195l’f; Burnet, 116-7; Luttrell, i 215, 222

. Petrie, 306; Burnet, 114-5, 244-5, 401

. Evelyn, ii 436, iii 92, 195; Luttrell, i 3466?; Burnet, 272-3, 366

. Burnet, 114ff; Petrie, 302, James the Second, Hillaire Belloc, 157fl?; Macaulay,

i 162; British Plays From the Restoration to 1820, Montrose J. Moses ed., 334;
Works of Thomas Otway, Thomas Thornton ed., iii 7; DNB, xiv 1243, 1681-2;
Genest, 352; Luttrell, i 227

. Macaulay, i 2o7lf; Burnet, 346fl; Luttrell, i 228, 263lf
. Evelyn, iii 85fl?; Cobbett’s Complete Collection of State Trials, ix 3531i, 1010;

Burnet, 358ff; Luttrell, i 271

. Evelyn, iii 1281f; Macaulay, i 332; Burnet, 3911f
. The Last Days of Charles II, Raymond Crawford, 48; Evelyn, iii 136; Mac-

Kinnon, i 190, ii 452; Luttrell, i 327

. MacKinnon, i 176, 178; Luttrell, i 339
. MacKinnon, i 178; Queen Mary of Modena, Martin Haile, 128-9; Burnet,

403; Luttrell, i 371, 3759:‘

. Evelyn iii 162; Macaulay, i 401ff; King Monmouth, Allen Fea, 219, 223;

Burnet 401, 404-5, 41off

. MacKinnon, i 179, 180n.; Luttrell, i 346E; Fea, 276lf
. Luttrell, i 355-6, 459113; Burnet, 435, 447, 487; Clode, i 80; Green, ii 264;

Macaulay, i 512, 585

. Luttrell, i 399; Belloc, 209; Clode, i 80

. Luttrell, 402ff; Burnet, 448, 4521i; Evelyn, iii 220lf

. Evelyn, iii 220-1; DNB, ii 724

. Burnet, 4766?; Belloc, 207; Macaulay, ii 9; Luttrell, i 377, 422, 426, 429

. Macaulay, ii 78ff; Fea (Mary of Modena), 186l’f; James the Second and His

Wives, Allen Fea, 156fl?; Burnet, 469, 4751f, 491; Luttrell, i 442, 449, 469

. Green, ii 281; Evelyn, iii 251, 253, 255; Burnet, 4846, 9421i; Luttrell, i 433,

441. 445- 455ff

. Evelyn, iii 258; Burnet, 499; Luttrell, i 473
. Evelyn, iii 259; Burnet, 500; Luttrell, i 4746; Macaulay, ii 75ff; Green, ii

284E

. Macaulay, ii 91
. Evelyn, iii 259; Sheppard, 69; Burnet, 501; Luttrell, i 4763; An Apology

for His Life, Colley Cibber (Everyman’s Library) n. d., 40

. Burnet, 502n
. Evelyn, 260, 261; Belloc, 217ff
. Macaulay, ii 90, 1o4ff; Luttrell, i 474lf

ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION OF A GUARDSMAN [ 17 ]

buried in the north cloister of the Abbey where her daughter,
Elizabeth Blow, Dr. Blow’s wife, had been buried in 1683.90 The
Captain’s father, Edward Braddock I, was now clerk of the cheque
of the Chapel Royal, a position which had increased his salary to
£76 a year. It was the clerk's duty to keep an attendance record of
the other gentlemen and priests of the Chapel Royal, and to pro-
vide the chapel candles. He received the residue of the candles as
part of his fee, and as a wax-chandler by trade, he must have known
how to make the most of that arrangement.“

The fighting in Flanders, a war of summer maneuvers among
the windmills, never reached any sharp, decisive climax. For Cap-
tain Braddock it began with a battle at the little town of Walcourt,
below Namur, on an August afternoon in 1690.92 With long siege
trains of slow-footed Dutch allies, the Coldstream marched and
countermarched across watery meadows, from one walled town to
another. A new campaign began each spring with the arrival of
King William from England, and closed on his return to London
in the fall.93 At the end of three years only the lieutenants of Brad-
dock’s regiment had anything to show for their service. Each had
been given the rank of captain-lieutenant to establish his foot guard
precedency over lieutenants of ordinary regiments of the line.94

In January, 1692, the King dismissed Churchill, now becoming
better known as Marlborough. London heard the Earl was in dis-
grace either for taking bribes or extortion from inferior officers.95
In Flanders, where he had made no secret of his criticism of the
King’s Dutch favorites, it was assumed that he was being punished
for his anti-Dutch attitude.“ The truth was, the King had been
told that Marlborough was carrying on a secret correspondence
with the deposed James. Queen Mary’s sister, Princess Anne, and
Anne's husband, Prince George of Denmark, were dismissed from
court because of their close friendship with Marlborough and his
wife. In May the Earl was sent to the Tower, charged with treason,
but was released for lack of evidence to sustain the charge.97

Late that summer, in the hedgerows of the Flemish village of
Steinkirk, five British regiments were cut to pieces in a bloody de-
feat which British officers blamed on the King’s arrogant Dutch
favorite—Count Solmes——the same de Solmes who had led William’s
Dutch guards down the mall in St. James’s Park and told Lord
Craven the Coldstream must withdraw from Whitehall.” Steinkirk
was refought the following winter in Parliament, where four or

[275]

69.
70.
71.
72.
73-
74-
75-
76.
77~
78.
79-
80.
81.
82.

92.
93-
94-
95-

97-
98.

99-
100.

101.
102.
103.
104.
105.

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Macaulay, ii 111ff, 131ff; Evelyn, iii 259, 261; Luttrell, i 486

Macaulay, ii 125; Fea (Mary of Modena), 218-9; Burnet, 504; Luttrell, i 485
Macaulay, ii 1276; Burnet, 504; Luttrell, i 485; MacKinnon, i 192ff
Macaulay, ii 128

Ibid., 1396'; Burnet, 505

Macaulay, ii 146; Clode, i 485; MacKinnon, i 193-4; Burnet, 5061?
Macaulay, ii 149-50; MacKinnon, i 196; Luttrell, i 488
MacKinn011, i 197

Evelyn, iii 262

MacKinnon, i 197; Burnet, 509; Luttrell, i 489

MacKinnon, i 194n

Evelyn, iii 262

Burnet, 5086; Evelyn, iii 262

Burnet, 512ff; Macaulay, ii 1641?, 192lf, 218; Evelyn, iii 264if; MacKinnon,
i 197; Hamilton, i 3373

. Clode, i 195-6; Burnet, 511

. MacKinnon, i 191, 199; ii 387, 465

. Ibid., i 201; DNB, xix 924f’f; Luttrell, i 434, 509

. Clode, i 142, 497; MacKinnon, i 199; Luttrell, i 494, 5o7ff; Coxe, i 24

. Fortescue, i 338; Macaulay, ii 260-261; Encyclopedia Britannica, Ninth edi-

tion, xi 643; Clode, 486, 487; Luttrell, i 4941f; MacKinnon, i 199; i 389;
Dalton, iii 43

. The Registers of Marriage of St. Mary le Bone, Middlesex (HSP Registers

of Section, Vol. 47), 132; MacKin11on, i 2023; ii 416-7; Hamilton, i 344;
Luttrell, i 582; ii 36, 37, 41, 73, 130, 165, 282

. MacKinnon, ii 416-7
. Westminster Registers, 208, 227
. Angliae Notitia 1692, 172;

Westminster Registers, 263; Cheque Book, 18,
115E, 210; Memorials of St. James Palace, Edgar Sheppard, London 1894,
ii 287, 325

MacKinnon, i 2o2ff; Fortescue, i 351fi; Luttrell, i 572

Macaulay, ii 768; Fortescue, i 351ff; MacKinnon, i 207

Hamilton, i 352-3; MacKinnon, i 211Ff

Macaulay, iii 44; Evelyn, iii 313
. Macaulay, iii 42; B11rnet, 574-5; Coxe, i 34ff
Macaulay, iii 43ff, 110, 344-5; Luttrell, ii 443, 445, iii 455, 457; Fortescue,

i 359; Burnet, 577-8, 584

Macaulay, iii 129f’E; Fortescue, i 36ol’f; Hamilton, i 361f‘t‘; MacKinnon, i
218ff

Macaulay, iii 146ff; Fortescue, i 366, 368; JHC, x 775

Fortescue, i 369fE; MacKinnon, i 230fl?; Hamilton, i 372%; Macaulay, iii
224lf, 3o3ff

MacKinnon, i 241

Evelyn, iii 338; Burnet, 606-7

Evelyn, iii 338; Luttrell, iii 420

Macaulay, iii 327

Baptismal Register, St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster (All previously
published biographical sketches of Edward Braddock [1694—1755] which
have ventured to give the place of his birth have suggested that he was
born in Perthshire, Scotland. This error appears to have been based upon
information contained in a New Orleans newspaper clipping which was
reprinted in Notes and Queries, Third Series, XII 5. In 1946 the author
visited Perthshire in search of some verification of this claim but could

106.

107.

108.
109.
110.
111.

112.

113.
114.
115.

116.

117.
118.

119.
120.
121.
122.

123.
124.
125.
126.

127.

128.
129.

130.

131.
132.

133.
134.

135.
136.
137.
138.

NOTES

[277]

find none. A subsequent search of Scottish marriage and baptismal records
in the Register House, at Edinburgh, failed to produce any information
indicating that any Braddocks were living in Scotland circa 1695. Later the
London baptismal record was found at St. Margaret's.)

Sheppard (The Old Royal Palace at Whitehall), 304; Luttrell, iii 446, 447;
Evelyn, iii 339; Macaulay, iii 323

DNB, v 376if, xviii 10176; Dalton, iv 173; Poetical Miscellanies, Sir Richard
Steele, 247; The Life of Sir Richard Steele, George A. Aiken, 499:"; Richard
Steele, Austin Dobson, 14lf

Luttrell, iv 15

Calendar of State Papers (Domestic Series) 1694-1695, 63

Luttrell, iii 462

MacKinnon, i 247-8n., 254ff; Hamilton, i 3931f; Fortescue, i 378-9; Luttrell,
iii 498; DNB, 3766; Macaulay, iii 309, 359

Macaulay, iii 377f; Luttrell, iii 536-7; A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble
Authors of England, Scotland and Ireland, Horatio Walpole, v 219
MacKinnon, ii 417; Macaulay, iii 378; Luttrell, iii 537

Luttrell, iii 537; Add Mss., 38, 700i, 229

Macaulay, iii 519, 524; Greene, ii 308; Burnet, 641ff; Luttrell, iv 277, 2856',
Evelyn, iii 362; HC], xiii 1

DNB, ii 724; Evelyn, iii 362

Luttrell, iv 304; MacKinnon, i 272-3, ii 307

The Will of Dr. John Blow, Principal Probate Registry, London; Calendar
of Treasury Books, xvii II 1006

Notes and Queries, First Series xii 72

Letter from the Headmaster, Westminster School, May 3, 1950

The Works of jonathan Swift, ix 369, 370

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Lawrence Sterne
(Modern Library Edition), 68ft, 105, 114, 395, 4623

The Life of Lawrence Sterne, Percy Fitzgerald, i, 7, 9

DNB, xiii 607

DNB, v 368-9

Macaulay, iii 529ff, 545; Fortescue, i 3846; Hamilton, i 414l’f; Robert
Harley, Earl of Oxford, E. S. Roscoe, 21; i 390

Evelyn, iii 367; Burnet, 645-6, 653; Luttrell, iv 280, 311, 313, 317ff, 330, 333.
472, 473, 478, 486, 487; Evelyn, iii 367; Journals of the House of Commons,
xii 5, 7, 18, 30ft, 37, 44, 51, 52, 55, 756, 86; DPHC London, 1742, iii 77-8
Luttrell, iv 293

Macaulay, iii 635-6; Evelyn, iii 367; Burnet, 653; Luttrell, iv 282, 481; HE],
xii 603, 614

Macaulay, 576-7; Luttrell, iv 327-8; Evelyn, iii 363

MacKinnon, i 275; Luttrell, iv 495, 498

Corner, 128; Burnet, 525; Luttrell, iv 326, 353ff, 361, 377, 401, 458, 529.
553. 562. 565. 575. 577; Evelyn. iii 284. 290

Evelyn, iii 338; Luttrell, iv 525, 574, 711

MacKinnon, ii 308-9, 417; Luttrell, iv 347, 348, 375, 486, 712; The Micro-
cosm of London 1808-11, iii 110; Blenheim, G. M. Trevelyan, 82

Sheppard, ii 203-4, 209-11

Trevelyan (Blenheim), 175

Evelyn, iii 343

Trevelyan (Blenheim), 62-3, 1186; Jesse, i 250; Luttrell, iv 671, 672; Burnet,
668-9, 683-4

[273]

139.

140.

141.

142.
143.
144.

145.
146.

147.

148.

149.
150.
151.

152.

153.
154.
155.
156.
157.
158.

159.
160.
161.

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Fortescue, i 389; Luttrell, iv 455. 499. 510, 605, 610. 623. 544» 579 9“?
HG], xii 18, 48, 53, 54. 59. 60. 69 etc

Fortescue, i 389; Traill, iv 742; Macaulay, iii 608; Luttrell, iv 382. 392. 395.
402-3. 419. 420. 424. 437. 455. 490. 499. 510. 518. 540. 541. 577. 587. 60!-
610, 618, 679

Mr. Steele’s Apology for Himself and His Writings, 80

DNB, xviii 1018; The Funeral, of Grief a La Mode, Richard Steele, 72. 73:
Luttrell, iv 657

Macaulay, iii 731ff; Evelyn, iii 392; Luttrell, v 87; MacKinnon, i 277; B01‘-
net, 695ff

Trevelyan (Blenheim), 143E; Coxe, i 73fI

Dalton, v 100-1

Trevelyan (Blenheim), 160-1; Macaulay, iii 7446; Evelyn, iii 393; Bllrnet.
70ofI

Luttrell, v 166

MacKenn0n, ii 309-10; Trevelyan (Blenheim), 164; Bumet, 7041f; COXC. i
1-77; Hamilton, i, 428; Luttrell, v 172

Trevelyan (Blenheim), 204; HE], xii 905-7

Luttrell, v 118

MacKinnon, i 279ff, ii 311-12; Hamilton, i 4341f; Fortescue, i 407; Trevelyan
(Blenheim), 262ff; Ashton, 158; Dalton, v XV, Burnet, 717-8

Fortescue, i 401ff; Trevelyan (Blenheim), 2416; Luttrell, vi 152; Burnet,
713'4

MacKinnon, ii 465; Dalton, v 46

Calendar of Treasury Papers, xix 170, 209, 217

Marlborough Dispatches, i 212

Trevelyan (Blenheim), 218ff; Fortescue, i 399, 411f’f

The Commedies of George Farquhar, ii; The Recruiting Ofiicer, 22
Trevelyan (Blenheim), 4071f; MacKinnon, i 286, ii 314ff

MacKinnon, ii 465; Luttrell, v 420; Fortescue, i 434

MacKinnon, ii 465

Fortescue, i 3413; Hamilton, i 443ff; Coxe, i 1561f; Burnet, 751ff; Trevelyan
(Blenheim), 421; Luttrell, v 462-3

. Luttrell, v 497-8

Hamilton, i 457; Coxe, i 2506‘

. Trevelyan (Blenheim), 422; English Poets of the Eighteenth Century, Ernest

Bernbaum ed., 9

. Trevelyan (Blenheim), 421 ; Luttrell, v 509, 515-6, vi 125; Dalton, v Part II

1-73; Coxe, i 251-2

. Trevelyan (Blenheim), 422-23
. MacKinnon, i 2961f, ii 317; Fortescue, i 450E; Hamilton, ii 7ff; Luttrell, v

555, vi 37, 61; Trevelyan (Ramillies), 63lf, 295if; Green, ii 323ff; DNB xiii
840ff

. Luttrell, vi 31, 42, 50, 52, 136, 172, 176, 690-1; MacKinnon, i 2966; Fortescue,

i 480fI

. Dalton, v 11, i 159; Luttrell, 535, 560

. Luttrell, vi 134

. DNB, iv 308

. MacKinnon, i 315-6; Calendar of Treasury Books, XXIII ii 178
. Ibid., 315f‘t'; Hamilton, ii 28, 33; Dalton, i 329

. Hamilton ii

Westminster Abbey Registers, 263, 265; Cheque Book, 25; Luttrell, vi 366

NOTES [ 279]

176. Will of Edward Braddock, of the Parish of St. Margaret's, Principal Pro-

177.

178.
179.

. Queen Anne’s American Kings, Richmond P. Bond, Oxford 1953, III, 1, 2;

\‘lO> <1!»-baton

12.

van
I-KOO

bate Registry, London

Mackinnon, ii 469; Dalton, vi 321; Sir Richard Steele, Willard Connely,
34» 45

Dalton, vi 18

Luttrell, vi 542f‘f, 547, 551, 554, 559ff; Green, ii 330; Burnet, 8466; Coxe,
iii 4ff, 21lf

Tatler No. 171; Luttrell, vi 571; American History and Government, Willis
Mason West, 146; A Basic History of the United States, Charles A. and
Mary R. Beard, 84; Luttrell, vi 572, 576

. Bond, 2ff

. Bond, 94-5
. Ibid., 12E; Luttrell, vi 574; History of the Dress of the British Soldier, John

Luard, 94; British Military Uniforms, James Laver, 27, Plate I

. MacKinnon, i 347
. Clode, ii 77, 608
. Dalton, vi 56

III. MORE EDUCATION ETC.

. Dalton (George), ii XV; Fortescue, i 577-8

. Clode, ii 609-1o

. Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, John F. Watson, ii 140

. Swift's Works, ix 371-2

. Memoirs of Jonathan Swift, D. D. (Swift's Works), Walter Scott, 463;

journal to Stella, Jonathan Swift, Harold Williams ed., i Xxff, 3, 24

. Journal to Stella, 13
. Coxe, iii 77fl?; Burnet, 856; Trevelyan (The Peace), 65lf; Jesse (Memoirs),

ii 39FE; Journal to Stella, i XVIIIff, 25; Marlborough: His Life and Times,
Winston S. Churchill, iv 257ff

. DNB, xii 1295; Trevelyan (Blenheim), 83; (Ramillies), 326; Jesse (Memoirs),

ii 366; A History of the Reign of Queen Anne, John Hill Burton, London,
1880, iii 7off; Marlborough, v 32E, 311ff, 348ff; Coxe, i 59, ii 97, 490E;
The History of Great Britain During the Reign of Queen Anne, Frederick
William Wyon, i 137, 238ff; JHC, xvi 398; Debates and Proceedings, iv
168

. Op. Cit., 6
10.
11.

Journal to Stella, i 7

Ibid., i 40; Trevelyan (Blenheim), 78; Burnet, 857; Churchill, vi 327; The
Review of the State of the British Nation, vii Nos. 84, 85, 86, 87, 9o, 91;
Tatler No. 232

Luttrell, vi 6391f; Journal to Stella, i 42, 52; Burnet, 857-8; Marlborough,
vi 348; Trevelyan (Blenheim), 52, 79; Walpole, John Morley, 19; Wyon, ii
251; Burton, iii 79; Memoirs of Lord Bolingbroke, George Wingrove Cooke,
i 76

. Journal to Stella, i 67; Luttrell, vi 643
. Journal of Stella, i 120; Luttrell, vi 664; Marlborough, vi 3396; Trevelyan

(The Peace), 114-5

. Bolingbroke and His Times, Walter Sichel, 15-6; The Life of Henry St.

john Viscount Bolingbroke, Thomas Macknight, 104-5; Coxe, ii 94lf; Green,
ii 328

. DNB, lx 847-8, xii 1296-7; Burton, iii 52ft

[280]

17.
18.

19.
20.

21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.

28.

29.
30.

31.

32.

33-

35-

36.

37-

38.

39-

40.
41 .
42.
43-
44-
45-
. Wood, 447
47-
48.
49-
50.
5 1 .
52.
53-
54-
55-

56.

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

DNB, xii 1295; Jesse (Memoirs), i 286-7, ii 2426; Coxe, 94ft; Churchill, v
3161f; Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, E. S. Roscoe, 94ff

Coxe, ii 487; Macaulay, ii 639fE; Jesse, i 320; Sarah Churchill, Frank
Chancellor, i 1426; Marlborough, vi 228, 265, 414, 650; Corner, 159; DNB,
iv 334; Trevelyan (The Peace), 63, 115; Jesse, iii 450-1; 473 110601173‘ 0)‘ the
Conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough

DNB, xii 1296; Luttrell, vi 75; Dalton, iv 173, vi 18, 224; MacKinnon, ii
470-1; Sichel, 76

DNB, xii 1295, ix 847-8; Coxe, ii 348; iii Glf; Churchill, vi 212-3, v 316;
Dalton, v 46, 66, 157, vi 18, 365; MacKinnon, ii 468-9; Burton, iii 62-3
Marlborough, vi 212ff; Dalton, ii 299n., vi XXV, v 38; Swift’s Works, iii 229
Churchill, vi 212: Coxe, iii 7

Churchill, vi 2686; Fortescue, i 538; Dalton, v 18

Coxe, iii 6ff; Green, ii 328

Journal to Stella, ii 401

Macknight, 149, 214; Sichel, 212

Luttrell, vi 655; Journal to Stella, i 104, 113, 116ff; Churchill, vi 650;
Campbell, 233

Churchill, vi 272

Swift's Works, iii 317ff; Wyon, ii 259

Five Queer Women, Walter and Clare Jerrold, London 1929, 831i; Marl-
borough, v 386, 442, vi 48, 72, 482, 534

Luttrell, vi 671, 672; Coxe, iii 1723; Journal to Stella, i 145: Marlborough,
v 225, vi 352

Luttrell, vi 680, 682; Burnet, 862

Luttrell, vi 682

. Luttrell, vi 687, 689-90, 693-4; Journal to Stella, i 183, 192, 195-6

Bond, 49lf; Dalton, vi 20, v 157; Coxe, iii 20311.; Luttrell, vi 707; Fortescue,
i 541

Spectator N0. 2

Luttrell, vi 709; Swift's Works, v 30; Bond 50; Fortescue, i 540; Burnet,
871; Dalton, vi XXV; Journal to Stella, ii 380

Luttrell, iii 429; Fortescue, i 559, 580

Journal to Stella, i 276, 288

I bid., i 304

MacKinnon, ii 420

Wood, 448

GM, January 1731, 25

Ibid., 263

Portrait by Bartholomew Dandridge, National Portrait Gallery.

Ibid.

LHW, Mrs. Paget Toynbee ed., iii 334

Political State of Great Britain, xiii 350-1

Melville (Bath), 200

Lord Hervey and His Friends, Earl of Ilchester, 9

Ibid., 94-5

Wood, 446

Ibid., 449

Journal to Stella, i 255, 328, 335, 350, ii 557, 567, 561, 615, 623, 629, 639
A History of the Four Georges, Justin McCarthy, i 145; A History of

57-

NOTES [281 ]

England in the Eighteenth Century, W. E. H. Lecky, i 136f‘r'; England
Under George 1, Wolfgang Michael, 29; Luttrell, vi 716, 724

Hamilton, ii 59, 60; Dalton, iii 189n; iv 191-2, 268n; v. 42; vi 51, 53n,, 197,
318-9

58. Hamilton, ii 60; Hannibal Not at Our Gates, 28; Trevelyan (The Peace),

59-
60.

297

London in the Eighteenth Century, Sir Walter Besant, 121, 435

Hannibal at the Gates, Daniel Defoe; The Art of Restoring, John Toland;
Neck or Nothing, John Dunton; Plain English, Daniel Defoe; Ancient
Precedents for Modern Facts; A View of the Real Danger of the Protestant
Succession, Daniel Defoe; Britain's Alarm; The Public Spirit of the Whigs,
Jonathan Swift; The Succession of the House of Hanover Vindicated, Mr.
Asgill; The Revolution and Anti-Revolution Principles Stated and Com-
pared, john Shute Barrington

. MacKinnon, ii 421
. Sichel, 485ff, 492lf; Macknight, 414lf; Trevelyan (The Peace), 293ff; Coxe,

iii 362ff; Lecky, i 163ff; McCarthy, i 53ff

. Michael, 19, 20, 37ff; Ashton, 403; Marlborough, vi 6o4ff
. Hamilton, ii 60
. Macknight, 418; Lecky, i 165; Trevelyan (The Peace), 305; Sichel, 494, 497;

Michael, 53

. Trevelyan (The Peace), 31olf
. MacKinnor1, i 341, ii 328; The First George in Hanover and England, Lewis

Melville, i 232

. Caroline the Illustrious, W. H. Wilkins, 115; England Under George 1,

Wolfgang Michael, 76; Mackinnon, i 342 and n.; Hamilton, ii 62

. Wilkins, 19, 54, 131; Melville, i 216, ii iff; Michael, 8091'

. Michael, 107

. Wilkins 54; Melville, 47ff, 74; Michael, 78-9

. Coxe, iii 378; George the First’s Army, Charles Dalton, i XXI; Hamilton,

ii 62; Michael, 95

. Dalton (George the First), i XXIV
. Ibid., ii 159; Dalton (Army Lists), vi 55, 57, 318, 320; Hamilton, ii 64;

MacKinnor1, i 343-4

. Dalton (George), XXIV; MacKinnon, i 454
. Macknight, 222-3; Sichel, 482; Michael, 122ff; Wyon, ii 530
. England Under the House of Hanover, Thomas Wright, i 23; Morley, 423,

Michael, 1 15-6, 123

. Michael, 126; Wilkins, 160

. Hamilton, ii 64; Coxe, iii 382-3

. Michael, 126; Luard, 96

. Michael, 130; Coxe, iii 382

. Michael, 88, 132; MacKinnon, ii 330

Michael, 130, 132; Dalton (George), i 19, XXII, XXIII; MacKinnon, i 344-5;
Hamilton, i 65-6; Melville, ii 68flf

. Michael, 163; Hamilton, ii 66; Churchill, vi 636

. Dalton (George), i 191; MacKinnon, 1343, ii 421

. Macxinnon, i 347, ii 466-7

. Fortescue, ii 29

. Notes and Queries, First Series XII 517

. MacKinnon, ii 421; Hamilton, ii 65-6

. Dalton (George), i XXVI, XXVII, XXXIII; Hamilton, ii 67; Michael,

178ff; Wilkins, 186, 189; Prince Charles Edward, J. Cuthbert Hadden, 22ll

[282]
91.

102.

103.

104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.

110.
111.
112.

113.

114.
115.

116.

117.
118.

l0

CD

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Michael. 22ofi; Frederick Louis Prince of Wales, Avery] Edwards, 12;
History of Frederick II of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great, Thomas
Carlyle, i 431

. Michael, 223

. MacKinnon, ii 455; Dalton (George), i 29n
. Skrine, 58; Evelyn, ii 440

. Fortescue, ii 323

. MacKinnon, ii 33off, 421

. Wilkins, 226

. Ibid., 227; Melville, ii 58-9

Ibid.

. Edwards, uff
. Wilkins, 226fl; Leicester Square, Tom Taylor, 225lf; The Life of Lord

Chesterfield, W. H. Craig, 61ff; Court Life Below Stairs, J. Fitzgerald
Malloy, 114ff, 183

Complete Works of Alexander Pope, W. C. Armstrong ed., 66-7; Repre-
sentative English Dramas from Dryden to Sheridan, Frederick Tupper and
James W. Tupper ed., 262; Craig, 639:"; Taylor, 237; Wilkins, 240; Dalton
(George), i XXIII; Theatre Royal Drury Lane, W. Macqueen Pope, 133
Journals of the House of Commons, xviii 627, 653; DNB, xviii 217; Dalton
(George), i XXXVIII, XXXIX, Fortescue, ii 15

MacKinnon, ii 473; Dalton (George), i 159n; DNB, xx 584ff

DNB, xi 44-5; MacKinnon, ii 476-7

MacKinnon, i 345; Political State of Great Britain, xvii 404

Ibid., 409-1o, 623ff

Ibid., xviii 317, 395E; MacKinnon, i 346, ii 334-5; Hamilton, ii 71
MacKinnon, ii 242, 335-6, 339, 4235; Political State of Great Britain, xvii
511, 627ff; Hamilton, ii 75

Political State of Great Britain, xxi 433

Fortescue, ii 52; I Charters, 12

The Life and Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, her grandson Lord
Wharncliffe ed., i 126, 469; DNB, xiii 707; DNB, ix 739

Wharncliife, i 469; Letters to and From Henrietta, Countess of Sufiolk,
and Her Second Husband, i 50

Melville, 1441f; Wilkins, 3151f; Carlyle, ii 58ff; MacKinnon, ii 349-50
Marlborough, vi 649; Coxe, iii 398E; MacKinnon, ii 348; Fortescue, ii ulf;
Hamilton, ii 78

Campbell, 251

Edwards, 1 5E

Ibid., 16, 115; Portrait of Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, Philip Mercier,
National Gallery, London; Poor Fred: The People’s Prince, Sir George
Young, 30-31; The Forgotten Prince of Wales, Captain Henry Curties, 5o;

Egmont, i 290, 412

IV. SCANDAL AT BATH

. And So to Bath, Cecil Roberts, 531i, 215; A Picturesque Guide to Bath,

Bristol, Hot Wells, Messrs. Ibbetson, Laporte and J. Hassell, 7

. Roberts, 56

Jesse, i 141, 185

O30!

%D®\I

NOTES [ 283]

. Roberts, 55ff; Walks through Bath, P. Egan, 4E; The Bath Road, Charles

G. Harper, 56ff; Ibbetson, Laporte, Hassell, 33

. Trevelyan (English Social History), 302
. The New Bath Guide, 1778, 63; Ashton, 373-4; Ibbetson, Laporte, Hassell,

27

. Jesse, i 340; Marlborough, vi 651; Coxe, iii 429ff
. Traill, iv 512; Fortescue, 584-5
. Life and Letters in Bath, A. Barbeau, 791i, 168; A Guide to the Knowledge

of Bath, John Earle, 161ff

10. The Life of Beau Nash, Esq., Oliver Goldsmith, 41ff

11. Melville (Bath), 1036

12. Round the Shires, Martin S. Briggs, 278

13. Barbeau, 63; Melville (Bath), 112ff

14. Barbeau, 266; Melville (Bath), 42f‘f

15. Barbeau, 154

16. Bath Under Beau Nash, Lewis Melville (L. 8. Benjamin) London 1907, 155

17. Edwards, 29; Melville (Bath), 1536; Barbeau, 9on

18. Barbeau, 169, 32n

19. The Life and Letters of James Wolfe, Beckles Willson, 238

20. DNB, ix 740; Lord Hervey and His Friends, the Earl of Ilchester ed., 94;
Jesse, i 365ff, 3831f

21. Lord Heruey’s Memoirs, XVIIIff, 986-7; DNB, iv 217-8; The Eighteenth
Century Architecture of Bath, Mowbray A. Green, 102

22. Melville (Bath), 153-4

23. DNB, x 22-3

24. Letters to and From the Countess of Sufiolk, i 182-3

25. Jesse, ii 188lf

26. Melville (Bath), 163

27. The Will of Edward Braddock (1725); An Essay Towards a Description of
Bath, John Wood, 334

28. Green 17, Plate IV

29. Bath Abbey Registers

30. Will of Edward Braddock (d. 1725); Gentleman's Magazine, September
1731, 397; The History of Gambling in England, John Ashton, 66

31. Will of Edward Braddock (d. 1725)

32. Bath Abbey Registers

33. Will of Edward Braddock (d. 1725). Letter to author from G. M. Kirkwood,
Principal Probate Registry, London, August 26, 1955

34. Letter to author from Beverly A. Hackett, Curatorial Assistant, Mount
Vernon Museum, August 29, 1955

35. Goldsmith, 83ff. A footnote on page 199 of Melville's Bath Under Beau
Nash, states that there is an account of Fanny Braddock’s death in Modern
Amours with a key prefixed, but an examination of a copy of this book
(London 1733) in the British Museum revealed no identification of the
“celebrated S----.” A semi-fictional article entitled “Frances Braddock’s
Only Love,” by Eugene F. Coughlin in The American Weekly for Septem-
ber 19, 1948, identified her lover as Hugh Boadley, “commonly regarded
as one of the most eligible bachelors in England," but Coughlin can recall
no basis of fact for the identification, and source materials he used in the
Library of The American Weekly provide no information on the subject.

36. The Works of Oliver Goldsmith, ii 5, 16

37. Wood, 447

38

. Goldsmith, 86

[284]

39-
40.
41 .
42.
43'
44-
45-
46.
47-
48.
49-
50.

N

10.
. Hogarth, Austin Dobson, 49

. Wheatley, 285-6

. Sherwin, 1133; John Gay, William Henry Irving, 241ff

. Lawrence, 44; Some Account of the English Stage, the Rev. john Genest,

1-1 Hannah-
CEY I-FOODOI-1

N) no--on-r-um
-- ocopoxlcn

24.

25.
26.

coooxi 91::-ta-on

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Bath Abbey Registers

GM, September 1731, 397

Goldsmith, 89; Wood, 448

Wood, 448

Wood, 447

lbid.

LI-IW, Mrs. Paget Toynbee ed., iii 334
Political State of Great Britain, xiii 350-1
Wood, 446

I bid., 449

Ibid.

Lord Her:/ey’s Memoirs

V. COVENT GARDEN

. Ashton, 15off
. Besant (London in the 18th Century), 2366; Mr. Gay, Oscar Sherwin, 161;

Luttrell, iv 687

. Besant, 276; Poems on Several Occasions, john Gay, 163, 188, 191
. Summerson, 13ff, 2481f
. The Life of Henry Fielding, Frederick Lawrence, 45n

Clubs of the Georgian Rakes, Louis C. Jones, 4ff, 11ff

. DNB, xxi 1312ff
. Lang, 106
. DNB, xii 438; Works of Jonathan Swift (Scott Edition), xiii 412; The

Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and United
Kingdom, Vicary Gibbs, iii 217
Hogarth’s London, H. B. Wheatley, 38

ii 656

Daily Post, June 1, 1732

The Covent Garden Tragedy, As It is Acted at the Theatre Royal in Drury
Lane by His Majesty’s Servants, 13, 14; The Georgian Theatre, W. S. Scott.
255; Genest, ii 334-5; Mezzotint frontispiece, The Complete Works of
Henry Fielding, iii

. Wheatley, 286; The History of Henry Fielding, Wilbur L. Cross, 128
. Ibid... 133

GM, June 1732, A Register of Books, 13; Covent Garden Tragedy etc.

. Cross, 129
. Letters of Horace Walpole, Mrs. Paget Toynbee, ed., Oxford 1903 (Here-

after referred to as LH W), iii 334-5

. LHW, iii 337
22.
. An Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy, written by Herself,

I bid.

i 36-7, 188 (Hereafter indicated as GAB.)

DNB, xvi 337; Dalton (George), i 253, 309; ii 205-6, 269; MacKinnon, ii
476; GAB.

GAB, i 36

Dalton (George), XLVI; Fortescue, ii 8

NOTES [ 285 ]

. Hervey, X1, 156, 278, 34off, 508, 650, 922, 987; Memories of the Court and

Times of George II, Mrs. K. B. Thomson, 231; Wilkins, 241

. Edwards, 16; Wilkins, 364

. Hervey, 2o5ff, 628ff; Edwards, 70

. Jesse, 209; Hervey, 98, 919

. Hervey, 340-1, 445; Kelly, 15

. Political State of Great Britain, xlii gff

. Green, ii 349

. Edwards, 25ff, 41ff 61, 811i; Wilkins, 489ff; Egmont, ii 267, 308, 325, 352,

462, 415, 421; Hervey, 553, 613, 95-6, 205, 207, 255-6, 553, 613

. Edwards, 116; Young, 71, 177, 190; GM, xii 217
. Edwards, 19, 235; Wilkins, 494&; Egmont, 192, 93, 208, 218, 225, 235, 236,

265; The Forgotten Prince, Captain Henry Curties, 71-2

. Fortescue, ii 53; Skrine, 68; Portrait by Charles Jervas, facing p. 22 II

Charteris; Kelly, 10

.]esse, iii 172; Caroline of England, Peter Quennell, 79; Edwards, 18-19;

GM, xii 538; Kelly, 8; I Charteris, 22

. Thomson, ii 264%

. MacKinnon, ii 471-2; Fortescue, ii 14lf

. Hamilton, ii 98

. Common Sense, July 2, 1737, The Gazetteer quoted in GM 1737, 4273
. GM 1737, 427E, 437; 1738, 202

. MacKinnon, ii 339

. Egemont, ii 424-5

. Hervey, 614ff; Edwards, 916'; Young, 1151f
. Edwards, 111ff; Young, 122ff

. Edwards, 120; MacKinnon, ii 339

. Edwards, 114ff, 119

. Hervey, 816; Edwards, 112

. Memoirs of St. James, 89

. Edwards, 125; Young, 136-7; GM, 1737 699-700; LM, 1737 644-703
. MacKinnon, ii 339-40

. Genest, iii 523, 547

. Genest, iii 547

. GAB, i 26

. Dalton, (George), ii 27

. GAB, i 29

. Ibz'd., ii 194

. Ibid., ii 55, 56

. Loc. cit.

v1. ]ENKINS'S EAR

. GM 1737, 635, 699; 1738, 217, 273, 3038?, 423, 424; 1739, 686', 104-5, 118ff,

159, 472ff; 1740, 146; Craftsman, March 4, 1738, March 10, April 28, 1739;
Common Sense, February 24, March 10, 17, April 14, 28, 1739; Green, ii
34591”; McCarthy, ii 198ff; Hayes, i 308-9; Debates and Proceedings of the
British House of Commons, x 96ft, 102-3, 174-5, 176-7, 182if

. GM 1738, 162
. Fortescue, ii 55; Gazetteer, August 25, 1739; Craftsman, September 9, 1738;

The Negotiators; The Convention, London 1739; Sir . . . Speech upon the

Peace; Hirco and Dunno

. Life of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, i 79; London: A Poem

I ll-S tarred General

[ 18] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

five British colonels who had been in the battle joined a debate,
denouncing Solmes and other Dutch oflicers.

“Let English soldiers be commanded by none but English gen-
erals!” the colonel argued.99

Talmach of the Coldstream commanded them the next summer,
1693, when they suffered another disastrous defeat in another
hedgerow battle near the village of Landon. Dead and wounded,
many from the Coldstream were piled waist deep. The following
year Talmach himself was mortally wounded and died in a British
descent on Brest. Command of the Coldstream passed to a Cam-
bridge-educated dare-devil, John Lord Cutts, a chesty young major
general of thirty-four, who had been wounded at Limerick, Stein-
kirk, and Brest.1°°

At the end of October, 1694, Captain Braddock and five other
officers of the Coldstream were granted home leave.1°1 The Cap-
tain's wife, Mary, was pregnant. About the time he reached Lon-
don a smallpox epidemic broke out. Deaths increased to more than
500 a day. Queen Mary was stricken and died three days after
Christmas.1°2 So began another winter of almost continuous snow,
with freezing temperatures that covered the Thames with ice.1°3
In the midst of this bitter weather, Mary Braddock’s baby was
born, a boy. The Abbey was still hung in black for the Queen's
funeral when the child was christened at St. Margaret's, the church

beside the Abbey.1°4 In the big leather-bound baptismal register,
the Vestry clerk wrote:

Edward Bmdocks to Capt Edw by Mary 105

The Queen’s funeral was held a month to the day after baby
Edward’s baptism. His grandfather, old Edward Braddock, I,
marched with other gentlemen of the Chapel Royal near the head
of the funeral procession to the Abbey, singing all the way.1°° An
elegy on the death of the Queen, a black-bordered folio pamphlet
written by a young lifeguardsman named Dick Steele, was dedi-
cated to Captain Braddock’s colonel, Cutts. Cutts, who occasionally
wrote poetry himself, was so flattered that he gave Steele an ensign's
commission in the Coldstream and made him his secretary.1°7

Being neither a member of Parliament, nor a court favorite, Cap-
tain Braddock was under orders to rejoin his command early in
the spring.1°8 Passes to Holland were issued at Whitehall on March
20 for the Captain and two servants, John Smith and Joan Price.1°°

[286]
5.

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

GM 1739, 382, 383; DNB, xx 267R‘

6. GM 1739, 551-2; LM 1739, 517-8; HC], xxiii 382

1-:
CCD®\T

IOIOM
OSUYD-ll

27.

28.
29.
30.
. GM 1741, 667; Carlyle, iv 71
32.
33-
34-
35-

36.
37»
38.
39-
40.

42.
43-
. GM 1742, 108; DNB, xviii 7576”

45-

ooso-o<_o 90§!O>UIn4>.bog~::-

. LM 1739, 518; McCarthy, ii 236; Edwards, 130

. McCarthy, ii 236; Fortescue, ii 57

. Watson ii 140

. Unsigned Portrait, Fort Necessity Museum, Farmington, Pa.; Fortescue,

ii, 57
GM 1739, 606; HCJ, xxiii 389
Dalton, ii 271; GM 1739 309, 659; Macxinnon, ii 476, 471

. GM 1739, 664

. GM 1740, 37; Hervey, 750; Egmont, iii 105, 107

. MacKinnon, ii 470, 471; Hamilton, ii 95; LM 1740, 147
. GM 1740, 91; LM 1740, 101; Hamilton, ii 101

GM 1740, 142, 143; DNB, xx 269

GM 1742 368, 379; History of British Journalism, Alexander Andrews, i 138:
English Newspapers, R. H. Fox Bourne, i 116fl':

MacKinn0n, ii 482, 483

. Charteris, I 77; Egmont, iii 163; GM 1740, 356

. Hamilton ii 95; MacKinnon ii 430

. GM 1740, 569 _
. Maria Theresa, Constance Lily Morris, 17, 441i; GM, 1740 127; Green; ii

345; Hayes, i 346

. GM 1741, 53; Morris, 46E
. GM 1740, 570, 623; HC], xxiii 547fl?, 705, xxiv, 40, 41. 407. 723.
. GM 1740, 623; The Succession of Parliaments, Being Exact Lists of the

Members etc., Charles Whitworth; Dalton, i 292; GM 1741, 235. 5153:
Clode, ii 93; History and Proceedings of the House of Lords, vii 6olf
Egmont, iii 219, 220; The Craftsman, May 23, 1741; GM 1741. 275. 3043
Hamilton, ii 103

GM 1741, 304; DPHE, xiii 14, 49, 53

GM 1741, 275; LM 1741, 252

Carlyle, iv 3ff; Morris, 77lf; Hayes, i 3541f

GM I741. 445» 501

Ibid., 542

Ketton-Cremer, 79-80

GM 1741 277, 446, 502, 552-3, 557, 607, 610-11, 667; LM 1741, 100, 415.
467; The Craftsman, August 1, 1741; Old English Journal, April 16, 1743;
London Gazette April 20, 1741 ; Carlyle, iv 36, 55-6, 98-9; LHW, i 112, 113
LHW, i 127

Ketton-Cremer, 56ft

DNB, xvii 49ff

LHW, i 114fE

Ibid., 109, 17olf; GM 1742 103, 105, 107; Egmont, iii 248; Edwards, 135.
136; Ketton-Cremer 82

. Historical Memoirs of His Late Royal Highness William Augustus, Duke

of Cumberland, Anonymous, 14; GM 1742, 163, 217; Hamilton, ii 104-5:
Carlyle, iv 187fE; William Augustus Duke of Cumberland; His Early Life
and Times, Evan Charteris, 115ff

LHW, i 216

GM 1742, 108; Dalton (George), i 59ff; MacKinnon, ii 482, 483

GM 1742, 273, 498; MacKinn0n, i 353, ii 430; LHW, i 278, 285, 288-9

£D®®®®®
O<D®\I C50!

®®®®G>\7\7\T\I\T\T\7\‘I\T
~M~°--.<>a=>s=°>'s=>=.=1~;~<e==-°~

NOTES [ 287 ]

. Fortescue, ii 84; GM 1742 390

. LHW, i 308, 322; Dalton (George), ii 27

. GAB, i 31lf; Dalton (George), ii 27

. GAB. i 18, 38ff

. Wyndham, 1 81; Genest, iv 9

. GAB, 21E

. Ibid. i 34, 37, 38

. Ibid. 38

. Ibid. ii 60; Molloy, 1 873; Genest, iii 631

. Scott, 49-50

. Pope, 103

. Scott, 55

. GM 1743, 218, 219; Hamilton, ii 107; Kelly, 20
. MacKinnon, ii 473

. LHW, i 352, 360; Charteris, I 125flF; MWDC, 58ff; GM 1743, 534; Carlyle,

iv 2556; Hamilton, ii 109ff; Skrine, 75lf; MacKinnon, i 356l’f; Kelly, 22ff

. LHW, i 365

. Egmont, iii 274

.Ibid., 275; MWDC, 117; GM 1743, 552; MacKinnon, ii 483
. Fontenoy, Francis Henry Skrine, 70; MWDC, 131; GM 1743, 668
. GAB, i 38, 39

. Ibz'd., i 42f‘f

. Ibz'd., 48lf, 55ff

. Genest, iv 155ff; Gab i 67-8

. GAB, i 69

. Ibid.

. GM 1744, 78; LHW, ii 2, 6; Egmont, iii 28465

- GM I744. 79, 104

Ibid., 103, 106, 107, 109, 212, 556; Dalton (George) ii 35ff; MWDC, 142
GM 1744, 102, 103, 104, 106, 165, 168, 221ff, 281; LM 1744, 257
MacKinnon, ii 431

LHW, ii 10

LHW, ii 11; MWDC, 1443 GM 1744, 154

LHW, ii 9

GM 1744, 165

MacKinnon, ii 431; GM 1744, 221

. Carlyle, iv 316, 333, 363-4; MacKinnon, i 426; Skrine, 119

. GM 1744, 565; DNB, xi 37ff; MacKinnon, ii 476-7

. Skrine, 116; MWDC, 169; GM 1744, 567

. GM 1745, 109, 165; MWDC, 179; Skrine, 126; Carlyle, iv 414; WADC, 167;

I Charteris, 163; Kelly, 28

. WADC, 104ff, 1161f; DNB, xi 42-3; MacKinnon, ii 480-481

. WADC, 116ff; LHW, ii 80; Dalton (George), i 355-56

. WADC, 103

. GM 1745, 162

. Ibid., 223; MWDC, 189

. GM 1745, 223; MWDC, 156, 194; Fortescue, ii 116, 117; LHW, ii 87; Skrine,

137; Carlyle, iv 4329:"; I Charteris, 177

. GM 1745, 246ff; MWDC, 236
. GM 1745, 247ff; MWDC, 236; WADC, 219; MacKinnon, ii 476-7, 482-3

93-
. Ibid., 315

95-

GM 1745» 315
Ibid., 275; WADC, 208

[288]

. WADC, 190; MacKinn0n, i 368; Hamilton, ii 126

. LHW, ii 88; WADC, 36-7

. GM 1745, 277; WADC, 216; GM 1745, 332-333

. LHW, ii 111ff

. Hamilton, ii 127

. GM 1745, 447; Skrine, 226fE; MWDC, 257ff

. Skrine, 230; GM 1745, 433; MWDC, 260; Fortcscue, ii 104

. Skrine, 230

. Hamilton, ii 127

. LHW, ii 124; Skrine, 245, 270; Hamilton, ii 127; Fortescue, ii 108
. MacKinn0n, i 373n; Skrine 237; Hamilton, ii 128

107.
108.
109.

110.
111.
112.
113.
. Skrine, 251
115.
116.
117.
118.
119.
120.
121.

122.
123.
124.
125.
126.
127.

128.
129.
130.
131.
132.
133.
134.
135.
136.
137.
138.
139.
140.
141.

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Journal of a Tour in the Netherlands in the year 1815, Robert Southey, 5
Skrine, 143; LHW, ii 117

A Year's Tour Through the Pais Bas, Philip Thickness, 13; An Hasty
Sketch of a Tour Through Part of the Austrian Netherlands, by an Eng-
lish Gentleman, 4l’f; The Papers of Thomas Bowrey, 24; The English Atlas,
252; Southey. 6fl

Luard, 97; Hamilton, ii 115; MacKinnon, ii 340

LM 1745, 394-5; An Hasty Sketch, 4

Hamilton, ii 127, 128

Ibid.; Skrine 230

GM 1745, 385; Hamilton, ii 128

GM 1745, 391; Slcrine, 252

GM 1745, 416; Skrine, 255-6

GM 1745. 386. 416: LM 1745. 398-9» 414

Critical, Historical and Misc. Essays, Thomas B. Macaulay, iii 192

GM 1745» 442

Life and Times of Prince Charles Stuart, Alexander Charles Ewald i 101;
WADC, 45-6; Memoirs of the Pretenders and their Adherents, John
Heneage Jesse, i 164; Itinerary of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, Walter
Beggar Blaikie, 1, 2; Lockhart Papers, ii 439

GM I745» 442

Ibid., 419, 441

Ibid., 385; Hamilton, ii 128

GM 1745» 497

Ibid., 496

LHW, ii 128, 129; Skrine, 271; Sir John Cape and the Rebellion of 1745,
Sir Edward Cadell, 275; GM 1745, 496, 500

Fortescue, ii 132; MacKinnon, ii 341

GM 1745, 499; MacKinn0n, i 375-6

GM 1745, 600, 609; Skrine, 143-4

GM 1745» 4975

Cadell, 2ooff

Ibid.; GM 1745 499; LHW, ii 129, 136; Fortescue, ii 130

GM 1745- 597

I bid., 637

Cadell, 250

GM 1745, 500, 502; Dalton (George), i 28; Ewald, 279

The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley (Everyman’s Edition), i 527

LHW, ii 144, 156, 199; GM 1745, 5541f, 606, 607, 609, 630, 633; Ewald, i 290
GM 1745, 557; MacKinnon, ii 341, 431

GM 1745, 604K; Blaikie, 23

8£D®\‘l O30‘:-h

11. LM,
12. GM,
. GM.
. GM,

Fifi-1
I-F09

NOTES [ 289 ]

. GM 1745, 6053, 61off, 620; Hamilton, ii 133; Bonnie Prince Charlie, Glen-

nell Wilkinson, 1 19

. GM 1745, 555ff; WADC, 244

. GM 1745, 615; LM 1745, 564, 619; LHW, ii 152; Hamilton, ii 132

. MacKinnon, ii 472-473

. Ibid., i 347, ii 474-5, 484-5; Hamilton, ii 121; Dalton (George), ii 263, 266
. Hamilton, ii 13211

. MacKinnon, i 341; Hamilton, ii 132; GM 1745, 614, 617; LHW, ii 151

. LHW, ii 156

. MacKinnon, i 381, ii 341-2-3

. Ibid., i 378; GM 1745. 620

. WADC, 245

. Dr. Johnson’s Lichfield, Mary Alden Hopkins, 8ff

. GM 1745, 665-6, 668

. Ibid., 613, 62off; Hamilton, ii 133

. GM 1745, 621

. Ibid., 1745 621; Wilkinson, 126

. Blaikie, 30

. Jesse, 321; William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, and the Seven Years

War, Evan Charteris, 47; Hervey, 539; Ewald, 292; Lang, 224

. Memoirs of the Pretenders and their Adherents, John Heneage jesse, i 153
. GM 1745, 665-6; LM 1745 620; Wheatley, 405; Dobson, 129

. WADC, 250; Greene, ii 363-4

. Lang, 218; Blaikie, 30

. GM 1745, 623; Hamilton, ii 135; The Conqueror of Culloden, Bernard W.

Kelly, 45

. Kelly, 47; GM 1745, 623

. GM 1745, 666; LM 1745, 621

. MacKinnon, i 380, ii 432; LM 1745, 623

. Wheatley, 408; Hogarth’: Works, John Ireland and John Nichols, ii 122

VII. FLANDERS

. Memoirs of Prince Charles Stuart, Charles Louis Klose, i 354: Life and

Times of Prince Charles Stuart, A. C. Ewald, i 3113; LM, xiv 6146, 625-6;
GM, xv 667-8; MWDC, 316E

. LM, xv 36; GM, xvi 20
. GM, xvi 41; LM, xv 48; Engraving, Royal Library at Windsor, reproduced

in II Charteris facing 258

. Charteris I, 241, 254; Kelly, 55; engraving Charteris II, 22
. Edwards, 146; Poor Fred: the People's Prince, Sir George Young, 190
. GM, xv 668; LM, xiv 630; Dalton (George), ii 41ff; Fortescue, ii 137; DNB,

ix 243; LHW, ii 167-8

. LHW, ii 170; GM, xvi 27-8, 41; LM, xv 42-3; Fortescue, ii 137E

. Ewald, i 336; Fortescue, ii 140

. Dalton (George), ii 46; Fortescue, ii 141

. Dalton (George), ii 47; MWDC, 325-6; GM, xvi 43, 81, 111; LM, xv 49;

LHW, ii 17o-1-2

xv 210; GM, xvi 222; LHW, ii 185

xvi 926; MWDC, 332, 342-3; LHW, ii 181
xvi 105; LM, xv 97

xvi 64, 145; MWDC, 352

[290]
15.
16.

17.
18.

19.
20.

21.
22.

23.
24.

25.

26.

27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33-

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

GM, xvi 218; LM, xv 313

GM, xvi 2o9ff; LM, xv 199fl?; MWDC, 346f‘t‘; Charteris I, 2661f; Kelly, 72ff
LHW, ii 189, 190, 215; GM, xvi 209; LM, xv 199; MWDC, 361

GM, xvi 211-2; Willson, 57-8

GM, xvi 210, 219-20, 263, 271; The Lyon in Mourning, ii 298ff; Ewald, ii
421i; MWDC, 350; Fortescue, ii 144ff; McCarthy, ii 301

Ewald, ii 429:‘; The Lyon in Mourning, 298flE; GM, xvi 383, 440, 531, 554:
LM, xv 423-4

GM, xvi 326-7, 381, 438; LM, xv 15, 301; LHW, ii 222; MacKinnon, ii 343
Kelly, 88

The Lyon in Mourning, ii 3o1ff; MWDC, 360; GM, xvi 324. 374-5: LHW,
ii 222, iii43; Kelly, 104; Charteris I, 289

GM, xvi 335ff, 382-8, 437; LM, xv 370, 393; Hamilton, ii 138; MWDC,
398-9; LHW, ii 233

LHW, ii 229, 238; Ewald, ii 62; GM, xvi 338, 358ff; 382-3, 439; LM, XV
374, 393, 395, 4o8ff, 431lf, 466, 645; MacKinnon, ii 343; Hamilton, ii 138;
LHW, ii 235ff; GM, xvi 3911f; LM, xv 4o8ff

LM, xv 262, 477, 537; MacKinnon, i 387-388; GM, xvi 439, 491, 493; Hamil-
ton, ii 138-9; Kelly, 274

MacKinnon, i 388; GM, xvi 493; Hamilton, ii 139

LM, xv 477; GM, xvi 493; MacKinnon, i 388

Charteris I, 295

GM, xvi 493

GM, xvi 600; MWDC, 429; Hamilton, ii 139-140

Hamilton, ii 139-140; MacKinnon, i 388-389

LM, xv 509, 580; GM, xvi 537, 542, 555, 595, 599f‘f; MacKinnon, i 388-389:
Hamilton, ii 140; Fortescue, ii 156; LHW, ii 250-251; MWDC, 430-431;
Kelly, 295; Naval and Military Memoirs of Great Britain, Robert Beatson,
i 3291f

. MacKinnon, ii 344

. Ibid., i 388

. Ibid., ii 344. 433

. LHW, ii 251

. MacKinnon, ii 344

. Fortescue, ii 149ff; Hamilton, ii 142

. Historical Record of the First or Royal Regiment of Foot, Richard Can-

non, 130; LM, xvi 178, 200; GM, xvii 202

. MacKinnon, i 389; Britannica, Ninth Edition, ix 350, xxiv 771-2

. MacKinnon, i 389

. Ibid.

. The English Atlas, iv 38

. LM, xvi 216, 220, 246; GM, xvii 250; Cannon, 130, 131

. LM, xvi 244; DNB, x 322; GM, xvi 26-7, 241; MacKinnon, ii 474

. GM, xvii 250; MWDC, 440

. LM, xvi 246

. MWDC, 347, 439, 4431i; WADC, 437; LM, xvi 229, 2525, 323ff; GM, xvii

258FE, 308, 315fi, 345; Hamilton, ii 143ff; Fortescue, ii 159ff; LHW, ii 285fl

. GM, xvii 328-9, 344, 401FE; LM, xvi 299-300, 342, 396; An Authentic Journal

of the Remarkable and Bloody Seige of Bergen-op-Zoom, by an English
Volunteer 9ff; Historie Abregeé de la Ville de Bergen-op-Zoom, M. Jean
Favre, 235f‘E; Charteris I, 3321f; Kelly, 98-9.

. The English Atlas iv uff, 1911f; The Heart of Holland, Havard, 305E
. WADC, 360

NOTES [ 291 ]

. State Papers, Public Records Oflice, Military Expeditions 87/23; The Eng-

lish Atlas 191; WADC, 359

. State Papers, 87/23
. MacKinnon, i 389; Hamilton, ii 145; State Papers 87/23; GM, xvii 399;

Dalton II, ii 269, 270 n5

. State Papers 87/23; MacKinnon, i 390n
. GM, xvii 4103; LM, xvi 422; Hamilton, ii 145
. LM, xvi 425; GM, xvii 410fI; Charteris I, 3326; Kelly, 98
. State Papers 87/23
Ibid.

. MacKinnon, i 390, ii 433; Hamilton, ii 146

. GM, xvii 541; LM, xvi 530; LHW, ii 336; Charteris II, 21

. LHW, ii 303

. GM, xviii 189-190; LM, xvi 192; Hamilton, ii 146; Fortescue, ii 163; Carlyle,

v 66-7

. MWDC, 455; Fortescue, ii 164; LHW, ii 307; LM, xvi 143, xvii 233; GM,

xvii 286, xviii 238; Hamilton, ii 146

. MWDC, 457; LM, xvii 503; GM, xviii 473; LHW, 347; HC], xxv 662

. MacKinnon, i 391; Hamilton, ii 147

. LM, xvii 571; GM, xviii 570-571

. MacKinnon, i 391; Hamilton, ii 147

. MacKinnon, ii 434

. Ibid., ii 401; Hamilton, ii 147; GM, xix 89

. Hamilton, ii 147; GM, xviii 229, 312, 378; xix 522, 569; xx 41, 42, 378; LM,

xviii 526; Charteris II, 30

. LHW, ii 423; GM, xix 329, 522; LM, xviii 141, 334, 529; Ketton-Cremer,

130-131; Hamilton, ii 148, 149

. Charteris II, 29; GM, xix 112, 138, 185, 235, 330, 378, 408, 426; LM, xviii

119ff, 181, 191, 238, 384; LHW, ii 367

. GM, xix 378; LM, xviii 383-4

. LHW, ii 398

. Ibid.

. GM, xix 42; LM, xviii 35, 142-3; Hamilton, ii 148-9

. MGaz, February 20, 1755; PGaz, January 28, 1755; Whitehall Evening Post,

Nov. 7-12, 1754

. Georgian London, John Summerson, 49ff; London, G. H. Cunningham, 16, 17
. Summerson, 49ff
. Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, by his adopted son,

G. W. Parke, 374

. Sheppard (Memoirs of St. james), i 390; The Connoisseur, June 6, 1754;

Luttrell, iii 513; Ashton, 142

. GAB, ii 12; Genest, iv 215, 273, 275
. Genest, vi 3421f; Bartolozzi engraving after Coates portrait in GAB, 1786

edition; Their Majesties’ Servants, Dr. John Doran, ii 278; A General View
of the English Stage, Thomas Wilkes, 303; Romance of the Irish Stage, ].
Fitzgerald Malloy, i 179ff

. Genest, iv 275

. GAB, ii 19

. Ibid., i 66, 120, 136; ii 19, 22, 30; Malloy, i 18gff
. GAB, ii 61

. Ibid., i 104, 107, 108, 115, 116; ii 3

. Ibid., ii 113

[ 292 J
92.

93-
94-
95-
96.
97-
98.
99-
100.

101.
102.
103.

104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.

110.
. LHW, iii 142
112.

111

113.
114.
115.
116.
117.
118.
119.
120.

N

030114’-‘A

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

GM, xix 88, 1851f, 205; LM, xviii 94, 1916; LHW, ii 3686, 375ff, 382:
Genest, iv 2821f; GAB, ii 18, 19, 43; HG], xxv 662; Charteris ii 354

GAB, ii 55ff

Ibid., 93K, 1013

Ibid., ii 33, iiilf, ii 14, 87, 106

McCarthy ii, 380; GAB. ii 112

Genest, iv 2733, 3096, 343

LHW, iii 18; GAB, ii 114; GM, xx 327, 422, 437ff; Pope, 171-2

GAB, ii 79, 80; Young, 2156’

Ibid., 78, 79; GM, xxi 140; LM, xx 139; Dodington, 96; Edwards, 183, 186;
Charteris II, 75, 76; LHW, iii 43; Memoirs of George 11, i 78

GM, xxi 137; LM, 140; Genest, ix 326, 336

LHW, iii 43; Charteris II, 76; Edwards, 186; Memoirs of George II, i 78
LM, xx 183, 184, 190; GM, xxi 184, 185; Dodington, 110-111; Edwards, 187;
LHW, iii 43; Charteris II, 77

Charteris II, 21ff; LHW, ii 367

Memoirs of George II, i 212; Fortescue i 566

GAB, iii 56

Ibid., ii 62, 86, 92, 129, 1396, iii 150

Ibid., iii 176E

Clode, i 74; Fortescue, i 316f‘1'; MacKinn0n, ii 406; LM, xv 331; DNB, iii
688

GAB, ii 186, 192, 193, 222, v 192

GM, xx 43, xxii 40, 2763; Green, ii 365; McCarthy, ii 373; Carlyle, v 251,
256; Montcalm and Wolfe, Francis Parkman (Everyman's Edition), i 25f‘f,
81-2; Charteris II, 86lf, 1151f, 121; Memoirs of the Administration of the
Right Honorable Henry Pelham, William Coxe, 281-2; Memoirs of George
II, 1 48-9» 394

LM, xxii 41; Parkman, 55-6; LHW, ii 365

LHW, ii 448; DNB, xi 44-5

McKinn0n, i 393; Army List (1770), 2136

The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, ii 253
MacKinnon, i 347

LHW, ii 12: GM, xx 380; LM, xix 380

GM, xxiii 53; LM, xxii 45; Dalton (George), ii 363; Army List (1770), 214
GAB, ii 193, v 192

VIII. GIBRALTAR

. The Historical Record of the Fourteenth Foot, gtf
. Ibid.
. Fortescue, i 560; ii 43ff; Ashton, 401; Trevelyan (Blenheim), 228; The His-

tory of Gibraltar, Captain Frederick Sayer, 481

. LM, xvii 15, 54, 128-129; Sayer, 257; Egmont, iii 298
. Sayer, 258-259
. DNB, ii 658, 659; II Dalton i 115 n3; A Treatise of Military Discipline by

Humphrey Bland (9th Edition); The Life and Letters of James Wolfe,
Beckles Willson, 113

. A History of the Seige of Gibraltar, John Drinkwater Bethune, 11; Dalton

(George) ii 265-6; Historical Record of the Nineteenth or the First York-
shire Riding Regiment of Foot, Richard Cannon, 12, 13; History of the
Herculean Straits, Thomas james, ii 316

. MacKinn0n, ii 473; Army List (1770), 219

23.
24.
. Parkman, i 85; Freeman, i 274t‘f;’ Dinwiddie I, 210, 253, 326, 340, 382; GM

26.

39-
40.
. LHW, iii 254
42.
43-
44-
45-
. Freeman, i 436; v 337
47-

NOTES [ 293 ]

. Bland, 229
10.
11.
12.
. Bland, 237

. Sayer, 458ff

. Ibid., 238, 433, 474, 483; The History of Gibraltar, translated from the

GAB, 130E; Genest, iv 360; DNB, xxi 1286
GM, xxii 333
Fortescue, i 562

Spanish of Don Ignacio Lopez Deziyala with a Continuation to Modern
Times by James Bell, 172, 176-7; A Voyage to Cadiz and Gibraltar, Lieut.
Gen. G. Cockburn, 16

. Bethune, 23

. Historical Record of the Sixth or Royal First Warwickshire Regiment of
Foot, 68

.Ibid., 58, 109; LHW, i 250-1; DNB, viii 775; Hamilton, ii 28; Dalton
(George), i 125, 127n; Army List (1770), 217; Dalton (George), ii 265

. GM, xxiii 249; LM, xxii 244; Dalton (George), ii 216-7n

. Sayer, 238, 253ff, 267; Bethune, 34, 39; Dalton (George), ii 29; Bell, 172-3;

Cockburn, 1 7

. GM, xxiv 45, 98
. Will of the Honorable Edward Braddock Esq., late Major General of His

Majesty's Forces, Principal Probate Registry, London; List of Ofiicers of
the First Royal Regiment of Artillery from the year 1716 to the Present
(Revised edition of J. Kane's List of Officers etc., published in 1815), 5
List of Officers of the Royal Regiment of Artillery

Braddock's Will (Op. Cit. 22); GAB, iii 192

1754 321'?

George Mercer Papers Relating to the Ohio Company of Virginia, com-
piled and edited by Lois Mulkearn, 1fl?, 167ff; The Ohio Company of
Virginia, Kenneth Bailey, 17lf

. Mulkearn, 52ff; Bailey, 73, 103ff

. Mulkearn, 2lf, 168ff; Bailey, 64ff; Parkman, i 35

. Mulkearn, aff, 16811’; Bailey, 25, 41, 35, 51, 58, 147, 148

. Mulkearn, 52, 67, 68; Bailey, 74H, 86lf; Parkman, i 29, 36ff

. Mulkearn, 66, 70, 73; Bailey, 171-2

. Mulkearn, 67, 72, 101, 253, 583; Bailey, 205ff

. Parkman, i 86ff; Freeman, i 2743

. GM, xx 142: LM, xxiii 141; LHW, iii 212f‘t'; Memoirs of George II, 3783;

Charteris II, 97ff; Macaulay’s Essays, ii 388

. GM, xxiv 191; LM, xxiii 188
. GM, xxiv 190

. GM, 1754 252ff
. Parkman, i 92; Freeman, i 344: History of an Expedition, Winthrop Sar-

gent, 4off
Walpole Memoirs, i 399; GM 1754 399-400
Walpole Memoirs, i 400

Walpole Memoirs, i 400

Freeman, i 422; Fortescue, ii 268: Dinwiddie I, 248; Parkman, i 107
British Museum Additional Manuscript 32850, f 289

Memoirs of George II, i 400-1; LHW, v 192-3

Dinwiddie I, 3531?, 371; Whitehall Evening Post Dec. 21-24, 1755

I 294 l
48.

49-

50.
51.

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Memoirs of George II, 401; The French and Indian War in Maryland,
Paul H. Giddens, Maryland Historical Magazine, xxx No. 4 291-2; Archives
of Maryland (II Sharpe), xxxi 52; GM 1754, 578

GM, xxiv 289, 386; LM, xxiii 190; Charteris II, ii 121; Maryland Gazette,
Jan. 2, 1755

GM, xxiv 290, 386

GM, xxiv 386; William Shirley, Governor of Massachusetts, George Arthur
Wood, 2206”; DAB, xvii 121; The Conduct of Major General Shirley, Late
General and Commander in Chief of His Majesty’s Forces in North Amer-
ica, William Alexander, 1ff

. Walpole Memoirs, i 400; Charteris II, 106, 121ff

. Add Mss., 35, 376 f 127; DNB, i 506

. Newcastle to Murray, September 28, 1754, Br Mu Add Mss., 32, 736 f 591
. Robinson to Newcastle, September 22, 1754, Newcastle Papers, British Mu-

seum, Vol. LI 32, 736 f 563

. Clode ii 65; Co1Rec, vi 286
. GM, xxii 144, 193, 290; DNB, vi 375; The Naval Chronicle for 1809 xxii

(engraving facing) 177; Publications of the Navy Record Society Vol. xlii,
The Loss of Minorca, H. W. Richmond, 24, 46, 122, 135, 138, 146

. Dalton (George), ii 28
. Albemarle to Robinson, October 23, 1754, Shelburne Papers, 36:68, Wil-

liam L. Clements Library, University of Michigan

. LM, xxiii
. Op. Cit. 55
. Historical Record of the Forty-Fourth or East Essex Regiment of Foot,

Thomas Carter; Dalton II, 316; Army List (1775) 223; MWDC, 465; MGaz,
January 2, 1755

. Clode, i 128-129

. HCJ, xxvii 86; Sargent, 162

. Braddock to Newcastle, March 20, 1755, Newcastle Papers, clxviii 388fE

. Op. Cit. 50

. Robinson to Newcastle, September 23, 1754, Newcastle Papers, British Mu-

seum Vol. L1 32, 736 f 569

. Charteris II, 128
. The British Empire Before the American Revolution VI: The Great War

for Empire, Lawrence Henry Gipson, vi 44t‘r'

. Maryland Gazette, January 2, 1755; GM, xxvi 484; LM, xxiii 484; Fortescue,

ii 268

. Albemarle to Robinson, October 9, 1754, Shelburne Papers, Clements Li-

brary, 36:64

. LM, xxiii 481, 484, 522, 525; GM, xxiv 481, 484; DNB, xi 37-8; MGaz,

January 2, 9, 1755, February 6, 20, 27, 1755; London Public Advertiser, Evening
Post, Whitehall Evening Post, Oct.-Nov.-Dec. 1754; PGaz, April 3, 1755

. Ibid.

. LM, xxiii 477-8

. The Connoisseur No. XXX; 11 Dalton ii 19n

. LHW, iii 260; GM, xxiv 530

. LHW, iii 334, 337

. MGaz January 2. 9. 16, February 6, March 6, 1755

. Op. Cit. 56

. MGaz February 20, 1755; PGaz January 28, 1755; Whitehall Post, Nov. 9-12;

Advertiser, Nov. 11, 1754

. I bid.

101.
102.
103.

No'r1~:s [ 295 J

. Instructions for General Braddock, Amherst Papers, 1 xxi P. R. 0., W/O

34/71

. Charteris II
. Military Afiairs in North America, 1748-1765, Stanley Pargellis ed., 12ff;

Newcastle to Albemarle, September 27, 1754, Newcastle Papers, British Mu-
seum Vol. LI 32, 736 f 592

. Op. Cit. 82; PaArch 2o3ff
. PaArch 2o3ff; Memoire Contenant Le Precis de Faits avec Leurs Pieces

Justifcatives, Jacob Nicolas Moreau, 16off; MGaz, January 30, 1755; PaArch,
ii 249; Co1Rec, vi 177, 2006; Sharpe II, 93; I Sharpe 16o; Op. Cit. 82

. PGaz, September 12, 1754; The History of England, Tobias Smollett, iii

446; MGaz, January 9, 1755

. GM, xxiv 529; HCJ, xxvii 13ff, 27, 28, 34, 36, 86; A Letter of the People

of England, by John Shebbeare, 33

. GM, xxiv 485, 578; Genest, iv 419; GAB ii 192, 193, 211, 212
. GAB, ii 193, 211; iii 2, 22, 114, 129

. Ibid., ii 193

. Pope, 182

. GAB, ii 136

. Braddock’s Will (Op. Cit. 22)

. GAB, ii 92, 194, 212113, iii 31, 32

. Braddock’s Will (Op. Cit. 22); GAB iii 95, 146

. Op. Cit. 82

. Pargellis, 53

. GM, xxvi 269, 270

. Historic Highways of America, IV; Braddock’s Road, Archer Butler Hul-

bert, 57

GAB, 82

GAB, ii 62, 194; ii 29, 62, 194; London Advertiser, Nov. 11, 13, 1754
GAB, ii 194; London Post, Nov. 7-9, 1754; Advertiser; Whitehall Post

IX. COLONIAL PROBLEMS

. GM xxvi 23
. The Barrington Papers, D. Bonner-Smith ed. (Publications of the Naval

Record Society, Vol. lxxvii), i 113, 116

. Ibid., 116
. Ibid., 117
. History of An Expedition to Fort Duquesne, Winthrop Sargent, Phila-

delphia 1856, 137; PGaz March 11, 1755

. Fortescue, ii 268; Sargent, 134-5; Forty—Fourth Regiment Orderly Book,

Library of Congress, also known as Halkett Orderly Book and referred to
hereafter as HOB; PGaz January 14, 28, March 4, 1755 ’

. Walpole Memoirs, iii 155; Fortescue, ii 32; Willson, 212, 223, 357

. Willson, 239; MGaz, January 9, 1755

. Willson, 274

. Sargent, 138; I Sharpe, 155; MGaz, January 2, 9, February 6, 27, 1755

. Barrington Papers, i 113; Dinwiddie, I 467

. Barrington Papers, op. cit.

. Sargent, 139; Pa Mag., xxii 499; PaGaz, March 11, 1755

. GM, xvii 468: Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe (Modern Library), 302, 304;

Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, by Henry Fielding (Fie1ding’s Works, xvi),
2181f

. Barrington Papers, op. cit.

ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION OF A GUARDSMAN [ 19]

The three of them probably went aboard ship near the Tower
with a party of recruits early in Apri1.11° That summer King Wil-
liam captured Namur. The Coldstream was in the thick of this
fight, losing 53 men killed and 112 wounded. Braddock’s role was
inconspicuous, but Cutts, the Coldstream’s colonel, acquired his
fourth battle scar, a cut across his head.111

On his return to London in October the King received an un-
usually warm welcome. But Cutts, who came back with him, be-
came the hero of Namur. Cutts had never been troubled with
modesty. The whole town soon heard how he had led the crucial
charge of the grenadiers. His own glowing accounts of his charmed
life under fire led Marlborough to nickname him “the Salaman-
der.” 112 Braddock also came home that fall, but on October 10 a
detail of 180 Coldstream guardsmen, commanded by Captain Brad-
dock, was ordered from London to Newmarket, England’s horse-
racing center and the first of half a dozen towns the King planned
to visit before Christmas.113

The King set out on October 17. The footguards, two days ahead
of him, took up quarters at Newmarket in the home of Richard
Girling. There must have been some hitch about paying for the use
of Girling’s house, because Captain Braddock later signed the fol-
lowing warrant:

Guard House N ewmarket.

These are to certify that the house of Mr. Richard Girling at New-
market with four rooms in the ground floor and two rooms one pair
of stairs was wholy taken up and made use of for a guard house for
the officers and soldiers of the foot guards during his majesty’s stay
in these parts in October last and therefore I humbly recommend
him for such allowance for the same as may be thought reasonable.
Given under my hand this 2nd Dec 1695.

E. Braddock 114

King William’s wars dragged on without serious fighting through
the summer of 1697. They ended with a treaty of peace, signed at
the village of Ryswick, near the Hague.“5 Dr. Blow celebrated the
peace by composing a new anthem, “Praise the Lord, Oh My Soul,”
which his father-in-law, old Edward Braddock I, sang with the
Chapel Royal at a Whitehall thanksgiving service.11°

Captain Braddock was home to stay for a while. His old battalion
of the Coldstream was billeted in the Tower hamlets, in London’s
East End,117 but his father, who now was choir master, lay clerk,

I 296]
16.

17.

18.
1g.
20.
21.

22.
23.
24.

25.
26.

27.
28.

29.

30.

31.
32.

33-
34-

35-
. St. Clair to Robinson, February 12, 1755, Public Records Office, London,

37-
38.
39-
40.
41 .

42.

43-

ILDSTARRED GENERAL

MGaz, March 13, 1755; Macaulay (History of England), ii 344, 345;
Britannica (Ninth Edition), vi 405
Robert 0rme’s Journal (Reprinted in Sargent), 295; Braddock’s Orderly
Books (Reprinted in Lowdermilk). The original orderly books are in
the Library of Congress. Hereafter in these references 0rme’s Journal is
referred to as Orme, and the paging follows that in Sargent's reprint.
Braddock’s orderly books will be referred to as BOB, using the Lowdermilk
paging.
GM, xviii 345
MG, March 13, 1755; Johnson’s England, 46
Roderick Random, Tobias Smollett, 146ff; The Sailor’s Workbook, Smith 478
Barrington Papers, i 113; Dinwiddie, I 511; The Life of Augustus Viscount
Kepple, the Hon. and Rev. Thomas Keppel, i 203
LM, xv 572, 622; Barrington Papers, i 113
Barrington Papers, i 113; VaMag, xxxii 306
Pargellis, 58lf; Dinwiddie, I 466, 453; MG, February 6, 1755; St. Clair to
Robinson, February 12, 1755, PRO c/0 5/46
Pargellis, 59
Keppel, i 203; Barrington, i 113
Orme, 283; VaGaz, February 28, 1755; MG, March 20, 1755
LM, xv 622; PaMag, xvi 278; Travels in the American Colonies, Newton
D. Mereness ed., 403-4
Braddock to Fox, February 24, 1755, GM, xxvii 195; Braddock to Newcastle,
March 20, 1755, Pargellis 80; Newcastle Papers, clviii 388lf; Moreau, 1g2ff

The conversation reproduced here and elsewhere in this narrative is
based entirely upon letters and written records. Rather than introduce all
this material, the author has taken the liberty to quote excerpts in dialogue
form. None of the quotations has been knowingly or intentionally taken out
of context. Sources are noted for each quotation.
Dinwiddie portrait, National Gallery, London; Watson, ii 140; Braddock
portrait by unknown artist, Fort Neccessity Museum; Portrait of General
Braddock (etching) by H. B. Hall, 1871, New York Public Library; History
of the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of West Virginia, Wills de Hass,
114 (woodcut)
DAB, v 316-317
Portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, National Gallery, London; DNB, xi 3gff;
Keppel i frontispiece (engraving)
Dinwiddie, II 4, 65
Dinwiddie, I 504; Sharpe, I 169; Minutes of the Provincial Council of
Pennsylvania (hereafter designated as ColRec), vi 304
Dinwiddie, I 485, 461, 468, 501

C. 0. 5/46

Dinwiddie, I 465

Ibid., 474; MG, January 23, 1755

Dinwiddie, I 513

Ibid., 480, 496, 513

Sharpe, I 1675; DAB, vii 323-4; An Englishman in the French Army in
America, James High ed., Maryland Historical Magazine, xlvii 103li
Ms. letter in Darlington Library, Pittsburgh

Orme, 287; Friendship Valley Farm, Ruth Gist Pickens, M.Hist.Mag., xlvii
122; Moreau, 180-181; Bailey, 86;

Dinwiddie, I 475, 496

56.
57-

58.

mores [ 297 ]

. Ibid., 452, 469, 509; Orme, 287
. Orme, 284
. Dinwiddie, I 454, 455, 458, 460, 463, 465, 468, 484, 521, 522; Orme, 285, 287;

Vac February 28, 1755; Md.Hist.Mag., vii 137if

. Dinwiddie, I 513, 523

. Ibid., 525

. Parkman, i 93if; Mercer, 4, 85

. Sharpe, I 140; Parkman, i 126

. Sharpe, I 140; Mercer, 4

. Dinwiddie, I 473, 476; VAC, March 7, 1755: ColRec, vi 323

. Gipson, 66; ColRec, VI 323

. Dinwiddie, I 512, 513

. This is an assumption, based upon the customs of the time, the limited

accommodations of the Governor's Palace. the necessity of Braddock having
a centrally located headquarters, and the notice published in the Va.Gaz.
on March 21, 1755 (See Note 124)

William and Mary College Quarterly (1st Series), xiv 213, xvii 170

VaG., April 25, 1755

Dinwiddie, I 515

59. Portrait, facing title page, PaMag, ix 111’; GM, xxv 378

60.

61.

62.
63.

64.
65.
66.

67.
68.

7o.

80.
81 .

82.

83.
84.
85.

GM, xxvii 195; Moreau, 174if

GM, xxvii 195; Moreau, 168ff

PaMag, ix 8

A Map of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Three Delaware Coun-
ties, by Lewis Evans, 1749. Reproduced in Lewis Evans, Henry N. Steven-
son; Mercer, 226, 411; Pargellis, 66

St. Clair to Morris, Williamsburg, February 10, 14, 1755; Co1Rec, vi. 2981f
Pargellis, 62; Dinwiddie, I 461, 472, 493; Sharpe, I 1366, 167, 168; MG,
January 16, 1755

Pargellis, 63

Ibid., 61

Ibid., 63; Sharpe, I 168, 186

. Dinwiddie, I 475

Pargellis, 60

. Sharpe, I 168, 186

. Orme, 288; Md.Hist.Mag., xxx 295

. St. Clair to Robinson, February 12. 1755, P. R. 0., C. 0. 5/46

. Pargellis, 62

. op. Cit.

. Ibid., 79

. Ibid., 61fi; Dinwiddie, I 464, 504; Orme, 285-6; Sharpe, I 172, 174. 202, 229
. Pargellis, 62

. Orme, 285; Braddock to Robinson, March 18, 1755, Newcastle Papers,

British Museum, clxviii 346; Dinwiddie, I 515

BOB, II I

Archives of Pennsylvania (hereafter designated as PaArch), ii 203; Din-
widdie, I 518; Braddock to Robinson, March 18, 1755, British Museum,
Newcastle Papers, cxlviii 346$

Colkec, vi 299, 300

Dinwiddie, I 523

I bid., 406

Colkec, vi 307

[ 298 ]
86.

87.
88.
89.
. Pargellis, 79; Barrington Papers, 118, 119n; Braddock to Robinson Op. Cit.,

120.
121.
122.
123.
124.
125.
126.

127.

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

PaArch, ii 258; Frank B. Need Documents, 447, Pennsylvania Historical
Society

Op. Cit., 63

I bid.

ColRec, vi 300, 301

79

. Barrington, 118ff

. Orme, 289; Barrington, 113; Braddock to Robinson Op. Cit., 79

. Barrington, 118

. The Writings of George Washington, John C. Fitzpatrick ed., Washington,

1931 (hereafter designated as Fitzpatrick), i 108

. Ibid., i 1o4ff; Freeman, i 44off, xxix 41

. Dinwiddie, I 355, 4o8ff

. MdG, September 26, October 24, 1754; Fitzpatrick, xxix 41

. Md.Hist.Mag., vii 14o; Freeman, i 4416; Hughes, i 174

. Letters to Washington, Stanislaus M. Hamilton, ed., New York 1898 (Here-

after designated Hamilton), i 57, 58

. PaMag, xvi 278, 279

. Freeman, ii 383ff; Hughes, 313

. Pargellis, 82

. Fitzgerald, i 1o9ff

. Barrington, i 113; VaG, March 7, 1755

. Braddock to Robinson, Op. Cit., 79; Fitzgerald, i 109-110

. Braddock to Robinson, Op. Cit., 79

. VaG, March 21, 1755

. Barrington, i 120, 121

. Sharpe, I 186; Braddock to Robinson, Op. Cit., 79; BOB, IV

. Orme, 289; Braddock to Robinson, Op. Cit., 79

. MdG, January 30, 1775

. Orme, 289; Pargellis, 59

. Dinwiddie, I 523

. Instructions to General Braddock, Amherst Papers lxxi PRO W/0 34/71
. Orme, 288; Dinwiddie, II 12

. ColRec, vi 336

. Braddock to Robinson Op. Cit., 79; VaG, March 21, 1755; MdG, March

20» 1755

. Braddock to Robinson, Op. Cit., 79
. Braddock to Newcastle, March 20, 1755, Newcastle Papers, British Museum,

clviii 388; GM, xxvii 197

Dinwiddie, II 2, 4, 18, 19

North Carolina Colonial Records, Raleigh 1887, v 571

Dinwiddie, II 4

MdG, March 20, 1755; Keppel, 2o1fE

VaG, March 21, 1755

Orme, 290, 291; Dinwiddie, II 4, 5; VaGaz. March 14, 1755

Seaport in Virginia: George Washingtan’s Alexandria, Gay Montague
Moore, glf; Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion, American Guide
Series, 1939:‘; History of Old Alexandria, Virginia, Mary G. Powell, 33ft;
Plan of the Town of Alexandria, in the District of Columbia, in 1798,
published by I. V. Thomas, engraved by T. Clarke

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, James Grant Wilson and
John Fiske, ed., ii 401, 402; DAB, vi 255-56

153.
154.
155.
156.

157.
. Sharpe, I 210; WADC, 341
159.
160.
161.

mores [ 299 ]

. Freeman, i 236n
. Dinwiddie, I 53, 54, 150, 231, 264, 424, 431; Freeman, i 232
. Army List (1770), 222; Historical Record of the Forty-Fourth Regiment;

Skrine, 64

. Op. Cit., 126
. BOB, XIII
. Keppel, Braddock to Napier, March 17, 1755, Pargellis, 77; VaMag, xxxii

306

. BOB, XIII

. MdG, April 10, 1755

. BOB, X, VIII

. Local tradition. The house still stands.

. BOB, VIIIff

. I bid., Rider's British Merlin for the Year of Our Lord God 1755, London

1755; BOB, XII

. BOB, XI

. Dinwiddie II 5; BOB, IX

. Orme, 297

. Sharpe, I 188; Dinwiddie, I 462
. VaMag, xxxii 306, 307

. BOB, XIIflE

. Ibid., VII, XVII

. Ibid., XVIII

. VaMag, xxxii 307

. BOB, VII; Dinwiddie, II 5

. The Lees of Virginia, Burton 8. Hendrick, 85, 93; DAB, vi 986; WPaMag,

XV 210

. The Virginians, William Makepeace Thackeray, 816‘. It should be noted

that Thackeray wrote The Virginians after two visits to the United States.
John Pendleton Kennedy saw much of the novelist (see Kennedy's manu-
script Journal, February 27, 1853; January 8, 9, 15, 1856, Peabody Institute
Library, Baltimore) and is credited with having later provided material
for the fourth chapter of the second volume of The Virginians. (Kennedy
Journal, September 26, 1858; John Pendleton Kennedy, by Edward M.
Gwathmey, New York, 1931, 1271f.) Thackeray visited the neighborhood of
Alexandria and talked with many Virginians. It seems not improbable that
his descripition of Braddock in The Virginians was based partly upon
legendary tales which he may have heard during his visits here.) He also
talked with Parkman.

. Sir Robert Walpole, Alexander Charles Ewald, London 1878, 5; The Plans,

Elevations and Sections, Etc., of Houghton, Thomas Ripley, 2; Anecdotes
of Painting in England, Horace Walpole, ii 706

Op cit.

Op cit.

Fitzpatrick, i 122~123

The Expedition of Major General Braddock to Virginia with the Two
Regiments of Halkett and Dunbar, London 1755 (Hereafter designated as
Expedition), 6, 7

Ibid.

Fitzpatrick, i 112ff, 116, 122
I bid., BOB, IV, V
DAB, xiii 226

[300]

162.
163.
164.

165.
166.
167.
168.
169.
170.

171.
172.
173.
174.
175.
176.
177.
178.
179.
180.
181.
. Ibid., 205, 207; Orme, 297; Braddock to Napier, April 19, 1755; Pargellis, 82
. BOB, XIIIff

. Ibid., XIII

. Ibid., Vff, XIX; Braddock to Napier, April 19, 1755; Pargellis, 83; Orme 298
. BOB, V

. Ibid., VIIIfI

. Dinwiddie, II 5; MdG, April 3, 1755; Pat}, April 17, 1755

. The Conduct of Major General Shirley, MdG op. cit.

. Governor Horatio Sharpe's Whitehall, Charles Scarlett, ]r., Md!-IistMag,

1-1-1-nu-nu
I-POUND-'CCO%\'l'°>U1t§05M0"

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

ColRec, vi 496; VaMag, xii 302

MacKinn0n, 484-5 ii; LHW, iii 336-7, 421n

PaMag, (Military and Political Affairs in the Middle Colonies in 1755. by
Daniel Dulaney), iii 20

GAB, iii 112-113

PaMag, iii 13ff; DAB. v 499; MdG. March 5, April 3, 1755

Sharpe, I 186, 189

Ibid.

Sharpe, I 186, 1956'

GM, xi 109; Governor Horatio Sharpe Retires, Paul H. Giddcns, Mdflist
Mag, xxxi 218; Governor Horatio Sharpe and His Maryland Government,
Paul H. Giddens, Mdl-IistMag, xxxii 157; Sharpe, I 187, 207, 220, 228, 443
Sharpe, I 195

ColRec, vi 376; MdG, March 13, 1775; VAG, April 11. 1755

Sharpe, I 194; Dinwiddie, II 14; Pargellis, 83

Sharpe, I 194

Expedition, 22, 23

Sargent, 75

Sharpe, I 201; Parkman, i 92; Dinwiddie, I 450

Powell, 45

Pargellis, 84

Sharpe, I 144, 149, 138, 139, 201, 228

Sharpe, I 201

xlvi 1 1

. GM, xi 109
. Op. Cit., 182; Sharpe, I 77, 97
. Sharpe, I 230; MdG, April 10, 1755

X. LOGISTICS

. Expedition, 5, 6

. Ibid., 61f; LM, xv 323

. Expedition, 9

. Orme, 296; Sharpe, I 77, 97; BOB, XVIII?
. Orme, 299; BOB, XVIII

. Orme, 299; Seamen's Journal (hereafter Seamen), 366 [84]; BOB, XXII
. Seamen, 367; Sharpe, I 204

. Seamen, 367; Orme, 298

. Orme, 298; BOB, XXI

. Orme, 298; BOB, XVff; MdG, April 3, 1755
. BOB, XIII; Dinwiddie, ll 12

. VaG, April 11, 1755

. BOB, XXII

. lbid., XVI, XVII I-IOB

15.
16.

R70
18
19.
20

21.
22.

23.

24.
25.
26.
27.
28.

29.
30.
31.
32.
33-
34-
35-

36.
37-
38.

39-

40.

41.
42.

NOTES [ 301 ]
Sharpe, I 194; MdG, April 3, 1755; Orme, 3003; DAB, x 124, 125

Op. Cit., Chapter VIII, 126

Braddock to Robinson, April 19, 1755, Public Records Office c/o 5/46; A
Review of the Military Operations in North America, William Livingston,

3-1'5

. Pa Arch, ii 290

Ibid.

The Papers of Sir William Johnson, ed. James Sullivan, i 456-6, 468;
C0lRec, vi 3656; Orme, 303

Sharpe, I 194; MdG, April 24, 1755

DNB, xiii 225

Braddock to Newcastle, April 19, 1755, Newcastle Papers, British Museum,
clxix 188ff

Seamen, 367-8 [85]; PaMag, xxiii 324; Andrews, 55

Seamen, 367-8; VaMag, xxxii 319

Orme, 297

ColRec, vi 368

Springfield Farm on Conococheague, Mary Vernon Mish, MdHistMag,
xlii 315, 318; Dinwiddie, I 454-5, 521-2; ColRec, vi 369, 373-4; 379; Sharpe,
I 205, 207, 230

ColRec, vi 368

Ibid., 323-4; DAB, iv 556

C0lRec, vi 368

Pargellis, 86; Dinwiddle, I 125

ColRec, vi 368

Orme, 307

Braddock to Napier, April 19, 1755; Pargellis, 81E

PaMag, iii 13

seamen, 369

I bid., 368

History of Western Maryland, T. J. C. Williams, Baltimore i 25; Local
Tradition; Pa Arch, ii 690

Orme, 307

A Light in the Wilderness, by Freeman Ankrun, The Brethren Evangelist,

March 17, 1951
Pargellis, 83

43. Sharpe, I 194, 196, 203, 207; MdG, April 24, 1755; Orme, 307

44-

45-

46.

47-

48.
49-

50.
51.

52.
53-
54-
55-
56.

Orme, 307-8; BOB, X; Pargellis, 482

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Frank Woodworth Pine, 254;
Orme, 308

Pargellis, 82

Orme, 307; Expedition 10

Franklin, 253; Braddock to Robinson, March 18, 1755; PaMag, xxxvi 125
Portraits of Franklin by Robert Feke or John Greenwood, Harvard Uni-
versity, Fogg Art Museum, and David Martin, Pennsylvania Academy of
Fine Arts; Benjamin Franklin, Carl Van Doren, go, 91

Van Doren, 205

Ibid., 201

Ibid., 2o5ff, 220ff, 227ff; Franklin, 253: C0lRec, vi 323; Bond, 39

Franklin, 254

Ibid.

Ibid., 254-5

Franklin, 263-264

[302]

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

57. Bland, 143

58. Franklin, 264

59. Ibid.

60. Ibid., 260-61

61. Shirley to Morris, April 23, 1755, PaArch, ii 292

62. Braddock to Morris, April 23, 1755, C0lRec, vi 377-8

63. Shirley to Morris, PaArch, ii 293-4

64. PaArch, ii 294-6

65. Seamen, 370

66. Fitzgerald, i 118; Sharpe, I 205; local tradition

67. Seamen, 368, 370; History of Maryland, James McSherry, 132; Court Square,
Charles McC Mathias, ]r., MdHistMag, xlvii 110-111

68. Seamen, 370 [87]. Bracketed figures indicate paging of that version of the
Seamen’s Journal reproduced in Braddock’s Road, by Archer Butler Hul-
bert, Cleveland 1903, as taken from an original manuscript in the Royal
Artillery Library, Woolwich; A Light in the Wilderness, by Freeman
Ankrum, The Brethren Evangelist, March 17, 1951

69. Orme, 309; Fitzpatrick, i 122; Sharpe, I 205, 208, 210, 254

70. Sharpe, I 205, 208

71. Fitzpatrick, i 118, 121, 122

72. MdG, March 17, 1755; The Story of Winchester in Virginia, Frederic
Morton, 49, 52, 84; Winchester, Virginia, Its Beginnings, Katherine Glass
Greene, 6, 43; Mereness, 334

73. Seamen, 371

74. PaArch, ii 308; Co1Rec, vi 372

75. Orme, 309; Seamen, 371

76. Fitzpatrick, i 120

77. Ibid., 118, 119

78. Dinwiddie, II 34

79. PaArch, ii 299, 300; ColRec, vi 380

80. Seamen, 373 [89]; VaMag, xxxii 312

81. “Journal of a Journey from London to Virginia, 1754,” VaMag, xxxii
311,316

82. Journal of Captain Charles Lewis, 1755, 4, Draper Manuscript, 18 V 21
State Historical Society of Winsconsin

83. Expedition, 16

84. Ibid.

85. Seamen, 373 [89]

86. Thomas Cresap, Maryland Frontiersman, Kenneth P. Bailey, 96ff; C01Rec,
V1 379

87. VaMag, xxxii 316; Seamen, [89]

88. Bailey, 97ff; Orme, 312-313; Mulkearn, 141-2, 413, 421, 529-30, 653

89. Seamen, 373 [89]; Dinwiddie, II 37

90. Seamen, 373 [89]; History of Allegany county, Maryland, James W. Thomas
and J. T. C. Williams

91. I bid.

92. I bid. [90]; Braddock to Robinson, June 5, 1755, PRO c/0 5/46

XI. FORT CUMBERLAND

. History of Cumberland, Will A. Lowdermilk, Sgff; Sharpe, II (Archives of

Maryland VI), 136ff; Seamen, 373 [90]

. Seamen, 393 [90]

NOTES [ 303]

. Hulbert, 47; Map in British Museum, reproduced in Hulbert
. Seamen, 379; Lowdermilk, 13o

VaMag, xxxii 316
Pargellis, 108

. Seamen, 373 [go]
. BOB, XXX
. Orme, 313, 314; Fitzpatrick, i 127; ColRec, vi 379, 383
. Seamen, 374 [90]
Ibid.

. Orme, 311, 315; Lowdermilk, 9o; Braddock to Robinson, June 5, 1755
. Fitzpatrick, i 148

. VaMag, xxxii 316

. Expedition, 15

. Ibid., 14, 15

Orme, 31 1; Braddock to Robinson, June 5, 1755, PRO; Moreau, 199

. Dinwiddie, I 418, 431, 432, 436, 514, 519, 521; II 34

Orme, 311 ; BOB, XXXI

Whiskey Rebellion, Leland D. Baldwin, 25; History of the Western Insur-
rection in Western Pennsylvania, H. M. Brackenridge, 17; PaArch, II 277;
Chronicles of Border Warfare, Alexander Scott Withers, 30-1; VaMag,
XXXII 313, 314; PaMag, XLVI 283; WPaMag, xvii 242

. Co1Rec, vi 374-5; PaMag, XLVI 27891"

. Sargent, 407

. Co1Rec, vi 372, 374-5

. Sargent, 407

. Parkman, i 35, 37

. Co1Rec, vi 375

. Sargent, 407

. Fitzpatrick, i 95

. Co1Rec, vii 87; GM, xxvi 414-415; PaMag, xlvi 295
. Seamen, 393

. Bond, 55, 56, 77; LM, xv 207; Withers, 25ff

. BOB, XXX

. Fitzpatrick, i 123

. BOB, XXXI

. Ibid., XX, XXXII

. Hulbert, 20, 23; Co1Rec, vi; U. S. Geological Survey, Cumberland Quad-

rangle

. BOB, XXXI; Orme, 323

. Seamen, 375 [g2]; HOB (unpaged)
. Hamilton, i 89

. Expedition, 15, 16

. Orme, 313

. GM, xxv 378

. Seamen, 375; Porter, i 163, 171

. Sharpe, I 149, 191-2

. Seamen, 372 [89]

. Orme, 311; BOB

. Seamen, 375

. Seamen, 376 [93]; Orme, 298, 312; Pargellis, 84; Add Mss 35593; BOB, VI;

Braddock to Robinson, June 5, 1755, PRO c/o 5/46

. Sharpe, I 168; BOB, XXXII, XXXIII
. Dinwiddie, I 114-115n; Pargellis, 86-7; Braddock to Robinson, June 5, 1755

[304]

. Sharpe, I 204

. BOB, XXXII

. Sharpe, I 142; Dinwiddie, I 428

. BOB, XXXII

. BOB, XXXIV; Ritenour, 132; ADB, xiii 166

. BOB, XXXII; ColRec, vi 397

. ColRec, vi 397

. Seamen, 378 [95]; Lowdermilk, 123-4

. ColRec, vi 4oo; Braddock to Robinson, June 5, 1755
. seamen, 377 [941

. Fitzgerald, I 123; Orme, 321; Braddock to Robinson, June 5, 1755
. Orme, 313-4; Braddock to Robinson, June 5, 1755
. Fitzgerald, I 123-4

. ColRec, vi 635-636

. Seamen, 377 [93]; Dinwiddie, II 34; Orme, 315

. Dinwiddie, II 40

. Orme, 315

. Ibid., 315; Braddock to Robinson, June 5, 1755

. Dinwiddie, II 34

. Ibid.

. Ibid., 40-41

. Expedition, 1665

. Fitzpatrick, I 125; Seamen, 377 [941

. Seamen, 377 [94]

Ibid.

. BOB, XXXV

. Seamen, 377

. Fitzpatrick, I 127

. seamen. 377 [941

. Ibid., 377-8; Sargent, 407

. Seamen, 378 [95]

. Ibid.; DAB, vii 184

. BOB, XXXVII

. Seamen, 378 [95]

. Seamen, 379; Expedition, 18ff
. Expedition, 18

. Ibid., 18fE

. Withers, 29lf, 76lf; Drake, gff

. ColRec, vi 398; PaArch, II 317
. ColRec, vi 38oif; PaArch, II 3o7ff
. ColRec, vi 381

. PaArch, II 309

. Expedition, 22

. Seamen, 379 [96]; Orme, 312-313; ColRec, VI 398; Franklin, 260
. Expedition, 23

. ColRec, vi 635-6

. I bid., 636

. Expedition, 22

. Seamen, 379 [96-7]

Ibid.

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

. Dinwiddie, II 41, 44; ColRec, vi 399-400; Sharpe, I 210
. Sharpe, I 210
. PaArch, ii 321-2

104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
113.
114.
115.
116.
117.
118.
119.
120.
121.
122.

NOTES [ 305 ]
Sargent, 407; Orme, 314; Fi1z., i 92

PaArch, 11 321-2

Ibid., 317

Orme, 312-313; C0IRec, vi 408

C0lRec, vi 400

Orme, 313

PaArch, II 330, 379

Expedition, 23ff

Ibid.

Colkec, vi 398; PaArch, II 317, 321

C0lRec, vi 402-403

DAB xiv 508; PaArch, II 325

ColRec, vi 397ff; PaMag, xlvii 133; PaArch, II 299
C0lRcc, vi 396

Ibid.

Dinwiddie, II 40

Ibid., 37-38

Co1Rec, vi 397

Ibid-. 374. 375. 379. 383. 394
'd., 400

. Ibid., 379, 396, 402; PaArch, II 321

. ColRec, vi 397; Van Doren, 206-7; Pargellis, 120; GAB, iii 112-113
. BOB, XXXVIII; HOB

. BOB, XXXIX; HOB

. BOB. XXXIX

. PaArch, II 330

. PaArch, II 325; C0lRcc, vi 400, 403

. Colllec, vi 400

. Ibid., 405-6

. Ibid., 410-411 ; Shirley, ii 199-200; DAB, xvi 377

. Seamen, 381 [98]

. DAB, ii 442, xiii 166; Old Tom Fossit, John Ritenour, 132

. PaArch, II 311, 315, 347; Orme, 321; VaMag, xxx 310, 315; BOB,

XXXVIIIE

. Scamen, 3796 [97]; Orme, 321; BOB. XXXVIII; James Wolfe, W. T.

Waugh, 37

. Expedition, 15

. BOB, XXXI, XXXVII

. Orme, 3173

. Orme, 314; Seamen, 380 [98]; Sargent, 407
. Sargent, 407; Orme, 314; Seamen, 380 [98]
. Seamen, 379; Sargent, 408; C01Rec, vi 398-399
. Orme, 321; Seamen, 380 [98]

. Orme, 322; Pargellis, 122

. BOB, XXXIXII

. BOB, XLII; ColRec, vi 443

. BOB. XLIV

. Ibid.

XII. THE LONG MARCH

. BOB, XLI, XLII; Orme, 324, 330
. Ibid., XLVI, Orme, 322
. BOB, XLIV

[ 20] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

and copyist at the Abbey, lived in the Great Sanctuary at West-
minster, in a house owned by Dr. Blow; 113 and it is more than
likely that the Captain’s wife and little son, Edward, lived nearby,
perhaps in one of the neighboring parishes with which the family
was associated. More children were born to the Captain's wife.
Eventually there were six, three boys and three girls.119 The girls
appear later in our story.

EDUCATION OF EDWARD BRADDOCK III

Had his father been an oflicer of higher rank, or his grandfather a
gentleman of more exalted station, young Edward Braddock might
have attended Westminster school, but there is no record of his hav-
ing been enrolled.12° His father may well have shared an opinion
held by many army officers of his generation that the study of Latin
and Creek was a loss of time, that public schools encouraged bad
company, and that universities produced pedants. The Rev. Dr.
Jonathan Swift had heard this theory expounded so clearly and
forcefully on one occasion by an officer in a coffee house that he
could still repeat it word by word:

Damn me, Doctor, say what you will, the army is the only school for
gentlemen. Do you think my Lord Marlborough beat the French
with Greek and Latin? Damn me, a scholar, when he comes into good
company, what is he but an ass? Damn me, I would be glad, by God,
to see any of your scholars with his nouns and verbs and his philoso-
phy and his trigonometry, what a figure he would make at a siege or
a blockade or reconnoitering, damn me! 121

At least two competent schoolmasters, his grandfather and Dr.
Blow, were close at hand, and young Edward may have received
his early education along with the choir boys they taught. At the
same time he lived in the sterner world of wars and rumors of wars,
of political upheaval and threatened ruin. No doubt, he saw as
many reminders and heard as many yarns about King William's
Wars as young Laurence Sterne, the son of another olficer who had
served in Flanders. The Braddock household, like that of Sterne’s
Tristram Shandy, must have had its Uncle Toby and Corporal
Trim in repeated attacks on the counterscarp at Namur.122 And
certainly those stories influenced his wish to be a soldier. But where
Sterne’s father had been a lieutenant in a regiment of the line, dis-
banded after the war,123 Braddock’s still held a captain’s commis-

[306]

. Fitzpatrick, i 131-2, 133; PaArch, ii 346-7
. PaArch, ii 347
. Fitzpatrick, i 1251f; Dinwiddie, II 41; Co1Rec vi 394, 408; VaGaz, March

Oflfirh

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

28.1755

. BOB, XLII

. ColRec, vi 499

. PaArch, ii 325

. Ibid., 335; The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America, John Fiske, ii 379;

Franklin, 48; PaArch, ii 346, 356, 358; ColRec, vi 417; List of Oflicers of the
Royal Regiment of Artillery, London 1890, 2; PaMag, xxii 499

. BOB, XLIII

. LHW, iii 309

. GM, xxv 322-23

. Ibid., 185, 234; LM, xxiv 249, 250; HCJ, XXVII 296

. Walpole, iii 299, 304-5

. Ibz'd., 302, 305

. Seamen, 381 [98-99]; Orme, 324; Fitzpatrick, i 132

. BOB, XLII; Seamen, 381

. Pargellis, 92; Braddock to Robinson, June 5, 1755, c/0 5/46 PRO Moreau,

197ff; A Letter to the People of England, John Shelbeare, 35

. Fitzpatrick, i 133-4; Braddock to Robinson, june 5, 1755

. Braddock to Robinson, June 5, 1755, PRO, c/o 5/46

. Ibid.

. Braddock to Napier, June 8, 1755, Pargellis 84

. Op. Cit., 21

. Fitzpatrick, i 134

. DAB, xvii 12off; DNB, xviii 142; PaArch, ii 330, 347; ColRec, vi 406; Cor-

respondence of William Shirley, ed. Charles Henry Lincoln, i 397, 42411;
ii 110, 1461f, 152if, 232n

. Pargellis, 94; St. Clair to Napier, June 13, 1755; WPaMag, xvii 24off
. Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, John Fiske, ii 432ff; II Dalton (George),

ii 347, 348n; DAB xvii 467E; DN B, xviii 177-8

. ColRec, vi 286

. Pargellis, 119

. Sharpe, I 268

. Hamilton, i 69; Fitzpatrick, i 140

. Dunbar to Napier, July 24, 1755, Pargellis, 111

. Autobiography of the Rev. Dr. Alexander C. Carlyle, D. D., ed. J. H.

Burton, 144

. BOB, XLIVflf (XLIV)
. Shirley's correspondence, ii 202; Braddock to Robinson, June 5, 1755, PR0

0/0 5/46

. Ibid. ColRec, vi 437

. Braddock to Newcastle, June 5, 1755, Newcastle Papers, CLXX 336
. Fitzpatrick, i 133

. PaArch, ii 346-7

. Seamen, 381-2

. Expedition, 15

. Seamen, 381-2; BOB, XLVI

. HOB

. BOB, XLVII

. Ibid.,- Orme, 326; PaArch, ii 348; ColRec, vi 426

NOTES [ 307 ]

47. Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, September 19, 1849, How The News of

56.
57-
58.
59-
60.

Braddock’: Defeat Came to Town and What Followed.

. Braddock to Napier, June 8, 1755, Pargellis, 84ft

. ColRec vi 411; Fitzpatrick, i 134, 137

. Fitzpatrick, i 134

. Orme, 325; Col.Rec, vi 426-7

. ColRec, vi 4069:‘, 415; PaArch, ii 257

. Fitzpatrick, i 136; Orme, 326; BOB, XLIV, XLVIIIff; Sharpe, I 245, HOB‘
. Seamen, 382 [99-100]; Orme, 326; BOB, XLIX

. A Sketch of General Braddock’s March from Fort Cumberland Etc., Cum-

berland Maps, Royal Library, Windsor, reproduced in Pargellis. The
Route of the Army Under the Command of General Braddock to the
Place of Their Defeat, Laid Down by Christopher Gist, Henry Huntington
Library, San Marino, Cal.; Pennsylvania State Survey Map, Fort Necessity
Museum.

U. 8. Geological Survey, Cumberland Quadrangle

Seamen, 382 [me]; Orme, 327

Watson, ii 142

Pargellis, 485

Watson, ii 140; primitive Braddock portrait, artist unknown, Ft. Necessity
Museum

. Orme, 331; Braddock Road Series, Photographic Post Cards, John Kennedy

Lacock, Washington (Pa.) 1908, No. 7

. Op. Cit., 56
. Orme, 331 ; VaMag, xxxii 310
. Skrine 135; A New and Enlarged Military Dictionary, Charles James (un-

paged), artillery; A Treatise of Artillery, by John Muller, 179-180

. Fitzpatrick, i 140, 143

. PaMag, xli 283

. Orme, 331

. Op. Cit., 48

. Fitzpatrick, i 144-45

. Orme, 331; BOB, L

. PaArch, 357

. Fitzpatrick, i 140

. Muller, 161

. Orme, 332

. Muller, Plate XX, 1161f; Orme, 332
. Orme, 332

. Ibid., BOB, L

. Orme, 332; BOB, LII

. BOB, LIV

. Ibid.; Op. Cit. 55

. Orme, 333; U. S. Geological Survey, Frostburg Quadrangle

HOB

. Orme, 333

. BOB, LIV

- Orme» 334. 350-351

. Orme, 334; BOB, LIV

. BOB, LX

. Orme, 335; Op. Cit., 55; Lacock Cards, Nos. 14, 15.
. PaMag, xxxviii 16n, 17; Op. Cit. 55; Orme, 335

. WestPaHistMag, xv1i 117; Pargellis, 93ff

[308]
. Op. Cit. 55; U. S. Geological Survey. Avilton Quadrangle; WPaMag xviii

13o.
. Pargellis, 123; Orme, 342; PaMag vii 431
132.
133.
134.
135.
. Ibid., 340-1
137.

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

117

. Pargellis, 93E

. WestPaHistMag, xvii 261n

. Fitzpatrick, i 142; Orme, 335

. Fitzpatrick, i 129, 142-3; ColRec, vi 409, 422, 431 ; MGaz, June 5, 1755

. Ibid., 143

. Pargellis, 95

. Fitzpatrick, i 142-3

. GM, xxvi 269-27o; General Braddock’s instructions, W/O 34/71, Amherst

Papers lxxi PRO

. Pargellis, 121-2

. Ibid., 102, 109

. Orme, 336; BOB, LVI

. BOB, LVI, LVIII

. HOB

. Fitzgerald, i 143

. Pargellis, 113; Orme, 336; BOB, LVII; Co1Rec, vi 477; Sharpe, I 249
. Orme, 336; BOB, LVI; Sargent, Plate III, facing 336

. Fitzpatrick, i 141

. Pargellis, 1o9ff, 113

. Ibid.

. Orme, 337

. Ibid., Lacock Card No. 18

. Orme, 336-7; Sharpe, I 234

. Orme, 337-8; Sargent, Plate iv

. Fitzgerald, i 144

. GM, xxiv 516ff; II Dalton (George), ii 13ff; DNB, xx 414-5; James Wolfe,

Man and Soldier, W. T. Waugh, 64

. Dalton, II 16

. Hamilton, i 66

. Ibz'd.,- Fitzgerald, i 142

. Fitzgerald, i 141-2; Niles Weekly Register, xiv (March 9, 1818) 180

. Orme, 338; Lacock Cards Nos. 20, 21

. Orme, 338; U. 8. Geological Survey, Accident Quadrangle

. Co1Rec, vi 4143, 428flE, 445

. Ib1'd., 412; Evans’ Map; Gist’s Map, Henry E. Huntington Library and

Art Gallery

. ColRec, vi 445-6

. Ibid., 414-5

. Pargellis, 121; PaMag, xxiii 324; Expedition, 27
128.
129.

HOB

Ib1'd.; Orme, 340, 342; The Correspondence of William Shirley, ed. Charles
Henry Lincoln, ii 31391"; Inquiry into Behavior of Troops at the Monon-
gahela c/o 5/46 PRO; GM 1755, 426

PaMag, xi 93

Orme, 339
Bland, 114
Orme, 340
Ibid.

Ibid., 341; Lacock Cards, No. 30

NOTES I 309 I

. Orme, 341

. Ibid.; PaG, July 17, 1755

. PaG, Op Cit.; Freeman i 4003; Parkman wolf

. Parkman, i 101; Freeman, i 404; Fitzgerald, xxix 40
. Orme, 342-3; PaMag, xxxviii 25n

. Orme 343; PaMag, xxxviii 25, 26

. Freeman, i 372-3; Fitzpatrick, i 73; Parkman, i 96

. Orme, 343

. Orme, 343-4; Moreau 153

. HOB; PaMag, xxxiii 324

. Orme, 344

. Willson, 267

. Shirley Correspondence ii 255ff; Nouveau Larouse Illustré, Directeur:

Claude Augé, Paris 1898 iii 717; Parkman, i 117; MdGaz, April 16, June
5» 1755

. MdGaz, May 1, 8, 15, 22, 1755; Co1Rec, vi 409

. Orme, 345; Lacock Cards Nos. 46, 47

. Orme, 345-6; HOB

. ColRec, vi 454ff; Sharpe, I 237-8; Orme, 345-6; MdGaz, July 3, 1755

155. C0lRec, vi 475-6

156.
157.
158.
159.
160.
. Ibz'd., 345-6, 348

. Orme, 348E

. HOB

. Orme, 349, 350; Sharpe, I 246

. Orme, 349, 350; Sharpe, I 250

. Orme, 349, 350; HOB

. Orme, 349, 351

. Ibid., 351; PaMag, xxxviii 34

. Orme, 351-2

. Ibz'd., 352

. PaMag, xxiii 325

. Orme, 352; Lacock Card No. 58

. Fitzpatrick, ii 146-7; Pargellis, uoff

. Fitzpatrick, i 144, 146-7; Fitzpatrick, xxix 41; MdGaz, July 10, 1755

. ColRec, vi 477; Sharpe, I 238, 239, 242, 243, 247; Shirley, ii 317

. Watson, ii 141; Fitzpatrick, xxix 41-2; C0lRec, vi 497

. GM, xxv 235; Shirley, ii 181, 202-3; Fitzpatrick, i 146

. Orme, 352; St. Clair to Robinson, Sept. 3, 1755 PRO c/0 5/46

. Pargellis, 121; Hamilton, i 125; Entick, i 145

. HOB

. Orme, 353

. The Braddock-Washington pistol in the collection of William G. Renwick,

Orme, 346; Lacock Cards No. 48; PaMag, xxxviii 29n, 30
Orme, 346

Pargellis, 110, 111; PaMag, xi 93ff

Orme, 346, 347-8

Ibid., 348

Weston, Mass.; Letter from F. B. Brandt, clerk to the Worshipful Com-
pany of Gunmakers, London, February 3, 1956.

XIII. INTO BATTLE

. Chronicles of Border Warfare, Alexander Scott Withers, ed. Reuben Gold

Thwaites, 66-67; Tragedies in the Wilderness (An Account of the Remark-

[310]

35-
. Serious Advice to the Inhabitants of the Northern Colonies, New York,

37-
38.
39-

40.
41.
42.
43-
. Seamen, 385 [102]

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

able Occurrences in the Life and Travels of Col. James Smith) Samuel 
Drake, 183; Relations Diverses sur la Bataille du Malanguele, Jean Marie
Shea, 9ff

. Parkman, i 134; PaMag, viii 121 (Daniel Hyacinth May Leinard dc Beaujeu,

John Gilmary Shea.)

. Pargellis, 129

. Sargent, 41ff; Freeman, i 374ff; Parkman, i 926, ii 271; Pargellis, tagfi
. PaMag, viii 122

. Ibid., 122-3, 128

. Ibid., 123, 128; Les Heroes de la Monongahela, de Beaujeu, 4

. Ibid., 124; Parkman, i 133-4; C0lRec, vi 16off; I OT 39-40

. C0lRec, vi 445

. PaMag, viii 124

. Ibid., 128; Sargent, 411; Shea, 10; Cudet, 24

. Sargent, 414-5

. Sharpe, II 234E, 4651f; ColRec, vi 454ff; PaArch, ii 362-363; MdGaz, June

28, July 10, 1755

. C01Rec, vi 466-8; Pargellis, 88; Drake, 180-1

. Drake, 182

. Ibid., 183

. Ibid., 183

. Pargellis, 129-30; Parkman, i 135; Sargent, 4091f

. PaMag, viii 128

. Ibid., 125; Sargent, 411; Parkman, i 136

. Drake, 183; PaMag, viii 125; Shea, 11

. PaMag, viii 128; Sargent, 411

. PaMag, viii 125-6; Drake, 183; Parkman, i 136; Shea, 14
. Drake, 183; Gage to Albemarle, July 24, 1755, Keppel, i 214
. Pargellis, 120fE; Seamen, 384 [102]

. Pargellis, 106; Sargent, 218

. U. 8. Geological Survey, Pittsburgh Quadrangle

. Pargellis, 98

. Ibid., 106, 108

. PaMag, iii 17-18

. Orme, 353-4

. Ibid., 354

. Op. Cit. 27; Sargent, 218-219; PaMag, xvii 212-213

. Sketch of the Field of Battle of the 9th July upon the Monongahela, Etc.,

by Patrick MacKeller, N0. 1, Cumberland Papers, Royal Library, Windsor
Castle, reproduced in Pargellis, Parkman, etc. Duplicate set in New York
Public Library.

Freeman, i 323; Parkman, i 88

1755-

Gage to Albemarle, July 24, 1755, Keppel, i 214

Pargellis, 106; Orme, 354

Pargellis, 98, 106; Orme, 354; Seamen, 385 [102]; Mackellar Map No. 1;
PaMag, xlvi 212-213

Seamen, 385 [102]; Pargellis, 106

Freeman, ii 64

Pargellis, 106; Mackellar Map No. 1; Gage to Albemarle, Op. Cit. 37
Pargellis, 103; Mackellar Map No. 1; Sargent, 219

NOTES

[311]

. Orme, 355; Mackellar Map No. 1; Pargellis, 103, 117; de Beaujeu 16
. Pargellis, 106; Seamen, 387

. Pargellis, 106

. Gage to Albemarle (Op. Cit., 37)

. Pargellis, 106

. Audet, 24-25; Shea, 11; PaMag, viii 126

. Pargellis, 106; Gage to Albemarle, Op. Cit. 37

. St. Clair to Robinson, September 3, 1755, PRO c/o 5/46

. Op. Cit., 37; Pargellis, 117

. Op. Cit., 37; Pargellis, 99

. Pargellis, 103, 106

. Op. Cit., 50

. Seamen, 385; Pargellis, 106; Fitzpatrick, xxix 40; Add Ms 35593

. Pargellis, 106, 115

. I bid., 99, 1 15; Mackellar Map No. 2; Orme, 354

. Orme, 355; Pargellis, 116; Mackellar Map No. 2.

. Pargellis, 99, 106; The Life, Adventures and Surprising Deliverances of

Duncan Cameron, 11

. Ibid., 103, 115

. Op. Cit., 37; Pargellis, 106

. Pargellis, 107

. Ibid.

. Ibid., 116

’. Ibid., 83

. Op. Cit., 37; Orme, 355-356
. Orme, 356

Sargent, 250

. Orme, 355

Kelly, 8; WADC, 38; MdGaz, September 11, 1755; Add Ms 41of.

. Olden Times ii 139; Whitehall Evening Post, October 9, 1755, quoted

PaMag, xxiii 321; Fitzpatrick, xxix 43

. Watson, ii 141; de Hass, 109; Public Advertiser, October 3, 1755, quoted

PaMag, xxiii, 319

. Custis, 374-5; Fitzpatrick, xxix 42
. PaMag, xxiii 32

. Pargellis, 103

. C0lRec, vi 501; PaMag, xxiii 325
. PaMag, xxiii 325

. Pargellis, 99, 107

. Op. Cit., 37

. HOB; Fitzpatrick, xxix 42

GM, xxv 380; Parkman, i 140

. Op. Cit., 37; Pargellis, 117; Sharpe, I 253; Shea, 11; Fitzpatrick, i 150
. Pargellis, 107; Sharpe, I 253

. Watson, ii 138; Pargellis, 118

. HOB

. Pargellis, 107

. Public Advertiser, October 31, 1755, quoted PaMag, xxiii 324
. Pargellis, 121

. Sharpe, I 253

. Pargellis, 117

. Sharpe, I 253

. Pargellis, 100, 101, 107

[312]

95-
96.
97-
98.
99-
100.

101.
102.
103.
104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
1 10.

111.
112.
113.
114.
115.
116.
117.
118.
119.
120.
121.

122.
123.
124.
125.
126.
127.
128.
129.

130.
131.
132.
133.
134.
135.
136.
137.
138.
139.
140.
141.
142.
143.

ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Watson, ii 140

Pargellis, 119; Fitzpatrick, i 152, xxix 42-3; Custis, 375

GM, xxv 380

Sargent, 246-7; Ritenour, 113tf

Freeman, ii 74

Orme, 356; Shirley, ii 312-313; Inquiry into Behavior of Troops at the
Monongahela, Albany, Nov. 21, 1755, PRO c/0 5/56

Pargellis, 99, 107; Searnen, 386 [104]

de Haas, 129-130n; Dinwiddie II 425

Pargellis, 107

I bid., 1 17; Orme, 355

Freeman, ii 76; PaMag, xxiii 311

Pargellis, 107

Orme, 356

Pargellis, 107

Ibid.,- Shirley, ii 312-313

Franklin, 265-6; Daniel Boone, John Bakeless, 25; Daniel Boone, Reuben
Gold Thwaites, 21

Pargellis, 107; Orme, 356; Shirley, ii

Fitzpatrick, i 149, 151

Expedition, 28ff

ColRec, vi 501

Fitzpatrick, i 43; Niles Weekly Register, May 9, 1818, 180

Sargent, 387n; Ritenour, 94

Fitzpatrick, xxix 43

Pargellis, 107-108

Ibid.; Shea, 15

Orme, 356; Fitzpatrick, xxix 43-44

Fitzpatrick, xxix 43-44; Niles Weekly Register, May 9, 1818, 179; Fitzpatrick
xxix 44

Orme, 356

Ibid., 356-7; Fitzpatrick, xxix 44

Fitzpatrick, xxix 44

Drake, 183E

Ibid.

Bland, 114

Op. Cit., 37

Dinwiddie, II 2216; GM, xxv 426; Public Advertiser, September 30, 1755
(quoted in Davis)

Pargellis, 102

Dinwiddie, 11 221E

Franklin, 268

Pargellis, 110; Fitzpatrick, xxix 44; WPaHisMag, xvii 496, xviii 118-119
ColRec, vi 4806; GM, xxv 379

Pargellis, 110

Ibid., 102; St. Clair to Robinson, September 3, 1755, PRO c/0 5/56
Ibid., 109

Ibid., 108

Orme, 357

Pargellis, 108

Franklin, 268

Shirley, ii 321

Seamen, 368n.

Fihil-llllfilliiihll-I
_oo\1czu1.ts<.3o1o:-ogogoxrcaoutxoo

Norms [313]

. Fitzpatrick, i 151

. GM, xxv 424; Colkec, vii 342

. Pargellis, 110

. Ibid.

. Dinwiddie, II 222

. Shirley, ii 321; Pargellis, 119; St. Clair to Robinson, September 3, 1755.

PRO c/o 5/46

. WestPaMag, xvii 49f‘t'

. Sharpe, I 269

. Pargellis, 110; Cameron, uif

. St. Clair to Robinson, September 3, 1755, PRO c/o 5/46
. Pargellis, 117

. Watson, ii 141; C0lRec, vi 589

. Custis, 375

. Pargellis, 119

. Dinwiddie, II 222-223; Shirley, ii 388

. Dinwiddie, II 222

. Shirley, ii 321; Pargellis, 111

. Pargellis, 111; Freeman, ii 82

. PaMag, ii 95

. Custis, 16211

. PaMag, xxiii 322-323

. Custis, 375

. Pargellis, 101

. Orme to-——(Keppel?) July 18, 1755, PRO c/o 5/46
. Bland, 135

. Haas, 112

. Orme, 357; Pargellis, 120

. Haas, 112

. Fitzpatrick, xxix 45; Custis, 162r1; Ritenour, 34; Niles Weekly Register,

May 9, 1818, 179-180

xrv. REQUIEM

. Sharpe, I 234ff; Co1Rec, vi 457ff; MdGaz, July 10, 1755
. VaMag, xxxii 317, “Journal of a Voyage from London to Va., 1754,” Nov.

17. I754-1Jam 19- I757"

. Ibid.; Sharpe, I 248; ColRec, vi 479
. VaMag, xxxii 317-318

. C0lRec, vi 478; Sharpe, I 246

. ColRec, vi 477-478; Sharpe, I 246

. Dinwiddie, II 98

Ibid., 48, 52, 63, 98, 99
Fitzgerald, i 148; Dinwiddie, II 116

. Pargellis, 98lf

Dinwiddie, 11 116-117, 120

. Barrington i 113-114; PaMag, ix 489-490, xxiii 310

LHW, iii 332

- [bid-1 33-F335

. The Public Advertiser, London, August 27, 1755.
. GAB, iii, iv 55

. LHW, iii 336-337

“British Newspaper Accounts of Bradd0ck's Defeat,” by N. Darnell Davis,
PaMag, xxiii 31off

[314]

19.
20.
21.
22.

23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
3o.
31.

32.
33-
34-
35-
36.
37-
38.
39-
40.
41 .
42.
43-

ILL-STIARRED GENERAL

GM, xxv 383, 389

Ibid., 383

LHW, iii 353

“Notations on General Braddock’s Will,” Principal Probate Registry.
London

GAB, iii-iv 14o

Dinwiddie, II 118, 119, 122, 130, 131; ColRec, vi 497ff, 515

Sharpe, I 251, 257-258

Ibid., 259

Dinwiddie, II 142; Co1Rec, vi 499, 501, 502; Cameron, 14

Dinwiddie, II 170

Ibid., 143ff; Co1Rec, 502, 513ff; Sharpe, I 265

PaMag, xxiii 323

Sargent, 244; Watson, ii 141, 143; PaMag, xxiii 318; Washington’s Expedi-
tions, James Haddon, 114, 115, 1261i

VaMag, xxxii 319

Sharpe, I 254; Dinwiddie, II 149

Pargellis, 1o2ff, 1o9fE, 112ff

PaGaz, September 4, 1755

Gage to Albemarle, Op. Cit., Chapter XVI

PaMag, xxiii 232, 321, 324

Fitzpatrick, i 154

Hamilton, i 83

Franklin, 262-3

Fitzpatrick, xxix 45

Niles Weekly Register, xiv 179, 180

History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania, ed. Franklin Ellis, 48; Lowder-
milk, 189; Ritenour, 234; Haddon, 127.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

——--no )  om

LEGEND

ADB-American Dictonary of Biography

Add Mss-—Additional Manuscript, British Museum
BM—British Museum, London

BOB——Braddock's Orderly Books

C/O—Co1onial Office Papers, Public Records Office, London
ColRec—Golonial Records of Pennsylvania
DNB—Dictionary of National Biography

GAB-An Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy
GM—Gent1eman's Magazine

HOB--Ha1kett’s Orderly Book

HSP—Harleian Society Publications

_]HC,-Journals of the House of Commons
LHW—Letters of Horace Walpole

LM-——London Magazine

MGaz—Mary1and Gazette

MdHistMag—Mary1and Historical Magazine
MWDC—Memoirs of William Duke of Cumberland
PaArch-Pennsylvania Archives

PaMag—Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
PGaz—Pennsylvania Gazette

PRO-Public Records Office, London

RS—Register Section

VaMag--Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
VGaz—Virginia Gazette

[315]

ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION 01-‘ A GUARDSMAN [ 21 ]

sion in the elite Coldstream and generally was addressed as “Colo-
nel,” his line rank. An effigy of the Coldstream’s first colonel,
Monck, in armor, was one of the sights people went to see in the
Abbey.124 And for all his conceit, the Coldstream’s incumbent
colonel, Cutts, was reputed to know more about storming parties
than any other officer in the British army.1-‘35

But at the moment the army was not too popular. During his
wars William had increased its strength to 87,000 men. Debts,
taxes, and the number of drunken grenadiers in the streets of Lon-
don had increased, too. Once a peace treaty had been signed, noisy
demagogues in the House of Commons denounced all soldiers as
thieves, seducers, a national plague, the scum of the earth. Hot
tempered veterans of Flanders threatened to cane their detractors.
Some of the members of the House carried pistols for protection.
The King ordered all army officers to remain in their quarters.125

Pamphleteers joined the outcry against the army, contending that
the defense of the realm might be entrusted safely to a stay-at-home
militia trained a few weeks each year and officered by justices of
the peace. One militia-minded Tory, Robert Harley, stood up in
the House and moved that the military establishments be reduced
to a force of not more than 1o,ooo men. The House confirmed Har-
ley’s proposal. It further resolved that every soldier in the British
army should be either a natural-born or a naturalized English-
man,127 that none but English troops should do guard duty at the
royal palace of Whitehall.123 This meant the return to Holland of
William’s brigade of Dutch blue guards. The King had hoped to
keep at least one battalion. His blues were ordered into red uni-
forms. William pleaded that they be permitted to remain.129 While
his appeal was before the Commons a Dutch laundress at Whitehall
hung her wash too close to a charcoal fire (some said she put hot
ashes in a closet) and set the royal palace ablaze. Captain Brad-
dock’s guards were called out to help fight the fire. They managed
to save the Banqueting Hall, but the rest of the old palace was
destroyed.13° With it was destroyed any remaining public affection
for William’s Dutch retainers. The departure of his blue guards
was delayed for a year, but at the end of March 1699 they marched
out of London and took ship for Hol1and.131

Whitehall never was rebuilt. London’s riverside dampness ag-
gravated King William’s asthma. He preferred Kensington, Hamp-
ton Court, and Windsor.133 St. James’s Palace in London was fitted

[316] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

MANUSCRIPT SOURCES
Public Records Ofiice, London

Colonial Office—Braddock, Edward

Correspondence, instructions, including letters from Orme, Dunbar
and St. Clair.

Inquiry into Behavior of Troops at the Monongahela.

Amherst Papers, Vol. lxxi.

Instructions for Edward Braddock, Major-General, etc; Private In-
structions; Secret Instructions.

State Papers, Military Expeditions.

Correspondence of Col. Edward Braddock and the Earl of Chester-
field.

British Museum, London

Orme, Robert; Journal, 1755.
Newcastle Papers.

War Oflice Correspondence.
Additional Manuscript.

Principal Probate Registry, London

Will of Edward Braddock, Esq., late Major General of His Majesty's
Forces.

Will of Edward Braddock, of the Parish of St. Margaret's Westminster.

Will of Edward Braddock, Esq., of St. Michael's Parish in the City
of Bath.

Will of Dr. John Blow (1648-1708).
Royal Archives, Windsor Castle

Duke of Cumberland Correspondence

British Parish Records

Baptismal Register of St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, London.
The Register of the Abbey Church of SS. Peter and Paul, Bath,
England.

Library of Congress, Washington
General Braddock’s Orderly Books

Forty-Fourth Regiment Orderly Book, also known as the I-Ialkett
Orderly Book.

Other American Depositories

The Clement Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Shelburne Papers. Letters from the Earl of Albemarle to Sir Thomas
Robinson.

Peabody Institute, Baltimore, Maryland. Journals of John Pendleton
Kennedy.

BIBLIOGRAPHY [ 317]

Pennsylvania Historical Society, Philadelphia.
Transcripts of Orme and Seamen's journals.
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The Parish Registers of St. Michael, Cornhill (HSP, RS VIII), Edited
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The Register of St. Lawrence Jewry, London (HSP, RS lxx), Edited
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The Registers of St. Mary Magdalen, Milk Street and St. Michael
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The Register of St. Lawrence Jewry and St. Mary Magdalen, Milk
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British Marriage License Records

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County Maryland. Cumberland, 1923.

 

 

 

 

[ 328] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Thompson, Mrs. K. B. Memoirs of the Court and Times of George 11.
London, 1850.

Toland, John. The Art of Restoring. London, 1714.

Toynbee, Mrs. Paget. The Letters of Horace Walpole. Oxford, 1903.

Traill, H. D. Social England. London, 1909.

Trevelyan, G. M. English Social History. London, 1946.

. England Under Queen Anne. New York, 1930-34.

Thwaites, Reuben Gold. Daniel Boone. New York, 1903.

Van Doren, Carl. Benjamin Franklin. New York, 1938.

Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion. (American Guide Series.)
New York, 1940.

Walpole, Horatio. A Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors of Eng-
land, Scotland and Wales. London, 1806.

Walpole Horace. Letters of. Edited by Mrs. Pager Toynbee. Oxford,
1903.

. Memoirs of George 11. London, 1847.

Waugh, W. T. James Wolfe, Man and Soldier. New York, 1928.

Webster, Alexander, and Raymond Needham. Somerset House, Past
and Present. New York, N.D.

Welch, Joseph. A List of Scholars at St. Peter’s College, Westminster.
London, 1788.

Wheatley, H. B. Hogarth’s London. New York, 1909.

Wesley, John. Journals. Everyman’s Library. New York and London,
N.D.

 

West, Willis Mason. American History and Government. New York,
1913.

Whitely, J. H. Wesley's England. London, 1938.

Whitworth, Charles. The Succession of Parliaments. London, 1764.

Williams, T. J. C. History of Frederick County, Maryland. Baltimore,
1915.

. History of Western Maryland. Baltimore; (With James W.
Thomas) History of Allegany County, Maryland. Cumberland, 1923.

Willson, Beckles. The Life and Letters of James Wolfe. London, 1909.

Wilkinson, Clennell. Bonnie Prince Charlie. Philadelphia, 1940.

Withers, Alexander Scott. Chronicles of Border Warfare. Clarksburg,
1831.

Wood, George Arthur. William Shirley, Governor of Massachusetts.
New York, 1920.

Wood, John. An Essay Towards a Description of Bath. London, 1749.

Wyon, Frederick William. The History of Great Britain During the
Reign of Queen Anne. London, 1876.

Wyndham, H. Saxe. Annals of Covent Garden Theatre. London, 1906.

 

INDEX

Addison, Joseph, 25, 36.

Aix-la-Chapelle, Treaty of, 105.

Albemarle, Earl of, 81, 114, 129, 153,
213.

Alexandria, Va., 153-154.

Almanza, Battle of, 26.

Anglo-Dutch Treaty of Alliance, 16.

Anne, Queen, as Princess Anne, 6, 9,
13, 22; as Queen, 23, 25, 32-38, 40.

Argyll, Duke of. See Campbell,
John.

Army, 7-8; armament for siege of
Fort Duquesne, 148; arrival of
Braddock’s troops in America,
150-152, 1 54-1 55; campfollowers
and wives, 156-157, 216, 220, 224-
225; commissions, purchase of,
31; difficulties of supply in Amer-
ica, 141-142, 144-145, 146-148, 151-
152, 160, 161, 163, 166, 169, 170,
171-173, 177, 179-180, 184, 185-186,
188-189, 191-194, 202-203, 219,
234; pay, 7-8; personnel, 136-138;
recruitment, 25, 90, 190; recruits
in America, 145, 160-161, 212; size
of Braddock's regiments in Amer-

ica, 136; supplies destroyed after
Braddock's defeat, 262-263; train-
ing in America, 162, 189-190.

Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, Princess of
Wales, 70.

Barrington, Samuel, 135-136.

Bath, 50-54.

Beaujeu, Captain Daniel Hyacinth
Mary, Lienard de, 240-241, 243,
248.

Bellamy, George Anne, 71, 79-80, 82-
83, 107-113, 130-131, 268.

Bergen-op-Zoom, Fall of, 103.

Berwick, Duke of, 26.

Besset, Colonel Andrew, 41.

Bishop, Thomas, 107, 137, 250-251,
254,264.

Bland, Major General Humphrey,
117.

Blenheim, Battle of, 25-26.

Blow, Dr. john, 6, 7, 10, 11, 19, 27.

Blow family, 28.

Bolingbroke, Viscount. See Saint
john, Henry.

Boone, Daniel, 205-206, 255.

[329]

[330]

Braddock, Arabella, 25.

Braddock, Edward (1), 5-6, 17, 18,
19-20, 27-28.

Braddock, Edward (II), 5, 7, 9, 10,
13, 15; continental duties, 18-19,
24; London duty, 25-27, 36, 40;
marriage, 16; promotions, 24-26,
28, 41-42; resignation, 43; retire-
ment at Bath, 43; will, 54.

Braddock, Edward (III), 1-2; actions
in the final battle, 249-254; apoc-
ryphal stories about, 157-159; ap-
pointment to American command,
124, 129; arrival in America, 138-
139; birth, 18; British attitude to-
ward his expedition, 211; captain-
cy, 69; commander (acting) of
Coldstream Guards, 114; com-
mander of Fourteenth Footguards
(Buckinghamshire Regiment), 1 14-
115; commission from George I,
42; conference with colonial gov-
ernors, 162-163, 166-167; confi-
dence before disaster, 238; costs of
his American expedition, 214;
death, 265; disappointment with
American aid, 211-212; duels, 46,
65-66; education, 20; embarkation
for America, 137; ensigncy in
Coldstream Guard, 30-31; expedi-
tion against the French, 100-101;
finances of American expedition,
217; Flanders duty, 87-88, 101-106;
fording the Monongahela, 245-
247; in Frederick, Md., 171-179;
Gibraltar duty, 117-119; grave,
272; Italian trip, 124; in Jacobite
uprising (1743), 84; letters to Gov-
ernor Morris, 204, 217, 228, 234;
letters to Napier, 170-171, 216;
letter to Newcastle, 168; letter to
Governor Sharpe, 199; lieuten-
ancy, 44; lieutenant-colonelcy, 93;
Litchfield duty, 93-94; London
duty, 36, 66, 107; London house,
107; loss of papers, 261-262; major-
generalcy, 121; majority, 81;
march to Duquesne, 215-219; oili-

INDEX

cial orders, 146; orders for Amer-
ican campaign, 132-134; plan of
march in America, 206-208; pri-
vate life, 62-63, 65-66; relinquish-
ment of command to Dunbar, 264;
reputation, 126-127, 268-269; re-
treat, 259-261; return to England
(1754), 129; in Virginia, 142-146;
will, 131-132, 269; wound, 254.

Braddock, Elizabeth (wife of John
Blow), 6.

Braddock, Frances (sister of Edward
III). 43» 52, 54-60.

Braddock, Henrietta (sister of Ed-
ward III), 43, 55.

Braddock, Mary (second wife of Ed-
ward II), 53-54, 78

Braddock ancestry, 5-6.

Braddock arms, 5.

Braddock family seal, 132.

Braddock’s expedition to America,
preparation for, 123, 124-134.

Bradd0ck’s road, 1, 147-148; rigors
of, 208, 211-212, 215-216, 218-239.

Bradock, Edmund, 5.

Bradock, John, 5.

Browne, Mrs. (widow), 156-157, 180,
184, 185, 266-267, 270.

Buckinghamshire Regiment of Foot-
guards (Fourteenth Footguards),
116.

Burton, Lieutenant Colonel, 159.

Cadogan, William, 38, 41-42, 48.
Calcroft, Jack, 112-113, 131-132.
Cameron, Duncan, 263.

Campbell, Colonel John (later Duke

of Argyll), 42, 43, 131.

Cardonnel, Adam, 27.

Carlisle, Capture of, 92, 97.

Carlyle, Major John, 154, 155.
Caroline, Queen, 41, 45, 47, 48.
Carteret, John (Lord), 78.
Casualties of the American cam-

paign, 261.

Chapel Royal, 6, 9.

Charles I, King, 3.

Charles II, King, 3-4, 8-9, 10.

INDEX

Chesterfield, Earl of. See Stanhope,
John.

Chudleigh, Captain John, 41.

Churchill, Arabella, 9.

Churchill, General Charles, 26, 41.

Churchill, Charles, Jr., 45, 78.

Churchill, Admiral George, 23, 81.

Churchill, John (later Duke of Marl-
borough), 9, 12-13; ascendancy
under Queen Anne, 23-24; Blen-
heim, Battle of, 25-26; death, 48;
disgrace under Queen Anne, 33-
38; dukedom, 24; earldom, 16;
imprisonment, 17; Malplaquet,
Battle of, 28; Ramillies, Battle of,
26; reinstatement of, under
George I, 40-41; rewards after
Blenheim, 25-26; retirement, 43.

Churchill, Sarah (Duchess of Marl-
borough)» 9. 33. 48. 57-

Churchill, Sir Winston, 9.

Cibber, Colley, 82-83.

Clancarty, Robert (Lord), 63.

Cleveland, Duchess of, 35.

Clive, Kitty, 63.

Coldstream Guards, 7; creation, 4;
defeat at Almanza, 26; description
of, 44; expedition against Vigo,
46; Flanders campaign, 16-21; loy-
alty to James II, 12-15; peace
duties under William of Orange,
22.

Contracoeur. See Pecaudy, Pierre
Claude.

Cooke, Elizabeth, 5-6, 16-17.

Cooke, Richard, 5-6.

Coote, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas,

39-

Cope, Sir John, 9o-91.

Court life under George II, 67-68.

Covent Garden, 62-63.

Craik, Dr. James, 264.

Craven, William (Earl of), 4, 10, 12-
13, 15, 16.

Cresap, Michael, 190, 200.

Cresap, Thomas, 120, 181.

Croghan, George, 169-170, 186-187,
207.

[331]

Cromwell, Oliver, 3, 4.

Culloden Field, Battle of, 98-99.

Cumberland, Duke of. See William
Augustus, Prince.

Cumberland, Fort, 144, 169, 183-184,
266-267.

Cutts, John (Lord), 18, 19, 24, 25, 26.

Davis, Mary, 6.

Dettingen, Battle of, 81.

Dick, Major Charles, 185, 192.

Dieskau, Lieutenant General Baron
Ludwig August von, 233.

Dinwiddie, Robert (Lieutenant Gov-
ernor of Virginia), 120, 126, 139-
142,143,152.

Dobbs, Captain Edward Brice, 205.

Dugdale, William, 5.

Dulany, Daniel, 159-160.

Dumas, Captain Jean, 241.

Dunbar, Colonel Thomas, 125, 166,
198, 214, 225-226, 237-238, 260-261,
270.

Dutch invasion of England, 12-16.

Duquesne, Marquis of, 119.

Duquesne, Fort, 121-122, 241-242.

Ellison, Lieutenant Colonel Robert,
139.

Erskine, John, 43.

Evans, Lewis, M aps of Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, New York, and Three
Delaware Counties . . . , 147-148.

Evelyn, John, excerpts from his,

Diary, 3, 4, 13, 15, 22.

Fairfax, Colonel William, 153-154,
267.

Farquhar, George, 25.

Fausset, Thomas, 270.

Fielding, Henry, Covent Garden
Tragedy, 63-65.

Finnie, Alexander, 143.

Folliott, Lieutenant Colonel John,

74-
F ontenoy, Battle of, 85-86.
Forbes, Thomas, 141.
Forty-Eighth Footguards, 125.

[332]

F orty-Fourth Footguards, 125.

Fox, Henry, 103, 109, 111, 120-121,
130-131.

Franklin, Benjamin, 173-177, 197-
198,271.

Franklin, William, 173, 177, 197,
200.

Fraser's cabin, 246.

Frederick, Md., 168-169.

Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales,
45, 48, 68, 110-111.

Frederick William I, King of Prus-
sia, 47.

French scouting of Braddock’s
forces, 240.

French troop movements in Amer-
ica, 217, 223-224, 230.

Gage, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas,
155-156, 166, 194, 270.

Garrick, David, 82.

Gates, Captain Horatio, 195.

Gay, John, 45, 63.

George 1, King, 40-41, 43-44, 47-48.

George II, as Prince of Wales, 41,
44-45; as King, 48, 67-68, 126-127.

George, Prince (later George III),
111.

George, Prince of Denmark, 9, 13,
23, 27.

George Augustus, Prince of Wales.
See George II.

George William, Prince, 44-45.

Gibraltar, Capture of, 25.

Gibraltar duty, 116-1 17.

Girling, Richard, 19.

Gist, Christopher, 120, 141, 235-236.

Gist, Nathaniel, 186.

Gist's plantation, 232.

Glen, Governor James, 2 17.

Goldsmith, Oliver, 54, 55.

Gordon, Harry, 184, 208-209, 256-
257.

Gorsuch, Colonel Charles, 27.

Grafton, Duke of, 12-13.

Guise, Lieutenant General Sir John,
118.

Gumley, Colonel Samuel, 6566.

INDEX

Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden,
4.
Gwynn, Nell, 9.

Halifax, Lord, 106, 127.

Halkett, Francis, 155.

Halkett, Sir Peter, 91, 125, 166, 208,
214, 253.

Hanbury, John, 119, 126.

Hanmer, Colonel William, 76.

Harley, Robert (later Earl of Ox-
ford)» 21. 32. 34. 37-

Hawley, Lieutenant General Henry,
97-98-

Hervey, John (Lord), 45, 52-53. 59.
66-67.

Hill, Jack, 33, 34, 36-37, 38, 42.

Hogarth, William, 63, 95-96.

Hunter, John, 139.

Indians, 230; British allies, 141, 184-
188, 190-191, 194-196, 198-199,
203, 207, 235-236; French allies,
241, 243-244, 258-259; skirmishes,
230-231, 236-237, 242.

Innes, Colonel, 207, 267.

Jacobite sentiment, 39-40, 42-43.
Jacobite uprisings, 46, 82-84, 89-100.
James II, King, as Duke of York, 9;
as King, 10-14; abdication, 15;
correspondence with Marlbor-
ough, 17; death, 17.
Jenkins, Captain Robert, 67-68.
Jenkins’s Ear, War of, 72 ff.
Jennings, Sarah. See Churchill,
Sarah.
Johnson, Samuel, London, 72.
Johnson, Colonel William, 166-167.
Jumonville, 121.

Karl VI, Holy Roman Emperor, 76.
Keppel, Commodore Augustus, 127-

128, 148.
Keppel, William Anne, 46.

Lambert, Dorothy, 16.
Lee, Richard Henry, 157.

INDEX

Lee, Thomas, 119.

Leslie (assistant to Saint Clair), 210.
Ligonier, Sir John, 118.

Little Meadows, 222-223.

Louis IV, King of France, 23, 25.
Louisburg, Capture of, 89.
Lowther, Captain Anthony, 73.
Lumley, Richard, Earl of Scarbor-

ough. 43. 48. 73-74-

Malplaquet, Battle of, 28.

Mann, Horace, 78.

Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary,
76.

Marlborough, Duchess of.
Churchill, Sarah.

Marlborough, Duke of. See Church-
ill, John.

Mary, Princess of Modena (wife of
James II), 9, 1 1-12.

Mary, Queen (wife of William of
Orange; daughter of James II), 6,
9, 11, 18.

Masham, Abigail, 33-36, 38, 42.

Masham, Samuel, 33.

Mercer, James, 139.

Medina, Sir Solomon, 37.

Mildmay, William, 1 13-1 14.

Mirepoix, Due de, 129.

Moltke, Baron, 87.

Monck, General George, 4.

Monmouth, Duke of, 10.

Monmouth’s Rebellion, 10-1 1.

Monongahela River, 237.

Morris, Robert Hunter (Governor of
Pennsylvania), 146-147, 151-152,
167-168, 217.

Morris, Captain Roger, 155, 159,
253.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 47.

Montour, Captain Andrew, 186.

Montresor, James, 128.

See

Napier, James, 128.

Nash, Richard (Beau), 52, 54-55.

Necessity, Fort, 121-122, 231.

Newcastle, Duke of, 44, 120-121, 122,
123, 128, 214-215.

[333]

O'Hara, James (Baron of Tyrawley),
66, 71, 79-81, 82, 124.

Ohio Company, 119.

Ord, Captain Thomas, 210.

Orme, Captain Robert, 137, 159,
224, 253, 270-271.

Ormonde, Duke of, 38, 42, 46.

Ostend, Fall of, 89.

Otway, Thomas, Venice Preserved,
9-10.

Pecaudy, Pierre Claude, Sieur de
Contracoeur, 240.

Pelham, Henry, 120.

Pennsylvania Road, 148, 168-169,
176, 228, 233-234, 242.

Pepperell, Sir William, 127.

Peterborough, Earl of, 25, 53.

Peters (Anglican priest), 199, 200-
204.

Petre, Father Edward, 1 1.

Philadelphia, 210.

Phillip, Duke of Wharton, 62-63.

Pitt, William, 120.

Prestonpans, Battle of, 9.

Politics (British), 1710, 28-29, 32-33;
1714, 42; 1741, 76-78.

Pope, Alexander, 45, 67, 72.

Poulson, Captain William, 190.

Pulteney, Captain Henry, 44.

Pulteney, William, 44.

Quin, James, 20, 82-83, 109, 131.

Ramillies, Battle of, 26.
Regiments sent to America with
Braddock, 124-125.
Reynolds, Colonel Rowland, 88-89.
Rich, Christopher, 82.
Richter, James, 128.
Rivett, Captain Edmund, 24, 28.
Robinson, Sir Thomas, 124-127, 152,
214.
Russell, Colonel, 100.
Ryswick, Treaty of, 19.

Sacheverell, Reverend Doctor Henry,
28-29.

[334]

Saint Clair, Colonel Sir John, ap-
pointment as quartermaster to
Braddock’s American staff, 128;
Dinwiddie’s opinion of, 140; du-
ties on the expedition, 143-145,
148, 208, 212-213, 237, 238, 260-
261; first report to Braddock, 139;
instructions, 130; letter to Napier,
148; quarrel with Croghan, 169-
170; wound, 248.

Saint John, Henry, 34-35, 37, 38.

Sancroft, Archbishop, 6.

Scarborough, Earl of. See Lumley,
Richard.

Scarouady, 226, 236, 251-252, 263-
264.

Shaftsbury, Earl of, 10.

Sharpe (Governor of Maryland),
140, 160, 172, 178, 179.

Sheridan, Thomas, 82.

Shippen, William, 45.46.

Shirley, William (Governor of
Massachusetts), 1 13-1 14, 205.

Shirley, William, ]r., 123, 127, 137,
157, 159, 255; letters to Governor
Morris, 176, 204-205, 215.

Six Nations, 167.

Smith, James, 242-243, 258-259.

Solmes, Count de, 14-15, 17-18.

Somerset, Duchess of, 36.

Sophia Dorothea (consort of George
I), 41.

The Spectator, 36.

Spencer, Charles (later Duke of
Marlborough), 79, 81.

Spendlowe, Lieutenant Charles, 148,
211,253.

Spotswood, Lieutenant
Alexander, 213.

Stair, Earl of, 81.

Stanhope, Brigadier General James,
34- 43-

Stanhope, Philip (Earl of Chester-
field), 45, 104-105, 114.

Steele, Richard, 18, 22-23, 32, 36.

Stobo, Captain Robert, 141.

Strother, Anthony, 214.

Colonel

INDEX

Stuart, Charles Edward (Bonnie
Prince Charles), 83, 89-99.

Stuart, James Francis Edward (son
of James II), 11-12.

Succession, Act of (1700), 22.

Swift, Jonathon, 31-32, 34-35.

Talmach, Colonel Thomas, 16, 18.

Thirty Years’ War, 4.

Turtle Creek, 237.

Tyrawley, Baron of. See O'Hara,
John.

Utrecht, Treaty of, 38.

Vernon, Vice Admiral Edward, 73,
74» 77-

Wade, General, 82, 84, 91.
Wakelin, Captain William, 5, 8.
Waller, Colonel John, 46.

Walpole, Horace, excerpts from let-
ters, 78, 106-107, 122, 128-129, 211,
267-268, 269.

Walpole, Sir Robert, 37-38, 41, 48,
57» 73» 75» 73-

Washington, George, 120, 122, 159,
194, 251; Account of a Journey
from Williamsburg to the French
Fort . . . , 121; advice to Braddock
in the battle, 253-254; appoint-
ment as aide-de-camp, 187; arrival
in Frederick, Md., 178; Braddock’s
attitude toward, 213-214; Brad-
dock’s offer of a commission, 150;
description of, 149-150; errand for
money, 209-210; errand to Dun-
bar, 257-258; estimate of Brad-
dock, 271-272; illness on the
march, 225, 227, 237-238; letter to
Braddock, 148-149; letter to Colo-
nel Fairfax, 215; letter to Orme,
271.

Washington, Townsend, 213-214.

Wentworth, Brigadier General
Thomas, 77.

Wesley, John, 52, 91-92.

INDEX

Wheeler, Lieutenant Colonel An-
drew, 27.

Whitehall Palace, burned, 21.

William of Orange, King, 11-12, 15,

23.

Wills Creek. See Cumberland, Fort.
Winchester, Md., 179.

Windsor Castle, 5.

Woflington, Peg, 8o.

Wolfe, Lieutenant General Edward,

5253-

[3351

Wolfe, Lieutenant Colonel James,

136-137, 232-233.
Wood (architect), 55-57.

Yorke, John, 119.
Yorke, Mary, 119, 131-132.
Youghiogheny River crossing, 2 3o.

Zulestein, Captain (Dutch oflicer),
14.

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HIST Pitt Paperback-233

I ll—S tarred General
Braddock of the Coldstream Guards

Lee M cC ardell

A rare combination of documented fact and good storytelling, I ll-
Starred General is the biography of a much maligned man from
one of history’s most vital eras. The career of Edward Braddock
began during the court intrigues of Queen Anne and George I,
gained momentum in continental military campaigns in the early
1750s, and ended abruptly in the rout of his American army near
present—day Pittsburgh in 1755. This highly acclaimed biography
reveals the man——and the politics—behind his defeat, one of the
major setbacks to British imperial power in the American
colonies.

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ever seen in action, and although he lost his life fighting for them,
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[22 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

up as a residence for Princess Anne and her husband, reconciled to
the childless King since the death of Queen Mary.133 Newly uni-
formed Coldstream guardsmen went on duty at new sentry boxes
in St. ]ames’s Park. Other details of foot guards attended the King,
wherever he happened to be. But St. James’s was the most popular
post. Every day, when the Coldstream was on duty there, its drum-
mers and hautboys played in the palace courtyard for the changing
of the guard. Every Monday night the Princess gave a ball.134 Sun-
day service in the chapel at St. James’s became so fashionable that
Bishop Burnett complained to the Princess about the ogling and
sighing.135

“My house,” Anne called her red-brick Tudor palace with its
double—towered Gothic gateway into St. James’s street. Its neat sash
windows, crimson draped, looked out across the green park doing
double duty as a children’s playground and a promenade for fops
and hussies.136 Evelyn noted regretfully in his diary that Anne her-
self, a sweet but pasty-faced invalid on the fat and dowdy side of
35, “made so little figure” for an heir presumptive.137 She had gone
through seventeen pregnancies and only one of her children, the
little Duke of Gloucester, lived long enough to play in the park.
His death, at the age of 11, in the summer of 1700, led Parliament
to pass an act of succession which provided, in the absence of any
direct heirs of the heir presumptive, that the crown should pass to
the House of Hanover, the German Protestant line of King James I,
whose daughter Elizabeth had married the Elector Pa1atine.133

Although the expulsion of William's Dutch guards restored lost.
prestige of the Coldstream and other household troops, the reduc-
tion of the army’s strength froze promotion. That the service now
consisted entirely of oflicers was a poor joke to Captain Braddock
who saw his profession slipping deeper and deeper into disre-
pute.139 Many officers of disbanded regiments ceased to be “gentle-
men.” St. James’s Park filled with idle veterans in threadbare coats
and tarnished braid. Even their recently instituted half-pay fell into
arrears. Parliament was deluged with claims and complaints. Dis-
charged soldiers of the rank and file took the darker streets and
more remote highways as robbers and thieves. Postboys, mail and
stage coaches were held up. Cavalry and footguards were ordered
out to patrol the roads.14°

On routine guard duty at the Tower, Ensign Dick Steele of the
Coldstream found time to write a solemn little book, The Chris-

ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION or A GUARDSMAN [23]

tian Hero: An Argument Proving that No Principles but those of
Religion are suflicient to Make a Great Man, deploring the irregu-
larity of the military character.141 Brother officers set him down as
a disagreeable fellow, and teased him into fighting a duel. Partly
in self-defense, Steele tried his hand at a comedy, “The Funeral,
or Grief-a-la-Mode,” produced in the spring of 1701 at Drury Lane.
In his play Steele took another slap at the army by suggesting it
was officered by indolent, arrogant younger sons whose only hope
of success in times of peace lay in marrying a fortune.142

By that time most oflicers of the Coldstream were engrossed in
more serious drama. The exiled James 11 died, September 15, 1701,
at St. Germain. The day after his death a herald-at-arms appeared
before the palace gate of St. Germain and proclaimed his son King
James III of England, Scotland, and Ireland. In violation of the
treaty of Ryswick, which had pledged him to abandon the Stuart
cause and recognize the Protestant William, His Most Christian
Majesty Louis XIV of France had promised the dying Roman
Catholic James to “acknowledge and treat the Prince your son as
King of England.” 143

To William this proclamation amounted to a declaration of war.
Reports that he was signing new commissions at the rate of 200 a
day heartened veterans who had been told for the past three years
that their faces were a plague to the nation.144 Cutts procured En-
sign Steele one of the King's new commissions, a captaincy in Lord
Lucas’ regiment of fusi1iers.145 Steele's departure from the Cold-
stream, like his debut as a dramatist, was overshadowed by events
of greater importance. King Wi11iam’s horse stumbled on a mole
hill at Hampton Court, throwing his rider. The King's collar bone
was broken by his fall. Fever developed. Within a fortnight he was
dead and the Princess Anne was proclaimed Queen of England!“

On St. George's Day, April 23, 1702, eight-year-old Edward Brad-
dock had an opportunity to see his father parade with the Cold-
stream for the coronation of the last of the Stuarts to occupy the
throne of England. Too sick to use a coach, Anne was carried in a
sedan chair packed with pillows from St. James’s to Westminster
Hall, and from Westminster to the Abbey.147 Within a week after
her succession Anne had named Marlborough captain-general of
her armies. Her husband, Prince George of Denmark, became
nominal head of the admiralty, but in practice it was controlled
by Marlborough’s brother, Admiral George Churchill. Marlbor-

[24 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

ough's wife, Sarah, Anne's confidante since childhood, became mis-
tress of the robes and keeper of the privy purse. The Marlborough
regime had come into power.148

War against France was proclaimed by a herald in front of St.
James’s Palace gate on May 15.149 Salamander Cutts joined Marl-
borough in Flanders.15° On May 16, Captain Braddock, as senior com-
pany commander of the Coldstream, received orders to form a battal-
ion of foot guards for an expedition being organized under the Duke
of Ormonde. Six companies of the Coldstream rendezvoused with
other troops on the Isle of Wight and sailed for Spain in July. It
made a good story for the Braddock children when the Captain got
home. Ormonde’s expedition had swooped down on a Spanish
treasure fleet in Vigo Bay. Fifty-six Spanish vessels had been sunk,
burned, or captured. Five of those taken were loaded with bullion,
vanilla, snuff, and cochineal. But the Coldstream’s share of the
prize money realized from the sale of this loot, divided one-ninth
to general oflicers and eight-ninths to the regiments employed,
amounted to less than £6oo.151

In Flanders, Marlborough had crossed the Meuse, reducing one
fortress after another, with Cutts leading the storm troops at the
taking of Liege. As a reward, Marlborough was raised to a Duke’s
estate with a pension of £5,000 a year.152 But the Queen did not
overlook Ormonde’s adventure. Brigadier William Mathew, a Cold-
stream major who had commanded the battalion in Spain, was pro-
moted to lieutenant-colonel. Braddock was made major of the
Coldstream.153 A £48 respite on his pay in that rank later became
the subject of a petition to the Treasury and he received only
£21.12 of the amount he claimed as due because there had been a
misunderstanding about the actual date of his promotion.154

Cutts evidently had a good opinion of Braddock, for a year later
he wrote Marlborough a letter recommending the promotion of
Braddock and Captain Edmund Rivett of the Coldstream grenadier
company. Marlborough must have shared Cutts’ good opinion. In
his reply the Duke wrote:

St. James 23, November 1703.

. . . Lieut. Col. Rivet delivered me this morning your Lordship’s letter
in his own and Col. Braddock’s behalf, and I shall be very glad when
Col. Mathews thinks of quitting the guards, that the vacancies may be
supplied to your Lordship’s satisfaction, being very sensible of the gen-
tlemen's merits.155

ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION or A GUARDSMAN [25]

The British army was not yet up to strength, having recruited
less than half of the total of 18,000 men authorized by Parliament.
Criminals, debtors, and paupers were drafted into the ranks. Magis-
trates were instructed to hand over to recruiting parties, then beat-
ing their drums at all the fairs and markets, any vagrants or un-
employed persons who could show no means of support.15° George
F arquhar, an Irish dramatist who had served briefly with the army
as a lieutenant in Ireland, used The Recruiting Oflicer as the title
of a new comedy that popularized the song:

Here’s forty shillings on the drum

For all that volunteers do come,

With shirts and clothes and present pay
When over the hills and far away.157

In February, Gibraltar was captured. A battalion of 400 Cold-
stream guards was shipped to help hold the Rock; but Major Brad-
dock remained in Lond0n.153 Cutts was abroad again with Marl-
borough, and Mathew had been knighted and appointed governor
of the Leeward Islands.159 Marlborough made good his promise.
Braddock became lieutenant-colonel of the C0ldstream.1‘*°

But the Duke had other things on his mind. That was the sum-
mer of his spectacular march to the Danube, where he won the
battle of Blenheim over a combined French and Bavarian army.
London went wild. Escorted by beefeaters, horse and foot, the
Queen rode to Wrenn’s still unfinished St. Paul's to give thanks
for the Duke's victory. Bradd0ck’s footguards made a lane for the
Queen to the big west door. She was carried in a chair from her
c0ach.1°1 Another spectacle for young Edward Braddock to re-
member.

Horse grenadiers, kettle drums, and trumpets welcomed the
Queen’s captain-general on his return to St. James’s a few days be-
fore Christmas.162 The 128 flags he had captured at Blenheim were
paraded by Coldstream pikemen through the park to Westmins-
ter.163 Steele’s friend, Joseph Addison, commissioned to write an
ode commemorating Blenheim, compared Marlborough to an angel
that “rides the whirlwind and directs the storm.” 164 The Queen
presented the Duke with a 15,000 acre manor near Oxford, ordered
a £250,000 palace built upon it at public expense, and put him
down on her civil list for an annual grant of £5,000. Bounties total-
ling £42,000 were distributed among the officers who had served

m.mmgLm:ToU mo Nfwunfi

[ 26] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

under him at Blenheim.165 The whole country was caught up in
an almost hysterical desire to share a little in the fame and glory
enshrining the name of Marlborough. Fathers bought commissions
for their sons as soon as they were old enough to strut. “The Grena-
diers March,” played at the Theatre Royal as an overture for The
Recruiting Ofiicer, almost became a national anthem!“

Lieut.-Col. Braddock seemed to be anchored in London. Some-
body had to carry on the unrewarding garrison duties of the regi-
ment’s home station, and it was left to him to oversee accounts for
mending the grates, for sweeping and emptying the “houses of
office” at the Coldstream barracks. He sent off three hundred re-
cruits to the only battalion of the Coldstream then in combat—not in
Flanders, where the legend of the invincible Duke, unbeatable in
battle, was taking root, but in Spain with the Earl of Peterbor-
ough.167 A few months later Peterborough’s army, including the
Coldstream battalion, was defeated at Almanza by a Franco-Spanish
force under the Duke of Berwick, Arabella Churchill’s bastard son
by James II. First reports of the battle received in London exag-
gerated British losses. Only 14 private soldiers and three oflicers of
the Coldstream battalion were said to have survived. In Flanders,
fortune again favored Arabel1a’s brother, the Duke of Marlbor-
ough. His smashing victory over the French at Ramillies called for
another thanksgiving at St. Paul’s.163

On the Queen’s new year list for 1707 Braddock was named a
brigadier.1°9 As lieutenant-colonel of the Coldstream, Braddock re-
mained in active command of the regiment. Cutts had been made a
lord chief justice of the Kingdom of Ireland and commander-in-
chief of Her Majesty’s forces there. But when Cutts died in Dublin
at the end of January, Braddock was passed over. General Charles
Churchill, a younger brother of Marlborough, who himself was still
colonel of the First Foot Guards, succeeded the Salamander as colo-
nel of the Coldstream and took command of the Guards’ brigade in
Flanders.17° Early in March of the following year General Churchill
was seized with an apoplectic fit. He retired to his Dorsetshire estate,
“Great Mintern,” presumably for the remainder of his life, but re-
tained the colonelcy of the Coldstream.171 A few weeks later, when
four companies of the regiment were ordered to embark for Flan-
ders, Braddock applied indirectly to the Duke himself for permission
to go with them. In reply to his request came this letter:

ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION OF A GUARDSMAN [27]

Whitehall, I7 May 1708.
Sir-

I am sorry to be the author of such unwelcome news to you, be-
cause of the respect I have to you; I am to acquaint you, in the ab-
sence of the Secretary of War, with his grace the Duke of Marlbor-
ough’s pleasure, signified by Mr. Cardonnel, that no officer of the
guards older in commission than Col. Gorsuch is to embark for
Ostend with the battalion of Guards. Your service therefore is not
expected on the other side of the water, where they have already
more brigadiers than brigades of foot.

I am ever, with great sincerety, sir
Yours 8cc.,
James Taylor!”

Mr. Cardonnel was Adam Cardonnel, the Duke’s confidential
secretary. Col. Gorsuch——Charles Gorsuch—had been commissioned
an ensign in the First Foot Guards in 1684, two years after Brad-
dock got his commission as a lieutenant in the Coldstream. In other
words, Braddock was senior to Gorsuch, who had commanded the
first battalion of the First Foot Guards and its Coldstream replace-
ments in Flanders for the last four years. But the guards were at-
tached to Mar1borough’s headquarters. Marlborough did not wish
that either Braddock or any other oflicer senior to Gorsuch should
be sent out. The Flanders-bound Coldstream battalion accordingly
was placed under the command of Lieut.-Col. Andrew Wheeler of
the First Foot Guards, a junior to Gorsuch.173 Gorsuch was
wounded at Ghent on Christmas eve and died a short time later,
if that was a matter of any satisfaction to the disappointed briga-
dier.174

His father, the choir master; his brother-in-law, Dr. Blow; and
the Prince of Denmark also died that year. All were buried in the
Abbey, his father in the north cloister near his mother.175 The
old choir master's genteel will, headed with an enormous and
flourishing inscription,

IN THE NAME OF GOD AMEN, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, Edward
Braddock, of the Parish of St. Margaret, Westminster, in the county of
Middlesex, Gentleman, being in perfect health of sound and perfect
mind and memory, thanks be given unto God therefore; calling to
mind the Mortality of my Flesh and knowing that it is appointed for
all Men once to Die, do make and Ordain this my last Will and Testa-
ment (that is to say) First and principally I give and Recommend my
Soul into the hands of God who gave it hoping that I shall be saved

[ 28] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

through the Merritts of my Saviour Christ Jesue, and as for my Body
it being the Mass of Substance of the Earth, to the Earth I committ to
be decently buried att the Abbey or Cloysters of St. Peter Church of
Westminster, or where else my executor hereinafter mentioned shall
think fit. . . .

To his granddaughters, Katherine, Elizabeth, and Mary Blow,
whom he prayed God to bless, he left a hundred pounds each.
Katherine and Elizabeth were each to receive a silver salver, and
Mary a porringer and two silver spoons. A large damask sheet was
willed to Elizabeth, and the chest of drawers in his bedchamber to
Mary. Another granddaughter, Arabella Braddock, was to have the
harpsicon in the parlor. All his wearing clothes and forty shillings
in silver were left to his servant, Elizabeth Longman. The residue
of his estate he bequeathed to his loving son, Edward II, whom he
named his sole executor.173

Another of Braddock's brother oflicers, Edmund Rivett, was
killed in Flanders the next year at Malplaquet, a Marlborough
triumph that cost 20,000 men, including 200 of the Coldstream
battalion.177 Perhaps, in the end, Braddock was lucky to have re-
mained in London. On New Year’s Day, 1710, he was one of
twenty-four officers promoted to be major-generals.173 This was al-
most as high as an undistinguished commoner of his station could
hope to rise. He still held his commission as lieutenant-colonel of
the Coldstream. And his next consideration seems to have been for
his son Edward, now fifteen, an age when youngsters often entered
the army.

EDWARD BRADDOCK III

The war, which had been going on for almost as long as Edward
Braddock III could remember, and which was followed so closely
in his home, must have widened the boy's world; but it was still a
world that came into sharp focus only in London. And there the
bitterness of politics and the fight for preferment presented an-
other part of the young man's education. The conflict of English
party politics within that world in the spring of 1710 raged around
the Rev. Dr. Henry Sacheverel, a choleric high churchman who
preached against the Queen’s Whig ministry. The Whigs were the
war party, the party of Marlborough. So violent were Sacheverel’s
anti-Whig sermons that he was impeached for seditious libel, tried

ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION or A GUARDSMAN [29]

before the Lords in crowded Westminster Hall, found guilty, and
enjoined not to preach for two years. During the trial General
Braddock’s footguards were posted around Westminster Hall. Riots
broke out. One man was killed. Nearly a hundred were arrested.179

Another vista of the world opened up to Edward Braddock, III,
that spring, with the arrival in London of four North American
“Indian Kings.” The “Kings,” sachems from the Mohawk Valley,
had been brought over by four Colonial officers in an effort to im-
press the Queen and her ministers with the urgency of Indian af-
fairs in a proposed expedition against the French in Canada and,
at the same time, to impress the Indians with the power and wealth
of England.13°

Young Edward certainly knew what all boys knew about Indian
warfare, how they massacred women and children and pared the
skin and hair from the crown of a slain enemy's head. He can
hardly have missed seeing the four sachems. Quartered at an up-
holsterer’s in King street, Covent Garden, they were the subject
of ballads, handbills, and newspaper advertisements. They visited
Greenwich Hospital, the V/Voolwich dockyard, Hampton Court,
Windsor Castle, and the Duke of Ormonde’s country seat near
Richmond. They attended service at St. ]ames’s. They sat for their
portraits. At a Haymarket Theatre performance of Macbeth they
were seated on the stage so that the audience might see them better.
They drove through the streets in two royal carriages on their way
to visit the Queen.131

At their audience they told her, through an interpreter, of their
disappointment the previous summer, how they had hung up their
kettles and taken up their hatchets to join her subjects against the
French. They were fearful now, they said, “lest the French, who
hitherto have dreaded us, should now think us unable to make war
against them.” Without her assistance, they told Queen Anne, they
might be obliged to leave their country and seek new homes. They
had often been importuned by the French to join them. They
assured her they had no inclination to do so, and in token of their
sincerity they presented her with belts of wampum.132

It was suggested that the Indians cross over to Flanders and
watch the British army in action. They never got that far. But be-
fore they sailed for home in May, their luggage heavy with gift
looking-glasses, scissors, glass beads, razors, combs, jews harps,
Bibles, and books of Common Prayer, they did attend a review of

[ go] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

horse guards in Hyde Park. Against the green of an English spring
the Queen’s jackbooted cavalry in breast plates, mounted on fat
bob-tailed chargers, were the most impressive troops in the British
army.133

But the horse guards were not for Edward Braddock, III. He
was booked for the Coldstream as soon as his father could buy him
an ensign’s “pair of colors," then selling for £450.13‘

Queen Anne did not approve the promiscuous sale of commis-
sions. When an advertisement appeared in the Post Boy stating
that anyone interested in buying a commission could find out
about it by inquiring of Mr. Pyne at Pyne’s coffee house under the
Scotland Yard gate, a Whitehall neighborhood in which many
young officers of the guards lived, the Gazette came back with this
announcement:

Whereas, a scandalous advertisement has been twice published in
the Post Boy “that whoever has a mind to treat about the purchasing
of commissions in the army, either in our regiments or others, might
apply to Mr. Pyne at his coffee house under Scotland Yard Gate near
Whitehall, and they should be further informed of it," which is directly
contrary to Her Majesty's expressed will and pleasure, sometime since
declared and signified, as well at home as to her generals abroad,
against the sale of commissions upon any account whatsoever; it is
thought fit to give public notice to prevent any abuses or impositions
that might happen therefrom; and whoever shall discover to her Maj-
esty's Secretary of War, at his office in Whitehall, the authors of the
said advertisement, shall have due protection and encouragement!“

But the General’s negotiations were completed. He obtained his
son an ensign’s commission in Lieut.-Col. Cornelius Swan's com-
pany of the Coldstream. The transaction must have met with the
approval of the Queen because she signed the commission for Ed-
ward Braddock, Junior, on the tenth of October, 1710.133

III

MORE EDUCATION AND A WAY OF LIFE

171o~1727

-—-—-<<©>>-—~—-—

HERE WAS a story about “the major crying for his parrich,” a

witticism based upon the practice of granting commissions in
the army to infants still of nursery age.1 It was an old story about
an old practice instituted in the days of Queen Anne's father, to
provide support for the Widows and children of oificers who had
died in the service. To correct abuses of the practice Anne had
issued an order redefining the purpose of commissions for children
and limiting their number to not more than two in any one regi-
ment at one time.”

The commission which the Queen signed for sixteen-year-old
Edward Braddock, Junior, was a man's commission. Edward Junior
was not a large youth for his age, but he was no longer a child,
and he was an army oflicer’s son.3 And an army ofiicer’s son, ac-
cording to Dr. Swift, was “in every article, as fully accomplished
at eight years old, as at eight and twenty, age holding only to the
growth of his person and his vice; so that if you should look at him
in his boyhood through the magnifying end of a perspective, and
in his manhood through the other, it would be impossible to spy
any difference; the same airs, the same strut, the same cock of his
hat, and posture of his sword, (as far as the change of fashions will
allow) the same understanding, the same compass of knowledge,
with the very same absurdity, impudence and impertinence of
tongue." ‘

[31]

[ 32 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Tall, dark, bush-browed Dr. Swift had left a country parish near
Dublin and come to London to press the claim of the Irish clergy
for Queen Anne's bounty, a royal revenue grant then enjoyed only
by the English cloth. The Doctor had taken lodgings near St.
James’s and got his mail at the Cockpit, at the office of his friend,
Captain Richard Steele, formerly of the Coldstream.5 After Steele
had quit the army he had become the government gazetteer at a
salary of £300 a year. He was also writing a penny paper of his
own, The Taller, published three times a week.“

Steele knew in what directions the political winds were blowing.
After the Sacheverel trial, in the spring of 1710, parliament had
been prorogued. During the summer the Queen had begun to dis-
miss her Whig ministers, replacing them with Tories.7 In August
the militia-minded Tory Harley, three-time speaker of the house,
had been made chancellor of the exchequer and virtual prime min-
ister. Parliament had been dissolved and new elections ordered for
October 5.3 In his Tatler for July 4, Steele had printed a letter
satirizing Harley and the new ministry. Now, he told Swift, he was
waiting for the lightning to strike. He expected to be sacked any
day.9

“Everything is turning upside down,” Swift wrote to his friend
Esther Johnson (Stella) in Ireland. “Every Whig in great office will,
to a man, be infallibly put out: and we shall have such a winter as
hath not beenseen in England.” 1°

On Friday, October 5, 1710, election day, riots and drunken
brawls broke out all over the country. No. 235 of Captain Steele's
Tatler for Tuesday, October 10, the day young Braddock’s com-
mission was signed, contained a noncontroversial essay on parental
favoritism.“ Election returns from the rural districts were still com-
ing in. First reports of a 6-to-1 Tory triumph proved to be an exag-
geration, but 270 members of the old parliament lost their seats.
The Whigs were going out of power.”

A few days later Captain Steele lost his job as gazetteer.13 Three
of Marlborough’s general officers, Thomas Meredyth, George Mc-
Cartney, and Philip Honeywood, were ordered to sell their com-
missions for drinking “destruction” to the new Tory ministry in
camp in Flanders. Their story, as it came back to London, said
they had dressed up a hat on a stick, calling it Harley, and dis-
charged a pistol at the thing, glasses in hand.“

Backstairs buzz and humble at St. James's Palace had seeded the

MORE EDUCATION AND A WAY or LIFE [33]

party upset. As young Braddock must have learned, if he had not
already heard in his own home, the high and mighty Sarah,
Duchess of Marlborough, was fighting a formerly indigent cousin,
Mrs. Abigail Masham, for the Queen’s favor.15 The Duchess and
her husband were allied with the Whigs. Mrs. Masham was a
Tory. Immediately at stake in their squabble were the fortunes of
two brigadier generals, both former officers of the Coldstrearn. One
was Mrs. Masham’s husband, Sam, and the other was her brother,
jack Hill. Neither was much of a soldier but both had been luckier,
or more astute, than Braddock’s father at winning the patronage
of the Queen.“

Mrs. Masham, a hatchet-faced woman with a red nose, was a
cousin of the Duchess of Marlborough on her mother's side. The
Duchess had brought her to court and procured her a place as one
of the Queen’s bedchamber women-not a lady of the bedchamber,
but a sort of royal waiting maid who, kneeling, handed the Queen’s
shift to the lady who helped her Majesty dress. The bedchamber
woman poured water from a ewer on the Queen's hands when she
washed, drew on the Queen's gloves when her Majesty could not
put them on herself. She smoothed the Queen's pillows, emptied
the slops, fetched her nightly cup of frothed chocolate, played the
harpsichord when her Majesty was melancholy. At night she slept
on the floor, across the Queen’s door."

Anne had grown attached to Mrs. Masham who, it turned out,
was a cousin of her new prime minister, Harley, as well as a cousin
of the Duchess. For many years the Duchess had been the Queen's
most intimate friend, and Anne had been guided almost exclusively
by the Marlboroughs ever since joining them in the conspiracy
against her deposed father, the former King James. Over those
years Sarah had turned arrogant, petulant, presumptuous. Mrs.
Masham was more amiable, less demanding. Her influence with the
Queen increased. Jealous hatred of Mrs. Masham became an ob-
session with the Duchess. As groom of the stole and mistress of the
robes, entrusted with management of the privy purse, the Duchess
still occupied apartments at St. James’s, but she had not spoken to
the Queen for the last six months.“

Mrs. Masham’s husband, Sam, eighth son of a baronet, was a
soft-spoken, good-natured, insignificant fellow who had been page,
equerry, and groom of the bedchamber to the Queen's husband,
the late Prince George of Denmark. In 1697 Masham had been

[ 34] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

made an ensign of the Coldstream, and in seven years time became
a captain. Later he obtained the colonelcy of a regiment of horse,
but being strictly a nonfighting soldier he spent most of his time
around St. James’s, bowing low, skipping to open the door for his
superiors, and occasionally playing cards with the Queen and his
wife.“

Jack Hill, Mrs. Masham’s tall, unkempt, four-bottle brother, was
a nephew of Brig.-Gen. James Stanhope, now in command in Spain.
Through his Marlborough connections Hill had become a page
to Anne when she was a princess and, in 1703, had been commis-
sioned a captain in the Coldstream. Two years later he had suc-
ceeded Stanhope as commander of the Eleventh Foot, and with
that regiment had followed Stanhope to the Peninsula. At the bat-
tle of Almanza, where he commanded a brigade, Hill had been
captured and his regiment almost destroyed. Returning to Eng-
land he had reorganized the Eleventh Foot and had taken it to
Flanders, where he served briefly as an aide to Marlborough.”
The Queen asked Marlborough to give Hill the colonelcy of the
Fourth Dragoons, a select regiment whose commander, Lord Essex,
had died. The Duke refused.

“Good for nothing,” was his opinion of Jack Hill.” Hill’s prefer-
ment over the heads of other men of greater merit and longer serv-
ice would “set up a standard of disalfection to rally all the mal-
content officers in the army,” the Duke told the Queen.”

But she was determined to do something for Mrs. Masham’s
brother, and when Marlborough failed to include his name in a
list of colonels submitted to her for promotion to the rank of
brigadier general, the Queen refused to sign any of the commis-
sions until the list had been extended to take in Hill. As a result,
thirty colonels had been promoted on New Year's Day 171o—the
day the elder Braddock became a major-general and ten months
before the younger Braddock’s first commission-—both Hill and
Mrs. Masham’s husband, Sam, being swept along in the flood.”

The party battle between the Whig and Tory covered a wider
front. Harley, as head of a new Tory ministry, hoped to discredit
Marlborough and end the war by concluding a popular peace.“
As a secretary of state, to deal particularly with the French he
chose Henry St. John, a Jacobite Tory whom Dr. Swift thought
“the greatest young man I ever knew.” The Doctor ticked off St.
John's gifts: “Wit, capacity, beauty, quickness of apprehension,

MORE EDUCATION AND A WAY or LIFE [35]

good learning and an excellent taste: the greatest orator in the
House of Commons, admirable conversation, good nature and good
manners, generous and a despiser of money.” 25

St. John also set a pace for London’s most notorious rakes, and
when the news of his appointment at a salary of £6000 a year
reached one of the establishments he patronized, its madame was
said to have exclaimed to the frail sisterhood she handled: “Six
thousand a year, girls, and all for us!” 23

Guardsmen on duty at St. James’s soon came to recognize most
of the characters who were now the talk of the town: Harley, St.
John, the Duchess of Marlborough, Mrs. Masham, Mrs. Masham’s
husband, and her brother. Of the lot, the Duchess was the most
striking in manner and appearance. She was still a beauty, slender,
erect, fair hair shining, tongue needle sharp. But of all who came
and went at the old red brick palace, young Braddock was given
to understand, Mrs. Masham was the most powerful.” “She could
make the Queen stand on her head if she chose,” 23 was the opinion
of many.

Dr. Swift took over The Examiner, a Tory weekly started by
St. john. Every Thursday the paper turned out a scorcher on the
Marlboroughs.” In its issue for November 16 the Doctor dropped
a hint that the Duke might be plotting counter revolution or
treason. The next Thursday he drew up a balance sheet estimating
that the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough had received from
England, in lands, grants, pictures, jewels, and jobs the equivalent
of £540,000. The Doctor compared this with the triumphal car, the
arch, the statue, and the laurel wreaths, calculated to have a total
value of £994 115 10d, received from ancient Rome by one of its
successful generals. He further accused the Duchess of appropriat-
ing £22,000 from the privy purse. In his December 14 number
Swift took up the defense of “an innocent lady,” obviously Mrs.
Masham, and by implication charged the Duchess of Marlborough
with insolence, bribery, and nepotism. The Thursday after Christ-
mas The Examiner drew a parallel between Marlborough and
Cromwell.

The Duke's private life, his unfaithfulness to James II, his sis-
ter’s shame as the King's mistress, his own early amours with the
faded Duchess of Cleveland were dragged out and published in a
book, Secret Memoirs and Manner of Several Persons of Quality.
Stories of Marlb0rough’s avarice were told and retold: The Duke

I l l-S tarred General

—«—«@»—~—

BRADDOCK

OF THE COLDSTREAM GUARDS

by
LEE MCCARDELL

. . . as the human tale unfolds its chapters of confusion and
misfortune, so all proportions and relations fade and change.
— Winston Churchill

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS

[ 36] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

padded his muster rolls. He drew large allowances in the field
under pretense of maintaining a public table at his headquarters
while he dined at the messes of subordinate officers. He blew out
his candles quickly to save wax. When in London he walked home
at night rather than pay the hire of a chairman.3°

Three days after Christmas, 1710, Marlborough returned to Lon-
don from Flanders. On the outskirts of the city people cheered him
from their doors and windows, pressing in around his carriage. To
avoid further uproar he changed to a hackney coach. But drums,
trumpets, rigid ranks of guardsmen received him in the palace
courtyard. He looked older, heavier than when young Braddock
had seen him last. His polished breastplate corseted a threatening
paunch. That evening he waited on the Queen and according to
reports, got a cool reception.“

On January 17 he again went to St. James’s. An account of his
humiliation became the talk of barber shops. The Queen had asked
him to return the golden key which the Duchess carried to the
royal wardrobe. He had pleaded on his knees that his wife be per-
mitted to keep it. The Queen was firm. The Duchess of Somerset
was to replace the Duchess of Marlborough as groom of the stole.
Mrs. Masham was to become the keeper of the privy purse.32

Not until the end of January was the army assured that the
Duke would again be commander-in~chief in Flanders.33 Seven
hundred men had been ordered picked from the two regiments of
footguards for service abroad but only 120 were drawn from the
Coldstream, fifteen from each of the eight companies in London.
They sailed for Holland with the Duke on February 21.34 General
Braddock remained in London, senior officer of the footguards
there, and his son, the Ensign, seems to have remained with him.
On March 1, Mrs. Masham’s brother, General Hill, was named
commander-in-chief of an expedition to be sent against the French
in North America. Five of Marlborough’s battalions were ordered
home from Flanders to join the expedition.35

A new daily paper, The Spectator, written by Captain Steele and
his friend Joseph Addison, came out the day of Hill's appointment.
General Braddock may well have read its second issue with more
than ordinary interest. He may even have recommended it to his
son. Steele, introducing a fictitious character called Captain Sentry,
“a gentleman of great courage, good understanding, but invincible
modesty," remarked that the military profession was “a way of

MORE EDUCATION AND A WAY or LIFE [ 37 ]

life in which no man can rise suitably to his own merit, who is not
something of a courtier as well as a soldier.” 36

Nine war vessels and forty transports carrying seven or eight
regiments of foot and half a battalion of marines sailed under Hill's
command for the conquest of Quebec.37 The elder Braddock may
have envied Hill his opportunity, but the departure of the Cana-
dian expedition probably was a matter of complete indifference to
his son. It had never been suggested that Hill’s force should in-
clude footguards. Colonial service was not popular with the army.
In years past officers had been broken rather than go to the West
Indies. Far more attractive was the prospect of plunder and good
living in France.33

Late spring rains puddled the country roads around London.
Farmers and their wives made hay and picked strawberries.39 In
the first warm days of June the Queen told Mrs. Masham to pack
up for their summer visit to Winds0r.4° One of the few favors
General Braddock could bestow upon his son would have been to
include him in a detachment of 200 from the Coldstream and First
Regiment of Footguards, with oflicers proportionable, ordered to
march to Windsor and attend the Queen during her stay.“ They
were still there when the news arrived that eight of Hill's trans-
ports had gone down on the rocks in the St. Lawrence. Nearly
eight hundred soldiers had been drowned. The expedition had
turned back without having come within sight of Quebec. Hill
himself appeared at Windsor a few days later to make the best of
a bad report to the Queen, blaming stormy weather and untrust-
worthy pilots.“

Semi-secret negotiations with France were under way but the two
parties were still divided when Parliament met in December. Har-
ley, who had escaped an attempted assassination by a disgruntled
French marquis serving in the British army, had been created Earl
of Oxford and made Lord High Treasurer.“ The Tories, led by
Harley and St. John, favored a peace conference. Marlborough and
the Whigs opposed it.44 Parliament adjourned for the Christmas
holidays. During the recess a report of the commissioners of public
accounts, circulated privately among its members, charged the
Duke with having received £6,000 a year from Sir Solomon Medina,
the army's bread and wagon contractor, and 21/2 per cent of the pay
of foreign troops in the British service. The total involved was
between £ 170,000 and £250,000. Robert Walpole, a truculent

[38] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Whig and former secretary at war, was accused of having approved
the payment of £ 1,000 to a friend on a forage contract.“

On New Year's Eve, 1711, the Queen broke her supreme com-
mander. She told him, in a letter, that she had no further use of
his services.“ Public announcement of his dismisal, printed in the
Gazette for New Year’s Day, shocked every man in the army."
Command of the First Foot Guards was then transferred from
Marlborough to the Duke of Ormonde. Ormonde also was made
general of the Queen’s land forces. Marlborough’s quartermaster,
William Cadogan, was removed as Lieutenant of the Tower and
replaced by Hill.43 There is no record of either of the Braddocks
having gone to Flanders that spring with a detachment of 200
men from the First and the Coldstream regiments, the usual re-
placements for guards brigade on foreign service. If they went they
saw no combat. Ormonde was under orders to keep his troops in
camp.49

The Tory-controlled House of Commons found Mar1borough's
acceptance of money from a contractor “unwarrantable and il-
legal.’’ The Duke went into voluntary exile in Holland. Walpole,
voted guilty of bribery, was sent to the Tower.“ General Braddock
went down to Portsmouth and then to Plymouth to disband a regi-
ment of foot and one of horse for which there was no longer any
need.51 St. John, now Viscount Bolingbroke, in reward for his serv-
ices to Harley and Mrs. Masham, set out for Paris to hasten the
peace negotiations which were concluded at Utrecht on the last day
of March, 1713.52

The six Coldstream companies which had been in Flanders came
home to crowded barracks at Hampton Court and the Savoy with
a peace-time grumble: better billets were available on the town at
sixpence per week.53 Listening to the tall, interminable tales of
older, bolder guardsmen back from the wars, Ensign Braddock
helped draw up warrants for the purchase of brooms and mops.
He told off detachments on occasion to transport officers’ baggage
to Windsor.“ His father, the General, who had seen so many re-
moved suddenly or pushed ahead at whim, could only counsel
patience. The invalid Queen was failing. She chewed her fan.
More than ever before she needed a tot of brandy in her tea.“

Both Oxford and Bolingbroke were reported to be in touch with
agents of the Pretender, who would if crowned be James III.
Should the Pretender turn Protestant, many Jacobites thought, it

MORE EDUCATION AND A WAY or LIFE [39]

might be a simple matter to repeal the Act of Settlement which
fixed succession on the German House of Hanover.

Anne's crypto-Jacobite Ministers apparently had set out to purge
the army of Whigs.“ Lieut.—Col. Thomas Coote of the First Foot
Guards, who had been very active in some rejoicings at the Three
Tons Tavern on the anniversary of King William's birthday, and
who was reported to have drunk publicly the health of the Elector
of Hanover, was called on to sell his company. Two other lieutenant-
colonels, told to sell out, were replaced by Roman Catholic officers.
Three captains of the regiment were dismissed summarily. Seven-
teen other oflicers were listed to go if they refused to resign. Whole-
sale dismissals could not be made without the Queen's permission.
Apparently that was all that delayed a purge.“

At Jenny Man’s coffee house in the Tilt Yard, sometimes called
the “Hanover Club” because of the absence of outspoken Jacobites
among the oflicers who gathered there, it was expected that the
Coldstream would be the next regiment to receive special treat-
ment. A long list of generals, colonels, and captains was said to
have orders to sell out unless willing to “serve the Queen without
asking questions.” 53

God Bless Queen Anne, the nation’: great defender.
Keep out the French, the Pope and the Pretender 59

children had sung when young Braddock was growing up. Now
they were singing it again. Fanatical Protestants, arguing the perils
of Popery against what they feared was a threatening Jacobite re-
surgence, fell back on an old watchword: “N0 wooden Shoesl”6°
The usual detachment of General Braddock’s foot guards to at-
tend the Queen on her summer retirement to Hampton Court and
Windsor was ordered out on July 7, 1714.31 But the Queen, obvi-
ously unwell, remained at Kensington. On Friday morning, July
30, 1714, while she was having her hair combed, she had an apo-
plectic stroke. Six doctors were called. The Privy Council assem-
bled.“ Rumors multiplied by the hour: the Pretender would land
in Scotland with 12,000 to 14,000 French troops. . . . Two Irish
officers were enlisting men in London and Westminster for the
Pretender. . . . Three drummers of the First Foot Guards had been
arrested for leading a demonstration for the House of Hanover. . . .
The Bishop of Rochester offered to head a troop of Life Guards in
his lawn sleeves and declare for James III, the Queen's brother. . . .

[40] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

The Queen favored her brother—although a proclamation issued
in her name offered a reward of £5,000 for his apprehension should
he land or attempt to land in Great Britain or Ireland.“

On orders from the council, General Braddock doubled all
guards and increased the garrison at the Tower. Four regiments
billeted in the country around London marched into the city.“
Heralds and life guards kept their horses saddled in the Kensing-
ton palace courtyard, ready to ride and proclaim the new king as
soon as the doctors said the Queen was dead. They said she was
dead at half past 7 Sunday morning, August 1, 1714.35

The heralds and life guards mounted up and clattered off to St.
James’s, where the foot guards presented arms and the courtiers
stood with bared heads while a special herald proclaimed, to the
roll of drums and the peal of trumpets:  . . the high and mighty
Prince George, Elector of Brunswick Lunenburg, is now, by the
death of our late sovereign of happy memory, become our only
lawful and rightful liege Lord, George, by the Grace of God, King
of Great Britain. . . .”

Cannon at the Tower thundered. “God save the King!” 55

The King arrived from Hanover on Saturday, September 18,
1714. On the ship with him came one of his mistresses, his son,
sixty-three courtiers, clerks, cooks, and other attendants, all speak-
ing German. The Duke of Marlborough, who returned from exile
the day after Anne died, met the new king at Greenwich with a
grenadier battalion of guards including two companies of Brad-
dock’s Coldstream."

A million and a half people crowded the streets of London to
welcome the new king when he entered the city. His coach, last in
a train of two hundred loaded with English nobility and gentry,
was an enormous model of the carriage maker's art, glazed and var-
nished, a-glitter with gilt, emblazoned with the royal arms, and
drawn by eight horses with postillions. Detachments of artillery,
city marshals on horseback, the King's kettle drummers, mounted
trumpeters, sheriff's officers marched at the head of the procession.
More foot guards lined the street, up to the gateway of St. ]ames's.°3

Days passed before some of the old palace retainers got a good
look at the new King, a pompous, methodical German of middle-
age and medium height, with a big nose, a dipper mouth, and
empty eyes. As a rule he wore a shabby brown suit sprinkled with
snuff and made use of only two rooms in St. James’s Palace, eating

MORE EDUCATION AND A WAY OF LIFE [41 ]

and sleeping in one and giving audiences in the other. His short,
fidgety, blue-eyed son, George Augustus, was on bad terms with the
King and afraid of him. Young George's pretty wife, the Princess
Caroline, was the most attractive and intelligent member of the
new royal family. Her bust, reputed to be the finest in Europe,
aroused the admiration of every Englishman. She spoke English
perfectly and was not awed in the slightest by her stuffy father-in-
law, who hated her.“

The gilded state coach, harnessed to six satiny bays, took the
new King and the Prince and Princess of Wales from St. James’s
to Westminster for the coronation, exactly one month after the
King's arrival. Foot guards lined a platform raised between West-
minster Palace and the Abbey. The square swarmed with drum-
mers, trumpeters, choirboys, aldermen, privy ,councilors, bishops,
barons, viscounts, marquises, and dukes-the peers in crimson
velvet robes with their coronets in their hands. Packed crowds
watched, and remarked that there was no queen. The ladies of the
court did not walk in the procession.”

Sophia Dorothea, the King's consort, was still alive. Twelve years
after her marriage to the Elector of Hanover she had had an
affair with a soldier of fortune. The lady was whisked away to the
Castle of Ahlden, twenty miles north of Hanover, where she re-
mained in seclusion.“ Conjugal infidelity was exclusively a male
privilege at the court of Hanover.

Marlborough was reappointed captain general of the army and
colonel of the First Foot Guards,” but there was still feeling
against him. At a dinner shortly after his reinstatement, Captain
George Chudleigh of the First Foot Guards made a speech express-
ing his admiration for the Duke and his confidence in him. Two
days later, at the first court held by the new King at St. James’s, a
Mr. Alworth, a member of Parliament for Windsor, remarked that
the Captain would have done better to keep his mouth shut. The
Captain’s brother, Capt. John Chudleigh of the Coldstream, heard
what Alworth said and challenged him. In spite of efforts by an-
other Coldstream officer, Col. Andrew Bissett, to prevent their meet-
ing, the Captain killed Alworth in a duel in Marylebone field.73

Marlborough's superannuated brother, Gen. Charles Churchill,
given to understand that he was no longer wanted, resigned his
commission as colonel of the Coldstream. But once again the elder
Braddock was passed over. The Duke's old quartermaster, Cadogan,

[42 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

was given command of the regiment. Braddock stayed on as its lieu-
tenant—colonel.74 His commission and that of his ensign son were
renewed by the King on January 11, 1715. With all other officers
remaining in the service they took a new oath of fidelity:

I swear to be true to our sovereign Lord King George and to serve
him honestly and faithfully in defense of his person, crown, and dig-
nity against all his enemies and oppressors and to observe and obey
His Majesty's orders and the orders of the generals and oificers set over
me by his Majesty. So help me God.75

The Hills and the Mashams disappeared. Ormonde and Bo1ing-
broke fled to France, joining up with the Pretender, sometimes
called the Chevalier St. George." New elections returned a Whig
majority to the House of Commons, and Robert Walpole, released
from the Tower and made paymaster of the forces, became chair-
man of a House committee which took the lead in proceedings
that impeached Oxford (Harley), Bolingbroke, and Ormonde for
high treason." Ormonde nevertheless remained popular with
Tories and jacobites, while the German King George I was slow
to endear himself to any of his new subjects, least of all to his
household troops. He wanted them dressed as cheaply as possible,
and grudgingly conformed to the English court custom of giving
new clothes to his regiments of guards on his birthday, March 28.
The new red coats and white shirts were cut from coarser and
cheaper materials than those to which the soldiers were accus-
tomed.78 “Hanover shirts,” some sneered at their new issue of
linen. They snipped samples of the cloths used in both their new
shirts and coats and handed them around in the taverns as
“Hanover cloth.” One detachment, marching to the Tower, pulled
out their shirt tails and showed them to shopkeepers along the
way. “These are Hanover shirts,” repeated the guardsmen. That
night some of the soldiers threw their new shirts over the King's
garden wall at St. James's.79 Others flung theirs into a ‘bonfire at
Whitehall. “Ormonde for ever!” someone shouted, half in jest and
half in protest.”

On May 29, the anniversary of the Restoration, people gathered
around the statue of Queen Anne in front of St. Paul's. “Down
with the House of Hanover!” they yelled. “God bless King James
the third!” 31

And on June lo, the birthday of the Pretender, the Lord Mayor
of London called out the militia. Braddock's guardsmen were

MORE EDUCATION AND A WAY or 1.1171-: [43]

posted in the streets to prevent persons from wearing white roses,
the Jacobite badge.”

Jacobite demonstrations broke out in Lancashire. In the Scottish
highlands a shifty Jacobite nobleman, “Bobbing John” Erskine,
the Earl of Mar, stirred up the clans, and early in September raised
the standard of the Pretender at a mountain village in the Gram-
pions. The Duke of Argyll, named commander-in-chief in Scotland,
hurried north to put down the revolt.33

Marlborough was no longer fit for duty. General direction of
military operations was left to his friend General Stanhope, now a
secretary of state. Three of Stanhope’s old lieutenants in Spain,
Gen. Wade, Wills, and Carpenter, all received commands.“ Once
again the elder Braddock found himself garrison-bound in London
with the Coldstream, encamped in Hyde Park to recruit four new
companies. This was a little too much after thirty-three years of
service. On September 28, 1715, he resigned his commission.35

His lieutenant-colonelcy of the Coldstream, with a fixed market
value of £5,000, was sold to Lieut.-Col. Richard Holmes.“ Under
new service regulations promulgated by George I, Braddock may
have continued to draw half-pay as a retired major general.”
Whatever his means, he had had enough of the army. He intended
to retire to Bath with his wife and their two unmarried daughters,
Henrietta and Frances. Two of his sons had taken care of them-
selves, one settling in Norfolk.”

His third son, Edward, remained with the Coldstream, encamped
in Hyde Park until they went into winter quarters, twelve compa-
nies in the Tower hamlets and six in Finsbury.89 Young Edward
read about the Scottish rising in the newspapers. Three days before
Christmas, James Edward Stewart stepped ashore in Scotland, at
Peterhead. But his insurrection had been crushed. In February he
returned to France, a price of £ 100,000 on his head. King George
made the end of the rebellion official in April when, in a translated
speech read by the Lord Chancellor, he told Parliament the Pre-
tender had fled.9°

Homesick for Hanover, the King was impatient to get away from
England. He was tired of St. James’s where, people said, he sat
around in the evening drinking beer seasoned with tobacco and
kicking the toes of his boots against Queen Anne’s wainscoting. He
wanted to do a little hunting in a country where people spoke his
language. He wanted to see a mistress left in Hanover because she

[44] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

was a Catholic.91 On the morning of July 18, 1716, the guard at
St. _]ames’s was turned out to see the King drive off with the Prince
of Wales to the Tower, where they took a boat for Gravesend.
There the Prince left his father aboard the royal yacht and re-
turned to St. James’s, Guardian of the Realm during his father's
absence.”

On the first day of August, 1716, Ensign Edward Braddock was
promoted to lieutenant in the Coldstream grenadier company, com-
manded by Captain Henry Pulteney, a younger brother of William
Pulteney, secretary at war.93 The price of a Coldstream lieutenancy
was £900. But Braddock must have been a capable young oflicer,
and ready for advancement. The grenadiers were picked men, the
privates the tallest in the regiment, chosen for size because they
were expected to throw a hand grenade farther than an ordinary
soldier. They wore high, peaked mitre-like caps which made them
look even taller than they were. In column they occupied the front
ranks. In line they stood on the right. Storm troops, they were
expected to take the lead in all hazardous operations. They suf-
fered battle losses in proportion.“

For the time being all military service was humdrum and routine.
But the standard of the recruit had fallen to its lowest level since
the accession of George 1. Every week deserters were brought into
Hyde Park, tied up to halberts or to a tree, and flogged with cats,
rods, cloak straps, and stirrup leathers.” In October the Coldstream
struck its tents, fourteen per company, and returned to the Tower
hamlets and Finsbury for the winter. The next summer the regi-
ment returned to the park, hats well cocked, hair tucked up, drum-
mers and hautboys festooned with f 16 to £25 worth of gold lace.
When the King was in town, oflicers of the Coldstream mounted
all guards in regimentals and gaiters.9°

That November, 1717, the Princess of Wales gave birth to a son,
the first prince of Hanoverian blood to be born on British soil.97
The christening of this infant led to an open quarrel between the
King and the Prince of Wales. The Prince wanted to name his son
Louis. The King held out for George William, and had his way.
The King also insisted that the Duke of Newcastle, one of the
richest men in England, stand as one of the child's godfathers. The
Prince hated the Duke. As soon as the King had left the Princess’s
bedroom, where the baby was baptized, the Prince walked over to

MORE EDUCATION AND A WAY or LIFE [45 ]

Newcastle, shook his fist and shouted, in heavy German accent:
“You are von rasca1—I shall find you!” 93 The king thought he said
“fight,” which he regarded this as an insult. He ordered both the
Prince and the Princess of Wales to move out of St. James’s Palace-
but to leave their infant son and three daughters there. The Princess
was permitted to return to visit her children, but the baby prince
died before the year was out.99 His death did not constitute a dy-
nastic catastrophe. Caroline had another son, Frederick Louis, now
10 years old, who had been left behind in Hanover by his grand-
father's orders, presumably to secure the family claim on the old
electorate in case anything went wrong with the new kingdom.1°°

Banished from St. James’s, Caroline and her husband set up their
own establishment at Leicester House, a straggling old two-story
mansion with a Dutch garden facing Leicester Fields, half a mile
from St. ]ames’s. People called Leicester House “the Prince’s pout-
ing place.” Notice was published in the Gazette that anyone attend-
ing audiences there would not be received at court. But all the
pretty maids of honor had followed the Princess to Leicester House.
After a decent period of mourning its spinet tinkled and minuets
and masquerades kept its windows yellow with candle light long
after those at St. James’s were dark.1°1

Braving the King's displeasure by calling at Leicester House were
Alexander Pope, who was translating the Illiad; John Gay, who
had collaborated with Pope on a new comedy, Three Hours After
Marriage; Philip Lord Stanhope, the future Earl of Chesterfield,
whose wit already had impressed the House of Commons; John
Lord Hervey, son of the Earl of Bristol, somewhat effeminate but
in demand as a beau; Richard Lumley, Earl of Scarborough, an
amiable card-loving colonel of horse grenadiers who would be
Braddock’s next regimental commander; and the younger Charles
Churchill, son of the old general and a former Coldstream captain
now enjoying notoriety as the lover of Anne Oldfield, the reigning
actress at Drury Lane.1°2

Army officers had other things than a royal family quarrel to
talk about. In the House of Commons a parliamentary Jacobite,
William Shippen, had argued that the British army was too large
for peace time. Shippen also said that a speech which the King had
delivered on the subject of army strength “seemed rather calculated
for the meridian of Germany than Great Britain,” and that “the
King is a stranger to our language and our constitution.” The re-

Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260
Copyright © 1958, University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
F effer and Simons, Inc., London

Manufactured in the United States of America

Paperback reprint 1962 (abridged), 1986 (unabridged)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McCardel1, Lee.
Ill-starred general

Bibliography: p. 315

Includes index.

1. Braddock, Edward, l695?—l755. 2. Great Britain. Army—Biography. 3.
Generals—Great Britain—Biography. 4. Great Britain—-History, Mi1itary— 18th
century. 5. Braddock’s Campaign, 1755. 6. United States——History——French
and Indian War, 1755—1763—Campaigns. I. Title.

[DA67.1.B7M35 1986] 973.2’6 86-7015
ISBN 0-8229-5903-8 (pbk.)

[46 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

action of the Commons had been a vote, 175 to 81, that Shippen’s
remarks were “highly dishonorable to, and unjustly reflecting on
His Majesty’s person and government.” The House also ordered
Shippen to the Tower. He was released at the end of the session
but never silenced. Once a year, for the next twenty—three, he stood
up in the House to move that the strength of the standing army
he reduced.1°3

In May, 1718, when the Coldstream again pitched tents for its
summer encampment in Hyde Park, Lieut. Braddock fought a duel
with sword and pistol with Col. John Waller. Waller appears to have
been the grandson of an Irish regicide and a former cavalry officer
who represented Castletown in the House of Commons.1°4 As re-
gards the cause of the duel, the record is blank, but apparently
honor was satisfied and the lieutenant was not injured. In August
he acquired a fifteen-year old superior officer: William Anne Kep-
pel, second so11 of the Earl of Albemarle, was commissioned a cap-
tain and lieutenant-colonel of grenadiers with the Co1dstream.1°5

Winter brought the threat of another Jacobite revolt. The Pre-
tender was received in Madrid, acknowledged King of England by
the Spanish Court. The renegade Duke of Ormonde sailed from
Cadiz for Scotland to press the Pretender’s claim.1°3 British troops
were assembled in the west of England, one battalion of the Cold-
stream at Chippenham. But a storm scattered Ormonde’s fleet.
Only two frigates reached Scotland. They landed about three hun-
dred Spanish soldiers who surrendered after a half-hearted fight at
Glenshiel.1°7

By way of reprisal, a secret British expedition including seven
companies of the Coldstream and commanded by Viscount Cobham
sailed from the Isle of Wight for Spain, early in September, 1719.
They landed in Vigo Bay at the end of the month. Lieut. Brad-
dock's company may have been among the grenadiers who were the
first to hit the beach. They found the countryside so well supplied
with wine that their officers had difficulty organizing them for an
attack, but the Spaniards surrendered the citadel of Vigo on Octo-
ber 4, after eight guardsmen had taken possession of the gate.1°3

By mid-November all the guardsmen were back in England to
resume normal garrison duties, attending the King on his return
from another visit to Hanover (the oflicers being warned to take
care that the men detailed for this had good breeches); guarding
the Royal Princesses Amelia, Caroline, and Louisa at Hampton

MORE EDUCATION AND A way or LIFE [47]

and Windsor (three highwaymen had robbed a maid of honor in
the hindermost coach of their parents’ retinue between Kensington
and Richmond the previous May when the Prince and Princess of
Wales were paying the children a visit) and at Kensington (where
the soldiers would observe such orders as might be received from
the Countess Dowager of Portland, governess to their Royal High-
nesses); putting down a weavers riot in Spitalfields Market (using
only their swords). The guards also stood by during the financial
panic of 1720.109

Cannon fire and a peal of bells on April 15, 1721 marked the
birth of another son to the Princess Caroline at Leicester House.11°
The din was followed by the most astonishing order ever issued
to the Coldstream Guards: they were to let their whiskers grow.
Frederick William 1, King of Prussia, father-in-law of King George's
daughter, Sophia Dorothea, had been named one of the child’s
godfathers and invited to attend the baptismal ceremony on May
2. The King of Prussia admired bearded soldiers. The men of the
Coldstream were a shaggy lot until word reached London that the
King of Prussia would not be there for the baptism. The new mem-
ber of the royal family was christened William Augustus.111

“An honest blockhead” was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s esti-
mate of William Augustus’ grandfather. Lady Mary, a society leader
often at court and in favor with Princess Caroline, was the witty
wife of a former ambassador to Turkey. She lived at Twickenham,
in a cottage near Pope. But who was the “superfine Mr. Braddocks”
who danced attention on Lady Mary's friend, Elizabeth, the 45-year
old Countess of Bristol? Could it have been one of Lieut. Brad-
dock’s three brothers? 112

Lady Mary never identified him completely. But she wrote to
her sister, the exiled Countess of Mar, in Paris, that the eccentric
and vivacious Elizabeth, a lover of pleasure and play, “has left off
the dull occupation of hazard and basset, and is grown young,
blooming, coquet and gallant; and to show she is fully sensible
to the errors of her past, and resolved to make up for time mis-
spent, she has two lovers at a time and is equally wickedly talked
of for the gentle Colonel Cotton and the superfine Mr. Brad-
docks.” 113

On June 22, 1727, the honest blockhead was in his carriage at
the Dutch frontier town of Osnabruck. On his way back to Han-
over for one of his frequent visits he had topped off a heavy Ger-

[48] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

man meal with a dessert of watermelons, strawberries, and oranges.
The load was too much for his 67-year old digestive system. Stricken
with a paralyzing cramp, King George I died.114

Capt.-Gen. Marlborough also was dead when the Coldstream pa-
raded in October for the coronation of George II and Queen Caro-
line. Cadogan had been named to succeed the Duke as the colonel
of the First Foot Guards, and Scarborough had succeeded Cadogan
as colonel of the Coldstream.115 The venerable Sarah, dowager
Duchess of Marlborough, now almost 70, attended the ceremonies
with a five-foot train of silk and ermine on her heavy crimson
robes of state. When the procession halted on its way to the abbey,
she took a drum from the guardsman and sat upon it in full view
of the crowd which laughed and cheered her. This was the fifth
coronation she had seen.116

Walpole had become Sir Robert Walpole, Prime Minister. One
of his first suggestions to the new king was that he send immedi-
ately for his elder son, Frederick Louis, still in Hanover, so that
Frederick Louis might take his rightful position at Court as the
new Prince of Wales. Around St. James’s hung a belief that both
the King and Queen would have been glad to exclude him from
the throne in favor of his chubby little brother, William Augustus,
Duke of Cumberland, a grave and solemn child of seven who liked
to ride, hunt, and watch soldiers drill.117

Prince Frederick Louis arrived by packetboat from Helvoetsluys
on a rough December day. Landing at Whitechapel, about seven
in the evening, he took a hackney coach to St. James’s, alighted at
the Friary, and walked down to the Queen’s backstairs. To the
oflicers of the Coldstream, taking his measure in the dimly lighted
Colonnade of the old palace, the new Prince of Wales was not im-
posing. Somebody said he played the fiddle, a silly instrument in
the opinion of soldiers who had heard drums thundering and fifes
squealing “Malbrook” when the great Duke, home from the wars,
took his salute with a flourish in the palace courtyard.113

IV

SCANDAL AT BATH

1715"1732

._...._...<.{@;.;..._..._.

HE ROAD FROM LONDON to Bath was an old one to Gen. Edward
TBraddOck, Sr. The first twenty miles, a route favored for the
journey from St. James’s to Windsor, was a stretch he had traveled
for the better part of thirty years as an officer of the Coldstream
Guards. Sometimes he had ridden ahead of the scarlet liveried
postillions and the six horses of the leather-sprung carriage with
the royal coat of arms on its varnished half glass door. Sometimes
he had ridden behind. After thirty years a man knew every twist
and turn. He knew when the horses’ hoofs would hammer the
planks of wooden bridges, when the harness chains would jingle
on slack traces. He knew when Windsor Castle would come into
view, the way Milton saw it, high-bosomed in tufted trees across
the fields.1

Familiar landmarks along the road began with Chiswick church-
yard, just Outside of London, where the Duchess of Cleveland was
buried, poor lady. General Braddock was Old enough to remember
her as a slightly faded mistress of Charles II.-‘3 Then the road
crossed Hounslow Heath, where King James had assembled the
Coldstream and other troops while London waited for the Prot-
estant wind that would bring William and Mary-Mary who ran
through the old royal palace at Whitehall before her fugitive
father's breath was out of the place, peeking in the closets and turn-
ing up the quilts on the beds.3

[49]

[ 5o] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

The road to Bath ran past the wrought-iron gates of old ducal
seats, the villas and brick walled gardens of dead-and-gone dandies,
past cottages beetlebrowed with thatch and dooryards bursting
with wallflowers. Summer treated the road’s travellers to the cidery
whiff of orchards, the sedgy freshness of river banks, the odor of
stale, sticky tavern beer, sweet after the dust and the smell of horses
and sweat and saddle leather. Winter offered the warmth of sea-
coal fires, glowing red in tavern grates. And there was no lack of
taverns along the road to Bath. One after another their swinging
signboards hung out their names, The Coach and Horses, The
White Horse, The White Hart, The Red Cow, The Seven Stars,
The King's Head, The King’s Arms, The Crown, The Castle.4

Gen. Braddock, retired and travelling by coach to Bath, 106
miles west of London, saw rural England in its prime. Never again
would hedgerow, box, English oak and beech, cattle-dappled
meadow and shepherding vale show themselves so green and tidy.
Never again, as in the receding age of the Good Queen Anne,
would half-timbered and overhanging houses, bow windows, and
squat church towers blend so neatly into the vista of narrow vil-
lage streets—narrow, that is, except a few places like Marlborough
whose broad High Street was wide enough to hold a market in
its lap.5

It took the Bath coach a day and a half to reach Marlborough,
the town for which the great Duke had taken his title, seventy-four
miles west of London.‘ The Duke had been a lucky one, starting
out in the foot guards like the elder Braddock, a boy with a
squeaky voice, but out-stripping him at every turn to become Eng-
land’s richest man and most famous general-—“Malbrook,” the Old
Corporal who never lost a battle.7 The younger Braddock would
be as proud as his father had been to serve under the Old
Corporal. The great Duke understood, better than any one else in
his day, the blast of disciplined infantry fire. It took thirty-seven
words of command to put his foot soldiers through the exercise of
loading and discharging their firelocks. But they fired by platoons
instead of by ranks. No army in Europe could match British infan-
fantry fire power.3

And so to Bath went General Braddock, to The Bath as it was
called, where fashion flocked as soon as June closed the London
season. Mild year-round climate and old Roman hot springs sup-
posedly beneficial for palsy, rheumatism, gout, neuralgia, sciatica,

SCANDAL AT BATH [ 51 ]

vapours, and diseases of the liver, originally had made Bath a re-
sort for both real and imaginary sufferers. Visits by the late Queen
Anne and her husband in later years had raised the stock of the
town as a place of fashion, filling it with people whose principal
purpose in life was to eat, drink, and gamble. Its floating popula-
tion ran into the thousands. Free and easy introductions made it
the match-making center of the country, a strategically favorable
last stand for retired major generals with unmarried daughters.”

A small, magnificent Gothic abbey rose above the rooftops of
Bath’s yellow stone and stucco houses, ranged on the slopes and
terraces of a natural ampitheatre in the elbow of a quiet little
river, the Avon. A peal of the Abbey’s ten bells customarily wel-
comed distinguished strangers to Bath. His party settled, the head
of the family was expected to pay the bell ringers half a guinea for
their trouble. He subscribed two guineas toward music and enter-
tainment, a fee which entitled him to three tickets for the balls
held each Tuesday and Friday night at the Assembly Room. An-
other guinea or a half went to the bookseller for reading material.
Another subscription was expected at the coffee house to pay for
pens, ink, and writing paper—the visitor must tell his friends where
he was and whom he was seeing.”

The General and his family probably found Bath agreeable after
London. Those who used the hot springs took an early morning
dip, anytime between 6 and 9 o’clock. Ladies, carried from their
lodgings to the baths in sedan chairs, wore chip hats and volum-
inous bathing clothes of yellow canvas or brown linen. Pants and
shirt of the same material were the proper bathing costume for
gentlemen. The water was piping hot, varying from 115 to 120
degrees, and snuff boxes were neglected while the bathers wiped
the sweat from their faces.

If he followed custom, the General breakfasted in a coffee house
where he could read the London papers. Later he might meet his
wife, and sometimes their daughters, in the Pump Room, a pavilion
overlooking the baths, where most visitors congregated for three
glasses of hot mineral water drawn by waiters from cocks encased
in marble behind a balustrade. An orchestra played in the pump
room. From there visitors strolled over to the abbey for morning
services.“ The abbey was actually a cathedral whose fan vaulting
was surpassed only by the roof of King's College Chapel at Cam-
bridge.”

[ 52] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

After church people walked in the sunshine, in the flagged and
gravelled squares. They rode, played cards until dinner time, 2 or
3 o'clock, then went back to the pump room, stopping in the Abbey
for evening services before tea. Balls began at 6 o’clock with a
minuet. On nights when there was no ball, there were concerts,
lectures, theatricals-not too well patronized—cards and dice.13
Richard (Beau) Nash, a gamester generally accepted in the news-
papers as Britain’s arbiter elegantarium had been appointed master of
all public ceremonies. Nash managed the balls, the promenades,
the card and dice tables and the chairmen of the town. He also fixed
the lodging rates.”

John “Wesley, a young preacher from Oxford and the son of one
of Mar1borough’s chaplains, thought Bath a den of vice, but gen-
erally speaking its worst sins were idleness and frivo1ity.15

“How d’ye do?” is all one hears in the morning and “What’s
trumps?” in the afternoon, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu once
complained.”

The Braddocks found no shortage of agreeable company. The
Duchess of Marlborough, who had brought the failing Duke to
Bath, returned after his death with her favorite granddaughter,
Diana Spencer, whom she hoped to marry to the new Prince of
Wales—the one who played the fiddle.” Lord Peterborough, a
garrulous veteran of the war in Spain, had settled in Bath and
could be counted upon to talk about the Coldstream battalion at
the battle of A1manza.18 Lieut-Gen. Edward Wolfe and his wife
who, like the Braddocks, had a son in the army, spent several weeks
in Bath each year.19 The Braddock’s elder daughter, a pretty
girl called Fanny, made friends easily. She was introduced to Lord
Hervey, the new Queen’s confidant, a gentleman of the bedcham-
ber and the husband of Mollie Lepell, a favorite St. _]ames’s wit
and beauty.2°

Lord Hervey, sickly and effeminate, suffered from gallstones, was
losing his teeth, and was on a diet. He had come to Bath on the
advice of his physician, Dr. George Cheyne, a trustee of Bath's
proposed Mineral Water Hospital and an authority on the healing
qualities of the spring.“ Hervey took a liking to Fanny Braddock,
but was not always kindly in his feelings toward those who came
to Bath in search of health or happiness in their old age and afflic-
tion. He wrote to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu:

SCANDAL AT BATH [ 5 3 ]

I came to this place yesterday, from which you may imagine I am
not yet sufficiently qualified to execute the commission you gave me,
which was to send you a list of the sojourners and inmates of this
place; but there is so universal an aflinity and resemblance among the
individuals that a small paragraph will amply serve to illustrate what
you have to depend on. The Duchess of Marlborough, Congreve, and
Lady Rich are the only people whose faces I know, the rest are a
swarm of wretched beings, some with half their limbs, some with none,
the ingredients of Pandora’s box personified, who stalk about, half
remnants of mortality, and by calling themselves human, ridicule the
species more than Swift's yahoos.”

Hervey’s wife, who had come to Bath with her husband, found
the place and its people amusing. In a letter to Mrs. Henrietta
Howard, a former maid of honor and now the King's new mis-
tress up in London, she said: 23

Lord Peterborough has been here for some time, though by his dress
one would believe he had not designed to make any stay, for he wears
boots all day, and as I hear, must do so, having brought no shoes with
him. It is a comical sight to see him with his blue ribbon and star and
a cabbage under each arm, or a chicken in his hand, which, after he
himself has purchased at market, he carries home for his dinner.“

The bumptious Peterborough, an admirer of Mrs. Howard, could
be a bore, with his interminable stories of beautiful Spanish
women, how he had once turned a cannon on a convent to force
one pretty woman to come out—a frightened woman whose face and
figure had almost escaped him when she ran into the convent for
refuge. “The Spanish ladies, of all other,” he insisted, “have the
most noble and reasonable sentiment of love. . . .” 25

“I think Bath a more agreeable place to be in than London,”
Mrs. Howard told Dr. Swift after visiting the spa. “All the enter-
tainments of the place lie in a small compass, and you are at lib-
erty to partake of them or let them alone, just as it suits your
humour.” 26

The Braddocks soon settled down as residents rather than visi-
tors. The General bought one of eighteen new houses on Trim
street, a new development just outside the old city wall.” Later
the Wolfes took the house at No. 5 Trim street, a two and a half
story residence with a classic facade designed by John Wood, an
architect who was lifting Bath’s face with a new city plan in the
palladian manner.-‘*3

Late in October, 1724, General Braddock’s wife, Mary, died. She

[ 54] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

was buried in the Bath abbey church.29 Something may have told
him that his own days were numbered, for two weeks after his
wife's funeral he made his wi11.3° Evidently he was concerned for
the future of his two unmarried daughters, Henrietta and Frances.
He divided equally between them his entire estate-—South Sea stock,
South Sea annuities, the Trim street house, its furnishings, his
jewelry, plate, and all other personal possessions, valued at a total
of at least £6,000.

“. . . only paying to my son Edward Braddock the sum of One
Hundred Pounds of lawful money of England to buy his mourn-
ing,” said the General's wi1l.31 Of his other two sons, if either was
still living, there was no mention.

The General died the following April, 1725. He was buried be-
side his wife in the abbey church.32 His two daughters, named sole
executrices, probably took his will up to London (where it was
probated) to show it to their brother, Edward.33 The only personal
possession of the General which seems to have passed into Edward’s
hands—and young Braddock may have received that before his
father died—was an ofl"1cer’s sash woven of red silk, twelve feet long
and thirty inches wide, with long tassels at each end. Embroidered
into the open mesh at each end, above a row of standing human
Figures, was the date “17o9,” the year (old style) the General re-
ceived his commission from Queen Anne as a major-general.34

Fanny Braddock had had so many beaux since her nineteenth
birthday that she had been in no haste to marry. Now she fell in
love with an adventurer, “the celebrated S—-——-, who at that time
went by the name of the good-natured man,” according to Oliver
Goldsmith.35 The character of Honeywood in Goldsmith’s comedy,
The Good Natured Man, may have been modeled after “the cele-
brated S-——,” but the full name of Fanny's lover appears to have
been lost.“

John Wood, the Bath architect who knew Fanny, said “she was
naturally of a gay temper, exceedingly generous, good natured in
the highest degree, affable, pleasant in conversation, and so full of
wit and humour that some of her letters and other writings, as
well in verse as in prose, with proper explanations would have
done honor to her memory. . . .”37 Withal apparently she was
naive. When S-——--— was arrested and imprisoned in London for
debt, she announced her intention of paying off his creditors.33

Beau Nash, who knew Fanny and probably had known her father,

SCANDAL AT BATH [ 55]

was in London when she came up from Bath to do what she could
to bring about the release of S———. Evidently she had ignored
everybody’s advice, including that of her brother and sister, to
leave the fellow alone. They appealed to Nash, one of the greatest
living experts on coxcombs, to try to dissuade her. He talked to
Fanny as plainly as a gentleman could speak to a lady in the stilted
language of the day. He told her that what she was doing would
ruin both herself and the man with whom she was infatuated.

So warm a concern for the interests of Mr. S—— would, in the first
place quite impair her fortune in the eyes of his sex, and, what is
worse, lessen her reputation in the eyes of her own [said Nash (accord-
ing to Goldsmith)].

Thus bringing Mr. S——- from prison, would be only a temporary
relief; a mind so generous as his would become bankrupt upon the
load of gratitude; and instead of improving in friendship or affection,
he would only study to avoid a creditor he could never repay. Though
small favors make good will, great ones destroy friendship.

Fanny rejected the Beau’s advice, as she had declined that of
others. She paid S———’s debts and set him free. And as wiser peo-
ple had warned her, he never came back. Goldsmith says he died
in jail. And her loyalty to the man she loved won her no corre-
sponding sympathy in Bath. Her friends fell away. She ceased to
be a belle. Her sister Henrietta died in 1729,39 leaving Fanny alone
in the world, as far as anyone in Bath knew, except for her one
brother, Lt. Edward of the Coldstream, in London.

Only Nash seems to have taken pity on Fanny. He watched her
closely. After Henrietta’s death, when Fanny began to appear more
and more frequently at the Bath card and dice tables, he tried to
help her, reproving her whenever she deviated from a professional
gambler’s rules of caution. She lost heavily. She lost everything
she owned, including Henrietta’s share of her father’s estate which
she had inherited, but she took her bad luck bravely.

“No one should ever be sensible of her losses, were they at the
last extremity,” she had been heard to say.“

Her money gone, she fell into the hands of Dame Lindsey, a
broken-down opera singer, who used her as a decoy for a gambling
table in one of Bath’s assembly rooms, an association which gave
Fanny the name of a loose woman. Nash rescued her from this
infamy and got her a position as a governess in the Wood home.“

Wood, the architect, his wife, and their three children lived at

CONTENTS

1. END OF THE ROAD
1694-1755
II. ANCESTRY AND EDUCATION

OFIXGUARDSMAN
1660-1710

III. MORE EDUCATION AND A WAY
OF LIFE

1710-1727

IV. SCANDAL AT BATH
1715-I732

v. COVENT GARDEN INTERLUDE

1732-1738

VI. JENKINS’S EAR AND THE

’FORTY-FIVE

1738-1745

VII. FLANDERS
1746-1753

49

[ 56] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

No. 24 Queen Square, the center house in an imposing block of
three done in his best palladian manner. In the summer of 1730
Fanny rented part of Wood's house and maintained her own apart-
ment there. Wood found her a perfect lady, with friends of the
best character. But she had become psychopathic.

“For about six months before her death she lost no opportunity
of viewing the moon with my telescopes; nor of talking with me
about the beauties of that luminary and what pleasures souls de-
parted from this earth must have, should the Almighty destine
them for that planet,” Wood recalled later.

She asked a surgeon, a friend of Wood, what means of suicide
was the easiest, attended by the least pain. She had difficulty sleep-
ing. She tried to tire herself by long walks up and down the vales
of the Avon valley with a genteel servant woman whom she had
playfully nicknamed “Nash.” When she went to bed Fanny tied
a handkerchief over her eyes and left her candle burning, in case
she awakened. Sometimes she would pace her room until exhausted.
Her servant woman locked her in her bedroom every night, slip-
ping the key back under the door to assure her mistress she would
not be disturbed until she awakened normally, usually about 7
o’clock each morning, when she rang a hand bell to call “Nash.” 42

Some word of his sister's misfortune surely reached Lieut. Edward
Braddock in London. He may have been embittered by reports
that she had gambled away every remaining penny of the £6,000
inheritance which their father had managed to lay up in a life-
time for his daughters’ security. But gambling was a common vice.
Young Braddock had seen plenty of it in the army. Ordinary sol-
diers in the footguards supplemented their meager pay when off
duty by working as porters in gambling houses where their officers
played at cards and dice night after night.43 A more likely explana-
tion of the Lieutenant’s lack of sympathy may well have been
Fanny's infatuation with S—-—--, and her refusal to accept any ad-
vice on that affair.

In the summer of 1731 young Braddock’s regiment encamped, as
usual, in Hyde Park with the other footguards. They were re-
viewed and exercised before their Majesties, the King and Queen
and the Prince of Wales, firing eighteen volleys. According to the
newspapers the troops made a fine appearance 44—which was more
than could be said for the Prince. Even when mounted on a white

SCANDAL AT BATH [57]

charger, with gold-plated harness and bearskin saddle holsters,
Frederick looked small and insignificant.“

Down in Bath, Fanny was still living with the Woods, but pre-
sumably without paying any rent. In August, Wood and his wife
went up to London, leaving Fanny with their three children. One
of Wood's workmen agreed to sleep in the house at night while
the architect was away/*6

Wood had planned to be back by September 8, but he was de-
layed two days. The night he was expected home, Fanny hanged
herself. Full details awaited Wood on his return, two nights later.

On the dining room window of her apartment, the afternoon
before she killed herself, she had scratched with a diamond ring
left by her father:

Oh Death! thou pleasing end to human Woe;
Thou Cure for Life, thou greatest Good below.’

Still may’st thou fly the Coward and the Slave,
And thy soft Slumbers only bless the brave.

She had had supper that night in Wood’s study, playing cheer-
fully with his two older children until bedtime, dandling them
on her knee; and on the way to her own bedroom she had looked
into the nursery on another child, asleep in its cradle. “Nash” had
left Fanny alone, locking her bedroom door as usual and slipping
the key underneath. It was the first time, as far as “Nash” could
remember, that Fanny had ever wished her a goodnight.

About half-past two in the morning, Wood’s workman, sleeping
downstairs, was awakened by a thump on the floor. He listened,
heard Fanny moving about her room, as was her habit, assumed
all was well, and went back to sleep. But no bell rang for “Nash”
at 7 o’clock next morning. None rang at noon. The servant woman
grew alarmed. The door of Fanny's room was still locked and the
key inside.

At 2 o’clock “Nash” called for help. A workman raised a ladder
to the window of Fanny's bedroom, climbed up, lifted the sash,
pushed back the shutters, and saw what had happened. Fanny had
knotted two girdles over a closed closet door, stepped off a dressing
stool, and strangled.

On a table set in front of her fireplace lay Sir John Harrington's
translation of Orlando Furioso, opened at the story of Olympia
who by ingratitude of a bosom friend was ruined and left to the
mercy of the world. In the pocket of her white nightgown was an-

[ 58] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

other girdle knotted in a noose but broken, apparently in a first
and unsuccessful attempt at suicide. Her head was bruised as if she
had fallen. Evidently that was the noise which had awakened the
workman downstairs.

A coroner's jury held an inquest, returned a verdict of suicide
while non compos mentis, and Fanny was buried next night in the
Abbey church with her parents and her sister.“

“Poor Fanny!” Braddock was reported to have said when word
of his sister's death reached him in London. “I always thought she
would play till she was forced to tuck herself up.” 43

He was not being quite as heartless as this may have sounded to
some people. He was using an accepted slang expression of the day.

Bath was always good for a scandal in the newspapers, and the
September issue of the sixpenny Gentleman’s Magazine provided
its readers with all the lurid particulars “of the unhappy self-mur-
ther of Miss Fanny Braddock at Bath.”

Mrs. Braddock went to bed, no ways disordered in her senses or be-
havior. . . . She got out of bed again, and, ’tis supposed, employed
some time in reading because a book lay open on the table.

She put on a white night gown, and pinned it over her breast; tied
a gold and silver girdle together, and hanged herself to a closet door
in this manner: At the end of the girdle she tied three knots, at about
one inch asunder, that, if one slipped, another might hold, then open-
ing the door, put the knotty end of the girdle over it and locked the
door again, and making a noose at the other end, put it about her
neck, by getting on a chair, and then dropping off it; she hung with
her back against the door, and had hold of the key with one of her
hands; she bit her tongue through, and had a bruise on her forehead
which last might be occasioned by the breaking of a red girdle she’d
tried first, which was found in her pocket with a noose on it, and there
were two marks on the door. . . .

She was buried in a decent manner in the Abbey church, in the
grave of her honest, brave old father, a gentleman who had experi-
enced some undeserved hardships in life; but who might be said to be
thus far happy, that he lived not to see or hear of so tragical a catas-
trophe of his beloved daughter.

Fanny became a legend of the gambling tables. Her death in-
spired newspaper articles on the subject of suicide. She was “the
celebrated Miss Fanny Brado-k” in the Political State of Great
Britain for October.” Her death found its way into a cheap anony-
mous (“with key”) anthology of “Modern Amours” published in
London in 1733. Wood recounted the story in his Essay towards a

SCANDAL AT BATH [ 59]

Description of Bath, a book published sixteen years later. Gold-
smith picked it up and embellished it with the art of a professional
rewrite man for his biography of Beau Nash. Fanny’s death was
responsible, to some extent, for the introduction of a bill in Parlia-
ment to prevent excessive and fraudulent gambling, and to sup-
press all private lotteries and the games of faro, basset, hazard, and
the ace of hearts.5°

Lord Hervey was at Hampton Court when he heard of Fanny’s
death.51 To Stephen Fox, a friend who lived at Bruton, a market
town below Bath, he wrote:

I am really jealous of her character on this occasion, and quite hurt
by those impertinent and simple people who endeavor by such paltry
comments to detract from it. I liked her living, and I honor her dying.
I dare say if it could be known, Adrian, Anacreon, or Petronius did
not die with more unconcern. Cato made much more bustle about it;
though he makes a much better figure in Lucan and Addison, than
she does in Fog and the Craftsman.

Nor are these all the absurdities I fret at and grow lean under upon
this occasion. There are full as many bad moralists who descant on
this subject as ignorant anatomists; and I am forced to sit and hear
things advanced by my brother-Courtiers which if they did not make
me peevish would infallibly make me laugh. I dare make no answer to
them, because I am sure, if I should dash their redundant stream of
folly with one drop of common sense, these inexhaustible sluices, their
mouths, would never be shut: and I should either be hooted through
the Palace for an atheist, or at least run the gauntlet through staring
eyes and pointing fingers wherever I went.5°

When Hervey told Augustus Schutz, Master of the Robes and
Privy Purse, that he thought Fanny had “done mighty right,”
Schutz fairly foamed with an outburst against self murder, “flying
in Almighty God’s face.”

“You will easily imagine I did not enter in an argument,” said
Hervey. “I should as soon think of reasoning with a kicking dog
or a biting horse.” 52

It is not likely that Braddock fared much better with his brother
officers than Hervey with his brother courtiers. Temporary noto-
riety as the brother of the celebrated Fanny Braddock, self mur-
derer, was not the sort of fame sought by a lieutenant of the Cold-
stream Guards. He had no wish to become involved and there was
nothing he could do now—except stay away from Bath.

Wood waited five months for some one to claim Fanny’s personal
effects, then felt justified in having them sold at public auction to

[60] ILL—STARRED GENERAL

satisfy a bill of £52.34 owed him when she died.53 Beau Nash was
at the sale, to run up the bids, and a morbid desire on the part of
many to own something which had belonged to the unfortunate
woman brought in more than Fanny owed. A small surplus was
turned over to her brother.

“Though it ought to have gone to me," said Wood resentfully,
“as a consideration towards the damages I sustained on the score
of her untimely death.” 54

V7

COVENT GARDEN INTERLUDE

1732-1738

AIN WASHED the last lingering winter chill from London brick
R and flagstone. The gardeners at St. _]ames’s bent over their
spades. Trees along the mall turned feathery green. Carters hauled
fresh yellow gravel from a scow moored at the King's old White-
hall landing stage and spread it on the wet paths in the park.
Spring was returning, with the smell of grass stained earth across
untrimmed hawthorne hedges and half ploughed fields. Casement
windows opened early in the morning to receive it.

Between 5 and 6 o'clock the bells of fifty churches tolled for
early service. By 7 the barbershops were filled with bristly faces and
uncurled wigs. But officers of the guards, off duty, slept until 9,
when the fops got their breakfast and their mail at the Young
Man's Coffee House, at Charing Cross. Older and lustier oflicers
preferred Jenny Man’s, in the Tilt Yard. At both places, hazy and
rancid with tobacco smoke, breakfast usually began with a small
beer or a draft of wine. Morning headaches were chronic.1

Drunkenness was no vice. Strong beer made Britons broad and
brown. And ever since the days of King William, when the impor-
tation of French brandy was prohibited, the distilling trade had
been encouraged by the government as a domestic market for home-
grown grain and a source of painless tax revenues. Taverns, mug-
houses, brandy and gin shops lined the narrow streets of London.

[51]

[62 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

A night's entertainment invariably ended with the bottle. Early
morning churchgoers would step over the drunks laid out on the
pavement in front of the public houses—but never over an officer
of the guards. An officer was a gentleman with a body servant who,
if necessary, carried him home, but there was a record of two cap-
tains of the guard having been drunk on parade at Whitehall?

At 10 o’clock the drums beat. A new palace guard assembled to
relieve the old one, at half-past, in the courtyard of St. James’s.
From 12 until 2, if the weather were good, officers off duty joined
promenaders in the park. Dinner might be anytime between 2 and
5, the later hours the more fashionable. Another drink at the
coffee house settled the port wine served with dinner. Practically
the whole of the guards’ mess, from colonel to ensign, were reputed
to spend the evening in what was known as “a certain notorious
house in St. James’s street.” 3 Others headed for Covent Garden, to
go to the theatre, drink in the cheaper taverns, or amuse themselves
in the night houses there.

Covent Garden, a seedy square off Drury Lane behind the Strand,
had been developed a century earlier on the grand Italian style as
an elegant residential place. Now a smelly fruit and vegetable
market was growing up in the original piazza, faced with solid
rows of arcaded Inigo Jones mansions and a church that looked
like a Tuscan temple. Actors at the theatres had lodgings in the
neighborhood and people were beginning to call the church——St.
Paul's Covent Garden—-“the actors’ church.” 4

Beggars, bullies, bawds, sots, pimps, prostitutes, pickpockets
made a good thing of Covent Garden after dark. No timid gentle-
man went there alone and unarmed. It was easy enough to shake
off some drab trying to sell faded violets she had picked from
market refuse, but a thief with a knife, a belligerent drunk swish-
ing a blade was another matter.5 All this made Covent Garden a
favorite rendezvous for rakehell bucks and bloods bent on drink-
ing, gambling, wenching. They scoured the taverns, beat the
rounds, toured the brothels-breaking furniture, smashing win-
dows, and chucking waiters, porters, madames, dishes, and glass-
ware into the street. Some of these rowdies organized themselves
into clubs.“ One of the lustiest, known as the Hell Fire Club, had
a brilliant and eccentric Jacobite, Phillip Duke of Wharton, as its
leader.7

There was a story that Fanny Braddock’s brother, during a

COVENT GARDEN INTERLUDE [63]

drunken brawl with Wharton and his crew, heaved a bottle which
put out one eye of Robert Lord Clancarty, elder son of a dissolute
and debauched ]acobite.3 Clancarty himself was a slovenly drunk
who generally passed out during the evening. He had served as a
Naval oflicer who was an intimate of Swift and Bolingbroke and,
through family connections, had hopes of being named governor
of Newfoundland. That he had lost one eye in a drinking bout
was common knowledge. But there was some question as to who
threw the bottle.9

William Hogarth, an artist who lived in Covent Garden, had
just completed a series of six story-pictures, “A Har1ot’s Progress.” 1°
Theophilus Cibber, son of Colley Cibber, the actor, had made the
story into a pantomime. Engravings of the pictures were repro-
duced on fanmounts, and on cups and saucers.“ Hogarth’s next
series, “The Rake’s Progress,” was unadulterated Covent Garden.
The scene of one plate was laid in the Rose Tavern, a night resort
of low character, next door to the Royal Theatre, Drury Lane. For
a pot of beer the porter of The Rose, known as Leathercoat, would
lie down in the street and allow the wheels of a coach to pass over
him.”

john Gay's smashing comedy, The Beggar’s Opera, had touched
on the sordid night life of Covent Garden. And when young Henry
Fielding, a budding playwright and the son of one of Marlbor-
ough’s old captains, sat down in the spring of 1732 to turn out
something bright and novel for the summer season at Drury Lane,
he could think of nothing better than a burlesque laid in the back
parlor of a Covent Garden bawdy house. He wrote it hastily, in
two short acts, and titled it The Covent Garden Tragedy.” We
analyze it here because of its alleged relationship to Braddock.

Fielding’s new play opened on Monday night, June 1, at the
Drury Lane Theatre.“ Its cast included Theophilus Cibber and
Katherine Raftor, a jovial little red-haired Irish actress who was
to become one of the immortal ladies of the Georgian stage under
her married name, Kitty Clive.15 The action of the play began with
the arrival of the mighty Captain Bilkum, preceded by a porter
named Leathersides, in the back parlor of one Mother Punchbowl’s
Covent Garden brothel. Bilkum was a bully and thoroughgoing
rascal. He threatened to break the head of a chairman who com-
plained Bilkum had paid only half his fare. Greeted by Mother

[64 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Punchbowl, who asked what he wished, Bilkum replied: “Get me
a wench and lend me half a crown.”
Mother Punchbowl pined for the good old days

When Colonels, Majors, Captains and Lieutenants,
Here spent the issue of their glorious toils.

These were the men, my Bilkum, that subdued

The haughty foe, and paid for beauty here.

Now we are sunk to a low race of beaus,

Fellows unfit for women or for war. . . .

Bilkum who apparently had just quit one mistress in a huff
fumed:

Oh! Tis not in the power of punch to ease
My grief-stung soul since Hecatissa’s false,
Since she could hide a poor half-guinea from me.
Oh! had I searched her pockets ere I rose,
1 had not left a single shilling in them. . . .

He still had no money with which to pay for the girl he wanted
and one of Mother Punchbowl’s brood refused to extend his credit
because, she said, he had paid her on a previous occasion with
counterfeit notes. The madame tried to persuade this wench to be
less exacting, arguing that a bawdy house needed at least one bully,
while Bilkum gloated aside over the prospect of getting what he
wanted “once more, unpaid for.” At the same time Mother Punch-
bowl counseled her girls:

Never give your easy mind to love;

And poise the scales of your afiection so

That a bare sixpence added to the scale

Might make the cit apprentice or the clerk
Outweigh a flaming colonel of the guards.

Oh! never give your mind to otficers,

Whose gold is on the outside of the pocket. . . .

There was a duel, and the wench for whom Bilkum hoped was
reported—erroneously, it turned out——to have hanged herself on
the curtain rods of her bed. The play ended happily with the actors
dancing to a fiddler’s tune.

For such examples as this and that
We are all taught to know I know not what.

And Miss Raftor, who played one of M other Punchbowl’s bawds,
spoke an epilogue concluding:

covmr GARDEN INTERLUDE [65]

To be a mistress kept, the strumpet strives,
And all the modest virgins to be wives.
For prudes may cant of virtues and of vices,
But faith, we only difler in our prices.

Apparently Fielding had worked into his play a lot of personal
neighborhood scandal familiar to his first night audience.“ The
bucks in the pit quickly recognized Leathersides as Leathercoat,
the porter of The Rose. They laughed loudly, but their mirth was
muffled in whistles and catcalls from others in the audience. Critics
reported the performance dull and obscene. They said the play
presented nothing that might not be observed any night at a noto-
rious bawdy house to which several members of the audience paid
a visit when the curtain came down." The show was withdrawn
from that summer’s bill. But a printed version sold for a shilling
on the bookstalls.13

The female characters in the play might have been drawn from
a dozen women known around Covent Garden. One was a Mother
Needham, who had stood in pillory not long before. Another was
a Mrs. Haywood, described whimsically by Fielding as “a useful
woman in the parish of Covent Garden.” But somebody assumed
that the Hecatissa to whom Bilkum referred was a Mrs. Upton with
whom Lieut. Edward Braddock of the Coldstream Guards was re-
ported to have been intimate. Braddock accordingly was identified
by some with Bilkum, and from there it was but a short step to
assume that the hanging episode referred to his sister Fanny.19

Mrs. Upton was said to have been keeping Braddock, and ac-
cording to a vicious piece of gossip passed on by Sir Robert Wal-
pole’s son, Horace:

“He (Braddock) had gone to great lengths with her pin money,
and was still craving. One day that he was very pressing, she pulled
out her purse and showed him that she had only 12 or 14 shillings
left. He twitched it from her, ‘Let me see that.’ Tied up in the
other end he found five guineas. He took them, tossed the empty
purse in her face, saying ‘Did you mean to cheat me?’ and never
went near her more.” 20

Once it got into circulation, the purse story helped spread an-
other scurrilous report concerning a duel Braddock was said to
have fought with C01. Samuel Gumley, a former Coldstream officer
who had transferred to the Royal Dragoons. Gumley was the son
of John Gumley of Isleworth, a wealthy glass manufacturer and

VIII. GIBRALTAR

IX.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

1753‘1754

COLONIAL PROBLEMS
November 1 7 54—April 1 755

. LOGISTICS

April, May 1755
FORT CUMBERLAND

May 10-29, 1755
THE LONG MARCH

May 30-July 8, 1755
INTO BATTLE

July 8-12, 1755
REQUIEM
Notes
Bibliography
Index

116

135

164

183

209

240

266
273
315
329

[66] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

army contractor whose daughter had married William Pulteney.
Pulteney, the brother of Braddock’s captain and former secretary
at war, had just settled some political differences of his own in a
duel with Fanny Braddock’s champion, Lord Hervey.21

Before they quarreled Braddock and the younger Gumley had
been friends. Gumley was a good natured wit. And as they were
about to step off and engage in combat, the story said, Gumley
tossed his purse to Braddock and said: “Braddock, you are a poor
dog. Here, take my purse; if you kill me you will be forced to run
away, and then you will not have a shilling to support you.”

Braddock threw it back, insisting they fight. In the duel Brad-
dock was disarmed but was too proud to beg for his life. And the
story ends that Gumley walked off and left him standing there.-‘*2

Braddock was no dullard.23 One of his associates was Col. James
O’Hara, Baron Tyrawley, a bright, irresponsible Irish wit who en-
joyed the acquaintance of Pope, Chesterfield, and Theophilus Gib-
ber’s father, Colley, the actor-poet-laureate.“ Like Braddock, Ty-
rawley was a general’s son. Four years older than Braddock, he
had served under Peterborough in Spain and with the Duke in
Flanders. At the age of twenty-three he had succeeded his father
as colonel of Royal Fusiliers. When in London Tyrawley spent
most of his time at White’s, a St. James’s street coffee house noted
for gaming, and enjoyed the society of some of the more complai-
sant ladies of the theatre. One of his former mistresses, a Mrs.
Bellamy, an actress now playing in Dublin, had become his mis-
tress when she was only 14 years old.-‘*6 There is no reason to as-
sume that Braddock’s morals were any higher than Tyrawley’s,
but he bore no closer resemblance to Captain Bilkum than did
Tyrawley. These were days when malicious gossip ruined many in
public life, and Braddock did not escape.

He was thirty-seven now. During his twenty-two years in the
Coldstream he had advanced only one grade. Many other officers
had been in the service for twenty years without rising above a
captain's rank.“ It had been their misfortune to enter the army
almost at the end of Queen Anne’s war, the beginning of a long
period of Walpole peace. With the exception of Tyrawley, who
was in perpetual difliculties over the management of his own af-
fairs, Braddock had no friends of any consequence to seek him
special favor.

He must have known his sister F anny’s friend, Lord Hervey, the

covmsrr GARDEN INTERLUDE [67]

Queen's confidant. Hervey lodged at the foot of the Queen’s back
stairway to gather gossip, fetch chairs, carry candles, and call
coaches. But Hervey roughed his cheeks, tripped like a lady as
often as he strutted like a lord, and did not endear himself to
guardsmen at St. James’s by speaking Latin whenever one came
within earshot. Pope had nicknamed him “Lord Fanny,” an asso-
ciation which Braddock must have found painful.”

Immaculate in white gaiters and scarlet regimentals, Braddock
helped marshal strangers who came to St. James’s with tickets per—
mitting them to watch the royal family eat in a state room set aside
for that exhibition. He inspected sentries at the sentry boxes either
side of the St. James Street gate where men of fashion in gold laced
coats and heavily powdered women in 9-yard hoops, paying court
to the royal family, passed in and out by coach and sedan chair,
attended by linkmen and liveried footmen. In the absence of a supe-
rior officer, he ordered out the drummers to beat a salute whenever
a member of the royal family passed through the gate.” It was part
of the King’s routine, when at St. James’s, to watch the changing
of the guard from the palace windows. Once a year the King re-
viewed the Coldstream and the other household troops.” But in
all probability he did not know that a lieutenant named Braddock
existed.

The court Braddock now served was pitched upon a higher level
than that of George I. But in many respects, as far as the royal
family was concerned, it was as coarse and vulgar as that of
Charles II. George II, who liked to regard himself as a ladykiller,
slept with other women as frequently as he slept with his wife,
and he rarely slept alone. The Queen's virtue was never questioned.
Prime Minister Robert Walpole, whose conversational vocabulary
drew heavily on the kennel and the stable, attributed the Queen’s
influence over the King primarily to their physical relationship,
and in advising her how to handle her husband he often spoke the
language of Mother Punchbowl. He shocked the Princesses.3°

The King thought of himself as a soldier. He had been with
Marlborough at Oudenarde in 1708, and hated to think of growing
old without another battle.31 Twice he had been disappointed. In
the summer of 1731 Captain Robert Jenkins, master of the brig
Rebecca, had sailed into London from Jamacia to report that
Spanish coast guards had boarded his ship in the Caribbean, tied
him up to a yardarm, cut off his ear, and bade him carry it back

[68 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

to his master, King George. The Captain had called at court, his
dissevered ear in a small box packed with cotton, but Walpole had
refused to regard mayhem as an act of war. Four years later, during
his annual visit to Hanover, George had been offered the Rhine
command of a proposed Austro-British army if he would bring
England into a war Austria was waging against France and Spain.
Walpole held fast to his peace policy.3-"- “There are fifty thousand
men slain in Europe this year and not one Englishman,” he said
quietly.33

Frederick Prince of Wales, was associated politically with Wal-
pole’s opposition.34 His parents detested him, and two young army
officers who were members of Parliament, William Pitt and john
Fane, Earl of Westmoreland, had been broken because of their
friendship for the prince. Frederick attended his father at troop
reviews and was reported to have military ambitions which were
not encouraged by the King. The Prince actually showed more in-
terest in the theatre than in the army.35

Following the example of his father and his grandfather, Fred-
erick had several mistresses, some of them not too nice. One night
he slipped out of St. James’s palace alone into the park to keep a
rendezvous with a woman who robbed him of his watch and twenty-
two guineas, and who was chased by a grenadier, possibly one of
Braddock’s. That seems to have been the lieutenant’s nearest ap-
proach to a personal contact with the Prince.“

Frederick’s younger brother, William Augustus, the chubby little
Duke of Cumberland, was still a boy, a grave and solemn blue-eyed.
child who still liked to watch soldiers drill.37 William Augustus
had recruited his own company of miniature Coldstream guards-
men among the sons of his father's courtiers. Dressed as a corporal,
he drilled them in the palace gardens. His parents doted on him
as much as they despised his older brother whom the King called
a puppy.33 Braddock would come to know the Duke better.

Braddock had another opportunity to see a group of North
American Indians in the summer of 1734. A chief, his wife, their
son, and five warriors from Mr. Og1ethorpe’s colony visited Lon-
don. The men refused to wear breeches, but the King received
them, in their clouts and red and black war paint, in a room
next to the guard room at St. James’s. The Indians placed two
skins in the King's hands and laid feathered sticks on the skins in
token of entering into an alliance with the English. Ladies of the

COVENT GARDEN INTERLUDE [69]

court thought the Indians hideous and terrifying. The gentlemen
thought them slightly comic.-‘*9

On February 10, 1736, Braddock became a full-fledged captain
o‘f the guards with line rank of lieutenant-colonel. Now and then
his guards did riot as well as sentry duty but all soldiers were still
regarded by many Englishmen as instruments of oppression.“ The
long VValpole peace had not increased the army’s popularity. In
1737 the Friendly Society of Military Members, an officers club of
the guards brigade which met fortnightly at a tavern called The
Goat in Fuller’s Rents, was ordered to divide its box and disband.
Who knew what an officers club might be plotting? 41

Using the nom de plume Frank F irelock, an officer who claimed
to have entered the army as an ensign under Marlborough and who
now was attached to a regiment stationed outside London, wrote
a letter to the paper Common Sense early in July, 1737, complain-
ing that he and his brother oflicers were being shunned and slighted
by the community in which they were quartered.”

“I am told that at court, and among people of fashion, a General
Officer is still admitted; that is to say, when company is not en-
gaged with some great man, such an Italian fiddler or singer,”
said Firelock, “but in the country it is much worse, for the better
sort will not converse with us at all and inferior folk look upon
us as their enemies.”

F irelock also observed that officers who never had seen any serv-
ice except “foolery at reviews” talked of promotion in terms of
who could carry an election. To this the Daily Gazeteer replied
that considering who presided at reviews——in London, the King-
F irelock’s remarks on that score could only be regarded as a glar-
ing mark of disloyalty.43

Braddock’s Coldstream and other foot guards were in summer
camp in Hyde Park, preparing for their annual “foolery,” outlined
by this order:

At 6 o'clock tomorrow morning Colonel Pultney will exercise the
seven battalions, by the wave of the colors as usual, when the King
sees them. The officers to appear in their new regimental clothes,
gaiters, square-toed shoes, gorgets, sashes, buff-colored gloves, regimen-
tal laced hats, cockades, the button worn on the left side, and twisted
wigs, according to the pattern. The men to appear perfectly clean and
shaved, square-toed shoes, their hats well-cocked, and worn so low as
to cover their foreheads, and raised behind, with their hair tucked up
well under and powdered, but none on their shoulders, the point of

[ 70] ILL—STARRED GENERAL

their hats pointing a little to the left, with cockades fixed under the
loops as usual, their arms perfectly clean, the hilts of their swords and
buckles of their accoutrements made as bright as possible.“

The King saw them but did not think they performed their ex-
ercises as well as they should. He said his troops in Hanover would
have done better.45

He and the rest of the royal family, including the Prince and a
new Princess of Wales, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, had taken up their
summer residence at Hampton Court. The Princess was in a family
way, her confinement due in October. The Queen told Lord Her-
vey that she was not at all convinced that Frederick was responsible
for his wife’s pregnancy, and that she did not think her son above
trying to palm off a suppositious child as his own legitimate heir.
Frederick resented his mother’s attitude so bitterly that when the
Princess began to feel premature labor pains about 10 o’clock on a
Sunday night, July 31, he carried her off in a coach back to St.
James’s where she gave birth to a daughter.43

This “extravagant and undutiful behavior in a matter of such
great consequence as the birth of an heir to (the) crown” enraged
both the King and the Queen. They commanded the Prince and
his wife to leave St. James’s as soon as the Princess could travel,“
and the couple left, as they had arrived, in a coach without escort.
The sentry on duty at the gate was ordered not to salute them.
Posted in the Coldstream orderly room was a notice:

It is His Majesty’s command, that none of the three regiments of

Foot Guards take any notice of the Prince or Princess of Wales, or
any of their families, until further orders.“

The Prince took his wife first to a house he owned at Kew, then
to Norfolk House in St. James’s Square.49 a

“I hope to God I never see him again,” said the Queen.5°

She got her wish. Within two months she was on her deathbed.
The King forbade Frederick to see her. But she saw her other
children, including William Duke of Cumberland, who had moved
into Frederick’s old apartments at St. ]ames’s.51

Queen Caroline died Sunday morning, November 20, 1737.52 In
the Coldstream orderly room, appeared this

ORDER Fop. MOURNING FOR HER LATE MAJESTY
Every oflicer is to have a scarlet coat, buttoned to the waist with a

mourning button, and faced with black cloth, no buttons on the sleeves
or pockets, black cloth waistcoats and breeches, plain hats, no less than

COVENT GARDEN INTERLUDE [71 ]

four inches in the brim, with crepe hat-bands, an end appearing at
each corner of the buttoned side of the hat, mourning swords and
buckles; and to get crepe for their sashes; to be all ready for Sunday
Se’nnight, the 4th of December; and the following officers must not
fail to have theirs ready on any account whatever: Lieut-Colonels
Legge, Braddock, Needham; Captains Corbett, Milner, Williamson;
Ensigns Stanhope, Gansell and Rudyard.53

By order of the Lord Chamberlain, all theatres were closed the
day after the Queen’s death.54 When they reopened, on January 2,
Tyrawley’s former mistress, Mrs. Bellamy, had returned from Dub-
lin and appeared at Covent Garden in the title role of The Fair
Quaker of Deal, a popular Restoration comedy.55 Here, for the
first time in several years, Mrs. Bellamy saw an eight-year-old
daughter she had borne Tyrawley. The child, named George Anne
Bellamy, was brought to the theatre by a nurse who had seen Mrs.
Bellamy’s name on a playbill.

“My god!” exclaimed the mother, looking at the little girl.
“What have you brought me here? This goggle-eyed, splatter-faced,
gabbart-mouthed wretch is not my child! Take her away!” 56

Tyrawley was not in town. He had been sent to Lisbon as British
ambassador to Portugal.” The little girl went to live with a for-
mer domestic of Tyrawley, a peruke-maker, and his wife who kept
a shop at St. James’s street.53 Braddock, who had known George
Anne since infancy, became a second father to the child.

“Pop,” he called her, an endearing nickname which her father
also used.59

And George Anne returned Braddock’s affection. She found him
amiable, confiding, and benign. She said later in her memoirs that
she could never understand why some thought him rude and
coarse.“

V71

JENKINS’S EAR AND THE FORTY-FIVE

1738-1745

._..._.___g.§@);.>..._...__

VEN AS QUEEN CAROLINE lay dying from what polite society de-
E scribed as “mortification of ye bowels,” colonial rivalries were
pushing royal family affairs into the background. Spain had chal-
lenged British maritime supremacy. London's West India mer-
chants and ship owners had addressed an appeal to the King and
carried a petition to the House of Commons protesting arbitrary
search and seizure of their vessels by the Spaniards. Cargoes were
said to have been condemned and crews inhumanly treated} A
House of Commons committee called in and questioned Captain
Jenkins of the brig Rebecca——the same Jenkins who accused the
Spaniards of having cut off one of his ears in 1731. Before the bar
of the House of Commons he repeated his story, how the Spaniards
slashed at his head with their cutlasses, almost but not quite cut-
ting off his ear. Jenkins said they had torn it off bleeding and
flung it in his face. He still carried the ear in a little box of cotton?

“Jenkins’s Ear” became a war cry. The newspapers took it up.
Ballad writers worked it into songs for such popular tunes as “A
Bawd Always Dies in Her Drink.” 3 Pope referred to it in a new
satire, “One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty-Eight.” A hack
by the name of Sam Johnson, who had been writing up the debates
in Parliament for the Gentleman’s Magazine, turned out a poem,
London, that went through three editions on the strength of lamen-
tations for Britain

[72]

J1~:Nx1Ns's EAR AND THE FORTY-FIVE [73]

. . . triumphant on the Main,

The Guard of Commerce and the Dread of Spain,
Ere Masquerades debauch’d, Excise Oppresfd,

01 English Honor grew a standing Jest. . . .4

Letters of marque and reprisal were issued against the ships,
goods, and subjects of Spain. Vice Admiral Edward Vernon, boast-
ing he needed only six ships to capture Porto Bello, where most
Spanish raiders were fitted out, weighed anchor with a British
squadron at Spithead and sailed westward.5

On the third Thursday in October, 1739, the heralds, in embla-
zoned tabards, mounted their horses in the stable yard at St. James’s
and rode to the palace gate to proclaim that His Majesty George II
“relying on the help of Almighty God, who knows the uprightness
of our intentions, have thought it fit to declare and do hereby de-
clare war against the King of Spain.” 6

With horse guards to clear a way through exulting crowds, the
heralds rode on to Temple Bar, drums pounding, trumpets ablare.
All the church bells of London began to ring.7

“They may ring their bells now,” muttered old Walpole bitterly.
“They will be wringing their hands before long.” 8

Captain Edward Braddock was 45 years old when the bells rang,
still a bachelor, inclined to stoutness and addicted to snuff. But his
hair was still brown,9 when he went without a powdered wig, and
he must have shared the public enthusiasm which greeted the
prospect of war to plunder Spain and her rich treasure ships from
the West Indies. Recruits turned out in such numbers that for
the first time in years army officers were able to pick and choose
their men.1°

Six new regiments of marines were authorized.“ Five men were
drafted from each company of footguards to provide sergeants
and corporals to discipline the new regiments. Captain Anthony
Lowther, a fifty-two~year-old Malplaquet veteran of the Coldstream,
was commissioned a colonel to command one regiment.” The
marines, it was assumed, would be the first troops overseas, the first
to get their hands on the Spanish gold pieces and wedges of silver
which every soldier imagined he saw on the sixpenny maps of the
West Indies that were being sold in London as fast as they could
be printed.13

On January 29, 1740, the Coldstream's colonel, the Earl of
Scarborough, died suddenly. He had been reported to be suffering

[ 74 ] ILL-=STARRED GENERAL

from an illness in the head-—some said madness—-and it was first
given out that he had died of apoplexy. Later it was learned that
he had shot himself with a pistol, in the mouth, the bullet lodging
in his skull. Scarborough was a bachelor with bastard children by
the Duchess of Kingston, but his death was believed to involve a
scandal with the Duchess of Manchester. Gossips said he had given
his word to marry her when her husband died. He had chosen
death, they said, as an alternative.“

Under the command of regimental Lieut.-Col. John Folliott, an
iron disciplinarian who threatened to break any sergeant or cor-
poral showing up on parade with his men in soiled linen, the Cold-
stream encamped in Hyde Park the middle of March. Oflicers
were directed to provide themselves with tents and full field equip-
ment.15 Other camps were to be established at Hounslow Heath
and Black Heath, and orders were out to begin preparations for
the movement of ten regiments to the continent.“

A few days later Lloyd's coffee house in Lombard street heard
that Vernon had captured Porto Bello with only six ships, just
as he had said he would. A Spanish army payroll of $10,000,000
had been seized and distributed among the members of his expedi-
tion. All London hailed Vernon a hero. Congratulatory addresses
to the King from both houses of Parliament extolled the Admira1’s
victory. Medals were struck off bearing his likeness, with the catch-
phrase, “He took Porto Bello with Six Ships.” Vernon's head be-
came a favorite sign for public houses."

The Craftsman for April 12 recorded public reaction to his ex-
ploit by publishing an imaginary tavern conversation between Mr.
John Tar, mariner, just back from Porto Bello, and Mr. Thomas
Lobster, a foot soldier in one of His Majesty's regiments of Guards.

“You must have had a vast fleet and a very great army to do all
this," said Lobster after listening to Tar’s account of the taking of the
town.

“No, you fool,” said Tar. “We did it with six men of war only, and
a couple hundred of you landsmen whom the noble Governor of
Jamaica was kind enough to lend us; for the Admiral had none sent
with him from home."

“Surely, Jack, this can’t be true. You must rodomontade a little.'’

“Ey, ey, that’s just like all of you Fair-weather Sparks, who make a
very pretty figure in Hyde Park, at a review, with your tucked-up hair
and powdered shoulders. . . . Ah! Tom, I wish you had took my advice
when you got Dolly the milkmaid with child and gone to sea with me

]ENx1Ns’s EAR AND THE FORTY-FIVE [75]

instead of listing for a soldier, and loitering away your spare time at
home.”

“Look ye, Jack,” retorted Tom Lobster, “don’t grow scurrilous, and
abuse your betters, for you can't be so ignorant as not to know that we
have the title of gentlemen soldiers; whereas you are called nothing
but Tarpaulins at best—why look ye here, Jack; does not this new red
coat, laced hat and sword at my side look more genteel than your old
pitched jacket and dirty’d trousers? If you have done your king and
country more service than us, as you pretend, it’s not our fault. We
durst not fight without orders. . . .”

Lobster had not heard of the congratulatory addresses to the
King, or of the freedom of the City being presented to Admiral
Vernon. He said he and the other members of his regiment never
read anything but pro—government newspapers like Gazeteer which,
subsidized with public funds by the Walpole ministry, were sent
free to their quarters. They would not dare read opposition papers,
like the Craftsman.

“We would stand a fair chance of running the gauntlet or being
tied neck and heels if we were caught reading them,” he said, “for
our Sergeant says they are filled with nothing but treason and sedition,
and faction and Popery and blasphemy.”

Tar found this hard to understand.

“What have you redcoats done to put’n out of humor?” he asked.

“Why nothing at all, Jack, that I know of.”

“Flesh! Tom, I believe thou has nicked it; for I don't hear that you
have done anything of late, besides playing the devil at your quarters
and burthening the parishes with base children.”

At Jack’s suggestion they drowned their differences in rum, an
unfamiliar spirit to Lobster. “We swam in it at Porto Bello and
Jamaica,” the sailor boasted.

His pockets were full of gold and silver Spanish coins. He slapped
one down on the bar and called on Kate, the barmaid, for a good
sneaker of rum punch for Lobster. “Put a biskit and some nut-
meg in it--that's our way at sea.” 13

But the King’s heart remained with his lobsters. He named his
nineteen-year-old favorite son, William Augustus Duke of Cumber-
land, to succeed the late Earl of Scarborough as colonel of the
Coldstream.19 The Coldstream had moved from Hyde Park to
Hounslow when it was joined by the Duke, whose chubby boyhood
had developed into a massive physique. He made a good appearance
in his white periwig, low three-cornered hat, scarlet coat and white
breeches, with a finely wrought silver basket-hilted sword. He rode

AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author wishes to acknowledge, with sincere appreciation, the
help of many friends and institutions in the collection and organiza-
tion of material for this book. Without their assistance the book
could not have been written. He wishes particularly to express his
indebtedness to the late Henry Fickus, director of research at the
Peabody Library, Baltimore; to Lloyd A. Brown, former librarian
of the Peabody, now director of the Chicago Historical Society, and
to all the members of the Peabody Library staff. In a large measure
this is their book.

Others to whom he owes a special debt of gratitude include
Francis C. Haber, editor of the Maryland Historical Magazine;
Mrs. Ruth H. Martin, director of the Fort Necessity Museum at
Farmington, Pennsylvania; Charles F. Wemyss Brown, of Glasgow,
Scotland; Edmund Nicholls, of London, England; General Sir
Gordon Holmes Alexander MacMillan, former governor and com-
mander-in-chief at Gibraltar; William G. Renwick, of Weston, Mas-
sachusetts; Colonel Ian Wm. Gore-Langton M.B.E., commander of
the Coldstream Guards; and Major Bobbie Phillips, Coldstream
regimental adjutant.

He wishes to thank the Earl of Ilchester for permission to quote
from his Lordship’s Lord Hervey and His Times that portion
of Hervey’s letter relative to Fanny Braddock which appears in

[vii]

[76] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

well. He was gracious. His affability and good sense won the esteem
of every officer in the regiment.”

The Duke reviewed the Coldstream, watching its scarlet ranks
wheel and mesh in patterns of pale blue lapels and flapping cuffs
looped back with white braid.” Lieut.-Col. Folliott kept his red-
coats on their square toes--buckles shining, musket barrels gleam-
ing, long white gaiters spotless, powdered hair tucked up well un-
der low cocked hats pointed at an angle. The Duke himself marked
the hang of each black leather pouch on each right thigh, the hitch
of each sword and bayonet in its double frog on the left. But he
saw no action with the regiment. In October the Coldstream re-
turned to winter quarters.”

Wednesday, November 12, was Admiral Vernon’s birthday. Lon-
don rang its bells for the hero and after dark lighted candles in
its windows. Public dinners were held in the absent Admiral’s
honor. But a bigger war than that of ]enkins’s Ear was in the mak-
ing. The Holy Roman Emperor, Karl VI of Austria, had died in
Vienna.23 Early in his reign Karl had promulgated a pragmatic
sanction decreeing that when he died his hereditary Habsburg
domains should descend undivided to his daughter, Maria Theresa,
Queen of Hungary. As a part of his peace policy, Walpole had
agreed that England should become one of the guarantors of the
Emperor’s decree, along with France, Spain, Prussia, and other
European powers.24

To most Englishmen “the pragmatic sanction” was as meaning-
less a phrase as “the balance of power.” They felt no obligations
toward the Queen of Hungary, not even when Parliament voted
her a subsidy of £300,000 and authorized seven new regiments of
foot and four of marines.‘-’5 Col. William Hanmer of the Cold-
stream was selected to command one of the new regiments. Passing
over more than 200 officers on half-pay, Walpole named four new
colonels from among members of Parliament. In the House of
Lords the choice of these four was blasted as political jobbery to
buy Walpole votes in a parliamentary election to be held in the
coming May, 1741.26

During the election a detachment of fifty footguards was called
from St. James’s Palace and the Savoy barracks to put down a riot
in Covent Garden. An opposition mob stoned Lord Sund0n’s
coach, and one of his lordship’s footmen had his skull cracked with
a brickbat.27 Witnesses later told the Middlesex Grand Jury that

JENK1Ns’s EAR AND THE FORTY-FIVE [77 ]

the soldiers had intermeddled with civil liberties, and the jury, in
its presentments, expressed alarm at “so daring a violation and in-
sult on our freedom and liberties and the dangerous consequences
of military power exercised in civil affairs.” It recommended court
“orders and directions for preventing and discouraging the like
heinous offense in the future.” 33

None of this was permitted to interfere with the King's annual
visit to Hanover. Early in May a twelve-oared barge had rowed him
down the river to the royal yacht, anchored near London bridge.
The Tower guns boomed as the barge glided by, its oars beating
the dirty Thames silver in the May sunshine.29 His Britannic
Majesty's Hanover holiday was not so bright. Bavaria and France
joined his nephew, Frederick William of Prussia, in repudiating
pledges as pragmatic sanction guarantors.“ A French army, moving
eastward to attack Prague, headed for Osnabruck on the Hanover
border. George II, returning to England, passed through Osna-
bruck shortly before the French marched in.31

In a belated effort to enlighten its readers on dynastic politics,
the Gentlemen’s Magazine published a map of Germany and an
account of the pragmatic sanction.” Cynical young officers strutting
in and out of the Tilt Yard coffee house joked about the proper
way to salute a Frenchman—with open arms and a kiss on the right
cheek.33 Captain Braddock, well beyond the strutting age, knew
from his father the proper way to salute a Frenchman—the Mal-
brook way, with fire by platoons!

The May election had returned Walpole with his majority in
the Commons dangerously reduced.34 Dissatisfaction with the slow
progress of the War of ]enkins’s Ear was increasing. Sir Robert was
blamed for the failure of an attack by Vernon on the Spanish
colonial stronghold at Cartagena. Vernon's champions contended
that the fault lay with the troops of the expedition under Brig.
Thomas Wentworth. The British army's best troops, it was argued,
had been kept in England. The officers of these sent to Vernon had
been either gentlemen whose quality and interest entitled them to
preferment, or worthless adventurers——both groups equally unfit to
command troops in battle. Officers of American troops which had
joined the expedition were reported to have been worse——black-
smiths, shoemakers, tailors.35

A solemn man in clerical garb stopped in front of St. _]ames’s and

[78 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

called to a guardsman on duty at one of the sentry boxes either side
of the gateway, under the palace clock:

“Did you ever see the Leviathan?”

The sentry looked at him blankly.

“No sir,” he said.

“Well,” said the man in the blackcoat, who looked like a parson,
“he is as like Sir Robert Walpole as ever two devils were like one
another!” 33

Sir Robert's son, Horace, who had just returned from the grand
tour to take a seat in the new parliament as one of two members
representing the Cornish borough of Callington, was amused by
what he called the mad parson story and passed it on in one of
the first of a series of interminable letters to a friend, Horace
Mann, the British charge d’aifairs at Florence.37

Most of young Walpole’s letters that fall and winter were stuffed
with fashionable westend chitchat about balls, operas, and mas-
querades. Sir Thomas Robinson—a long, lean amateur architect,
not to be confused with the short, fat British minister of the same
name at Vienna 33-—had taken off the doors of his house to make
room for two hundred guests at a ball. The plump, flaxen-haired
Duke of Cumberland had been one of the guests, footing country
dances like a bear. One of Braddock’s former brother officers, Lieut.
Charles Churchill of the Coldstream, the younger General Charles
Churchill’s bastard son by Anne Oldfield, had been there making
eyes at his future wife, Sir Robert Walpole’s bastard daughter,
Mary. Supper was served at midnight. They danced until 4 in the
morning.39

In February Sir Robert Walpole resigned as the King’s prime
minister. Control of foreign affairs passed to John Lord Carteret,
who fully recognized the pragmatic sanction. The Earl of Stair,
named field marshall and ambassador plenipotentiary to the Dutch,
was sent to The Hague to discuss the dispatch of British troops to
the continent to protect Hanover and the Netherlands from France
and Prussia.“ Three battalions of foot guards, part of the house-
hold cavalry, six regiments of dragoons, and twelve of the line were
ordered to gather up their camp equipment and embark for Flan-
ders.“

“We are now all military,” Horace Walpole reported. “No par-
ties but reviews. No officers but hope to go abroad-at least it is
the fashion to say so.” 42

JENx1Ns’s EAR AND rm: FORTY-FIVE [79]

The Duke of Cumberland quit the Coldstream to succeed the
late Sir Charles Wills, who had died on Christmas Day 1741, as
colonel of the First Foot Guards.43 Charles Spencer, 35-year-old
Duke of Marlborough, a great-nephew of the Old Corporal, re-
placed Cumberland as commander of the Coldstream. Braddock’s
battalion of the regiment remained in London, but Spencer went
to Flanders.“ The King and the Duke were expected to join the
army there any day. Their luggage, their linen, their saddle and
sumpter horses were shipped from Gravesend to be ready for them
when they arrived. But they stayed in England all that summer.45
The Dutch, at peace with France, had no wish to offend her and
were reluctant to become involved. Grudgingly they permitted the
British troops to land in their country. The only fighting that oc-
curred in Flanders that summer was a brawl between British sol-
diers and Dutch butchers in the market square at Ghent.“

Braddock’s friend Tyrawley came home in the fall from Lisbon,
at his own request, for military service. He was given command of
a brigade of five regiments on the home establishment.“ Tyrawley
brought with him from Lisbon fourteen bars of gold—a gift from
the King of Portugal—a Portugese mistress, and a brood of swarthy,
illegitimate children who, according to George Anne Bellamy, gave
his Stratton street residence more the appearance of a Turkish
seraglio than the home of an English lord.43

George Anne was growing up. A bosomy, blue-eyed girl of
twelve or thirteen who read poetry and drama, she was now ac-
knowledged by her mother as a daughter. Mrs. Bellamy had never
been entirely successful as an actress. She was a beauty with strik-
ing figure lacking animation 49 and playing only occasional engage-
ments at Covent Garden. She saw possibilities in her daughter and
arranged George Anne's first stage appearance in a benefit panto-
mime. Later in the spring of 1742, George Anne had played Miss
Prue in Congreve’s All for Love, a comedy not exactly suitable for
well bred children.5°

When Tyrawley returned to London she left the peruke maker's
home and went to live with her father, his Portugese mistress,
Donna Anna, and their children. Tyrawley avoided Mrs. Bellamy
and gave George Anne strict instructions to stay away from her.51
The new arrangement was not a happy one for George Anne. The
Stratton street household consisted of three girls by different
mothers, and assorted boys. All the boys except George Anne's full

[80] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

brother, who usually was at sea with the Navy, eventually went off
to school, and when summer came Tyrawley took a box at Bushy
Park.52 He spent much of his time attending the King at Rich-
mond, but he took George Anne on at least one visit to his friend
Pope, the poet, who insulted the child by turning her over to a
housekeeper with instructions that the young lady be shown the
garden and given as much fruit to eat as she wished. Chesterfield,
who happened by during the visit, rode home in the Tyrawley car-
riage and soothed George Anne's wounded pride with adult flat-
tery.53

Tyrawley had not lost his eye for a pretty actress. In due time he
was on the trail of Peg Woffington, a bewitching Irish girl who
had played with Mrs. Bellamy in Dublin and at Covent Garden.54
Dressed in boy’s clothes as Sir Harry Wildair in The Constant
Couple, a favorite Farquhar comedy repeated on ten successive
nights at the Garden, Peg sang a naughty song that charmed her
audience:

Thus Damon knocked at Celia’s door,
He sighed and begged and wept and swore:
The sigh was so

She answered ‘no,

No, no, no!’

Again he sighed, again he prayed:
‘No, Damon, no, I am a maid;
Consider, no, I am a maid,

No, no, no!’

At last his sighs and tears made way;
She rose and softly turned the key:
‘Come in,’ said she, ‘but do not stay;
I may conclude

You will be rude:

But, if you are, you may.’ 55

“I have played this part so many times that half the town be-
lieves me to be a real man,” she complained one night, coming off
the stage in Sir Harry’s breeches.

“Madam the other half knows you to be a woman,” was the
pointed reply of James Quin, a young Irish actor.“

The other half included one of Braddock’s brother oflicers. Capt.-
Lt. Julius Caesar, of the Coldstream, with whom Peg lived as a
mistress.57

In a general promotion of officers in the spring of 1743 Tyrawley

1ENx1Ns's EAR AND THE FORTY-FIVE [81 ]

was made a major-general. The Duke of Cumberland and his friend
the young Earl of Albemarle, Braddock’s former 15-year-old grena-
dier captain now grown up and with a regiment of his own, also
became major-generals. The young Duke of Marlborough was made
a brigadier. Folliott, lieutenant-colonel of the Coldstream, was
transferred to the First Foot Guards.-*3 The Coldstream's first major,
George Churchill, succeeded Folliott as regimental lieutenant-
colonel, and the second major, William Douglas, became first
major. This opened the way for Braddock’s promotion to second
major, an advancement which cost him ,5 1,200, at the established
rates, over and above £2,400 he could get for his captain’s com-
mission.59

He and Tyrawley were still in London that summer when an
allied army of some 40,000 British, Austrian, Hanoverian, and Hes-
sian troops, commanded by King George, marched up the river
Main, then retreated and unexpectedly defeated a French force of
60,000 at the village of Dettingen, above Frankfurt. The Duke of
Cumberland got a musket ball in the calf of his leg, but the brigade
of guards, commanded by young Marlborough, came off without a
single casualty. The brigade had been posted at the rear of the
column to protect its elaborate headquarters train of 662 horses,
54 cars, 35 wagons and 13 berlins from an anticipated attack which
never developed. Theoretically the Guards had held the post of
honor. Actually it had been a place of safety.“

“The maiden heroes of the guards are in great warmth with
General Ilton (a Hanoverian commander) who kept them out of
Harm's way,” Walpole wrote in another of his gossipy letters
which, true or false, had power to ruin a reputation with a
phrase.“ “They call him ‘the confectioner’ because he says he pre-
served them.”

Behind the dispatches telling London of the battle came reports
of dissatisfaction of English officers with the King's partiality to-
ward his Hanoverians. When rations ran short the English were
said to have drawn only two days’ subsistence while the Hanover-
ians received four. The King was quoted as having criticized his
English troop for lack of discipline.“ Lord Stair resigned as field
marshal, offended by the King's preference for the advice of his
Hanoverian generals. Marlborough resigned as a brigadier, rather
than share his quarters with a Hanoverian general. He also re-
signed as colonel of the Coldstream.“

[82 ] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

Old General Wade, a leaden soldier who played cards with the
King and whose professional reputation rested largely upon a sys-
tem of military roads he had constructed in the Scottish highlands,
was expected to succeed Stair. Tyrawley knew Wade. He had no
desire to serve under him; so when the King offered Tyrawley the
post of ambassador to Russia, he accepted.“

TyrawIey’s daughter, George Anne, took lodgings with the
daughter of a Westminster apothecary, a genteel Mrs. Jones who
with her husband kept a china and bijou shop near St. James’s.
Tyrawley allowed George Anne £100 a year for clothes and other
incidental expenses but cautioned her against having anything to
do with her mother.

Mrs. Bellamy had married again. Her second husband, a dissi-
pated officer young enough to be her own child, went off to Gibral-
tar with his regiment, stripping her of every valuable she possessed.
She appealed to her daughter, asking her to come and live with
her. George Anne did what her mother asked, and her allowance
was promptly cut ofl?.65

During a visit to Mrs. Woffington at Teddington, in a house
filled with theatrical people, George Anne met Thomas Sheridan,
21 Dublin manager; David Garrick, a young actor enamored of the
beautiful Peg; Christopher Rich, the Covent Garden Theatre man-
ager, and his daughters. The young people amused themselves with
amateur theatricals. George Anne showed unusual talent. When
she and her mother returned to London, making their home with
friends of Mrs. Bellamy in Henrietta street, it was decided that
George Anne should go on the stage.“

Mrs. Bellamy talked to Rich. He was willing to try George Anne
in the role of N ominia in Otway’s tragedy The Orphan. But Quin,
his male star, balked at being cast with an unknown girl described
on the bill as “a young gentlewoman, being her first appearance on
any stage.” Quin’s protest was overruled. The play was put on with
him in the lead. For three acts George Anne suffered from an acute
stage fright that almost robbed her of voice and motion. In the
fourth she found herelf. At the end of the play Quin took her in
his arms.

“Thou art a divine creature,” he cried, “and the true spirit is
in thee!” 67

She did Lucia in Cato, Arsinoe in Marianne, Anne Bullen in
Henry VIII. She played a minor role with toothless old Colley

JENx1Ns's EAR AND THE FORTY-FIVE [83]

Cibber in Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John, a hitherto
unstaged tragedy which Cibber hauled out in a fit of February
(1744) patriotism as a public warning against the Popish Pre-
tender. John Gay's patron, the Duchess of Queensbury, and the
London diplomatic corps turned out to patronize the young actress,
daughter of the British ambassador to Russia. After the fashion of
the day George Anne also was pursued by a young Mr. Montgomery
and the fifth Lord Byron, a dissolute old rake.“ Quin heard. He
called her into his dressing room one day after rehearsal.

“My dear girl, you are vastly followed, I hear,” he told her. “Do
not let the love of finery, or any other inducement, prevail upon
you to commit an indiscretion. Men in general are rascals. You are
young and engaging, and therefore ought to be doubly cautious.” 39

She declared she would listen to no proposal but marriage-and
a coach! Mr. Montgomery was frank. He told her he could not
afford marriage. But old Lord Byron was not easily put off. He
hung around the theatre, back stage, and with the help of a friend
abducted George Anne and tried to seduce her. She was rescued by
her brother, the Naval officer. The scandal got into the newspapers.
Mrs. Bellamy refused to believe her daughter's plea of innocence.
The girl had a nervous breakdown. When Sheridan, the Irish
theatre manager she had met at Mrs. W0flingt0n’s, offered George
Anne an engagement in Dublin, mother and daughter welcomed
the opportunity to leave London without farewells.”

If Braddock, her second father, neglected George Anne in her
distress, it may well have been because of a sudden crisis in national
affairs. Bonnie Prince Charlie (Charles Edward Stuart, the Pre-
tender) had slipped away from Rome two or three days before
Christmas, 1743.71 In February he was seen at Dunkirk where the
French Marshal Saxe was reported to be assembling transports,
men-of-war, and 15,000 troops for a descent on England. A British
diplomatic messenger on his way to London from Paris, carrying
dispatches from the English ambassador, was arrested and searched
at Calais. His Britannic Majesty George II sent messages to both
houses of Parliament, warning them the country was in danger of
invasion.”

Overnight, Bradd0ck’s military duties ceased to be a matter of
garrison routine. Habeus corpus was suspended. Suspect Jacobites
were arrested. Guards were doubled at the Tower and at St.
_]ames’s. Three extraordinary councils were held in the palace with a

[84] ILL-STARRED GENERAL

great coming and going of coaches and couriers. The Earl of Stair
and the young Duke of Marlborough waited upon the King, in
bed with rheumatism, to offer their services. The Earl was made
commander in chief of all troops in south Britain. Lt.-Col. George
Churchill of the Coldstream, was named one of nine new brigadiers
to help Stair organize home defenses.”

The threat was still from Dunkirk toward London, Kent, and the
South coast, along the channel patrolled by the French fleet, its
white sails in full view on a clear day.” On February 9, 1744, Brad-
dock’s second battalion marched to Rochester and Sittingbourne, a
route which took them down the old Roman road called Watling
street.75 Winter was almost over. Fresh, damp ocean air blew over
the downs, sweet with the promise of early blossoms in the hop
gardens and the apple and cherry orchards either side of the
road. As English soldiers on their way to repel a foreign foe, the
redcoats were cheered in every village along the way. Whenever
they halted near a public house the tavern keeper and his bar-
maid waited, smiling, to fill their mugs, free.”

But they soon wore out their welcome. A storm smashed and
scattered the French transports at Dunkirk. Charles Edward dropped
his invasion plans." Patriotic Kentishmen, keen to watch a chan-
nel naval battle from the white cliffs and green headlands of their
native shore, were disappointed.” Innkeepers began to complain
about drunken soldiers. Orders were issued that not more than six
should be quartered in any one house.79 And on March 20, Brad-
dock’s battalion returned to London where drafts of twelve men
were taken from each company as replacements for the footguards
in Flanders.3°

Louis XV signed his long expected declaration of war against
England. But the allied army in Flanders, left entirely to old Gen-
eral Wade, advanced, foraged, skirmished, and retreated, always a
safe distance from the French. Brigadier Churchill of the Cold-
stream commanded the guards brigade with Wade. Braddock re-
mained in London.31 The Coldstream colonelcy, vacant since the
resignation of young Marlborough, was given to the Earl of Albe-
marle, now a staff officer with Wade.” Early in October Wade’s
health broke down. He applied for leave to return to England and
resigned his command.33

Stair declined to reconsider his resignation as field marshal. The
Duke of Cumberland was named captain-general, a title last held

J1«:Nx1Ns’s EAR AND THE FORTY-FIVE [85]

by the great Marlborough, and invested with command of the en-
tire allied army in Flanders. As much as he was attached to his
son, William Augustus, the King hesitated to entrust so vast an
operation to so inexperienced a young soldier; for he was in his
early twenties. It was agreed, without public announcement that he
would be advised in his military operations by older and more
seasoned officers.“

Cumberland himself chose six British aides-de-camp, four of them
from the footguards. From the Coldstream he picked Viscount
Bury, Albemarle’s son, and Lieut. Joseph Yorke, third son of the
Earl of Hardwicke, one of Newcastle's confidants.35 From his own
regiment, the First Foot Guards, he chose Capt. William Henry
Lord Ancrum, son of the third Marquis of Lothian, titular head of
an old and distinguished Scottish border family, and Capt. Henry Sey-
mour Conway, handsome supercillious younger brother of the Earl
of Hertford, and an Eton schoolfellow and cousin of Horace Wal-

pole who took credit for having called Conway to the Duke's at-  

tention.83 The other two aides selected by the Duke were Charles
Baron Cathcart, a professional soldier's son who had served in
Flanders, and Capt. Robert Napier, an inconspicuous but compe-
tent infantryman from the Second Foot with experience in the
quartermaster general department.“

A few days before Easter, 1745, the Duke left for Holland, a
fair, fat, pop-eyed prince of twenty-three-going-on-twenty-four and
gaining weight so rapidly that his neck was being squeezed out of
sight between his small ears and his drooping shoulders.” Arriving
in Brussels, he reviewed the allied army. His British troops paraded
in new uniforms.89 Fifty miles to the southwest the French army,
commanded by Marshal Saxe, was investing Tournay, one of thirty-
five walled towns in Flanders toward which military operations cus-
tomarily were directed. The French king and the Dauphin were in
the French camp to watch the progress of the siege. Saxe, carried
in a wicker litter half dead from dropsy, watched Cumberlapd’s
allied forces creep toward him in short, cautious, methodical
marches. At the village of Fontenoy on the river Scheldt, five miles
southeast of Tournay, the two armies met.90

George II had left London and was on his way to Hanover for
another holiday when the first blood curdling accounts of the bat-
tle took away Whitehall’s breath. Nearly 10,000 British and Han-
overian soldiers were reported killed, wounded, and missing. Cas-