Montcalm and Wolfe — Chapter 7, Part 3
The garrison consisted of a few companies of the regular troops stationed permanently in the colony, and to these were added a considerable number of Canadians.
Contrecoeur still held the command.
[215] Under him were three other captains, Beaujeu, Dumas, and Ligneris.
Besides the troops and Canadians, eight hundred Indian warriors, mustered from far and near, had built their wigwams and camp-sheds on the open ground, or under the edge of the neighboring woods,--very little to the advantage of the young corn.
Some were baptized savages settled in Canada,--Caughnawagas from Saut St. Louis, Abenakis from St. Francis, and Hurons from Lorette, whose chief bore the name of Anastase, in honor of that Father of the Church.
The rest were unmitigated heathen,--Pottawattamies and Ojibwas from the northern lakes under Charles Langlade, the same bold partisan who had led them, three years before, to attack the Miamis at Pickawillany; Shawanoes and Mingoes from the Ohio; and Ottawas from Detroit, commanded, it is said, by that most redoubtable of savages, Pontiac.
The law of the survival of the fittest had wrought on this heterogeneous crew through countless generations; and with the primitive Indian, the fittest was the hardiest, fiercest, most adroit, and most wily.
Baptized and heathen alike they had just enjoyed a diversion greatly to their taste.
A young Pennsylvanian named James Smith, a spirited and intelligent boy of eighteen, had been waylaid by three Indians on the western borders of the province and led captive to the fort.
When the party came to the edge of the clearing, his captors, who had shot and scalped his companion, raised the scalp-yell; whereupon a din of responsive whoops and firing of guns rose from all the Indian camps, and their inmates swarmed out like bees, while the French in the fort shot off muskets and cannon to honor the occasion.
The unfortunate boy, the object of this obstreperous rejoicing, presently saw a multitude of savages, naked, hideously bedaubed with red, blue, black, and brown, and armed with sticks or clubs, ranging themselves in two long parallel lines, between which he was told that he must run, the faster the better, as they would beat him all the way.
He ran with his best speed, under a shower of blows, and had nearly reached the end of the course, when he was knocked down.
He tried to rise, but was blinded by a handful of sand thrown into his face; and then they beat him till he swooned.
On coming to his senses he found himself in the fort, with the surgeon opening a vein in his arm and a crowd of French and Indians looking on.
In a few days he was able to walk with the help of a stick; and, coming out from his quarters one morning, he saw a memorable scene.
[216] [Footnote 215: See Appendix D. ] [Footnote 216: _Account of Remarkable Occurrences in the Life of Colonel James Smith, written by himself_.
Perhaps the best of all the numerous narratives of captives among the Indians.
] Three days before, an Indian had brought the report that the English were approaching; and the Chevalier de la Perade was sent out to reconnoitre.
[217] He returned on the next day, the seventh, with news that they were not far distant.
On the eighth the brothers Normanville went out, and found that they were within six leagues of the fort.
The French were in great excitement and alarm; but Contrecoeur at length took a resolution, which seems to have been inspired by Beaujeu.
[218] It was determined to meet the enemy on the march, and ambuscade them if possible at the crossing of the Monongahela, or some other favorable spot.
Beaujeu proposed the plan to the Indians, and offered them the war-hatchet; but they would not take it.
"Do you want to die, my father, and sacrifice us besides?"
That night they held a council, and in the morning again refused to go.
Beaujeu did not despair.
"I am determined," he exclaimed, "to meet the English.
What!
will you let your father go alone?"
[219] The greater part caught fire at his words, promised to follow him and put on their war-paint.
Beaujeu received the communion, then dressed himself like a savage, and joined the clamorous throng.
Open barrels of gunpowder and bullets were set before the gate of the fort, and James Smith, painfully climbing the rampart with the help of his stick, looked down on the warrior rabble as, huddling together, wild with excitement, they scooped up the contents to fill their powder-horns and pouches.
Then, band after band, they filed off along the forest track that led to the ford of the Monongahela.
They numbered six hundred and thirty-seven; and with them went thirty-six French officers and cadets, seventy-two regular soldiers, and a hundred and forty-six Canadians, or about nine hundred in all.
[220] At eight o'clock the tumult was over.
The broad clearing lay lonely and still, and Contrecoeur, with what was left of his garrison, waited in suspense for the issue.
[Footnote 217: _Relation de Godefroy_, in Shea, _Bataille du Malangueulé_ (Monongahela).
] [Footnote 218: Dumas, however, declares that Beaujeu adopted the plan at his suggestion.
_Dumas au Ministre, 24 Juillet, 1756_.
] [Footnote 219: _Relation depuis le Départ des Trouppes de Québec jusqu'au 30 du Mois de Septembre, 1755_.
] [Footnote 220: _Liste des Officiers, Cadets, Soldats, Miliciens, et Sauvages qui composaient le Détachement qui a été au devant d'un Corps de 2,000 Anglois à 3 Lieues du Fort Duquesne, le 9 Juillet, 1755; joint à la Lettre de M. Bigot du 6 Août, 1755_.
] It was near one o'clock when Braddock crossed the Monongahela for the second time.
If the French made a stand anywhere, it would be, he thought, at the fording-place; but Lieutenant-Colonel Gage, whom he sent across with a strong advance-party, found no enemy, and quietly took possession of the farther shore.
Then the main body followed.
To impose on the imagination of the French scouts, who were doubtless on the watch, the movement was made with studied regularity and order.
The sun was cloudless, and the men were inspirited by the prospect of near triumph.
Washington afterwards spoke with admiration of the spectacle.
[221] The music, the banners, the mounted officers, the troop of light cavalry, the naval detachment, the red-coated regulars, the blue-coated Virginians, the wagons and tumbrils, cannon, howitzers, and coehorns, the train of packhorses, and the droves of cattle, passed in long procession through the rippling shallows, and slowly entered the bordering forest.
Here, when all were over, a short halt was ordered for rest and refreshment.
[Footnote 221: Compare the account of another eye-witness, Dr. Walker, in _Hazard's Pennsylvania Register_, VI.
104. ] Why had not Beaujeu defended the ford?
This was his intention in the morning; but he had been met by obstacles, the nature of which is not wholly clear.
His Indians, it seems, had proved refractory.
Three hundred of them left him, went off in another direction, and did not rejoin him till the English had crossed the river.
[222] Hence perhaps it was that, having left Fort Duquesne at eight o'clock, he spent half the day in marching seven miles, and was more than a mile from the fording-place when the British reached the eastern shore.
The delay, from whatever cause arising, cost him the opportunity of laying an ambush either at the ford or in the gullies and ravines that channelled the forest through which Braddock was now on the point of marching.
[Footnote 222: _Relation de Godefroy_, in Shea, _Bataille du Malangueulé_.
] Not far from the bank of the river, and close by the British line of march, there was a clearing and a deserted house that had once belonged to the trader Fraser.
Washington remembered it well.
It was here that he found rest and shelter on the winter journey homeward from his mission to Fort Le Boeuf.
He was in no less need of rest at this moment; for recent fever had so weakened him that he could hardly sit his horse.
From Fraser's house to Fort Duquesne the distance was eight miles by a rough path, along which the troops were now beginning to move after their halt.
It ran inland for a little; then curved to the left, and followed a course parallel to the river along the base of a line of steep hills that here bordered the valley.
These and all the country were buried in dense and heavy forest, choked with bushes and the carcases of fallen trees.
Braddock has been charged with marching blindly into an ambuscade; but it was not so.
There was no ambuscade;
and had there been one, he would have found it.
It is true that he did not reconnoitre the woods very far in advance of the head of the column;
yet, with this exception, he made elaborate dispositions to prevent surprise.
Several guides, with six Virginian light horsemen, led the way.
Then, a musket-shot behind, came the vanguard; then three hundred soldiers under Gage; then a large body of axemen, under Sir John Sinclair, to open the road; then two cannon with tumbrils and tool-wagons; and lastly the rear-guard, closing the line, while flanking-parties ranged the woods on both sides.
This was the advance-column.
The main body followed with little or no interval.
The artillery and wagons moved along the road, and the troops filed through the woods close on either hand.
Numerous flanking-parties were thrown out a hundred yards and more to right and left; while, in the space between them and the marching column, the pack horses and cattle, with their drivers, made their way painfully among the trees and thickets;
since, had they been allowed to follow the road, the line of march would have been too long for mutual support.
A body of regulars and provincials brought up the rear.
Gage, with his advance-column, had just passed a wide and bushy ravine that crossed their path, and the van of the main column was on the point of entering it, when the guides and light horsemen in the front suddenly fell back; and the engineer, Gordon, then engaged in marking out the road, saw a man, dressed like an Indian, but wearing the gorget of an officer, bounding forward along the path.
[223] He stopped when he discovered the head of the column, turned, and waved his hat.
The forest behind was swarming with French and savages.
At the signal of the officer, who was probably Beaujeu, they yelled the war-whoop, spread themselves to right and left, and opened a sharp fire under cover of the trees.
Gage's column wheeled deliberately into line, and fired several volleys with great steadiness against the now invisible assailants.
Few of them were hurt; the trees caught the shot, but the noise was deafening under the dense arches of the forest.
The greater part of the Canadians, to borrow the words of Dumas, "fled shamefully, crying 'Sauve qui peut!'
"[224] Volley followed volley, and at the third Beaujeu dropped dead.
Gage's two cannon were now brought to bear, on which the Indians, like the Canadians, gave way in confusion, but did not, like them, abandon the field.
The close scarlet ranks of the English were plainly to be seen through the trees and the smoke; they were moving forward, cheering lustily, and shouting "God save the King."
Dumas, now chief in command, thought that all was lost.
"I advanced," he says, "with the assurance that comes from despair, exciting by voice and gesture the few soldiers that remained.
The fire of my platoon was so sharp that the enemy seemed astonished."
The Indians, encouraged, began to rally.
The French officers who commanded them showed admirable courage and address; and while Dumas and Ligneris, with the regulars and what was left of the Canadians, held the ground in front, the savage warriors, screeching their war-cries, swarmed through the forest along both flanks of the English, hid behind trees, bushes, and fallen trunks, or crouched in gullies and ravines, and opened a deadly fire on the helpless soldiery, who, themselves completely visible, could see no enemy, and wasted volley after volley on the impassive trees.
The most destructive fire came from a hill on the English right, where the Indians lay in multitudes, firing from their lurking-places on the living target below.
But the invisible death was everywhere, in front, flank, and rear.
The British cheer was heard no more.
The troops broke their ranks and huddled together in a bewildered mass, shrinking from the bullets that cut them down by scores.
[Footnote 223: _Journal of the Proceeding of the Detachment of Seamen_, in Sargent.
] [Footnote 224: _Dumas au Ministre, 24 Juillet, 1756. Contrecoeur à Vaudreuil, 14 Juillet, 1755_.
See Appendix D, where extracts are given.
] When Braddock heard the firing in the front, he pushed forward with the main body to the support of Gage, leaving four hundred men in the rear, under Sir Peter Halket, to guard the baggage.
At the moment of his arrival Gage's soldiers had abandoned their two cannon, and were falling back to escape the concentrated fire of the Indians.
Meeting the advancing troops, they tried to find cover behind them.
This threw the whole into confusion.
The men of the two regiments became mixed together; and in a short time the entire force, except the Virginians and the troops left with Halket, were massed in several dense bodies within a small space of ground, facing some one way and some another, and all alike exposed without shelter to the bullets that pelted them like hail.
Both men and officers were new to this blind and frightful warfare of the savage in his native woods.
To charge the Indians in their hiding-places would have been useless.
They would have eluded pursuit with the agility of wildcats, and swarmed back, like angry hornets, the moment that it ceased.
The Virginians alone were equal to the emergency.
Fighting behind trees like the Indians themselves, they might have held the enemy in check till order could be restored, had not Braddock, furious at a proceeding that shocked all his ideas of courage and discipline, ordered them, with oaths, to form into line.
A body of them under Captain Waggoner made a dash for a fallen tree lying in the woods, far out towards the lurking-places of the Indians, and, crouching behind the huge trunk, opened fire; but the regulars, seeing the smoke among the bushes, mistook their best friends for the enemy, shot at them from behind, killed many, and forced the rest to return.
A few of the regulars also tried in their clumsy way to fight behind trees; but Braddock beat them with his sword, and compelled them to stand with the rest, an open mark for the Indians.
The panic increased; the soldiers crowded together, and the bullets spent themselves in a mass of human bodies.
Commands, entreaties, and threats were lost upon them.
"We would fight," some of them answered, "if we could see anybody to fight with."
Nothing was visible but puffs of smoke.
Officers and men who had stood all the afternoon under fire afterwards declared that they could not be sure they had seen a single Indian.
Braddock ordered Lieutenant-Colonel Burton to attack the hill where the puffs of smoke were thickest, and the bullets most deadly.
With infinite difficulty that brave officer induced a hundred men to follow him; but he was soon disabled by a wound, and they all faced about.
The artillerymen stood for some time by their guns, which did great damage to the trees and little to the enemy.
The mob of soldiers, stupefied with terror, stood panting, their foreheads beaded with sweat, loading and firing mechanically, sometimes into the air, sometimes among their own comrades, many of whom they killed.
The ground, strewn with dead and wounded men, the bounding of maddened horses, the clatter and roar of musketry and cannon, mixed with the spiteful report of rifles and the yells that rose from the indefatigable throats of six hundred unseen savages, formed a chaos of anguish and terror scarcely paralleled even in Indian war.
"I cannot describe the horrors of that scene," one of Braddock's officers wrote three weeks after; "no pen could do it.
The yell of the Indians is fresh on my ear, and the terrific sound will haunt me till the hour of my dissolution."
[225] [Footnote 225: _Leslie to a Merchant of Philadelphia, 30 July, 1755_, in _Hazard's Pennsylvania Register_, V. 191. Leslie was a lieutenant of the Forty-fourth.
] Braddock showed a furious intrepidity.
Mounted on horseback, he dashed to and fro, storming like a madman.
Four horses were shot under him, and he mounted a fifth.
Washington seconded his chief with equal courage; he too no doubt using strong language, for he did not measure words when the fit was on him.
He escaped as by miracle.
Two horses were killed under him, and four bullets tore his clothes.
The conduct of the British officers was above praise.
Nothing could surpass their undaunted self-devotion; and in their vain attempts to lead on the men, the havoc among them was frightful.
Sir Peter Halket was shot dead.
His son, a lieutenant in his regiment, stooping to raise the body of his father, was shot dead in turn.
Young Shirley, Braddock's secretary, was pierced through the brain.
Orme and Morris, his aides-de-camp, Sinclair, the quartermaster-general, Gates and Gage, both afterwards conspicuous on opposite sides in the War of the Revolution, and Gladwin, who, eight years later, defended Detroit against Pontiac, were all wounded.
Of eighty-six officers, sixty-three were killed or disabled;[226] while out of thirteen hundred and seventy-three noncommissioned officers and privates, only four hundred and fifty-nine came off unharmed.
[227] [Footnote 226: _A List of the Officers who were present, and of those killed and wounded, in the Action on the Banks of the Monongahela, 9 July, 1755_ (Public Record Office, _America and West Indies_, LXXXII).
]
