Satiated with carnage and plunder, the Indians could not be tempted from the battle-field. The army of Braddock had been carefully watched, by some Indian spies, from the time they left Fort Cumberland. There was no force in Fort Duquesne that could cope with the English, and the French commandant had expressed the necessity of either retreat or surrender. By accident, four or five hundred Indians happened to be at the fort of the French garrison. One officer of inferior rank, Capt. Beaujeau, strenuously urged that, for the honor of the French arms, some resistance should be made. Beaujeau consulted the Indians, who volunteered to the number of about four hundred. With much difficulty, the young hero obtained from his commander permission to lead out to a certain limit such French soldiers as chose to join in the desperate enterprise. Of the number, only about thirty volunteered, and with these four hundred and thirty men, the gallant Frenchman marched out to attack more than threefold their number. In the meantime, Braddock rejected every remonstrance from Washington and other colonial officers with insult, and advanced into the snare just as far as the enemy desired, when destruction to the greater part of the army was almost the certain result. When the victory was reported to the commandant at Fort Duquesne, his transports were unbounded. He received Beaujeau with open arms, loaded him with the most extravagant honors, and, in a few days, sent to report the victory to the Governor of Canada. But behold! when the dispatches were opened, they consisted of criminal charges against Beaujeau in his office of paymaster, and other charges equally culpable. Under these accusations, this injured man was tried, broke and ruined. So matters rested until, in the revolutionary war, the subject of Braddock's defeat happened to come into conversation between Washington and Lafayette, when the real facts were stated to the latter. He heard them with unqualified astonishment; but with his powerful sense of justice, determining to do all in his ability to repair what he considered a national act of cruelty and injustice, he took and preserved careful notes, and on his return to Europe, had inquiries made for Beaujeau. He was found in a state of poverty and wretchedness, broken down by advancing years and unmerited obloquy. The affair was brought before the government of France, and as the real events were made manifest, the officer was restored to his rank and honors. To the foregoing account of the incidents of Braddock's defeat, we annex a few paragraphs from the narrative of Colonel James Smith, then a prisoner at Fort Duquesne. Some time after I was there, I was visited by the Delaware Indian who was at the taking of me, and could speak some English. I asked him what news from Braddock's army? He said the Indians spied them every day, and he showed me, by making marks on the ground with a stick, that Braddock's army was advancing in very close order, and that the Indians would surround them, take trees, and (as he expressed it) shoot um down all one pigeon. Shortly after this, on the 9th day of July, 1755, in the morning, I heard a great stir in the fort. As I could then walk with a staff in my hand, I went out of the door, which was just by the wall of the fort, and stood upon the wall and viewed the Indians in a huddle before the gate, where were barrels of powder, bullets, flints, etc., and every one taking what suited; I saw the Indians also march off in rank entire-likewise the French Canadians, and some regulars. After viewing the Indians and French in different. positions, I computed them to be about four hundred, and wondered that they attempted to go out against Braddock with so small a party. I was then in high hopes that I would soon see them fly before the British troops, and that General Braddock would soon take the fort and rescue me. I remained anxious to know the event of this day; and, in the afternoon, I again observed a great noise and commotion in the fort, and though at that time I could not understand French, yet I found that it was the voice of joy and triumph, and feared that they had received what I called bad news. I had observed some of the old country soldiers speak Dutch; as I spoke Dutch, I went to one of them, and asked him what was the news? He told me that a runner had just arrived, who said that Braddock would certainly be defeated; that the Indians and French had surrounded them, and were concealed behind trees and in gullies, and kept a constant fire upon the English, and that they saw the English falling in heaps, and if they did not take the river, which was the only gap, and make their escape, there would not be one man left alive before sundown. Some time after this, I heard a number of scalp-halloos, and saw a company of Indians and French coming in. I observed they had a great inany bloody scalps, grenadiers' caps, British canteens, bayonets, etc., with them. They brought the news that Braddock was defeated. After that, another company came in, which appeared to be about one hundred, and chiefly Indians, and it seemed to me that almost every one of this company was carrying scalps; after this came another company with a number of wagon horses, and also a great many scalps. Those that were coming in, and those that had arrived, kept a constant firing of small arms, and also the great guns in the fort, which were accompanied with the most hideous shouts and yells from all quarters; so it appeared to me as if the infernal regions had broke loose. About sundown I beheld a small party coming in with about a dozen prisoners, stripped naked, with their hands tied behind their backs, and their faces and part of their bodies blackened-these prisoners they burned to death on the bank of the Alleghany River, opposite to the fort. I stood on the fort wall until I beheld them begin to burn one of these men: they had him tied to a stake, and kept touching him with fire-brands, red-hot irons, etc., and he screaming in the most doleful manner-the Indians, in the meantime, yelling like infernal spirits. As this scene appeared too shocking for me to behold, I returned to my lodging both sorry and sore. When I came into my lodgings I saw Russel's Seven Sermons, which they had brought from the field of battle, which a Frenchman made a present of to me. From the best information I could receive, there were only seven Indians and four French killed in this battle, and five hundred British lay dead in the field, beside what were killed in the river on their retreat. The morning after the battle I saw Braddock's artillery brought into the fort; the same day I also saw several Indians in British officers' dress, with sash, half moons, laced hats, etc., which the British then wore. The result of this battle gave the French and Indians a complete ascendency on the Ohio, and put a check to the British operations west of the mountains for two or three years. In 1757, the Shawanees, Cherokees, and Iroquois, in alliance with the French, penetrated even to the east side of the mountains, desolating the frontier settlements in blood. In the same autumn, the English built Fort Loudon, in what is now named Monroe county, East Tennessee: in the succeeding year, Col. Burd erected another fort on the Holston, one hundred miles north. Settlements arose around each of these posts. Grant's Defeat.-In the year 1758, great preparations were made by the English for the reduction of the French posts. In July, an army of seven thousand men, under General Forbes, left Carlisle, Pennsylvania, destined for the reduction of Fort Duquesne. About the middle of September, the advanced guard, under Col. Boquet, having reached Loyal Hanna, in what is now Westmoreland county, that officer dispatched Major Grant to reconnoiter, with eight hundred Highland Scotch and two hundred Virginians, under Major Andrew Lewis, who subsequently commanded at the sanguinary battle of Point Pleasant. As they drew near the fort undiscovered, Grant thonght he could surprise the garrison, and thus disappoint his general of the honor of the conquest., Lewis in vain remonstrated against the folly of the attempt; but Grant, desirous of monopolizing all the honor, ordered Lewis with his provincials to remain behind with the baggage. Early in the morning Grant, with his Scotch Highlanders, advanced to the attack by beating drums upon Grant's Hill, as it was afterward called, within the site of Pittsburgh. This incautious bravado aroused the Indians, who, to the number of fifteen hundred, were lying on the opposite side of the river, and soonGrant was surrounded by an overwhelming number, when the work of death went on rapidly, and in a manner quite novel to the Scotch Highlanders, who, in all their European wars, had never |