DEATH OF BRADDOCK.

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yet we are willing to believe them, as they impart a gleam of just and generous feeling to his closing scene. He died on the night of the 13th, at the Great Meadows, the place of Washington's discomfiture in the previous year. His obsequies were performed before break of day. The chaplain having been wounded; Washington read the funeral service. All was done in sadness, and without parade, so as not to attract the attention of lurking savages, who might discover and outrage his grave. It is doubtful even whether a volley was fired over it, that last military honor which he had recently paid to the remains of an Indian warrior. The place of his sepulture, however, is still known, and pointed out.

Reproach spared him not, even when in his grave. The failure of the expedition was attributed, both in England and America, to his obstinacy, his technical pedantry, and his military conceit. He had been continually warned to be on his guard against ambush and surprise, but without avail. Had he taken the advice urged on him by Washington and others, to employ scouting parties of Indians and rangers, he would never have been so signally surprised and defeated.

Still his dauntless conduct on the field of battl shows him to have been a man of fearless spirit and he was universally allowed to be an accom plished disciplinarian. His melancholy end, to disarms censure of its asperity. Whatever ma have been his faults and errors, he in a manner expiated them by the hardest lot that can befall a

ored grave in a strange land; a memory clouded by misfortune and a name forever coupled with defeat.

NOTE.

In narrating the expedition of Braddock, we have frequently cited the journals of Captain Orme and of the "Seamen's Detachment." They were procured in England by the Hon. Joseph R. Ingersoll, while Minister at the Court of St. James and recently published by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, ably edited and illustrated with an admirable Introductory Memoir by Winthrop Sargent, Esq., member of that Society.

CHAPTER XVII.

Arrival at Fort Cumberland. - Letters of Washington to his Family. Panic of Dunbar.

HE obsequies of the unfortunate Braddock being finished, the escort continued its retreat with the sick and wounded. Washington, assisted by Dr. Craik, watched with assiduity over his comrades, Orme and Morris. As the horses which bore their litters were nearly knocked up, he dispatched messengers to the commander of Fort Cumberland requesting that others might be sent on, and that comfortable quarters might be prepared for the reception of those officers.

On the 17th, the sad cavalcade reached the fort, and were relieved from the incessant apprehension of pursuit. Here, too, flying reports had preceded them, brought by fugitives from the battle; who, with the disposition usual in such cases to exaggerate, had represented the whole army as massacred. Fearing these reports might reach home, and affect his family, Washington wrote to his mother, and his brother, John Augustine, apprising them of safety. safety. "The Virginia troops," says he, in

to his mother, "showed

CHAPTER XVIII.

Costs of Campaigning.

Measures for Public Safety.

-

Washington in Command. - Head-quarters at Winchester. - Lord Fairfax and his Troop of Horse. - Indian Ravages. - Panic at Winchester. Cause of the Alarm. -- Operations elsewhere. Shirley against Niagara. Johnson against Crown Point. — Affair at Lake George. - Death of Dieskau.

ASHINGTON arrived at Mount Vernon on the 26th of July, still in feeble condition from his long illness. His campaigning, thus far, had trenched upon his private fortune, and impaired one of the best of constitutions.

In a letter to his brother Augustine, then a member of Assembly at Williamsburg, he casts up the result of his frontier experience. "I was employed," he writes, "to go a journey in the winter, when I believe few or none would have undertaken it, and what did I get by it? - my expenses borne ! I was then appointed, with trifling pay, to conduct a handful of men to the Ohio. What did I get by that? Why, after putting myself to a considerable expense in equipping and providing necessaries for the ca paign, I went out, was soundly beaten, a all! Came in, and had my mmission

COSTS OF CAMPAIGNING.

223

from me, or, in other words, my command reduced, under pretense of an order from home (England). I then went out a volunteer with General Braddock, and lost all my horses, and many other things. But this being a voluntary act, I ought not to have mentioned it; nor should I have done it, were it not to show that I have been on the losing order ever since I entered the service, which is now nearly two years."

What a striking lesson is furnished by this brief summary ! How little was he aware of the vast advantages he was acquiring in this school of bitter experience! "In the hand of Heaven he stood," to be shaped and trained for its great purpose; and every trial and vicissitude of his early life but fitted him to cope with one or other of the varied and multifarious duties of his future destiny.

But though under the saddening influence of debility and defeat, he might count the cost of his campaigning, the martial spirit still burned within him. His connection with the army it is true, had ceased at the death of Braddock, but his military duties continued as adjutant-general of the northern division of the province, and he immediately issued orders for the county lieutenants to hold the militia in readiness for parade and exercise, foreseeing that, in the present defenseless state of the frontier, there would be need of their services.

Tidings of the rout and retreat of the army had circulated far and, and spread consternation throughout the try. Immediate in