CHAPTER III.The French War.

CHAPTER III.The French War.

Braddock’s Army—Washington Resigns, accepts the office of Aide to Braddock—Interview with Franklin—Crossing the Mountains—The Ambush—The warnings of Washington—The Attack—Events of the Battle—Peril and Bravery of Washington—The Rout—Narrative of Colonel Smith—Indian Strategy—Scenes at Fort Duquesne—The Indian War-cries—The Gold Seal—What Washington had gained—Spirit of the Savages—Washington’s statement—Scenes of woe.

Braddock’s Army—Washington Resigns, accepts the office of Aide to Braddock—Interview with Franklin—Crossing the Mountains—The Ambush—The warnings of Washington—The Attack—Events of the Battle—Peril and Bravery of Washington—The Rout—Narrative of Colonel Smith—Indian Strategy—Scenes at Fort Duquesne—The Indian War-cries—The Gold Seal—What Washington had gained—Spirit of the Savages—Washington’s statement—Scenes of woe.

War between France and England had now became inevitable. The British cabinet, being resolved to drive the French from the continent of North America, had not only no apology to offer for her untoward military movement, but immediately made new and more formidable preparations for the accomplishment of her determined purpose. The task seemed not difficult; for the rapidly growing English colonies, scattered along the Atlantic coast, contained a population greatly outnumbering those gathered around the settlements on the banks of the St. Lawrence, and the few military and trading posts which were established on the borders of the great lakes, and in the valley of the Ohio.34

On the other hand, the pride of the court of France required that it should not submit to indignity; neither could France yield to the arrogant demands of the English, and surrender, at their dictation, territory which she had long considered as beyond all legitimate question her own. Thus the warfare became essentially one of attack on the part of England, one of defence on the part of France. England was to organize armies and send them across the mountains, to drive the French from the valley of the Ohio. France was to strengthen her fortresses in the valley so as to repel and drive back the invaders. Both nations did everything in their power to enlist the Indians warriors beneath their banners.

In the spring of the year 1755, the British government sent two regiments of regular troops from England, to cross the wilderness of the Alleghanies, and wrest Fort Duquesne from the French. The highly disciplined troops were well instructed in the tactics of European battle-fields, but were entirely unacquainted with Indian strategy, and were quite unprepared to cope with the difficulties ofIndian warfare. General Braddock, a proud, self-conceited Englishman, who despised all other nationalities, and who had a thorough contempt for the military ability of the Americans, was placed in command.

“Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty look before a fall.” He was too proud to learn from those who were abundantly able to teach him. He was too haughty to listen to any warnings of danger from those who were far wiser than himself, but whom he regarded as ignorant and cowardly. He, in command of well drilled British regulars, had nothing to fear and nothing to learn from colonists, Frenchmen, or Indians.

General Braddock, at the head of his two highly disciplined and well uniformed regiments, commenced his march across the wide, rugged mountain ranges. From the eastern declivities, where the water commenced running into the Atlantic, to the western slopes where the gushing springs flowed into the Ohio, was a distance of more than one hundred miles. The path was narrow. In many places torrents were to be bridged, obstructions removed, and the trail widened through the vast masses of rock, by the corps of engineers. Thus there would be presented to the keen eyes of the Indians, who were sent by the French, to watch and report the progress of thefoe, a straggling, broken line of men and wagons four miles in length.

There was something exceedingly exasperating in the contemptuous manner in which the British court and cabinet treated the colonial officers. It seemed to be, with them, an established principle that an Englishman must, of necessity, be superior to an American. Governor Dinwiddie reduced Colonel Washington to the rank of a captain, and placed over him officers whom he had commanded. This degradation was, of course, not to be submitted to by a high-minded man. Washington at once resigned his commission, and retired from the army.

Governor Sharpe, the crown-appointed Governor of Maryland, received, from the king, the appointment of Commander-in-Chief of the forces employed against the French. He was well acquainted with Washington’s exalted character, and valuable experience, and yet he had the presumption to write, urging him to accept the office ofcaptainof a Virginia company, intimating to him that he might nominally hold his former commission as colonel. Washington replied:

“This idea has filled me with surprise; for if you think me capable of holding a commission that has neither rank nor emolument annexed to it, you must entertain a very contemptible opinion of my weakness,and believe me to be more empty than the commission itself.”

When General Braddock landed at Alexandria, in Virginia, with his two regiments, hearing of the fame of Washington, and of his previous excursions across the mountains, he invited him to take part in the campaign, as one of his staff, retaining his former rank. The chivalric spirit of Washington was roused; for the pageantry of war was quite conspicuous from his quiet retreat at Mount Vernon.

British ships of war, with their gay banners, and transports crowded with troops, were continually sailing by his door, to Alexandria, which was but a few miles above. The booming of cannon, and the music of well-trained bands, woke the echoes of those vast forests. Washington mounted his horse, and rode to Alexandria. The love of adventure, of heroic military achievements, inspired him. He eagerly accepted the offer of Braddock, to become a member of the general’s military household, but without any emolument or any distinct command. The position recognized his full rank, and gave him the opportunity of acquiring new experience, and of becoming acquainted with the highest principles of martial tactics as then practised by the armies of Europe.

His widowed mother entreated him not again toexpose himself to the perils of a campaign. But he found the temptation too strong to be resisted. On the 20th of April, 1755, the army commenced its march, from Alexandria. Washington was announced as one of the general’s aides. Benjamin Franklin, then forty-nine years of age, visited the army when it had reached Fredericktown. Braddock was so confident of the success of the expedition, that he said to Franklin:

“After taking Duquesne, I shall proceed to Niagara; and having taken that, to Frontenac, if the season will allow time. And I suppose it will, for Duquesne can hardly detain me above three or four days. Then I can see nothing which can obstruct my march to Niagara.”35

Franklin, with his customary good sense and modesty, replied, “To be sure, sir, if you arrive well before Duquesne, with these fine troops, so well provided with artillery, the fort, though completely fortified, and assisted with a very strong garrison, can probably make but a very short resistance. The only danger I apprehend, of obstruction to your march, is from the ambuscades of the Indians, who,by constant practice, are dexterous in laying and executing them. And the slender line, nearly four miles long, which your army must make, may expose it to be attacked by surprise on its flanks, and to be cut, like thread, into several pieces, which, from their distance, cannot come up in time to support one another.”

Franklin adds, “He smiled at my ignorance, and replied, ‘These savages may indeed be a formidable enemy to raw American militia, but upon the king’s regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible they should make any impression.’

“I was conscious of an impropriety in my disputing with a military man on matters of his profession, and said no more.”36

There were many delays; and it was not until the 20th of May, that the army reached Wills’ Creek, where there was a frontier post called Fort Cumberland. Here again there were delays, which Washington deemed the result of want of judgment. On the 10th of June, the march was resumed, and the army commenced, what Washington called, “the tremendous undertaking,” of dragging the artillery and the heavily-laded wagons up the steep and rugged mountain road, which the engineers had been sent forward to open.

Washington very strongly disapproved of the great number of horses and wagons required by the officers for the transportation of their baggage, with many needless luxuries. He was astonished and appalled at the recklessness with which the march was conducted; and he could not refrain from warning his superior officer of the peril to which the army was exposed in its thin line several miles in extent.

“The French officers,” said he, “through their Indian runners, will keep themselves informed of every step of our progress. The eyes of these savage scouts, from the glooms of the forest and the distant crags, are continually fixed upon us. We are in danger, every hour, of falling into an ambush, when our men and horses will be shot down by volleys of bullets from an invisible foe. And that foe can instantly take flight, beyond all possibility of pursuit. The French officers can lead hundreds of the savage warriors to plunge, in a sudden onset, upon our straggling line, and striking fiercely on the right and left, plunder and burn many wagons, throw the whole line into confusion, and retire unharmed, before it will be possible to concentrate any force to repel them.”

It would seem that such suggestions would be obvious to any man of ordinary intelligence. GeneralBraddock, with a smile of incredulity and contempt, listened to these warnings of his youthful aide, and politely intimated that a Major-General in the regular army of his majesty the king of Great Britain was not to be taught the art of war by a young American provincial, who had never seen even the inside of a military school.

When the army commenced its march from Fort Cumberland, Washington was quite dazzled by the brilliance of the scene. He declares it to have been the most beautiful and inspiriting spectacle he had ever beheld. The British troops were dressed in full and gaudy uniform. They were arranged in columns, and marched with precision of drill such as Washington had never seen before. The beams of the unclouded sun were reflected from silken banners and burnished arms, while well-trained musical bands caused the forests to resound with their martial strains. The officers were mounted on prancing steeds, in the highest condition. The river flowed tranquilly by, an emblem, not of horrid war, but of peaceful, opulent, and happy homes. All were inspirited with hope and confidence.

Such was the commencement of the campaign. How different the scene presented, when, at the close of a few weeks, the fragments of this army returned, bleeding, exhausted, starving—a struggling band offugitives, one half of their number having been killed and scalped by the Indians.

Washington soon became convinced of the incapacity of General Braddock to conduct such an enterprise as that upon which he had entered. He writes:37

“I found that, instead of pushing on with vigor, without regarding a little rough road, they were halting to level every mole-hill, and to erect bridges over every brook, by which means we were four days in getting twelve miles.”38

On one occasion Washington said, “If our march is to be regulated by the slow movements of the train, it will be very tedious.” Braddock smiled contemptuously at this indication of the ignorance of the young American officer in reference to the march of armies.

Without encountering any opposition, the army surmounted the rugged acclivities, and threaded the long defiles of the mountains, until, from the dreary expanse, they entered upon the luxuriant, blooming,magnificent valley of apparently boundless reach beyond. This successful passage of the mountains inspired Major-General Braddock with renewed self-confidence. His deportment said, every hour, to his youthful American aid, “You see that a British officer cannot be instructed in the art of war by a young Virginian.”

The lips of Washington were sealed. Not another word could he utter. But he knew full well that an hour of awful disaster was approaching, and one which he could do nothing whatever to avert. On the 9th of July the sun rose over the Alleghanies, which were left far away in the east, in cloudless splendor. The army, in joyous march, was approaching the banks of the Monongahela.

It was one of those lovely days in which all nature seems happy. The flowers were in their richest bloom. The birds were swelling their throats with their sweetest songs. Balmy airs scarcely rippled the surface of the rivulet, along whose banks the troops were marching. All the sights and sounds of nature seemed to indicate that God intended this for a happy world; where he wished to see his children dwelling lovingly together, in the interchange of all deeds of fraternal kindness. It was such a day as Herbert has beautifully pictured in the words:

“Sweet day, so still, so calm, so bright,The bridal of the earth and sky.”

“Sweet day, so still, so calm, so bright,The bridal of the earth and sky.”

“Sweet day, so still, so calm, so bright,The bridal of the earth and sky.”

The troops were defiling through a ravine which presented a natural path for their march. On either side the eminences were covered with the majestic forest and dense and almost impenetrable thickets of underbrush. The narrow passage was very circuitous. It was just the spot which any one familiar with Indian warfare would carefully explore, before allowing a long line of troops to become entangled in its labyrinthine trail. But there was no pause in the march; no scouts were sent along the eminences to search for an ambush; no precautions whatever were adopted to guard against surprise.

The troops were now within a few miles of Fort Duquesne. The march had been triumphantly accomplished. Braddock was sanguine in the assurance that before the sun should set his banners would float, in triumph, over the fortress, and his army would be sheltered within its walls. He was exulting. Washington was appalled in view of the danger which still menaced them. Proudly Braddock hurried along, with his straggling band. Jokes and laughter resounded, as the burnished muskets and polished cannon of the British regulars brilliantly reflected the sunbeams.

The hour of doom had come. Suddenly therewas a thunder-burst of musketry, as from the cloudless skies. A storm of bullets, piercing the flesh, shattering the bones, swept the astounded ranks. It was like a supernatural attack from invisible spirits. Not a musket was revealed. Not an individual was to be seen. But from hundreds of stentorian throats the hideous war-whoop burst, leading those, who had never heard those shrill yells before, to apprehend that they were assailed, not by mortal foes, but by incarnate fiends.

The Indians were unerring marksmen. They were allies of the French, and their savage ferocity was guided by European science. Crash followed crash in rapid succession. The ground was instantly covered with the dead and the dying. The horses, goaded by bullets and terrified to frenzy, reared and plunged, and tore along the line, dragging fragments of wagons after them, and trampling the living and the dead into the mire. The ranks were thrown into utter consternation. There was no defence that could be made. And still the deadly storm of bullets fell upon them, while a feeble return fire was attempted, which merely threw its bullets against the rocks, or buried them in the gigantic trees. The Indians were derisively laughing at the convulsive and impotent struggles of their victims.

Washington, who had been appalled as he anticipatedthis terrific scene, now that the awful hour had come, was perfectly calm and self-possessed. He had previously made the arrangement with some of the provincial officers, precisely what to do in the emergence. The Virginia troops were somewhat scattered. Washington was on horseback. Almost instantly his horse was shot beneath him. He sprang upon another, from which the rider had fallen; but scarcely was he seated in the saddle, ere that horse dropped to the ground, pierced by the bullet. Four bullets passed through his clothing. All this occurred in almost less time than it has taken to describe it.

The scene was one to appall the stoutest nerves. The yells of the savages, the clamor of the panic-stricken soldiers, the frantic plungings of the wounded steeds, the utter and helpless confusion, the unceasing rattle of musketry, the storm of leaden hail, the incessant dropping of the dead, and the moans of the wounded, all united in presenting a spectacle which could scarcely be rivalled in the realms of despair. How different this awful scene of battle from the picture of loveliness, peace, and happiness, which the valley exhibited, reposing in its Maker’s smiles, as that morning’s sun flooded it with its beams.

Braddock was a Briton, and, almost of course a man of physical courage. Even pride was sufficientlystrong to prevent any display of cowardice. With bull-dog daring, he stood his ground, and issued his orders, endeavoring in vain to marshal his troops in battle array. At length a bullet struck him, and he fell mortally wounded. An awful scene of confusion and horror was presented. There were six hundred invisible foes in ambush. They were armed with the best of French muskets, and were supported by a small band of highly disciplined French troops.

Washington rallied all the Americans within his reach, and each man, posting himself behind a tree, fired not a bullet without taking deliberate aim. The English huddled together, and senselessly, in their frenzy, firing at random, presented a fair target to the Indian marksmen, and fell as fast as the savages could load and fire. As the Indians rushed from their covert, with tomahawk and scalping-knife to seize their bloody trophy of scalps, from the dead and the wounded, who were struggling upon the ground, the Americans, with their rapid and deadly fire checked them, and drove them back. But for this the army would have been utterly destroyed. The English regulars were helpless. “They ran,” wrote Washington, “like sheep before the hounds.”

The rout was complete. Braddock, bleeding, exhausted, and experiencing the intensest mental anguish, begged to be left upon the field to die.Everything was abandoned. The wagoners and artillery-men, cutting the traces, mounted the horses and fled. Fortunately, the savages were too much engaged in plunder to pursue. The carnage had been awful. Out of eighty-six officers, twenty-six were killed and thirty-six wounded. Over seven hundred of the rank and file fell. The tomahawk of the savage soon numbered the wounded with the slain.

Braddock was hurried from the field in a litter, and his wounds dressed about a mile from the scene of carnage. He could not mount a horse, and had to be carried. A woe-stricken band of eighty soldiers formed his escort. For four days he lingered in great pain, and then died. Once he was heard to exclaim: “Who would have thought it.” It is also said that he apologized to Washington for the manner in which he had rejected his advice. His remains were buried in the road, and all indications of his grave concealed, lest the Indians might discover the spot. In the gloom of night the melancholy funeral ceremonies were performed. Washington read the burial service. It is probable that not even a volley was fired over his grave. Seldom has there been recorded a more sad close of an ambitious life.

The army of Braddock was annihilated. TheFrench, conscious that it could do no further harm, left the starving, staggering, bleeding remains to struggle back to Virginia. They returned to Fort Duquesne, to rejoice over the victory, and to strengthen their works, in preparation for another assault, should the attempt be renewed.

There was, at that time, an English officer, Colonel James Smith, a captive at the fort. He has given a minute and exceedingly interesting account of the scenes which had transpired, and which continued to be enacted there. His narrative throws much light upon the character of the conflict, and upon the woes with which man’s inhumanity can crush his brother man.

He says that Indian scouts were every hour watching, from mountain crags and forest thickets, the advance of the army. Every day swift runners came to the fort with their report. The French commandant was kept as intimately acquainted with the condition of the army, and its position, as Braddock could have been himself. These warriors, intelligent men, with established military principles, loudly derided the folly of Braddock, declaring that he was nothing but a fool. As they described his straggling and defenceless line, its utter exposure, the course which they knew he must pursue, and the ambush they were preparing for his destruction,they would burst into boisterous laughter, saying, “We will shoot ’em all down, same as one pigeon.”

It is a great mistake to imagine that men must be simpletons because they can neither read nor write. It is said that Charlemagne could not even write his own name. And many of the most illustrious warriors of ancient days had no acquaintance whatever with books. No one can read, with an impartial spirit, the history of the Indian wars, without admitting that there were in many cases, Indian chiefs who entirely outgeneralled their English antagonists. The scene of events at the fort is very vividly presented by Colonel Smith.

Early in the morning of the day in which the attack was to be made, there was great and joyous commotion in and around the fort. The Indians, some six or seven hundred in number, were greatly elated. They seemed to be as sure of victory then as they were after it had been attained.

There was hurrying to and fro, examining the muskets, filling the powder-horns from open kegs of powder, storing away bullets in their leathern pouches, and hurrying off in small bands, in single file, through the trails of the forest. About an equal number of French troops accompanied the Indians.

Soon all were gone, save the small garrison left incharge. Slowly and silently the hours of the long summer day passed, when late in the afternoon the triumphant shouts of fleet-footed runners were heard in the forest, announcing the tidings of the great victory—tidings which awoke the garrison to enthusiasm, but which filled the heart of Colonel Smith withdismay. They brought the intelligence that the English were huddled together and surrounded, in utter dismay and confusion, in a narrow ravine, from which escape was almost impossible. The Indians, from their concealments, were shooting them down as fast as they could load and fire. They said that before sundown all would be killed.

The whoops or yells of the savages had various significations. There was the war-whoop, with which their fierce natures were roused to the attack. There was the cry of retreat, at whose signal all seemed instantaneously to vanish. And there was the exultant, triumphant “scalp-halloo,” with which they made the forests resound, when they returned to the camp, dangling the gory trophies of victory.39

Soon a band of about a hundred savages appeared,yelling like so many demons in their frantic, boisterous joy. It was the greatest victory they had ever known or conceived of. Braddock’s army was laden not only with all conveniences but with all luxuries. The Indians were astounded, bewildered, at the amount and richness of the plunder they had gained. It was more than they could carry away, and it presented to them a spectacle of wealth and splendor such as the fabled lamp of Aladdin never revealed. The savages returned stooping beneath the load of grenadiers’ caps, canteens, muskets, swords, bayonets, and rich uniforms which they had stripped from the dead. All had dripping scalps, and several had money. Colonel Smith writes:

“Those that were coming in and those that had arrived, kept a constant firing of small-arms, and also of the great guns in the fort, which was accompanied by the most hideous shouts and yells from all quarters; so that 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. Their faces, and parts of their bodies were blackened. These prisoners they burned to death on the banks of the Alleghany river, opposite to the fort. I stood on the fort walls until I beheld them begin to burn one of these men.They tied him 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, were yelling like infernal spirits. As this scene was too shocking for me to behold, I returned to my lodgings, both sorry and sore.40

“From the best information I could receive, there were only seven Indians and four French killed in this battle. Five hundred British lay dead in the field, besides what were killed in the river, after their retreat. The morning after the battle, I saw Braddock’s artillery brought into fort. The same day also I saw several Indians in the dress of British officers, with the sashes, half moons, laced hats, etc., which the British wore.”

On the 17th of July, Washington, at the head of his sad cavalcade, reached Fort Cumberland. Fugitives had already brought reports of the disaster. Washington, knowing the terrible anxiety of his family wrote as follows to his mother.

“The Virginia troops showed a good deal of bravery, and were nearly all killed. The dastardlybehavior of those they called Regulars, exposed all others, that were ordered to do their duty, to almost certain death. At last, in despite of all the efforts of the officers to the contrary, they ran, as sheep pursued by dogs, and it was impossible to rally them.”

The American troops, who, in silent exasperation, had allowed themselves to be led, by the folly of Braddock, into the valley of death, had, in some way, become acquainted with the warnings and remonstrances of Washington. This foresight, combined with the perfect courage he had displayed on the battle-field, gave them the highest opinion of his military abilities. They proclaimed his fame far and wide. Thus the ignominious defeat of the British Major-General rebounded to the honor of his American aide.

After the lapse of eighty years a gold seal of Washington, containing his initials, was found upon the battle-field. A bullet had struck it from his person. The precious relic is in possession of one of the family.

This total defeat of the English, established, for a time, the entire ascendency of the French in the valley of the Ohio and on the great lakes. Washington reached Mount Vernon on the 26th of July, in a very feeble condition of bodily health. He wasprobably well satisfied that there is but little pleasant music to be found in the whistling of hostile bullets. To his brother Augustine he wrote, in reference to his frontier experience:

“I was employed to go a journey in the winter, when I believe few or none would have undertaken it. 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 for that? Why, after putting myself to a considerable expense in equipping and providing necessaries for the campaign, I went out, was soundly beaten and lost all! Came in, and had my commission taken from me; or, in other words, my command reduced, under pretence 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.”

The French and the English now alike infamously engaged in enlisting the Indians to aid them in the conflict. These benighted savages seem to have had no more idea of mercy than had the wolves. They burned the lonely cabins, tomahawkedand scalped women and children, carried mothers and maidens into the most awful captivity, and often put their helpless victims to the torture. And yet the nobility of France and the lords of England looked complacently on, while they goaded the savages to their infernal deeds.

The English settlers outnumbered the French more than ten to one. But the French, in actual possession of the lakes and the valley, could rally around their banners a vastly more powerful force of savages than the English could summon. Thus the English were much more exposed than the French. The savages having lapped blood, and generally hating the English, entered eagerly upon the work of conflagration, plunder, and slaughter.

There were American hamlets of log huts, and lonely American farm-houses, scattered through the wilderness for a distance of four hundred miles along the western frontier of Virginia. But the court and cabinet of Great Britain considered their weal or woe a matter of but little consequence compared with the national glory to be obtained in driving the French from this whole continent.41

Fifteen hundred plumed, painted, howling savages were soon the allies of France, perpetrating deeds which one shudders to record. At midnight these demons of the human race would burst from the forest, and rush howling upon some hut where the poor defenceless emigrant, with his wife and his children, was tremblingly sleeping. In an hour the dreadful tragedy was completed. The yells of the savages drowned the shrieks of the mother and her babe, as they fell beneath the tomahawk. The cabin was in ashes. The savages had disappeared. The rising sun revealed but the gory corpses in their shocking mutilation.

For the protection of the frontier, thus exposed to the greatest woes of which the imagination can conceive, Virginia raised a force of seven hundred men, which was placed under the experienced command of Colonel Washington. For three years he was engaged in these arduous but almost unavailing labors. No one could tell at what point the wary Indian would strike a blow. Having struck it, the demoniac band vanished into the glooms of the wilderness, where pursuit was impossible. There is some excuse to be found for the fiend-like deeds of the savages, in the ignorance, and in the principlesof war which they and their ancestors had ever cherished. But there is no excuse whatever to be found for those French and English statesmen, who employed such agents for the accomplishment of their ambitious projects. The scenes of woe, which Washington often witnessed, were so dreadful that, in after life, he could seldom bear to recur to them. We will give one instance, which he has related, as illustrative of many others.

One day as, with a small detachment of troops, he was traversing a portion of the frontier, he came to a solitary log cabin, in a little clearing, which the axe of a settler had effected in the heart of the forest. As they were approaching, through the woods, the report of a gun arrested their attention. Cautiously they crept through the underbrush, until they came in full sight of the cabin. Smoke was curling up through the roof, while a large party of savages, with piles of plunder by their side, were shouting and swinging their bleeding scalps, as they danced round their booty. As soon as they caught sight of the soldiers they fled into the forest with the swiftness of deer. In the following words Washington describes the scene which was then opened before them:

“On entering we saw a sight that, though we were familiar with blood and massacre, struck us, atleast myself, with feelings more mournful than I had ever experienced before. On the bed, in one corner of the room, lay the body of a young woman, swimming in blood, with a gash in her forehead, which almost separated the head into two parts. On her breast lay two little babes, apparently twins, less than a twelve-month old, with their heads also cut open. Their innocent blood which once flowed in the same veins, now mingled in one current again. I was inured to scenes of bloodshed and misery, but this cut me to the soul. Never in my after life, did I raise my hand against a savage, without calling to mind the mother with her little twins, their heads cleft asunder.”

The soldiers eagerly pursued the fugitive savages. They had gone but a short distance from the house, when they found the father of the family and his little boy, both dead and scalped in the field. The father had been holding the plough, and his son driving the horse, when the savages came upon them. From ambush they had shot down the father, and the terrified little boy had run some distance toward the house, when he was overtaken and cut down by the tomahawk. Thus the whole family perished. Such were the perils of a home on the frontiers, in those sad days. In allusion to these awful scenes Washington wrote:

“On leaving one spot, for the protection of another point of exposure, the scene was often such as I shall never forget. The women and children clung round our knees, beseeching us to stay and protect them, and crying out to us, for God’s sake, not to leave them to be butchered by the savages. A hundred times, I declare to heaven, I would have laid down my life with pleasure, could I have insured the safety of those suffering people by the sacrifice.”

During the years 1756 and 1757, the English met a constant series of disasters. The French furnished their Indian allies with the best muskets, and amply supplied them with ammunition. A small band of French, under skilful officers, would take lead. They could call to their aid any number almost they wished of Indian warriors. These hardy men, cautious and sagacious, were highly disciplined in the kind of warfare in which they were engaged. They were by no means to be despised. In such enterprises they were far more valuable than European troops could have been. If there be fiendish work to be done, fiends are needed as the agents.

In February 1756, some matters of state called Washington to Boston. He travelled the distance, five hundred miles, on horseback, and in considerable state. He was accompanied by two aides. Thethree officers had each black servants dressed in livery. All were well mounted. In Philadelphia and New York Washington was received with distinguished honors.

Almost every man must have his first love. It is very confidently asserted that Washington, young, rich, handsome, and renowned, became an ardent and open admirer of a beautiful and highly accomplished lady, Miss Philipse.42It is even said that he sought her hand, and was refused. This is not probable. He remained in Boston but ten days; the press of business demanding a speedy return. The lady subsequently married Captain Morris.43

Napoleon once said that he could easily imagine himself surrounded from infancy by family influences, education and companionship, which should have led him, instead of espousing the cause of the people, to have been an ardent defender of the ancient régime. Mr. Everett writes:

“One cannot but bestow a passing thought onthe question, What might have been the effect on the march of events, if Washington, at the age of twenty-five, and before the controversies between the mother country and the colonies had commenced, had formed a matrimonial alliance with a family of wealth and influence, in New York, which adhered to the royal cause and left America, as loyalists, when the war broke out? It is a somewhat curious fact, that Washington’s head-quarters, during a part of the campaign of 1776, were established in the stately mansion of the Morrises, on the Harlem river.”44

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