XXXIII
When alone with us the Postmaster-General talked with even greater seriousness, saying that in Philadelphia, so secure were they of the success of the campaign, that a gentleman, a Dr. Bond I think it was, proposed to raise money for an illumination to be ready when the news of victory came. Mr. Franklin told us that he had begged him to take warning from a verse in the Old Testament as to before battle and after, and this much pleased his lordship, who laughed and said, “Well put, sir”; but when I asked what the verse was, they both laughed and bade me read my Bible, and, indeed, I am none the wiser up to this day.
It was not alone the general who was discontented. On arriving at Wills Creek I found this letter from George Croghan, one of the most important traders on the frontier, and with a commission from Pennsylvaniato make roads and secure waggons and Indian allies.
Dear Colonel: If the rest are like Sir John St. Clair, I shall be glad to be shut of the business. He swore at us for delay and said “no soldier should handle an axe, but by fire and sword he would force the inhabitants to do the work; we should be treated as traitors, and that when the General came he would give us ten bad words for one that he had given.” You, Sir, know well how hard it is to stir up our border folks and what a task to get from farmers in the spring their waggons and horses. We are doing our best. I have secured Captain Jack—a guide hard to beat.
Dear Colonel: If the rest are like Sir John St. Clair, I shall be glad to be shut of the business. He swore at us for delay and said “no soldier should handle an axe, but by fire and sword he would force the inhabitants to do the work; we should be treated as traitors, and that when the General came he would give us ten bad words for one that he had given.” You, Sir, know well how hard it is to stir up our border folks and what a task to get from farmers in the spring their waggons and horses. We are doing our best. I have secured Captain Jack—a guide hard to beat.
There was more of it, and enough to afford serious thought.
During our stay I heard nothing but complaints of our want of efficiency, and no one seemed to see that it was silly to expect to find everything at hand in a land as new as ours. Captain Orme and Ensign Allen complained on one occasion to Dr. Mercer and me that our men were languid, spiritless, and unsoldier-like. Dr. Mercer, who was a hot-headed Scotchman, said he had seen undisciplined Highlanders put torout regulars at Prestonpans and Falkirk, and that in the woods our men would beat the best grenadiers in the King’s army. Orme grew angry and said Mercer was a damned rebel; but I succeeded in quieting them, although I insisted that Captain Orme would in time change his opinion, as indeed happened. Mercer was in a constant rage and told me over and over that the officers were insolent and that the general was ill with the disease called damned foolishness. I thought him imprudent and begged him to be careful; but as he had served in ’45 with the Pretender, and come over here after his flight, he was, on that account, in bad odour with the regular officers, and, I feared, also with the general, who had been with the Duke of Cumberland upon the final bloody defeat of the rebels at Culloden. Dr. Mercer had just cause to complain, but I thought him unwise to talk so freely. He was, nevertheless, a gallant gentleman, and died a general, falling gloriously at Princeton when rallying his men.
I saw Mr. Franklin again but once before he went away. He was clearly not a man altogether to the liking of Lord Fairfax, but why, I never came to know. He seemed tome at that time a conscientious and intelligent person, very able to get along with all manner of people. I must admit that he conducted matters of gravity as if they amused him and were not serious, a method which never altogether pleased me. When I justified the general’s groaning over his many difficulties as to roads and transport and food, he said that his difficulties were of British making, and that had the force landed in Philadelphia, horses, waggons, and supplies would have been found in abundance. To this I agreed, for I thought the plan of the march ill chosen. After this the doctor amused himself with the astonishment the Indians would have when they got hold of the wigs of the officers—a jest which did not seem to me agreeable. He spoke also with much freedom of the general, and said to argue with him was useless and was like striking a pillow or reasoning with a wild animal, who had only its own thoughts and could not comprehend yours. I made no reply, and he fell to most ingenious talk about the temperature of springs and the ways of swimming. Notwithstanding his doubts, the great array of war kept me somewhat confident and cheerfuluntil I heard that nine hundred men of the French had passed Sandusky on their way to reinforce the French on the Ohio, so that I had to write Mr. Speaker Robinson that I feared we should have more to do than merely to march up and down the hills, as the general had said would be all.
It was May 19 when the general arrived at Fort Cumberland, and June 10 before he set out to cross the mountains, and after, as the general said, more expenditure of oaths in a month than he had needed in his whole Scotch campaign with the duke, of whom the general liked to speak.
I spent much of my time while we lay at this post in learning the methods of drill and discipline, and in aiding to satisfy the Virginia recruits that it was necessary to imitate the methods of the regulars, although if it came to wood fighting I believed the English officers and men would more need to learn the ways of the rangers. Yet some who judged our people by their dislike of strict drill were of opinion that the lowness and ignorance of their officers gave little hope of their future behaviour under fire. My task of helping to train the men was given up when the general ordered meto go to Williamsburg and fetch back four thousand pounds, an errand not much to my liking.
Unfortunately, the detail was made without my having the opportunity of choice, and proved very unfit, giving me much concern and anxiety. I do not know why there was delay in assembling this detail, but eight days passed after I got my order before I was given the men. I believe they would not have been eight seconds in dispersing if we had been attacked.
Captain Horatio Gates, of a New York Independent company, advised not to take regulars, who would obey only their own officers; but I had no choice, and so set out and was gone a fortnight. On my return I slept every night in the waggon, with my precious money about me and pistols loaded. The men were drunken and disobedient until I promised strappado on our reaching camp, and indeed I was glad to be rid of the money and the guard.
I saw during this ride and later that, as Orme had told me, the men of the Forty-fourth and Forty-eighth regiments were drunken, mutinous, and disorderly, so that it was not alone our own failures to providewhich made difficult the task of our unfortunate commander.
I found the general much disgusted at the delays in supplying him, and, as I thought, most unwise, and only increased his trouble by abuse of the colonies, for the more men deserve abuse the less they like it, and get sullen and less than ever inclined to help.
Just before we set out from Fort Cumberland, the general being now in the saddle, Lord Fairfax presented me with a handsome pair of pistols, and said: “I should have been pleased to have had a son like you; but for that I must have had a wife, which is a calamity I have been spared. If occasion serves, I shall be glad to hear from you.”
Lord Fairfax had informed me that General Braddock would ask my opinion and advice as to the use to be made of Indians and our rangers. He did consult me, but only, I believed, because his lordship had desired him to do so.
I never succeeded to make much impression upon him, and it was as the wise Mr. Franklin had said. Many Indians joined us on the way with their squaws, but thechiefs were too little considered or consulted. Their women were insulted or worse, and those that came to-day, receiving no gifts, were gone to-morrow.
On June 6, Sir John St. Clair was sent on in advance with some six hundred choppers to widen and better my old road. After him came Sir Peter Halket’s force. On June 10, if I remember aright, the general followed with his staff and the rest of the army. As soon as the march began, the lack of discipline became plain, and the officers were worse than the men and altogether too much drunkenness.
Captain Croghan said to me: “I should like to give these fellows a wood drill and upset half the rum-kegs.” This was as we led our horses over the second mountain. “Why, sir,” he said, “here are hundreds of waggons and enough gimcracks and nonsense to fit out a town, and all the officers of foot on horseback.”
I said that I had represented to the general and Colonel Dunbar the risk of this long train, and urged that we use our horses for packhorses and to carry only what we really needed. “That would be,” CaptainCroghan said, “for the men, blankets, an axe, a rifle, a knife, and ammunition.”
He went on to tell us that he had urged this to be done again and again—that was, to Captains Orme and Shirley, the military secretary of the commander, for he had been told plainly enough that he was himself too small a person to converse with the general, and a d—d trader he had been called. He was sure the general would listen to no advice except from the King’s officers. I had to admit that he listened to me at times, and had always said in a civil way that he would consider of what I advised, but got no further.