XXXIX
If I had the pen of a good writer I should incline to describe what I saw. There were great fires burning, and all manner of baggage and stores thrown on them. The regulars were chopping up the artillery-waggons and casting ammunition into a creek.
About a hundred yards away from my hut, in the middle of the road, a deep grave was dug. A few officers and men were gathered about it, and on the ground lay the general’s body, wrapt in a cloak, but no coffin. I looked about me, not knowing how to conduct the matter. Then an orderly handed me the chaplain’s prayer-book, with a marker at the funeral service.
As I was about to begin, Lieutenant-Colonel Burton came forward with a flag and laid it decently over the dead man. Then he placed on it his sword, and fell back, and all uncovered. After this I read slowly, for thelight was yet dim, the service of the church. This being over, the men lowered the body into the grave and filled it up with earth, and cast stones and bushes over it. No guard was ordered, and no volley fired, lest, as was said, it might be heard by the enemy, which appeared to me foolish, for there was noise enough, and at any minute one hundred men in the woods would have routed the whole camp.
Thus died a man whose good and bad qualities were intimately blended. He was brave even to a fault and in regular service would have done honour to the army. His attachments were warm, his enmities were strong, and, having no disguise about him, both appeared in full force. He was generous and disinterested, but plain and blunt in his manner, even to rudeness.
Dunbar made haste to get away, and I was not less pleased to be out of an ill-contrived business.
This affair was a serious blow to the belief in the colonies as to the high value of the King’s soldiers. It became like a proverb in Virginia to say a man “ran like a regular.”
Mr. Franklin said to me long afterwardsthat this disaster gave us the first suspicion that our exalted ideas of the powers of British regular troops had not been well founded, and indeed I am assured that when Lord Percy’s and Colonel Pitcairn’s force was put to flight at Lexington the older farmers on our own frontiers, when they knew what had been done, were less amazed than the minute-men of Massachusetts.
We reached Wills Creek on the 18th, as Morris said, the worst-beaten army that had not been in battle. Colonel Dunbar did not require my aid, and my general being dead, my service as a volunteer was at an end.
The march to the settlements was most disgraceful—all in cowardly haste to get out of the wilderness. I am satisfied that no troops are so given to pillage as a retreating army, and certainly none was ever worse conducted by the officers or more disorderly than Colonel Dunbar’s force. The settlers and outlying farms near Fort Cumberland suffered much; men and women were misused, and chickens and cattle stolen. I heard afterwards that in their march through Pennsylvania Dunbar’s men plundered and insulted the farmers stillworse, and were quite enough, Mr. Franklin said, to put us out of all patience with such defenders.
I bade good-by to the aides of the general, and would have had Orme and Morris go home with me to be cared for by Dr. Craik, but they preferred to go on to Philadelphia. They were much dispirited, but had only warm praise for my Virginia rangers. I was in no better humour, and felt, as I rode away, that we were on the edge of an awful crisis for the border counties. The favourable sentiments Sir John St. Clair and Colonel Burton were pleased to express respecting me could not but be pleasing; but the situation of our affairs was, to my mind, so serious as to put me into one of my melancholic moods and to make me feel, as I often did in the greater war, that, what with want of patriotism and lack of spirit, only that Providence in which I have always trusted could carry us through a great peril. As usual, a brisk ride jolted me into a more hopeful state of mind.
I lay for a day at Winchester in a poor tavern, cared for by the general’s man, Bishop. There, to my comfort, came Lord Fairfax, who had the kindness to bring withhim a good horse, which I was the better pleased to have because what became of the horse the general would have had me have I was never able to hear. His lordship insisted that I rest at Greenway Court until I was more fit to travel. I had here many letters; one said that I was given up for killed, and there was come a long story about my dying speech. My mother was in a sad worry about me, and when she received my letter contradicting my death, and that I had never composed any dying speech, she declared I was always making her anxious and had no right to distress her by doing things that gave her occasion to think I was dead. His lordship overcame my objections, and I remained with him at the court several days, well pleased to be at rest.
When alone with Lord Fairfax, he showed me the affection and concern which, like myself, he was averse to displaying in company. After I had been made to give him a full account of the march and the battle, he said: “You will be wise to write and to say little of what took place, and to let others say what they will. The men who, having done something worthy of praise,do not incline to speak of it, are sure to be enough spoken of by others.”
This was much as in any case I inclined to do, so that until now I have nowhere related this matter at length, and, as to the diary kept on our march, the French had it, and I saved only two or three letters.
What his lordship wrote of this disastrous business and of me to his friends in London, I do not know, but I was soon aware that both in England and in the colonies I was more praised than I deserved to be.
In 1758, a second British force, under Colonel Grant, was defeated in like manner as Braddock had been, but this was at the outworks of Fort Duquesne. In November of that same year I served under General Forbes and saw once more this disastrous neighbourhood. The hillside where we suffered such disgraceful and needless defeat was a miserable sight, for there were here scattered bits of red uniform and the bones of men and horses bleached in the sun.
At this time the garrison had fled, after succeeding in part to burn the fort, but no great damage done. I myself raised theflag of his Majesty over the ruins which had cost the lives of so many brave men.
I lingered longer at Greenway Court than was needful to repair my broken health, for what his lordship had to say of men and of passing events I found instructive, and the counsels he gave to agree with my own disposition.
I received here a letter from my mother, entreating me not to engage further in the military line, but giving no good reasons, so that I had to reply that she should more consider my honour and what duty I owed to my country than to grieve over what might not result in misfortune, or if it did, was to be accepted as better for me than to have failed to be worthy of the esteem of just men. When I spoke of this letter to Lord Fairfax, he said I had answered with entire propriety.
I reached Mount Vernon, as my diary shows, on July 26, at 4P.M., a poorer man for my campaigning, and, I feared, with a good constitution much impaired.
Soon after I returned I received several letters congratulating me on my escape unhurt, and expressing a general satisfaction that amidst so much cowardice and ill managementthe rangers behaved with spirit and courage.
Among these communications one which afforded me more than ordinary pleasure was from Mr. Benjamin Franklin. Besides what he found fit to say of me, were certain reflections which, at this distant day, seem to nourish my inclination to look forward now, as he did then, desirous, as all must be, to discern from the present what the future alone can surely disclose.
Indeed, as I have descended the vale of life I have had increasing need to consider what the years would bring about, for to endeavour to forecast the future is one of the duties of a statesman.
Mr. Franklin, when in his last illness, said to General Knox, who spoke of it to Mrs. Washington, that I possessed the capacity to look forward in a way which, he said, was one of the forms of imagination, but that I had not the gift of fancy. I am not assured even now that I fully understand what he desired to convey by this statement.
The letter which gave rise in my mind to these reflections contains one of those light statements which I have never found myself able to employ, and which do not assist meto understand the affair in hand, or to comprehend any better what is desired to be conveyed.
Philadelphia.To Colonel George Washington.Respected Sir: I am the richer for having had the opportunity of making your acquaintance, and I ought not to conceal from you the pleasure I have had in learning of late that your conduct in the humiliating defeat of General Braddock was such as to be a matter of just pride to the colonies.Affairs with us, and indeed with all the colonies, are in a condition greatly to be deplored. We are, as it appears to me, much in the same state as a man I knew who, having married four times, had as a consequence four mothers-in-law, all of whom were of opinion that they had the right to meddle in his family affairs. These are, for us, the King, the Parliament, the Lords of Trade, and the Governors. For all of them we are a family of bad little boys. We, on the other hand, entertain the belief that we are grown-up Englishmen, who believe that we inherit certain rights. Soon or late mischief will come of it. The eggs of trouble are slow to hatch, but they do surely hatch soon or late and are never addled.It would be worse than folly to conceal fromyou my fears as to the future. There are limitations to what men like our colonists, accustomed to a large measure of individual freedom, will endure. We seem to me to have gone back a century and to be at the commencement of just such a struggle with the crown as then occurred.I was interested in what you said of the great coldness of a spring at Mount Vernon. I will, when opportunity serves, send you a good thermometer, when I think you will find that your wells have near about what is the average heat of the air for the entire year.I hope to hear from you at your convenience, and, believe me, I shall feel myself honoured by any such mark of your attention, and that I am, with respect,Your ob’d’t humble servant,Benjamin Franklin.P. S. I venture to enclose one of my almanacs.B. F.
Philadelphia.
To Colonel George Washington.
Respected Sir: I am the richer for having had the opportunity of making your acquaintance, and I ought not to conceal from you the pleasure I have had in learning of late that your conduct in the humiliating defeat of General Braddock was such as to be a matter of just pride to the colonies.
Affairs with us, and indeed with all the colonies, are in a condition greatly to be deplored. We are, as it appears to me, much in the same state as a man I knew who, having married four times, had as a consequence four mothers-in-law, all of whom were of opinion that they had the right to meddle in his family affairs. These are, for us, the King, the Parliament, the Lords of Trade, and the Governors. For all of them we are a family of bad little boys. We, on the other hand, entertain the belief that we are grown-up Englishmen, who believe that we inherit certain rights. Soon or late mischief will come of it. The eggs of trouble are slow to hatch, but they do surely hatch soon or late and are never addled.
It would be worse than folly to conceal fromyou my fears as to the future. There are limitations to what men like our colonists, accustomed to a large measure of individual freedom, will endure. We seem to me to have gone back a century and to be at the commencement of just such a struggle with the crown as then occurred.
I was interested in what you said of the great coldness of a spring at Mount Vernon. I will, when opportunity serves, send you a good thermometer, when I think you will find that your wells have near about what is the average heat of the air for the entire year.
I hope to hear from you at your convenience, and, believe me, I shall feel myself honoured by any such mark of your attention, and that I am, with respect,
Your ob’d’t humble servant,
Benjamin Franklin.
P. S. I venture to enclose one of my almanacs.
B. F.
I gave this almanac and the letter to be read to my Lord Fairfax. He returned them, saying that what was said of the way of governing the colonies was true, but that Mr. Franklin overstated what was to be feared in the future; and as to the almanac, damn the man’s little maxims! They smelt of New England.