Part 13

The provisions and waggon needed for the general were made ready during the night, and at break of day, with two companies of grenadiers, I rode back again, hardly knowing if I should drop on the road. I met the general at Gist’s cabin, some thirteen miles away. On our return we halted half a day at Dunbar’s camp, and then hurried on with his force to Great Meadows, where we camped on the 13th of July. There were, as some of us believed, still men enough, if fitly handled, to return and surprise the French; but, as Gist said, these men were already defeated, and no one of those in command meant to try it again. Indeed, Dunbar intended for Philadelphia and to wait there for reinforcements. Even Governor Dinwiddie would have had him make a new campaign; but they had all of them had, as Dr. Craik said, a big dose of Indian medicine, and a council decided with the colonel. The governor was much troubled when he heard of this decision, and, as he told me later, wrote to Lord Halifax that he would have now not only to guard the border, but to protect the counties from combinations of negro slaves, who had become, Governor Dinwiddie declared, audacious since General Braddock’s defeat, because the poor creatures believed the French would give them their freedom. My wounded general’s proud spirit gave way when he heard of Colonel Dunbar’s intention. He lived four days after the battle, having been brought in much pain, and still more distress of mind, to the camp at Great Meadows.

For the most part he was silent and only now and then let a groan. Dr. Craik told me that he cried out over and over: “Who would have believed it possible?” Once he said to Captain Stewart: “We shall know better next time; but what will the duke say? [That was his Grace of Cumberland.] What will he say?” On the morning of the 13th Dr. Craik said the general had made his will and desired to see me. When he was aware of my coming into his hut, he put out his left hand, saying, “That is the only hand which is left,” for the ball had gone through his right arm. He was said to be a great wit, but that a man about to die should have spirit to use his dying breath in a jest much astonished me.

He said: “I want you to take my horse and my man, Bishop. I have told St. Clair.” Then he said: “I should have taken your advice. Too late; too late.” After this he closed his eyes, and again, after a little, opened them and said feebly: “If I lived I should never wish to see a red coat again. My compliments to the governor.” He spoke no more, only, “How they will curse me!” and I went out. In fact, I was too weak to endure the deadly sorrow with which this brave man’s miserable end afflicted me, to whom he had been so kind a friend.

I endeavoured to distract my mind by examining the remains of the fort I had here made. To my amazement, I saw, as I moved about, that there was little discipline, and I observed that where there is too much drill and mechanical order a defeat does away with it entirely. The colonials it was hard to instruct; but as every man was used to rely on himself at any minute, and not to look all the time for orders, they suffered less during disaster, and on a retreat knew how to care for themselves. Now the few that were left looked on with wonder at the stupid destruction of waggons, provisions, and even artillery. Many of the officers were disgusted, and protested against these disgraceful proceedings.

But Colonel Dunbar meant to move on to Philadelphia, as he said, for winter quarters, and yet now it was only July, and he had men enough left to guard the frontier or to return and take the fort.

I felt sick and worn out, and soon went to my shelter among the Virginians. I threw myself down and fell into a deep sleep, and indeed never stirred until Captain Walter Stewart had to shake me to wake me up. I must have dreamed, for he told me I had called out “Indians” twice.

When I was well awakened, he said: “We are to move at once. Every frog that croaks and every screech-owl is an Indian for these whipped curs. The general died at twelve o’clock. He is to be buried in the roadway, so that the red devils may not dig up his scalp. Colonel Dunbar asks that you will read the service.”

I thought the request strange until he reminded me, as indeed I knew, that the chaplain, Mr. Hamilton, who had behaved with good sense and courage in the action, was badly wounded, and that the colonel, who was the proper person for this sad business, was occupied in arranging for the march and in destroying what had been gathered at such great cost.

It was just before break of day I went out after Stewart, feeling a kind of satisfaction that the coward in command was not to commit to the grave my poor general, whom, being dead, every one would abuse.

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 the light 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 afterwards that 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 still worse, 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 with him 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 the flag 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 4 P.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 management the 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 me to 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 from you 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.

XL

This account of my youth I have for the present put aside to be considered later, whether to destroy it or not.

I discover in writing these remembrances that I have found pleasure in recalling many small circumstances which I had forgot. I also observe that, as I have written very little but letters in my life, the habit of writing as if for another’s eyes than my own has prevailed, without intention on my part; but this can do no harm, seeing that all this has been set down only in order that I may for my own satisfaction consider as an old man what judgment I should pass on my acts as a young one.

As I shall retain for a season what I have written, I desire that, in case of accident to me, these pages should not for a long time be allowed to come to the general eye. The letters left among these leaves I intend to restore to their proper files.

DIARY――DECEMBER 7, 1799

Rainy morning; mercury at 37. Afternoon clear and pleasant. Dined with Lord Fairfax at Belvoir.

In the evening felt somewhat a lowness of mind, and am reminded, as I write, that I have never had the inclination to set down in my diary other than practical matters. To distract my thoughts, I began to run over what was wrote last year and to consider of what has passed since I wrote, and of what must be done with what was written. My late brother Charles dying in September, I am the only male left of the second marriage. We are no long-lived people, and when I shall be called to follow them is known only to the Giver of Life. When the summons comes, I shall endeavour to obey it with a good grace.

I have had much anxiety during the past two years concerning my country, and especially as to the indignities inflicted on us by the French, and a certain relief not to be again called, at my age, into the field. I may have been too anxious, but a bystander sees more of the game than they who are playing, and I believe I have had cause to feel uneasy. But the Ship of State is afloat, or very nearly so, and, considering myself as a passenger only, I shall trust to Heaven and the mariners, whose duty it is to steer us into a safe port of peace and prosperity.

[The general died on December fourteenth of this year, seventeen hundred and ninety-nine.]

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Transcriber’s Notes:

――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

――Archaic and variable spelling, and misspellings in correspondence, have been preserved.

――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.