aff there
by building Fort Duquesne to command the Ohio Valley. At that time the
chief British commander in America was General Braddock, a joyous,
rollicking soldier of the old-fashioned type, rather popular in London
as a good companion and good fellow, who loved his glass with a more
than merely convivial enthusiasm. But he was not the sort of man who
was fitted to fight the French just then and there. In the open field
and under ordinary conditions he might have done well enough, but the
war with France in the American colonies was not pursued under ordinary
conditions. It was fought on the lines of Indian warfare, with
murderous Indian allies, against whom the jolly general of the London
tables and the St. James's clubs was wholly unfitted to cope. Though
he had been warned by Sir P. K. Halkett, who knew the danger, Braddock
actually insisted upon advancing with astonishing recklessness against
Fort Duquesne as if he were marching at the head of an invincible force
to the easiest possible success. The result of his heedlessness is one
of the grimmest spots in English colonial history.

[Sidenote: 1759--James Wolfe]

Braddock's forces were cut to pieces: very few of his stout thousand
escaped to spread horror through the English colonies by the news of
their misfortunes. The banner of the Leopard had gone down indeed
before the white coats and the Silver Lilies of France and the painted
fantasies of Indian braves and sachems. The fair hair of English
soldiers graced the wigwams of the wild and remorseless Red Man, and it
seemed for the moment as if the fighting power of England had gone.
But, indeed, English fighting power was made of sterner stuff. The
fact is, perhaps, never more happily exemplified than in this very
story of the dying Braddock himself. As he was carried away, bleeding,
to his death, from that fatal ambuscade, something of the hero animated
and exalted {287} the spirit of that drink-hardy and foolhardy soldier.
"I must do better another time," he is reported to have said; and it
would not be easy to say with what gallanter words a stout soldier
could go to his account. Against such a spirit as that which animated
the dying Braddock the soldiers of France were not destined to triumph.
"The last of the Gracchi," said Mirabeau, "when dying, flung dust to
heaven, and from that dust sprang Marias." Braddock, promising himself
to do better next time, spoke not indeed for himself, but for hi