of England and France also met in conflict. In the spring an
English force of regular and colonial troops, chiefly the latter, {230}
under the command of Colonel Monckton, who has given his name to a
prosperous city on the isthmus of Chignecto, and of Colonels Winslow
and Scott, captured the two French forts and took a good many
prisoners, among whom were a considerable number of French Acadians,
forced by the French to assist in the defence of Beausejour. Le Loutre
succeeded during the confusion on the surrender of the fort, in evading
capture, but only to find himself eventually taken prisoner by an
English ship while on his way to France, and sent to the island of
Jersey, where he was kept in confinement until the end of the war, and
from that time disappears from American history.

In the same year General Braddock, an arrogant though experienced
soldier, was sent in command of a large force of regular and colonial
troops into the valley of the Ohio to attack Fort Duquesne and drive
the French from that region, but chiefly through his want of caution
and his ignorance of Indian methods of warfare in the American
wilderness, he was surprised on the Monongahela by a small force of
Indians and French under the Canadian Beaujeu, who were concealed in
ravines, from which they were able in perfect security to prevent the
advance of the English, and literally riddle them with bullets until
they fled in dismay and confusion, leaving behind them a great store of
munitions and provisions besides a large sum of money in specie.
Braddock died from the wounds he received, and the remnant of his
beaten regiments retired precipitately beyond the Alleghanies. This
unhappy {231} disaster was followed by a succession of Indian raids
along hundreds of miles of frontier, and the _petite guerre_ of the
Abenakis and French in Acadia and New England, with all its horrors,
was repeated by the Indians of the West. The southern colonies were
paralysed for the moment, and the authorities of Pennsylvania gave
evidences of indifference, if not of cowardice, that are discreditable
features of its early history.

General Johnson, of the Mohawk country, at the head of a large colonial
force, defeated Baron Dieskau at the foot of Lake George, which then
received its present name in honour of the King of England, and the
French general himself was taken prisoner. It was for his services on
this occasion that Johnson was made a baronet, though