ice, were
thus shot down. Athwart the brow of the hill lay a large log, five feet
in diameter, which Captain Waggoner, of the Virginia Levies, resolved to
take possession of. With shouldered firelocks he marched a party of
eighty men to the spot, losing but three on the way; and at once
throwing themselves behind it, the remainder opened a hot fire upon the
enemy. But no sooner were the flash and the report of their pieces
perceived by the mob behind, than a general discharge was poured upon
the little band, by which fifty were slain outright and the rest
constrained to fly.

By this time the afternoon was well advanced and the whole English line
surrounded. The ammunition began to fail and the artillery to flag; the
baggage was warmly attacked; and a runner was despatched to the fort
with the tidings that by set of sun not an Englishman would be left
alive upon the ground. Still, gathering counsel from despair, Braddock
disdained to yield; still, strong in this point only of their
discipline, his soldiers died by his side, palsied with fear, yet
without one thought of craven flight. At last, when every aide but
Washington was struck down; when the lives of the vast majority of the
officers had been sacrificed with a reckless intrepidity, a sublime
self-devotion, that surpasses the power of language to express; when
scarce a third part of the whole army remained unscathed, and these
incapable of aught save remaining to die or till the word to retire was
given--at last, Braddock abandoned all hope of victory, and, with a mien
undaunted as in his proudest hour, ordered the drums to sound a retreat.
The instant their faces were turned, the poor regulars lost every trace
of the sustaining power of custom; and the retreat became a headlong
flight. "Despite of all the efforts of the officers to the contrary,
they ran," says Washington, "as sheep pursued by dogs, and it was
impossible to rally them."

Beneath a large tree standing between the heads of the northernmost
ravines, and while in the act of giving an order, Braddock received a
mortal wound; the ball passing through his right arm into the lungs.
Falling from his horse, he lay helpless on the ground, surrounded by the
dead, abandoned by the living. Not one of his transatlantic soldiery
"who had served with the Duke" could be prevailed upon to stay his
headlong flight and aid to bear his general from the field. Orme thought
to tempt them with a purse containing sixty