onfirm the adhesion of all their
wavering allies. Major Grant, of the Highlanders, had urged Bouquet to
send him to reconnoitre Fort Duquesne, capture prisoners, and strike a
blow that would animate the assailants and discourage the assailed.
Bouquet, forgetting his usual prudence, consented; and Grant set out
from the camp at Loyalhannon with about eight hundred men, Highlanders,
Royal Americans, and provincials. On the fourteenth of September, at two
in the morning, he reached the top of the rising ground thenceforth
called Grant's Hill, half a mile or more from the French fort. The
forest and the darkness of the night hid him completely from the enemy.
He ordered Major Lewis, of the Virginians, to take with him half the
detachment, descend to the open plain before the fort, and attack the
Indians known to be encamped there; after which he was to make a feigned
retreat to the hill, where the rest of the troops were to lie in ambush
and receive the pursuers. Lewis set out on his errand, while Grant
waited anxiously for the result. Dawn was near, and all was silent; till
at length Lewis returned, and incensed his commander by declaring that
his men had lost their way in the dark woods, and fallen into such
confusion that the attempt was impracticable. The morning twilight now
began, but the country was wrapped in thick fog. Grant abandoned his
first plan, and sent a few Highlanders into the cleared ground to burn a
warehouse that had been seen there. He was convinced that the French and
their Indians were too few to attack him, though their numbers in fact
were far greater than his own.[659] Infatuated with this idea, and bent
on taking prisoners, he had the incredible rashness to divide his force
in such a way that the several parts could not support each other.
Lewis, with two hundred men, was sent to guard the baggage two miles in
the rear, where a company of Virginians, under Captain Bullitt, was
already stationed. A hundred Pennsylvanians were posted far off on the
right, towards the Alleghany, while Captain Mackenzie, with a detachment
of Highlanders, was sent to the left, towards the Monongahela. Then, the
fog having cleared a little, Captain Macdonald, with another company of
Highlanders, was ordered into the open plain to reconnoitre the fort and
make a plan of it, Grant himself remaining on the hill with a hundred
of his own regiment and a company of Maryland men. "In order to put on a
good countenance," he says