rtain that
they were executed with shameful alacrity. More than a hundred wagons
were burned; cannon, coehorns, and shells were burst or buried; barrels
of gunpowder were staved, and the contents thrown into a brook;
provisions were scattered through the woods and swamps. Then the whole
command began its retreat over the mountains to Fort Cumberland, sixty
miles distant. This proceeding, for which, in view of the condition of
Braddock, Dunbar must be held answerable, excited the utmost
indignation among the colonists. If he could not advance, they thought,
he might at least have fortified himself and held his ground till the
provinces could send him help; thus covering the frontier, and holding
French war-parties in check.

[Footnote 230: _Depositions of Matthew Laird, Michael Hoover, and Jacob
Hoover, Wagoners_, in _Colonial Records of Pa._, VI. 482.]

Braddock's last moment was near. Orme, who, though himself severely
wounded, was with him till his death, told Franklin that he was totally
silent all the first day, and at night said only, "Who would have
thought it?" that all the next day he was again silent, till at last he
muttered, "We shall better know how to deal with them another time," and
died a few minutes after. He had nevertheless found breath to give
orders at Gist's for the succor of the men who had dropped on the road.
It is said, too, that in his last hours "he could not bear the sight of
a red coat," but murmured praises of "the blues," or Virginians, and
said that he hoped he should live to reward them.[231] He died at about
eight o'clock in the evening of Sunday, the thirteenth. Dunbar had begun
his retreat that morning, and was then encamped near the Great Meadows.
On Monday the dead commander was buried in the road; and men, horses,
and wagons passed over his grave, effacing every sign of it, lest the
Indians should find and mutilate the body.

[Footnote 231: _Bolling to his Son, 13 Aug. 1755_. Bolling was a
Virginian gentleman whose son was at school in England.]

Colonel James Innes, commanding at Fort Cumberland, where a crowd of
invalids with soldiers' wives and other women had been left when the
expedition marched, heard of the defeat, only two days after it
happened, from a wagoner who had fled from the field on horseback. He at
once sent a note of six lines to Lord Fairfax: "I have this moment
received the most melancholy news of the defeat of our troops, the
General killed, and numbers o