quently said they had a
sufficient stock of ammunition for ten years' war with the English."

These prisoners were eleven men, women, and children, captured in the
border settlements, and now delivered by their countrymen. The day was
far spent when the party withdrew, carrying their wounded on Indian
horses, and moving perforce with extreme slowness, though expecting an
attack every moment. None took place; and they reached the settlements
at last, having bought their success with the loss of seventeen killed
and thirteen wounded.[447] A medal was given to each officer, not by the
Quaker-ridden Assembly, but by the city council of Philadelphia.

[Footnote 447: _Report of Armstrong to Governor Denny, 14 Sept. 1756_,
in _Colonial Records of Pa._, VII. 257,--a modest yet very minute
account. _A list of the Names of the Persons killed, wounded, and
missing in the late Expedition against the Kittanning_. Hazard,
_Pennsylvania Register_, I. 366.]

The report of this affair made by Dumas, commandant at Fort Duquesne, is
worth noting. He says that Attique, the French name of Kittanning, was
attacked by "le General Wachinton," with three or four hundred men on
horseback; that the Indians gave way; but that five or six Frenchmen who
were in the town held the English in check till the fugitives rallied;
that Washington and his men then took to flight, and would have been
pursued but for the loss of some barrels of gunpowder which chanced to
explode during the action. Dumas adds that several large parties are now
on the track of the enemy, and he hopes will cut them to pieces. He then
asks for a supply of provisions and merchandise to replace those which
the Indians of Attique had lost by a fire.[448] Like other officers of
the day, he would admit nothing but successes in the department under
his command.

[Footnote 448: _Dumas a Vaudreuil, 9 Sept. 1756_, cited in _Bigot au
Ministre, 6 Oct. 1756_, and in Bougainville, _Journal_.]

Vaudreuil wrote singular despatches at this time to the minister at
Versailles. He takes credit to himself for the number of war-parties
that his officers kept always at work, and fills page after page with
details of the _coups_ they had struck; how one brought in two English
scalps, another three, another one, and another seven. He owns that they
committed frightful cruelties, mutilating and sometimes burning their
prisoners; but he expresses no regret, and probably felt none, since he
declares th