ing near him. This guard being disordered, the
general hurried the troops up to their assistance, which was done in
great confusion, through wagons, baggage, and cattle; and presently the
fire came upon their flank: the officers, being on horseback, were more
easily distinguished, picked out as marks, and fell very fast; and the
soldiers were crowded together in a huddle, having or hearing no orders,
and standing to be shot at till two-thirds of them were killed; and
then, being seized with a panic, the whole fled with precipitation.

[Illustration: THE AMBUSH]

The wagoners took each a horse out of his team and scampered; their
example was immediately followed by others; so that all the wagons,
provisions, artillery, and stores were left to the enemy. The general,
being wounded, was brought off with difficulty; his secretary, Mr.
Shirley, was killed by his side; and out of eighty-six officers,
sixty-three were killed or wounded, and seven hundred and fourteen men
killed out of eleven hundred. These eleven hundred had been picked men
from the whole army; the rest had been left behind with Colonel Dunbar,
who was to follow with the heavier part of the stores, provisions, and
baggage. The flyers, not being pursued, arrived at Dunbar's camp, and
the panic they brought with them instantly seized him and all his
people; and, though he had now above one thousand men, and the enemy who
had beaten Braddock did not at most exceed four hundred Indians and
French together, instead of proceeding, and endeavoring to recover some
of the lost honor, he ordered all the stores, ammunition, etc., to be
destroyed, that he might have more horses to assist his flight toward
the settlements, and less lumber to remove. He was there met with
requests from the governors of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania,
that he would post his troops on the frontiers, so as to afford some
protection to the inhabitants; but he continued his hasty march through
all the country, not thinking himself safe till he arrived at
Philadelphia, where the inhabitants could protect him. This whole
transaction gave us Americans the first suspicion that our exalted ideas
of the prowess of British regulars had not been well founded.

In their first march, too, from their landing till they got beyond the
settlements, they had plundered and stripped the inhabitants, totally
ruining some poor families, besides insulting, abusing, and confining
the people if they remonst