Braddock

Braddock, EDWARD, a British general, born in Perthshire, Scotland, about 1695, entered the Coldstream Guards in 1710, and was appointed major-general in 1754. Nine months later he sailed as commander against the French in America, and with a force of nearly 2000 British and provincial troops, reached the Monongahela, a branch of the Ohio, on July 8, 1755. Leaving the baggage behind, on the 9th he pushed forward with a chosen force to invest Fort Duquesne, on the present site of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. In spite of his obstinacy, he appears to have so far regarded the warnings of his American officers that he threw out flank and advance parties to guard against a surprise. He twice forded the Monongahela in order to avoid a dangerous defile; and it was on the right bank of the river that his advance guard was attacked by a party of about 900 French and Indians from the fort. Properly speaking, Braddock fell into no ambuscade; but the dense cover of the forest, of which the Indians immediately took advantage to surround his force, and his dogged insistence on his men fighting in line, instead of imitating the tactics of the foe, exposed the British as a helpless living target to a withering fire, to which they could make none but a desultory and uncertain return. After two hours' fighting, in which Braddock, whose bravery was never called in question, had four horses shot under him, and was mortally wounded while vainly trying to rally his men, the survivors made a hasty retreat under Washington, Braddock's aide-de- camp, the only one of his staff who escaped unhurt. No less than 63 out of 86 officers, and 914 out of 1373 men engaged, were either killed or wounded. The French loss was trifling. Braddock was carried from the field, and died July 13, 1755, at Great Meadows, about 60 miles from the scene of his fatal surprise. See Winthrop Sargent's monograph (Philadelphia, 1855), and Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe (1884).