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 Braddock and ending, after (it is said) two hours' fighting, in a panic-stricken rout. Braddock, who strove bravely to re-form his men, after having several horses shot under him, was himself struck down by a bullet, which passed through his right arm and lodged in the body. His aide-de-camp Orme and some provincial officers with great difficulty had him carried off the field. He rallied sufficiently to give directions for succouring the wounded, but gradually sank and died at sundown on Sunday, 13 July 1755, at a halting-place called Great Meadows, between fifty and sixty miles from the battlefield. 'We shall know better how to deal with them next time' were his last words as he rallied momentarily before expiring. He was buried before dawn in the middle of the track, and the precaution was taken of passing the vehicles of the retreating force, now reduced to some degree of order, over the grave, to efface whatever might lead to desecration by the pursuers. Long after, in 1823, the grave was rifled by labourers employed in the construction of the national road hard by, and some of the bones, still distinguishable by military trappings, were carried off. Others were buried at the foot of a broad spreading oak, which marks or marked the locality, about a mile to the west of Fort Necessity.

No portrait of Braddock is known to exist, but he is described as rather short and stout in person in his later years. To failings common among military men of his day he added the unpopular defects of a hasty temper and a coarse, self-assertive manner, but his fidelity and honour as a public servant have never been questioned, even by those who have portrayed his character in darkest colours. He was a severe disciplinarian, but his severity, like his alleged incapacity as a general, has probably been exaggerated. The difficulties he appears to have encountered at every step have been forgotten, as well as the fact that the ponderous discipline in which he had been trained from his youth up, and which was still associated with the best traditions of the English foot, had never before been in serious collision with the tactics of the backwoods. Two shrewd observers among those who knew him personally judged him less harshly than have most later critics. Wolfe, on the first tidings of the disaster, wrote of Braddock as 'a man of courage and good sense, although not a master of the art of war,' and added emphatic testimony to the wretched discipline of most line regiments at the time (, Life of Wolfe, p. 324). Benjamin Franklin said of him : 'He was, I think, a brave man, and might have made a good figure in some European war, but he had too much self-confidence, and had too high an idea of the validity of European troops, and too low a one of Americans and Indians' (, Franklin, i. 140). One of Braddock's order-books, said to have belonged to Washington, is preserved in the library of Congress, and a silken military sash, worked with the date 1707, and much stained as with blood, which is believed to have been Braddock's sash, is in the possession of the family of the late General Zachary Taylor, United States army, into whose hands it came during the Mexican war. In after years more than one individual sought a shameful notoriety by claiming to have traitorously given Braddock his death-wound during the fight. Mr. Winthrop Sargent has exposed the absurdity of these stories. One is reproduced in 'Notes and Queries,' 3rd ser. xii. 5. Braddock had two sisters, who received from their father a respectable fortune of 6,000l., and both of whom predeceased their brother. The unhappy fate of Fanny Braddock, the surviving sister, who committed suicide at Bath in 1739, has been recorded by Goldsmith (Miscellaneous Works, Prior's ed. iii. 294). Descendants of a brother were stated in 'Notes and Queries' (1st ser. xi. 72) some time back to be living at Martham in Norfolk, in humble circumstances, and to believe themselves entitled to a considerable amount of money, the papers relating to which had been lost. No account has been found of moneys standing to the credit of Braddock or his representatives in any public securities.

The accounts of the Fort Duquesne expedition published at the time appear to have been mostly catchpenny productions; but two authentic narratives are in existence. Of these one is the manuscript journal of Braddock's favourite aide-de-camp, Captain Orme, Coldstream guards, who afterwards retired from the service and died in 1781. This is now No. 212 King's MSS. in British Museum. The other is the manuscript diary of a naval officer attached to Braddock's force, which is now in the possession of the Rev. F. O. Morris of Nunburnholme Rectory, Yorkshire, by whom it was published some years ago under the title, 'An Account of the Battle on the Monagahela River, from an original document by one of the survivors' (London, 1854, 8vo). Copies of these journals have been embodied with a mass of information from American and French sources by Mr. Winthrop Sargent, in an exhaustive monograph forming vol. v. of 'Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania' (Philadelphia, 1856). A map of Braddock's route was prepared from traces found still extant in 1846, when a railway survey was in progress in the locality, and first appeared in a Pittsburg periodical, entitled 'Olden Time' (vol. ii.) An excel-