Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/251

 then covered, they suddenly attacked it in flanks and rear, cut to pieces, tomahawked and scalped the greater number, while the rest with the general saved their lives by becoming prisoners to the French, on whose mercy they threw themselves.[154]

The following year 1758, was productive of greater slaughter to the British, by the defeat of general Braddock's army of five thousand men, being surprised by the French and Indians in great force on the banks of the Monongahela, when within eight miles of Fort Du Quesne, then a wilderness, but now well inhabited and ornamented on the very spot by the handsome brick house and fine farm of judge Wallace.[155] The general and three fourths of the army, were shot down from behind trees, while in the parade of European tacticks, presenting four bold open fronts to the enemy, being formed in a hollow square. The few who escaped, did so under the protection of Col. since Gen. Washington's provincial militia, who by opposing a similar warfare against the savage enemy, covered the retreat of the few remaining regulars.

Some time afterwards in the same year, the fort capitulated to general Forbes, and the river Allegheny having made some encroachment on it by undermining its banks, a new and more extensive fortification of a square with four bas-*