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42 the offensive or defensive; yet what might be absolutely necessary in the one, would be quite useless in the other." He well knew a determined stroke at Fort Duquesne, "a floodgate to open ruin and woe," was the only hope of the southern and central colonies. In the meantime he led a desperately exasperating life attempting to hold the frontier with his tatterdemalion army by following Pennsylvania's example of building a line of forts to defend the country. There was no destitution or distress of which he did not know; at times he was begging for blankets to cover his naked soldiers, and again for shoes and shirts; there were few guns in a state of repair and at times in days of danger hundreds flocked to him who could neither be fed nor armed. His life must have been known to Lord Fairfax who wrote in the following strain: "Such a medley of undisciplined militia must create you various troubles, but having Cæsar's Commentaries and perhaps Quintus Curtius, you have therein read of greater fatigues, murmurings, mutinies, and defections, than will probably come to your share." The fact