be attacked and by unequal numbers,” he promised beforehand to “withstand” them “if there are five to one,” adding, “I doubt not, but if you hear I am beaten, but you will, at the same [time,] hear that we have done our duty, in fighting as long [as] there was a possibility of hope,” and in this he was as good as his word.  When sickness detained him in the Braddock march, he halted only on condition that he should receive timely notice of when the fighting was to begin, and in that engagement he exposed himself so that “I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, altho’ death was levelling my companions on every side of me!” Not content with such an experience, in the second march on Fort Duquesne he “prayed” the interest of a friend to have his regiment part of the “light troops” that were to push forward in advance of the main army.

The same carelessness of personal danger was shown all through the Revolution.  At the battle of Brooklyn, on New York Island, at Trenton, Germantown, and Monmouth, he exposed himself to the enemy’s fire, and at the siege of Yorktown an eyewitness relates that “during the assault, the British kept up an incessant firing of cannon and musketry from their whole line.  His Excellency General Washington, Generals Lincoln and Knox with their aids, having dismounted, were standing in an exposed situation waiting the result.  Colonel Cobb, one of General Washington’s aids, solicitous for his safety, said to his Excellency, ’Sir, you are too much exposed here, had you not better step back a little?’ ‘Colonel Cobb,’ replied his Excellency, ’if you are afraid, you have liberty to step back.’” It is no cause for wonder that an officer wrote, “our army love their General very much, but they have one thing against him, which is the little care he takes of himself in any action.  His personal bravery, and the desire he has of animating his troops by example, make him fearless of danger.  This occasions us much uneasiness.”

[Illustration:  WASHINGTON’S TRANSCRIPT OF THE RULES OF CIVILITY, CIRCA 1744]

This fearlessness was equally shown by his hatred and, indeed, non-comprehension of cowardice.  In his first battle, upon the French surrendering, he wrote to the governor, “if the whole Detach’t of the French behave with no more Resolution than this chosen Party did, I flatter myself we shall have no g’t trouble in driving them to the d—–.”  At Braddock’s defeat, though the regiment he had commanded “behaved like men and died like soldiers,” he could hardly find words to express his contempt for the conduct of the British “cowardly regulars,” writing of their “dastardly behavior” when they “broke and ran as sheep before hounds,” and raging over being “most scandalously” and “shamefully beaten.”  When the British first landed on New York Island, and two New England brigades ran away from “a small party of the enemy,” numbering about fifty, without firing a shot, he completely lost his self-control