Finally the army began to move, but so slowly and after so much delay that they did not reach Will’s Creek until the middle of May.  Here came another exasperating pause, relieved only by Franklin, who, by giving his own time, ability, and money, supplied the necessary wagons.  Then they pushed on again, but with the utmost slowness.  With supreme difficulty they made an elaborate road over the mountains as they marched, and did not reach the Little Meadows until June 16.  Then at last Braddock turned to his young aide for the counsel which had already been proffered and rejected many times.  Washington advised the division of the army, so that the main body could hurry forward in light marching order while a detachment remained behind and brought up the heavy baggage.  This plan was adopted, and the army started forward, still too heavily burdened, as Washington thought, but in somewhat better trim for the wilderness than before.  Their progress, quickened as it was, still seemed slow to Washington, but he was taken ill with a fever, and finally was compelled by Braddock to stop for rest at the ford of Youghiogany.  He made Braddock promise that he should be brought up before the army reached Fort Duquesne, and wrote to his friend Orme that he would not miss the impending battle for five hundred pounds.

As soon as his fever abated a little he left Colonel Dunbar, and, being unable to sit on a horse, was conveyed to the front in a wagon, coming up with the army on July 8.  He was just in time, for the next day the troops forded the Monongahela and marched to attack the fort.  The splendid appearance of the soldiers as they crossed the river roused Washington’s enthusiasm; but he was not without misgivings.  Franklin had already warned Braddock against the danger of surprise, and had been told with a sneer that while these savages might be a formidable enemy to raw American militia, they could make no impression on disciplined troops.  Now at the last moment Washington warned the general again and was angrily rebuked.

The troops marched on in ordered ranks, glittering and beautiful.  Suddenly firing was heard in the front, and presently the van was flung back on the main body.  Yells and war-whoops resounded on every side, and an unseen enemy poured in a deadly fire.  Washington begged Braddock to throw his men into the woods, but all in vain.  Fight in platoons they must, or not at all.  The result was that they did not fight at all.  They became panic-stricken, and huddled together, overcome with fear, until at last when Braddock was mortally wounded they broke in wild rout and fled.  Of the regular troops, seven hundred, and of the officers, who showed the utmost bravery, sixty-two out of eighty-six, were killed or wounded.  Two hundred Frenchmen and six hundred Indians achieved this signal victory.  The only thing that could be called fighting on the English side was done by the Virginians, “the raw American militia,” who, spread out as skirmishers, met their foes on their own ground, and were cut off after a desperate resistance almost to a man.