[Footnote 217:  Relation de Godefroy, in Shea, Bataille du Malangueule (Monongahela).]

[Footnote 218:  Dumas, however, declares that Beaujeu adopted the plan at his suggestion. Dumas au Ministre, 24 Juillet, 1756.]

[Footnote 219:  Relation depuis le Depart des Trouppes de Quebec jusqu’au 30 du Mois de Septembre, 1755.]

[Footnote 220:  Liste des Officiers, Cadets, Soldats, Miliciens, et Sauvages qui composaient le Detachement qui a ete au devant d’un Corps de 2,000 Anglois a 3 Lieues du Fort Duquesne, le 9 Juillet, 1755; joint a la Lettre de M. Bigot du 6 Aout, 1755.]

It was near one o’clock when Braddock crossed the Monongahela for the second time.  If the French made a stand anywhere, it would be, he thought, at the fording-place; but Lieutenant-Colonel Gage, whom he sent across with a strong advance-party, found no enemy, and quietly took possession of the farther shore.  Then the main body followed.  To impose on the imagination of the French scouts, who were doubtless on the watch, the movement was made with studied regularity and order.  The sun was cloudless, and the men were inspirited by the prospect of near triumph.  Washington afterwards spoke with admiration of the spectacle.[221] The music, the banners, the mounted officers, the troop of light cavalry, the naval detachment, the red-coated regulars, the blue-coated Virginians, the wagons and tumbrils, cannon, howitzers, and coehorns, the train of packhorses, and the droves of cattle, passed in long procession through the rippling shallows, and slowly entered the bordering forest.  Here, when all were over, a short halt was ordered for rest and refreshment.

[Footnote 221:  Compare the account of another eye-witness, Dr. Walker, in Hazard’s Pennsylvania Register, VI. 104.]

Why had not Beaujeu defended the ford?  This was his intention in the morning; but he had been met by obstacles, the nature of which is not wholly clear.  His Indians, it seems, had proved refractory.  Three hundred of them left him, went off in another direction, and did not rejoin him till the English had crossed the river.[222] Hence perhaps it was that, having left Fort Duquesne at eight o’clock, he spent half the day in marching seven miles, and was more than a mile from the fording-place when the British reached the eastern shore.  The delay, from whatever cause arising, cost him the opportunity of laying an ambush either at the ford or in the gullies and ravines that channelled the forest through which Braddock was now on the point of marching.

[Footnote 222:  Relation de Godefroy, in Shea, Bataille du Malangueule.]