the now invisible assailants.  Few of them were hurt; the trees caught the shot, but the noise was deafening under the dense arches of the forest.  The greater part of the Canadians, to borrow the words of Dumas, “fled shamefully, crying ’Sauve qui peut!’"[224] Volley followed volley, and at the third Beaujeu dropped dead.  Gage’s two cannon were now brought to bear, on which the Indians, like the Canadians, gave way in confusion, but did not, like them, abandon the field.  The close scarlet ranks of the English were plainly to be seen through the trees and the smoke; they were moving forward, cheering lustily, and shouting “God save the King.”  Dumas, now chief in command, thought that all was lost.  “I advanced,” he says, “with the assurance that comes from despair, exciting by voice and gesture the few soldiers that remained.  The fire of my platoon was so sharp that the enemy seemed astonished.”  The Indians, encouraged, began to rally.  The French officers who commanded them showed admirable courage and address; and while Dumas and Ligneris, with the regulars and what was left of the Canadians, held the ground in front, the savage warriors, screeching their war-cries, swarmed through the forest along both flanks of the English, hid behind trees, bushes, and fallen trunks, or crouched in gullies and ravines, and opened a deadly fire on the helpless soldiery, who, themselves completely visible, could see no enemy, and wasted volley after volley on the impassive trees.  The most destructive fire came from a hill on the English right, where the Indians lay in multitudes, firing from their lurking-places on the living target below.  But the invisible death was everywhere, in front, flank, and rear.  The British cheer was heard no more.  The troops broke their ranks and huddled together in a bewildered mass, shrinking from the bullets that cut them down by scores.

[Footnote 223:  Journal of the Proceeding of the Detachment of Seamen, in Sargent.]

[Footnote 224:  Dumas au Ministre, 24 Juillet, 1756.  Contrecoeur a Vaudreuil, 14 Juillet, 1755.  See Appendix D, where extracts are given.]

When Braddock heard the firing in the front, he pushed forward with the main body to the support of Gage, leaving four hundred men in the rear, under Sir Peter Halket, to guard the baggage.  At the moment of his arrival Gage’s soldiers had abandoned their two cannon, and were falling back to escape the concentrated fire of the Indians.  Meeting the advancing troops, they tried to find cover behind them.  This threw the whole into confusion.  The men of the two regiments became mixed together; and in a short time the entire force, except the Virginians and the troops left with Halket, were massed in several dense bodies within a small space of ground, facing some one way and some another, and all alike exposed without shelter to the bullets that pelted them like hail.  Both men and officers were new to this blind and frightful