Braddock showed a furious intrepidity.  Mounted on horseback, he dashed to and fro, storming like a madman.  Four horses were shot under him, and he mounted a fifth.  Washington seconded his chief with equal courage; he too no doubt using strong language, for he did not measure words when the fit was on him.  He escaped as by miracle.  Two horses were killed under him, and four bullets tore his clothes.  The conduct of the British officers was above praise.  Nothing could surpass their undaunted self-devotion; and in their vain attempts to lead on the men, the havoc among them was frightful.  Sir Peter Halket was shot dead.  His son, a lieutenant in his regiment, stooping to raise the body of his father, was shot dead in turn.  Young Shirley, Braddock’s secretary, was pierced through the brain.  Orme and Morris, his aides-de-camp, Sinclair, the quartermaster-general, Gates and Gage, both afterwards conspicuous on opposite sides in the War of the Revolution, and Gladwin, who, eight years later, defended Detroit against Pontiac, were all wounded.  Of eighty-six officers, sixty-three were killed or disabled;[226] while out of thirteen hundred and seventy-three noncommissioned officers and privates, only four hundred and fifty-nine came off unharmed.[227]

[Footnote 226:  A List of the Officers who were present, and of those killed and wounded, in the Action on the Banks of the Monongahela, 9 July, 1755 (Public Record Office, America and West Indies, LXXXII).]

[Footnote 227:  Statement of the engineer, Mackellar.  By another account, out of a total, officers and men, of 1,460, the number of all ranks who escaped was 583.  Braddock’s force, originally 1,200, was increased, a few days before the battle, by detachments from Dunbar.]

Braddock saw that all was lost.  To save the wreck of his force from annihilation, he at last commanded a retreat; and as he and such of his officers as were left strove to withdraw the half-frenzied crew in some semblance of order, a bullet struck him down.  The gallant bulldog fell from his horse, shot through the arm into the lungs.  It is said, though on evidence of no weight, that the bullet came from one of his own men.  Be this as it may, there he lay among the bushes, bleeding, gasping, unable even to curse.  He demanded to be left where he was.  Captain Stewart and another provincial bore him between them to the rear.

It was about this time that the mob of soldiers, having been three hours under fire, and having spent their ammunition, broke away in a blind frenzy, rushed back towards the ford, “and when,” says Washington, “we endeavored to rally them, it was with as much success as if we had attempted to stop the wild bears of the mountains.”  They dashed across, helter-skelter, plunging through the water to the farther bank, leaving wounded comrades, cannon, baggage, the military chest, and the General’s papers, a prey to the Indians.  About fifty of these followed to the edge of the river.  Dumas and Ligneris, who had now only about twenty Frenchmen with them, made no attempt to pursue, and went back to the fort, because, says Contrecoeur, so many of the Canadians had “retired at the first fire.”  The field, abandoned to the savages, was a pandemonium of pillage and murder.[228]