chiefly Indians; and it seemed to me that almost every one of this company was carrying scalps.  After this came another company with a number of wagon-horses, and also a great many scalps.  Those that were coming in and those that had arrived kept a constant firing of small arms, and also the great guns in the fort, which were accompanied with the most hideous shouts and yells from all quarters, so that it appeared to me as though the infernal regions had broke loose.”

“About sundown I beheld a small party coming in with about a dozen prisoners, stripped naked, with their hands tied behind their backs and their faces and part of their bodies blacked; these prisoners they burned to death on the bank of Alleghany River, opposite the fort.  I stood on the fort wall until I beheld them begin to burn one of these men; they had him tied to a stake, and kept touching him with firebrands, red-hot irons, etc., and he screaming in a most doleful manner, the Indians in the meantime yelling like infernal spirits.  As this scene appeared too shocking for me to behold, I retired to my lodging, both sore and sorry.  When I came into my lodgings I saw Russel’s Seven Sermons, which they had brought from the field of battle, which a Frenchman made a present of to me.”

The loss of the French was slight, but fell chiefly on the officers, three of whom were killed, and four wounded.  Of the regular soldiers, all but four escaped untouched.  The Canadians suffered still less in proportion to their numbers, only five of them being hurt.  The Indians, who won the victory, bore the principal loss.  Of those from Canada, twenty-seven were killed and wounded; while the casualties among the Western tribes are not reported.[229] All of these last went off the next morning with their plunder and scalps, leaving Contrecoeur in great anxiety lest the remnant of Braddock’s troops, reinforced by the division under Dunbar, should attack him again.  His doubts would have vanished had he known the condition of his defeated enemy.

[Footnote 229:  Liste des Officiers, Soldats, Miliciens, et Sauvages de Canada qui out ete tues et blesses le 9 Juillet, 1755.]

In the pain and languor of a mortal wound, Braddock showed unflinching resolution.  His bearers stopped with him at a favorable spot beyond the Monongahela; and here he hoped to maintain his position till the arrival of Dunbar.  By the efforts of the officers about a hundred men were collected around him; but to keep them there was impossible.  Within an hour they abandoned him, and fled like the rest.  Gage, however, succeeded in rallying about eighty beyond the other fording-place; and Washington, on an order from Braddock, spurred his jaded horse towards the camp of Dunbar to demand wagons, provisions, and hospital stores.