The overtures of peace were accepted, and the Delawares, Shawanoes, and Mingoes were no longer enemies of the English.  The loss was the more disheartening to the French, since, some weeks before, they had gained a success which they hoped would confirm the adhesion of all their wavering allies.  Major Grant, of the Highlanders, had urged Bouquet to send him to reconnoitre Fort Duquesne, capture prisoners, and strike a blow that would animate the assailants and discourage the assailed.  Bouquet, forgetting his usual prudence, consented; and Grant set out from the camp at Loyalhannon with about eight hundred men, Highlanders, Royal Americans, and provincials.  On the fourteenth of September, at two in the morning, he reached the top of the rising ground thenceforth called Grant’s Hill, half a mile or more from the French fort.  The forest and the darkness of the night hid him completely from the enemy.  He ordered Major Lewis, of the Virginians, to take with him half the detachment, descend to the open plain before the fort, and attack the Indians known to be encamped there; after which he was to make a feigned retreat to the hill, where the rest of the troops were to lie in ambush and receive the pursuers.  Lewis set out on his errand, while Grant waited anxiously for the result.  Dawn was near, and all was silent; till at length Lewis returned, and incensed his commander by declaring that his men had lost their way in the dark woods, and fallen into such confusion that the attempt was impracticable.  The morning twilight now began, but the country was wrapped in thick fog.  Grant abandoned his first plan, and sent a few Highlanders into the cleared ground to burn a warehouse that had been seen there.  He was convinced that the French and their Indians were too few to attack him, though their numbers in fact were far greater than his own.[659] Infatuated with this idea, and bent on taking prisoners, he had the incredible rashness to divide his force in such a way that the several parts could not support each other.  Lewis, with two hundred men, was sent to guard the baggage two miles in the rear, where a company of Virginians, under Captain Bullitt, was already stationed.  A hundred Pennsylvanians were posted far off on the right, towards the Alleghany, while Captain Mackenzie, with a detachment of Highlanders, was sent to the left, towards the Monongahela.  Then, the fog having cleared a little, Captain Macdonald, with another company of Highlanders, was ordered into the open plain to reconnoitre the fort and make a plan of it, Grant himself remaining on the hill with a hundred of his own regiment and a company of Maryland men.  “In order to put on a good countenance,” he says, “and convince our men they had no reason to be afraid, I gave directions to our drums to beat the reveille.  The troops were in an advantageous post, and I must own I thought we had nothing to fear.”  Macdonald was at this time on the plain, midway between the woods and the fort, and in full sight of it.