[Footnote 660:  On Grant’s defeat, Grant to Forbes, no date, a long and minute report, written while a prisoner. Bouquet a Forbes, 17 Sept. 1758.  Forbes to Pitt, 20 Oct. 1758.  Vaudreuil au Ministre, 1 Nov. 1758. Letters from camp in Boston Evening Post, Boston Weekly Advertiser, Boston News Letter, and other provincial newspapers of the time. List of Killed, Wounded, and Missing in the Action of Sept. 14.  Gentleman’s Magazine, XXIX. 173. Hazard’s Pennsylvania Register, VIII. 141. Olden Time, I. 179.  Vaudreuil, with characteristic exaggeration, represents all Grant’s party as killed or taken, except a few who died of starvation.  The returns show that 540 came back safe, out of 813.]

The invalid General was deeply touched by this reverse, yet expressed himself with a moderation that does him honor.  He wrote to Bouquet from Raystown:  “Your letter of the seventeenth I read with no less surprise than concern, as I could not believe that such an attempt would have been made without my knowledge and concurrence.  The breaking in upon our fair and flattering hopes of success touches me most sensibly.  There are two wounded Highland officers just now arrived, who give so lame an account of the matter that one can draw nothing from them, only that my friend Grant most certainly lost his wits, and by his thirst of fame brought on his own perdition, and ran great risk of ours."[661]

[Footnote 661:  Forbes to Bouquet, 23 Sept. 1758.]

The French pushed their advantage with spirit.  Early in October a large body of them hovered in the woods about the camp at Loyalhannon, drove back a detachment sent against them, approached under cover of the trees, and, though beaten off, withdrew deliberately, after burying their dead and killing great numbers of horses and cattle.[662] But, with all their courageous energy, their position was desperate.  The militia of Louisiana and the Illinois left the fort in November and went home; the Indians of Detroit and the Wabash would stay no longer; and, worse yet, the supplies destined for Fort Duquesne had been destroyed by Bradstreet at Fort Frontenac.  Hence Ligneris was compelled by prospective starvation to dismiss the greater part of his force, and await the approach of his enemy with those that remained.

[Footnote 662:  Burd to Bouquet, 12 Oct. 1758.  Bouquet a Forbes, 13 Oct. 1758.  Forbes to Pitt, 20 Oct. 1758.  Letter from Loyalhannon, 14 Oct., in Olden Time, I. 180. Letters from camp, in Boston News Letter.  Ligneris a Vaudreuil, 18 Oct. 1758.  Vaudreuil au Ministre, 20 Nov. 1758.]