[Footnote 155:  Journal de Villiers, original.  Omitted in the Journal as printed by the French Government.  A short and very incorrect abstract of this Journal will be found in N.Y.  Col.  Docs., X.]

[Footnote 156:  See Appendix C. On the fight at Great Meadows, compare Sparks, Writings of Washington, II. 456-468; also a letter of Colonel Innes to Governor Hamilton, written a week after the event, in Colonial Records of Pa., VI. 50, and a letter of Adam Stephen in Pennsylvania Gazette, 1754.]

Washington reports that twelve of the Virginians were killed on the spot, and forty-three wounded, while on the casualties in Mackay’s company no returns appear.  Villiers reports his own loss at only twenty in all.[157] The numbers engaged are uncertain.  The six companies of the Virginia regiment counted three hundred and five men and officers, and Mackay’s company one hundred; but many were on the sick list, and some had deserted.  About three hundred and fifty may have taken part in the fight.  On the side of the French, Villiers says that the detachment as originally formed consisted of five hundred white men.  These were increased after his arrival at Fort Duquesne, and one of the party reports that seven hundred marched on the expedition.[158] The number of Indians joining them is not given; but as nine tribes and communities contributed to it, and as two barrels of wine were required to give the warriors a parting feast, it must have been considerable.  White men and red, it seems clear that the French force was more than twice that of the English, while they were better posted and better sheltered, keeping all day under cover, and never showing themselves on the open meadow.  There were no Indians with Washington.  Even the Half-King held aloof; though, being of a caustic turn, he did not spare his comments on the fight, telling Conrad Weiser, the provincial interpreter, that the French behaved like cowards, and the English like fools.[159]

[Footnote 157:  Dinwiddie writes to the Lords of Trade that thirty in all were killed, and seventy wounded, on the English side; and the commissary Varin writes to Bigot that the French lost seventy-two killed and wounded.]

[Footnote 158:  A Journal had from Thomas Forbes, lately a Private Soldier in the King of France’s Service. (Public Record Office.) Forbes was one of Villiers’ soldiers.  The commissary Varin puts the number of French at six hundred, besides Indians.]

[Footnote 159:  Journal of Conrad Weiser, in Colonial Records of Pa., VI. 150.  The Half-King also remarked that Washington “was a good-natured man, but had no experience, and would by no means take advice from the Indians, but was always driving them on to fight by his directions; that he lay at one place from one full moon to the other, and made no fortifications at all, except that little thing upon the meadow, where he thought the French would come up to him in open field.”]