their numbers were to be raised by enlistment to seven hundred.[183] Major-General Braddock, a man after the Duke of Cumberland’s own heart, was appointed to the chief command.  The two regiments—­the forty-fourth and the forty-eighth—­embarked at Cork in the middle of January.  The soldiers detested the service, and many had deserted.  More would have done so had they foreseen what awaited them.

[Footnote 182:  Entick, Late War, I. 118.]

[Footnote 183:  Robinson to Lords of the Admiralty, 30 Sept. 1754.  Ibid., to Board of Ordnance, 10 Oct. 1754.  Ibid., Circular Letter to American Governors, 26 Oct. 1754.  Instructions to our Trusty and Well-beloved Edward Braddock, 25 Nov. 1754.]

This movement was no sooner known at Versailles than a counter expedition was prepared on a larger scale.  Eighteen ships of war were fitted for sea at Brest and Rochefort, and the six battalions of La Reine, Bourgogne, Languedoc, Guienne, Artois, and Bearn, three thousand men in all, were ordered on board for Canada.  Baron Dieskau, a German veteran who had served under Saxe, was made their general; and with him went the new governor of French America, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, destined to succeed Duquesne, whose health was failing under the fatigues of his office.  Admiral Dubois de la Motte commanded the fleet; and lest the English should try to intercept it, another squadron of nine ships, under Admiral Macnamara, was ordered to accompany it to a certain distance from the coast.  There was long and tedious delay.  Doreil, commissary of war, who had embarked with Vaudreuil and Dieskau in the same ship, wrote from the harbor of Brest on the twenty-ninth of April:  “At last I think we are off.  We should have been outside by four o’clock this morning, if M. de Macnamara had not been obliged to ask Count Dubois de la Motte to wait till noon to mend some important part of the rigging (I don’t know the name of it) which was broken.  It is precious time lost, and gives the English the advantage over us of two tides.  I talk of these things as a blind man does of colors.  What is certain is that Count Dubois de la Motte is very impatient to get away, and that the King’s fleet destined for Canada is in very able and zealous hands.  It is now half-past two.  In half an hour all may be ready, and we may get out of the harbor before night.”  He was again disappointed; it was the third of May before the fleet put to sea.[184]

[Footnote 184:  Lettres de Cremille, de Rostaing, et de Doreil au Ministre, Avril 18, 24, 28, 29, 1755.  Liste des Vaisseaux de Guerre qui composent l’Escadre armee a Brest, 1755.  Journal of M. de Vaudreuil’s Voyage to Canada, in N.Y.  Col.  Docs., X. 297.  Pouchot, I. 25.]