On hearing the firing, Braddock, leaving 400 men in the rear under Sir Peter Halket, to guard the baggage, advanced with the main body to support Gage; but, just as he came up, the soldiers, appalled by the fire which was mowing them down in scores, abandoned their cannon and fell back in confusion.  This threw the advancing force into disorder, and the two regiments became mixed together, massed in several dense bodies within a small space of ground, facing some one way and some another, all alike exposed, without shelter, to the hail of bullets.

Men and officers were alike new to warfare like this.  They had been taught to fight in line against solid masses of the enemy, and against an invisible foe like the present they were helpless.  The Virginians alone were equal to the emergency.  They at once adopted their familiar forest tactics, and, taking their post behind trees, began to fight the Indians in their own way.

Had Braddock been a man of judgment and temper, the fortunes of the day might yet have been retrieved, for the Virginians could have checked the Indians until the English troops were rallied and prepared to meet the difficulty; but, to Braddock, the idea of men fighting behind trees was at once cowardly and opposed to all military discipline, and he dashed forward on his horse, and with fierce oaths ordered the Virginians to form line.  A body of them, however, under Captain Waggoner, made a dash for a huge fallen tree, far out towards the lurking places of the Indians, and, crouching behind it, opened fire upon them; but the regulars, seeing the smoke among the bushes, took them for the enemy and, firing, killed many and forced the rest to return.

A few of the soldiers tried to imitate the Indians, and fight behind the trees, but Braddock beat them back with the flat of his sword, and forced them to stand with the others, who were now huddled in a mass, forming a target for the enemy’s bullets.  Lieutenant Colonel Burton led 100 of them towards a knoll from which the puffs came thickest, but he fell wounded, and his men, on whom the enemy instantly concentrated their fire, fell back.  The soldiers, powerless against the unseen foe, for afterwards some of the officers and men who escaped declared that, throughout the whole fight, they had not seen a single Indian, discharged their guns aimlessly among the trees.

They were half stupefied now with the terror and confusion of the scene, the rain of bullets, the wild yells which burst ceaselessly from their 600 savage foemen; while the horses, wild with terror and wounds, added to the confusion by dashing madly hither and thither.  Braddock behaved with furious intrepidity.  He dashed hither and thither, shouting and storming at the men, and striving to get them in order, and to lead them to attack the enemy.  Four horses were, one after the other, shot under him.  His officers behaved with equal courage and self devotion, and in vain attempted to lead on the men, sometimes advancing in parties towards the Indians, in hopes that the soldiers would follow them.  Sir Peter Halket was killed, Horne and Morris, the two aides-de-camp, Sinclair the quartermaster general, Gates, Gage, and Gladwin were wounded.  Of 86 officers, 63 were killed or disabled, while of non-commissioned officers and privates only 459 came off unharmed.