ery, sixty-two
out of eighty-six, were killed or wounded. Two hundred Frenchmen and
six hundred Indians achieved this signal victory. The only thing
that could be called fighting on the English side was done by
the Virginians, "the raw American militia," who, spread out as
skirmishers, met their foes on their own ground, and were cut off
after a desperate resistance almost to a man.

Washington at the outset flung himself headlong into the fight. He
rode up and down the field, carrying orders and striving to rally "the
dastards," as he afterwards called the regular troops. He endeavored
to bring up the artillery, but the men would not serve the guns,
although to set an example he aimed and discharged one himself. All
through that dreadful carnage he rode fiercely about, raging with the
excitement of battle, and utterly exposed from beginning to end. Even
now it makes the heart beat quicker to think of him amid the smoke and
slaughter as he dashed hither and thither, his face glowing and his
eyes shining with the fierce light of battle, leading on his own
Virginians, and trying to stay the tide of disaster. He had two horses
shot under him and four bullets through his coat. The Indians thought
he bore a charmed life, while his death was reported in the colonies,
together with his dying speech, which, he dryly wrote to his brother,
he had not yet composed.

When the troops broke it was Washington who gathered the fugitives and
brought off the dying general. It was he who rode on to meet Dunbar,
and rallying the fugitives enabled the wretched remnants to take up
their march for the settlements. He it was who laid Braddock in the
grave four days after the defeat, and read over the dead the solemn
words of the English service. Wise, sensible, and active in the
advance, splendidly reckless on the day of battle, cool and collected
on the retreat, Washington alone emerged from that history of disaster
with added glory. Again he comes before us as, above all things,
the fighting man, hot-blooded and fierce in action, and utterly
indifferent to the danger which excited and delighted him. But the
earlier lesson had not been useless. He now showed a prudence and
wisdom in counsel which were not apparent in the first of his
campaigns, and he no longer thought that mere courage was
all-sufficient, or that any enemy could be despised. He was plainly
one of those who could learn. His first experience had borne good
fruit, and now he