e Pennsylvania farmers. Issuing a handbill
addressed to their interests and their fears, and exciting among the
Germans an apprehension of an arbitrary impressment to be enforced by
Sir John St. Clair, "the Hussar," he was soon able to provide the
general with the means of transportation.[473:A] It was a long time
before Franklin recovered compensation for the farmers; Governor Shirley
at length paid the greater part of the amount, twenty thousand pounds;
but it is said that owing to the neglect of Lord Loudoun, Franklin was
never wholly repaid. Washington and Franklin were both held in high
estimation by Braddock, and they were unconsciously co-operating with
him in a war destined in its unforeseen consequences to dismember the
British empire.

Braddock's army, with its baggage extending (along a road twelve feet
wide) sometimes four miles in length, moved from Fort Cumberland, at the
mouth of Will's Creek, early in June, and advanced slowly and with
difficulty, five miles being considered a good day's march. There was
much sickness among the soldiers: Washington was seized with a fever,
and obliged to travel in a covered wagon. Braddock, however, continued
to consult him, and he advised the general to disencumber himself of his
heavy guns and unnecessary baggage, to leave them with a rear division,
and to press forward expeditiously to Fort Du Quesne. In a council of
war it was determined that Braddock should advance as rapidly as
possible with twelve hundred select men, and Colonel Dunbar follow on
slowly with a rear-guard of about six hundred,--a number of the soldiers
being disabled by sickness. The advance corps proceeded only nineteen
miles in four days, losing occasionally a straggler, cut off by the
French and Indian scouts. Trees were found near the road stripped of
their barks and painted, and on them the French had written many of
their names and the number of scalps recently taken, with many insolent
threats and scurrilous bravados.

Washington was now (by the general's order) compelled to stop, his
physician declaring that his life would be jeoparded by a continuance
with the army, and Braddock promising that he should be brought up with
it before it reached Fort Du Quesne. On the day before the battle of the
Monongahela, Washington, in a wagon, rejoined the army, at the mouth of
the Youghiogany River, and fifteen miles from Fort Du Quesne. On the
morning of Wednesday, the 9th of July, 1755, the troops, i