e lips of diplomacy, was,
with equally pacific assurances, promptly checkmated by France.
Eighteen ships of war, carrying the six battalions of La Reine,
Bourgogne, Languedoc, Guienne, Artois, and Bearn, and convoyed by an
auxiliary squadron of nine battleships, were hurried off to New France
under the joint command of Baron Dieskau and the Marquis de Vaudreuil,
the new Governor of Quebec. As in the case of former expeditions on so
large a scale, some of the vessels failed to reach their destination,
and two frigates fell into the hands of Admiral Boscawen, who had
secret orders to intercept this French flotilla.

Braddock and his thousand regulars were now regarded as the salvation
of the English colonies, whose representatives had at last agreed upon
a scheme for defending their frontiers. The English general, it was
decided, should destroy Fort Duquesne, Governor Shirley attacking the
French fort of Niagara; while Colonel William Johnson, a settler of
the Upper Hudson, and chiefly remarkable for his influence with the
Mohawks, was to proceed against Crown Point. None of these intentions
was fulfilled in its entirety, although Johnson, in the course of his
operations in the district of Lake Champlain, was able to inflict a
crushing defeat upon the French under Dieskau, and on the scene of
his triumph to erect Fort William Henry.

[Illustration: SIR HUGH PALLISER, BART.
(Raised first English flag over Quebec, 1759)]

The feature of the summer campaign of 1755 was, however, the fate of
Braddock and his column. Setting out from Fort Cumberland on the
Potomac, the English General made his way north-westward at the head
of twenty-two hundred men, four hundred and fifty of these being
veteran Virginians under the command of Colonel George Washington. But
the overweening Braddock considered these raw colonials to be the
least effective of his troops. From the first the progress of this
imposing force was painfully slow. "Instead of pushing on with vigour
without regarding a little rough road," writes George Washington, "we
were halted to level every mole-hill, and compelled to erect bridges
over every brook, by which means we were four days in getting twelve
miles." Declining colonial advice, Braddock preferred to regulate his
motions by the text-book of war; and as he knew nothing of the country
through which he made his way, and still less of the tactics of his
foe, the sequel was almost inevitable.

"It was th