e water-carriage, especially in its
western settlements, where its inhabitants have great numbers of carts,
waggons, and horses. Mr. Braddock should therefore certainly, in point
of prudence, have landed in Pennsylvania: the contract for supplying his
troops should have been made with some of the chief planters there, who
could easily have performed their engagements; and if his camp had been
formed near Frank's Town, or somewhere upon the south-west borders of
that province, he would have had but eighty miles to march from thence
to Fort Du Quesne, instead of an hundred and thirty miles that he had
to advance from Will's-Creek, where he did encamp, through roads neither
better nor more practicable than the other would have been. This error,
in the very beginning of the expedition, whether owing to an injudicious
preference fondly given to the Virginians in the lucrative job of
supplying these troops, or to any other cause, delayed the march of
the army for some weeks, during which it was in the utmost distress
for necessaries of all kinds; and would probably have defeated the
expedition entirely for that summer, had not the contractors found means
to procure some assistance from the back settlements of Pennsylvania.
But even when these supplies did arrive, they consisted of only fifteen
waggons, and an hundred draft horses, instead of an hundred and fifty
waggons and three hundred horses, which the Virginian contractors had
engaged to furnish, and the provisions were so bad that they could not
be used. However, some gentlemen in Pennsylvania, being applied to in
this exigency, amply made up for these deficiencies, and the troops were
by this means supplied with every thing they wanted. Another, and still
more fatal error was committed in the choice of the commander for
this expedition. Major-general Braddock, who was appointed to it, was
undoubtedly a man of courage, and expert in all the punctilios of
a review, having been brought up in the English guards; but he was
naturally very haughty, positive, and difficult of access; qualities ill
suited to the temper of the people amongst whom he was to command. His
extreme severity in matters of discipline had rendered him unpopular
among the soldiers; and the strict military education in which he had
been trained from his youth, and which he prided himself on scrupulously
following, made him hold the American militia in great contempt, because
they could not go through their