Hocquart then asked the name of the British admiral; and on hearing it said: "I know him; he is a friend of mine." Being asked his own name in return, he had scarcely uttered it when the batteries of the "Dunkirk" belched flame and smoke, and volleyed a tempest of iron upon the crowded decks of the "Alcide." She returned the fire, but was forced at length to strike her colors. Rostaing, second in command of the troops, was killed; and six other officers, with about eighty men, were killed or wounded.1 At the same time the "Lis" was attacked and overpowered. She had on board eight companies of the battalions of La Reine and Languedoc. The third French ship, the "Dauphin," escaped under cover of a rising fog.

2

Here at last was an end to negotiation. The sword was drawn and brandished in the eyes of Europe.

1 Liste des Officiers tués et blessés dans le Combat de l'Alcide et du Lis. 2 Hocquart's account is given in full by Pichon, Lettres et Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Cap-Breton. The short account in Précis des Faits, 272, seems, too, to be drawn from Hocquart. Also Boscawen to Robinson, 22 June, 1755. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 24 Juillet, 1755. Entick, I. 137.

Some English accounts say that Captain Howe, in answer to the question, "Are we at peace, or war?" returned, "I don't know; but you had better prepare for war.' Boscawen places the action on the 10th, instead of the 8th, and puts the English loss at seven killed and twenty-seven

wounded.

CHAPTER VII.

ARRIVAL OF BRADDOCK

1755.

BRADDOCK.

HIS CHARACTER.

-

·COUNCIL AT ALEXAN DRIA. - PLAN OF THE CAMPAIGN. - APATHY OF THE COLONISTS. RAGE OF BRADDOCK - FRANKLIN. — FORT CUMBERLAND. · Сом. POSITION OF THE ARMY. - OFFENDED FRIENDS. THE MARCH. THE FRENCH FORT. - SAVAGE ALLIES. THE CAPTIVE. BEAU. JEU. - HE GOES ΤΟ MEET PASSAGE OF THE MONONGAHELA. THE SURPRISE. — THE BATTLE. - ROUT OF BRADHIS DEATH. INDIAN FEROCITY. — Reception of the Ill NEWS. WEAKNESS OF DUNBAR.- THE FRONTIER ABANDONED.

DOCK.

66

THE ENGLISH.

I HAVE the pleasure to acquaint you that General Braddock came to my house last Sunday night," writes Dinwiddie, at the end of February, to Governor Dobbs of North Carolina. Braddock had landed at Hampton from the ship "Centurion," along with young Commodore Keppel, who commanded the American squadron. "I am mighty glad," again writes Dinwiddie, "that the General is arrived, which I hope will give me some ease; for these twelve months past I have been a perfect slave." He conceived golden opinions of his guest. "He is, I think, a very fine officer, and a sensible, considerate gentleman. He and I live in great harmony."

Had he known him better, he might have praised him less. William Shirley, son of the Governor of

Massachusetts, was Braddock's secretary; and after an acquaintance of some months wrote to his friend Governor Morris: "We have a general most judiciously chosen for being disqualified for the service he is employed in in almost every respect. He may be brave for aught I know, and he is honest in pecuniary matters." 1 The astute Franklin, who also had good opportunity of knowing him, says: "This general was, I think, a brave man, and might probably have made a good figure in some European war. But he had too much selfconfidence; too high an opinion of the validity of regular troops; too mean a one of both Americans and Indians."2 Horace Walpole, in his function of gathering and immortalizing the gossip of his time, has left a sharply drawn sketch of Braddock in two letters to Sir Horace Mann, written in the

summer of this year: "I love to give you an idea of our characters as they rise upon the stage of history. Braddock is a very Iroquois in disposition. He had a sister who, having gamed away all her little fortune at Bath, hanged herself with a truly English deliberation, leaving only a note upon the table with those lines: To die is landing on some silent shore,' etc. When Braddock was told of it, he only said: 'Poor Fanny! I always thought she would play till she would be forced to tuck herself up." Under the name of Miss Sylvia S- Goldsmith, in his life of Nash, tells the story of this unhappy woman.

1 Shirley the younger to Morris, 23 May, 1755.

2 Franklin, Autobiography.

1755]

HIS CHARACTER.

189

She was a rash but warm-hearted creature, reduced to penury and dependence, not so much by a passion for cards as by her lavish generosity to a lover ruined by his own follies, and with whom her relations are said to have been entirely innocent. Walpole continues: "But a more ridiculous story of Braddock, and which is recorded in heroics by Fielding in his Covent Garden Tragedy, was an amorous discussion he had formerly with a Mrs. Upton, who kept him. He had gone the greatest lengths with her pin-money, and was still craving. One day, that he was very pressing, she pulled out her purse and showed him that she had but twelve or fourteen shillings left. He twitched it from her: Let me see that.' Tied up at the other end he found five guineas. He took them, tossed the empty purse in her face, saying: Did you mean to cheat me?' and never went near her more. Now you are acquainted with General Braddock."

He once had a duel with Colonel Gumley, Lady Bath's brother, who had been his great friend. As they were going to engage, Gumley, who had good-humor and wit (Braddock had the latter), said: Braddock, you are a poor dog! Here, take my purse; if you kill me, you will be forced to run away, and then you will not have a shilling to support you.' Braddock refused the purse, insisted on the duel, was disarmed, and would not even ask his life. However, with all his brutality, he has lately been gover nor of Gibraltar, where he made himself adored,

and where scarce any governor was endured before." 1

Another story is told of him by an accomplished actress of the time, George Anne Bellamy, whom Braddock had known from girlhood, and with whom his present relations seem to have been those of an elderly adviser and friend. "As we

were walking in the Park one day, we heard a poor fellow was to be chastised; when I requested the General to beg off the offender. Upon his application to the general officer, whose name was Dury, he asked Braddock how long since he had divested himself of the brutality and insolence of his manners? To which the other replied: You never knew me insolent to my inferiors. It is only to such rude men as yourself that I behave with the spirit which I think they deserve.'

Braddock made a visit to the actress on the evening before he left London for America. "Before we parted," she says, "the General told me that he should never see me more; for he was going with a handful of men to conquer whole nations; and to do this they must cut their way through unknown woods. He produced a map of the country, saying at the same time: 'Dear Pop, we are sent like sacrifices to the altar,'" 2— a strange presentiment for a man of his sturdy temper.

1 Letters of Horace Walpole (1866), II. 459, 461. It is doubtful if Braddock was ever governor of Gibraltar; though, as Mr. Sargent shows, he once commanded a regiment there.

2 Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy, written by herself, II. 204 (London, 1786).