University of Virginia Library

LEGEND EIGHTH.
THE BATTLE OF MONONGAHELA.

“General,” said young Washington, with an
earnestness in his tone that would have
penetrated any heart, not stultified by self-conceit,
“with twelve men, I will traverse
yonder thickets, and defend our army from a
fatal surprise.”

The young soldier as he spoke bent over
the neck of his bay steed, and his pale face,
shadowed in the forehead by his hat, was
touched in the cheeks by the noon-day sun.

Braddock smiled —

And at the moment, a column of smoke, rose
from the hill-side into the sky — there was a
sound as of one column of armed men recoiling
on another — from every side pealed the
rifle-shot mingled with that war-cry which
makes the blood sun cold even in a veteran's
veins.

The smile passed from Braddock's face.

Casting his gaze toward the hill-top, he
beheld his first division half lost to view amid
clouds and flame. He saw a sheeted blaze
pouring from the shadows of the trees. He
heard the cry which pealed from the wood,
from the ravine — echoing, thrilling, from
every side into the calm Heaven.

“The Indians and the French are upon us!”
he cried, turning his flushed face toward young
Washington.

At the same moment, the white plume which
crowned his chapeau was borne away by a
rifle shot.

“General,” cried Washington, “there is but
one way to save our army from defeat and
massacre. Let our men fight under shelter,
and then every rock will be a fort, every tree
a castle —”

With a sneer on his colorless lip, the
General turned away.

“That is not the way for an Englishman to
fight,” he said.

But as he spoke, the first division came
rushing in wild disorder from the top of the
hill — soon its panic-stricken soldiers communicated
their panic to the second — and from
the second to the third, like lightning from one
cloud to another, that panic leapt, until amid
the clouds which rushed over the scene, nothing
was seen but broken ranks, falling back before
a deadly fire.

How the voice of the battle awoke the
wilderness, and filled every nook of the forest
with the groans of dying men! Dying afar
from country and from home, not in open fight,
or by a foe, whose eyes flashed in their faces as
his arm fell in the death-blow, but by the hand
of an enemy who crouched in the thicket, and
murdered securely from the shadow of a rock.

Behold the scene. This band of twelve
hundred men, scattered over the hill-side, are
shut in by a wall of fire. They advance and
they are dead. They retreat, and their path
is choked by corpses, which a moment since
were living men. They move to his side, and
death flashes upon them from yonder log. On
to the other, and they are mown to pieces by
the fire from those collosal oaks.

And Braddock, hoarse with shouting and
blind with rage, sends the gallant men of his
staff whirling over the field.

“Let them form in regular order. Let them
fight like Englishmen, and the day is ours.”

And to his side there comes a wounded
horse, bearing the young Virginian, whose
hunting shirt, is torn into ribbons by the bullets
of the foe.

“General,” he cries, “it is not yet too late.
Let our men fight the enemy in their own way

— let them fight behind cover — and the day is
ours.”

The words have not passed his lips, when
his horse reels under him, and sprinkles the
sod with blood. Then young Washington
starting from his dying horse, springs to his
feet, and awaits the answer of Braddock, his
pale face now flushing fast with the fever of
battle.

An oath escapes the lips of the Briton.

“No, sir. The men shall fight as Englishmen
or not at all!” he shouts, and dashes to
another part of the field.

Half-way down the hill-side, encircled by
the sudden clouds of battle, the young Virginian
stood, one foot resting upon the flank of
his dying steed, whose glassy eye was once
upturned toward his master's face, and then
cold and dark forever.

His cheek was no longer pale — flushed
with the impulse of the fight, it gave a deeper
light to his eye, while his brow grew radiant
with a sombre delight.

It was in this moment, when the fire of the
irresistible foe, hurled panic and death into the
“exact” order of the British army, that young
Washington lingered for a moment near his
dead steed, and took in with an eager glance
the confused details of the scene.

Clouds of white smoke, tinged here and
there with a midnight fold, rolled over the hill-side,
and hung over the river, reaching from
forest to forest, above the waters, like a bridge
of death.

Among these clouds, through the intervals
made by the musquet flash or rifle blaze, the
British host, no longer joined in compact
lines, but broken into confused crowds, was
visible. From the hill-top and from the ravines
on either hand; nay, from every log and
tree streamed the incessant blaze which strewed
the sod with dead and dying. And the calm
sky was choked by battle cloud — the awful
stillness of the virgin forest was succeeded by
the howl of demoniac carnage.

This was the scene which Washington beheld
as resting one foot upon the flank of his
dead horse, he cast a hurried glance around
him.

Braddock was there — upon his horse, which
panted and reared among heaps of dead — his
voice came hoarsely down the hill as he en
deavored to rally his men into parade order,
and force them to fight this battle in “regular”
style.

Washington groaned in anguish. He had
warned the General of the ambush — had besought
him, almost with tears, to move forward
with caution — and now, his warnings disregarded,
his prayers met with scorn, he beheld
twelve hundred men at the mercy of a hidden
foe.

“The day is not yet lost!” he cried, as a
hope brightened over his face.

“George!” said a gruff voice, and a hard
hand was laid upon his own.

The giant hunter,[1] clad in his costume of
skins, half concealed by a hunting shirt, stood
before him. The blood trickled over his sunburnt
cheek, but he grasped his good rifle in
one hand, while the other held the rein of a
frightened and riderless horse.

“George,” said the hunter, with gruff familiarity,
“thou'rt the only man can save us today.
Here's a horse, boy — mount him, and
tell that fool of a Britisher, that we don't
fight French and Ingins in this 'ere style. Tell
him that we can fight 'em in their own way,
but it is not our fashion to walk up to death
and swallow it, in this fool-hardy manner.”

Not a word more was spoken. With a
bound Washington sprang into the saddle — you
may see his form, yonder amid the mists of
battle — you may trace the fiery circles of his
sword above the lurid clouds.

The hunter gazed after him with a grim
smile, and then plunged into the smoke.

Near the top of the hill, his face purpled by
rage, Braddock mounted on a fresh horse —
two had fallen under him — was hurrying his
aids over the field, while the bullets whistled
like hail over his head, and about the long mane
of his war steed.

“General!” cried Washington, as he dashed
up to the side of the Briton — “once more let
me beseech you — change the order of this
conflict. It is folly, it is worse than folly, to
attempt to combat a hidden enemy in this style.
Let the Provincials, at least, fight behind
cover” —

In the very earnestness of the very moment
he leaned forward, his hunting shirt falling

back over his chest, and disclosing his blue
uniform. And at the very instant a button was
severed from his breast by a rifle ball.

Braddock did not even listen to the young
Virginian. Maddened by the terrible havoc
going on every hand — inflated by the peculiar
self-complacency which possesses mere
military men, over all the world, he bade his
aid-de-camp join with him in the attempt to
rally the panic-stricken troops, to display them
once more in regular lines, and march them
“exactly” to death, according to the tactics of
the regular army.

But at the moment a scene occurred which
paled even Braddock's cheek.

A band of Virginians, some eighty men in
all, fought their way up the hill-side, turned a
fallen tree, whose huge trunk, some five feet in
diameter, offered a convenient breast-work.
From the thicket, beyond that tree, streamed
the blaze of Indian rifles, and yet those men,
led on by their Captain, the brave Waggoner,
fought steadily up the hill-side, their blue hunting
frocks seen distinctly amid the clouds which
curled about the summit.

Their way is littered with dead; they cannot
advance but the corpse of a Briton, clad in
scarlet, glares in their faces with stony eyes.

Braddock saw them on their fearful way —
Washington, too, reining his brown steed near
the General's side, held his breath as he
marked each step of their progress.

The short sword of Waggoner gleaming in
their van — the heroic Virginians dashed
onward, and, leaving three of their number in
their path, they reach the fallen tree — they
are dealing death among the foemen hidden by
yonder thicket, when —

Braddock's cheek grew livid — Washington
uttered a cry of despair!

— When they are cut down, hewn into
fragments, crushed into one mangled heap of
living men, entangled among dead and dying.
Crushed not by a fire from their front, but by
a fire from the rear, mangled not by bullets of
the foe, but by the rifles of their comrades —
their brothers.

Captain Waggoner rose up from among the
heaps of dead, and shook his bloody knife in
the air, in witness of the fatal mismanagement
which had butchered thirty out of his eighty
men.

Washington saw that sword quivering and
gleaming from the hill-top, and with a cold
sneer on his face, turned to the regular general.

“You see, General,” he said, “those of our
men who mean to fight, are massacred by your
regular soldiers!”

Ere Braddock could reply, his horse sunk
beneath him, pierced in the heart by a rifle
bullet. He rises from the dying steed — he
shouts for a fresh horse — he plunges madly
to and fro in the thickest of the battle. Does
he learn wisdom by experience, does he bid
his men to maintain the fight behind the trunks
of these colossal trees? No — no! Determined
to enforce “regular tactics” and “correct
discipline” to the last moment, he speeds
wildly among his broken columns, never for a
moment pausing in his career, save to insult
some provincial band, who are holding battle
from the shelter of fallen trees.

There was a slender youth, clad in the
hunting frock, who loaded his rifle behind a
poplar tree which towered alone in the centre
of the field. His young breast protected by
this tree, he loaded in silence without even a
battle shout, and then, with lips compressed
and flashing eye, took his deadly aim, and saw
his distant foeman reel into death.

It was Braddock who marked this youth,
and reined his horse near the tree, pulling the
rein so suddenly, that the wild steed fell back
on his haunches.

“Coward!” cried he, turning his flushed
face towards the boy, “you dare not fight like
a man, but must skulk behind the shelter of a
tree —”

He leans over the neck of his steed; his
sword descends — the boy sinks on his knees,
and turns his disfigured face toward the British
General.

But Braddock was gone again. Urging his
horse over the dying and the dead, he hurries
to another part of the field, beholding everywhere
the same spectacle — broken crowds of
scarlet-coated soldiers, firing upon each other
while the hidden foe hems them on every hand,
and mows them incessantly into the great
harvest of death.

Meanwhile, the boy by the solitary poplar,
beaten to the earth by Braddock's sword,
wipes the blood from his eyes, and looks
around with a vague glance. His senses are

whirling in delirium; a word of home comes
to his white lip, mingled with the syllables of
a sister's name.

But there is a giant form bending over him;
a sunburnt face, streaked with blood, is gazing
into his own with dilating eyes. It is the
hunter, clad in a hunting shirt, spotted with
blood, but with his good rifle in his brawny
arm.

His own arm becomes nerveless, his harsh
voice faint and broken, as he bends over the
bleeding boy.

“Arthur,” he says, smoothing the brown
locks of the boy aside from his bloody forehead
— “who has done this? Tell me, child
— tell me;” — an oath escaped from between
his set teeth — “and if he's hidden behind a
hundred yards of French and Ingins I'll pay
him for it, afore this day's an hour older!”

The boy passed one hand over his eyes, and
wiped the blood away.

“Brother,” he faintly said, and a smile of
recognition passed his pale face — “It was a
sword * * * * In Braddock's hand. *
* * * You see, he did not like it, because
I fought behind a tree.”

The stern backwoodsman rose and clutched
his rifle. The cords of his bared neck began
to swell; a hoarse cry came from his heaving
chest.

And then, while his young brother lay
bleeding at the foot of the poplar tree, the sunburnt
man, with the great tears starting over
his tawny cheeks, began to load his rifle in
silence, but with much prudence and care.

“That ball is for him, Arthur — I shan't
fire this rifle until his heart lies afore it, and
that's a sartin thing!”

With these words he turned away, measuring
the sod with immense strides. He had
not gone ten paces, when a sudden thought
came over him.

“The boy will die,” he muttered, and
turned away.

He drew near, but no voice greeted him this
time with the word “brother.” Where he
had left a wounded form, bathed on the brow
with streaming blood, now was only a corpse,
propped against the tree, the rifle fallen from
its stiffened fingers, and the cold lips parting in
a smile.

There was a stain upon his breast, near the
heart — a stray bullet had completed the work
begun by Braddock's sword.

It would have moved your heart to see the
rugged backwoodsman, gazing silently into the
face of the dead boy. Few words he said,
but they were spoken with a heaving heart and
choking utterance.

“Arthur, my child, you staid at home with
the old folks in the settlements yonder, while
your brother went out to seek his fortin'
among b'ars and Ingins in the woods. A bold
fellow I've been — many a rough fight I've
had — but I don't want to see two days like
this in a life time. This mornin', when I
came to jine the army, I thought you was far
away — safe at home — it's the first time I've
seen your face for many a day. An' now
they're waitin' for you, — father and mother,
— and here you are, cut down like a dog, by
Braddock's sword.”

A gleam of battle light reddened the pale
features of the dead boy.

The giant hunter turned away, grasping the
rifle which embodied the fate of the army, the
destiny of Braddock. He turned away, and
soon was lost among the clouds — after a
while we will behold him again.

For three hours the work of massacre went
on. Five horses were shot beneath the British
General as he hurried madly over the field, but
all his efforts were vain. His artillery and
infantry, mingled at first in sad disorder, were
soon mingled in one common havoc. For
three hours the blood shed on the hill-side
trickled down through the grass, and fell drop
by drop into the Monongahela. For three
hours that girdle of flame shut in the doomed
army, and when the third hour came, and the
sun, as if weary of slaughter, veiled his beams
in a lurid cloud, seven hundred men were
stretched upon the sod.

Seven hundred dead and dying, out of an
army of twelve hundred men, slain in a combat
of three hours, by a hidden foe!

Sixty officers, brave and gallant; the flower
of Virginian chivalry and the pride of the regular
army, were stretched among the slain.

And as the work of carnage goes on, where
is Washington, the youth of twenty-three,
whose grey eye, already fires with precocious
experience?

Many and thrilling are the traditions which

the old soldiers of the field — the few survivors
of its carnage — have handed from the
history of their hearts down to our day.

Mounted on a dark bay he had crossed the
river, his pale cheek touched by a solitary
flush, but his grey eyes full of indefinable foreboding.

The bay horse had fallen dead beneath him
in the dawn of the fight.

Next, his commanding form, roused into all
its vigor by the frenzy of battle, was borne
over the field by a generous roan horse, whose
eye dilated with the fury of the hour.

And the generous roan had fallen, too, under
his young rider, howling his last war cry as
his broken limbs crumbled beneath him.

But now, mounted upon a grey horse, his
forehead bared to the battle flash, and his uniform
riddled by bullet-holes, Washington is
seen where the fire of the enemy illumines the
verge of the ravine; where the Indian yell
mocks the anguish of the dying — where the
hill-top gleams like a funeral pyre, with bayonets
and rifle blaze.

Now confronting this havoc-stricken band
of regulars, hurling his horse before them, and
daring them to fly the field; now rallying
yonder group of Continentals, and leading
them to the hopeless charge; at one time, beside
the infuriated Braddock, listening to his
mad commands, at another, whirling like an
arrow over the hill side, into the very vortex
of battle.

It was thus that the grey horse became
known to friend and foe; it was amid the corses
of Braddock's field beside the waters of the
Monongahela, that the name of Washington
was first stamped upon the hearts of his countrymen,
to ripen into full glory upon a broader
and holier field.

And wherever the young Virginian went,
whether skirting the borders of the wood, or
riding in the centre of the fight, there was an
eye that followed his career; there was a rifle
levelled at his breast.

So, Braddock, wherever he rode, saw
through the mists of the scene, an eye watching
his progress, a rifle levelled at his heart.

There was this difference between the two.
It was an Indian who tracked the steps of
Washington, and hung like a red image of
death in his path. Three times he had fired
— he was the most fatal marksman in all his
tribe — and yet his balls had glanced from the
breast of Washington, like icicles from the
granite rock.

It was a gaunt form, almost gigantic in stature,
that followed Braddock through the mazes
of the scene. A backwoodsman, with a torn
hunting frock, fluttering over his garment of
skins. But never once had he fired. Many
times had the rifle rose, and the aim been taken,
but there was no report from the deadly
tube. He seemed, this unknown man, to delay
his fire, as an epicure pauses long, before
he touches the richest viand of his feast.

At last there come a moment — the bloodiest
and the darkest of all — near the close of
the third hour, when Washington reined his
grey horse near Braddock's side. It was near
the summit of the hill — they were encircled
by corpses; wherever their eyes turned was
the sight of a dying man, writhing in the last
agony, or a dead man's face, upturned to the
dark battle cloud.

Braddock's jet black horse — it was the
sixth he had bestrode on this fatal day — hung
his head over the neck of Washington's grey
steed, as the riders conversed in hurried and
subdued tones.

Braddock's gay uniform was sadly disfigured;
his face, livid under the eyes, was
stamped with a sullen despair.

Washington's visage, boldly marked against
the dark cloud — the forehead bare and the
eye gleaming — was radiant with a glorious
hope.

“General, I can save the wreck of our force,”
he said, in a pleading tone. “Permit me to
do it.”

At this moment, from a log, some few paces
behind the back of Washington, rose the image
of a gaunt backwoodsman, with levelled
rifle, and sunburnt face, compressed by a
deadly resolve.

And from a rock, fifty yards from the back
of Braddock, an Indian started into view, his
rifle poised — his red plume waving over his
visage — the death aim taken, and the finger
on the trigger.

Does the backwoodsman level his rifle at
the heart of Washington?

Does the Indian chief mean to slay the General
in the gay scarlet uniform?

No — no! Ten times the Indian has fired
at the heart of Washington; four bullets have
touched but not wounded him; six have left
him scatheless. If the eleventh does not kill,
the Indian will fire no more, assured that the
Great Spirit panoplies the youth of twenty-three
years.

And as for the Backwoodsman, this is his
first and last fire at the heart of Braddock. As
he loaded that rifle near the body of the dead
brother — he feels that its bullet is winged by
death.

And thus, the Indian behind Braddock, the
Backwoodsman at the back of Washington,
each take their fatal aim in the last hour of the
fatal fight.

“Permit me, General,” said the tremulous
voice of Washington, “permit me to save the
the wreck of our gallant band?”

There was a lull in the storm. Suddenly,
through the momentary stillness, two separate
sounds, from opposite sides, pealed on the air
like echo answering echo. Two rifle balls,
winged by death, hissed on their way.

One tore a fragment from the breast of
Washington's coat, but left the young hero
scatheless.

Braddock smiled as he marked the trace of
the bullet — and then fell on the neck of his
horse with a low groan. A bullet had
pierced his right arm, and buried itself in his
heart.

And the Indian chief fled into the thicket,
telling his red brothers how the Great Spirit
guarded the breast of the young man, mounted
on the grey horse — how steel could not
wound, nor bullet harm him — his heart was
as granite, his arm as iron, and his name destined
for great deeds in some future day.

And the gaunt hunter went slowly to the
foot of the poplar tree; and bent near the dead
boy, and wiped the blood, still warm, from his
cold features, saying, amid his anguish, two
simple words —

“My Brother!”

And the young Virginian, mounted on the
grey steed, rallied the wreck of the gallant
army, and — while artillery and baggage were
left, with the corpses of the slain, to the foe —
saw them cross once more the river, whose
waves now blushed as if in very shame for
the carnage, and a rude tumbril rolled onward;
bearing amid the broken columns the mangled
form of Braddock, who, in the delirium of his
wounds, kept ever repeating a single name —

“Washington.”