Braddock Expedition

The Braddock Expedition was a failed British attempt to capture the French Fort Duquesne in the summer of 1755 during the French and Indian War. The Expedition takes its name from General Edward Braddock, who led the British forces and died in the effort.

Contents

1 The Journey

2 The Battle

The Journey

Braddock commanded two regiments of the British Army (about 1,350 men) and about 500 regulars and militiamen from various British American colonies. Twenty-three year-old George Washington served as a volunteer aide-de-camp to General Braddock.¹

Braddock's attempt to recruit Native American allies from those tribes not yet allied with the French proved mostly unsuccessful; he had but eight Mingo Indians with him, serving as scouts. A number of Indians in the area, notably Delaware leader Shingas, remained neutral. Caught between two powerful European empires at war, local Indians could not afford to be on the side of the loser. Braddock's success or failure would influence their decisions.

Setting out from Fort Cumberland in Maryland on May 29, 1755, the Expedition faced an enormous logistical challenge: moving a large body of men with equipment, provisions, and (most importantly for the task ahead) heavy canon, across the densely wooded Allegheny Mountains and into western Pennsylvania, a journey of about 110 miles. Braddock had received important assistance from Benjamin Franklin, who helped procure wagons and supplies for the expedition. Among the wagoners, incidentally, were two young men who would later become legends of American history: Daniel Boone and Daniel Morgan.

The Expedition progressed slowly, in some cases moving as few as two miles a day, creating a road (Braddock's Road) as they went. To speed up movement, Braddock split his men into a "flying column" of about 1,500 men (commanded by him), and a supply column with most of the baggage, which lagged far behind. They passed the ruins of Fort Necessity along the way, where Washington had been defeated by the French the previous year. Small French and Indian war bands harried Braddock's men during the march, but these were minor skirmishes.

Meanwhile, at Fort Duquesne, the French garrison consisted of only about 250 regulars and Canadian militia, with about 640 Indian allies camped outside the fort. The Indians were from a variety of tribes long associated with the French, including Ottawas, Ojibwas, and Potawatomis. The French commander, realizing that his fort could not withstand Braddock's canon, decided to launch a preemptive strike: an ambush of Braddock's army as he crossed the Monongahela River.

The Battle

On July 9 1755, Braddock's men crossed the river without opposition, about nine miles south of the fort. The advance unit under Lt. Colonel Thomas Gage began to move ahead, and unexpectedly came upon the French and Indian force, who were hurrying to the river, behind schedule. The battle, which came to be known as the Battle of the Monongahela (or the Battle of the Wilderness, or just Braddock's Defeat), was joined. Braddock's impressive column of almost 1,500 men faced less than 900 French and Indians.²

After an initial defense, Gage's group concluded that they could not close with the enemy, and retreated. In the narrow confines of the road, they collided with the main body of Braddock's force, which had advanced rapidly when the shots were heard. The entire column dissolved in disorder as the French and Indians enveloped them and continued to fire from the woods and ravines. Following Braddock's example, the officers kept trying to reform units into regular order within the confines of the road, mostly in vain. The militia either fled or took cover and returned fire. Finally, after three hours of intense battle, Braddock went down, and the retreat began. By sunset, the surviving British and American forces were fleeing back down the road they had built. Braddock died of his wounds during the retreat, on July 13.

Of the approximately 1,460 men Braddock had led into battle, 456 were killed and 421 wounded. (The officers were prime targets and suffered greatly: out of 86 officers, 63 were killed or wounded.) The roughly 250 French and Canadians had 28 killed and about the same number wounded; their 637 Indian allies lost but 11 killed and 29 wounded.

Colonel Dunbar, with the rear supply unit, took command when the survivors reached his position. He ordered the destruction of supplies and cannon before withdrawing, burning about 150 wagons on the spot. Ironically, at this point the demoralized and disorganized Expedition still outnumbered their opponents, who were not in pursuit.

Aftermath

Braddock's defeat at the Battle of the Monongahela was a momentous event for the people of the region. The French and their Indian allies found themselves unexpectedly with the upper hand in the struggle for control of the Ohio Country, and a ferocious frontier war quickly escalated. Indians in the area who had been inclined to remain neutral now found it nearly impossible to do so. And the colonists of "backcountry" Pennsylvania and Virginia found themselves without professional military protection, scrambling to organize a defense. This brutal frontier war would continue until Fort Duquesne was finally abandoned by the French as a result of the successful approach of the Forbes Expedition in 1758.

The Debate

The debate on how Braddock, with superior numbers and bigger guns, could lose the Battle of the Monongahela began soon after the battle, and continues to this day. Some blamed Braddock, some blamed his officers, some blamed the British regulars or the colonial militia. George Washington, for his part, supported Braddock and found fault with the British regulars.

Braddock's tactics are still debated. One school of thought holds that Braddock's reliance on time-honored European methods, where men stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the open and fire mass volleys in unison, was not appropriate for frontier fighting, and cost Braddock the battle. Skirmish tactics that American colonials had learned from fighting with Indians, where men take cover and fire individually, was the superior method, or so the argument goes. This position is presented in books such as Armstrong Starkey's European and Native American Warfare, 1675-1815 (University of Oklahoma Press, 1998).

However, others counter that the European approach was unmatched when properly executed, and that the superiority of frontier tactics is an American myth. Braddock's failure, according to proponents of this theory, was not that he did not use frontier methods; he failed because he did not adequately apply traditional military doctrine. This argument is detailed in books such as Guy Chet's Conquering the American Wilderness: The Triumph of European Warfare in the Colonial Northwest (University of Massachusetts Press, 2003).

Notes

1. Some accounts state that Washington commanded the Virginia militia on the Braddock Expedition, but this is incorrect. (Though it is true that Washington commanded Virginia militia before and after the Expedition.) As a volunteer aide-de-camp, Washington essentially served as an unpaid and unranked gentleman consultant, with little real authority, but much inside access.

2. The Battle of the Monongahela has often been mistakenly described as an ambush. The encounter was actually a meeting engagement, where two forces clash at an unexpected time and place. The quick and effective response of the French and Indians led many of Braddock's men to believe they had been ambushed; French documents reveal that the French and Indian force was too late to prepare an ambush, and had been as surprised as the British.