Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today we can discuss historical distortions; events or people who are commonly misrepresented. We’ve talked a lot about things like the American Founding Fathers and the Lost Cause in this thread before, feel free to discuss other events throughout time, including those outside American history. That said, I’ll violate my own suggestion below.

Today’s picture: July 9, 1755 saw the defeat of Edward Braddock’s British expedition to Fort Pitt during the French and Indian War. Known today as the Battle of the Monongahela, it’s more commonly rendered as “Braddock’s defeat.” There’s a common understanding of this campaign, propagated heavily by American historians, of Braddock as an oblivious, bigoted martinet who maltreated his colonial allies, alienated friendly Indians and blundered into a hostile ambush where his European tactics ran afoul of the realities of guerrilla warfare. Like many standard narratives, it’s at once oversimplified and exaggerated.

Braddock’s expedition arrived in America in May, initially consisting of regulars from the 44th and 48th Infantry Regiments. During his time in America he recruited a large body of militia from Pennsylvania and Virginia. He was tasked with marching overland to capture Ft. Duquesne, a French fortress in what’s now Pittsburgh, the focal point of the disputed territory between French North America, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Indeed, the dispute over this area had triggered the war in the first place; George Washington had led a small expedition to stake Virginia’s claim on the Ohio Valley, resulting in the murder of French prisoners and his later defeat at Ft. Necessity.

Braddock’s troops marched overland from Fort Cumberland, Maryland, taking time to build a road through the wilderness as he advanced (much of it now U.S. Route 40 on the National Highway System; it passes through Somerset County, Pennsylvania, where your humble writer resides). Fort Duquesne stood at the junction of the Monongahela, Allegheny and Ohio Rivers, in what’s Point State Park in modern Pittsburgh.

Many depictions of Braddock claim that he alienated colonial allies and Indians alike with his brusque manner. Braddock harbored mixed feelings about the colonials. He worked amiably with the Pennsylvanians (including Benjamin Franklin, who helped supply the expedition) and the Virginia aristocrats who led the officer corps, among them Washington and Horatio Gates, future generals in the Continental Army. He did show little regard for the rank-and-file militia whose poor discipline delayed the march overland; but then, so did Braddock’s focus on constructing a highway through mountains and woods. Braddock’s biggest mistake was dividing his force into two separate columns, with the infantry moving forward ahead of his artillery. Should anything obstruct him, it would prove difficult to coordinate a defense.

 

As for the Natives, Braddock met with local tribes repeatedly during his march; he was, by most accounts, cordial and respectful in his dealings with them. However, the Natives (including the Delaware and Shawnee) remained noncommittal; they doubted Braddock’s ability to defeat the French and decided to remain neutral until events gave them cause to join battle. In the end, Braddock only recruited eight scouts from the Mingo, and no warriors. The lack of Native support resulted less from Braddock’s personal shortcomings than the Native leaders’ own judgment, one which proved astute.

The French possessed fewer than 300 men at Ft. Duquesne, mostly Canadian militia and French Marines. Their commander, Daniel Lienard de Beaujeu, realized the weakness of his position and led his troops to an advanced position on the Monongahela River, intending to ambush the British as they crossed. He hoped that surprise and the dense terrain would negate Braddock’s considerable numeric advantage. Beaujeu, a highly charismatic man who’d spent months cultivating friendships with the local Natives, was more successful than Braddock in recruiting them; a smattering of 600 men from three tribes (the Shawnee, Abenaki and Lenape) agreed to join him in fighting the British.

Despite Beaujeu’s plans, the action on July 9th wasn’t an ambush; it was a meeting engagement, with the two sides stumbling into each other. The British advance guard (led by Thomas Gage, who commanded British troops at Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill two decades later) forded the Monongahela faster than Beaujeu expected and a confrontation resulted. The two sides exchanged musket fire; Beaujeu was killed in one of these volleys, leaving the French temporarily leaderless. This, historian Daid Preston argues, was the crucial moment in the battle; had Gage’s command held its ground, Braddock might well have deployed his force effectively and defeat Beaujeu’s command. Instead, Gage ordered his company to fall back. Chaos, and defeat, ensued. 

Hearing the shots, Braddock hurriedly ordered his main body of infantry forward; however, they became snarled in a narrow road, with men and guns hopelessly mixed together. Gage’s precipitous withdrawal only exacerbated the situation, with the resulting traffic jam allowing the French and Natives time to regroup. As Fred Anderson notes, the traditional idea that conventional battlefield tactics failed in a frontier guerrilla setting is almost a nonsequitir; in the rush of events, Braddock’s troops weren’t able to deploy, let alone to fight in traditional battle lines.

Soon enough, the French and their Native allies (now led by a Canadian Lieutenant, Jean-Daniel Dumas) pressed forward, sniping at the British from the woods. The British regulars were slaughtered by enemy marksmen; their lead columns fell back, disrupting efforts by Braddock to coordinate a defense. Some colonial troops broke ranks and attempted to fire on the French and Indians behind cover, only for regulars to mistake them for the enemy and kill many with friendly fire. Braddock’s artillery struggled to unlimber under these strained circumstances; in any case, the fighting was too close range for cannon to achieve much.

Eventually, Braddock rallied a defensive line, and the initial panic receded. What had been a rout became a more even contest until Braddock himself was mortally wounded. Afterwards his men retreated, without orders; some units, led by George Washington, maintained some cohesion, while others panicked and were killed or captured by the Natives as they forded the Monongahela. Of the 1,300 Anglo-American troops directly engaged, 456 died and 422 were wounded; French and Indian casualties were much lighter, at 27 killed and 57 wounded. Fort Duquesne remained in French hands until 1758, when John Forbes captured the fort and destroyed it, rebuilding Ft. Pitt in its place. 

The common narrative of the battle formed soon afterwards; Braddock was blamed for the defeat, understandably though for largely the wrong reasons (not by Washington, who went to his grave defending his commander). He went from a flawed, overly strict but by no means incompetent general to an arrogant, inflexible embodiment of everything colonial Americans despised about the British. Braddock’s defeat also shook assumptions that colonials needed British protection, whether against the French or the Native Americans on the frontier. And thus a myth took hold, helping to spur the formation of an American identity that eventually led to armed rebellion.

This article draws largely on Fred C. Anderson’s Crucible of War (2000) and David L. Preston’s Braddock’s Defeat (2015), both of which do much to revise the standard narrative of this battle.