Washington Marvellously Protected

The protection of Washington from harm during that battle was wonderful. "I luckily escaped without a wound," he wrote to his mother, "though I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me." At one time an Indian chief singled him out for death by his rifle, and directed his followers to do the same. Fifteen years afterward, when Washington was in the Ohio country, that chief traveled many a weary mile to see the man at whom he said he had fired more than a dozen fair shots, but could not hit him. "We felt that some Manitou guarded your life," said the chief, "and we believed you could not be killed." "By the all-powerful dispensations of Providence," Washington wrote to his brother John Augustine, "I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation. Death was levelling my companions on every side." At Cumberland, he heard a circumstantial account of his death, and his "dying speech." Washington was never wounded in battle.

Governor Shirley was appointed Braddock's successor in the chief command of the British forces in America. The expedition led by him to operate against Forts Niagara and Frontenac was not exposed to great perils nor suffered serious disasters. Nor did it accomplish much. After a very fatiguing march through the wilderness from Albany to Oswego on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, he arrived at the latter place in August, his little army of fifteen hundred men reduced by sickness and dispirited by the news of Braddock's disaster. The Assembly of New York had freely voted men and money for the expedition, and the Six Nations had promised many warriors; but on the first of September, not more than twenty-five hundred able-bodied men were in camp at Oswego.

The energetic Shirley was not disheartened. There was a small, dilapidated fort at Oswego. He at once began to strengthen the post by erecting two stronger forts, one on each side of the Oswego River, which there enters the Lake between high banks. Fort Pepperell (afterward Fort Oswego), on the west side, had a strong stone wall, with square towers; Fort Ontario on the east was built of huge logs and earth. Shirley also constructed vessels to bear his troops over the bosom of the Lake to their future destination. But reinforcements did not come. He waited all through September. Storm after storm swept over the Lake, threatening any flotilla that he might launch upon it with great peril, if not actual disaster. The breath of approaching winter began to be keenly felt, and, disappointed, he was compelled to abandon the expedition for a season. Leaving seven hundred troops to garrison the fort, the general marched back to Albany with the remainder, where he arrived late in October. There he made vigorous preparations for reinforcing and supplying the garrison at Oswego, for the Marquis de Montcalm, a distinguished French soldier, was then governor of Canada, and would be likely to pursue aggressive measures the following spring. Colonel John Bradstreet was appointed commissary-general at Albany, with captain (afterward General) Philip Schuyler as his chief assistant. Then Shirley returned to Massachusetts, leaving William Alexander (Lord Stirling), his secretary, in New York.

In the meantime, the expedition entrusted to the leadership of William Johnson (then swaying immense influence over the Indians in the Mohawk Valley), and destined for wresting the strong post of Crown Point, on Lake Champlain, from the French, had been more successful than either that of Braddock or Shirley, although it did not achieve its intended object. His army consisted chiefly of New England militia and Indians-the former from Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and the latter from the Mohawk Valley. These were assembled at Albany, the New England men having Phineas Lyman for their chief commander. There were also some New York and New Jersey militia, with the army, when, in July, it was at the head of small-boat navigation on the Hudson, fifty miles above Albany, and numbering about six thousand able-bodied men. Among them were Putnam and Stark, who afterward became famous leaders in the war for independence.