This Day in Colonial History (Washington Escapes Ambush of British in Pennsylvania Wilderness)

July 9, 1755—Marching through the thick forests of Western Pennsylvania with too few advance scouts, approximately 1,500 British troops were attacked, then defeated by an outnumbered force of 900 Indians, French, and Canadians.

The panicked redcoats hardly even bothered to protect their mortally wounded leader, General Edward Braddock, the recently appointed commander in chief of all British troops in North America. The stinging defeat did, however, provide excellent experience for a 23-year-old Virginian hired by Braddock as a volunteer aide-de-camp, George Washington.

The debacle near present-day Pittsburgh wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Braddock was a soldier with 45 years’ experience. Moreover, his troops were among England’s best, drilled to maintain cohesion along the combat line and looking forward to reaching Fort Duquesne—the opening wedge in their attempt to supplant France as the dominant power in North America.

But, under fire from the French and their Indian allies using trees and rocks for cover, with their own scarlet uniforms serving as excellent targets, His Majesty’s troops found their training of little use in a new kind of asymmetrical warfare. After three hours, with 60 of 80 officers killed or wounded, they broke under the pressure, leaving wagons, provisions, clothing, and personal effects in their wake.

By the time they stumbled away from the Battle of the Monongahela, half of Braddock’s army had been killed or wounded, shocking the British public and their American colonies.

Braddock was not without virtues or insights. He did, after all, spot talent in young Washington, even though the Virginian had, in effect, inadvertently started the French and Indian War in a skirmish in the woods of the Ohio Valley. (See David Preston’s discussion in the October 2019 issue of Smithsonian Magazine.) And he was justly annoyed by the lack of material support he was provided when he first reached the colonies (a situation quickly redressed by horses and wagons rounded up by Pennsylvania’s Benjamin Franklin).

But each day, Braddock proved that his inflexibility was matched only by his irascibility. And, by the end of the campaign and his life, he would have proof that he was mistaken in believing that colonists’ “slothful and languid disposition renders them very unfit for military service.”

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Washington, Douglas Southall Freeman summarized succinctly the limitations of Braddock in a foreign environment:

“Braddock, of course, was entirely ignorant of the type of combat that prevailed in America. What was worse, he was not a man to learn. He lacked all originality of mind and exemplified the system that produced and schooled him, a system traditional, methodical and inflexible. A man of his training was not apt to fail to do everything the regulations and the accepted tactics prescribed. It was still less likely he would do anything more. Trained for war on the continent of Europe, where the masters employed their art, Braddock believed that the tactics in which he had been drilled for forty years were close to perfection…. As a matter of fact, few of the political elders who had the temerity to talk to Braddock about his chosen art of war had any personal experience in frontier fighting. Young men like Washington scarcely counted until they proved themselves.”

Proving himself was what Washington ended up doing in multiple ways in the ambush. Despite having two horses shot from under him, as well as four bullets flying through his hat or uniform, he helped Braddock rally his men; managed to get his wounded commander across the river with the yells of nearby Native Americans ringing in his ears; dug a makeshift grave for Braddock, then covered the evidence of it so the commander’s remains would not be desecrated by his foes; and coordinated the stunned army’s retreat, ensuring its remnants would fight another day.

Though a wave of second-guessing ensued after the battle over why the English forces as a whole performed so badly, young Washington emerged from the catastrophe with an enhanced reputation for coolness and bravery under fire. He finished his service in the French and Indian War as the highest-ranking officer among the Virginia troops, positioning him to be named commander in chief of the Continental Army when hostilities broke out between Britain and its colonies in 1775.

But the Battle of the Monongahela influenced Washington’s career in other key ways, too, through the lessons he took away:

*Native Americans were a powerful force that would have to be dealt with—diplomatically if possible, militarily if necessary. During the American Revolution, Iroquois attacks led Washington to authorize Gen. John Sullivan to crush harassment by the Indians and their Loyalists in southern New York. As President, he sought unsuccessfully to institute a just Indian policy, trying to simultaneously ward off British incitements of Indian raids and settlers' incursions into Indian lands in the Northwest Territory.

*The advice of aides was not to be dismissed lightly. At critical junctures, Braddock, believing that he knew best, ignored the advice of subordinates, including about the need to bolster their number of Indian scouts. In contrast, when he commanded the continentals, Washington was cautious and deliberate to a fault, listening carefully at councils of war.

*Inadequate attention to detail could harm an army. An officer noted that Braddock was “very indolent and seemed glad for anybody to take business off his hands.” In the crucial run-up to battle, his failure to ensure proper reconnoitering ensured that he would blunder into the wilderness. Freeman was scathing about this failure: “Great dangers often are rendered small by vigilance; lesser dangers always are enlarged by negligence.” Washington—who managed his plantation from afar as well as his army during the Revolutionary War—would never make the same mistake.

*British forces were not invincible. Always a realist, Washington knew just how great the odds were that he could defeat the far numerically superior British forces. But his experience with Braddock surely also convinced him that Britain commanders’ overconfidence rendered them vulnerable.

*Military intelligence was crucial. At the Monongahela, the French commander had used intelligence supplied by his network of intelligence scouts to expertly deploy his troops. Braddock’s failure to match this made his defeat inevitable. On the other hand, Washington’s constant attention to this in the American Revolution meant that he could shift the odds against victory more in his service.

*Surprise, even against a heavily favored foe, could carry the day. Shock helped break the will of Braddock’s troops. Two decades later, at the Battle of Trenton, Washington ensured the survival of the patriot cause with a dawn attack on British troops still hung over from Christmas revelry the night before.