Battle of the Monongahela

Background

After Washington's surrender at the Battle of Fort Necessity in July 1754, the British government sent Major General Edward Braddock to America with two regiments of regular infantry, the 44th and 48th Foot. His task was to take Fort Duquesne at the Forks of the Ohio. The regiments were brought up to strength with American recruits and joined by companies of Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina provincials. George Washington, who had resigned his Virginia commission, went along as a volunteer aide on Braddock's staff.

The army left Fort Cumberland on the upper Potomac in late May and early June 1755, more than 2,000 strong, cutting a road through the mountains as it went. Progress was slow. In mid-June Braddock divided his force. He pushed ahead with a picked column of about 1,300 to 1,400 men and some of the artillery, leaving Colonel Thomas Dunbar to follow with the heavy baggage. Only a handful of Native scouts stayed with the British. On the morning of 9 July the column forded the Monongahela River twice to avoid a narrow passage along the bank. It was then about ten miles from the fort.

The Battle

The commander at Fort Duquesne, Claude-Pierre Pécaudy de Contrecoeur, had too few men to stand a siege. He sent out Captain Daniel Liénard de Beaujeu with about 250 French colonial regulars and Canadian militia and more than 600 Native warriors. They came from many nations, among them Ottawas, Potawatomis, Ojibwas, Hurons, Shawnees and Delawares. Beaujeu meant to ambush the British at the river but arrived too late.

Early in the afternoon his men ran head-on into the British advance guard under Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Gage, in open woodland beyond the second ford. Gage's men fired several volleys and Beaujeu was killed. Some of the Canadians fled. Captain Jean-Daniel Dumas took command and held the center, and the warriors ran down both sides of the British column, firing from behind trees and from a hill on the British right.

The advance guard fell back and collided with the main body, which Braddock was bringing forward. The redcoats were packed together on the narrow road, in the smoke, under fire from an enemy they could seldom see. They fired in all directions and sometimes hit one another. Some provincial troops who took to the trees were shot at by the regulars by mistake. Officers on horseback were easy targets, and nearly three quarters of them were killed or wounded. Braddock had several horses shot under him before a ball passed through his arm into his chest. After about three hours the column broke and fled back across the river. Washington had two horses shot under him and bullet holes in his coat but was not hit.

Weapons

The regulars carried the Brown Bess Musket and its Socket Bayonet. Their training was in volley fire and the bayonet charge against a formed enemy, and at the Monongahela there was no such enemy to charge. Their short swords, of the Infantry Hanger type, had been left in store on Braddock's orders before the march. The Canadians and many warriors carried light French guns such as the Fusil de Chasse, and they aimed at individual men. When the column gave way, the warriors came in with hand weapons, including the Tomahawk; wooden clubs such as the Gunstock War Club were also among the arms of these nations. The British artillery fired but did little harm in the trees, and the guns were abandoned.

Aftermath

British losses are usually given as about 450 killed and more than 400 wounded out of roughly 1,400 engaged. French and Native losses were small, probably fewer than 50 killed and wounded by their own reports. Braddock died on 13 July during the retreat and was buried in the road near the Great Meadows. Dunbar destroyed his stores and marched the survivors to Philadelphia, leaving the frontiers of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia open to raids. The British did not take Fort Duquesne until November 1758.

The defeat showed British officers that regular tactics needed changing for American forests, and the army later raised light infantry and rangers. Several men who were there met again as generals in the American Revolution, among them Washington, Gage and Horatio Gates.

On Screen

Young Washington (2026), directed by Jon Erwin for Angel Studios, with William Franklyn-Miller as George Washington, covers Washington's service from 1753 to 1755 and so includes Braddock's expedition and its defeat. The film is a dramatized account, and it should be read as one. Several points of the record are worth knowing when watching any screen version of the battle. It was a meeting engagement, not a prepared ambush. The French officers and Canadians were a minority of the force that won it, and most of the fighting was done by Native warriors. Washington was a volunteer aide who had been seriously ill in the days before the battle, not the commander of the Virginia troops. His conduct during the retreat, when he helped bring off the wounded Braddock, made his reputation in the colonies.