Braddock’s Defeat: The Battle of the Monogahela and the Road to Revolution

Abstract

David L. Preston’s Braddock’s Defeat: The Battle of the Monongahela and the Road to Revolution provides an exploration of one of the earliest battles of the French and Indian War. In May 1755 Edward Braddock, a general of the British Army, led three thousand soldiers to exceptional defeat in western Pennsylvania. Braddock’s ignorance of North America and his bigotry undermined the campaign. The battle as one man’s failure is a narrative that other historians have accepted without further investigation. In three sections, covering preparation, battle, and aftermath, Braddock’s Defeat offers a more in-depth analysis of the campaign. Preston begins by connecting defeat to deficient soldiers and supplies. British and French perspectives, described in the second section, establish the pan-Indian military alliance as decisive to victory. In the final section readers learn how the Monongahela Valley campaign prompted the American Revolution.The decentralized mobilization of Braddock’s army created an army rife with incompetence. The Crown-sourced regular troops had spent years on garrison duty neglecting any tactical training. Meanwhile, veterans mustered in the colonies proved unfit for service due to age or infirmity. Scores of inexperienced Virginians recruited to fill shortfalls enlisted to escape slavery or indenture. Likewise, Pennsylvania farmers impressed into service resisted their compulsory military service. Commissioned officers might have offered structure; Braddock’s did not. Royal policy dictated junior and senior officers born in Great Britain outrank their colonial seniors, spawning unfounded anticolonial and anti-Redcoat bias. Ultimately, Braddock was outfitted with a hapless army of unable and unwilling troops led by a body of fresh officers unfamiliar with North America.Insufficient supplies further hindered the campaign. As the men entered the western borderlands, few farms existed to restock provisions. Here, from some of Preston’s strongest prose, an image of enduring hardship emerges. On scant diets, three thousand men trekked 125 miles along unstable embankments and over sharp ridges one thousand feet high. At the head, hundreds of troops labored, clearing roads through forest for the convey of quarter- and half-ton mortars.When the battle of the Monongahela Valley finally erupted, Braddock’s malnourished men were suffering acute fatigue. The French and pan-Indian army had suffered neither deprivation nor hardship. The French corps boasted more officers, diplomats, and strategists than the English had. Further, well-established North American military forces stood alongside seven hundred pan-Indian allies. The French army represented the greatest known Euro-Indian army ever assembled. Native American reconnaissance supplied French and pan-Indian strategy with intelligence. Indian forces killed officers first, stripping the British regiments of direction. After officers, pan-Indian warriors struck artillerymen, reducing their immediate opposition to the least experienced. In strategy and tactics Braddock’s Defeat establishes the pan-Indian actors as definitive victors of the Battle of the Monongahela.Braddock marched into battle with only four Iroquois warriors accompanying his troops. Reasons offered by Preston to explain Braddock’s nominal Indian support are inadequate. Equally unsupported are Preston’s efforts to dispel Braddock’s Indian prejudice by promoting Braddock as an advocate for indigenous geopolitical authority. In exchange for military support Braddock offered to legitimize claims fabricated by the Iroquois to land controlled by other Indian communities. Further, the colonial officers Braddock recruited to facilitate the alliance abused their diplomatic role to gain deeds for themselves. Braddock’s proposal motivated the pan-Indian alliance with France in defense of indigenous sovereignty. Braddock’s Defeat falls silent on these points.The ramifications of the British defeat provide a case study of war igniting war, a study that military and imperial historians will find insightful. Throughout Braddock’s campaign regular officers scorned Indian and colonial forces. Following their military retreat, the regular army withdrew from the frontier, allowing white settlers to slaughter Indian families. In an environment reeling with violence, colonial veterans of the campaign produced stories of the battle that characterized the British Army as villains while attributing the defeat solely to Braddock. From colonial companies heroes arose. Waylaid by camp fever, George Washington spent much of Braddock’s campaign on a commode. Despite his minimal involvement, anti-British narratives inflated Washington’s reputation to that of an unparalleled leader. Such stories provided white colonists with new enemies to fight and a rising generation of American heroes to lead.