Instead of
marching, like Braddock, at one stretch for Fort Duquesne, burdened with
a long and cumbrous baggage-train, it was the plan of Forbes to push on
by slow stages, establishing fortified magazines as he went, and at
last, when within easy distance of the fort, to advance upon it with all
his force, as little impeded as possible with wagons and packhorses. He
bore no likeness to his predecessor, except in determined resolution,
and he did not hesitate to embrace military heresies which would have
driven Braddock to fury. To Bouquet, in whom he placed a well-merited
trust, he wrote, "I have been long in your opinion of equipping numbers
of our men like the savages, and I fancy Colonel Burd, of Virginia, has
most of his best people equipped in that manner. In this country we must
learn the art of war from enemy Indians, or anybody else who has seen it
carried on here."
His provincials displeased him, not without reason; for the greater part
were but the crudest material for an army, unruly, and recalcitrant to
discipline. Some of them came to the rendezvous at Carlisle with old
province muskets, the locks tied on with a string; others brought
fowling-pieces of their own, and others carried nothing but
walking-sticks; while many had never fired a gun in their lives.[647]
Forbes reported to Pitt that their officers, except a few in the higher
ranks, were "an extremely bad collection of broken inn-keepers,
horse-jockeys, and Indian traders;" nor is he more flattering towards
the men, though as to some of them he afterwards changed his mind.
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