Dans ce moment
j'envoyai M. le Chev'r. Le Borgne et M. de Rocheblave dire
aux officiers qui etaient a la tete des Sauvages de prendre l'ennemi
en flanc. Le canon qui battit en tete donna faveur a mes ordres.
L'ennemi, pris de tous cotes, combattit avec la fermete la plus
opiniatre. Des rangs entiers tombaient a la fois; presque tous
les officiers perirent; et le desordre s'etant mis par la dans cette
colonne, tout prit la fuite."
Whatever may have been the conduct of the Canadian militia,
the French officers behaved with the utmost courage, and shared
with the Indians the honors of the victory. The partisan chief
Charles Langlade seems also to have been especially prominent.
His grandson, the aged Pierre Grignon, declared that it was he
who led the attack (Draper, _Recollections of Grignon_, in the
_Collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society,_ III.). Such evidence,
taken alone, is of the least possible weight; but both the
traveller Anbury and General John Burgoyne, writing many years
after the event, speak of Langlade, who was then alive, as the
author of Braddock's defeat. Hence there can be little doubt that
he took an important part in it, though the contemporary writers
do not mention his name. Compare Tasse, _Notice sur Charles
Langlade_. The honors fell to Contrecoeur, Dumas, and Ligneris,
all of whom received the cross of the Order of St Louis (_Ordres
du Roy et Depeches des Ministres_, 1755).
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