The recent events in the Ohio Valley demanded some sort of attention, and since England was unwilling to increase her colonies’ strength and independence by promoting their unity, she was forced to take military action herself. In the fall of 1754, two regiments of British regulars arrived in Virginia; two more were to be supplied by William Shirley and William Pepperell, both of whom had become regimental commanders after the Louisbourg expedition of 1745. And six months later, there arrived in Virginia Major General Edward Braddock as the commander-in-chief of British regulars in America. Braddock, a longtime career officer, had an excellent reputation as a tough soldier and competent leader, and with his appearance the colonies’ little war had suddenly become a conflict between England and France. Though both nations maintained the pretense of peace for another two years, both sides were well aware of the implications; only a few months later, Canada, too, was reinforced by nearly 4,000 regulars under the command of German-born Baron von Dieskau, a skillful officer of considerable reputation.
General Braddock’s instructions were very specific about the purpose of his command: he was to recover British territory by removing the French from British possessions rather than invade French territory. He was to drive the French from Fort Duquesne, then from Niagara and then gain control of Lake Ontario. Finally, he was to capture the fort at Crown Point on Lake Champlain and destroy Fort Beausejour in Acadia. (Beausejour, of course, had meanwhile already been taken care of by the New England expedition against Le Loutre and his Indians). Ignorant of American geography, the British ministry had failed to realize that by simply seizing and holding control of Lake Ontario, the French lifeline to the West would have been cut, and all other posts would have fallen without further action. Shirley and other colonial officials knew this very well, but as usual they had not been consulted. British troops were instead to be sent into the wilderness on a route across the most difficult country possible.
Braddock began by calling several governors to a meeting at Alexandria, Virginia, to discuss the plans for the coming campaign. It was finally decided that William Shirley would lead the attack on Fort Niagara; William Johnson was to lead the expedition on Crown Point; and Braddock himself would march the two regiments of British regulars and some colonial troops through the Allegheny Mountains against the French forts at the forks of the Ohio River.
Braddock’s force assembled at Will’s Creek on the Potomac, where Fort Cumberland had been built. Over the next few weeks, as he watched the undisciplined rag-tag troops stroll into camp, the general became convinced that British contempt for the colonial militias was amply justified. And when he tried to secure a large body of Indians for scouts and allies, only about thirty answered his call, and most of these independent spirits he managed to offend by his arrogant manners. In the end, many of these Indians not only deserted the expedition, but warned their red brothers against this haughty white man. Still, by the first week of June, about 2,100 men were ready to march out against the enemy.
From Fort Cumberland, the troops were faced with 110 miles of uninhabited wilderness, a march over steep, rocky mountains and nearly impassible morasses. The 450 colonial militiamen under Lieutenant Colonel Washington literally carved a road through this wilderness to transport the half-ton cannon Braddock had insisted on taking. Nowhere along the march did the expected Indian allies or additional colonists appear. On June 18th, about 1,200 handpicked men were finally chosen to continue the expedition; the rest were left behind.
On July 9th, while the expedition was less than ten miles from Fort Duquesne, they were suddenly attacked by about 900 French and Indians. Caught by surprise, weighed down with equipment and supplies, the tightly packed regiments of British soldiers caught fire from three sides before they were able to go on the defensive. Huddled into a twelve-foot path, shut in by a forest resounding with Indian war cries and filled with hidden enemies, the British regulars became terrified and refused to charge. The colonial troops, familiar with this type of warfare, tried to invade the woods and fight Indian fashion, but Braddock drove them back into the ranks where they fell in scores. Both George Washington and a British officer again begged the general to release the troops, but Braddock still refused.
Meanwhile the ammunition had begun to fail, much of the equipment and supplies were destroyed, and most of the officers had been shot down. When Braddock himself was finally felled by a bullet, discipline among the troops broke down completely, and Washington led them in a retreat back to Fort Cumberland. “We have been beaten,” reported the young commander, “most shamefully beaten by a handful of men.” In this so-called Battle of the Wilderness, the still only 22-year old Virginian had received his second painful defeat. This time not even the presence of British regulars and commanders such as Braddock and Brigadier General Thomas Gage had made any difference. The future of British America was beginning to look more hopeless all the time.
More bad news came in from Fort Niagara. Shirley’s campaign had been abandoned when Admiral Boscawen, whose fleet was an essential part of the operation, had allowed a French fleet to slip through the blockade. Niagara had thus received strong reinforcements of regulars, against whom the colonial militia stood little chance. William Johnson’s New England troops and Indian allies had meanwhile constructed Fort William Henry on Lake George, and had even defeated a French force under Baron von Dieskau, but that was where the expedition had come to a halt.
While fighting had thus began between the colonies in America, the tangled politics of Europe were about to expand these hostilities into a major war between the mother countries. Empress Maria Theresia of Austria, still seeking to recover Silesia from Prussia, had meanwhile managed to secure the allegiance of both Russia and France. When the fighting broke out in North America, George II of England and his ancestral Hanover quickly negotiated a treaty with Frederick II of Prussia. Thus both England and France had suddenly switched allies; when Frederick II invaded Saxony in 1756 and began what became known as the Seven Years War, it was France, Austria, Russia, Sweden, and Saxony on one side, and Prussia, Great Britain and Hanover on the other.