Battle of the Monongahela, 9 July 1755

The battle, stage by stage

1. 9 July 1755, about 1 PM

   The second crossing

   General Edward Braddock's flying column, about 1,300 British regulars and colonial troops, had camped on 8 July east of the Monongahela. That morning it crossed the river near the mouth of Crooked Run and marched down the west bank. Around midday it forded back to the east bank at Frazier's, just below the mouth of Turtle Creek, some 7-8 miles from Fort Duquesne. The river was some 300 yards wide and shallow. The steep banks had to be cut down for the guns and wagons. Lt Col Thomas Gage's advance party and Sir John St. Clair's working party crossed first. The main body followed in parade order with colors flying and drums beating, an image many survivors remembered. George Washington, still weak with fever, rode with the general as a volunteer aide. That morning, about 8 AM, Captain Daniel Liénard de Beaujeu had left Fort Duquesne to ambush the British at the crossing. With him went about 108 troupes de la marine, 146 Canadian militia and roughly 637 warriors (Contrecoeur's report). He was already too late. The crossing point and the route north are reconstructions.

2. About 1:30 PM

   Collision on the road

   Gage's party had gone perhaps a mile beyond the river, climbing along the base of the hills and then north-west, roughly where Bell Avenue now runs. Its guides suddenly came back with word of the enemy. Beaujeu's column came into sight down the road ahead, near a gully that modern Sixth Street follows. Beaujeu waved his hat and his men spread out. Neither side had expected to meet here, and the French had no time to set an ambush. Gage's grenadiers deployed across the road and fired volleys, and his two 6-pounders opened with grapeshot. Braddock's Battlefield History Center on Sixth Street stands about where the fight began. Its exact place rests on the 1755 sketches and on Crocker's and Preston's reconstructions; the ground has been built over.

3. About 1:45 PM

   Beaujeu falls; the warriors spread

   By Contrecoeur's report Beaujeu was killed by the third volley. Many of the Canadians broke and ran; Dumas wrote that about 100 fled. Captain Jean-Daniel Dumas took command and held the marines on the road. The warriors did not stop. They came from many nations: Ottawa, Ojibwe and Potawatomi from the Great Lakes, with Charles Langlade among their leaders, and Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape, Mingo and mission Abenaki and others. They ran down both sides of the column through the woods. On the British right they took a hill that overlooked the road, the 'rising ground' that Mackellar's plan says the army should have held. The flank guards were driven in. Who stood where along each flank is not known, so the warrior positions are schematic.

4. About 2 PM

   The column jams

   Gage's men, firing at an enemy they could barely see, fell back and lost their two 6-pounders. Braddock had sent the main body forward at the sound of the firing. The retreating advance party ran into it and into the working party, and the column jammed in the road. Mackellar's second plan shows the troops at this moment: 'the whole body joined, with little or no order', facing outward toward the fire. The 12-pounders sit in the road. The rear guard is split around the convoy, which has closed up behind it. The hill on the right is in the warriors' hands. The center of this crowd lay, roughly, under today's Washington Statue Park on Jones Avenue, which the state marker treats as the likely center of the battlefield.

5. About 2:30-4 PM

   Fire into the crowded road

   For two to three hours the warriors and marines fired from behind trees and the slopes of two ravines into a packed mass, in places reportedly up to twenty men deep. Officers on horseback drew fire, and most were shot. Braddock had four or five horses killed under him. He ordered Burton to take the hill on the right, but the attack fell apart under fire. Virginians who took to the trees to fight the warriors' way were in some cases shot by regulars who took them for the enemy. Gage, St. Clair and Burton were all wounded. The British were slowly driven back across a hollow way (marked 'r' on Mackellar's plan), and the convoy behind them came under fire. The hill and hollow way are placed by inference, not survey.

6. About 4:30-5:30 PM

   Braddock falls; the army breaks

   Braddock, who had at last ordered a retreat, was shot through the arm and into the lungs. Organized resistance ended. The men broke for the river, and drivers cut horses from the wagons; young Daniel Boone was one of the wagoners. Captain Robert Orme, Captain Robert Stewart and Washington got the general off the field. Burton and others tried and failed to rally men short of the ford, and Gage gathered some on the far bank. Only a few warriors, about 50 by one account, followed to the river and fired on the men crossing. Most stayed on the field to take plunder, scalps and captives. Washington had two horses shot under him; he later wrote of 'four bullets through my coat'. Braddock sent him back that night to Dunbar's division for wagons and food.

7. 10-14 July 1755

   Braddock's death and burial

   The survivors fled back up their own road. At Dunbar's camp near Jumonville the rear division destroyed guns, powder and stores, and the army fell back past Great Meadows. Braddock died on the evening of 13 July at Old Orchard Camp, near Fort Necessity. Washington read the burial service the next morning. They buried him in the middle of the road and marched the army over the grave to hide it. Of the column, roughly 450-500 were killed and about 420-500 wounded (456 killed and 422 wounded in a common count; the NPS gives 914 of 1,373 rank and file and 63 of 86 officers). French and Native losses were about 30-40 killed (Contrecoeur's report and modern estimates differ). Beaujeu was buried at Fort Duquesne on 12 July. The fort stayed French until the Forbes expedition of 1758.