decade nearly six hundred thousand pounds for military 1 7 5 5 purposes. Thus the Braddock expedition of which much had The Lesson been expected brought its burden of bitter disappoint- of it All ment to Englishmen on both sides of the Atlantic. But it made manifest the fact that the mettle of English colonists was as good as that of English regulars, that on their own ground their fighting methods were superior, and that the "red-coats" were not invincible. Franklin wrote that "this whole transaction gave us Americans the first suspicion that our exalted ideas of the prowess of British regulars had not been well founded.' At the Monongahela, "Morgan and Mercer, Gates and Washington, first stood side by side, and in that day's dark torrent of blood was tempered the steel which was to sever the colonies from the parent stem." 1755 William Johnson in Command CHAPTER IV THE QUADRILATERAL CAMPAIGN OF 1755-CROWN POINT AND NIAGARA Τ' HE expedition against Crown Point, which formed a part of the program adopted by the Alexandria conference in April, had been proposed by Shirley to the ministry in January and to the Massachusetts assembly in February. The assembly approved the project and voted money for the pay and maintenance of twelve hundred men on condition that the adjacent colonies would contribute fairly to the same end. Connecticut voted twelve hundred men, New Hampshire five hundred, and Rhode Island four hundred; New York promised eight hundred more; and later in the year some of the colonies added to their quotas. Shirley appointed William Johnson of New York to command the proposed expedition, thus 1 755 gratifying that province and the Iroquois and avoiding the jealousy that the smaller New England colonies would have felt had he named a Massachusetts officer. After the approval of the plan by the Alexandria conference, Shirley and the governors of the other provinces that were to take part separately commissioned Johnson as majorgeneral. As Parkman remarks, "never did general take the field with authority so heterogeneous." The new commander "could hold his own in a grave council of colonial governors, or, if need be, could drink and shout and paint his face and dance the war-dance with the wildest of Mohawk warriors," but he never had seen active service and knew nothing of war. The third feature of the quadrilateral campaign agreed Shirley and upon at Alexandria was the expedition that Governor Johnson at Albany Shirley was to lead against Niagara. In July, the forces for both expeditions, about six thousand ill-disciplined provincials and impatient Indians, were rendezvoused at Albany. Troops came in tardily, everything moved slowly, and a Massachusetts officer wrote to his wife that "the expedition goes on very much as a snail runs,' 1 7 5 5 while another complained that the rum "won't hold out nine weeks. Things appear most melancholy to me.' Before either general left Albany, sad news came from the Monongahela. The loss of his son was a great bereavement for Shirley and the promotion that Braddock's death made probable was poor consolation. Vaudreuil and Meanwhile, Dieskau and Vaudreuil and as much of the French expedition as had escaped Boscawen's English fleet had arrived in Canada. tre Creshumbbet Preparations were made to reinforce Fort Frontenac Le Baron de fiestan and to attack Autograph of Dieskau Oswego, for the Partie du Luc Champlain understood that this English trading-post on Lake |