Fort Necessity has a very fine museum and book store. Our last stop of the day will be the Great Crossings of the Youghiogheny River. The Fort Ligonier site will be used to explain the construction of Fort Duquesne since it is a reasonable example of what the latter fort looked like in Fort Ligonier also has a premier 18th century artillery train on display for educational purposes. It has excellent exhibits and a long-range goal to educate future generations about the importance of the key players in the Battle of the Monongahela.
A short walk will put us at the Fort Pitt Museum. Tour participants are responsible for transportation to the headquarters hotel, and securing a room reservation, if necessary. Braddock immediately ordered his regulars to form firing lines, but the British infantry found that it was virtually impossible to deploy in the close confines of the woods. The Canadian force quickly melted into the heavy forest on both sides and deployed along the flanks of the British column.
Accurate fire from the Canadians and their Native allies tore into the ranks of the Anglo-American force, and the battle soon became a slaughter. Major-General Braddock was mortally wounded, and British soldiers and colonial militia perished. The location gave the French the opportunity to trade with Native American groups in the Ohio Country and deter the growth of British trade and settlement in North America.
In spring , Major George Washington led an expedition of Virginians toward Fort Duquesne to force the French to abandon the site. They ambushed the French, and the battle ended with one Virginian and fourteen Frenchmen dead, including Jumonville.
Nervous about a counterattack by the French and Indians, Washington encouraged his men to hasten the construction of Fort Necessity. In late June, Indian allies informed Washington and his men that the French had assembled a force with the intention of driving the Virginia militia back.
After a few hours of fighting, the French offered to let the overmatched British provincials walk away if they agreed to leave the Ohio Country for a year.
Having lost thirty men and with seventy wounded, Washington abandoned Fort Necessity the next morning, and the French destroyed it. With the aid of Lieutenant Colonel George Washington, who was still serving as a provincial officer, Braddock led men towards his target in June When they were about ten miles from Fort Duquesne, an army of Frenchmen, Canadians, and Native Americans attacked Braddock and his men, who were unaccustomed to American frontier warfare.
The massacre ended with British killed or wounded, including Braddock. They could not miss. Redcoats struggling to load their muskets were cut down where they stood.
Washington stood tall in the middle of it all, his jacket and hat perforated by multiple bullets, two horses shot out from under him, but he emerged without a scratch. In the end, with every British officer killed or wounded, Washington took charge of leading the retreat off the battlefield. Braddock, carried along in a wagon, had been shot through the body and died about a mile from Fort Necessity.
Legend says that Washington ordered the general to be buried in the road so that the passing wagons would obliterate the location. That way, his remains could not be desecrated. You can visit the approximate site of the battlefield today. This unprepossessing little place is a watershed site in the history of the United States.
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