After General Forbes, in the late autumn of 1758, had taken Fort Duquesne, a new English fort, Fort Pitt, was in the following year built by General Stanwix upon the site of the French stronghold. The place was, as it had always been, the key of the Ohio valley, and on the maintenance of the fort depended at once the safety of the borderlands of Virginia and Pennsylvania, and the possibility of extending trade among the Indian tribes of the Ohio. In July, 1763, Fort Pitt was in a critical position. The posts which connected it with Lake Erie had been destroyed: the road which Forbes had cut through Pennsylvania on his memorable march was obstructed by Indians; and the outlying post along it, Fort Ligonier, about fifty-five miles east of Fort Pitt, was, like Fort Pitt itself, in a state of siege. The Indians were, as in the dark days after Braddock’s disaster, harrying the outlying homesteads and settlements, and once more the colonies were exhibiting to the full their incapacity for self-defence, or rather, the indifference of the residents in the towns to the safety of their fellows who lived in the backwoods. [Sidenote: The route to Fort Pitt.] Forbes’ road to Fort Pitt ran for nearly 100 miles from Bedford or Raestown, as it had earlier been called, in a direction rather north of west, across the Alleghany Mountains and the Laurel Hills. The intermediate post, Fort Ligonier, stood at a place which had been known in Forbes’ time as Loyalhannon, rather nearer to Bedford than to Fort Pitt. Bedford itself was about thirty miles north of Fort Cumberland on Wills Creek, which Braddock had selected for the starting-point of his more southerly march. It marked the limit of settlement, and 100 miles separated it from the town of Carlisle, which lay due east, in the direction of the long-settled parts of Pennsylvania. [Sidenote: Insecurity of the frontier.] [Sidenote: Difficulties with the Pennsylvanian legislature.]