When Braddock died, the hero of a hopeless fight and the martyr of his own folly, the funeral service was read over his body by the young Virginian soldier who had fought by his side and had warned him against his rashness. To men in later years there seemed to be something prophetic, with the blended irony and pathos of prophecy, in the picture of that dead Englishman, his scarlet coat torn and bloody with so many wounds, lying in his grave while his American lieutenant read over him the words that committed so much wasted courage to the earth. At the time and hour the thing signified no more than the price of a petty victory of allied French and Indians, which the Virginian soldier was soon to avenge. After planting the banner of King George on the ruins of Fort Duquesne, Captain Washington sheathed his sword and retired from military into civil life, with as little likelihood as desire of ever carrying arms again. All he asked and all he anticipated was to live the tranquil life of a comfortable colonial gentleman. After a youth that had been vexed by many experiences of the passion of love he had married happily and wisely, and had settled down to a gracious rural life at Mount Vernon, on the banks of the Potomac River. He wished no better than to be a country gentleman, with a country gentleman's pleasures and pursuits--farming, hunting, fishing--with a country gentleman's friendships for neighbors like himself. He was a dutiful servant of his State; he was a member of the Virginia Houses of Burgesses for fifteen years after the fall of Fort Duquesne, and though he seldom played any part in debate he commanded the confidence and the esteem of his colleagues and of his fellow-citizens. He lived and enjoyed a peaceful, honorable, useful, uneventful life, and might have lived it to its end in dignified obscurity if a rash and headstrong sovereign over-seas had not found ministers too servile or too foolish to say him nay. {181}