Among the English officers who arrived in 1755 was General Edward Braddock. He was brave and skillful, but conceited and stubborn. When Washington, who was one of his aides, explained to him the character of the treacherous foes whom he would have to fight and advised him to adopt similar tactics, the English officer insultingly answered that when he felt the need of advice from a young Virginian, he would ask for it. He marched toward Fort Duquesne and was within a few miles of the post, when he ran into an ambush and was assailed so vehemently by a force of French and Indians that half his men were killed, the rest put to flight, and himself mortally wounded. Washington and his Virginians, by adopting the Indian style of fighting, checked the pursuit and saved the remainder of the men. [Illustration: BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT.] In the spring of 1756, England and France declared war against each other and the struggle now involved those two countries. For two years the English, despite their preponderance of forces in America, lost rather than gained ground. Their officers sent across the ocean were a sorry lot, while the French were commanded by Montcalm, a brilliant leader. He concentrated his forces and delivered many effective blows, capturing the forts on the northern border of New York and winning all the Indians to his support. The English fought in detached bodies and were continually defeated. ENGLISH SUCCESSES. But a change came in 1758, when William Pitt, one of the greatest Englishmen in history, was called to the head of the government. He weeded out inefficient officers, replaced them with skillful ones, who, concentrating their troops, assailed the French at three important points. Louisburg, on Cape Breton Island, which had been captured more than a hundred years before, during King George's War, was again taken by a naval expedition in the summer of 1758. In the autumn, Fort Duquesne was captured without resistance and named Fort Pitt, in honor of the illustrious prime minister. The single defeat administered to the English was at Ticonderoga, where Montcalm commanded in person. This was a severe repulse, in which the English lost in the neighborhood of 1,600 men. It was offset by the expulsion of the French from northwestern New York and the capture of Fort Frontenac, on the present site of Kingston in Canada. [Illustration: MARTELLO TOWER ON THE HEIGHTS OF ABRAHAM, WHERE WOLFE WAS KILLED.] One wise step of Pitt was in winning the cordial support of the provincials, as the colonists were called, to the British regulars. Our ancestors thus gained a most valuable military training which served them well in the great struggle for independence a few years later. WOLFE'S GREAT VICTORY.