The test soon came. In the conflict which followed he was in the thickest of the fight, one man being killed at his side. He wrote to his brother, "I heard the bullets whistle, and, believe me, there is something charming in the sound." Years afterward, he said, when he had long known the sorrows of war, "If I said that, it was when I was young." At Great Meadows, below Pittsburg, he was defeated by superior numbers, and obliged to evacuate the fort, but the Virginia House of Burgesses thanked him for his bravery. The next year, England sent out General Braddock, who had been over forty years in the service, a fearless but self-willed officer, to take command of the American forces. Washington gladly joined him as an aide-de-camp. They set out with two thousand soldiers, toward Fort du Quesne (Pittsburg). The amount of baggage astonished Washington, who well knew the swamps and mountains that must be crossed, but Braddock could not be influenced. He remarked to Benjamin Franklin, "These savages may indeed be a formidable enemy to raw militia, but upon the king's regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible they should make an impression." How great an "impression" savages could make upon the "king's regular and disciplined troops" was soon to be shown. The march was exceedingly difficult. Sometimes a whole day was spent in cutting a passage of two miles over the mountains. Washington urged that the Virginia Rangers be put to the front, as they understood Indian warfare. The general haughtily opposed it, and the regulars in brilliant uniforms, bayonets fixed, colors flying, and drums beating, swept over the open plain to battle, July 9, 1755. Suddenly there was a cry, "The French and Indians!" The Indian yell struck terror to the hearts of the regulars. They fired in all directions, killing their own men. A panic ensued. Braddock tried to rally his men; even striking them with the flat of his sword. Five horses were killed under him. At last a bullet entered his lungs, and he fell, mortally wounded. Then the men fled precipitately, falling over their dead comrades. Out of eighty-six officers, twenty-six were killed and thirty-six wounded. Nearly half of the whole army were dead or disabled. The Virginia Rangers covered the retreat of the flying regulars, and thus saved a remnant. Braddock, bequeathing his horse and servant, Bishop, to Washington, died broken-hearted, moaning, "Who would have thought it!... We shall better know how to deal with them another time." Washington tenderly read the funeral service, and Braddock was buried in the new and wild country he had come to save.