[29] No transaction in the life of Washington has elicited more passionate attack and defence than this. The French court published a very full account of the occurrence in a duodecimo which was sent to all the governments of Europe. It was entitled, “Mémoire contenant le Précis des Faits, avec leurs Pièces justificatives, pour servir de Réponse aux Observations envoyées, par les Ministres d’Angleterre, dans les cours de l’Europe.” A Paris, de l’Imprimerie Royale, 1756. [30] “The site of this fort is three or four hundred yards south of what is now called National Road, four miles from the foot of Laurel Hill, and fifty miles from Cumberland at Wills’ Creek.”--Sparks’ _Life of Washington_, p. 51. [31] M. De Villiers, in his despatches to the French Government, wrote, “We made the English consent to sign, that they had assassinated my brother in his camp.” [32] Irving’s _Life of Washington_, vol. i. p. 51. [33] “A gentleman, who had heard that Colonel Washington had said that he knew of no music so pleasing as the whistling of bullets, being alone in conversation with him, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, asked him whether it was as he had related. The general answered, ‘If I said so, it was when I was young.’”--_Gordon’s History_, vol. ii. p. 203. [34] “As late as 1754 all the French colonies, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, did not contain more than a hundred thousand white inhabitants, while the inhabitants of the English colonies were then estimated at twelve hundred thousand white and two hundred and fifty thousand blacks.”--_History of the United States of America_, by Harvey Prindle Peet, LL.D., p. 156. [35] “It is evident that the sense of the people was but little wakened to the necessity or importance of those enterprises against the French; and that they looked upon them rather as the results of political objects in Great Britain, than as immediately concerning themselves.”--Sparks’ _Life of Washington_, p. 51. [36] _Autobiography of Franklin_, Sparks’ edition, p. 90. [37] “Braddock’s own secretary, William Shirley, wrote confidentially to Governor Morris, ‘We have a general most judiciously chosen for being disqualified for the service he is employed in, in almost every respect.’”--_Colonial Records_, p. 405. [38] Walpole wittily wrote, “The Duke of Brunswick is much dissatisfied at the slowness of General Braddock, _who does not march as if he was at all impatient to be scalped_.” This was unjust. Want of courage was not one of the faults of General Braddock. [39] Mr. Irving, writing of the assailants says, “They were not the main force of the French, but a mere detachment of 72 Regulars, 146 Canadians, and 637 Indians, 855 in all, led by Captain de Beaujeu. Such was the scanty force which the imagination of the panic-stricken army had magnified into a great host, and from which they had fled, in breathless terror, abandoning the whole frontier.”--_Life of Washington_, vol. i. p. 206.