This spot, he decided, with instinctive military skill, to be the most appropriate place for England to rear a fortress and establish a garrison, which would constitute the most effectual _point d’appui_ (point of support), from which expeditions could emerge for the destruction of the French trading posts. This whole region was then an unbroken, howling wilderness. Buried in the glooms of the forest, far away from all observation, Washington hoped to rear a strong fortress before the French should have any suspicion of what was going on. Having completed these works, and rendered them impregnable to any force which France could bring against them, he would then build strong flat-bottomed boats, armed with cannon, and manned with troops, in which they could drift down the Ohio, and attack by surprise, and destroy, all the French military and trading posts found upon the banks. Contemplating this plan in the light of humanity, it was a very sad one. “War is cruelty. You cannot refine it.” At these posts there were many humble emigrants, fathers and mothers, little boys and girls. They were innocent of all crime. Struggling against the enormous taxation, of king and nobles, in France, they had left the thatched cottages of their lowly ancestors, hoping to find homes of more comfort in the wilderness of the New World. It is dreadful to think of the consternation, which must have spread through such a little settlement of pioneers, when suddenly, on some bright, sunny morning, the terrible gun-boats, crowded with armed soldiers, rounded a bend in the river, and opened their fire. “Bayonets,” says a French proverb, “must not think.” Soldiers must obey orders, regardless of the tears and pleadings of humanity. The orders were peremptory. “Apply the torch and lay every building in ashes. The dying matron, helpless in her bed, and the new-born babe, must look out for themselves. Disperse, capture, or kill all the inhabitants. Leave nothing behind but smouldering ruins and mangled corpses.”