The command, of the Fort Duquesne campaign was given by Pitt to Brigadier John Forbes, a Scot, ten years younger than his century. Of Forbes little seems to be known save that he began life as a medical student; abandoning his profession for that of arms he made a brave and good officer. That Pitt chose him to retrieve the dead Braddock's mistakes speaks loudly of his commanding abilities; the numerous quotations from his correspondence given elsewhere in this monograph will present a clearer picture of this almost unknown hero than has ever yet been drawn. "Though a well-bred man of the world," writes Parkman, "his tastes were simple; he detested ceremony, and dealt frankly and plainly with the colonists, who both respected and liked him."[54] The correspondence between Forbes and his chief assistant, Lieutenant-colonel Henry Bouquet, a Swiss, commanding the regiment of Royal Americans, is convincing proof of the democratic plainness and whole-hearted earnestness of Braddock's successor. The condition of the frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania during the years succeeding Braddock's defeat has been previously reviewed, and the greatness of the task now thrown upon General Forbes's shoulders can be readily conceived. Yet there was much in his favor; the colonies were quite aroused to the danger. Pennsylvania and Virginia were at last ready to put shoulder to shoulder in an attempt to drive the French from the Ohio. Pennsylvania promised Forbes twenty-seven hundred men; sixteen hundred were to come from Virginia and other of the southern provinces. Twelve hundred Highlanders from Montgomery's regiment were given Forbes, also the Royal American regiment, made up largely of Pennsylvania Germans and officered by men brought for the purpose from Europe. The force, when at last gathered together, amounted to between six and seven thousand men. The very proportions of this army were its principal menace. No one believed that Fort Duquesne, far away in the forests beyond the mountains, could hold out against this formidable array. That the French, now being attacked simultaneously in the east and in the north, could send reenforcements to the Ohio was no more likely. But there still lay the Alleghenies, their crags and gorges. Could this large body of troops cross them and take provisions sufficient to support men and horses? As with Braddock, so now with Forbes, it was the mere physical feat of throwing an army three hundred miles into the forests that was the crucial problem. Fort Duquesne could have been captured with half of Forbes's army; Wolfe had hardly more than that at Quebec in the year succeeding. If Forbes could move this army, or any considerable fraction of it, across the mountains, there was no reasonable doubt of his success.