In a few hours three prisoners were brought into camp who reported the true condition of affairs at Fort Duquesne. Bradstreet had destroyed the stores destined for the Ohio by the destruction of Fort Frontenac. Ligneris, the commandant, had consequently been compelled to send home his Illinois and Louisiana militia. The brave Post had succeeded in alienating the Ohio Indians. The remainder at Fort Duquesne were glad now to hurry away into their winter quarters in their distant homelands. The gods had favored the brave. Immediately Forbes determined upon a hurried advance with a picked body of twenty-five hundred men, unencumbered. Washington and Armstrong hastened ahead to cut the pathway. A strong vanguard led the way. Behind them came the hero of the hour and of the campaign, Forbes, borne on his litter. The Highlanders occupied the center of the rear, with the Royal Americans and provincials on their right and left under Bouquet and Washington. On the night of the twenty-fourth the little army lay on its arms in the hills of Turkey Creek, near Braddock's fatal field. At midnight a booming report startled them. Were the French welcoming the long-expected reenforcements from Presque Isle and Niagara--or had a magazine exploded? In the morning some advised a delay to reconnoitre. Forbes scorned the suggestion; "I will sleep," he is said to have exclaimed, "in Fort Duquesne or in hell tonight." At dusk that November evening the army marched breathlessly down the wide, hard trace over which Beaujeu had led his rabble toward Braddock's army and, without opposition, came at last within sight of the goal upon which the eyes of the world had been directed so long. The barracks and store-house of Fort Duquesne were burned, the fortifications blown up and the French--gone forever. Two days later a weary man sat within an improvised house and with a feeble hand indited a letter to the British Secretary of State. And all it contained was summed up in its first words: "Pittsbourgh 27^{th} Novem^r 1758." It was Pitt's bourgh now. The region about the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela was known in Kentucky as "the Pitt country." The generous Bouquet expressed the sentiment of the army when he affirmed: "After God, the success of this expedition is entirely due to the General." When Forbes's physical condition is understood, his last campaign must be considered one of the most heroic in the annals of America. "Its solid value was above price. It opened the Great West to English enterprise, took from France half her savage allies, and relieved the western borders from the scourge of Indian war. From southern New York to North Carolina, the frontier populations had cause to bless the memory of the steadfast and all-enduring soldier."[75]