Killing England

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  This book is dedicated to all American history teachers past and present.

  Acknowledgments

  Stephen Rubin, the best publisher on the planet, and his muse Gillian Blake—an editor with a great eye.

  Eric Simonoff, who puts the deals together and guides the process.

  Marty Dugard, the best writing partner a person could have.

  Finally, my fourteen-year-old son, Spencer, who loves history and keeps me on my toes!

  —BILL O’REILLY

  Thanks to Bill O’Reilly, for his vision and genius. Thanks also to the team that makes the Killing books possible: Steve Rubin, Gillian Blake, Chris O’Connell, and the intrepid Eric Simonoff. And to Calene and the Bongo Boys, with much love.

  —MARTIN DUGARD

  Prologue

  OHIO COUNTRY, NORTH AMERICA

  JULY 9, 1755

  1:30 P.M.

  The long knives are out.

  The face of Capt. Daniel-Hyacinthe-Marie Liénard de Beaujeu is striped in war paint. Primeval forest conceals his French Marines, Canadian militia, and Indian allies as they maneuver into position. Hidden behind boulders and ancient oak trees, they await the massive combined force of the British and colonial armies now marching toward them. Beaujeu’s French and Indians are heavily outnumbered. Unlike the British, they don’t have cannon that can kill and maim dozens with a single blast of canister shot. Instead, their weapons are those of a nimble guerrilla fighting force: muskets, tomahawks, war clubs to bash skulls, and sharp knives for slicing the flesh and hair from a dying man’s head.

  Captain Beaujeu clearly sees the dirty crimson uniforms and miter caps of the Forty-Fourth and Forty-Eighth Regiments’ Grenadier companies. These foot soldiers at the front of the British ranks are an elite fighting force. As best the French commander can tell, they number about three hundred men. He has scouted the enemy well, and knows that hundreds more British and Americans follow behind them in a thin mile-long column, hemmed in on both sides by the woods.

  Beaujeu is stripped to the waist in the manner of his Indian allies. Bear grease smeared on his torso will make him slippery and more difficult to fight when the combat becomes hand to hand. The forty-three-year-old father of nine never tires of defeating the British. Killing them, he has written in his journal, fills him with “joye.” His weapon of choice is a musket made at the Tulle Arsenal in Saint-Étienne, France. The Indians under his command, warriors from many tribes, are so enamored of this lightweight weapon that they ask for the “Tulle fusil” by name.1

  But right now, those guns are silent.

  The French and Indians hold their fire as they await the moment when Beaujeu will stand tall in the forest to wave his hat. This is the signal to attack.

  Oblivious to the coming ambush, twenty-three-year-old George Washington sits gingerly in the saddle at the very rear of the British column, guiding his horse along the narrow path leading straight into the hidden enemy. Dressed in the blue uniform of the Virginia militia, Washington is in agony. A tall and charismatic young man with large hands and a face marked by smallpox scars, Washington rides atop a pillow to protect his ailing backside from the pain of hemorrhoids. A rumble in his belly signals yet another attack of dysentery, forcing him to abruptly guide his charger into the forest in search of discreet relief.

  The young Virginian contents himself with the knowledge that the march is almost over: after six weeks and 290 backbreaking miles through the wilderness, the British Army is just one day away from reaching the French garrison known as Fort Duquesne, which it plans to destroy.

  Washington’s intestinal illness forced him to travel flat on his back in a covered wagon until yesterday. But it is vital that he ride into battle on horseback. Just one year ago he was the officer who fired the first shot in the war between the British and the French. “The volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire,” is how one British historian will describe the incident. Indeed, Washington’s decision to attack a small French scouting party, killing all its soldiers, will launch what will become known as history’s first world war. In time, the fighting will spread far beyond North America—into Europe, Africa, and even India.2

  But that moment of impulse eventually led to public disgrace. Soon after the skirmish, Washington suffered the humiliation of surrendering his Virginia militia to the French at a battlefield not far from here known as Fort Necessity. In order to avoid a wider war, the French allowed Washington and his men to return home, but the stigma of failure still hangs over the ambitious former surveyor. He has returned to this forest as a volunteer, seeking redemption by using his knowledge of the lush woodland trails to assist the British commander, Gen. Edward Braddock.

  Unbeknownst to George Washington, however, the battle he seeks will not take place tomorrow.

  LEGEND HERE

  It is happening right now.

  * * *

  Three hundred miles away, in Philadelphia, forty-nine-year-old Benjamin Franklin sits naked in his bedroom. He is reading a book with the windows wide open while enjoying the rejuvenation of his daily “air bath.” Franklin eagerly awaits word of the British Army’s great victory, for the French presence in the Ohio River Valley not only blocks America’s westward expansion, but also threatens the safety of the existing American colonies.

  Franklin is not alone. From Virginia to Boston, General Braddock’s campaign is a cause célèbre. The French and British have been at odds in Europe for centuries. Now their rivalry is shifting to North America. It was the British who first established a string of colonies up and down the Atlantic seaboard, but the French were not easily outdone, settling land west of the Appalachian Mountains. They call this thinly populated region New France. Beginning in Canada, the territory extends from the Great Lakes south through the Mississippi Valley all the way to the region on the Gulf of Mexico known as Louisiana. The border between the French and British colonies is poorly defined. One region in particular, the Ohio River Valley, is highly coveted by the British as a means of expanding their sphere of influence. General Braddock has been sent to America with the singular purpose of taking possession of this land.

  But there is also a more tactical reason for the impending battle. The French soldiers in the Ohio River Valley are limited to the garrison at Fort Duquesne. They are in a defensive stance right now, dedicated to keeping the British contained on the coast. But, in time, Fort Duquesne could serve as a jumping-off point for a French assault on the British colonies themselves. If that happens, their Indian allies will be free to loot and pillage colonial farms and towns.

  Fears of the French and Indians sweeping into Pennsylvania and Virginia have churchgoers ardently praying for the general’s success “against our neighboring enemies.” Many colonists are so confident of Braddock’s abilities that toasts to his victory have already been r
aised throughout the colonies.

  Franklin, however, is not ready to celebrate.

  The balding postmaster is a few inches short of six feet tall, with broad shoulders and what many consider a very large head. He has been in a common-law marriage for twenty-five years, to Deborah Read, a buxom beauty two years his junior.3 He sired an illegitimate son with another woman before their union, and Deborah has given birth to two children, one of whom died from smallpox at the age of four. The gray-eyed Franklin favors a vegetarian diet and appears portly but is in fact muscular due to his passion for swimming. He is an inventor, writer, firefighter, publisher, postmaster, and scientist.

  Most of all, though, Benjamin Franklin is patriotic for a nation that does not yet exist.

  Franklin’s current focus is protecting “America” from the growing French threat. He seeks to form a union of the colonies that will provide this protection. But instead of seeing him as an ally, the British see him as a gadfly. His efforts to meet with the Iroquois Indians to broker a peace are viewed as interfering with the power of the king.

  Despite British animosity, Franklin’s ingenuity saved General Braddock’s expedition in April, when the general himself declared that he could not proceed into the Ohio River Valley due to a lack of wagons and drivers for hauling the food and munitions vital to supplying his army. Franklin and Braddock met in person in late April, just days before George Washington joined the British cause.

  “I happened to say I thought it was a pity they had not been landed rather in Pennsylvania,” Franklin will write, “as in that country almost every farmer had his wagon. The general eagerly laid hold of my words, and said, ‘Then you, sir, who are a man of interest there, can probably procure them for us; and I beg you will undertake it.’”

  Within two weeks, Franklin presented Braddock with 150 wagons and another 259 horses. Among the wagoners is a twenty-year-old outdoorsman named Daniel Boone.4

  Franklin is uneasy about Braddock’s battle tactics. He believes the sixty-year-old British general is ignorant about fighting in the wilderness and employs strategies better suited to the empty plains of Europe. Franklin has personally warned Braddock about the Indians’ ability to camouflage themselves and strike without warning. He believes the general’s plan of traveling through the forest in a single column could lead to a devastating surprise attack.

  “These savages may, indeed, be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia,” Braddock replied as he dismissed Franklin’s advice, “but upon the king’s regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible they should make any impression.”

  Just a few days ago, when two good friends requested that Franklin donate to a fund that would purchase fireworks to celebrate Braddock’s coming victory, Franklin was uncharacteristically dour. “Time enough to prepare for the rejoicing,” he told them by way of refusal, “when … we should have occasion to rejoice.”

  “You surely don’t suppose that the fort will not be taken?” one of his friends asked in astonishment.

  “The events of war,” Franklin replied, “are subject to great uncertainty.”

  * * *

  A bare-chested Capt. Daniel-Hyacinthe-Marie Liénard de Beaujeu now rises to his feet and waves his black tricornered chapeau high over his head.

  Yet the French and Indians do not immediately open fire. Instead, they move toward the British lines while simultaneously fanning wide until they surround the enemy on three sides.

  The center of the French line is a disciplined band of marines well versed in forest fighting. Their uniforms are not the garish red of the British or even the bright blue of the American colonists, but consist of brown moccasins and leggings of a type borrowed from the Indians. Like Captain Beaujeu, many marines are stripped to the waist and slathered in bear grease.

  These hardened men now completely block the British advance. A fight is inevitable. Beaujeu has chosen the perfect killing ground to make his stand, offering the British no room to move past the French and toward Fort Duquesne. Indians in the woods outflank the redcoats on the right and left.

  Initially, the British are flustered by the sight of the enemy, but their training soon takes over. Answering with cool precision the command to “fix your bayonets,” they slide the seventeen-inch triangular blades over the ends of their musket barrels and march toward their enemy with outward calm. On the inside, however, these young men from England, Ireland, and Scotland are terrified. They fear the French, but not as much as they fear the Iroquois and the Delaware. The horror of getting scalped alive has been a frequent topic of late-night campfire conversation.

  “God save the king,” the grenadiers shout, forming into three neat lines to fire the first volley. Most shots go wild. Their Brown Bess muskets cannot be aimed accurately at a distance greater than fifty yards, thanks to a lack of rifling grooves in the barrel, so volley fire is the only way to hit any targets at all. Yet the British draw first blood: two young French officers are hit, one shot through the mouth.

  The French once again dive for cover. As the grenadiers reload for the second volley, two British six-pound cannon are dragged forward into firing positions. With rehearsed precision, the grenadiers part ranks as the guns are aimed and loaded in their lines, ensuring that none of them is hit by the deadly salvoes of canister shot soon fired at the French.

  The effect is immediate. If the greatest fear of British soldiers is being scalped, the French and Indians tremble just as mightily at the mutilation wrought by canister and grape. Each round contains fifty-six balls weighing 1.5 ounces each. These flying pieces of hot, jagged metal now shred limbs and torsos. “Every man for himself,” cried out in French, echoes up and down the ridgeline. The Canadian militia, whom Beaujeu has long suspected of cowardice, abandons its position as its men run from the battle. Beaujeu and his remaining men cower behind the ancient oaks and walnut trees, taking advantage of the cover provided by the white smoke from musket fire that now settles over the land like a low cloud.

  The British fire a third volley.

  A single musket ball pierces the forehead of Captain Beaujeu.

  His body slumps to the ground. No one rushes to check for signs of life. Instead, the battle Beaujeu planned so meticulously continues to rage as he lies facedown in the dirt at the edge of a ravine.

  The captain’s death undoes the French. Even many Indians flee the battle. Not only have the British thwarted the ambush within a matter of minutes, but they have done so without suffering any loss of life. Roaring a cheer of self-congratulation, the grenadiers rush forward to claim their victory—a fatal mistake for many.

  Not all the Indians have run away.

  Gen. Edward Braddock once bragged to Benjamin Franklin that these native warriors would be no match for His Majesty’s Army. The truth is that the Indians are the most experienced fighting force on this battlefield. They have been stealthily observing the British for a month, awaiting this moment of attack. Their knowledge of this landscape and of the tactics required to win the engagement is beyond the comprehension of the pale and blistered soldiers they now face. Even the British officers on horseback, whose bright red uniforms make them such an easy target, are no match for these brave men.

  As the British grenadiers race forward with great commotion, the remaining Indians now begin shooting from the right and left sides of the column, unleashing a brutal cross fire that catches the grenadiers completely off guard.

  The Indians’ next gambit is equally unexpected. Rather than standing in one place to fight, as the British expect from their opponents on the battlefield, the tribes run like deer through the woods, bounding over rocks, hiding behind trees to reload and shoot, then sprinting toward a new field of fire. High-pitched war cries pierce the air, making it seem as if the Indians were everywhere at once. It is a scream the British will never forget, “perhaps the most horrid sound that can be imagined,” one account will later read.

  The grenadiers fire a fourth round, but that will be their las
t. Order is soon lost. The neat lines of British soldiers that launched precise volleys into the French lines just moments ago have been replaced by a jumble of terrified men shooting at anything that moves. Indians storm the British lines. The thick white clouds of musket smoke add to the chaos.

  Most of these men will never see England again. This they now know. Panicked grenadiers turn and run. Officers attempting to stop them are ignored—some even shot by their own desperate men.

  Indians quickly fall upon the stragglers, shouldering their cherished Tulle fusil muskets so they can kill face-to-face. The sickening thud of spiked clubs cracking open skull after British skull combines with the war cries and musket cracks and the whinny of dying horses.

  A senior British officer is shot from his horse. As he breathes his last, a junior officer who happens to be his son runs to the rescue, only to be shot dead and fall motionless atop his father’s body.

  Capt. Robert Cholmley of the Forty-Eighth is also shot from the saddle. He is scalped as he lies wounded. Just eight months ago, before sailing from his home in Ireland to America, Cholmley sensed that this campaign might not end well. “As to my body, where the leaf falls, let it rot,” he wrote in his will.

  So it is. The veteran officer’s corpse will never be buried or moved from this spot. He truly will be left to rot. Perhaps the greatest indignity is Captain Cholmley’s final moment of life, as two warriors pull the brain from his head and smear its gray matter on their bodies as a sign of domination.

  Cholmley is not alone in his debasement. Blood is everywhere, in streaks on faces and uniforms, pooling on the forest floor. Dead grenadiers litter the earth. Almost every British officer is shot. The peaked miter caps that were once the most distinctive element of the grenadier uniform lie scattered atop the carpet of leaves, knocked from the heads of the dead in the instant before foreheads were sliced and scalps peeled away from the bone with expert precision.5