There, Braddock would suffer one of the worst defeats in British military history. Later that same month, Braddock led a force of British regulars and American militiamen – including George Washington, Daniel Morgan and young Sergeant Daniel Boone – from Fort Cumberland, Maryland, into the Appalachian wilderness. That abrupt dismissal of Franklin’s advice would prove fatally misguided.

“The only danger I apprehend of obstruction to your march,” he warned, “is from ambuscades of Indians, who, by constant practice, are dexterous in laying and executing them, and the slender line, near four miles long, which your army must make, may expose it to be attacked by surprise in its flanks, and to be cut like a thread into several pieces.’”įranklin wrote that Braddock smiled at his “ignorance” and recalled the general replying, “These savages may, indeed, be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia, but upon the King’s regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible they should make any impression.”

He recalled Braddock boasting,“Duquesne can hardly detain me above three or four days.”įranklin, however, cautioned the general that he was badly underestimating the rigors of the American wilderness and the dangers therein – especially the French-allied Indians. Braddock, who had been appointed a major general only a year before, had come to the Colonies with the 44thand 48th regiments of British regulars three months earlier to take command of the growing struggle against the French.įranklin wrote in his autobiography that the general expected to make quick work of Fort Duquesne. However, he was quickly recruited to help the general gather wagons and supplies for his forthcoming expedition into Pennsylvania against the French-held Fort Duquesne (on the site of today’s Pittsburgh). In his role as deputy postmaster general of Britain’s North American Colonies, Franklin came to meet Braddock to discuss the handling of military dispatches.

In May 1755, British Major General Edward Braddock met with the American inventor, writer and former Philadelphia printer Benjamin Franklin in Frederick town, Maryland. A British disaster in the French and Indian War propelled the rise of a young American colonel, George Washington.

War in french translation