📅 On This Day in Military History
1 event across history
Britain sent General Braddock with 1,400 British regulars and 450 colonials — including Washington — to capture Fort Duquesne (modern Pittsburgh). A French and Indian force of 900 ambushed the column on a forest road. The disciplined British formations were devastated by fire from men they couldn't see. Braddock was mortally wounded; two-thirds of his force was killed or wounded. Washington had two horses shot from under him and four bullet holes in his coat.
The worst British military disaster in North America to that point. It exposed the fatal weakness of European linear tactics in forest warfare. Washington's cool conduct under fire made him famous throughout the colonies. The destruction of Braddock's force left the entire Pennsylvania and Virginia frontier undefended.
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