A
Magnificent Memory
When I get most gloomy about this I summon up a picture
of a noble British general with
powdered hair and pipe-clay leggings sitting astride a white stallion
directing troop movements across
the green river Monongahela, his
brilliant columns all in red stretching far behind him. "The most
magnificent sight I ever saw," said George Washington many years later when he remembered it. Who
could blame all those ordinary men for betting their lives on an invincible military machine, all
glittering and disciplined? All they had
to do was to ride down naked American savages from the Stone Age; all
they had to do was take their
orders and obey them.
General Braddock and
British tradition dictated common soldiers should be treated like dumb children, as a tough,
unsentimental shepherd treats sheep. It isn't even very hard to imagine these lowly soldiers, so well gotten
up, feeling proud to submerge their little destinies in the awesome collective will of the British
empire.
But as things turned out, a day of
reckoning was at hand for the empire. Exposed in full pretension, the collapse of the British expedition under
Braddock sent a shock of wild
surmise through the minds of other common men in the colonies and their
leaders. If Braddock didn't know
what he was doing, was it possible German King George back in London could be taken, too? Prince Charles Visits Steel
Valley High
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