Yeah, this is what happens when you decide to march into ALL THE TREES of Pennsylvania and ignore the help of the literal subject matter experts on scouting because you're a bigoted egotistical arse, aka EDWARD "OH NO THEY'RE ALL AROUND US" BRADDOCK

THREADDDDDDDD https://twitter.com/HistoryCenter/status/1281591624464830464

Look, if your're fixin to invade the deepwoods of PA, regardless if you take 22 or 80, there's a few key things you're gonna wanna do

1, don't turn down the native guides

2, don't to collect all the wagons you can from Ben Franklin

3, invest in light infantry

Ed Braddock, he's been assigned to go fix G-Wash's little boo-boo at the Forks of the Ohio, which is Pittsburgh, as opposed to the Spoons of the Ohio, which is Cincinnati, and the Knives of the Ohio which is Point Pleasant and the Sporks of the Ohio which is Cairo

That tweet deserves a goddam emmy ffs

anyways

braddock has to go and seize Fort Duquesne which is uhhh not the university but very french. full of French, really. And some lost Canadians. And some incredibly competent Native light fighters

Eddy Braddock gets his 2100 troops together at Cumberland, MD, with the newly promoted LTC Washington - yeah, they promoted him after he STARTED A GODDAM WORLD WAR, sheesh Virginia - and wagon teamsters Daniel Boone and Dan Morgan which would be A GREAT FUCKIN SITCOM

What he DIDN't have were many native scouts, only 8 Mingo stuck around, mainly due to Braddock's absolute certainty that British Regulars were the bee's knees and he didn't need any "savages." Not really shocking that they were like "you do you, assface, see ya later"

So Braddock takes off, intent to cut his way from MD to Pittsburgh. Literally cut, with axes, cause PA was mostly trees . still is, really. This one Brit officer looked at PA and was like "HOW THE FUCK DO YOU DO WAR THINGS HERE" or something like that, more or less

Off they go, chopping down trees towards 76, because there they only had to deal with construction 11 months out of the year, which was only slightly better than making your own road

slightly

Also, did i mention there were more mosquitoes than truckstops on I-80?

They leave in May, by July, theyre getting pretty close and Morgan and Boone have reached the first critical crisis of their friendship in the sitcom that I am now volunteering to write, but it mainly has to do with enlisted-officer relationships

But the advance guard is close

The advance guard is led by ol Horatio Gates, all excited to do fun fort-storming things with his grenadiers, and they run into some French regulars and marines and Canadian miltiia and everyone is like "IT'S ONNNNN"

The French open fire and then the grenadiers RIP some volleys

They're straight yelling "god save the king" with every volley because they were sorta metal and they keep advancing with every volley because they unlocked "fire and advance" in the research part of the game

anyways, the French commander gets schwacked and their lines break

At this point, Gates is all, "aw shit, I got this on lock" and is calcualting how good his name will look as the Conquerer of Duquesne" when the failure to send out flankers and skirmishers and also to get native scouts bites them in the ass sooooooo hard

The native light infantry on the flanks open fire from cover and concealment and whooooo boy do the grenadiers not like this. Gates brings up his cannons and fire grapeshot into the woods which doesn;t do a whole hell of a lot

Braddock starts ordering more troops up

Regulars charge up the road and run right into the retreating grenadiers, and all hell breaks out. well, more hell. meanwhile, GWashington rides around all gallantly, but more probably just really excited about the dysentery that he had in a badddd way

As the fire intensifies and the smoke clouds the trees, visibility breaks down, and command and control goes to shit. That's the doctrinal term, yes. Thats when the Native American light infantry goes for the close in fighting and the British column completely disintegrates

That's around the time that Braddock gets hit & that column gets all mixed up in all the wagons and the retreat turns into a rout and, well, yeah, you get the idea. pretty much utter and complete. And otd in 1755, Braddock dies and gets buried in the road his troops retreat over

So, let's go over this again, if you're invading Pittsburgh:

1. don't piss off the native scouts
2. don't bring too many wagons
3. get light infantry

Oh, and probably bring some money for tolls.

and primanti brothers sandwiches

this has been

#drunjhistory

be well