Note 17 — Chapter I
Reading edition
"The French have taken such liberties with some of our forts that are of great consequence to cover Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia, that we are actually dispatching two regiments thither. As the climate and other American circumstances are against these poor men, I pity them, and think them too many if the French mean nothing farther, too few if they do. Indeed, I am one of those that feel less resentment when we are attacked so far off: I think it an obligation to be eaten the last."—Walpole's Letters to Sir H. Mann, Oct. 6, 1754.
"A detachment of fifty men of the regiment of artillery embarked with the 2d battalion, No. 44 and No. 48, under the command of Major-general Braddock, for America.... This detachment was mostly cut to pieces near Fort du Quesne, on the Monongahela, on the 9th of July, 1755."—Memoirs of the Royal Regt. of Artillery, 1743. MSS., Col. Macbean, R.A. Library, Woolwich.