"SAYINGS THAT WERE NEVER UTTERED"
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] Sia—Thaekeray's absurd version of Wolfe's dying words given with all the air of " inside information," is not his only blunder in The Virginians. His version of Braddoek's defeat has had a lasting influence on magazine and similar writers, particularly Americans, as being of a flattering nature. Braddock was not a blundering fool—nor was he ambushed and surprised by the Franco-Indian force that destroyed his own. He made no mistake whatever in his dispositions against surprise. It was merely the inability of European trained infantry suddenly to adapt themselves to backwood warfare—the fault of the Home Government, who plaruied and dictated everything. Thackeray, if memory serves me, quotes the legend of." 500 Virginians " who alone held the enemy. There were just 300 colonials at Braddock's defeat— Virginians, New Yorkers, and Carolinians. Their job, as shown in the contemporary plan of the battle, was to guard the baggage in the rear, which they did, taking cover no doubt according to backwoods custom while the British infantry took that ghastly two hours' punislunent from mostly unseen foes, standing, according to the description, when the panic set in, the eat ire force, including the colonials, flying back at once across the Menongalola. There was no pursuit. The scalps and plunder on the battlefield were too much for the savages. Just twenty years later "Nicholas Cresswell" from Derbyshire, riding over the Western trail which "Braddock's road had become, saw relies of the battle, including many skulls and bones, still thick on the ground.—I am, Sir, &e.,
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