John Forbes was born in the year 1710 in the parish of Edinburgh and the county of Edinburgh. His parents were John Forbes Sr., and Elizabeth Graham. The father was the Laird of Pittencrief in Dunfermline, in the shire of Fife, Scotland.
Despite his early interest in pursuing a career in 'physic' (medicine), young John began a career in the military with the purchase of a cornetcy in the 2nd Royal North British Dragons (variously known as the 'Scots Greys') in 1735. Although at the present time, we might think that purchasing a position in the army was a means of cheating the system, in the Eighteenth Century it was a perfectly honorable way for a young man to get his foot in the door, so the speak, of the armed forces. From the cornetcy, John Forbes made additional purchases and rose in rank. His rise, though, was not achieved solely by purchases of higher and higher positions. He performed well, and exemplary in certain of those positions, and his performance helped to propell him upwards. During years of service on the European continent in the War of the Austrian Succession, John Forbes had served as aid-de-camp to various commanders. He also served as a Deputy Quartermaster General.
By the time that the French began to threaten movement into the Ohio Valley, John Forbes achieved the rank of Brigadier General. He began his experience in the North American Colonies as a Colonel of the 17th Foot in 1757 and he was ordered to North America with John Campbell, the 4th Earl of Loudoun, recently commissioned as the Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty's Forces in North America. In December 1757 William Pitt made some changes. He replaced Loudoun with James Abercromby and Forbes was promoted to Brigadier General with the directive to capture Fort Duquesne from the French.
The rank could not save Forbes from health problems. In addition to pains in his legs, he was afflicted with chronic dysentery. As a result, General John Forbes spent over half of the Expedition that bore his name in his bed.
The Forbes Expedition began at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It is the county seat of Cumberland County and is located in the Cumberland Valley, a portion of the Great Appalachian Valley. Leading the vanguard of the British Army was Colonel Henry Bouquet, who set out on the first of June 1758.
John Forbes was still at Philadelphia when Bouquet got the army moving westward. Forbes remained at Philadelphia during the month of June and finally arrived at Carlisle on 4 July. He remained at Carlisle for about five weeks and arrived at Shippensburg on 12 August. He spent ten days at Fort Loudoun and it was the middle of September before he got to Fort Bedford. It would be the first week of November before he made his way to Loyal Hannon (later called Fort Ligonier). Bad weather and the recently cut road being ruined by the incessant rain prevented General Forbes from proceeding out of the fortification at Loyal Hannon until the middle of November.
And suddenly, without a fight, the French blew up the powder magazine and abandoned Fort Duquesne and just like that the Forbes Expedition was victorious.
General Forbes spent only a week at the Forks of the Ohio to oversee the plans to rebuild the fortification as Fort Pitt and then being carried on a litter between two horses, he was carried back to Philadelphia.
The trip back east took more than six weeks. And despite his attempt to continue to direct the army, he was bedridden and clearly on his deathbed. The end came on 11 March 1759 and John Forbes was then buried in the cemetery of Christ Church.
Henry Bouquet (pronounced Boo-krit) was born in Switzerland in the year 1719, making him nine years younger than John Forbes and thirty-nine years of age when he assisted General John Forbes with the expedition to take Fort Duquesne. Henry's father was Isaac Barthelemy Bouquet and his mother was Madeleine Rolaz. They were a prominent family in the town of Rolle, Canton Vaud, Switzerland.
Various of Henry's uncles were officers in the army. His uncle Louis Bouquet was a Lieutenant General in the Dutch Army, so it was natural for Henry to make the army a career. He started out at the age of seventeen and served in the army of the Dutch Republic and also under the King of Sardinia. During the Italian Campaign of the War of the Austrian Succession, Henry Bouquet was commissioned a First Lieutenant. His military skills induced the Prince of Orange to take him on as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Swiss Guards at The Hague. While in that position, he became acquainted with Benjamin Franklin, who familiarized Henry with the situation in the Colonies.
A unit to become known as the Royal American Regiment was being formed and German-speaking trained officers were being recruited to command the regiment. The British Ambassador to The Hague, Sir Joseph Yorke recommended that Bouquet be an officer of that regiment.
Colonel Bouquet arrived in America with the Royal American Regiment in the summer of 1756 and oversaw the raising of the troops for that regiment in Pennsylvania ~ mostly in the German communities around Philadelphia.
During the spring of 1758, Henry Bouquet was assigned by Lord Loudoun as the second-in-command to Brigadier General John Forbes in the Expedition to take Fort Duquesne from the French.
Because of the near constant state of ill health in which General Forbes found himself, he relied on Colonel Bouquet to essentially take control of the army and to make decisions that best suited the campaign, such as choosing the bluff two miles west of John Wray's trading post on which to have Fort Bedford constructed.
Following the capture of Fort Duquesne in November 1758, Colonel Bouquet continued serving the British Army. And two years later he led troops to rebuild Fort Presque Isle and other fortifications along the Ohio River which the French had destroyed before abandoning them.
In 1763 the Pontiac's Rebellion brought warfare to the Ohio Valley and western Pennsylvania, and Colonel Henry Bouquet was again commissioned to lead the British forces to quell it. The end of the Rebellion was brought about by Bouquet's leadership in late 1764. Bouquet received the rank of Brigadier General as a result.
After being appointed to command the Southern District of North America, Bouquet was sent to Florida. He caught yellow fever and died on 2 September 1765 at Pensacola. Florida.
George Washington is so often revered as the Father of His Country and his leadership during the American Revolutionary War as the Commander-in-Chief coupled with his serving as the first President of the United States of America has elevated him to near 'demigod' status. It is often forgotten that he started out simply as a Colonel of the Virginia troops during the French and Indian War.
The life and accomplishments of George Washington, [the son of Augustine and Mary (Ball) Washington, who was born on 22 February 1732 and died on 14 December 1799] are well known. His participation in the French and Indian War and his association with Bedford County will be noted here.
The military officers of the Colonies were not respected in the same way as the regular British Army officers were. Not only were the Colonial, or Provincial, military officers not as respected as officer of the regular British Army, they were often denied advancement and in some cases ostracised and their suggestions ignored.
George Washington definitely was ambitious about his military career. His older brother, Lawrence Washington was known to bring military instructors to Mount Vernon for the purpose of teaching George the things that would be necessary for him to know in order to become an officer.
Colonel Samuel C. Vestal, in an article included in Volume I of History of the George Washington Bicentennial Celebration, stated that "Washington, like Wellington, was never drilled as a soldier in a company. Nor did he ever drill a company. In the British service, the instruction of the men was done by drill sergeants.".
So, in regard to the military, George Washington was what you would call a 'self-made man', learning how the military should operate by personally becoming involved with it.
In October 1753, Robert Dinwiddie, Governor of the Virginia Colony engaged George Washington to head into the Virginia frontier to warn the French to cease and desist in their encroachment into the Ohio Valley. A series of French forts had been constructed southward from Lake Erie ostensibly to provide safety for fur trappers. They constructed the Fort de la Presque Isle in the vicinity of the lake and where the city of Erie, Pennsylvania is located; Fort LeBoeuf at a site about twenty miles south of Lake Erie where the town of Waterford stands today; and Fort Machault/Venango where French Creek empties into the Allegheny River. The Virginia Colony laid claim to that region, and Dinwiddie wanted the French to withdraw.
George Washington was commissioned to deliver a letter warning the French to leave to the French troops holding Fort LeBoeuf. He did as he was requested, arriving at Fort LeBoeuf on the 11th of December. He delivered the letter and returned to Williamsburg, Virginia by 16 January 1754. The French ignored the warning contained in the letter.
On 14 Februry 1754, the Virginia House appropriated 10,000 pounds for an expedition to be undertaken to physically dislodge the French out of the four forts along the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers.
William Trent, a fur trader in the Ohio Valley, was commissioned a Captain and sent with troops to construct a fort at the Forks of the Ohio, where the Allegheny and the Monongahela Rivers merge to form the Ohio River. What they were going to call Fort Prince George, a redoubt with stockade walls, was begun on 17 February. Then, on 18 April, a French force of over five hundred troops led by Captain Pierre de Contrecoeur appeared and forced the surrender of the Virginians. The French completed the construction of the fortification and named it Fort Duquesne.
George Washington was commissioned the rank of Lieutenant Colonel of the Virginia Regiment on 15 March 1754.
On the 2nd of April, unaware of the French takeover of the fort at the Forks of the Ohio, Colonel Washington led 180 British~American troops out of Alexandria, Virginia. They arrived at Wills Creek, near present-day Cumberland, Maryland two weeks later. It was then that Washington found out about the takeover of the fort at the Forks of the Ohio.
While encamped at Great Meadows, about fifty miles northwest of Wills Creek, Washington was informed that a body of French troops were nearby and planning an attack on his Virginian troops. Calling the French's bluff, Colonel Washington attacked first and defeated the French. In the battle, the French commander, Ensign Joseph Coulon de Villiers, the Sieur de Jumonville was killed. Twenty-one of the French troops were taken prisoner.
Being apprised of the defeat and the death of the ensign by one soldier who escaped the defeat at Great Meadows, the commander at Fort Duquesne, Captain Louis Coulon Ecuyer, Sieur de Villiers the half-brother of Ensign Joseph led a force of seven hundred French troops and 350 Indians to attack Washington's troops at a makeshift fortification called Fort Necessity. After four hours of fighting, Washington accepted terms of surrender offered by the French commander.
The Seven Years War, commonly known as the French and Indian War in the North American colonies, had begun.
On 29 May 1755, General Edward Braddock marched out of Fort Cumberland to capture Fort Duquesne. The route which the British took, to be known as Braddock's Road, traveled through the Virginia Colony's western frontier. That region would eventually be ruled to be part of the colony of Pennsylvania.
Rather than go into a complete history of the Braddock's Expedition, suffice it to say that the French repulsed the British in the Battle of the Monongahela (variously known as the Battle of the Wilderness and the Battle of Braddock's Field), on 9 July 1755, resulting in the death of General Braddock.
A second attempt to take Fort Duquesne was launched in the summer of 1758 under the direction of General John Forbes, and led in the field by Colonel Henry Bouquet.
During the Forbes Expedition, Colonel George Washington was instructed by Forbes to keep his troops at Fort Cumberland, but in readiness to march along the old Braddocks Road in the event that the expedition through Pennsylvania, via Fort Bedford, was unsuccessful, or if the French made a move out of Fort Duquesne.
Apart from cutting a half of the road between Fort Cumberland and Fort Bedford, George Washington and his troops remained at Fort Cumberland.
On 5 August 1758, Washington wrote a letter to Francis Fauquier, the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia from his camp at Fort Cumberland:
I neglected till now, purposely, (since my last of the 10th. Ulto.) to give your honour any acct. of Our Expedition; hoping at last to be furnish'd with something agreeable; being disappointed in this, I am sorry to inform you that we are still Incamp'd here, and have little prospect of de-camping, unless a fatal Resolution take place of opening a New Road from Rays Town to Fort Duquesne . . .
On 1 September 1758, Colonel Washington wrote to John Robinson, the Speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses, in which he stated:
We are still Incamp'd here, very sickly; and quite dispirited at the prospect before Us. That appearance of Glory once in view, that hope, that laudable Ambition of serving Our Country, and meriting its applause, is now no more! Tis dwindled into ease; Sloth, and fatal inactivity, and in a Word, All is lost, . . .
It is nostalgic to believe that George Washington was physically at Fort Bedford during much of the Fores Expedition, but it was the 16th of September 1758 before he was first mentioned as being at Fort Bedford. On that date, Brigade Major Francis Halkett wrote a letter to Maryland Governor Horatio Sharpe in which he stated:
This evening Colonel Washington arrived, who surprises the General extreamly by the account that he gives of the great scarsity of provisions at Fort Cumberland. . .
How long George Washington remained at Fort Bedford is not known with any certainty. All of his letters during the period until 6 November when he wrote from Loyal Hanna were signed from Fort Cumberland. Aparently, his arrival on 16 September was in passing through to the fort that would eventually be named Fort Ligonier.
The next time that Washington came to Bedford County was in 1794 when he brought a portion of the Federal Army westward to deal with the Whiskey Rebellion. During that visit, he was no longer the Virginian Colonel, nor was he the Continental Army's Commander-in-Chief. He was now the President of the United States of America.
Many people believe that George Washington's arrival in Bedford town would have been a triumphant affair. No newspaper was in existence at the time to record his arrival at the head of the army, but any coverage of it would probably not have been favorable.
President George Washington was not coming into Bedford town as a hero; he was coming into Bedford town as a conqueror ready to subdue any wrong-doers and to take as prisoner anyone supporting the Whiskey Rebels. He stayed two nights at the Espy House and during the intervening day met with his officers, such as Henry (Light-Horse Harry) Lee, to coordinate the push farther west.
