Braddock's Defeat: The Battle of the Monongahela and the Road to Revolution

Braddock's Defeat: The Battle of the Monongahela and the Road to Revolution By David L. Preston New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015 480 pages $29.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Reading terrain in relation to the adversary is often the key to tactical victory. It also makes for the beginnings of a first-rate military history, as David L. Preston demonstrates in his profound Braddock's Defeat: The Battle of the Monongahela and the Road to Revolution. Preston paddled, hiked, and drove his way to an excellent analysis of the maneuver and decision-making of the French, Indians, British, and colonists during this epic campaign in the 1755 American wilderness. His on-the-ground treatment of events renders this study the definitive work of the first conventional British ground operation of the French and Indian War, and as Preston shows, with wide-ranging implications for Europe in the Seven Years' War, and eventually, the American Revolutionary War. Hesitant at first to purchase what I considered yet another treatment of this infamous engagement, Preston's excellent lecture at the Ohio Country Conference convinced me to rethink my impression. I was more than rewarded. Braddock's Defeat is one of the most thorough military history accounts of any topic, combining detailed strategic, operational, and tactical examinations with the best of modern military history's cultural considerations. In so doing, Preston revives Braddock's reputation as a sensible military man, sensitive to the need to cultivate indigenous allies, while placating the infighting colonists. The Indians themselves become the main agent of victory for the battle, acting in conjunction with French officers and cadets in crushing the British flankers and pouring deadly enfilading volleys into Braddock's beleaguered column. Preston's uncovering of rare Indian voices in the record adds brilliantly to this analysis. Braddock's defeat was a matter of initial Indian success in an ambush, in a fashion similar to what I have discovered occurred repeatedly in the Great Narragansett War (traditionally King Philip's War). An initial accurate volley into a European column negotiating difficult terrain by a large number of concealed Indians usually led to a rapid and decisive Indian victory. Although it may have been more useful in the section about the battle itself, the counterfactual allusion to how Braddock might have reacted tactically is a critical piece of Preston's analysis (315-316). Subsequent Indian fighters, like Henry Bouquet, Robert Rogers, and "Mad" Anthony Wayne, employed such tactics against Native Americans, perhaps making good Braddock's supposed final words, "We shall better know how to deal with them another time" (273). As with many commands unprepared for the enemy, there was no next time for Braddock and many of his troops who were killed in action and mutilated in accord with Indian cultural affinities in war. Preston does not conclude with new consideration of Indian material, but uncovers original French sources in Caen's archives and elsewhere which produced, among valuable maps, a hitherto unknown account of the French battle plan. …