George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

“ [241] free quarters this day, I'll order here all the troops

chap. X.} 1756.

in North America under my command, and billet them myself upon the city.” So the magistrates got up a subscription for the winter support of officers, who had done nothing for the country but burden its resources. In Philadelphia Loudoun uttered the same menace, and the storm was averted only by an adjustment. The frontier had been left open to the French; this quartering troops in the principal towns at the expense of the inhabitants by the illegal authority of a military chief, was the great result of the campaign.

Yet native courage flashed up in every part of the colonies. The false Delawares, thirsting for victims and secret as the night, from their village at Kittanning, within forty-five miles of Fort Duquesne, stained all the border of Pennsylvania with murder and scalping. To destroy them, three hundred Pennsylvanians crossed the Alleghanies, conducted by John Armstrong, of Cumberland County, famed as inheriting the courage of the Scottish covenanters.

In the night following the seventh of September, the avenging party, having marched on that day thirty miles through the unbroken forests, were guided to the Indian village of Kittanning, by the beating of a drum and the whooping of warriors at their festival; and they lay quiet and hush till the moon was fairly set. They heard a young fellow whistling near them, as a signal to a squaw after his dance was over; and in a field of maize, on the margin of the river, they saw the fires near which the Indians took their rest with no dreams of danger. At daybreak three companies which lagged in the rear were brought over the