Hello and welcome to a history of the United States.

Episode 106, all chaos on the Western Front.

In our last episode, we brought Lord Lowndon to North America and watched the British

Northern Frontier's offensive capability be completely destroyed within a month following the disaster at Fort

Zwego. But the situation wasn't that much better on the Western frontier. During the winter

of 1755, 1756, a number of forts were constructed on the Western frontiers of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia,

each with a small garrison.

This made for, in theory, a chain of fortifications commanding strategic points to dominate and protect the frontier.

This didn't quite work in practice. While some were strong forts, such as

Fort Augusta in Pennsylvania and Fort Cumberland in Maryland, many were much less than this. In many cases,

they were a stockade surrounding a few cabins. Then they were each

located roughly 20 miles apart, which made them isolated. They were only capable of providing

refuge points for people from the backwoods to flee from. Never mind actually repel a raid.

Washington thought they were useless, while Moncum called them pretended forts.

The colonies did quite little throughout 1756, with Maryland doing by far the least. It had the

smallest frontier and the least interest. It raised only 250 provincial soldiers throughout the year,

and by autumn concluded that Fort Cumberland wasn't worth defending, with the Assembly instructing that the fort be abandoned, with a force relocating to Fort Frederick, 70 miles to the east.

Virginia did a great deal more. The House of Burgesses raised £55,000 for defence, while Colonel Washington

was authorised to enlist 1,500 men, although he did not even manage to raise half that figure.

In the north, the colonies paid wages to its soldiers, but in Virginia, the proposed compensation

was so miserly that few volunteered, and they had to resort to conscription laws that only applied

to those who were too poor to flee the colony. Those troops that had been raised were then under-provisioned,

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