One of the direct serious charges brought against Washington was that he did "not know the difference between a party and an army." This is brought by Colonel Bouquet and I do not believe that he was in error or that the accusation can be proved unjust. Washington had had much experience, such as it was, in the Fort Necessity campaign, with Braddock, and on the Virginia frontier. But the Fort Necessity campaign was conspicuous as a political, not a military event. The force he led west did not number two hundred men. This was, surely, a party, not an army. Now, be it remembered, the great difficulty of leading any body of men, small or great, lay in provisioning them and feeding the horses. The larger the army the greater the difficulty—indeed the difficulty trebled as the number of men and horses was doubled. On those mountain roads the second wagon was drawn with much greater difficulty than the first. Again, a small body of men could, in part, be supplied with food from the forests; in the case of an army this source of supply must be ignored. In the case of Washington's Fort Necessity
