Cool, calculating, foreseeing, dauntlessly brave--there was not in the New World at this time a better soldier than this heroic Swiss.
Amherst was in a bad way for troops.

The only available forces for the relief of Fort Pitt were 242 men of the 42nd Highlanders--the famous Black Watch--with 133 of the 77th (Montgomery's) Highlanders, and some Royal Americans.

These, with a few volunteers, made up a contingent 550 strong.

It was a force all too small for the task before it, and the majority of the soldiers had but recently arrived from the West Indies and were in wretched health.
Bouquet had sent instructions to Carlisle to have supplies ready for him and sufficient wagons assembled there for the expedition, but when he reached the place at the end of June he found that nothing had been done.

The frontier was in a state of paralysis from panic.