They were hurried into a campaign against peculiarly formidable foes before they had acquired the rudiments of a soldier's training, and, of course, they never even understood what woodcraft meant.

[Footnote: Denny's Journal, 374.] The officers were men of courage, as in the end most of them showed by dying bravely on the field of battle; but they were utterly untrained themselves, and had no time in which to train their men.

Under such conditions it did not need keen vision to foretell disaster.

Harmar had learned a bitter lesson the preceding year; he knew well what Indians could do, and what raw troops could not; and he insisted with emphasis that the only possible outcome to St.Clair's expedition was defeat.
The Troops Gather at Fort Washington.
As the raw troops straggled to Pittsburgh they were shipped down the Ohio to Fort Washington; and St.Clair made the headquarters of his army at a new fort some twenty-five miles northward, which he christened Fort Hamilton.

During September the army slowly assembled; two small regiments of regulars, two of six months' levies, a number of Kentucky militia, a few cavalry, and a couple of small batteries of light guns.
After wearisome delays, due mainly to the utter inefficiency of the quartermaster and contractor, the start for the Indian towns was made on October the 4th.
The Army Begins its March.
The army trudged slowly through the deep woods and across the wet prairies, cutting out its own road, and making but five or six miles a day.