Next evening, as the general sat in his quarters at the Alexandria Tavern, surrounded by his officers, most of them drinking and swaggering, the general most of all, a knock came at the door, and when it was opened Captain Vanbraam’s short figure appeared, and with him George Washington, the finest and most military figure that General Braddock ever remembered to have seen. Something he had once heard of the great Condé came to General Braddock’s dull brain when he saw this superb young soldier: “This man was born a captain.”