[134] See Parkman, Half Century of Conflict, chap. xiv. For the original documents see Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XVI.
[135] Wisconsin Historical Collections, XVI, 476-77.
The Foxes resisted desperately the attempt to exterminate them.[136] De Lignery led an expedition from Montreal in 1728, which on its arrival in Wisconsin numbered five hundred Frenchmen and over a thousand Indians. To this invasion of her future sister state Illinois contributed a force of twenty Frenchmen and five hundred Indians, who came by way of the Chicago Portage. The results of this great effort, however, were but slight. The Foxes abandoned their villages and retired before the French, who succeeded in capturing two squaws and an old man. The former were enslaved and the latter was roasted at a slow fire, to the scandal of Father Crespel, who expressed his surprise to the tormentors at the pleasure they derived from the performance.
[136] For the facts about the ensuing period see Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XVII, editorial introduction and accompanying documents. Father Crespel's report of De Lignery's expedition is printed in Smith, History of Wisconsin, I, 339 ff.
Having burned the villages and ravaged the cornfields De Lignery retired, confessing his failure and placing the responsibility for it on the Illinois contingent, who should have come by way of the Wisconsin Portage instead of by Chicago, and thus have taken the Foxes in the rear. The forts upon Lake Pepin and Green Bay were evacuated, and Wisconsin was temporarily abandoned to the red man. The only recourse now before the French was to rouse against the Foxes the neighboring tribes, who by constantly harassing them might gradually wear them down.[137] This policy proved effective, and in 1729 the Foxes sued for peace. It was not granted, however, and meanwhile a chain of circumstances arising from De Lignery's humiliation of 1728 was weaving for them a disaster more terrible than that which had befallen them at Detroit in 1712.
[137] Wisconsin Historical Collections, XVIII, xiii.
When the French evacuated Fort Beauharnois[138] on Lake Pepin in 1728, they attempted to escape down the Mississippi to Fort Chartres, but were taken captive by the Kickapoos and Mascoutens, hitherto the allies of the Foxes, who had settled in eastern Iowa.[139] During the long captivity that ensued Father Guignas, one of the prisoners, succeeded in inducing their captors to desert the Foxes and sue for peace with the French.[140] Weakened by this defection the Foxes sought, by passing around the southern end of Lake Michigan and through the country of the Ouiatanons, who were well disposed toward them, to escape to the Iroquois.[141] The Kickapoos and Mascoutens reported this design to the nearest French posts, but, doubting the fidelity of their new allies, the settlers around Fort Chartres for a time declined to take the field.
[138] Named for Charles Beauharnois, governor of New France from 1726 to 1747. He was reputed to be the natural son of Louis XIV, and it has sometimes been said, though apparently incorrectly, that the Empress Josephine was descended from him.
[139] Narrative of De Boucherville, Wisconsin Historical Collections, XVII, 36 ff.
[140] Ibid., 36 ff., 110.