Col. Bouquet in a letter written to Chief Justice Allen of Pennsylvania on November 26th, enumerated the needs of the garrison, which he hopes the Provinces of Pennsylvania and Virginia will immediately supply. He adds: "After God, the success of this expedition is entirely due to the general. He has shown the greatest prudence, firmness and ability. No one is better informed than I am, who had an opportunity to see every step that has been taken from the beginning and every obstacle that was thrown in his way." Forbes' first care was to provide defense and shelter for his troops, and a strong stockade was built around the traders' cabins and soldiers' huts, which he named Pittsburgh, in honor of England's great Minister, William Pitt. Two hundred Virginians under Col. Mercer were left to defend the new fortification, a force wholly inadequate to hold the place if the French chose to return and attempt to take it again. Those who remained must for a time depend largely on stream and forest to supply their needs, while the army, which was to return began their homeward march early in December, with starvation staring them in the face.
No sooner was this work done than Forbes utterly succumbed. He left with the soldiers, and was carried all the way to Philadelphia in a litter, arriving there January 18, 1759. He lingered through the winter, died in March, and was buried in Christ Church, March 14, 1759. Parkman says: "If his achievement was not brilliant, its solid value was above price; it opened the Great West to English enterprise, took from France half her savage allies, and relieved the western borders from the scourge of Indian war. From Southern New York to North Carolina the frontier population had cause to bless the memory of this steadfast and all-enduring soldier."
Just sixty days after the taking of Fort Duquesne, William Pitt wrote a letter, dated Whitehall, January 23, 1759, of which the following extract will show how important this place was considered in Great Britain.
"Sir:—I am now to acquaint you that the King has been pleased immediately upon receiving the news of the success of his armies on the river Ohio, to direct the commander-in-chief of His Majesty's forces in North America, and General Forbes, to lose no time in concerting the properest and speediest means for completely restoring, if possible, the ruined Fort Duquesne to a defensible and respectable state, or for erecting another in the room of it of sufficient strength, and every way adequate to the great importance of the several objects of maintaining His Majesty's subject in the undisputed possession of the Ohio," etc., etc.
In a letter dated Pittsburgh, August 1759, Col. Mercer writes to Gov. Denny: "Capt. Gordon, chief engineer, has arrived with most of the artificers, but does not fix the spot for constructing the Fort till the general comes up. We are preparing the materials for building with what expedition so few men are capable of."
There was no attempt made to restore the old fortifications, but about a year afterwards work was begun on a new fort. Gen. John Stanwix, who succeeded Gen. Forbes, is said to have been a man of high military standing, with a liberal and generous spirit. In 1760, he appeared on the Ohio at the head of an army, and with full power to build a large fort where Fort Duquesne had stood. The exact date of his arrival and the day when work was commenced is not known, but the work must have been begun the last of August or the first of September, 1759. A letter dated September 24, 1759, gives the following account: "It is now near a month since the army has been employed in erecting a most formidable fortification, such a one as will to latest posterity secure the British Empire on the Ohio. There is no need to enumerate the abilities of the chief engineer nor the spirit shown by the troops in executing the important task; the fort will soon be a lasting monument of both."
The fort was built near the point where the Allegheny and Monongahela unite their waters, but a little farther inland than the site of Fort Duquesne. It stood on the present site of the Duquesne Freight Station, while all the ground from the Point to Third Street and from Liberty Street to the Allegheny River was enclosed in a stockade and surrounded by a moat. It was a solid and substantial building, constructed at an enormous expense to the English Government.[C] It was five-sided, two sides facing the land of brick, the others stockade. The earth around was thrown up so all was enclosed by a rampart of earth, supported on the land side by a perpendicular wall of brick; on the other sides a line of pickets was fixed on the outside of the slope, and a moat encompassed the entire work. Casemates, barracks and store houses were completed for a garrison of one thousand men and officers, and eighteen pieces of artillery mounted on the bastions. This strong fortification was thought to establish the British dominion of the Ohio. The exact date of its completion is not known, but on March 21, 1760, Maj. Gen. Stanwix, having finished his work, set out on his return journey to Philadelphia.
Conspiracy of Pontiac and Col. Bouquet.
The effect of this stronghold was soon apparent in the return of about four thousand settlers to their lands on the frontiers of Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland, from which they had been driven by their savage enemies, and the brisk trade which at once began to be carried on with the now, to all appearance, friendly Indians. However, this security was not of long duration. The definite treaty of peace between England, Spain and France was signed February 10, 1763, but before that time, Pontiac, the great chief of the Ottawas, was planning his great conspiracy, which carried death and desolation throughout the frontier.
The French had always tried to ingratiate themselves with the Indians. When their warriors came to French forts they were hospitably welcomed and liberally supplied with guns, ammunition and clothing, until the weapons and garments of their forefathers were forgotten. The English, on the contrary, either gave reluctantly or did not give at all. Many of the English traders were of the coarsest stamp, who vied with each other in rapacity and violence. When an Indian warrior came to an English fort, instead of the kindly welcome he had been accustomed to receive from the French, he got nothing but oaths, and menaces, and blows, sometimes being assisted to leave the premises by the butt of a sentinel's musket. But above and beyond all, they watched with wrath and fear the progress of the white man into their best hunting grounds, for as the English colonist advanced their beloved forests disappeared under the strokes of the axe. The French did all in their power to augment this discontent.