During this uneventful time the little colony grew, and the settlers enjoyed a moderate degree of prosperity. A contented population of about two thousand whites,[73] to whom grants of land had been freely made for purposes of settlement or cultivation, was mainly engaged in agricultural pursuits. Side by side with them the natives were gathered in villages in which were established Jesuit missions. The fertile soil readily yielded to their efforts at cultivation more than they could consume, and each year the surplus products were floated down to New Orleans. Bossu asserted that all the flour for the lower country came from Illinois. Vaudreuil, before leaving the colony for Canada, reported[74] that boats came down the river annually with provisions; but as late as 1744 he still harped on the discovery of new copper and lead mines. Of the real agricultural value of the country there could not at that time have been any just appreciation. As a mining region it had proved to be a failure.
PLAN OF FORT CHARTRES.
[Taken from Lewis C. Beck’s Gazetteer of the States of Illinois and Missouri, (Albany, 1823). The plan was draughted from the ground in 1823. Key: a,a,a, etc., exterior wall (1447 feet); B, gate; C, small gate; D,D, houses of commandant and commissary, 96×30 feet each. E, well; F, magazine; G,G, etc., barracks, 135×36 feet; H,H, storehouse and guard-house, 90×24 feet. I, small magazine; K, furnace; L,L, etc., ravine. Area of fort, 4 acres.—Ed.]
The little fort needed repairs;[75] and La Galissonière, with his usual sagacity, wrote, “The little colony of Illinois ought not to be left to perish. The King must sacrifice for its support. The principal advantage of the country is its extreme productiveness; and its connection with Canada and Louisiana must be maintained.” Apparently the urgency of La Galissonière produced some results. Macarty, the officer who had command of the post at the time of the collision between the French and the English at the headwaters of the Ohio, arrived at Fort Chartres in the winter of 1751-1752. Bossu, who accompanied him, writes from the fort: “The Sieur Saussier, an engineer, has made a plan for constructing a new fort here, according to the intention of the Court. It will bear the same name with the old one, which is called Fort de Chartres.” In January, 1755, Bossu arrived a second time at the post, having in the mean time made a trip to New Orleans. He says: “I came once more to the old Fort Chartres, where I lay in a hut till I could get a lodging in the new fort, which is almost finished. It is built of freestone, flanked with four bastions, and capable of containing a garrison of three hundred[76] men.” The construction of this fort was the final effort of France in the Valley of the Mississippi. It proved to be of even less value than the fortress at Louisbourg, upon which so much money was wasted, for it fell into the hands of the enemy without the formality of a siege. On the other side of the river, Bournion, who in 1721 bore the title of “Commandant du Missouri,” founded Fort Orleans on an island in the Missouri, and left a garrison[77] there, which was afterward massacred. Misère, now known as St. Genevieve, was founded about 1740.
As events drifted on toward the end of the French occupation, the difficulties of the French Government elsewhere compelled the absolute neglect of Louisiana. Kerlerec writes in 1757 that he has not heard from the Court for two years; and in 1761 the French ambassador, in a memorial to the Court at Madrid, states that for four years no assistance had been furnished to the colony. An estimate of the population made in 1745 places the number of inhabitants at six thousand and twenty, of whom four thousand were white. Compared with the number at the time of the retrocession by the Company, it shows a falling off of a thousand whites. It is probable that the white population was even less at a later day. It is not strange that the feeble results of this long occupation should have led the Most Christian King to the determination to present the colony to his very dear and much-loved cousin, the King of Spain,—an act which was consummated in 1762, but not made public at the time. Its influence was not felt until later.
The outline of events in Canada which we have previously traced carried us to a point where the first collision in the Valley of the Ohio between the troops of the two great nations who were contending for the mastery of the northern portion of the continent had already taken place. News of this contest reached New Orleans, and reports of what was occurring at the North served to fill out the Louisiana despatches. From this source we learn that the Chevalier de Villiers,[78] a captain stationed at Fort Chartres, solicited the privilege of leading an expedition to avenge the death of his brother Jumonville, who had been killed by the Virginian force under Washington. The request was granted; and thus the troops from the East and from the West participated in these preliminary contests in the Valley of the Ohio.[79]
It is not within the proposed limits of this sketch to follow in detail the military events with which each of the few remaining years of French domination in America were marked. The death-struggle was protracted much longer than could have been anticipated. The white population of the English colonies is said to have been over ten times greater than that of Canada in 1755; and yet these odds did not fairly express the difference between the contending Powers.[80] The disproportion of the aid which might be expected from the mother countries was far greater. The situation was the reverse of what it had been in the past. England began to show some interest in her colonies. She was prosperous, and the ocean was open to her cruisers. The French experiments at colonization in America had proved a source of expense so great as to check the sympathy and crush the hopes of the Court. The vessels of France could only communicate with her colonies by eluding the search of the English ships widely scattered over the sea. Although no formal declaration of war was made until 1756, England did not hesitate to seize French merchant-vessels and to attack French men-of-war, and she backed the pretensions of her colonists with solid arguments clad in red coats and bearing glittering bayonets. France shipped a few soldiers and some stores to Canada. Some of her vessels succeeded in running the gauntlet of the English cruisers, but more were driven ashore or captured. The native Canadians, more French than Frenchmen themselves, rallied to the support of the Government which had strangled every sign of independent life in their country. Old men and children joined the ranks to repel the invader; and again we have the story repeated of scant crops improperly harvested because of lack of field hands, and thereafter actual suffering for food in this old and well-established colony. The experiences of Braddock and of Dieskau were needed to teach Europeans the value of the opinions of provincial officers in matters of border warfare. Temporary successes during several years inspired hopes in the minds of the French and thwarted the progress of the English. Nevertheless, the strength of the English began to tell, especially along the seaboard, where their supremacy was more conspicuous. The line of French forts across the neck of the Acadian peninsula fell without serious opposition, and it was determined to remove from the country a population which would neither take the oath of allegiance to His Britannic Majesty, nor preserve neutrality in time of war. Their forcible deportation followed; and in their wanderings some of these “neutral French” even penetrated to the distant colony of Louisiana, where they settled on the banks of the Mississippi.[81] Such was the demoralization of the official class of peculators in Canada that those refugees who escaped to the protection of its Government were fed with unwholesome food, for which the King had been charged exorbitant prices by his commissaries. The destruction of the fort at Oswego postponed for that year the efforts of the English to interrupt the communication between the valleys of the Ohio and the St. Lawrence. The destruction of Fort William Henry temporarily protected Montreal; the check sustained by Abercromby was of equal military value. But in 1758 Louisbourg, with its garrison and stores was lost, the little settlements in Gaspé were ravaged, and France was deprived of the last foot of territory on the North Atlantic seaboard. Quebec thus became accessible to the enemy by way of the sea without hindrance.
