(4.) Clark had heard from the hunters who joined him on the way, and had been in the town eight days before, that the fort was kept in good order, and that the garrison was on the alert. He was too good a soldier, on such information, to divide his scanty force of less than two hundred men into three divisions, and with one of them attack an isolated fort on the opposite side of the river, where he could have no support from his other divisions. Bowman, in a letter to Col. Hite, said: "This town was sufficiently fortified to have resisted a thousand men." That Clark passed the site of the old fort without approaching or even mentioning it, and threw his men across the river a mile north of the town, is evidence that the site of the old fort was then unoccupied.
(5.) M. Rocheblave, writing from Kaskaskia, "Fort Gage, Feb. 8, 1778", to Gen. Carleton at Montreal, shows conclusively where the fort was situated in which he was taken prisoner by Clark five months later. The MS. is in the Canadian Archives (Brymner's Report of 1882, p. 12). Rocheblave reports that "the roof of the mansion of the fort is of shingles and very leaky, notwithstanding my efforts to patch it; and unless a new roof be provided very soon, the building, which was constructed twenty-five years ago and cost the Jesuits 40,000 piastres, will be ruined." By a decree of the king, the Jesuits were suppressed in France and its colonies in 1763, and their property was confiscated to the crown. The Jesuits had a valuable estate at Kaskaskia which was taken possession of by the French commandant, and the priests were expelled. Father Watrin, Jesuit, in his Memoir of the Missions of Louisiana, 1764 or 1765 (Mag. of West. Hist. i. 265), says "When the Jesuits of the Illinois, recalled by the decree against them, passed this post [Point Coupée, on the Mississippi], Father Irenæus arpens [200 acres] of cultivated land, a very good stock of cattle, and a brewery, which was sold by the French commandant, after the country was ceded to the English, for the [French] crown, in consequence of the suppression of the order." This sale must have taken place before the English occupation, in 1765. Pittman mentions the church and the "Jesuits' house" as "the principal buildings, which are built of stone, and, considering this part of the world, make a very good appearance." The Jesuits' house was doubtless the one mentioned by Rocheblave, the fort being adjacent to it. On his plan of Kaskaskia Pittman locates the church in the centre of the town, and the Jesuits' property at the southeast corner, near the river. Pittman returned to Pensacola from Illinois in the spring of 1767, "with the plan of a fort", which, Haldimand reports to Gage, will "cost a good deal of money" (Haldimand Coll., p. 25). In 1772 Fort Chartres was abandoned in consequence of being undermined during an inundation of the Mississippi. Gen. Gage gave the order March 16, 1772, and directed that the troops be stationed at Kaskaskia. After the capture of the fort in 1778, the name was changed to "Fort Clark" (Bowman, p. 110; Canad. Arch., 1882, p. 36). I have found no instance where the old fort on the bluff, burned in 1766, and now known as "Fort Gage", had that name during the period when it existed as a fort.
(6.) Lieut. Ross's Map of the Mississippi from the Balise to Fort Chartres, made late in 1765, improved from the French surveys, and published in London in 1775, places "Ft. Caskaskias" at the southeast corner of the town, on the west bank of the river,—the spot indicated in Rocheblave's letter. It shows no fort on the eastern bank.
(7.) Major De Peyster, writing June 27, 1779, from Michilimacinac to Gen. Haldimand, reports concerning affairs at Kaskaskia, and fixes without question the location of the fort. He says: "The Kaskaskias no ways fortified; the fort being still a sorry pinchetted [picketted?] enclosure round the Jesuits' college." (Mich. Pion. Coll. ix. 388.)
It is remarkable that Gov. Reynolds, who resided at Kaskaskia in 1800, should not have known the location of "Fort Gage"; or, rather, that the local remembrances of the real spot should have faded out in twenty-one years. He says (in My Own Times, p. 31, ed. 1879): "The English government [in 1772] abandoned Fort Chartres and established its authority at Fort Gage, on the bluff east of Kaskaskia." Again, he says (Pioneer History, p. 81, ed. 1887): "The British garrison occupied Fort Gage, which stood on the Kaskaskia river bluffs opposite the village." This, in his mind, was the location of the fort which Clark captured. He says (Ibid. p. 94): "Two parties crossed the river; the other party remained with Col. Clark to attack the fort."
Capt. Bowman, in letter to Col. Hite of July 30, 1778 (Almon's Remembrancer, 1779, p. 82), describes the march and capture as follows: "Marched for Kaskaskia with four days' provisions, and in six days arrived at the place in the night of the 4th instant, having marched two days without any sustenance, in which hungry condition we unanimously determined to take the town, or die in the attempt. About midnight we marched into the town without being discovered. Our object was the fort, which we soon got possession of; the commanding officer (Philip Rocheblave) we made prisoner, and he is now on his way to Williamsburg under a strong guard, with all his instructions from time to time, from the several governors at Detroit, Quebec, etc., to set the Indians upon us, with great rewards for our scalps, for which he has a salary of £200 per year." This statement shows that the fort was in the town, and controverts the assertion of Butler (p. 53) that the public papers in the fort were not captured, out of delicacy to the wife of the commander, she "presuming a good deal on the gallantry of our countrymen by imposing upon their delicacy towards herself." ... "Better, ten thousand times better", Butler adds, "were it so, than that the ancient fame of the sons of Virginia should have been tarnished by insult to a female!"
[1503] Campaign, p. 31.
[1504] For the details of the conquest of Kaskaskia, see Clark's narrative of 1779 in Campaign (1869), pp. 24-36; and of his narrative of 1791 (?) in J. B. Dillon's Indiana (1843), pp. 127-150; (2d edition, 1859), pp. 114-136. See also Butler's Kentucky, p. 49, Withers's Border Warfare, p. 185; Perkins's Annals, p. 192; Beckwith's Historic Notes, p. 245; Davidson's Illinois, p. 173; Brown's Illinois, p. 230; Monette, i. 414.
[1505] The letter which Gov. Henry addressed to the Virginia delegates in Congress, Nov. 14, 1778, on receiving intelligence of Clark's capture of Kaskaskia, is in Butler's Kentucky, 2d. ed., p. 532; and is reprinted from the MS. in the new and excellent life of Patrick Henry (Boston, 1887), by Professor Moses Coit Tyler (p. 230).—Ed.
[1506] Of M. Rocheblave very little is known. His full name, Philippe François de Rastel, Chevalier de Rocheblave, with his nativity, appears in the parish records of Kaskaskia for April 11, 1763, in the third publication of the banns of his marriage to Michel Marie Dufresne (E. G. Mason's Kaskaskia, p. 17). He is mentioned in 1756 (N. Y. Col. Doc., x. 435) as a cadet at Fort Duquesne; in July, 1757, on the Potomac (Ibid. 581); and in July, 1759, at Niagara (Ibid. 992). Many of his letters [in French] are in the Canadian Archives. Several of them which I have, show him to have been a man of sensibility and refinement. He said he was a British subject because he had been abandoned by France at the peace. One of them is a long and interesting letter dated at "Fort Gage, July 4, 1778", which was probably sent off by boat a few hours before he was captured by Col. Clark. He was a prisoner in Virginia until the autumn of 1780, when he broke his parole and went to New York (Jefferson's Writings, i. 258). His family were left at Kaskaskia; and Gov. Henry of Virginia, in his instructions to Col. John Todd, Dec. 12, 1778, says: "Mr. Rocheblave's wife and family must not suffer for want of that property of which they were bereft by our troops. It is to be restored to them, if possible. If this cannot be done, the public must support them." (Calendar of Va. Papers, i. 314). His wife, signing her name "Marie Michel de Rocheblave", wrote from Kaskaskia, March 27, 1780, to Gen. Haldimand, appealing to his humanity for pecuniary help, as the rebels had taken everything from her but her debts. (MS. letter furnished to me by Mr. B. F. Stevens.)