But she held her place firmly, and, in better English than she had yet spoken, heaped reproaches upon me, saying that "no man worthy of the name would invade the privacy of a woman's personal belongings." Then she began to weep and to wail, and to entreat Clark piteously.
"Let her alone, McElroy," said Clark, at last; "we cannot use violence to a woman," so we marched off with our prisoner, the Commandant, and left the little Frenchwoman to destroy his papers at her leisure.
"I tell you, McElroy," said Clark, "I'd rather face a battalion, or storm a battery, than to encounter another hysterical Frenchwoman."
During the night we took possession of the ungarrisoned fort—a disused warehouse, which had served as fort since the burning of the old one—and Colonel Clark issued strict commands that only the officers and such soldiers as he should detail to guard the town from time to time, must leave the fort until further orders. By this ruse the citizens were deceived for weeks as to our real strength, their imagination readily using such adroit hints as Colonel Clark threw out to magnify our force into a strong army of invasion, and the squad left at Corn Island, into large reinforcements, expected in a few days.
All night guards patrolled the streets. The inhabitants, however, obeyed orders strictly, and did not venture forth next morning until permission was given them, with the information that the fort and the town were in our possession, and M. Rocheblave a prisoner.
Their distressed faces presented a strong contrast to the cheerful scene which greeted our eyes with the beaming sunlight of the morning. Kaskaskia, situated on the right bank of the Kaskaskia or the Okan River, six miles above its confluence with the Mississippi, was then a village of two hundred and fifty houses, situated on a beautiful and rolling peninsula. The velvet verdure of the plain, dotted with little groves of pecan, maple, ash, and button-wood, the glassy surface of the idle river, the lofty hill opposite, with its stately forest, the air scented with the fragrance of its wild flowers, the little springs gushing from its sides in sparkling beauty, all reposing in the lap of nature, with their virgin freshness yet upon them—there was a landscape to charm her most capricious lover. We gazed enchanted on the fair picture and felt that we had reached a Canaan, rich reward for all we had dared and endured.
Presently came the priest to Colonel Clark, asking that the people be allowed to assemble once more in the church to say to each other a last farewell before leaving their homes, and separating forever. "Theirs," he said, "was the fortune of war, and they made no murmur—since an all wise God had willed it so. Nor could they complain of their conquerors, who so far had treated them with unexampled consideration. They had but one other favor to ask—that the men might not be separated from their wives and their little ones."
Doubtless all the night through the woeful fate of the hapless Acadians had been present to the anxious minds of the people, who were expecting for themselves, as the best to be hoped, a similar fate.
When the priest's words had been translated to Colonel Clark by Saunders, he answered with a winning smile, and a convincing air of friendliness:
"Monsieur Gibault, we have nothing whatever against your religion, nor against the citizens of Kaskaskia. Assemble your people in church when and for what purpose you will; worship God freely, as your consciences dictate. It is to win freedom of belief and personal liberty for all the inhabitants of this broad continent we have taken up our arms. But we came not to fight against the French; our quarrel is against King George of England. And why should the citizens of Kaskaskia, for the sake of being loyal to a power which has but lately subdued them, desert their comfortable homes, and wander forth again into the wilderness? Why should they not make peace, and live in harmony with the allies of their father land? Have they not heard the great news—that France and America have formed a close alliance—that a French fleet and a French army are on their way to help us fight the armies who have invaded us because we would not submit to tyranny and injustice? Does not this alliance absolve the citizens of Kaskaskia from all allegiance to England? Is not blood thicker than treaties forced upon a people at the point of the sword?