Old Fort Chartres

THE marvelous growth of the great West obscures all relating to it, save what is of recent date. It has a past and a history, but these are hidden by the throng of modern events. Few realize that the territory of Illinois, which seems but yesterday to have passed from the control of the red man to that of our republic, was once claimed by Spain, occupied by France, and conquered by England. And fewer still may know that within its boundaries yet remain the ruins of a fortress in its time the most formidable in America, which filled a large place in the operations of these great powers in the valley of the Mississippi. Above the walls of old Fort Chartres, desolate now and almost forgotten. have floated in turn the flags of two mighty nations, and its story is an epitome of their strife for sovereignty over the New World.

The union of Canada, by a line of forts, with the region of the West and South was a favorite scheme of the French crown at an early day. Spain then laid claim to nearly the whole of North America, by the right of first discovery, and by virtue of a grant from the Pope, who disposed of a continent which he did not own with reckless liberality. France relied on the possession taken by La Salle for her title to the Mississippi Valley, and a long altercation ensued. But the French held their own, and occupied the disputed territory. In the Illinois country the mission villages of Cahokia and Kaskaskia sprang up and throve apace, though troubled by rumors of English encroachments near the Ohio and the Mississippi. The need of guarding these settlements became more manifest, at the news of the discovery of valuable mines in that locality. And when the grant of the whole valley of the great river to the merchant Crozat was surrendered in 1717, John Law’s famous Company of the West, afterwards absorbed in that of the Indies, was ready to become his successor, and to dazzle the multitude with the glitter of the gold and silver of Illinois. The representatives of this great corporation, in unison with those of the French government, recognizing the many reasons for a military post in that far-away region, made haste to found one, and thus Fort Chartres arose. It was established as a link in the great chain of strongholds which was to stretch from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf; a bulwark against Spain and a barrier to England; a protector of the infant colony and of the church which planted it; a centre for trade and for the operation of the far-famed mines ; and as the chief seat in the New WOrld of the Royal Company of the Indies, which wove a spell so potent that its victims saw in the near future crowded cities all along the course of the Mississippi, and stately argosies afloat upon its waters, one hundred and fifty years ago.

On the 9th of February, 1718, there arrived at Mobile, by ship from France, Pierre Duqué Boisbriant, a Canadian gentleman, with the commission of commandant “ at the Illinois.” In October of the same year, accompanied by several officers and a detachment of troops, he departed for his new province, where he was ordered to construct a fort. The little flotilla, stemming the swift current of the Mississippi, moved slowly on its way, encountering no enemies more annoying than “ the mosquitoes, which,” says the worthy priest Poisson, who took the same journey shortly after, “ have caused more swearing since the French have been here than had previously taken place in all the rest of the world.” Late in the year Boisbriant reached Kaskaskia, and selected a site for his post sixteen miles above that village, on the left bank of the Mississippi. Merrily rang the axes of the soldiers in the forest by the mighty river, as they hewed out the ponderous timbers for palisade and bastion. And by degrees the walls arose, and the barracks and commandant’s house and the storehouse and great hall of the India Company were built, and the cannon, bearing the insignia of Louis XIV., were placed in position. In the spring of 1720 all was finished, the banner of France was given to the breeze, and the work was named Fort Chartres. An early governor of the State of Illinois, who wrote its pioneer history, has gravely stated that this fort was so called because it had a charter from the crown of France for its erection. But it is feared that the same wag who persuaded an Illinois legisla ture to name the second capital of the State Vandalia, by reason of the alleged traces of a tribe of Indians named Vandals in its neighborhood, also victimized a governor. We can hardly accept his derivation, when it appears that the name was taken, by way of compliment to the then Regent of France, from the title of his son, the Duc de Chartres.

The first important arrival at the new post was that of Philip Francis Renault, formerly a banker in Paris, the directorgeneral of the mines of the India Company, who reached Fort Chartres before its completion, bringing with him two hundred and fifty miners and soldiers, and also a large number of blacks from St. Domingo. This was the beginning of negro slavery in Illinois. The fort was hardly finished, when news reached Boisbriant of the march of a Spanish force from Mexico against his stronghold. But this expedition was cut off by the natives on the route, the chaplain alone being spared. He ultimately made his escape, while delighting the Indians with feats of horsemanship, by gradually withdrawing to a distance, and describing a final elaborate figure which had no return curve. Two Pawnee chiefs, who displayed as trophies a Catalonian pistol and a pair of Spanish shoes, gave this account to Father Charlevoix at Green Bay.

This pleasant old traveler was then making the journey through North America of which he has left such a charming description. On the 9th of October, 1721, he passed Fort Chartres, which, he tells us, then stood a musket-shot from the river. The leader of his escort was a young Canadian officer, Jean St. Ange de Belle Rive, destined in later years to have a closer acquaintance with the fort than this passing glimpse of its newly built walls and structures afforded him. He hardly anticipated then that to him would come the honor of commanding it, and that on him, almost half a century later, would fall the sad duty of finally lowering there his country’s flag, which waved so proudly above it that autumn morning.

No sooner was the fort erected than a village began to grow up at its gates, in which the watchful Jesuits forthwith established the parish of St. Anne de Fort Chartres. Its existing records begin with an ancient document, tattered and worn, written in Quebec in the year 1716. It is a copy of a curious decree of Louis XV., seemingly in the nature of a manual of church etiquette. Twelve articles provide, among other things, that the governor-general and the intendant shall each have a prie-dieu in the cathedrals of Quebec and Montreal, the governor-general on the right, the intendant on the left; the commander of the troops shall have a seat behind the governor-general; and in church processions the governor-general shall march at the head of the council, his guards in front, the intendant to the left and behind the council, and the chief notary, first usher, and captain of the guard with the governor-general, yet behind him, but not on the same line with the council. And these rules are to govern all other churches of New France. Probably this copy of this important deliverance of the king was sent from Quebec to the church of St. Anne in 1721, the year in which the parish registers seem to have been opened. We may presume that Boisbriant followed its instructions strictly, and took care to be on the right hand in the church, and also that his intendant, or civil officer, Marc Antoine de la Loire des Ursins, should be on the left. These two, together with Michel Chassin, commissary for the India Company, formed the provincial council of the Illinois, and speedily made Fort Chartres the centre of the civil government of the colony. This council executed the grants of land upon which many titles rest to this day. Boisbriant, doubtless believing that he that provideth not for his own household is worse than an infidel, had a large tract granted to himself, “beginning at the little hill behind the fort.” Their largest conveyance, in 1723, to M. Renault, included a parcel above Fort Chartres, one league along the river and two leagues deep, on which to raise provisions for his settlements among the mines. Of this last tract, a large part was never sold by Renault, and to this day the unconveyed portion is marked upon the maps of Monroe County, Illinois, as the property of the Philip Renault heirs.

In the place of Boisbriant, in 1725, came M. de Siette, a captain in the royal army. In the parish register, in his time, appears the baptism of “ a female savage of the Padoucah nation, by the fort chaplain, who records with satisfaction that he performed the ceremony and called her Thérèse, but does not say whether she consented, or what she thought about it. She apparently paid a casual visit to the fort, and he baptized her at a venture, and made haste to write down another convert. The Fox Indians were a thorn in the side of De Siette. Their war parties swooped upon the settlers, murdering them in their fields, even within a few miles of the fort. In great wrath, the commandant opened a correspondence on the subject with the French governor at Green Bay, and proposed that the Fox tribe should be exterminated at once. The calmer De Lignerie replied, in substance, that this would be the best possible expedient, provided the Foxes did not exterminate them in the attempt. He suggested a postponement of hostilities until De Siette and himself could meet “ at Chikagau, or the Rock of St. Louis,” and better concert their plans. De Siette’s successor, by a masterly piece of strategy, waylaid and destroyed so many of the persistent foemen that peace reigned for a time. This officer, M. de St. Ange de Belle Rive, who, as we have seen, first visited the Illinois country with Father Charlevoix, had since made it his home, for the ancient title records of this region show that in 1729 he purchased “a house in the prairie bounding on one side the road leading to Fort Chartres.” And in an old package of stained and mouldering papers, but lately disinterred from the dust of at least one century, is the original petition, addressed by St. Ange to the proper authorities, for the confirmation of his title to certain land not far from the fort, acquired from “a savage named Chicago, who is satisfied with the payment made to him. ’ A young officer named Pierre d’Artaguiette, who had distinguished himself greatly in the French warfare with the Natchez Indians, was appointed to the Illinois district in 1734, taking the place of St. Ange, who was transferred to another post. The services and virtues of the new commander, his brilliant career and untimely death, have surrounded his name with a halo of romance. He had ruled his province well for two short years, when the summons to the field came to him again. Governor Bienville had resolved to crush the Chickasaws, and needed the aid of all his subordinates. D’Artaguiette set forth from Fort Chartres on a morning in February, with his whole force, making a brave show, as the fleet of batteaux and canoes floated down the Mississippi. This first invasion of Southern soil by soldiers from Illinois was made by the entire garrison of the fort, augmented by a company of volunteers from the French villages, the Kaskaskia tribe, and a throng of Indian warriors who had flocked to the standard even from the far-away Detroit. The chief, Chicago, led the Illinois and the Miamis, and at the mouth of the Ohio the Chevalier Vinsenne joined the expedition with the garrison from the post on the Wabash and a number of Indians, including a party of Iroquois braves. Landing and marching inland, they reached the Chickasaw villages at the appointed time, but the troops from New Orleans, who were to meet them there, failed to appear. Compelled to fight or retreat, D'Artaguiette chose the former, and was at first successful ; but the tide turned when he fell, covered with wounds. Many of the French were slain, most of the Indians fled, and D’Artaguiette, Vinsenne. the Jesuit Senat, and young St. Ange, son of the Illinois commandant, were taken prisoners by the unconquered Chickasaws, who burned them at the stake, and triumphantly marched to the Georgia coast to tell their English allies there of the French defeat. The broken remnants of the little army, under the leadership of a boy of sixteen, pursued by the savages for five and twenty leagues, regained the river, and sadly returned to the fort. On the sorrow caused there by the mournful news, the masses that were said in the little church of St. Anne for the repose of the souls of the slain, and the deep grief felt throughout the country of the Illinois, in cabin and wigwam alike, we will not dwell. The impression made by the life and death of D’Artaguiette was so abiding that his name remained a household word among the French for years, and well into the present century the favorite song among the negroes along the Mississippi was one of which the oft-repeated chorus ran, —

Three years later, La Buissonière, who succeeded him, led an expedition from Fort Chartres, composed of Frenchmen and natives, to take part in another campaign against the dauntless Chickasaws. Soldiers from Quebec and Montreal, with recruits from all the tribes along the route, overtook him on the way, and the Northern forces joined the troops under Bienville, newly reinforced from Paris, near the site of the city of Memphis. The dominions of the king of France, in the Old World and the New, were laid under contribution to concentrate this army at the rendezvous, but not a blow was struck. White men and red lay in camp for months, apparently unwilling to risk an encounter, and at length a dubious peace was arranged, and all marched home again, without loss or glory. Hardly had the Fort Chartres detachment returned, when a boat going from New Orleans to the Illinois was attacked above the mouth of the Ohio by the Chickasaws, and all on board were killed, save one young girl. She had recently arrived from France, and was on her way to join her sister, the wife of an officer at the fort. Escaping by a miracle to the shore, she wandered through the woods for days, living on herbs, until, sore spent and ready to die, she chanced to reach an elevation from which she caught a glimpse of the flag floating over Fort Chartres, and with new hope and strength struggled onward, and came safely to the friends who had mourned for her as dead.

During La Buissonière’s governorship were the halcyon days of the French settlers at the Illinois. The Indians were kept in check, the fertile soil yielded bounteous harvests,and Lower Louisiana afforded a market each year for two convoys laden with grain and supplies. The village of Prairie Du Rocher had grown up five miles from the fort, upon a grant made by the India Company to Boisbriant, and Renault had established the village of St. Philip on a portion of his tract of land above the fort. These were laid out after the French manner, with commons and common fields, still marked upon the local maps, and to some extent held and used to this day under the provisions of these early grants. To the colony came scions of noble families of France, seeking fame and adventure in that distant land, and their names and titles appear at length in the old records and parish registers Among them was Benoist St. Clair, captain of a company detached from the marine service, who followed La Buissonière in the chief command, and held it for a year or more. He found little to do in those piping times of peace, made an occasional grant of land, and soon sought other service.

The Chevalier de Bertel, who describes himself as major commanding for the king, took charge in his stead. Together with De la Loire Flancour, civil judge at the Illinois, he made various grants of land, including one to a young man at St. Philip, for the reason that he was the first one born in Illinois to marry and settle himself. And to another, who asked the gift of a farm, because he had seven children, they conveyed a large tract for each child. Not long before De Bertel’s accession, Governor Bienville had returned to France, finally resigning his trust to the Marquis de Vaudreuil. Here a word may appropriately be spoken of the first royal governor of the province of which Illinois was a part, and in whose administration Fort Chartres was constructed. Le Moyne de Bienville was one of an illustrious family. His father was killed in battle in the service of his country, and his ten brothers held wellearned commissions in the French army and navy. He won renown in engagements with the English on land and sea, was one of the founders of Louisiana, and chose the site of the city of New Orleans. As lieutenant-governor and governor of the province, he served for nearly forty years, and was honored as the bravest and best man in the colony. His portrait, which adorns the mansion of Baron Grant, at Longueil, in Canada, the representative of the family, shows a martial figure and a noble face, in keeping with his record, and his intimate connection with its early history would make it fitting to preserve a copy of this original in the State of Illinois.

The Chevalier de Bertel had a difficult part to play. France and England were at war, and whispers of an English attack upon the settlements at the Illinois were in the air. The fort was out of repair and poorly supplied, and the old-time Indian allies had been won over by the English. The abandonment of the post was contemplated, but the Marquis de Galissonière, governorgeneral of Canada, protested against this step in a memorial to the home government, in which he says : “ The little colony of Illinois ought not to he 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.” In the year 1750, De Galissonière once more urged upon the king the importance of preserving and strengthening the post at the Illinois, describing the country as open and ready for the plow, and traversed by an innumerable multitude of buffaloes. “ And these animals,” he says, “ are covered with a species of wool sufficiently fine to be employed in various manufactories.” And he further suggests, and doubtless correctly, that “ the buffalo, if caught and attached to the plow, would move it at a speed superior to that of the domestic ox ” !

In the succeeding autumn, the Chevalier de Makarty, a major of engineers, with a few companies of troops, arrived from France, under orders to rebuild the citadel of the Illinois country. Other detachments followed, until nearly a full regiment of French grenadiers answered to the roll-call at Fort Chartres. They toiled busily to transform it from a fortress of wood to one of stone, under the skillful guidance of the trained officer, whose Irish blood, as well as his French commission, made hostile preparations against England a labor of love to him. You may see to this day the place in the bluffs, to the eastward of the fort, where they quarried the huge blocks, which they carried in boats across the little lake lying between. The finer stone, with which the gateways and buildings were faced, was brought from beyond the Mississippi. A million of crowns seemed to the king of France only a reasonable expense for this work of reconstruction, which was to secure his empire in the West. And hardly was it completed, when the contest began in the New World, and the garrison of fort Chartres had a hand in the opening struggle. In May, 1754, the young George Washington, with his Virginia riflemen, surprised a French party at the Great Meadows, and slew its leader, Jumonville. His brother, Neyon de Villiers, one of the captains at Fort Chartres, obtained leave from Makarty to avenge him, and led his company, by the Mississippi and the Ohio, to Fort Du Quesne, joining there the head of the family, Coulon de Villiers, who was marching on the same errand. Together they brought to bay “ Monsieur de Waehenston,” as the French dispatches call him, at Fort Necessity, which he surrendered on the 4th of July. The capture of this place by the French is one of the causes assigned by George II. for t He declaration of hostilities by England, and thus the Old French War began. The little detachment, with its bold leader, returned, flushed with victory, to celebrate at Fort Chartres the triumph of Illinois over Virginia. And soon the tireless De Villiers and his intrepid band made the long river journey again, and, crossing the Alleghanies, captured Fort Granville on the Juniata. The Marquis de Montcalm, writing to the minister of war at Paris, thus pleasantly alludes to this little attention paid by Illinois to Pennsylvania : “ The news from the Beautiful River is excellent. We continue to devastate Pennsylvania. De Villiers has just burned Fort Granville, sixty miles from Philadelphia.” The following year Aubry, another of the Fort Chartres captains, was sent by Makarty, with four hundred men, to reinforce Fort Du Quesne. The morning after his arrival, he sallied out and defeated an English force near by, and a few days later surprised the main body of the enemy in their camp, fortyfive miles away, captured their horses, and brought his party back mounted. Shortly, however, the approach of a superior force, with Washington and his riflemen In the van, compelled the abandonment of Fort Du Quesne. By the light of its burning stockade, the Illinois troops embarked at midnight on the Beautiful River, and set sail for their distant homes.

The English star was now in the ascendant, yet still the French struggled gallantly. Once more the drum beat to arms on the parade ground at Fort Chartres, at the command to march to raise the siege of Fort Niagara. All the Illinois villages sent volunteers, and Aubry led the expedition. As they entered the Niagara River, Indian scouts likened them to “ a floating island, so black was the stream with their bateaux and canoes.” The desperate charge upon the English lines failed; Aubry, badly wounded, fell into the hands of the enemy; and the bulletin reads, “ Of the French from the Illinois, many were killed and many taken prisoners.” Despair and gloom settled upon the fort and its neighborhood, when the sorrowful news came back. Makarty writes to the governor-general, “ The defeat at Niagara has cost me the flower of my men.” The surrender, at Montreal, of the Canadas .followed upon Wolfe’s victory on the Plains of Abraham, but still the Illinois held out for the king. Neyon de Villiers received his richly deserved promotion, and assumed command at Fort Chartres. And the fine old soldier, Makarty, doubtless regretting that he had not had opportunity to test the strength of the goodly stone walls he had built, sheathed his sword, twirled his mustache, made his bow, and departed.

The village at the fort gate, after the rebuilding called New Chartre, had become a well-established community. The old title records quaintly illustrate its ways of transacting business, as when, for instance, the royal notary at the Illinois declares that he made a certain sale “ in the forenoon of Sunday, after the great parochial mass of St. Anne, of New Chartre, at the main door of the church, offering the property in a high and audible voice, while the people were going out in great numbers from said church.” And the parish register, which briefly and dryly notes the marriages of the common people, spares neither space nor words in the record of the weddings in the families of the officers at the fort. When Jean Freilé de Vidrinne, officer of a company, is married to Elizabeth de Moncharveaux, daughter of Jean Francois Liveron de Moncharveaux, captain of a company, and when Monsieur André Chevalier, royal solicitor and treasurer for the king at the country of the Illinois, weds Madeleine Loisel, names and titles and ancestry are set forth at length, and all the dignitaries of fort or village sign the register as witnesses. In the baptismal register of the chapel of St. Joseph, at Prairie Du Rocher, appears one entry which has a strangely familiar sound, though written more than a century ago. For it recites that several persons, adults and children, were baptized together, “ in the presence of their parents, brothers, uncles, mutual friends, their sisters, their cousins, and their aunts.” This palpably is the germ of Pinafore, which Illinois may therefore take the credit of originating, long before our era !

New Chartre and the neighboring villages and the fort rested secure in the belief that, although Canada had surrendered, Louisiana with the Illinois country would be preserved by the king. Hence, like a thunder-clap came the news that, on the 10th of February, 17 63, Louis XV. had ratified the treaty ceding these also to the English. An expedition from New Orleans, coming to settle at the Illinois, was met by the announcement of the change of government, and its leader, Pierre Laclede, decided to establish a new post in the territory west of the Mississippi, supposed to be still French soil. Storing his goods and making his headquarters at the fort for the winter, he selected a fine bluff, sixty miles to the northward, as the site of his colony, and took possession in the spring. This was the beginning of the city of St. Louis. Many of the French from the Illinois followed him, even transporting their houses to the other shore, so great was their desire to live under their own flag; and terrible was their disappointment when the secret treaty with Spain was made known, by which their faithless king transferred all his dominions beyond the Mississippi to that nation. Those who remained at the Illinois felt their hopes revive, as time passed on and the redcoats came not. The veteran St. Ange had come from Vincennes to play the last sad act in the drama, and, with a little garrison of forty men, still held the fort, although it was the only place in North America at which the white flag of the Bourbons was still flying. Until that flag was lowered, the victory of the English was not complete; but the way to the West was not yet open to them, for Pontiac was a lion in the path. Captain Morris, sent from Detroit to arrange for the surrender, was met by the forest chieftain, who, squatting in front of him, opened the interview by observing that the English were liars, and asked him if he had come to lie to them, like the rest. Attentions much less courteous were received from individuals of the Kickapoo persuasion, and Morris turned back. Lieutenant Frazer, pushing down the Ohio, reached Kaskaskia, where he fell into Pontiac’s hands, who kept him all one night in dread of being boiled alive, and at daybreak shipped him to New Orleans by canoe express, with the cheerful information that the kettle was boiling over a large fire to receive any other Englishmen who came that way. Other attempts were no more successful, and the French and Spanish officers in Louisiana laughed at the English failures to reach a fort they claimed to own, and suggested that an important party had been omitted in the treaty of cession, and that a new one should be made with King Pontiac. Meanwhile, that sovereign was ordering into service some Illinois Indians assembled near Fort Chartres, and, when they seemed reluctant to engage in hostilities against their new rulers, said to them, “ Hesitate not, or I destroy you as fire does the prairie grass. Listen, and recollect that these are the words of Pontiac ! ” Their scruples vanished with amazing rapidity, and they did his bidding. Then, with his retinue of dusky warriors, he led the way through the tall gateway of Fort Chartres, and, greeting St. Ange, as he sat in the government house, said, “Father, I have long wished to see thee, to recall the battles which we fought together against the misguided Indians and the English dogs, I love the French, and I have come here with my warriors to avenge their wrongs.” But St. Ange plainly told him that all was over and he must make peace with the English; and Pontiac, at last convinced, gave up the contest. No opposition was made to the approach of a detachment of the forty-second Highlanders, the famous “ Black Watch,” under Captain Sterling, to whom St. Ange formally surrendered the fort on the 10th of October, 1765. The lilies of France gave place to the red cross of St. George, and the long struggle was ended. At Fort Chartres, the great empire of France in the New World ceased forever.

The articles of capitulation are preserved in the French archives at Paris. The fort is minutely described in them, with its arched gateway, fifteen feet high, having a cut-stone platform above the gate ; its walls of stone, eighteen feet in height, with loop-holes, embrasures, and bastions ; the great store house, ninety feet long by thirty wide; the government house, with iron gates and a stone porch, a coach-house and pigeonhouse adjoining; the two rows of barracks, each one hundred and twentyeight feet long ; the intendant’s house, guard-house, bake-house, and prison, all of stone; and the magazine, thirty-eight feet in length, nearly the same in width, and thirteen feet high above the ground, with doors of wood and iron hung in a cut-stone doorway, — the whole occupying an area of more than four acres. The English claimed the cannon in the fort, under the treaty of cession. The French differed with them, but left the guns in position, pending the settlement of the question by the home authorities. St. Ange and his men took boat for St. Louis, where they exchanged the service of his Most Christian Majesty of France for that of his Most Catholic Majesty of Spain. One tragedy signalized the accession of the new government at Fort Chartres. Two young officers, the one French and the other English, were rival suitors for the hand of a young girl in the neighborhood, and a quarrel arose, which led to perhaps the first duel fought in Illinois. They met early on a Sunday morning, near the fort, armed with small swords ; the Englishman was slain, and his opponent made haste to descend the river to New Orleans. With the departure of the French soldiers, the last spark of life in the village of New Chartre went out. On the register then in use in the church of St. Anne was written, “ The above-mentioned church having been abolished, the rest of the paper which was in this book has been taken for the service of the church at Kaskaskia.” And the Mississippi, as if bent upon destroying every vestige of the once happy and prosperous village, encroached upon its site, until a large portion of it was swept away.

The Illinois had now become an English colony, “ in the days when George the Third was king.” The simple French inhabitants with difficulty accustomed themselves to the change, and longed for the paternal sway of the commanders of their own race. It is said that, soon after the English occupation, the officer in authority at Fort Chartres died suddenly, and, there being no one competent to succeed him, the wheels of government stopped ; and that St. Ange, then commanding the garrison at the Spanish post of St. Louis, hearing of the confusion in his old province, repaired to Fort Chartres, restored order, and remained in charge until another English officer could reach the spot. The story is typical of the man, who deserves a wider fame than he has won. He spent a long life in the arduous duties of a frontier officer, and for more than fifty years was associated with the Illinois country, which became the homo of his family. Entering the French army as a boy, he grew gray in the service ; and when New France was surrendered by the unworthy king, who made no provision for the men who had stood so steadfastly for him, St. Ange was more faithful to France than Louis XV. had been. For his removal to St. Louis and acceptance of a Spanish commission were in the interest and for the protection of his misled fellow countrymen who had settled at that place, solely that they might still be French subjects. And all who knew him, friends and foes, countrymen and foreigners, white men and red, alike bear testimony to the uprightness, the steady fortitude, the unshrinking courage, the kindliness and nobility, of Louis St. Ange de Belle Rive, the last French commandant of the Illinois.

The year after the surrender, Captain Philip Pitman, an English engineer officer, visited the fort, in pursuance of his orders to examine the British posts in the Mississippi Valley. In his report he speaks of the thickness of the walls and the handsome entrance gate, describes the works and buildings very fully, and concludes as follows: “ It is generally believed that this is the most convenient and best built fort in North America.” In the fall of 1768, Lieutenant Colonel John Wilkins relieved the officer in charge of the post, and, under a proclamation from General Gage, established a court with seven judges, to sit at Fort Chartres and administer the law of England, — the first court of common law jurisdiction west of the Alleghanics. The old French court, with its single judge, which for more than forty years decided the causes that arose in the Illinois country, according to the civil law, had ceased with the surrender. Its records for many years were preserved at Kaskaskia, but less care was taken of them when removed from there; and, within a few years past, these documents, so valuable to the antiquarian and the historian, have been used by veritable Illinois Vandals to light the fires in a country court-house, and but a solitary fragment now remains.

For seven years only the English ruled at Fort Chartres, though doubtless believing it to be their permanent headquarters for the whole Northwest. But the Mississippi had ever been a French river, and could not endure the presence of a rival nation on its banks. Its waters murmured the names of Marquette and Joliet, of La Salle and Jonty, and their memories would not suffer it to rest contented with successors of another race. So it rose in its might, and assailed the fort, and, on a stormy night in springtime, its resistless flood tore away a bastion and part of the river wall. The garrison fled in all haste across the submerged meadows, taking refuge on the hills above Kaskaskia; and from the year 1772 Fort Chartres was never occupied again. An occasional band of Indians found shelter in its lonely buildings, but otherwise the solitude which claimed for its own the once busy fortress remained unbroken for many a year. Now and then an adventurous traveler found his way thither. Quaint old Governor Reynolds, who saw it in 1802, says, “ It presented the most striking contrast between a savage wilderness, filled with wild beasts and reptiles, and the remains of one of the largest and strongest fortifications on the continent. Large trees were growing in the houses which once contained the elegant and accomplished French officers and soldiers. Cannon, snakes, and bats were sleeping together in peace in and around this fort.” United States Judge Brackenridge writes in 1817, “ Fort Chartres is a noble ruin. There are a number of cannon lying half buried in the earth, with their trunnions broken off. I remarked a kind of inclosure near, which, according to tradition, was fitted up by the officers as a kind of arbor, where they could sit and converse in the heat of the day.” Hall, in his Romance of the West, describes a visit to the fort in 1829 : “ The crumbling pile is overgrown, the tall trees rearing their stems from piles of stone, and the vines creeping over the tottering walls. It was curious to see in the gloom of a dense forest these remnants of the architecture of a past age.” Governor Reynolds came again in 1854, and found “Fort Chartres a pile of mouldering ruins, and the walls torn away almost even with the surface.”

To one visiting the site but a year ago, the excursion afforded as strong a contrast between the past and the present as may readily be found. From the nearest railway point the brisk new town of Red Bud, twenty miles distant, the greater part of the drive over the prairie and through the forest which intervenes is as monotonous as a drive anywhere in Illinois may properly be. But when you reach the bluff, far overlooking the lordly Mississippi and its lowlands to the Missouri hills beyond, and wind down the road cut deeply into its face to the little village of Prairie Du Rocher, lying at its foot, a change comes over the scene. The wide and shaded village streets, with the French names upon the little stores ; the houses built as in Canada, with dormer windows and piazzas facing to the south ; the mill bearing the name given by the Jesuits; the foreign accent and appearance of the people ; the very atmosphere, so full of rest and quiet, to which hurry is unknown, — all combine to make one feel as if in another time and another land than ours. It is as though a little piece of old France had been transplanted to the Mississippi a century since and forgotten ; or as if a stratum of the early French settlements at the Illinois, a hundred years ago or more, had sunk down below the reach of time and change, with its ways and customs and people intact, and still pursued its former life, unmindful of the busy nineteenth century on the uplands above its head. It was not surprising to be told that at the house of the village priest some ancient relics were to be seen, and that some old documents had once been there. In such a place, such things should always be. But it was a surprise, when shown into a room adorned with portraits of Pius IX. and Leo XIII., and expecting to see a venerable man in black robes and perhaps the tonsure, to be suddenly greeted by a joyous youth in German student costume, with a mighty meerschaum in his hand, who introduced himself as the priest in charge of the parish of St. Joseph of Prairie Du Rocher. He had arrived but six months before from the old country, and had been stationed at this place because of his knowledge of French, which is spoken by nearly all of the two hundred and fifty families in his parish, which includes a number of colored people, the descendants of the slaves of the early settlers. With ready courtesy he led the way to his sanctum, where he displayed, with pride, three chalices and a monstrant, or receptacle for the wafer, very old and of quaint workmanship, made of solid silver, and a tabernacle of inlaid wood, all supposed to have belonged to the church of St. Anne of Fort Chartres. At an inquiry for old manuscripts, he produced from a lumber room a bundle of discolored papers, fast going to decay, which he had found in the house when he took possession, but of which he knew but little. The first inspection revealed a marriage register of the church of St. Anne of Fort Chartres, containing autographs of Makarty and De Villiers: and a subsequent examination showed that these papers comprised a large part of the registers of that parish, as well as the early records of that of St. Joseph of Prairie Du Rocher.

Such an experience was a most fitting prelude to the sight of the old fort itself, though this was indeed difficult to find. In the early days all roads in the Illinois country led to Fort Chartres. Highways thither are the most prominent feature of the old village plats and ancient maps of the region. Now, there is not even a path to it. The simple French people along the way found it hard to believe that any one could really wish to visit the old fort, and, with kindly earnestness, insisted that the intended destination must be the river landing, which takes its name from the fort, but is some miles distant. By dint of repeated inquiries, a course was found which led to the goal, after a five-mile drive from Prairie Du Rocher. The ruins were approached by crossing a beautiful level field, green with winter wheat, and the first sight of the low bank which marks the position of the walls and of the old magazine, standing bravely up against the forest background, was a sufficient reward for the journey. At the entrance to the inclosure is a rude farm-gate, which stands just in the place of its lofty predecessor of carved stone, and the line of the walls and corner bastions can be readily traced by the mounds of earth and fragments of stone, beneath which, doubtless, the heavy foundations remain. On two sides the outline of the ditch can be seen, and the cellars of the commandant’s and intendant’s houses are distinctly visible, half filled with débris, under which, perhaps, the old cannon of Louis XIV. are still lying. Time has settled the question of title to them, and they belong neither to France nor to England now. Two rude houses, occupied by farm tenants, are within the area of the works, which have been cleared of trees, save a few tall ones near the magazine and along the ditch. In front the ground is open and under cultivation, and, looking from the old gateway, you have before you the prospect which must often have pleased the eyes of the officers of France and England, when gazing from “ the cut-stone platform above the arch:” the knoll in front, where Boishriant’s land grant to himself commenced ; the level plateau, dotted with clumps of forest trees, the gleam of the little lake in the lowland, and, beyond, the beautiful buttresses of rock, rounded and shaped as if by the hand of man, supporting the upland which bounds the view. Of the vanished village of St. Anne, no trace remains, save a few garden plants, growing wild on the plain; and there is no sign of the church, where sales were made, “ in a high and audible voice, while the people were going out in great numbers.” The site of St. Philip is covered by a farm ; but, to this day, a part of its long line of fields is known as “ the king’s highway,” though there is no road there, and it is supposed that this was the route along which Renault brought the supplies from his grant to the river for transfer to his mines.

Yet, though so much has gone of the ancient surroundings and of the fort itself, it was an exceeding pleasure to find the old magazine still almost complete, and bearing itself as sturdily as if conscious that it alone is left of all the vast domain of France in America, and resolute to preserve its memory for ages to come. It stands within the southeastern bastion, solidly built of stone, its walls four feet in thickness, sloping upwards to perhaps twelve feet from the ground, and rounded at the top. It is partially covered with vines and moss, and one might search far and wide in our land to find an object so picturesque and venerable. But for the loss of its iron doors and the cut stone about the doorway, it is well-nigh as perfect as on the day it was built. Within, a few steps lead to the solid stone floor, some feet below the surface, and the interior, nearly thirty feet square, is entirely uninjured. You may note the arched stone roof, the careful construction of the heavy walls, and the few small apertures for light and air, curiously protected against injury from without. Here one may invoke the shades of Makarty and De Villiers and St. Ange, and easily bring back the past. For, as it is to-day, it has seen them all, as they went to and fro before it, or examined its store of shot and shell; it has heard the word of command as the grenadiers drilled on the parade ground hard by; it has watched the tawny chieftains and their followers trooping in single file through the adjacent gateway ; and past its moss-grown walls the bridal processions of Madeleine Loisel and Elizabeth Montcharveaux, and other fair ladies from the fort, have gone to the little church of St. Anne. And gazing at it in such a mood, until all about was peopled with the airy shapes of long ago, and one beheld again the gallant company which laid the foundations of this fortress with such high hope and purpose ; the hurrying scouts passing through its portals with tidings of Indian foray or Spanish march ; the valiant leaders setting forth from its walls on distant expeditions against savage or civilized foe; the colonists flocking to its store-house or council-chamber ; the dusky warriors thronging its inclosure, with Chicago or Pontiao at their head; the gathering there of those who founded a great city ; the happy village at its gates; and the scenes of its momentous surrender, which sealed the loss of an empire to France, it seems not unreasonable to wish that the State of Illinois might, while yet there is time, take measures to preserve, for the sake of the memories, the romance, and the history interwoven in its fabric, what still remains of Old Fort Chartres.

Edward G. Mason.