Jean Baptiste Lapaise de Védrines had arrived in New Orleans with the new Administration of Governor Vaudreuil. In the same way, he was appointed to serve at Fort Chartres in the Upper Louisiana Territory (Illinois) in May 1751 with the new Administration of Commandant Jean Jacques MaCarty Mactigue.[1] The exact date of his arrival in the Pays des Illinois presently remains unknown.
Soldiers of the Compagnies Franches de la Marine en Nouvelle-France, 1750-1755, Eugène Lelièpvre
Nevertheless, the first appearance of Jean Baptiste Lapaise de Védrines in the records of Kaskaskia is on July 22, 1751[2], so, as previously stated, he most likely departed New Orleans the spring of 1751 in the special convoy that headed up the Mississippi that year.[3] It is also a possibility that he made the trip in an earlier convoy. Chevalier Jean Jacques MaCarty Mactigue departed New Orleans in the fall convoy of and arrived as the commandant of Fort Chartres later that year in December of 1751. They both arrived in the Pays des Illinois and would serve there during exciting and challenging times, particularly as a new stone Fort would be constructed and the French and Indian War (also called the Seven Years War) would break out.
At the same time that the city of New Orleans was being founded in the Lower Louisiana Territory, the French were working to establish a presence in Upper Louisiana, which would later be known as the Pays des Illinois. In 1719, the French established the first Fort de Chartres on the east bank of the Mississippi River about sixteen miles north of the village of Kaskaskia. Around the Fort, a village began to grow up known simply as Chartres or Nouvelle Chartres.
Unfortunately, five years after the original Fort was built, flooding from the Mississippi River and the weather conditions of the area in general had left it in bad condition. Construction of a second wooden Fort began in 1725, this time, further from the river, but still on the flood plain. It took a little longer for the second wooden Fort to deteriorate, but a third wooden Fort had to be constructed in 1732. Within ten years, by 1742, the third wooden Fort too was merely a rotting little stockade, its equipment dissipated. By 1747, “the commandant moved most of the soldiers to Kaskaskia…only a small detachment remained at the Fort.”[4]
When commandant Jean Jacques MaCarty Mactigue arrived in the Illinois country, he was not impressed with the condition in which he found the Fort: “Late in 1751, Macarty, the newly appointed commandant, noted that while the frames of the buildings within the fort were good, the buildings needed other significant repairs and one was close to collapse.”[5] He was given orders to build a new Fort of stone.
While we currently do not know a great deal about his eight years of service in New Orleans as a junior officer of the French Marines, we are able to know more about Jean Baptiste Lapaise de Védrines’ years in the Pays des Illinois serving at the Fort de Chartres. His name appears as a witness in several different civil and sacramental records.
For example, less than a year after he arrived at Fort Chartres, at a Baptism on February 4, 1752, he served as the parrain (or godfather) of “a negro child, natural son of Margrite, a negress belonging to Flibot, habitant in this parish.”[6] Filibot (or Philibot) was a relative of Jean Baptiste Lapaise de Védrines’ future wife, Elisabeth de Moncharvaux. The child was named Jean Baptiste, apparently after his parrain.
Later that year, on October 5, 1752, Jean Baptiste Lapaise de Védrines, received the promotion to Enseigne en Second, which Governor Vaudreuil had appointed him during the previous year.[7]
Fort de Chartres in 1753
Work on the new Fort designed by François Saucier was begun in 1753. A huge structure of stone, plastered over, it covered four acres of ground and could accommodate 300-400 men. When completed, it was known as the strongest and most pretentious fortress in the new world. Years later, once the French lost the War to the British, Philip Pittman, writing in 1764, said: “It is generally allowed that this is the most commodious and best built fort in North America.”[8]
That fall, from September to November 1753, Jean Baptiste Lapaise de Védrines was listed as an Enseigne in a Detachment of troops under Francois de Mazellières at Illinois during a dangerous mission. According to a letter Macarty, commandant of Fort Chartres wrote to Governor Kerlérec in New Orleans, “a strong detachment which was composed of one hundred troops” under the command of Captain Mazellières, with Jean Baptiste Lapaise de Védrines as one of the Officers (Enseigne en Second) was given the mission to “provide a supply of provisions of all sorts for the subsistence of a detachment of three thousand men which was to leave Canada in the Spring of 1753 to come and fortify itself on the Ohio, Wabash, and Great Miami rivers”.[9] Mazellières and his company left on September 1. However, as they advanced, they did not find the detachment from Canada:
“Not having found him he acted as follows: Having entered the Wabash and gained the entrance to the Ohio River he ascended it for about ninety leagues without being able to ascend it higher for want of water, and being stopped by a cascade or fall of about fifteen feet he took the decision of sending by land the Sieur Portneuf and some soldiers with orders to follow the river to discover the said army if it were possible. The Sieur Portneuf lost himself for three or four days in the depths of the forest through the ignorance of his guide, but having reached the river again he marched three days more, which brought him to the Shawnee village, where he saw several English traders and several of our soldiers who have deserted, some of whom have taken wives. On the eve of his arrival at the said village two Delaware Indians, or Mohawk, arrived who gave the Shawnee an account of the position of the detachment from Canada. They told them also that a party was established and entrenched at Presqu’Isle on Lake Erie, another at the river aux Boeufs, and that the remainder, commanded by the Sieur Péan, had returned to Canada. The Shawnee not having attacked the French save when they were found in parties of their enemies, the chief and some of the important men of the village told the Sieur de Portneuf that they would advise him to leave immediately, adding to him that their young men began to lose their understanding and wished to kill him, which obliged the Sieur de Portneuf to leave that same night. The Sieur des Mazellières, to whom but two months’ provisions had been given following the orders of M. Duquesne, not hearing any news of the Sieur de Portneuf nor of the army and having lost ten men by desertion and being threatened with not being able to keep one, took the decision of making an enclosure of upright pickets for a cache of all the provisions which he covered with canvas; after which he returned to the Illinois, where he arrived the nineteenth of November last and the Sieur Portneuf some days afterward.”[10]
Evidently Jean Baptiste Lapaise de Védrines returned safely to Fort Chartres along with Captain Mazellières.
By the next year, in 1754, “Fort de Chartres mustered 285, probably the largest number in the history of the fort.”[11] Life at Fort Chartres under Commandant MaCarty was described this way in 1921:
The people of the fort and village led a merry life. Lordly processions of gentlemen and richly dressed ladies marched into the chapel to hear Mass. Hunting parties issued from the gates of the fort and returned at night full laden with spoils of the chase. Stately receptions were given, where officers in uniforms covered with gold lace danced with ladies robed in velvets and satins. The fashions of Paris were reproduced in this military station on the distant Mississippi. The fame of Fort Chartres spread to every settlement in the new world. It became a common saying, “All roads lead to Fort Chartres.”[12]
Around the same time, Jean Baptiste Lapaise de Védrines’ fellow French Marines were engaged in an interesting battle. England and France were still relatively at peace. But in May 1754, Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville led a small detachment of French to notify the British that they were trespassing on territory claimed by France in the Ohio Country, including the territory of the upper Ohio River in what is today western Pennsylvania.
George Washington, a young British Officer commanding a detachment of Virginia militia, ambushed Jumonville’s party, killing him and several others. This event was one of the first battles of the Seven Years’ War. Jumonville’s brother Louis Coulon de Villiers later defeated Washington and forced his surrender at Fort Necessity…the only military surrender of his long career…and it happened on the 4th of July (1754)!
The surrender was described in this way:
By 11:00am on the 3rd of July 1754, Louis Coulon de Villiers came within sight of Fort Necessity. Washington was occupying the Fort and began to prepare his garrison for an attack.
Coulon moved his troops into the woods, within easy musket range of the fort. Deciding to strike first, Washington ordered an assault with his entire force across the open field. Seeing the assault coming, Coulon ordered his soldiers, led by Indians, to charge directly at Washington’s line. However, the Virginians fled back to the fort, leaving Washington and the British greatly outnumbered. Washington ordered a retreat back to the fort.
The Victory of Montcalms Troops at Carillon, Henry Alexander Ogden
Louis Coulon de Villiers sent an officer under a white flag to negotiate. Washington sent one of his officers along with a translator, to negotiate. As negotiations began, the Virginians, against Washington’s orders, broke into the fort’s liquor supply and got drunk. Coulon told the translator that all he wanted was that Washington surrender the garrison, and the Virginians could go back to Virginia. He warned, however, that if they did not surrender now, the Indians might storm the fort and scalp the entire garrison.
While Jean Baptiste Lapaise de Védrines himself was not personally engaged in the battle against the young George Washington and his militia in 1754, it’s easy to imagine the joy Louis Coulon de Villiers and his men shared with their fellow Marines when they arrived back at Fort Chartres, Illinois. Surely, at this point, Jean Baptiste Lapaise de Védrines never imagined that his sons would one day be living in a nation which would have George Washington as its first President! But now that it had begun, it was the Seven Years’ War that Jean Baptiste Lapaise de Védrines and his fellow Marines would be engaged in during the rest of his time at the Fort de Chartres until they lost the War to the British in 1763.
On March 3, 1757 Jean Baptiste Lapaise de Védrines received payment of a debt for the sum of 121 livres, 15 sols from the estate of Officer Pierre St. Ange.[14] St. Ange had been burned at the stake by Chicasaw Indians along with the commandant Artaguiette and officers Louis Dutisne, Sieur de Vincennes, and the Jesuit Priest, Fr. Antoine Senat.
That same year, Jean Baptiste Lapaise de Védrines is listed as an Enseigne en second in a detachment of troops under Louis Marie de Populus, Escuyer de St. Protais, at Cahokia, Illinois.[15]
The next fall, Jean Baptiste Lapaise de Védrines was back at Fort Chartres making preparations to marry the young maiden, Elisabeth de Moncharvaux, the daughter of his Captain, Jean Baptiste François Tisserand de Moncharvaux. They were married on October 10, 1758, at the chapel of Sainte Anne de Fort Chartres by the Apostolic Missionary, Fr. Jacques-François Forget Duverger. (This marriage record is what first gave Jacky Vidrine the information about the location of Jean Baptiste Lapaise de Védrines’ place of origin in France.) Through her mother, Elisabeth de Moncharvaux was the great granddaughter of Marie Rouensa, a full-blooded woman of the Kaskaskia Tribe of Native Americans. The Kaskaskia Tribe had arrived at the mouth of the Kaskaskia River where it met the Mississippi River around 1703. Marie Rouensa’s father, Chief Francois Xavier Mamentouensa Rouensa (1650-1725), was Chief of the Illini Confederation.
By the following year, in July 1759, Jean Baptiste Lapaise de Védrines was promoted to Enseigne en Pied (full ensign).[16]
Diorama of Village of Chartres at Fort Chartres Museum. Photo by Fr. Jason Vidrine
Ensign De Védrines and his wife bought a lot in the town of New Chartres next to the Fort [one lot of twenty-five toises in front and thirty in depth, on which there is one shed built of pickets with a double stone chimney bounded in front by a great street of New Chartres] on November 17, 1760[17], intending – it appears – to settle there. Two years later, around 1762, they had their first child and oldest son, Jean Baptiste Pierre de Védrines.
The Seven Years War in America was not ended with the surrender of Montreal September 8, 1760. A month later, October 11, 1760, King George II of England died. The fate of Louisiana hung in balance.[18] Ceded to England were Canada and the east bank of the Mississippi River except the Isle of Orleans. Spain was offered all the west bank (la rive droite) plus New Orleans, and this was accepted at Fontainbleu on November 3, 1762.[19]
The Treaty of Paris was signed on February 10, 1763, but the clause concerning the transfer of the west bank to Spain was not made public.[20] Spain felt it was unprepared to occupy and govern such an immense territory, so it was agreed that the fact of the transfer be kept secret while they organized.[21]
By the next month, an ordinance was signed by King Louis XV on March 16, 1763, granting Jean Baptiste Lapaise de Védrines’ request for retirement from the French Marines and the retirement pension he was to receive of 200 livres per year.[22] It was subsequently signed and dated in New Orleans on September 15, 1763.[23]
The following month, on May 10, 1763, De Vedrine, landowner was mentioned in a land sale at Nouvelle Chartres.[24]
One month earlier in April, 1763, Jean-Jacques-Blaise d’Abbadie arrived in New Orleans to replace Kerlérec as Governor of Louisiana with the news of the Treaty of Paris.
The people of the Louisiana Province were indignant that part of it had been given up to the English. Many of the older French residents of Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Prairie du Rocher, and Fort Chartres left their homes to cross the river to what they thought was French Territory.[25] Others descended the river to New Orleans. The news of the transfer to Spain was made public in France only on April 21, 1764.[26] Some gossip had reached Louisiana late in 1764, but was not really accepted or believed, not even at the arrival of Antonio de Ulloa as the new Governor on March 5, 1766.[27]
There was an interesting account of the Illinois Country in 1763 drawn up by Aubry (who succeeded D’Abbadie after his death on February 4, 1765.)[28] In 1764, he was Commandant of the troops at New Orleans,[29] and did this report evidently for the use of Major Loftus before the attempt to occupy the Illinois by ascending the Mississippi.[30]
The report tells about the Indian tribes who were united in opposing British occupation and settlement, their location, and their hunting season (February). It mentions that camping should be on the west bank to make ambush difficult. This is questioned on Robertson’s description as though the English could not believe they would be as safe on the “French” side of the River.[31]
Aubrey mentioned the Fort that was built on the heights on the other side of the narrow river at Kaskaskia, after his departure in 1759. The Fort commanded the town, and was its protection from Indians, but because he had left before it was built, he did not know the number of cannons, nor the capacity of the Fort. The population of Kaskaskia he estimated at about 400 inhabitants.[32]
Fort de Chartres was described as built of stone with capacity for 300 soldiers and having perhaps twenty cannons. There were about 100 people living around the Fort, and 20 more in a village nearby (St. Philippe). Prairie du Rocher, located between the two forts (which were six leagues apart), had, he thought, about fifty inhabitants.[33]
There was another small Fort built of pickets (palisades), and a village, Cahokia, of about 100 inhabitants, about fifteen leagues beyond Fort de Chartres (The enclosure of pickets had been torn down and burned by the time Pittman described it in 1765).[34]
As early as December 1, 1763, Commandant de Villiers requested orders to vacate Fort Chartres, and asked approval to do so in early March, 1764. He felt all could leave by the first week of March, while the water was high and navigation easier.[35]
De Villiers had prepared for the British to take over the Fort, and all through the long and exceptionally cold winter of 1763-1764, he waited. In March, he felt sure the rivers further north were still blocked with ice.[36]
On April 12, 1764, the Indian Pontiac, enemy of the English, brought the news that the English had decided to come to Illinois by way of the Mississippi. Several habitants had been preparing to leave for lower Louisiana, but now fear of the English and of the Illinois en route made them decide to wait.
Governor D’Abbadie sent out two convoys, one on April 19th and one on June 11th with some provisions for Arkansas and Illinois. He felt the bateaux would be needed by de Villiers to carry out the plan to descend to New Orleans with most of the garrison and some inhabitants.[37] However, since it took several months to ascend from New Orleans to Illinois, it is unlikely the boats arrived in time.
Finally, De Villiers was able to depart. He left the Illinois Post on June 15, 1764 with an enormous convoy of twenty-one bateaux and seven pirogues, having with him six officers and sixty-three men. Some inhabitants (about 80) who wished to leave before the British occupied the Illinois came with them.[38] This was probably the largest convoy ever on the Mississippi, and De Villiers was criticized for having persuaded a large number of habitants to abandon Illinois.[39]
Védrines was most likely one of the officers in this convoy. It appears that his young family had their second child and first daughter, Agnes Vidrine, in 1764, either as they prepared to leave the Illinois Country for New Orleans, or on the way there.
Commandant MaCarty had retired three years earlier and settled on his plantation near New Orleans (which later became the town, and then suburb of Carrollton). Perhaps the presence of the commandant he had served under nearly his whole time at Fort Chartres as well as many other soldiers from Fort Chartres he had served with had an influence, in part, on Jean Baptiste’s choice to go back to the city he had first arrived at from France, and which he had served for nearly nine years before being sent up to the Illinois Country.
Only forty soldiers remained in Illinois under the Command of Louis St. Ange de Bellerive, who delivered Fort Chartres to the British the following year, on October 14, 1765.[40] He then crossed to the west side of the Mississippi to St. Louis, Missouri, where he served as Commandant until 1770.[41]
[1] For more about Commandant Jean-Jacques Macarty, Cf. David MacDonald, Lives of Fort de Chartres: Commandants, Soldiers, and Civilians in French Illinois, 1720–1770 (Carbondale, IL, 2016) pp.82-104.
[2] Kaskaskia Manuscripts 51:7:22:1.
[3] Archives Nationales Coloniales,C13 A34 f. 277.
[4] David MacDonald, Lives of Fort de Chartres: Commandants, Soldiers, and Civilians in French Illinois, 1720–1770 (Carbondale, IL, 2016) p.24.
[5] David MacDonald, Lives of Fort de Chartres: Commandants, Soldiers, and Civilians in French Illinois, 1720–1770 (Carbondale, IL, 2016), p.24.
[6] St. Anne Church de Fort Chartres Baptismal Reccord, now at St. Joseph in Prairie du Rocher, Illinois cited in Brown and Dean, The Village of Chartres in Colonial Illinois: 1720-1765, (Baton Rouge, LA, 2012), p. 185, D-260.
[7] Archives Nationales Coloniales,D2, C59, f.32; http://anom.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr/ark:/61561/tu245npjgn
[8] David MacDonald, Lives of Fort de Chartres: Commandants, Soldiers, and Civilians in French Illinois, 1720–1770, (Carbondale, IL, 2016), p.25.
[9] Archives Nationales Coloniales,C13 A38, f.79; Theodore Calvin Pease, Illinois on the Eve of the Seven Years War, 1747-1755 (Springfield, IL, 1940), pp.861-868.
[10] Archives Nationales Coloniales,C13 A38, f.79; Theodore Calvin Pease, Illinois on the Eve of the Seven Years War, 1747-1755 (Springfield, IL, 1940), pp.861-868.
[11] David MacDonald, Lives of Fort de Chartres: Commandants, Soldiers, and Civilians in French Illinois, 1720–1770 (Carbondale, IL, 2016), p.23.
[12] Irwin F. Mather, The Making of Illinois (Chicago, IL, 1921), p.87.
[13] Cf. Edward Lengel, General George Washington: A Military Life (New York, NY, 2007), pp.40-44.
[14] Kaskaskia Manuscripts 57:3:22:1
[15] Archives Nationales Coloniales,D2, C59, f.32; http://anom.archivesnationales.culture
.gouv.fr/ark:/61561/tu245npjgn
[16] Archives Nationales Coloniales,D2, C59, f.32; http://anom.archivesnationales.culture
.gouv.fr/ark:/61561/tu245npjgn
[17] Kaskaskia Manuscripts 60:11:17:1.
[18] Bernard, Histoire de la Lousiane, p.149
[19] Bernard, Histoire de la Louisiane, p.150
[20] Bernard, Histoire de la Louisiane, p.150
[21] Bernard, Histoire de la Louisiane, p.150
[22] Archives Nationales Coloniales,E 384 bis, http://anom.archivesnationales.culture
.gouv.fr/ark:/61561/up424dx44zyo
[23] Archives Nationales Coloniales,D2 C59, f32
[24] Kaskaskia Manuscripts 329: see 48:2:15:1
[25] Bernard, Histoire de la Louisiane, p.150
[26] Bernard, Antoine, Histoire de la Louisiane de ses origines à nos jours, p.161
[27] Bernard, Histoire de la Louisiane, p.157-158
[28] Avelard and Cartier, p. 57
[29] Ibid, p. 217
[30] Ibid, p. 1
[31] Ibid, p. 218
[32] See Belting, p.39-40
[33] Alvord and Cartier, p.1-5
[34] Alvord and Cartier, p.1-5; Aubry’s Account 1763; Dartmouth Manuscripts, 510
[35] Alvord and Cartier, p. 271; C 13A 43:353
[36] Avlord and Cartier, p. 225; C 13A 44:92
[37] Alvord and Cartier, p. 270; ANC C13A:44:74-77
[38] Alvord and Cartier, p. 271; ANC C13A:44:74-77
[39] Lives of Fort Chartres, p. 115
[40] Alvord and Cartier, p.271
[41] Alvord and Cartier, p.289