What gives peculiar interest in this fortress to us to-day is that it was
for a little time the only place in North America where the flag of the
French was flying. All New France had been ceded by the treaty of Paris in
1763, but the little garrison of forty men still held Fort Chartres.
Pontiac and other friendly Indians intercepted all approaching English
forces till, in 1765 (two years after the treaty of Paris and the cession
of Canada and all the valley east of the Mississippi), St. Ange, the
commander, announced to Pontiac, friendly to the end, that all was over,
that "Onontio, their great French father," could no longer help his red
children, that he was beyond the sea and could not hear, and that he,
Pontiac, must make peace with the English. Then it was that the forty-
second Highlanders, the "Black Watch," were permitted to enter the fort
and to put the red cross of St. George in place of the fleur-de-lis. And
so it was at Fort Chartres that the mighty struggle ended and that the
titular life of the great empire of France in the new world actually went
out.
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