k was preparing to
attack and to warn them of their danger. La Balme also ingratiated himself
with the discontented French, asking why they did not drive "these
vagabonds," the American soldiers, away, and saying that to refuse to
furnish provisions was the most efficient method. "Everything he advances
tends to advance the French interest and depreciate the American. The
people here are easily misled; buoy'd up with the flattering hopes of
being again subject to the king of France, he could easily prevail on them
to drive every American out of the Place and this appears to me to be his
Plan." After thoroughly stirring up the people at Vincennes, the
adventurer left, with an escort of thirty French and Indians, to visit
Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and St. Louis. He and Col. Montgomery, then the
superior officer in Illinois, did not meet, and he received not the
slightest countenance from the Spanish commandant at St. Louis. By the
French inhabitants, La Balme "was received ... just as the Jews would
receive the Messiah--was conducted from the post here [at Kaskaskia] by a
large detachment of the inhabitants as well as different tribes of
Indians." The French in the towns near the Mississippi were so
enthusiastic that La Balme had little difficulty in raising forty or fifty
troops for an expedition against Detroit. Some of the American soldiers at
Cahokia deserted to him, and when placed under arrest by the military
authorities were rescued by a mob. On October 5, 1780, after telling the
Indians to be quiet because they would see the French in Illinois in the
spring, the French troops set out from Cahokia.(66)

The troops from Illinois were to be joined by a body from Vincennes, but
without waiting for them La Balme pushed on to the Miami towns, where he
hoped to capture a British Indian trader who was especially hated by the
French. The trader was not found, but his store of goods to the amount of
one hundred horse-loads was seized. The expected reinforcements not
arriving, La Balme felt too weak to attack Detroit and started to return.
He was attacked by the Indians on the river Aboite, eleven miles southwest
of the present Fort Wayne, and he and some thirty of his men were killed
and at least one hundred horses, richly laden with plunder, were taken by
the Indians. It was reported that disaffected inhabitants of Detroit had
concealed five hundred stands of arms with which to assist the forces of
La Balme in taking the place. A