Note 109 — III Two Journals of Western Tours, by Charles Frederick Post: one, to the neighborhood of Fort Duquesne (July-September, 1758); the other to the Ohio (October, 1758-January 1759) (continued 2)
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Colonel Henry Bouquet, a Swiss officer, who had served with distinction in the armies of Sardinia and Holland, was engaged to enter the regiment of Royal Americans, and came to America in 1756. The following year he was in command in South Carolina; but early in 1758 was summoned north to aid Forbes in his march through Pennsylvania. Bouquet commanded the advance, and prepared the road, ordered the stations for reserve supplies, and by careful management contributed much to the success of the campaign. Upon Forbes’s retiring, Bouquet was left in command at Fort Pitt, where he remained fulfilling the arduous and exacting duties of his frontier service until late in 1762, when he was relieved by Captain Ecuyer, and returned to Philadelphia. On the news of the siege of Fort Pitt (1763), Bouquet organized a relief expedition, which inflicted a severe defeat upon the Indians at Bushy Run. The following year, the Indian country was invaded, Bouquet’s expedition to the Muskingum proving a complete success. Relieved from his Western command, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general and placed in command of all the troops in the southern British colonies of America. He died at Pensacola, February, 1766, at the early age of forty-seven. He was not only a soldier of ability and vigor, but a man of most attractive and charming character, beloved by superiors and subordinates. The collection of his letters in the British Museum is a chief source for the history of the West during this period. See calendar in Canadian Archives, 1889; extracts in Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, xix, pp. 27-295; also Bouquet’s Expedition against the Ohio Indians (Cincinnati, 1868).—Ed.