Note IV-6 — Chapter IV · PIKE'S DISSERTATION ON LOUISIANA.[IV-1]

This "Mr. M'Cartie" was Le Chevalier Macarty, Makarty, etc., who in 1751 succeeded Le Sieur de St. Clair as major-commandant of the Illinois. He was by birth an Irishman, became a major of engineers, and served about nine years in the position indicated. The far-famed Fort Chartres is called by Wallace "the only great architectural work of the French in the entire basin of the Mississippi, over which, in succession, had proudly floated the flags of two powerful nations." Old Fort Chartres, or De Chartres, supposed to have been so named for the Duc de Chartres, son of the then Regent of France, was built in 1719 and 1720, under the direction of Pierre Duqué de Boisbriant, the king's lieutenant for France, at the expense of the Company of the West; it at once became military headquarters and the center of authority, and was long prominent in the French history of Illinois. It was rebuilt in 1753-56 during Major Macarty's incumbency, upon the plans of the French engineer Saucier, at an estimated cost of 5,000,000 livres; and this "new Chartres" is described as a "huge structure of masonry, an object of wonder and curiosity to all who ever beheld it"—some of these being antiquarians of the present day. The historic fortress suffered encroachments of the Mississippi for several years; it was finally dilapidated during a freshet in 1772, then evacuated by the British garrison, which removed to Fort Gage, and never reoccupied. We have many memorials of the progress of its decay, as well as of the period of its greatness: see Wallace's Illinois and Louisiana under French rule, 1893, pp. 270, 271, 313-318, which include various important references, notably to Pittman, whose description of the fort as it was in 1766 is transcribed, and to Beck's Gazetteer, giving a plan of the fort from observations made in 1820. The name stands for a steamboat landing near Prairie du Rocher, Randolph Co., Ill.