French Imperial remnants on the middle ground: The strange case of August de la Balme and Charles Beaubien

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Summer 2000 by Birzer, Bradley J

Colonel August de la Balme witnessed intense anger among the French Creoles of the Illinois country in 1780. Threatened physically by the British, Americans, and the Native Americans warring with one another, the French stood isolated, without military protection, and psychologically insecure; their government had abandoned them in the peace accords of 1763. When de la Balme promised the Creoles a quick remedy and targeted a scapegoat, Charles Beaubien, the British agent to the Miamis, they received him as "the Messiah."1

Prolonged stability or peace rarely graced the pays d'en hauf during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Instead, intrigue and violence abounded. Certainly the existence of the constructed "Middle Ground" added to a superficial calm. One may define the "middle ground" as a place as well as a concept, a French Borderlands.z Centered around the western Great Lakes, the middle ground served as a place in which empires and frontiers clashed with native cultures, but had yet to conquer them. Instead, a constructed culture, neither European nor Indian, reigned. While it was still dark, bloody, and violent, the middle ground relied on trade as the basis of cultural interaction rather than merely incessant conquest or warfare. Richard White argues that the middle ground ended with the death of Tecumseh in 1813, as the native cultures could no longer play the English against the Americans.3 Jay Gitlin has taken this a step further, demonstrating that even after the United States won the War of 1812, competing Indian and French Creole interests remained a predominant feature of life on and around the Mississippi, Ohio, Maumee, and Wabash rivers.4

The real instability began in the early 1760s. After the forlorn possibility of victory in North America, dramatic French losses on the Plains of Abraham reverberated throughout the pays d'en haut. As the British painfully and inadequately reestablished the Middle Ground the French had created, they met incredible resistance from many of the American Indians who resented their new role as British subjects, the rebel Americans who wanted their own republic, and the remaining Creole French in the region, upon whom the British had hoped they could rely.

This article examines the conflicting lives of two renegade Frenchmen, Charles Beaubien and August de la Balme. In the vacuum left by the official French departure in 1763, these two men served as powerful symbols of what Creoles and freelancers could do for international relations as well as local situations. At the hinterland, the edge of empires, they wielded considerable influence. It also considers the effects of their conflict on the Miami Indians and the stability of the region.

Very little is known of August de la Balme's background prior to his arrival in the United States. A French military officer since the mid-1760s and self-acclaimed cavalry expert, he applied to fight for the United States in October 1776. Holding equally a dislike of Great Britain and a desire to make a name for themselves in military combat, numerous European officers applied to the United States for commissions. Congress and the military accepted few, believing that the United States could not effectively pay them. The American military also disliked the prospect of European gentlemen taking credit for their rebellion.

De la Balme had better connections than most. Presenting a letter of recommendation from Benjamin Franklin, de la Balme received the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and "Inspector General of the Cavalry" from the Continental Congress. He quickly proved an enigma. Unexpectedly and with little stated reason, de la Balme resigned in October 1777, having served only a few months.s By the beginning of 1778, de la Balme had second thoughts about his hasty departure. Confident that Canada needed to be attacked directly, or so he stated, de la Balme again applied to Congress to organize an expedition against Canada. The Frenchman believed that the Creoles of Detroit - the headquarters of British operations in the West - were ready to rebel and only needed the slightest provocation and invitation from the Americans. Certainly a number of British officers feared the same to be true.b "It is not from the number, nor from a blind Valour; that victory is to be expected" de la Balme wrote Congress, paraphrasing a Roman proverb. Having burned Congress once, de la Balme continued his persuasion: "But it is from a good order and from the Knowledge of War."' Congress was now understandably leery of de la Balme and his seemingly quickly shifting moods. Receiving very little support from Congress, de la Balme decided to go west and raise an army on his own.

Like George Rogers Clark, who never obtained enough money or equipment to invade Detroit, de la Balme argued that the former French post of Detroit represented the Achilles heel in British Canadian defenses.$ Once he arrived with a sufficient military force, he argued, the inspired Creole population would rise in rebellion to overthrow the British.9