Defender of St Louis
"...a little-known part of the history of the American Revolution..."
"Mangez plomb, cochons!"
"Eat Lead, You Pigs!"
Francois Valle first made his mark in the region as founder of French Colonial
Valles Mines after arriving from Quebec in 1748. In later years he moved to Ste Genevieve,
ultimately serving as Commandante of the Fort there. But 32 years after Valles
Mines he made history a second time by risking everything to help a Spanish fort named
Fort San Carlos 60 miles to the North, a
vulnerable settlement caught in a battle for the New World, a place today we today
call...Saint Louis,
Missouri.
"...In his early 70's and commandante of Ste. Genevieve, he sent his two sons and
all the Ste. Genevieve militia he could spare to the Spanish settlement at St. Louis in May
1780 to defend against the coming British-Indians' attack. " [With the attack on its way,
St. Louis had still not been fortified].
"In two weeks the garrison of 350 defenders withstood 1000 attackers. May 26th, outnumbered
3 to 1, the garrison still prevailed after a desperate struggle...It does not seem excessive to claim that the men
from Ste. Genevieve added the weight that tipped the scale of battle in favor of the defenders...*...by royal decree on
April 1, 1782 King Carlos III of Spain conferred upon Francois I the rank of lieutenant in the regular Spanish army. Francois
Valle, French Canadian habitant thus became a Spanish don..."
"...At the same time that the Franco-Spanish garrison repelled the Anglo-Indian attack on St Louis,
Colonel John Montgomery and General George Rogers Clark fended off a secondary British thrust at
Cahokia across the Mississippi. These British setbacks in the western theater of action are a
little-known part of the history of the American Revolution. Nonetheless, they prevented Great
Britain from seizing control of the lucrative fur trade of the lower Mississippi River,...."
*
NOTE 1: Valle gave the defenders a major tactical advantage in two ways, first by
supplying genuine lead musket and cannon balls and secondly, by supplying his own Ste. Genevieve militia, trained and equipped.
NOTE 2: Riflemen in those days knew the best way to armor themselves came from casting their own projectiles [see
Mel Gibson in "The Patriot" for an accurate depiction making his dead son's
army soldiers into rifle balls] from lead, not pebbles.
At 100 feet getting hit with a pebble
or stone did not compare to the damage and knockdown power of a typical 52-caliber lead rifleball at that distance, even to this day used
for medium game [weighing] up to 300 lbs. Lead is 15
times heavier than limestone [0.409 lbs/cu.in vs. dolomite's 0.0266 lbs/cu.in.).
The Battle of Fort San Carlos has been called the westernmost
battle of the Revolutionary War.
Rumor has it that ruins of Fort San Carlos are buried under Ballpark Village or at
Market and Broadway under the site of
Mayor Cervantes' Spanish Pavilion.
"...A Stunning Defeat
In October 1781, the war virtually came to an end when General Cornwallis was surrounded and forced to surrender the
British position at Yorktown, Virginia. Two years later, the Treaty of Paris made it official: America was independent.
From USHistory.org
"August 27, 1782 - The last fighting of the Revolutionary War between Americans and British occurs with a skirmish in South Carolina along
the Combahee River. November 10, 1782 - The final battle of the Revolutionary War occurs as Americans
retaliate against Loyalist and Indian forces by attacking a Shawnee Indian village in the Ohio territory."
HistoryPlace.com
When did the Revolutionary War end?
"...France fought alongside the United States, against Britain, from 1778..."
Francois Valle also supplied lead to the Revolutionary War effort as a Frenchman. The French were a great help to the
colonists, often at their own expense."
From Wikipedia's "France in the American Revolutionary War
"