trouble?"
Then he wrote to the French minister, tendering his
services to France in her arduous struggle:
"I would begin with St. Louis, a rich, large, and populous town, and by placing two or three frigates within the Mississippi's mouth (to guard against Spanish succours) I would engage to subdue New Orleans, and the rest of Louisiana. If farther aided I would capture Pensacola; and if Santa Fé and the rest of New Mexico were objects—I know their strength and every avenue leading to them, for conquest.—All the routes as well as the defenceless situation of those places are perfectly known to me and I possess draughts of all their defences, and estimates of the greatest force which could oppose me. If France will be hearty and secret in this business my success borders on certainty.—The route from St. Louis to Santa Fé is easy, and the places not very distant.... To save Congress from a rupture with Spain on our account, we must first expatriate ourselves and become French citizens. This is our intention."
On its errand of good or ill the letter sped to the French minister to the United States, and lo! that minister was Genet, just landed at Charleston.
Genet had come from Revolutionary France, at this moment fighting all Europe, so frightfully had upblazed the tiny spark of liberty borne back by the soldiers of Rochambeau.
André Michaux was instructed to hasten to the Falls of the Ohio with this message to George Rogers Clark:
"The French minister has filled out this blank commission from his Government making you a Marshal of France, Major General and Commander-in-Chief of the French Legion on the Mississippi."
Thus had Genet answered the letter.
New Orleans was watching. "The Americans are threatening us with an army assembling on the Ohio," wrote Carondelet in alarm to Spain.
"Ill-disposed and fanatical citizens in this Capital," he added, "restless and turbulent men infatuated with Liberty and Equality, are increased with every vessel that comes from the ports
