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Introduction The Most Unaccountable Country and Inhabitants in the World During the summer of 1761, Colonel Henry Bouquet took measure of his surroundings. The son of a prosperous innkeeper from the town of Rolle, near Lake Geneva in Switzerland, the forty-two-year-old professional soldier had led an interesting life. At age seventeen, Bouquet enlisted in a Swiss professional regiment, continuing a family tradition of military service. Numerous European heads of state employed Swiss professional soldiers, who earned great notoriety for their professionalism and loyalty. Bouquet’s regiment saw action in Italy during King George’s War (known in Europe as the War of Austrian Succession),and after the war he became a lieutenant colonel in the Swiss Guards serving the Prince of Orange,ruler of the Dutch Republic. It was there that Bouquet met British ambassador Sir Joseph Yorke, who recommended the young officer for service in the British army headed for North America. War had erupted between Great Britain and France, and following the defeat of Major General Edward Braddock ’s army in 1755, the British government was reorganizing its military forces.The British were particularly interested in European-trained officers to command German-speaking soldiers from the American colonies, who comprised an important part of the new Royal American regiment. In 1756, Bouquet arrived in Philadelphia, where he helped recruit and train a battalion of Pennsylvania German soldiers. After an unfulfilling eighteen-month stint in South Carolina, Bouquet and his regiment were back in Pennsylvania , attached to the army of Brigadier General John Forbes, who advanced across the Pennsylvania countryside during the summer of 1758 and captured Fort Duquesne, a French outpost at the forks of the Ohio River. Following the untimely death of Forbes, Bouquet inherited the responsibility of· 1 · 2 a colony sprung from hell consolidating the British hold on the Ohio forks, helping to establish the foundation for what became the town of Pittsburgh.1 It was at Pittsburgh, within his quarters at the massive Fort Pitt, that Bouquet paused to reflect on his surroundings. Although he was European by birth, Bouquet had come to consider Pennsylvania his “mother country in America.”While little is known of his education and formative background, Bouquet developed an interest in learning,mathematics,and science uncommon to most career soldiers.He immensely enjoyed the genteel life of Philadelphia , where he became friendly with the town’s leading citizens, wooed the daughter of a prominent merchant, and cultivated the “esteem, respect, and affection” of Benjamin Franklin. But his military career often took him away from such pursuits, and he spent most of his time in Pennsylvania on the western frontier, a service he greeted with a fair amount of despondency. Bouquet found garrison life at Fort Pitt particularly uncomfortable.He often complained to friends that he was “ignorant of all that is happening in the world,”a reflection on the extreme remoteness of the post,situated some 300 miles from his urbane associations in Philadelphia. At times, loneliness and boredom wore at Bouquet’s resolve. “I have come to the conclusion that we are in fact machines, subject to the influence of the places in which we live,” he wrote to a confidant. “The imagination is all smiles when we are content, and if the contrary occurs, everyone frowns.”2 Bouquet had much to frown over at Pittsburgh, where he consistently labored to execute his duties with diligence and professionalism, no easy feat given the considerable challenges that attended his command. Bouquet’s most vexing frustrations involved the local population. A chaotic, largely spontaneous village had grown up outside Fort Pitt’s walls, populated by a virtual cross-section of colonial society. With no civilian authority to govern the more than 300 inhabitants,disorder and rebelliousness prevailed in Pittsburgh , where vice, robbery, murder, and drunkenness challenged Bouquet on a daily basis.James Kenny,a Quaker merchant who arrived in Pittsburgh not long after Bouquet,was shocked by the state of lawlessness and the depravity of local society.“It seems as if I was some obstruction to the province of Satan ’s government or kingdom at the place,” he recorded in his journal, “since none of the temptations has effect to draw me into the practices that are too common here.” Bouquet concurred with Kenny’s damning assessment, concluding that without civilian authority to restrain the inhabitants, the region was little more than “a colony sprung from hell for the scourge of mankind.”3 Twenty years after Bouquet made...

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