General Bouquet—General Haldimand.

Early in 1765 General Henry Bouquet having been assigned to the command of the southern military district of the colonies, of which Pensacola was the headquarters, sailed from Philadelphia in a small schooner for that place. He arrived there in the early spring, and on the following September died.^[4] Of the day and cause of his death nothing seems to be known. Of the fact that his grave was marked by a monument, there is the most conclusive proof.^[5]

Where is that monument? That time and the elements are responsible for its disappearance is improbable. That it is not even a subject of tradition suggests the painful suspicion that it was willfully destroyed; a suggestion which explains the absence of all memorials of the people who must have died in Pensacola during the nearly twenty years of the British dominion, and removes from their generation the reproach of having had no respect for the memory and ashes of their departed friends and comrades.

An exodus of the English occurred in 1783, as a future page will show, like that of the Spaniards in 1763 already mentioned. The town was filled by a new and strange population, whose needs for building material were urgent, and their reverence for the dead too feeble, perhaps, to resist the temptation of supplying their wants by plundering tombs deserted by their natural guardians.

Nature, too, conspired with man in the work of desecration. The necropolis of the English was at the western extremity of the town, extending southward and embracing a slight bluff on the Bay. From 1860 to 1870 the water abraded that place, washing out human bones, and thus compelled the earth to surrender its dead to the sport of the waves.

General Bouquet was born at Rolle, in the canton of Berne, Switzerland. That he attained so high a rank is evidence of his merit. His masterly campaign, in 1763, against the Ohio Indians, including the Delawares, the Shawnees, and Mingoes, as related by the classic pen of Dr. Kingsford, in his History of Canada,^[6] is a most interesting and striking chapter of our colonial annals. The result was the removal of a terrible scourge from the western borders of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and the restoration to liberty and to friends of three hundred white men and women by a treaty, the terms of which were left to the discretion of General Bouquet by General Gage. So highly appreciated were his skill and courage at the time that both colonies honored him with votes of thanks for his “great services,” which were supplemented by a complimentary letter from the king.

But the royal letter and his promotion were only Dead Sea apples. Their result was a voyage in a small vessel to the distant shores of the Gulf of Mexico, where he was to die in a few months in a little garrison town with his laurels yet fresh on his brow, away from the friends and that admiring social circle he had left so recently at Philadelphia. Had he been the son, or cousin, whether first, second or third, would have mattered not, of a minister, he would have won a pension and obtained an enviable appointment.

General Bouquet was not only a distinguished soldier, but he also left behind him another claim to distinction in the thirty volumes of manuscript in the British museum, known as the “Bouquet Collection,” which now calendared is available to the historical student.

His monument has perished; his bones, perhaps, have been the sport of the unpitying waves; generations have unconsciously trampled on his dust; but, in “the Pantheon of history,” his name and his fame are as fresh as when on these shores he drew his last breath and heaved his last sigh.

A letter^[7] from his confidential friend Ourry inspires the suspicion that a romantic passion, nourished by exile and inaction, contributed to his early death. He was devoted to a Miss Willing of Philadelphia, and supposed to be her affianced. A Mr. Francis, a wealthy Londoner, wooed and won the lady whilst the soldier was winning laurels on the western frontier. But for vandal hands his tomb would be a shrine where disappointed love could make its votive offerings.

General Frederick Haldimand was the successor of General Bouquet in the command of the southern district. He, too, was a Swiss, and a native of the Canton of Berne. He had held important commands in Canada before he came to Florida. In 1773 he was appointed governor of New York. In the same year, during General Gage’s absence in England, he was commander-in-chief of the colonies. He was, from 1778 to 1784, governor-general of Canada. To the qualities of a distinguished soldier, he added ability for civil affairs and the statesmanlike qualities which great crises sometimes require in a military commander, as appears from Lord Dartmouth’s correspondence with him during Gage’s absence.^[8]

There is an interesting coincidence in the lives of Bouquet and Haldimand. Drawn to each other, doubtless, by the tie of nativity and profession, similarity of disposition, interests and fortunes, a life-long friendship was the natural consequence. They were associates in land investments. Bouquet bequeathed his entire estate to his native brother-in-arms, including the valuable collection before referred to. More fortunate than the former, the latter lived to be made a Knight of the Bath, and to die in his native town of Yverdun.^[9]