II. ARKANSAS POST AND THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR

D. Captain Colbert Raids Arkansas Post

4. The April 17, 1783, Raid

b) The Raiders Surprise and Sweep the Habitant Coast

The flotilla pulled into the north bank of the Arkansas at Red Bluff, a short distance downstream from the habitants’ fields. Here the partisans landed. After detailing seven men, including Malcom Clark, to guard the boats, Captain Colbert set out for the post. It was 2:30 A.M., on April 17, 1783, when they closed in on the habitant coast.[104] Eight years before, the shots heard around the world had been fired on Lexington Green.

Commandant Dubreuil, having heard “nothing more of the pirates” since March 26, was asleep in his quarters. Lieutenant de Villars, Acting-Governor Miró’s orders to the contrary, was still at the post. Upon Dubreuil’s arrival in January, de Villars had turned over to him the commandant’s quarters and he, his wife, and two servants had moved “themselves to a lodge of Indian style, also within” the stockade. A wind storm on April 12 had demolished this house, and the de Villars household had gone to live in a dwelling “on the habitant coast,” one-half mile downstream from Fort Carlos III.

Although Sergt. Alexo Pastor and eight privates were on guard, Colbert and his partisans gained the habitant coast without being challenged. Breaking down the door of the dwelling in which the de Villars household slept, the raiders made them prisoners. Six other residents and their families were captured, while four habitant families escaped into the woods. The women and children from the hunting village, whose husbands and fathers had not returned from the winter’s hunt, fled on the first alarm to the fort. They had been awakened by shots and shouts.

Sergeant Pastor and his men had encountered the raiders as they roamed across the habitant coast. Darkness added to the confusion. Men fired at flashes, and a great amount of powder was burned. Outnumbered, the Spanish were badly beaten. Two of the patrol were killed, another and one of the habitants’ blacks wounded, and five captured. Only Sergeant Pastor escaped. Breaking away from three partisans, he fled to the fort, which he entered by crawling through an embrasure. All this transpired within 30 minutes.[105]