Col. Bouquet in a letter written to Chief Justice Allen of Pennsylvania on November 26th, enumerated the needs of the garrison, which he hopes the Provinces of Pennsylvania and Virginia will immediately supply. He adds: "After God, the success of this expedition is entirely due to the general. He has shown the greatest prudence, firmness and ability. No one is better informed than I am, who had an opportunity to see every step that has been taken from the beginning and every obstacle that was thrown in his way." Forbes' first care was to provide defense and shelter for his troops, and a strong stockade was built around the traders' cabins and soldiers' huts, which he named Pittsburgh, in honor of England's great Minister, William Pitt. Two hundred Virginians under Col. Mercer were left to defend the new fortification, a force wholly inadequate to hold the place if the French chose to return and attempt to take it again. Those who remained must for a time depend largely on stream and forest to supply their needs, while the army, which was to return began their homeward march early in December, with starvation staring them in the face. No sooner was this work done than Forbes utterly succumbed. He left with the soldiers, and was carried all the way to Philadelphia in a litter, arriving there January 18, 1759. He lingered through the winter, died in March, and was buried in Christ Church, March 14, 1759. Parkman says: "If his achievement was not brilliant, its solid value was above price; it opened the Great West to English enterprise, took from France half her savage allies, and relieved the western borders from the scourge of Indian war. From Southern New York to North Carolina the frontier population had cause to bless the memory of this steadfast and all-enduring soldier." Just sixty days after the taking of Fort Duquesne, William Pitt wrote a letter, dated Whitehall, January 23, 1759, of which the following extract will show how important this place was considered in Great Britain. "Sir:--I am now to acquaint you that the King has been pleased immediately upon receiving the news of the success of his armies on the river Ohio, to direct the commander-in-chief of His Majesty's forces in North America, and General Forbes, to lose no time in concerting the properest and speediest means for completely restoring, if possible, the ruined Fort Duquesne to a defensible and respectable state, or for erecting another in the room of it of sufficient strength, and every way adequate to the great importance of the several objects of maintaining His Majesty's subject in the undisputed possession of the Ohio," etc., etc.