The present Fort Chartres was occupied in 1720 by Philippe François de Renault, the French director-general of mining operations, who brought with him up the river for the purpose two hundred white men and five hundred Santo Domingo negroes, thus introducing slavery in what became Illinois. The purpose of the fort was to protect against the Spaniards the servants of John Law’s famous Company of the Indies, whose startling scheme for curing the financial ills of France was later known as the Mississippi Bubble. Law’s plan was to set up a bank to manage the royal revenue and to issue notes backed by landed security. In selling shares in his Company of the Indies, which was to accomplish financial wonders, “large engravings were distributed in France, representing the arrival of the French at the Mississippi river, and savages with their squaws rushing to meet the new arrivals with evident respect and admiration.” Promises of great dividends from mountains of gold and silver, lead, copper, and quicksilver were made. Shares rose rapidly and soon were selling for 20,000 francs. For three months the French people believed in Law. Then the Mississippi Bubble burst and there was sorrow in the homeland. In the meantime the work at Fort Chartres was continued. Within the stockade of wood, which had earth between the palisades for purposes of strength, were received many wandering savages who brought their furs for barter. The French residents felt secure in the presence of their protection. Various expeditions were sent out against the Indians. One of these went out against the Chickasaw Indians, on the Arkansas River. Disaster overtook the company of French soldiers, and fifteen were captured and put to death with savage barbarity. In 1753 the fort was in such bad condition that it was decided to build anew, this time of stone, brought from the bluff. When completed, the new structure was one of the strongest forts ever built in America. An English traveler who visited the new fort in 1765, when the British were in control, told of finding walls two feet two inches thick, pierced with loopholes at regular distances, and with two portholes for cannon in the faces, and two in the flanks of each bastion. There was a ditch, but this had not been completed. The entrance was a handsome rustic gate. Within the fort he found the houses of the commander and of the commissary, the magazine for stores, and the quarters of the soldiers. There were also a powder magazine, a bunk house, and a prison. The visitor told how the bank of the Mississippi was continually falling in, and so was threatening the fort. In the effort to control the destructive current a sand bank had been built to turn it from its course; the sand bank had become an island, covered by willows. Yet it was realized that the destruction of the fort was sure.