Juchereau was removed from Massac and went to the southern waters of the Mississippi, where he found many large “fish to fry” which need not be described in this chapter, and the good Father Mermet was taken back to Kaskaskia. Deprived of its mainsprings in this fashion, the little post began to languish and shortly came to grief because of rising disaffection among the surrounding Indians. The place was abandoned by the French fleeing for their lives and leaving behind them thirteen thousand buffalo skins which were eagerly seized by the Indians from whom they had been purchased at the rate of munificence usual to those days. Tradition has it that the post was re-established by adventurers shortly after its abandonment and was used as a trading centre pure and simple, but the once lively little foundation of Juchereau and Mermet was not again conspicuous in the events of that border until the French and Indian War of 1756-63. During this time it was a rendezvous for the French on the Ohio River and was their last defence in the campaign of the English which finally wrested La Belle Riviere from the lilies of France. In 1756 French soldiers landed here in force, threw up earthworks and erected a stockade with four bastions mounting eight cannon. Henceforth in French records the site was known as Fort Massac. In 1763, by the terms of the Treaty of Paris, Massac became an English possession together with all of the rest of the French strongholds in North America, but it was not until the spring of 1765 that the troops of France finally marched out from the fort. The English during the thirteen years that they held the Illinois country never occupied the point with troops.