A contemporary who writes from Vincennes speaks of La Balme as a French colonel. He was regarded by the Americans with much suspicion. Capt. Dalton, the American commander at Vincennes, whose character was later much questioned, allowed him to go among the Indians,(65) whereupon La Balme advised them to send word to the tribes which Clark was preparing to attack and to warn them of their danger. La Balme also ingratiated himself with the discontented French, asking why they did not drive “these vagabonds,” the American soldiers, away, and saying that to refuse to furnish provisions was the most efficient method. “Everything he advances tends to advance the French interest and depreciate the American. The people here are easily misled; buoy’d up with the flattering hopes of being again subject to the king of France, he could easily prevail on them to drive every American out of the Place and this appears to me to be his Plan.” After thoroughly stirring up the people at Vincennes, the adventurer left, with an escort of thirty French and Indians, to visit Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and St. Louis. He and Col. Montgomery, then the superior officer in Illinois, did not meet, and he received not the slightest countenance from the Spanish commandant at St. Louis. By the French inhabitants, La Balme “was received ... just as the Jews would receive the Messiah—was conducted from the post here [at Kaskaskia] by a large detachment of the inhabitants as well as different tribes of Indians.” The French in the towns near the Mississippi were so enthusiastic that La Balme had little difficulty in raising forty or fifty troops for an expedition against Detroit. Some of the American soldiers at Cahokia deserted to him, and when placed under arrest by the military authorities were rescued by a mob. On October 5, 1780, after telling the Indians to be quiet because they would see the French in Illinois in the spring, the French troops set out from Cahokia.(66)