The misfortunes of the war with England which terminated with the peace of Ryswick (Sept. 1, 1697,) still further convinced the most sagacious of the leading French colonists of the importance of a fort on the Detroit river which would command this channel of communication with the great lakes above. Impressed with this fact, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, a Gascon sailor who amid a career of romantic adventure came to be commandant at Michilimackinac, crossed the Atlantic in person, and earnestly and repeatedly pressed upon the colonial minister, Count Ponchartrain, the necessity of the prompt establishment of a permanent post on the Detroit, where it would bring the French forces in closer proximity to the Iroquois and would give them command of the waters of the upper lakes and of the great fur trading regions about them. Cadillac did not urge this as a missionary enterprise but for its commercial and military advantages, and the force and vigor of his representations prevailed at the palace. He sailed from France with the royal order, "Take prompt possession of Detroit," with this supplement from Ponchartrain: "Prosecute vigorously; if the Jesuits obstruct, return and report." Cadillac arrived in Quebec early in the first year of the eighteenth century (March 8). Three months later (June 5) his preparations were made, and on that day he took his departure from La Chine. With him were Captain Tonti, Lieutenants Dugue and Chacornacle, fifty soldiers, and fifty Canadian traders and artisans. Nineteen days later he arrived upon the site of the present city of Detroit. In his memoir Cadillac wrote: "I arrived at Detroit, July 24 (1701), and fortified myself there immediately. I had the necessary huts made and cleared up the ground preparatory to its being sowed in the autumn." When he touched the shore of Michigan, with pomp and ceremony he erected a cross, a cedar post beside it; then with a sword in one hand and a sod in the other he made solemn proclamation with many words of "possession taken" of all the country round about, from the great lakes to the south seas, in the name of the King of France.