Made For War — Tier One French Operators In The North American Wilderness

“A man of war, courageous by nature, thirsting for glory and eager for the dangers through which it is gained…”

— Description from the French Court of Frontier Partisan Joseph Marin de La Malgue

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Some of the most experienced and effective operators in the annals of the Frontier Partisans were French colonial officers — men born in Canada and bred in the forest among the native peoples. Steeped in a martial culture and in the relationship-based fur trade, a small cadre of men — often representing multiple generations of a family — came to wield tremendous influence in vast stretches of the North American interior, from what is now Wisconsin to New York. In the nearly perpetual conflict between New France and Great Britain, they served as partisan leaders in countless raids and ambuscades, developing a reputation as highly effective — and ruthless — combat leaders.

Two such men were the father and son Paul and Joseph Marin de La Malgue.

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Paul Marin de La Malgue was an exemplar of a particular type of French officer, a colonial regular soldier who operated like a partisan, working closely with native peoples. His initial area of operations in the 1720s-30s was in the western reaches of New France, in what is now Wisconsin, where he served as an ensign in command of the post at Chagouamigon on Lake Superior, tasked with keeping the the Dakota Sioux, Chippewa (Ojibwa), Fox, and Sauk tribes aligned with French trading interests — and at peace with each other — so as not to disrupt the fur trade. Such officers were compensated by being given a trading concession out of their assigned posts, which could be extremely lucrative.

As recorded by David Chaput in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Governor Charles de Beauharnois…

… declared that Marin was feared and respected by the Indians and always ready to risk his life for the French cause.

A National Park Service history of the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway recounts the manner in which Marin and his son Joseph worked to manage Indian diplomacy and trade:

The elder Marin astutely cultivated Dakota leaders. Canoe loads of gifts were lavished on them and in turn they acted as trading liaisons, collecting furs from all of the hunters who had received goods in advance from Marin. The French extended their trade presence to most of the villages of the eastern Dakota and were rewarded with annual returns of 150,000 francs. Meanwhile, young Joseph Marin, based in Chippewa territory, worked to ease tensions between his trading partners and the Dakota. Eventually the father and son managed to work out a division of the disputed territory. On the St. Croix this led to the Dakota recognizing Chippewa rights to the valley from its headwaters to the mouth of the Snake River. When the Chippewa expressed a desire to trap along the Crow Wing River, a substantial tributary of the Mississippi roughly midway between Leech Lake and modern St. Paul, Joseph Marin negotiated a lease between the rival Indian nations. 

During King George’s War (1744-48) Paul would risk his life for the French cause leading war parties in Acadia (Nova Scotia) and on the New York frontier. He earned a reputation for ruthless effectiveness, raiding and burning  Schuylerville (later Saratoga). After the war he headed back west to Green Bay, which was a thriving fur trade hub. He built a highly successful trading network, employing 190 voyageurs by the 1750s.

By this time, British traders were making inroads into the Ohio Valley, and the French were determined to drive them out. Governor Duquesne of New France mounted an expedition into the Ohio Country to clear them out, keep the local tribes firmly on side, and and establish a powerful French military presence in the region. He tapped a 61-year-old Paul Marin for the arduous task.

Chaput:

Marin’s orders were to establish a fortified post on the south shore of Lake Erie, construct a road to the head-waters of the Allegheny River, make the Rivière au Bœuf (French Creek) navigable, then establish a chain of forts to the Ohio River, and garrison them. Marin, now 61 years old, drove himself and his 1,500 men unmercifully all through the summer and fall of 1753. He allowed nothing to stand in his way. Junior officers who showed a lack of zeal for the task were threatened with instant dismissal from the service. When the Iroquois protested the invasion of their lands they were bluntly told that if they opposed it they would be crushed. American fur-traders caught in the region were sent to Montreal in chains as a warning to others.

Hundreds of the Canadian labour force sickened from poor food and over-exertion; many of them perished and the wraith-like appearance of those who survived made Duquesne blanch when they arrived back at Montreal. Marin himself fell sick and, although instructed to return to convalesce, he refused. In September Duquesne sent him the cross of Saint Louis, awarded in that year’s honours list. It arrived too late. Marin died on 29 October at Fort de la Rivière au Bœuf (Waterford, Pa.). He had deliberately chosen to die on active service rather than relinquish his command.

Marin’s badassery had world-historical repercussions. The French show of force alarmed Virginia officials. A young Virginia militia lieutenant colonel named George Washington was sent out to Fort LeBoeuf to tell the French that they were trespassing on Virginia territory, and must leave. The French were polite and hospitable, but not inclined to acquiesce to the Virginians’ request. Virginia Governor Dinwiddie then sent out a construction party to build a fort at the Forks of the Ohio, but they were sent packing and the French began construction of Fort Duquesne, where Pittsburg stands today.

Washington was ordered back to the frontier with orders to act on the defensive, but to restrain anyone who attempted to obstruct colonial settlement activities. Governor Dinwiddie was acting on his own authority, without any authorization from London, and putting such orders in the hands of an ambitious, aggressive young militia colonel was a good way to start a war.

Which is just what happened.

Getting wind of an apparently belligerent  scouting party composed of French Marines (their elite forest fighting force), Canadiens and Indians in the area, Washington determined to attack their camp, with the aid of some Indian auxiliaries led by one Tanacharison, known to the British as The Half-King because of his subsidiary stature under Iroquois suzerainty. Tanacharison’s presence was another handful of dry tinder to toss on the fire: he was one of the Iroquois that Marin had threatened/insulted.

The insult that required redress, and Tanacharison would get it.

Washington and about 40 of his troops struck the camp on May 28, 1754, killing several of the French soldiers. Tanacharison tomahawked the French commander, Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville, who had in his possession a summons ordering the British trespassers to leave the territory. Tanacharison reportedly washed his hands with de Jumonville’s brains. The French considered de Jumonville to be on a diplomatic mission, and his killing created an international incident. It ultimately touched off a world war, known in Europe as the Seven Years War and in North America as the French & Indian War. It was the final imperial contest between France and Great Britain for control of North America.

Paul Marin’s son Joseph would become one of the most prominent partisans in the war his father had helped set in motion.

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Joseph Marin grew up in the family business way out on the Wisconsin frontier, learning the arts of diplomacy and war, and the economic intricacies of the fur trade. At the age of 13 in 1732, he was already out on a major expedition through what the French called pays d’en haut, the Great Lakes territory of New France.

As noted, from a young age he was brokering important diplomatic and economic deals between the Dakota Sioux and the Chippewa.

He fought under his father’s command during King George’s War, where he mastered small-unit raiding tactics. He was in the west when his father died on Duquesne’s expedition, operating their fur trade interests, keeping the peace between the Sioux and the Chippewa, and between the Sioux and the Cree, and exploring what is now Minnesota. When the French and Indian War broke out, Marin headed to Montreal with a cadre of Menominee warriors and set about becoming one of the deadliest Frontier Partisan operators in the Lake George theater.

Marin was a French officer, but in combat he went completely native in garb and loadout. He armed himself with a distinctive double-barreled “fuzee” (fusil).

Marin typically led mixed forces of French Marines, Canadian militia, and native warriors, and he quickly made his name a terror to the British military. In countless forest firefights, Marin consistently bested British forces, staking up an impressively lopsided kill ratio.

Laurence Burrows, whose War on the Turtle’s Back is the most eagerly awaited Frontier Partisan tome of 2026, depicts a patrol led by Marin in the vicinity of Fort William Henry (the locus of the action in Last of the Mohicans) and the nearby Fort Edward.

A Menominee Scout to Fort Edward, July 1757

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Like his father, Joseph Marin gained a reputation for ruthlessness — not only with the British, but with his own French government and military. His superiors often looked with distaste upon the kind of partisan warfare in which Marin excelled. French regular officer Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville complained:

“It is an abominable way to make war… The retaliation is frightening. The air one breathes is contagious of making one accustomed to callousness.”

Abominable, perhaps, but also effective. Marin’s raiders kept the British on the back foot, and only Rogers Rangers had any luck in holding them off. Marin engaged Rogers in a ferocious firefight in the woods near Lake George in 1758. Each side inflicted casualties, and each claimed a victory of sorts. Marin claimed that he would have won a complete victory if his militia component hadn’t fled the battlefield. Rogers Rangers held the field.

A battlefield incident is indicative of how much the British hated the partisan Marin. A French prisoner identified one of the dead as Marin. Rogers personally scalped the corpse “down to the the neck.” Alas for the Ranger, the prisoner had given him a bum steer. Lt. Marin lived to fight another day.

And fight he did, throughout 1758 and into 1759, harassing the frontier all the way down to Maryland. His war ran out in 1759, as the tide turned in favor of the British. British forces laid siege to Fort Niagara in New York, and Marin was part of a contingent assigned to lift the siege. He was ambushed and taken prisoner, and deported to England and then to France. Marin could recount with some pride that:

“They announced my capture as a great triumph in their newspaper.” 

He tried to make it back to Canada, but was intercepted at sea, and again returned to France. The war was over, and he was destitute, his properties being looted and destroyed in the last campaigns. The next decade in France, which was no homeland to the Canadian, were dreary.

Chaput:

His years in France were not happy: his fortune lost, he lived on a meagre pension from the crown. He tried to have the court acknowledge his status as a noble, claiming to be descended from the Marini family of Toulon, Toulouse, and Marseilles. There is some possibility that the Marins may have been of the minor nobility of southern France. Paul and Joseph had considered themselves nobles and were certainly considered as such in the colony. In 1767 Lieutenant Governor Guy Carleton included Joseph Marin’s name in a report on the Canadian nobility. Although the French court acknowledged Marin as “a man of war, courageous by nature, thirsting for glory and eager for the dangers through which it is gained,” it did not deem these qualities sufficient to grant him his request. He did receive the cross of Saint-Louis in 1761, when the king tried to compensate the officers from New France for their service in a lost cause.

The great Frontier Partisan finally won an appointment as a lieutenant colonel for an expedition to establish a French settlement on Madagascar. It didn’t work out. Joseph Marin sickened and died — a sad death for a warrior who has to be ranked among the top tier of Frontier Partisans.