MARIAUCHAU D’ESGLY (d’Esglis), FRANÇOIS-LOUIS, baptized 17 Dec. 1708 at Quebec, son of François Mariauchau d’Esgly and Louise-Philippe Chartier de Lotbinière; d. a bachelor 25 March 1736 in the Chickasaw country.

On 29 March 1725 Mariauchau d’Esgly was given an expectancy of a second ensign’s commission; this rank was granted officially on 23 April 1726. On 10 Nov. 1731 Charles de Beauharnois* de La Boische recommended him to the minister, Maurepas, for service in Louisiana as a lieutenant. This rank was conferred on him on 17 Aug. 1732, and in the autumn of the same year Mariauchau went to the French colony in the south.

In 1736 the governor of Louisiana, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne* de Bienville, organized a punitive expedition against the Chickasaws who had given refuge to the Natchez chiefs responsible for the slaughter that had taken place at Fort Rosalie at the end of 1729. His plan was to set out from Mobile and go up the Tombigbee River, coming on the Chickasaw villages from the south, while the adjutant, Pierre d’Artaguiette, advancing from the Illinois country with a party made up of 140 Frenchmen, including Mariauchau d’Esgly, and 266 Indians would approach from the northwest [see François-Marie Bissot de Vinsenne]. Bienville was slow in appearing, and on 25 March d’Artaguiette, having been in enemy territory for three weeks and seeing his food running low, decided to attack three Chickasaw villages. After having taken two of these villages the party was surrounded; Artaguiette and his officers, among whom was Mariauchau, were seized by the Chickasaws, tortured, and burned.

Hervé Biron

AN, Col., C^11A, 54, f.416. Charlevoix, Histoire (1744), II, 501f. Le Jeune, Dictionnaire, I, 600f. Antoine Bernard, Histoire de la Louisiane (Québec, 1953), 125f. Guy Frégault, Le grand marquis, Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil et la Louisiane (Montréal, 1952), 144–48. Charles Gayarré, Histoire de la Louisiane (2v., New Orleans, 1846–47), I, 314. P.-G. Roy, Fils de Québec, I, 174–76.