“At the French lines on Prospect Hill”

In 2019 Ric Detwiller published an excellent article at the Journal of the American Revolution about a Frenchman recruited as a provincial engineer early in the siege of Boston.

Though “Monsieur Dubuque” (Jean-Baptiste du Buq?) lasted only a short time before defecting to the British, he left behind a fortification near Prospect Hill labeled “French Redoubt” on Henry Pelham’s map of the siege, as shown in this posting.

In a comment to the Detwiller article, Les Haskell added a pertinent entry from the diary of his relative, Caleb Haskell, on 26 July 1775:

This morning our regiment was ordered out of the great Fort [on Prospect Hill] to man the French lines — where we are for the future to repair in an alarm. A grenadier, belonging to the enemy’s side when on sentry, quitted his post, came over to us and delivered himself a prisoner to our guards.

In addition, the Massachusetts archives has a return of Capt. Edward Crafts’s artillery company dated 12 Oct 1775 from the “French lines.”

While preparing yesterday’s talk on the Convention Army, the prisoners of war held at Prospect and Winter Hills in 1777–78, I spotted how the label “French lines” lasted past the siege of Boston.

In 1894 the Maine Historical Society published the “Military Journal of Col. Ichabod Goodwin,” an orderly book for a militia contingent detailed to help guard those prisoners. That document shows that the three main positions where the Continental forces posted guards included “french lines.”

The editor of this volume guessed that term “probably refers to Hessians, no French troops having been present.”

However, the German-speaking prisoners (actually Brunswickers) were housed on Winter Hill. Pelham’s map locates the “French Redoubt” much closer to Prospect Hill. And the transcript of the early 1778 inquiry into Col. David Henley’s treatment of the British prisoners shows Col. Jacob Gerrish speaking of “the guard at the French lines on Prospect Hill.”

Thus, nearly three years after “Monsieur Dubuque” slipped away from his job with the Americans, military men in New England still referred to the fortifications he oversaw as the “French lines.”