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Fort Detroit (originally Fort Pontchartrain du Detroit) was a French fort and trading post established in 1701 in New France in North America. It was located on the present cite of Detroit, Michigan in the United States. The fort was later taken over by the British following their victory in the French and Indian War, then by the United States after the American Revolutionary War. It was the scene of a significant battle between the United States and Great Britian during the War of 1812.
History
The fort was established by Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, a French military leader in New France who had previously commanded Fort Michilimackinac on the Straits of Mackinac from 1694 to 1697. Cadillac had returned to France in 1698 to petition Louis XIV to authorize the establishment of an outpost on "le Detroit", the strait connecting Lake Erie and Lake Huron. After successfully persuaded Jerome Phelypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain, the king's Minister of Marine, to authorize the fort, Cadillac return to New France and set out form La Chine, on the St. Lawrence River near Montreal, with 100 men in 25 long canoes. The expedition followed a roundabout course up the Ottawa River and south through Lake Huron and Lake St. Clair to reach Grosse Ile on the Detroit River on July 23, 1701.