Lieutenant Bailey, with fourteen regulars, made a show of attack on the east, while Major Bowman led a company through the town, on a line near where Main street in Vincennes is now located, to a point north of the stockade.
Charleville, a brave creole, who was at the head of some daring fellows, by a brilliant dash got position under cover of a natural terrace at the edge of the prairie, opposite the fort's southwestern angle.

Lieutenant Beverley, in whom the commander placed highest confidence, was sent to look for a supply of ammunition, and to gather up all the Frenchmen in the town who wished to join in the attack.
Oncle Jazon and ten other available men went with him.
They all made a great noise when they felt that the place was completely invested.

Nor can we deny, much as we would like to, the strong desire for vengeance which raised those shouting voices and nerved those steady hearts to do or die in an undertaking which certainly had a desperate look.

Patriotism of the purest strain those men had, and that alone would have borne them up; but the recollection of smouldering cabin homes in Kentucky, of women and children murdered and scalped, of men brave and true burned at the stake, and of all the indescribable outrages of Indian warfare incited and rewarded by the commander of the fort yonder, added to patriotism the terrible urge of that dark passion which clamors for blood to quench the fire of wrath.
Not a few of those wet, half-frozen, emaciated soldiers of freedom had experienced the soul rending shock of returning from a day's hunting in the forest to find home in ashes and loved ones brutally murdered and scalped, or dragged away to unspeakable outrage under circumstances too harrowing for description, the bare thought of which turns our blood cold, even at this distance.

Now the opportunity had arrived for a stroke of retaliation.