The Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 7, number 3, March 1924

              a wisconsin anabasis louise p kellogg the world-famous retreat of the ten thousand greeks through the territory we now know as the near east was once when xenophon's account was a universal textbook the commonplace of every schoolboy as a footnote to the great anabasis we herein recount the retreat two thousand years later through wisconsin of as brave and resourceful a party as any greek ever knew wisconsin in 1680 was a wilderness uncharted by any save savages and beasts civilization had barely swept a fringe across its borders and dense forests alternating with miry swales crowded to the shores of all its waterways no white man had essayed its wilderness faring so fraught with hardship and perils until necessity forced a handful of europeans to cross this way or perish in the year 1678 there appeared at the court of the french king at versailles a young officer who had been in the service of louis xiv for several years henry de tonty was of italian descent born on french soil where his father was an exile after participating in a neapolitan revolt against the oppressive tyranny of spanish rulers lorenzo de tonty had been a banker at naples a friend and ally of the florentine medici one of whose daughters was the mother of the french king he therefore sought an asylum in france where he received patronage and aid from his fellow italian cardinal mazarin all powerful minister of the youthful louis xiv no doubt it was mazarin who arranged for the exiled tonty an excellent marriage with a french gentlewoman named desliettes from this union sprang henry the eldest son born in 1650 and alphonse also destined to pass the larger share of his life in america