USA > Louisiana > Louisiana : its history as a French colony. Third series of lectures > Part 6
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RELIGIOUS WARFARE.
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equal to the sagacious daring of conception and to the artful readiness of execution. Thus they began with obtaining for their . Superior, from the Bishop of Quebec, in whose diocese Louisiana was included, a commission of Grand Vicar, to be carried into effect within the limits of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Capuchins, with which they had no right to inter- fere, in virtue of the stipulated conditions of the contract entered into between the Capuchins and the India Company, in 1717. The Jesuits pretended that this was not a violation of that contract, because their Superior did not assume to act as Jesuit, but as Grand Vicar and representative of the Bishop of Quebec in his diocese of Louisiana. But the Superior Council, siding with the Capuchins, had refused to admit and to record the nomination made by the Bishop. Never- theless, the Jesuits had gradually usurped many of the functions of the Capuchins, in spite of the strenuous opposition of the latter, and had carried their audacity so far as to threaten to interdict their rivals altogether. The poor Capuchins, who were completely bewildered, and who were wanting in the spirit and ability neces- sary to cope with such adversaries, contented them- selves with uttering loud complaints, and clamoring for the help of the government. Unluckily for their cause, they had committed the fault of acting with too much expansion of good nature towards the Jesuits. For instance, on the 9th of March, 1752, Reverend Father Dagobert, the Superior of the Capuchins, had had the imprudent courtesy of inviting Father Baudoin, the Superior of the Jesuits, to give his bene- diction to the Chapel of the Hospital, built for the poor of the parish of New Orleans. Father Baudoin, the Jesuit, assented with pious alacrity to the proposi- tion of Father Dagobert, the Capuchin, which alacrity
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INTRIGUES OF THE ENGLISH.
was stimulated by the circumstance that Father Dago- bert, on that occasion, had, with Christian meekness, offered to act, and did act, as aid, or assistant, to the proud Jesuit, that is, in an inferior capacity. Father Baudoin availed himself of this circumstance as a weapon against the Capuchins. He said that he had published his letters patent as Grand Vicar, imme- diately after having received them, and that, although he had assumed this title, and announced his determi- nation to act as such, no objection had been raised to his causing, in this capacity, certain publication to be made, on the 26th of February, 1752, with regard to the celebration of the Jubilee in the parish of New Orleans ; that, subsequently, he had given his bene- diction, in the same capacity, to the Chapel of the Hospital, and that, having thus been openly recognized Vicar General of Lower Louisiana, it was now too late for the Capuchins to dispute his title and the preroga- tives thereto appertaining. This was the question which had agitated the colony for several years, and which still remained undecided in 1755. It was called the War of the Jesuits and the Capuchins, and pro- duced much irritation at the time. It gave rise to acrimonious writings, squibs, pasquinades, and satirical songs. The women, in particular, made themselves conspicuous for the vivacity of their zeal either for one or the other party.
The year 1756 passed off without leaving in its course anything worth recording. Kerlerec continued to complain of the grievous state of destitution from which the colony was suffering, and of the intrigues of the English, whom he represented as gaining much ground and influence with the Indians. In a despatch of the 1st of April, he says :- " The governors of Virginia and Carolina have offered rewards for our
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DISCONTENT OF THE INDIANS.
heads. I believe that the English government is not aware of it; otherwise, it would be an abomination. Our Indians have frequently proposed to bring to me English scalps, and I have always rejected their offer with indignation." Notwithstanding the destitution in which the colony was represented to -be, its expenses went up, this year, to 829,398 livres.
On the 14th of March, 1757, the Intendant Com- missary, D'Auberville, died, and was succeeded, ad interim, by Bobé Desclozeaux.
The English had nearly cut off all communication between France and Louisiana, and Kerlerec found himself so much in want of ammunition, that he sent to Vera Cruz for powder, but all he could obtain from the Governor of that place, was twenty-one thousand six hundred and twenty-three pounds of an inferior quality.
On the 21st of October, Kerlerec informed his government that he had written fifteen despatches in cypher without receiving an answer, and that the colony was so defenceless, that it would yield to the first attack, particularly if the French were abandoned by the Indians, who, so far, had been their allies, and. who were showing much dissatisfaction. "The English," Kerlerec wrote, " have taken very efficacious- means to capture all ships bound to Louisiana. They have established a permanent cruise at Cape St. Antonio de Cuba, and their privateers, spreading desolation among our coasters, pounce upon them at the very mouth of the Mississippi. In a word, we are lacking in everything, and the discontent of our Indians is a subject of serious fears. So far, I have quieted them, but it has been at considerable expense. Had it not been for the distribution among them of some merchandise, procured from small vessels which
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84
ATTACK ON FORT DUQUESNE.
had eluded the vigilance of our enemies, some revo- lution fatal to us would have sprung up among the Indians."
Three critical years had elapsed, during which , Louisiana seems to have been severed from all commu- nication with France, when, in August, 1758, a new Intendant Commissary, De Rochemore, arrived from the parent country, with some of the supplies which had been so long prayed for. Never had help been more opportune ; for the Choctaws, impatient at not receiving their customary presents, had begun acts of hostility against the French. According to a state- ment made by Kerlerec, the Choctaws could then bring into the field four thousand warriors, and the Aliba- mons three thousand. " These two nations," said Kerlerec, " are the bulwarks of the colony, and they must be conciliated, cost what it may."
Kerlerec also informed his government that his plan, for two years, had been to unite all the Indians of the South and West into a great confederacy, to march at their head against the English settlements, and thus to operate a diversion in favor of De Vaudreuil, who was struggling at the North in the defence of Canada, but that he had, in vain, waited two years for the neces- sary means to carry his plan into execution.
On the 20th of December, Kerlerec applied for the Cross of St. Louis in favor of Captain Aubry, who was destined, at a future period, to be Governor of Louisiana, and who was to play a conspicuous part in the drama by which her destinies were closed as a French colony. This officer had recently distinguished himself at Fort Duquesne, and previously, on several other occasions. It seems that, on the 14th of Septem- ber, at six o'clock in the morning, Fort Duquesne had been attacked by an English detachment of nine
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ROCHEMORE.
hundred men. Aubry, who commanded the Louisiana troops, sallied out at their head to meet the enemy. Notwithstanding three murderous discharges of artil- lery and musketry, he fell upon the English troops with fixed bayonets, and crushed them entirely. The English left upon the battle ground three hundred men, dead or n ortally wounded; many were drowned, and two hundred made prisoners. Such is the French report.
The year 1759 was marked in Louisiana by one of those paper money operations, from which she had already suffered so many evils at different times. Hardly had Rochemore been installed in his office as Intendant Commissary, when he called in one million eight hundred thousand livres of paper money which circulated in the colony, and converted it into drafts on the treasury in France. He replaced the with- drawn currency by another emission of paper money to the same amount, under the singular pretext of making his administration distinct from that of his predecessor. In so doing, he had the hardihcod to act in direct opposition to his instructions, and was justly and severely reprimanded for it by his government.
Rochemore seems to have cared very little for the blame he had incurred, and did not hesitate to engage in bitter hostility against Governor Kerlerec, whom he accused of being guilty of an illegal and corrupt traffic with the Indians, secretly carried on under cover of the Governor's Secretary, Titon de Sibeque. He also complained of the extravagant expenses in which the Governor indulged, and informed the French govern- ment that the costs of the administration of the colony would, this year, rise to one million of livres.
It appears, however, that Rochemore had irregulari- ties enough of his own to be forgiven, and that he
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ROCHEMORE.
ought not to have felt justified in looking too closely and too critically into the conduct of others ; thus, not only had he assumed the power of issuing paper money, but he had also annulled certain concessions of lands, to bestow those lands on members of his own family. He proceeded to dispose, in the most arbi- trary manner, of the King's merchandise, to the safe keeping of which he had appointed his brother-in-law. He whimsically appointed to the office of Comptroller his friend and adviser, Destrehan, who was Treasurer of the colony : so that Destrehan, the Comptroller, was expected to supervise, direct, and control the acts of Destrehan, the Treasurer. He went into suspicious partnerships with certain individuals, to whom he had granted the execution of the public works, and to whom he had made considerable and injudicious ad- vances. For these reasons, and on account of his hostility to Kerlerec, Rochemore was dismissed from office by a ministerial resolution of the 27th of August, 1759. His Secretary, Bellot, a sort of pettifogger, was arrested and sent to France. In the possession of . Bellot was found forty thousand livres, which, con- sidering his small salary, could not have been honestly acquired in the course of one year, elapsed since his arrival in the country. Destrehan was ordered back to France, as being too rich and dangerous. All those who had supported Rochemore in his opposition to the Governor, and they were numerous, highly connected and powerful, incurred displeasure, reprimand, or dis- missal from office, at the hands of the French govern- ment, and some of them were forcibly embarked by Kerlerec and transported to France.
There is but too much evidence that, from the foun- dation of the colony, the French government, the princely merchant Crozat and the India Company had
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INTRODUCTION OF THE SUGAR CANE.
been shamefully defrauded. Thus, two of the King's ships, which had been sent to Louisiana with merchan- dise, having arrived on the 17th of August, 1758, were not ready to depart before the 2d of January, 1759, and their expenses, during this unaccountable delay, amounted to 194,099 livres. The Minister of the Marine department made it a ground of energetic complaint against the administration of Louisiana, and he, no doubt with reason, suspected that gross fraud had been practised on the King. The fact is that the fate of Louisiana, as a French colony, was rapidly approaching a crisis, and that the French government had grown disgusted with a possession which had been, for more than half a century, the cause of heavy expenses, without giving even a faint promise of adequate compensation in the future. It is not, there- fore, astonishing that the King, for the sake of economy, suppressed at once thirty-six companies of the Loui- siana troops, and thereby reduced to almost nothing the forces of the Colony. The colonists, however, were striving to increase their resources and to ameliorate their condition, by engaging with more perseverance, zeal, and skill in agricultural pursuits. Dubreuil, one of the richest men of the colony, whose means enabled him to make experiments, and who owned that tract of land where now is Esplanade street, and part of the Third Municipality of New Orleans, seeing that the canes, introduced by the Jesuits in 1751, had growni to maturity, and had ever since been cultivated with success, as an article of luxury, which was retailed in the New Orleans market, built a sugar mill and attempted to make sugar. But the attempt proved to be a complete failure.
Although an order had been issued in France, on the 27th of August, 1759, to recall Rochemore, he was
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RECALL OF ROCHEMORE.
still in office on the 2d of January, 1760, and, as Intend- ant Commissary, he took part in a Court Martial, in which it was unanimously resolved that it was expedi- ent to surround New Orleans with a ditch and palisade, in conformity with a plan made by the engineer Devergès. These fortifications were to be erected at the King's expense, because the inhabitants of New Orleans were too poor to undertake such works, and would be sufficiently taxed with the obligation of keeping them up. This Court Martial was composed of Kerlerec, as Governor, of Rochemore, as Intendant Commissary, and of the following officers : Devergès, D'Herneuville, Grand-Pré, Grand-Champ, Maret de la Tour, Bellehot, Favrot, Pontalba, Dorville, and Tru- deau. On the 21st of December of the same year, 1760, the projected fortifications were completed, but Kerlerec wrote to his government that, to render them efficient, he wanted artillery, men, and ammunition.
The officers who had sided with Rochemore against Kerlerec, and whom Kerlerec had forcibly sent back to France, had been so clamorous against the Governor and had advocated the cause of Rochemore with such zeal, that they had succeeded in suspending the execu- tion of the ministerial order dismissing the Commissary from office. Among these officers, the most active and influential were Grondel and Marigny de Mandeville, and it was not long before Kerlerec perceived that they were no contemptible enemies.
But, in 1761, new complaints, which were coun- tenanced by the Superior Council, having been made against Rochemore, he was definitively recalled, and Foucault, his successor, arrived in June of the same year. Describing the state of the colony in a despatch addressed to his government, Foucault said : " I have found the King's warehouses entirely empty, merchan-
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HELP SOLICITED FROM SPAIN.
dise selling at enormous prices, the papers and registers of the administration scattered about and intrusted to clerks, some of whom are no longer in the employment of the colony. There is afloat more than seven millions of paper money. Drafts on the treasury in France are discounted at 400 and 500 per cent."*
Ilence it is difficult to imagine a more painful and precarious situation than that in which the colony found itself at the time. A few words, extracted from a despatch written by Kerlerec, on the 12th of July, will complete the picture : "The Choctaws and the Alibamons," said he, " harass us daily, to have supplies and merchandise. They threaten to go over to the English, if we cannot relieve them, and, in the mean time, by their frequent visits, they devour the little that remains of our provisions and exhaust. our meagre stock of merchandise. We have just ground to fear and to expect hostilities from them. Therefore our situation is not tenable, and the whole population is in a state of keen anxiety."
Whilst Kerlerec was drawing up such a delineation of Louisiana, the Ambassador of France at the Court of Madrid presented to that government, on the 31st of October, 1761, a memorial in which he made the humiliating confession, that France was unable to pro- tect Louisiana any longer, and solicited the help and co-operation of Spain, to supply the necessary wants of that colony, and to prevent her from falling into the hands of the English. The principal argument used to awaken the sympathy of Spain and to elicit favorable action on her part, was, that Louisiana was then the only bulwark between the English and her
. This means that four or five livres of the paper currency, or of drafts on the Treasury, were given for one livre in specie.
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HELP SOLICITED FROM SPAIN.
own colonies. " This circumstance alone," said the French ambassador, " would be deserving of the atten- tion of Spain, if his Catholic Majesty was not disposed, as he is, to afford to France all the assistance in his power." The Ambassador concluded his memorial with the declaration, that France would reimburse Spain, with the greatest punctuality, for all the pecu- niary advances. which she would make, and for all the supplies and ammunition with which she would furnish Louisiana. 1
Kerlerec was made acquainted with this application to the Spanish government, and sent couriers in every direction to inform the Indians that, as the Spaniards were going to join the French in the protection of Louisiana, he would soon be in a situation to supply all their wants, and to trade with them on the largest scale. He therefore counselled the Indians to show, on all occasions, their friendship and gratitude to the Spaniards. With a view to strengthen his administra- tion and to prevent opposition to his measures, he pro- ceeded to make some considerable changes among the officers in command. Thus, he gave the command of New Orleans to De la Houssaye, in the place of Belle- isle, a friend of Rochemore, and put De Grand-Pré in command of Mobile, removing the incumbent on account of some partiality shown to Rochemore.
But Kerlerec was doomed to see all his hopes. blasted, and to break all his promises. Spain, with her customary prudence, was pondering or dozing on the application made by the French government, and had not allowed herself to be betrayed into any departure from her usually slow mode of acting. She had remained passive so far, and had left Louisiana to her fate, and to the ineffectual protection of France. In 1762, however, some ships arrived at New Orleans
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DEPARTURE OF ROCHEMORE.
from the parent country, but contributed very little to the relief of the colony. Alluding to these ships, Kerlerec wrote on the 24th of June : "They have brought none of the articles we wanted most, and hardly any of the things mentioned in the invoices. What they have brought is either not to the taste of the Indians, or is of so inferior or bad a quality, that it is without value. I am, therefore, under the shame- ful and humiliating necessity of not keeping my plighted faith to the savages. What shall I do with those Indian tribes I had convened, under the expec- tation of the supplies which I was led to believe would soon be at hand? What will be their feelings ? How shall I keep them quiet .? I am in a frightful position. Is the province of Louisiana destined to be the sport of cupidity and avarice ? "
Rochemore, who had remained in the colony since his removal from office in 1761, left, this year, in July, for France. In a despatch to his government, Kerlerec said : " Rochemore has departed in the Medea, with a pocket-book full of bills of credit, which are drawn in favor of another name than his, but which will secure to him a brilliant fortune in France. The object of this substitution of name is to prevent the government from knowing the truth." This despatch contained bitter complaints against certain officers of the colony, such as Belleisle, Grondel, Grand-Champ, D'Hauterive, Marigny de Mandeville, Rocheblave, Broutin, &c. Kerlerec transmitted also to his government a certifi- cate as to the mal-administration and evil doings of Rochemore, which was signed by sixty of the most res- pectable citizens and by the members of the Superior Council.
Foucault, who had succeeded Rochemore, was the very personification of treachery. He managed to
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CESSION OF LOUISIANA TO SPAIN.
keep on good terms with the Governor, and this functionary, in his despatches, bestowed the highest commendation on the new Commissary. But, whilst Kerlerec was acting so kindly towards Foucault, this individual was far from returning the favor, and, on the contrary, secretly accused Kerlerec of every sort of malfeasances, of a wasteful expenditure of the public monies, and of their appropriation to his own uses and purposes.
Thus matters stood, when, on the 3d of November, 1762, the Marquis of Grimaldi, the Ambassador of Spain at the Court of Versailles, and the Duke of Choiseul, the premier in the French ministry, signed at Fontaine- bleau, an act by which the French king ceded to his cousin of Spain, and to his successors, for ever, in full ownership and without any exception or reservation what- ever, from the pure impulsc of his generous heart, and from the sense of the affection and friendship existing between these two royal persons, all the country known under the name of Louisiana. This apparent act of generosity had been so spontaneous and unforeseen on the part of the French king, that the Spanish minister had no instructions on the subject, and accepted the gift conditionally, that is, sub spe rati, subject to the ratification of his Catholic Majesty.
On the 13th of the same month, the King of Spain declared that, in order the better to cement the union which existed, between the two nations as between the two kings, he accepted the donation tendered to him by the generosity of his Most Christian Majesty.
These acts of donation and acceptance were kept secret, and the King of France continued to act as sovereign of Louisiana. Thus, on the Ist of January, 1763, he appointed Nicholas Chauvin de la Frenière, Attorney General, and, on the 10th of February, he
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TREATY OF PEACE SIGNED AT PARIS.
appointed, as Comptroller, Foucault, who already held the office of Intendant Commissary.
On the same day, a treaty of peace was signed at Paris, between the kings of Spain and of France on the one side, and the King of Great Britain on the other, with the consent and acquiescence of the King of Portugal. The Art. 7 said :
" In order to re-establish peace on solid and durable foundations, and to remove for ever all causes of dis- pute in relation to the limits between the French and British territories on the continent of America, it is agreed that, for the future, the limits between the possessions of his Most Christian Majesty and those of his Britannic Majesty in that part of the world, shall be irrevocably fixed by a line drawn along the middle of the River Mississippi, from its source to the River Iberville, and from thence by a line in the middle of that stream and of the Lakes Maurepas and Pontchar- train to the sea; and to that effect, the Most Christian King cedes, in full property and with full guaranty, to his Britannic Majesty, the river and the port of Mobile, and all that he possesses, or has a right to possess, on the left side of the Mississippi, with the exception of the town of New Orleans and the island on which it stands, and which shall be retained by France, with the understanding that the navigation of the Mississippi shall be free and open to the subjects of his Britannic Majesty as well as those of his Most Christian Majesty, in all its length from its source to the sea, and particularly that part of it which is between said Island and New Orleans and the right bank of the River, including egress and ingress at its mouth. It is further stipulated that the ships of both nations shall not be stopped on the river, visited, or subjected to any duty."
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TREATY OF PEACE SIGNED AT PARIS.
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By this treaty, the King of France renounced his pretensions to Nova Scotia or Acadia, and guarantied the whole of it with its dependencies to Great Britain, ceding also Canada with its dependencies, and what- ever remained of his ancient possessions in that portion of North America.
The King of Spain ceded also to Great Britain the province of Florida, with the fort of St. Augustine and the Bay of Pensacola, as well as all the country he possessed, on the continent of North America, to the east and south-east of the River Mississippi.
It will be observed that, by this treaty, the King of France transferred to Great Britain, in 1763, part of what he had already given to Spain in November, 1762. But, probably, Spain had very little objection to resign a portion of an acquisition which had been forced upon her, and to which she did not at the time attach much value.
Thus France, with one stroke of the pen, found herself stripped of those boundless possessions which she had acquired at the cost of so much heroic blood and so much treasure, and which extended in one proud, uninterrupted line, from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to that of the Mississippi. The adventurous and much-enduring population which had settled there, and had overcome so many perils under the flag of France, and for her benefit, was coldly delivered over to the yoke of foreign masters. Tradition points to the spot, called " El ultimo suspiro del Moro," " the last sigh of the Moor," where the Infidel king, driven away from his fair city of Granada, looked back on her white towers glittering in the distance, and wept like a woman for the loss of that which he had not defended like a man. But he of France, the most Christian majesty, did he sigh at the immensity of his
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