USA > Mississippi > A history of Mississippi : from the discovery of the great river > Part 5
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istration." At the foot of this letter the Minister of the Marine had written these words : "The Governor, Lamothe Cadillac, and the Commissary, Duclos, whose dispositions and humors are incompatible, and whose intellects are not equal to the functions with which his Majesty has entrusted them, are dismissed from office." To attempt to depict the impotent rage of Cadillac, at this last cruel blow, or to measure the flow of bitter imprecations that fell from his lips and were distributed with regal profusion, were to at- tempt what the judges of the courts sometimes call "a vain thing," and it will not be attempted. It is only nec- essary to add that Governor Cadillac fled from the Colony in wrath, heaping maledictions upon it, declaring it doomed to all sorts of calamities, very much as Governor Adel- bert Ames abandoned the State of Mississippi he had dis- honored, in the year of our Lord 1876.
The wretchedly miserable condition of the Louisiana Colony on the arrival of L'Epinay, the new Governor, is thus graphically described by Gayarre :
" On the 9th of March, 1717, three ships belonging to Crozat arrived with three companies of infantry and fifty colonists, with De L'Epinay, the new Governor, and Hu- bert, the King's Commissary. L'Epinay brought to Bien- ville the decoration of the Cross of St. Louis, and a royal patent, conceding to him, by mean tenure in soccage, Horn Island, on the coast of the present State of Alabama. Bienville had demanded in vain that it be erected in his favor into a noble fief.
" Hardly had L'Epinay landed, when he disagreed with Bienville, and the Colony was again distracted with two factions, with L'Epinay on one side and Bienville on the other. There was not at that time in Louisiana more than seven hundred souls, including the military ; and thus far the efforts of Crozat to increase the population had proved miserably abortive. In vain had his agents resorted to every means in their power to trade with the Spanish prov- inces, either by land or by sea, either legally or illegally ; several millions worth of merchandise which he had sent to Louisiana, with the hope of their finding their way to Mexico, had been lost for want of a market. In vain also
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had been expensive researches for mines and pearl fisher- ies. As to the trading in furs with the Indians, it hardly repaid the cost of keeping factories among them. Thus all the schemes of Crozat had failed. The miserable Eu- ropean population, scattered over Louisiana, was opposed to his monopoly, and contributed, as much as they could, to defeat his plans. As for the officers, they were too much engrossed by their own interests and too intent upon their daily quarrels, to mind anything else. There was but one thing, which to the despairing Crozat. seemed destined to thrive in Louisiana. That was the spirit of discord!"
In the beginning of the month of August, 1717, Crozat, finding that under the new Governor, L'Epinay, things were likely to move as lamely as before, addressed to the king a petition, in which he informed his Majesty that his strength was not equal to the enterprise he had under- taken, and that he felt himself rapidly sinking under the weight which rested on his shoulders, and from which he begged his Majesty to relieve him. On the 13th of the same month, the Prince of Bourbon and Marshal D'Estrees, accepted, in the name of the King, Crozat's proposition to give up the charter which he had obtained in the preced- ing reign."
Thus perished as brilliant a dream of wealth and power as ever .dazzled the brain of man. Crozat had struggled bravely, but fate, destiny, and what Byron calls "that un- spiritual god, circumstance," had combined against him. Coupled with his love of wealth and power, for which he had vainly striven, was the noblest emotion that ever stirred the human heart, the love of a father for his idolized daughter. Crozat saw that beloved child fading hourly before his gaze, and when the last spark of life had fed, he folded her hands upon her pulseless breast, im- pressed a farewell kiss upon brow and lips, followed her to the tomb, and when the last sad rites were performed. the heart of the father gave way, and he fell a lifeless corse upon the fresh-made grave of his beloved daughter.
The French Governors of the Province of Mississippi. during the period embraced from the year 1699 to the year 1717, were : first. Sauvolle: secord, Bienville; third. Lamothe Cadillac ; fourth, De L'Epinay.
CHAPTER III.
MISSISSIPPI AS A FRENCH PROVINCE, FROM 1717 TO 1730.
T HE vast country then known as Louisiana was still destined to be the toy of chance, the plaything of any adventurous hand that chose to grasp it. Louis the XIV died in 1715, and Crozat surrendered his charter in 1717. The Duke of Orleans was then at the head of affairs in France, as Regent, during the minority of Louis XV. And here commenced the boldest, most audacious, and yet the most attractive scheme the wit of man ever devised for swindling the public.
John Law, a native of Edinburg, Scotland, born in 1671, a man of fine education, versatile ability, boundless ambition and utterly unscrupulous as to the means of at- taining a desired end, was destined to become a most con- spicuous figure in the world of commerce and finance. Born to a good fortune, his fondness for gaming, for the race-course, and his many amours, soon left him a bank- rupt. His intrigue with a married woman involved him in a duel with a man named Wilson, whom he killed. Law was arrested, indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced to be hanged. His good fortune did not desert him in his extrem- ity, however, for the king graciously commuted the death sentence to imprisonment. His lucky star was again in the ascendant. He succeeded in escaping from prison and fled to the continent, where for a number of years he was a well-known personage to various officials of more than one continental capital. Having wandered over Europe for a number of years, and considering that he had noth- ing further to fear from imprisonment at home, he returned to Edinburg in the year 1700, where he soon offered, for
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the consideration of the public, "Proposals and reasons for establishing a Council of Trade."
This having been coldly received, he, in 1705, offered to the Scottish Parliament "a plan for removing the difficulties under which the kingdom had then been suffering from the scarcity of money, and from the stoppage of payments by the banks," and in illustration of his views on the subject, he gave publicity to another work, entitled, "Money and Trade considered, with a proposal for supplying the nation with money." His cool-headed countrymen, however, seemed incapable of appreciating the financial schemes of Law, and he once more betook himself to the continent as a more congenial theatre of financial operations. At sev- eral capitals he attracted an unenviable notoriety by his unvarying and unprecedented luck in gaming. At Paris he is said to have introduced the fascinating game of faro. and his success at the game was such that D'Argenson, the Minister of Police, ordered him to quit the kingdom, with the remark, "That Scot is too expert at the game which. he has introduced." In Genoa and in Venice his success at gaming followed him, and the facility with which he drew in large sums of money in his gambling operations there, induced the magistrates of those cities, in the interest of their own people, to banish the brilliant gambler from their domains. But the hour of his triumph was at hand. Gambler, libertine and roue as he was, he was soon to flash upon the world as the greatest financier of the age. He reached Paris at an opportune hour. The frightful difficulties bequeathed to the French people by the long, vainglorious and war-wasting reign of Louis the XIV, constituted a legacy of financial ruin. The pub- lic credit was nil, the public debt was immense, and was constantly increasing. The taxation was enormous, and scarcely adequate to the payment of the annually accruing interest, to say nothing of the principal. Trade was an- nihilated, foreign commerce had perished. Industry was paralyzed. Stagnation was prevalent all over the land. Want and penury sat grinning at every fireside. All manufacturing enterprises were palsied. Merchants, me- chanics and farmers were suddenly converted into mendi-
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cants. The condition of affairs had become so desperate that a proposition was seriously made that the Council of State should promulgate an act of national bankruptcy, and thus obliterate forever the public debt. This, how- ever, was rejected, though a measure hardly less culpable was adopted. By a visa, or examination of the public liabilities by a committee, with full power of quashing claims, the debt was reduced nearly fifty per cent. The coin of the realm in circulation was called in, and re-issued at the rate of 120 for 100 and a chamber of justice was established to punish speculators, to whom all the difficul- ties of the public were ascribed. These measures were the mere nostrums of the financial quacks of the day, and their failure to relieve the people was so apparent that a new panacea appeared in the shape of billets d'etat, or State bonds, which were issued as part security for the reduced debt. These bonds depreciated at once 75 per cen- tum below their nominal or face value. The wants of the Regent for money continued unabated. His demands for funds were incessant, his profligate pleasures were not to be curbed or restrained by want of money to purchase them, and at this propitious hour, John Law, the mall whom the minister of police had driven from Paris years before, appeared again in the beautiful city as the saviour of the people and the public credit. The Regent, the Duke of Orleans, welcomed the new financial deliverer, and he soon unfolded a grand scheme to the needy and sorely per- plexed Regent.
Francis Watt, M. A., thus describes, in the Encylopedia Brittanica, the system of kite-flying finance inaugurated by John Law in the French capital in the first quarter of the eighteenth century :
" A royal bank was to be founded. It was to manage the trade and currency of the kingdom, to collect the taxes and free the country from debt. The council of finance, then under the Duke of Noailles, opposed the plan, but the Regent allowed Law to go on with part of it in a tenta- tive way. By an edict of the 2d of May, 1716, a private institution called La Banque Generale, and managed by Law, was founded. The capital was six million livres,
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divided into twelve hundred shares of five thousand livres, payable in four installments. One-fourth in cash, three- fourths in billets d'etat. It was to perform the ordinary functions of a bank, and had power to issue notes payable at sight in the weight and value of the money mentioned at the day of issue. The bank was a great and immediate success. By providing for the absorption of part of the State paper, it raised to some extent the credit of the gov- ernment. The notes were a most desirable medium of ex- change, for they had the element of fixity of value, which was, owing to the arbitrary mint decrees of the govern- ment, wanting in the coin of the realm. They were also found the most convenient instruments of remitance be- tween the Capital and the Provinces, and they thus de- veloped and increased the industries of the latter. The rate of interest, previously enormous and uncertain, fell first to six and then to four per cent .; and when another decree, dated April 10th, 1717, ordered collectors of taxes to receive notes as payment, and to change them for coin at request, the bank so rose in favor that it had soon a note issue of sixty million livres. Law now gained the full confidence of the Regent, and was allowed to proceed with the development of the "system." The trade of the large and fertile region in North America, about the Mis- sissippi, had been granted to a speculator named Crozat. He found the undertaking too large and was glad to give it up. By a decree of August, 1717, Law was allowed to establish the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales, and to endow it with privileges practically amounting to sov- reignty over the most fertile region of North America. The capital was one hundred millions, divided into two hundred thousand shares of five thousand livres each. The payments were to be one-fourth in coin, and three- fourths in billets d'etat. On these last the government was to pay three million livres interest yearly to the com- pany. As the State paper was depreciated the shares fell much below par. The rapid rise of Law had made him many enemies, and they took advantage of this to attack his system. D'Argenson, the former Minister of Police. (who had driven him from France some years before), and 4
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now in succession to De Noailles, head of the Council of Finance, with the brothers Paris of Grenoble, famous tax farmers of the day, formed what was called the "anti-sys- tem." The farming of the taxes was let to them, under an assumed name, for forty-eight and a half million livres yearly. A company was formed the exact counterpart of the Mississippi Company. The capital was the same, divided in the same manner, but the payments were to be entirely in money. The returns from the public revenue were sure, those from the Mississippi scheme were not. Hence the shares of the latter were for some time out of favor. Law proceeded unmoved with his plans. On the 4th of December, 1718, the bank became a government in- stitution under the name of "La Banque Royale." Law was director, and the king guaranteed the notes. The shareholders were repaid in coin, and, to widen the influ- ence of the new institution, the transportation of money between towns where it had branches was forbidden. The paper issue now reached one hundred and ten millions. Law had such confidence in the success of his plans that he agreed to take over shares in the Mississippi Company at par at a near date." This, however, was the mere bluff of a desperate gambler, for the seeds of decay had been sown, and evidences were multiplying that the tawdry financial castle which John Law had reared, was tottering to its fall. In 1719, he was at the summit of wealth, power and dignity. Nobles and Ministers of State, Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops, officers of the Army and Navy of the highest rank, fawned upon John Law, were proud of his smile and prompt to do his bidding. In one short year he was a wanderer and a fugitive. In the month of December, 1720, he left Paris secretly at night, resumed his wandering life, and nine years later died at Venice, poor, despised by his victims, and forgotten by the gay world which had known him in the heyday of his young manhood.
It is amazing at this day to read the full text of the powers conceded to John Law and his Mississippi Com- pany. It had the exclusive right of trade with Louisiana for twenty-five years. It was authorized to make treaties
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with the Indians, and to wage war against them when necessary. The power was conceded to the company of " making grants of land, of levying troops, of erecting for- tifications, of appointing the governors of the colony, and the other officers commanding the troops," provided these latter should " be accepted and commissioned by the King." Among the other extraordinary powers conceded to the company were the right to " build ships of war and cast sannon, to appoint and remove judges and other officers of justice." The company obliged itself to bring into Louis- iana, before the expiration of its charter, six thousand white persons and three thousand negroes, but it was agreed that these persons should not be brought from another French colony without the consent of the Governor of that colony.
On the 9th of March, 1718, there arrived three vessels belonging to the Mississippi Company, bringing "three companies of infantry and sixty-nine colonists, who by their presence, and the information they brought, revived the hope of better days," says Gayarre. The same author continues :
"The office of Governor of Louisiana was definitively, and for the second time. granted to Bienville, as successor to L'Epinay, who exercised his powers only for a few months, during which he became very unpopular by prohibiting the sale of spirituous liquors to the Indians." Bienville was personally popular with both soldiers and colonists, had been in Louisiana for many years, had been an active par- ticipant in all the stirring events of those stirring times, and his second appointment was hailed with unaffected joy. The first act of the new Governor was to found the present city of New Orleans on the bank of the great river. He no doubt looked to it as the future seat of government of the colony, but the Mississippi. then as now, had a fashion of overflowing its banks, and the embryotic city was inundated. But Bienville builded wiser than he knew. perhaps. The insignificant village that he planted more than one hundred and seventy years ago, has grown to be a great, wealthy and populous city, whose foreign export trade places her next in rank to New York, the great metropolis of the western world.
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Under the rule of the Mississippi Company, the idea had gradually dawned upon the managers that agriculture should be encouraged as a subject of vital and paramount importance, and the company arrived at the conclusion that the best way to promote the encouragement of the cultivation of the soil, was to make large grants of land to persons of wealth and importance, and trust to them to in- troduce industrious colonists to cultivate the soil. With this view large concessions were made to various persons. Twelve square miles on the Arkansas river were granted to Law himself. Various large concessions were made to lands in divers portions of the present State of Louisiana, while in Mississippi immense concessions were made to various persons. On the Yazoo river, grants were made to a company composed of LeBlanc, Secretary of State, the Count de Belleville, the Marquis D'Auleck and LeBlond. In the neighborhood of Natchez the company made a large grant to Hubert, the King's Commissaire Ordonnateur and to some merchants of St. Malo. The lands on the Bay of St. Louis were conceded to Madame de Mezieres, and those on Pascagoula Bay to Madame de Chaumont. The result of these grants was soon apparent. The grantees were men and women of fortune who loved their ease. These had no inducement to brave the terrors of a long sea voyage, and encounter the privation and hardships of the wilds of Louisiana. They contented themselves, therefore, with sending large numbers of ignorant peasants to cultivate their American estates, under the management of in- dolent, incapable and faithless agents. The result was a lamentable failure, and the company was compelled to look elsewhere for agricultural labor. They naturally turned their eyes to Africa. Vessels were, therefore, soon plying between the Gulf of Mexico, and the coast of Africa, bringing to Louisiana cargoes of African slaves. By the rules of the company these slaves were sold to the old settlers; those who had been two or more years in the colony, at one-half the price, in cash. and the remainder on one year's credit. The new inhabitants, those less than two years in the colony, were authorized to purchase slaves on a credit of one and two years.
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In April, 1719, two ships belonging to the Company arrived from France, bringing intelligence that war had broken out between France and Spain. The vessels also brought dispatches to Bienville informing him that hostilities were existing between the two countries, and urging him to at- tack and capture Pensacola. This important position had recently been captured by the French, and in about two months the Spaniards recaptured it, in consequence of the treachery of a portion of the French garrison. Bienville at once made preparations to assail Pensacola. In the nick of time three French ships of war, under command of the Count Champmeslin, arrived at Dauphine Island convoy - ing two vessels of the company. Bienville at once con- ferred with Count Champmeslin, and they arranged for an immediate assault upon Pensacola by sea and by land. Bienville had organized a body of five hundred Choctaw Indians under the command of M. de La Longueville, and in conjunction with Count Champmeslin, made a joint attack on the two forts, and after a smart fight of two hours the Spanish forts and the Spanish fleet in the har- bor of Pensacola surrendered to the arms of France on the 17th day of August, 1719. On board of one of the cap- tured Spanish ships, thirty five of the French deserters at Pensacola were found. A short shrift awaited them. Twelve were sentenced to be hanged, and the rest were condemned to work for life in the galleys of France.
Bienville had long been dissatisfied with the character of the colonists and soldiers sent to him in Louisiana, and after the capture of Pensacola he wrote the following sting- ing protest to the home authorities :
"The Council of State will permit me to represent thatitis exceedingly painful for an officer who is intrusted with the destinies of a colony, to have nothing better to defend her than a band of deserters, of smugglers, and of rogues, who are ever ready, not only to abandon their flag, but to turn their arms against their country. Are not most of the people I receive here sent by force ? What attachment can they conceive for a colony which they look upon in the light of a prison, and which they cannot leave at will ? Can it be imagined that they will not use every effort to
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escape from a position which is odious to them ? And is it not known that they can do so with great facility in a country so open as this, and when they can so readily find refuge with the Spaniards or the English ? It seems to me absolutely necessary, if it be wished to preserve this colony to the king, to send to it none but those who are willing, and to make life more attractive than it is for the present. In the first place, in order to accomplish this object, I should recommend to transport here a sufficient number of cattle to supply the colony with fresh meat, and then to transmit provisions of every kind with more regu- larity and in greater quantity than in the past. If not, the people here will continue to be exceedingly miserable. It must also be taken into consideration that the popula- tion and the military forces are so scattered, that in case of a sudden emergency, I have to rely, as means of defense. only on the Indian nations ! For the present, I am even deprived of this resource on account of the want of pro- visions and merchandise to secure their support ; but. backed by them, we could resist all the efforts of the Spaniards, although they could act powerfully against us, on account of the proximity of Havana and Vera Cruz. It is to be feared, however, that by cruising with large vessels on our coast, they may cut off' our supplies from France. We know this to be their intention, from what we have learned from the French deserters we have retaken. In that case it would be impossible to preserve the colony."
At this time Bienville was exceedingly anxious to trans- fer the Colonial seat of government to New Orleans. His proposition created much opposition from his official asso- ciates. Hubert, the King's Commissary, was strongly in favor of Natchez. The fact, however, that he owned large tracts of land in that vicinity, weakened his arguments. and caused little heed to be paid to them. L' Archam- bault, Villardo, and Legas, who represented the Mississippi Company, as agents of the commercial interests of that company, thought that the interests of those they repre- sented would be best promoted by keeping the seat of gov- ernment on the seashore. This view settled the question ; the opinion of the commercial agents prevailed, and in
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pursuance of this conclusion, "a body of soldiers and mechanics was dispatched to the east side of the Bay of Biloxi, where houses and barracks were ordered to be con- structed." "That place," says Gayarre, " was called New Biloxi, in contradistinction to the first settlement made on that bay, and which was ever after known as old Biloxi." Thus, after years of chance and change, the Colonial seat of government was again planted on the soil of the present State of Mississippi.
"On the 26th of November, 1719," says Gayarre, "a royal edict was issued in conformity with the charter grant- ing to the Company the exclusive privilege of commerce with Louisiana. That edict declared to the world that any other vessels than those of the Company, would, on their resorting to the Colony for the purpose of trade, incur for- feiture and confiscation."
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