Prisoners of Chance | Page 3

word of this unwelcome transfer reached the distant
province, while as much more time elapsed ere Don Antonio de Ulloa,
the newly appointed Spanish governor, landed at New Orleans, and,
under guard of but two companies of infantry, took unto himself the
reins. Unrest was already in the air,--petitions and delegations laden
with vehement protests crossed the Atlantic. Both were alike returned,
disregarded by the French King. Where it is probable that a single word
of wise counsel, even of kindly explanation, might have calmed the
rising tumult, silence and contempt merely served to aggravate it.
It has been written by conscientious historians that commercial
interests, not loyalty to French traditions, were the real cause of this
struggle of 1768. Be that as it may, its leaders were found in the
Superior Council, a body of governors older even than New Orleans, of
which the patriotic Lafrénière was then the presiding officer, and whose
membership contained such representative citizens as Foucault, Jean
and Joseph Milhet, Caresse, Petit, Poupet, a prominent lawyer. Marquis,
a Swiss captain, with Bathasar de Masan, Hardy de Boisblanc, and
Joseph Villere, planters of the upper Mississippi, as well as two
nephews of the great Bienville, Charles de Noyan, a young ex-captain
of cavalry, lately married to the only daughter of Lafrénière, and his
younger brother, a lieutenant in the navy.

On the twenty-seventh of October, 1768, every Frenchman in Louisiana
Province was marching toward New Orleans. That same night the guns
at the Tehoupitoulas Gate--the upper river corner--were spiked; while
yet farther away, along a narrow road bordering the great stream, armed
with fowling pieces, muskets, even axes, the Arcadians, and the
aroused inhabitants of the German coast, came sweeping down to unite
with the impatient Creoles of the town. In the dull gray of early
morning they pushed past the spiked and useless cannon, and, with De
Noyan and Villere at their head, forced the other gates and noisily
paraded the streets under the fleur de lis. The people rose en masse to
greet them, until, utterly unable to resist the rising tide of popular
enthusiasm, Ulloa retired on board the Spanish frigate, which slipped
her cables, and came to anchor far out in the stream. Two days later,
hurried no doubt by demands of the council, the governor set sail for
the West Indies, leaving the fair province under control of what was
little better than a headless mob.
For now, having achieved success, the strange listlessness of the
Southern nature reasserted itself, and from that moment no apparent
effort was made to strengthen their position--no government was
established, no basis of credit effected, no diplomatic relations were
assumed. They had battled for results like men, yet were content to play
with them like children. For more than seven months they thus enjoyed
a false security, as delightful as their sunny summer-time. Then
suddenly, as breaks an ocean storm, that slumbering community was
rudely aroused from its siestas and day-dreaming by the report that
Spaniards were at the mouth of the river in overwhelming force.
Confusion reigned on every hand; scarcely a hundred men rallied to
defend the town; yet no one fled. The Spanish fleet consisted of
twenty-four vessels. For more than three weeks they felt their uncertain
way around the bends of the Mississippi, and on the eighteenth of
August, 1769, furled their canvas before the silent batteries. Firing a
single gun from the deck of his flag-ship, the frigate "Santa Maria,"
Don Alexandro O'Reilly, accompanied by twenty-six hundred chosen
Spanish troops and fifty pieces of artillery, landed, amid all the pomp
of Continental war, taking formal possession of the province. That

night his soldiers patrolled the streets, and his cannon swept the river
front, while not a Frenchman ventured to stray beyond the doorway of
his home.
Within the narrow space of two days the iron hand of Spain's new
Captain-General had closed upon the leaders of the bloodless
insurrection, his judgments falling with such severity as to earn for him
in the annals of Louisiana the title of "Cruel O'Reilly." Among those of
the revolutionists before mentioned, Petit, Masan, Doucet, Boisblanc,
Jean Milhet, and Poupet were consigned to Moro Castle, Havana,
where they remained a year, and then were stripped of their property
and forbidden ever again to enter the province of Louisiana. The
younger Bienville escaped with the loss of his fortune. Foucault met his
fate resisting the guard on board the "Santa Maria," where he was held
prisoner; while Lafrénière, De Noyan, Caresse, Marquis, and Joseph
Milhet were condemned to be publicly hanged. The earnest
supplication, both of colonists and Spanish officials, shocked by the
unjust severity of this sentence, sufficed to save them from the disgrace
of the gallows, but fated them to fall before the volley of a