Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans (8 page)

O’Reilly arrived at La Balize on July 20, 1769, on a frigate accompanied by 20 other ships and 2,056 soldiers, 46 cannons of various sizes, mortars, a large supply of arms and ammunition, medical provisions, and food. He sent his aide-de-camp, Lt. Col. Bouligny, with a letter to Charles Aubry, notifying the French of his arrival, informing Aubry of his royal commission to take possession of the colony, and asking his cooperation. Bouligny was greeted in New Orleans by a large crowd, including three Spanish officers who had been detailed by the colonists as security for debts owed them by the Spanish government. He proceeded to Aubry’s home to deliver the letter. Aubry now promised his cooperation and assembled the colonists in the Plaza to inform them of O’Reilly’s arrival.

Three representatives were sent to greet O’Reilly. They promised submission and explained that their rebellion had been brought about by the “severe nature of Don Antonio and the subversion of privileges, which had been assured in the act of cession. . . .” (Texada 1970, 29). Then they asked for time sufficient for those who wished to immigrate to do so.

O’Reilly replied that he wanted to become well-informed about the events that occurred before he acted. The men dined with him and then returned to New Orleans, full of admiration for O’Reilly.

During the night of August 16, 1769, the Spanish convoy moved quietly into the city of New Orleans, and the colonists were awakened on the August 17 by cannon shot from the flotilla. When they arrived at the river, they found the Spanish fleet at anchor.

On August 18, possession was taken in the Plaza. O’Reilly walked to the center of the square and presented Aubry with the letter from the king. Aubry placed the keys of the city at O’Reilly’s feet. Spanish flags were run up in all parts of the city, and artillery was fired. Then all retired to the cathedral to say a
Te Deum
in thanksgiving.

Following the ceremony, O’Reilly consulted privately with Aubry, demanding that he prepare a complete account of the events surrounding the rebellion. The French governor, obeying the orders of his new sovereign, wrote a complete report. As a result of his information, O’Reilly arrested Lafrenière
, Foucault, Noyan,
de Boisblanc
, members of the Superior Council, and Braud, the printer. Each of these men was summoned separately to his home. Later, Marquis, an officer of the troops; Doucet, a lawyer; Petit and Mazant
, planters; Jean and Joseph Milhet; and Caresse
and Poupet
, merchants; were also arrested.

According to historian Charles Gayarré, Joseph Villere, who had led the Germans to join the rebels, was on his plantation on the German Coast when he received a letter from Aubry saying that he had nothing to fear from O’Reilly and that he could come to New Orleans in perfect safety. Villere descended the river to New Orleans and found himself arrested. Outraged, he struck the Spanish officers, who pierced him with bayonets. He lingered and later died in prison, awaiting trial (Gayarré 1851, 304).

“The trial of those indicted as leaders of the rebellion began in late August 1769 and did not terminate until October 24. It was conducted according to the standard Spanish judicial procedures. The Spanish Court set out to prove that there had been a conspiracy to oust Ulloa, and that treason and sedition had been committed. The defendants and other witnesses were interrogated separately, as there was no trial by jury in Spanish Law, nor trial held in public court” (Texada 1970). Their sentences were pronounced by O’Reilly on October 24, 1769, and on the following day, October 25, five rebels—Lafrenière, Noyan, Caresse, Marquis, and Joseph Milhet—were shot to death by Spanish soldiers, there being no hangman in the colony. Petit was imprisoned for life; Mazant and Doucet were sentenced to imprisonment for ten years; and de Boisblanc, Jean Milhet, and Poupet to imprisonment for six years, all in the Castle Morror in Havana. Braud, the printer of the petition, was discharged. Shocked into submission, the rest of colonists gave up the fight. The French Creoles never forgave O’Reilly for his act. Henceforth, he was to be known as “Bloody O’Reilly,” and as such he has taken his place in the history of Louisiana.

The question of whether O’Reilly was cruel or justified in his treatment of the rebels continues to be a matter of dispute among historians. François Barbé-Marbois said that “King Charles secretly disapproved of these acts of outrage.” Historian Judge François-Xavier Martin said that “posterity . . . will doom this act to public execration. No necessity demanded, no policy justified it.”

On the other hand, if it was treason, it was at the time considered a most grievous crime by all nations and punishable by death.

Historian Henry Edward Chambers puts the blame for the execution of the rebels on the shoulders of Governor Aubry. O’Reilly, he says, came to the colony with orders from the king to suppress rebellion and punish leaders. “[He] . . . was compelled . . . to make an example of the leaders . . . lest other Spanish colonials follow the Louisiana example.” Aubry, he feels, kept Ulloa and the colonial leaders from coming to terms. “He inserted a wedge of mutual antagonism,” which thus caused rebellion.

O’Reilly began his administration by abolishing the Superior Council and substituting a Cabildo, composed of six
regidors
(councilmen) and
alcaldes
(mayors), an attorney-general, and a clerk, all presided over by the governor. The laws of Spain, the
Siete Partidas
(Seven Parts), were substituted for those of France.

Under the Cabildo Governing Council of Louisiana, O’Reilly a
bolished Indian slavery. He permitted many French officials to stay in office and helped farmers by establishing land titles. Under O’Reilly’s Ordinance of 1770, a system of homesteading land was established, allowing an owner a parcel of land six to eight arpents fronting on a river or bayou and forty arpents in depth if he occupied the land and enclosed it within three years. The front of the land was to be cleared.

During his governance, roads and levees were installed. The only religion tolerated was the Catholic religion, which worked no hardship on the Creole Catholic population. Medicine was divided into three disciplines during his term: medicine proper, surgery, and pharmacy. An Ursuline nun was the first pharmacist in Louisiana.

Don Luis de Unzaga

As we can see, O’Reilly’s administration was not without merit. He left Louisiana in 1770, turning over the reins of government to
Don Luis de Unzaga y Amezaga,
a successful, well-liked man whose rule was mild and paternal, as was that of every other governor during the next three decades of Spanish domination. Unzaga married a Creole native of Louisiana. As governor, he did whatever was needed to make the colony successful. Expediency was the byword of the Spanish domination. Unzaga winked at smuggling and allowed the British traders to have commerce with the Spanish settlers along the Mississippi, because the colony needed what they supplied.

One of the most well remembered Spanish immigrants to come to New Orleans during this period was
Don Andrès Almonester y Roxas,
who came from Andalusia, Spain, in 1769, at the age of forty-four. A widower whose wife and child died in Spain, he had been appointed Royal Notary for the king of Spain. At his first meeting with the Cabildo Council, he was also appointed clerk and notary to Governor Unzaga and his Intendant and Royal Notary for Louisiana. Almonester was later to prove himself a real estate genius, New Orleans’s greatest benefactor, and was to become the father of the celebrated Baroness Pontalba.

A list of the value of herbs by Sister Xavier, first female pharmacist.

Don Bernardo de Galvez

In 1777,
Don Bernardo de Galvez
took over the duties as governor. Galvez was only thirty-one years old, a member of an influential family, and another Spanish governor to marry a Creole girl from Louisiana, Felicie de St. Maxent d’Estrehan. He provided himself to be extraordinarily heroic and admirable. He allowed great freedom to the colonists in their commerce and gave help openly to the American Revolutionists. Spain declared war on England May 8, 1779, and on July 8, Charles III authorized his Louisiana subjects to take part in the war.

With a small fleet and an army of 1,430 men, Galvez led successful attacks against the British outposts at Baton Rouge and Natchez, capturing Fort Manchac along the way. In 1780, he conquered Mobile and then undertook a lengthy attack against Pensacola. The English commander capitulated May 9, 1781, an act by which the province of West Florida was acquired by Spain. By eliminating the British presence from these forts, Galvez’s Louisiana Regiment and militias effectively ended the attacks launched against American troops from the Mississippi and Gulf of Mexico. As a consequence, the descendants of Galvez’s troops are entitled to become members of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Sons of the American Revolution organizations.

The Treaty of Peace was signed in Paris, January, 1783, acknowledging the independence of the United States, with a southern boundary line of thirty-one degrees latitude. The description was important, since it became the dividing line between the United States and the Spanish colonies. Both Floridas thus passed to Spanish control.

In 1785, Galvez was made captain-general of Cuba, Louisiana, and the two Floridas. The same year, he succeeded his father as viceroy of Mexico. Galvez died in Mexico on November 30, 1786, at the age of thirty-eight. He remains one of the most romantic figures in colonial Louisiana history. A statue of Galvez stands at the foot of Canal Street, and St. Bernard Parish is named in honor of St. Bernard, Galvez’s patron saint.

Don Esteban Rodríguez Miró y Sabater
succeeded Galvez in 1785. He, too, married a native Creole girl, Marie Celeste Elenore de
McCarty
. It was during Miró’s time that five thousand French Acadian
exiles began arriving in Louisiana. During the French and Indian War, they had refused to swear allegiance to England and had therefore been exiled. They were shipped to different points along the Atlantic coast and to the far-flung ports of England and France. At one port in France, 375 families arrived (comprised of 1,574 people).

Since the Spanish needed farmers to provide food for the colonists in Louisiana, bowing once again to expediency, they transported the Acadians on Spanish ships from the ports of France to make their homes in Louisiana. The Acadians settled in the Lafourche-Teche area, where they would become substantial farmers and permanent inhabitants of
the region. The Spanish gave the newcomers land grants, livestock, and
grain to begin their new lives in southwest Louisiana. To Louisiana, they brought warmth and gaiety, love of home and family, and a love of the land. Like the Germans, they provided food for the tables of the colonists. But unlike the immigrants who eventually amalgamated, they kept to themselves in the bayou country, working their land and establishing their homes. They spoke almost exclusively to one another, using the seventeenth century French of their forefathers. Few of them spoke anything but French until the First World War.

The Disastrous Fires

In 1788, during Miró’s administration, the first of two terrible fires in New Orleans occurred. On Good Friday, March 21, 1788, Don Vincente Jose Nunez, the military treasurer, was in his private chapel in his residence on Chartres Street near St. Louis. It was a very windy day, and a candle fell from the altar, setting the chapel on fire. Flames spread and engulfed the entire city. Residences and business places burned to the ground. The fire spread around the Plaza and ignited the town hall, the arsenal, the parish church, and the quarters of the Capuchins, all of which disappeared into smoke. Prisoners were released from jail just in time to escape the flames. In the morning, tents covered the plaza and the levee, and only chimneys remained of the 856 buildings that had been lost. Nearly half the town was in ashes.

Six years later, in 1794, some children playing on Royal Street accidentally set fire to a hay store. Within three hours, 212 stores and houses had burned down. The new buildings that had been built at the bottom of the Plaza escaped, but only two stores were left standing, and once again, the levee and the Plaza became camping grounds for the city’s inhabitants.

From this time on, buildings were erected with sturdier material. Tile roofs came into general use. Homes now displayed Spanish-American features, and the beauty of the town, as well as its safety, was improved. The new buildings stood shoulder-to-shoulder with party walls, each a different color of stucco over brick. The overall effect was Caribbean, from which area much of the architecture was borrowed.

An ordinance had been passed that buildings of more than one story be made of brick. Walls were designed with lovely arcades, and patios came alive with the plangent sounds of fountains. There were prominent doors and windows and heavy iron bolts and gratings, all of which adorned sturdy structures. As a finishing touch, magnificent wrought-iron lacework decorated the balconies of the two- and three-story dwellings. The French called the inner yards “courtyards,” for they were the heart,
le coeur,
of the household.
The Spanish called them
patios,
a word that sounded like horses’ hoof
s on cobblestones.