Through all the future and the coming years,
As through all time that’s past,
One law holds ever good,
That nothing comes to life of man
Unscathed throughout by woes.
—Sophocles.
The war which had been waged intermittently between France and England for a century was ended by the Treaty of Paris, February 10, 1763. The battle that decided which of the two nations should be predominant in America had been fought on the Heights of Quebec four years before. The French army of General Montcalm was defeated by the English and their soldier-colonists commanded by General Wolfe. By the terms of the treaty France ceded to England all her territory in America except Louisiana and the Island and City of New Orleans. Canada and all the French territory east of the Mississippi passed to England who was now apparently master of North America. The real test of this presumption was yet to be made, and it was, indeed, a scorching one. “The victory of Wolfe at Quebec … really contributed in an indirect way to the loss of the Thirteen Colonies. The bonfires which then illumined the coasts and settlements of New England, and lit the market-places of New York and Philadelphia with the light of a great rejoicing, were the last of their kind in American history, and, in the capture of the army of Cornwallis at Yorktown, France obtained revenge for the defeat of Montcalm on the Heights of Quebec.”1
At the beginning of this conflict, known as the Seven Years’ War, England perpetrated an outrage which will remain for all time a blot upon the history of her colonies in America. The incident is referred to here for the reason that it is definitely linked to the annals of Louisiana. Before the settlement of Jamestown by the English, and many years before the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock, a colony of Breton peasants settled Acadia. In 1754, the descendants of those sturdy and happy French pioneers were cruelly expatriated by the English, who had previously captured the military defenses of Nova Scotia. “They were a simple, rural, God-fearing people, living in quiet happiness upon their well-cultivated farms. … When their sky seemed serenest, the Acadians were suddenly seized to the number of seven thousand, deprived of their lands, flocks and other property, and at the point of a bayonet hurried on board an English fleet. They were then landed penniless along the coast, from Maine to Louisiana. No regard was paid to family ties. Parents were separated from children, wives from husbands, sisters from brothers. Thus in misery and exile, this once happy people lingered out a sorrowful and weary existence.”2
“In all the annals of Spanish brutality, there is nothing more disgraceful to humanity than the systematic and enjoined treatment of these innocent Bretons by the English. … No detail was wanting, from first to last, to make the crime of the Acadian deportation perfect.” (Hawthorne’s Hist. U. S.) Many of the banished Acadians found refuge in Louisiana.
The people of Louisiana had not suffered to any great extent from the war, but their time to feel its direful effects had now come. King Louis XV., following his disastrous defeat by the English, harbored the fear that Great Britain would next attempt to occupy his remaining American possessions and secretly gave the province of Louisiana to his cousin, Charles III of Spain. The people of Louisiana were much grieved by reason of this action of their king and petitioned him to reconsider his act and continue to be their ruler. Their request was ignored, and, in 1765, Ulloa, the first Spanish governor, arrived and raised the Spanish flag in their beloved country. The indignant French citizens made life so unpleasant for Ulloa that he left the province. He was succeeded by a tyrant named O’Reilly, who came with a large army and proceeded to cause the arrest of eleven men who were charged with being instrumental in bringing about Ulloa’s departure. They were tried by judges and found guilty. Five of them, Caresse, Lafrenière, Marquis, Noyan and Milhet, were condemned to be hanged, but later sentenced to be shot and the decree was executed near the old Ursuline convent in New Orleans, the men refusing to have their eyes covered with bandages and heroically faced the guns of the Spanish soldiers. The six men who escaped the death sentence were sent to Havana and imprisoned.
For many years now the lot of the colonists in every section of America was one of severe trials. The French of Louisiana were disheartened and made no progress under the government of Spain, and they had little hope for a change for the better. The English colonists were smarting under the oppressive yoke of George II. He was succeeded by George III who assiduously continued to systematically deprive them of their liberties and to bespatter their intelligence with insult until their condition became intolerable. Within a decade after this royal bigot had assumed his crown, the colonists had fought and won their first battles at Lexington and Concord, and a few years later the British army under Cornwallis made its last stand at Yorktown and surrendered to General Washington and his army of patriots. By this blow the arrogant English were completely humbled and the original Thirteen Colonies were no longer subjects of Great Britain. Only the French colonists of Canada remained loyal to King George. A new nation (a republic that did not belie its name) was born and was destined to become one of the most progressive and powerful governments known in the record of human affairs. The culmination of the war was not only a triumph for the colonies, but it started the fires of liberty all over the world.
The United States had but fairly entered on its career as a nation when events were happening in Europe which led to the struggle that shook the throne of every monarch on the continent. Louis XVI, a good man, but a densely ignorant king, was on the throne of France. His misgovernment of his subjects, through wooden ministers, lost him his head as well as his crown. The monarchy was succeeded by a government by a mob, whose chief glory was in the murders it committed and the army of Frenchmen it led to the guillotine. The reign of the mob was supplanted by the inglorious Directory. The revolution extended through the last dozen years of the eighteenth century, and at its culmination France could boast of nothing gained from it more substantial than a despotic government, at the head of which was Napoleon Bonaparte who bore the title of emperor. In 1803 this arch-disturber was on the verge of beginning his mighty conflict with allied Europe. For twelve years the armies of France, under the direction of the intrepid Corsican, had triumphed in practically every battle in which they engaged and thrones were cast asunder and nations made subservient to his formidable will. In the course of his conquests, in 1800, the kingdom of Spain was entangled in his powerful web. Charles IV., a hare-brained monarch, occupied the Spanish throne under the guardianship of his wife, Queen Maria Louise. Napoleon, who was desirous of regaining the possessions which France had lost in America, “persuaded” the Spanish king to cede Louisiana back to France. Charles reluctantly yielded to the “persuasion” of the French emperor, and by the treaty of Ildefonso, which was kept secret from the world for many months, Louisiana again passed under the flag of France. The wars of Napoleon had extended through the administrations of George Washington and John Adams as presidents of the young American republic and (in 1803) Thomas Jefferson was president of the rapidly growing nation. The immense territory of the United States, which extended from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, was being occupied by thousands of progressive home-builders, and the occupancy of Louisiana by Spain, with her stringent trade laws, was considered by the United States an impediment to commerce on the Great River, and when the secret that Charles III had ceded Louisiana to Napoleon was finally divulged Jefferson was determined to at least acquire the Island and City of New Orleans. Robert Livingston was the United States minister at the French capital, and James Monroe was sent to Paris to assist him in negotiations for the purchase of New Orleans. Napoleon at first declined to consider proposals for the sale of the key to the Mississippi River, the highway for commerce in his American province, but just at this time his warships, which had been sent on an expedition to bring Santo Domingo under his authority, were annihilated by the English, and the remainder of the French navy being of no service to him, his hopes for retaining a foothold in America were suddenly and effectually vanished. “Some who have studied ingeniously into the riddles of the Corsican brain attribute to the French failure at Santo Domingo, more than any other cause, this sudden relinquishment of Louisiana.” (Henry Adams.) Napoleon also needed money to prosecute his continental war and he hastened to cede to the United States not only New Orleans, but all of his vast American empire, for a sum that today would not exceed the taxable property value of four Louisiana parishes.
The United States assigned Governor Claiborne to the government of the newly acquired territory, and with General Wilkinson, who commanded the federal troops on the frontier, he took charge in January, 1804. And the Stars and Stripes supplanted the flag of France.
Back to: Sabine Parish – Louisiana History & Genealogy Project
Back to: Louisiana History & Genealogy Project
Source
Belisle, John G., History of Sabine Parish, Louisiana, Many, La. : The Sabine banner press, 1912.