502

CLOSE OF GRONDEL'S HISTORY.

throwing himself among the combatants, whom he awed into submission by his firmness and his venerable aspect; and the municipal authorities of Nemours voted him thanks for his noble conduct. In 1796, overwhelmed with grief at the horrors which had swept over France, he left Nemours, and retired to Salins, near Montereau. He was one of those who were most enthusiastic in favor of Bonaparte, when the future despot struck, on the 18th Brumaire, his celebrated blow against the legislative assemblies of France. On this occasion, Baudry de Lozieres relates that Grondel rapturously exclaimed: "I have lived long enough; France is saved and her wounds are closed: be it forever recorded, to the eternal glory of the God who has come down from heaven to confer upon us so many benefits! This great restorer is above the human species; for it does not belong to man to execute so many gigantic and immortal things, and to do so in such a short space of time."

So intense was Grondel's admiration for Bonaparte, that, on his being presented to the First Consul, the octogenarian veteran actually sobbed and shed tears on the hand of the youthful general who had become the master of France. The officer who, in 1732, had been fighting in Louisiana to secure that important colony to his country, can not but have felt deeply grateful, in 1802, to the hero who had wrested that rich possession from Spain, and reannexed it to the domains of France. But General Grondel's joy was not of long duration, and he lived to see Louisiana escape from the grasp France to fall into the motherly lap of the United States of America,

of

SEVENTH LECTURE.

STATE OF AGRICULTURE IN 1736-EXEMPTION FROM DUTIES ON CERTAIN ARTICLES OF IMPORTATION AND EXPORTATION-WAR BETWEEN THE CHOCTAWS AND CHICKASAWS-SINGULAR JUDICIAL PROCEEDING IN 1738- BIENVILLE'S DISPATCH ON THE SAND-BARS AT THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI DE NOAILLES IS SENT TO LOUISIANA TO COMMAND AN EXPEDITION AGAINST THE CHICKASAWS-BIENVILLE'S JEALOUSY-INTRIGUES OF THE INDIAN, RED SHOE-GENERAL RENDEZVOUS OF THE FRENCH AT THE MOUTH OF RIVER MARGOT-FAILURE OF THAT EXPEDITION -ITS PROBABLE CAUSES - BIENVILLE'S APOLOGY-EFFECTS OF A Hurricane— SITUATION OF THE COLONY IN 1741-HEROISM OF A FRENCH GIRL IN A BATTLE AGAINST THE INDIANS-BIENVILLE INCURS THE DISPLEASURE OF HIS GOVERNMENT -HE DEMANDS THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A COLLEGE-THAT DEMAND IS REFUSED -BIENVILLE IS RECALLED TO FRANCE HE DEPARTS NEVER TO RETURN-HE IS SUCCEEDED BY THE MARQUIS of VaudreuIL-OTHER FACTS AND EVENTS FROM 1736 To 1743.

THE bad success of Bienville's campaign against the Chickasaws had, to some degree, checked the progress of the colony, and contributed to increase the disaffection of the inhabitants, who were already very little pleased with their colonial home, and who became still more dispirited by the prospect of protracted warfare with implacable savages. To this feeling of insecurity must be added the stagnation of commerce, and the precarious condition of agriculture, of which Bienville said: "The planters are disgusted with the cultivation of tobacco on account of the uncertainty of the crop, which is alternately affected either by the incessant rains, or by the long droughts so peculiar to this country. We may produce from thirty to thirty-five thousand pounds of indigo, if there be no accident in the way. The inhabitants are turning their attention to this branch of industry. As to silk, very little is made, through igno

rance.

With regard to cotton, the production is very

504

THE CHICKASAWS AND CHOCTAWS.

limited, on account of the difficulty of separating it from its seeds, or rather because the cultivation of indigo is more profitable. As to flax and hemp, hardly any is made. With regard to tar and pitch, the colony produces about six or seven thousand barrels, but it wants an outlet." Such was the state of agriculture in Louisiana in 1736.

On the 4th of February, 1737, the French government issued an ordinance which was to take effect on the 1st of July of that year. The object of it was to exempt from certain duties, during ten years, the productions of Louisiana, which should be carried to Martinique, Guadaloupe, Trinity, Dominique, Barbade, St. Lucie, St. Vincent, Grenade, and the other islands of that archipelago, and the productions of these islands when transported directly to Louisiana. This was another measure of sound policy, and it is to be regretted that the whole administration of the colony was not founded on a system equally as praiseworthy..

During the whole of the year 1737, war was kept up, at the instigation of the French, between the Choctaws and the Chickasaws, without producing any result of importance. It consisted of marauding excursions, in which, however, the Choctaws, by their depreda tions, succeeded in inflicting some partial injuries on the Chickasaws, who were too well provided with means of defense not to set at defiance all the rude and incomplete engines of attack, which could be brought to bear against them. In a dispatch of the 28th of February, Bienville had said: "Fortified as they are, with the help and through the instructions of the English, the Chickasaws can not be destroyed, except bombards of a strong caliber and miners are employed against them. It is necessary that we be so provided. The English have sent more than two hun

CHARITY HOSPITAL IN NEW ORLEANS.

505

dred men to the Chickasaws, to whom they afford every

kind of assistance.

Nothing occurred during that year worth being recorded, except it be the phenomenon of the fall at New Orleans, on Palm Sunday, of hailstones as large as the eggs of a common hen, and the foundation of an hospital by a sailor, named Jean Louis, who, in the service of the India Company, had acquired a small capital of ten thousand livres, which, at his death, he consecrated to the relief of suffering humanity. At one of the extremities of the city, a house belonging to one Mme. Kolly, was purchased for twelve hundred livres; the repairs went up to two thousand five hundred livres. One part of the balance of the sum bequeathed was employed in procuring the necessary apparatus and furniture, and the other part was kept in reserve. In 1849, the Charity Hospital of New Orleans, which is the principal institution of the kind in that city, accommodates in its spacious halls more than one thousand patients, at the annual expense of fifty thousand dollars. What contrasts will spring up from the lapse of a century!

As another exemplification of such contrasts, it may not be indifferent to record that, in 1738, the annals of Louisiana are marked by a singular judicial trial founded on laws, customs, feelings, and ideas which are so foreign to those of our own time, that there seems to be between them a wider chasm of ages than there really is. Thus, an individual named Labarre, having committed suicide, a curator was appointed to the corpse, which was indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be deprived of Christian burial, and to lie rotting and bleaching on the face of the earth among the offals, bones, and refuse of the butcher's stall.

The French government had always felt considerable difficulty in preventing desertion in the troops sent to

506

DESERTIONS AMONG THE FRENCH TROOPS.

Louisiana. In a dispatch of the 18th of March, 1738, Bienville said: "Many of the Swiss desert to Pensacola, where they are protected openly by the monks and secretly by the governor. But as the Spaniards are in want of provisions, I have recommended to Diron d'Artaguette, at Mobile, not to supply them with any until they consent to deliver up our deserters."

In a communication of the 12th of April following, he returned to the same subject: "Three other Swiss," he wrote, "have again deserted to Pensacola, which is in a state of extreme famine. The governor of that place sent to me for some provisions. I refused them on account of the protection he grants to our deserters. Whereupon he sent them back to me. Every day, there come here Spaniards whom hunger drives away from Pensacola. We have already among us more than thirty of them, whose pale and squalid faces are frightful to look at, and testify to the sufferings of these wretches. Such misery is without a parallel."

These dispatches describe a state of things which is almost inexplicable. On one side, we see the Spaniards running away from Pensacola to New Orleans, to escape from starvation, and on the other, the Swiss and French soldiers deserting from the halls of abundance in New Orleans and Mobile, to throw themselves into the arms of famine in Pensacola. The only natural conclusion that one can come to on this subject is, that the French soldiers, blackguards as they are represented to be by Bienville, were disposed to run any risk rather than remain in Louisiana.

Among the official communications of that year to the French government, there is a joint one from Bienville and Salmon, which bears on a subject of much interest to this day. It relates to the sand-bars which obstruct the several mouths of the Mississippi. "There are daily