At the conclusion of the Seven Years' War, France lost all of its territories on the North America continent, which consisted of Quebec, Illinois, and Louisiana but retained its islands in the Caribbean. Great Britain acquired from France Quebec and all the land on the east bank of the Mississippi River. As compensation, France handed over control of Louisiana to their Spanish allies. The turnover was slow with the French continuing to expand its villages including founding St. Louis. In April 1764 the first Spanish governor, Jean-Jacques Blaise d'Abbadie, a French official who was administering Louisiana for the Spanish, took office. D'Abbadie died from illness on February 4, 1765. The senior military officer in the colony Captain Charles Philippe Aubry, assumed control and continued to administer the Louisiana for Spain. In January of 1765, Jean Milhet, a rich and influential New Orleans elite, was sent to France to appeal directly to King Louis XV to rescind the decision to transfer Louisiana to the Spanish crown, but the King would not grant him an audience. On March 5, 1766, Don Antonio de Ulloa, the new Spanish governor, arrived, with a small garrison of only 90 soldiers and a handful of advisors. Upon arriving Governor Ulloa heard understood the tension with the New Orleans elites and heard rumors of a french uprising. Having insufficient military support, Governor Ulloa did not formally accept the handing over of the territory, not even raising the Spanish flag over the Place d'Armes. Instead, he decided to run the colony through Captain Aubrey, the interim French governor. Governor Ulloa finally took formal possession of the colony in late January 1767, in a ceremony held at La Balize. The elite of New Orleans were displeased at the Spanish, especially as the transfer ceremony did not take place with what they saw as the necessary pomp. Governor Ulloa's superiors in Havana virtually ignored his many requests, including to replace the colony's French currency with pesos and the dispatch of a larger garrison. Although fluent in French, Governor Ulloa disliked New Orleans society, which he considered to be full of immoral boors who drank too much and were profligate with their money. Governor Ullola preferred to spend his time at the more rural La Balize outpost on the Mississippi river, where he could live a simpler life. In the summer of 1768, Governor Ulloa announced plans to crack down on Louisiana's considerable smuggling operations by reducing the mouth of the Mississippi to a single channel to improve security; officially he spent his time at La Balize supervising the engineering of the project. At the same time, he also announced that Louisiana would no longer trade with other nations, consistent with policy in other Spanish possessions. As well he would crack down on the slave trade, the brothels, and on fur traders who often robbed the natives of their dues. These measures angered the New Orleans elites that had enriched themselves through these illegal means. That same summer of 1768, Denis-Nicolas Foucault, Louisiana's chief financial officer and Nicolas Chauvin de La Frénière, Louisiana attorney general, hatched a plot to force the Spanish out. Most of the complaints of the plotters, who included many of the colony's elites. The conspirators included all members of the Superior Council, created by the French as the colony's chief judicial institution. According to the historians at the Grand Lodge of Louisiana, all the leaders of the insurrection and Superior Council were members of either la Parfaite Harmonie Loge (Perfect Harmony Lodge) est 1752 or the Scottish rite Loge de Parfaite l’Ecosse (Lodge of Perfection) est 1763. Joseph Milhet, the brother of Jean Milhet, was sent to villages west of the Mississippi to stir insurrection. Joseph Villeré went to German Protestant communities northwest of New Orleans, the most successful place of recruitment. Pierre Marquis was declared the commanding officer of the rebel militia. In the process, the conspirators arrested the French military officer Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent on charges of collaborating with the enemy. Balthasar Masan went to British held Mobile in the territory of West Florida to request aid. On October 28 hundreds of armed rebels marched to Place d'Armes and riots broke out in New Orleans. Captain Aubry wnd the Spanish and loyal French garrison was arrested and escorted to the Volante, the flagship packet boat on which he had arrived in the colony. Governor Ulloa and his pregnant wife were also arrested and taken to Volante. They were held there while the Superior Council voted on what should happen. R hey concluded that the Spanish governor and officials, and the French loyal to Spain must leave within three days. The Volante departed from New Orleans to Havana on 1 November. The Superior Council drew up the Memorial of the Planters and Merchants of Louisiana on the Revolt of October 29, 1768, a defense of their actions based on supposed tyrannical rule and the commerce-destroying policies of the Spanish crown. While the Paris elite supported the Superior Council's actions, the French court did not. Many officials refused to see the delegates from Louisiana at all, and none of them ever returned to the colony. The colony fell into extreme economic turmoil, with the elites unchecked. On July 6, 1769 the Irish-born Spanish general Alejandro O'Reilly, who fought for the Catholic armies of Austria, France, and Spain against the armies of the European Protestant kingdoms, sailed to Louisiana with 23 ships, loaded with 46 cannons, 150,000 pesos, and almost 2,100 soldiers. This Spanish fleet was headed by Governor Ulloa's Volante, which now served as O'Reilly's flagship. They reached La Balize on July 21. There, O'Reilly landed Francisco Bouligny, and sent a message upstream to New Orleans, arriving there on the evening of July 24. General O'Reilly was met by a crowd. The following morning, Captain Aubrey assembled the people of the city, formally announcing the arrival of a Spanish armada of ships commanded by General O'Reilly, whose reputation was well known to them. The rebels surrendered, laying down their arms. On July 27, General O'Reilly had a meeting on Volante with three leaders of the conspiracy, La Frénière, Pierre Marquis and Joseph Milhet. Out of fear, La Frénière declared their profound respect for the Spanish king and noted that no blood had been shed in the rebellion. A debatable statement that most US historians agree with. They blamed Governor Ulloa's "subversion of the privileges assures by the act of cession" for making the rebellion necessary. General O'Reilly's reply was succinct: "Gentlemen, it is not possible for me to judge things without first finding out about the prior circumstances." He pledged that he would hold a thorough investigation, and that "seditious people" would be brought to justice. General O'Reilly's fleet arrived in New Orleans after several weeks of recon quest. sailing upstream to the other settlements to announces the official claim by Spain of the settlement.
General O'Reilly disembarked on August 18, having previously met with captain Aubrey to tell him that he wished to hold the ceremony of taking formal possession of Louisiana as soon as he arrived. A cannon shot announced the beginning of the spectacle, which included the disembarking of all of General O'Reilly's troops, which included 90 cavalrymen. Captain Aubrey read out the transfer orders from the kings of France and Spain in French, and gave the keys to the city's gates to Governor O'Reilly. The French flag was formally lowered and the Spanish flag raised, and artillery and musket fire rang out, while French and Spanish soldiers cried "Long live the Kings!." The ceremony concluded with a Te Deum in the Church of St. Louis, followed by Mass. The next morning, August 19, general O'Reilly requested of captain Aubrey a full account of the rebellion, providing the names of the ring-leaders and their deeds, and the authors of the 'Memorial of the Planters and Merchants'. This he gave to General O'Reilly on the following day. On the morning of the 21st, after reading Aubrey's document, General O'Reilly arrested the leaders of the rebellion. General O"Reilly accused them of treason and they gave up their swords and were escorted away. Because of the many family and commercial connections between the conspirators and the rest of New Orleans' elites and merchants, there was much trepidation among concerning what would happen to them. General O'Reilly put them at ease by telling them that he wanted to administer "precise justice", and that they had nothing to fear. He posted an amnesty proclamation on the 22nd, and another on the 24th telling free inhabitants of Louisiana to come to his residence on the 26th to swear loyalty to the Spanish crown. The trial itself began shortly after the conspirators were arrested, and did not conclude until October 24. Each one had an advocate appointed for them, even Joseph Villeré, who had died, because a finding of guilty could affect the disposition of his estate. A royal prosecutor who had come with the fleet conducted the proceedings. The defendants argued that they could not be tried under Spanish law, because Ulloa had never formally received possession of the colony, an argument which they lost. The result of the trial was finding of sedition and treason for all the defendants. General O'Reilly handed down his sentence a few days after the end of the trial. Five of the accused — La Frénière, Marquis, Joseph Milhet, Pierre Caresse, and Jean-Baptiste de Noyan — were sentenced to death on October 25 and were executed by firing squad on October 26; this would also have been Villeré's fate if he had not died. Foucault, who was a French official, was sent back to France, where he was interrogated and then given an indefinite prison sentence, of which he served two years. Five other plotters were sent to prison in Cuba, one for life, two for 10 years, and the rest for 6 years. All of the property of the condemned men — except for their dowries — was confiscated. Twenty-one other conspirators were banished from Louisiana, although one, an aging man, was allowed to live out the rest of his life in New Orleans. One month after the executions, general O'Reilly promulgated new laws for the colony, known as O'Reilly's Code. It combined the Castilian laws of Spain, "Seven-Part Code,” but left in place colloquial French legal procedures which were consistent with Spanish law. The administrative and judicial systems were overhauled, and the courts were decentralized, putting local justices in place and abolishing the Superior Council, the members of which were largely responsible for the rebellion. It was replaced by the Cabildo, a council which was used throughout Spanish America. General O'Reilly improved relations with the Native Americans in the area, including giving full citizenship and rights to catholic natives and free blacks. He also allowed native and free blacks to enter the milita with equal pay and rights as French. He eliminated forts that existed only to Protect fur traders and smugglers, focusing more on settlements. In order to stabilize the economy, he placed price controls on staple goods, reformed trade practices, and made sure that the government was adequately funded. General O’Reilly’s had been chosen to crush the rebellion, punish its organizers, and install an order in Louisiana. In just six months he accomplished all three, left Louisiana a set of laws and institutions that served the colony well for decades. At the beginning of US rule in Louisiana, a Creole elite reasserting their French identity would idolize the rebels of 1768 as patriotic French martyrs by naming the alleged site of their execution in New Orleans “Frenchmen Street” the street still retains the name. The five are depicted on a frieze on the front of the Louisiana State Capital exterior.
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