Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans Read Online Free PDF

time, Law became the advisor to the regent, and with his aid and encouragement, started his campaign to populate the Louisiana colony in record time and to make himself a fortune in the bargain.
    His fraudulent scheme called for the combining of the Bank of France and the Company of the West, an arrangement that he successfully managed. The Mississippi Bubble, a name later given his plan, still incites the envy of high-pressure salesmen everywhere. The plan was 1) to induce noblemen and rich middle class businessmen to buy shares of stock in Louisiana land and also to purchase land for them and 2) to entice (or to force) the poor of Europe to become engagés, hired field hands for the Company or for the concessionaires. Shareholders would prosper, Law promised, when the gold, silver, diamonds, and pearls were found in the New World. With nothing but gaudy promises to back his “shares,” Law found himself inundated by the demands of speculators. He could not print the shares fast enough.
    In 1716, Law had signed a contract with the government of France, (with the blessing of Philippe), allowing him to establish a private bank, which would provide him with all the credit he needed. Then, in 1717, he replaced the governor at the age of thirty-seven.
    A brilliant, ruthless sales campaign followed, unprecedented in Europe. Posters and handbills flooded France, Germany, and Switzerland, offering free land, provisions, and transportation to those who would volunteer to immigrate to the New World. They were told that the soil of Louisiana bore two crops a year without cultivation and that the Indians so adored the white man that they would not let him labor, but took the burden from him. In addition, they were promised the imaginary gold mines, the pearl fisheries, as well as a delightful climate where there was no disease or old age.
    Many paupers who strayed into Paris or prisoners who would not volunteer were kidnapped and shipped under guard to fill the emptiness of Louisiana. Prostitutes and the inmates of jails and hospitals were all sent to populate the colony and to start the flow of wealth to the stockholders.
    Alexander Franz, in his Die Kolonisation des Mississippitales Bis Zum Ausgange Der Französischen Herrschaft: Eine Kolonialhistorische Studie ” (1906), wrote:
    The company even kept a whole regiment of archers which cleaned Paris of its rabble and adventurers, and received for this a fixed salary and 100 livres a head . . . Five thousand people are said to have disappeared from Paris in April, 1721, alone.
    Prisoners were set free in Paris in September, 1721 . . . under the condition that they would marry the prostitutes and go with them to Louisiana. The newly married couples were chained together and thus dragged to the port of embarkation.
    Meanwhile, Bienville set his men to work clearing forests and erecting sheds and barracks at the site of the Indian portage, which he had selected back in 1699 on his first visit to Louisiana with Iberville. The portage was roughly where Esplanade Avenue is today. It is a trail from the river to Bayou St. John (Bienville had named the bayou in honor of his patron saint). The trail led through cypress swamps teeming with snakes and alligators near a fortified Indian village called Tchoutchouma . It was at this point, where the river comes closest to the lake, that Bienville had decided to build his city. This “beautiful crescent in the river” would be the site of his new trading post.
    He wanted the spot for two reasons. First, it was the half-way point by water between Natchez (Fort Rosalie) and Mobile (Fort Louis de la Mobile). Secondly, it was a spot “safe from Hurricanes and Tidal Waves,” according to an easy account of the city.
    Bienville had to argue for the site with Pierre Le Blond de La Tour, the royal engineer; with Adrian de Pauger , assistant engineer; and with John Law , president of the Company. They all thought it was absurd to select a site in the