viceroy of Mexico, nephew of the secretary of state and president of the Council of the Indies, he had all the prestige of family influence behind him, and although but twenty-one years of age, he had the genius of the young for happy indiscretions. He it was who, profiting by the war between Great Britain and her colonies, not only aided the latter secretly, by allowing supplies of ammunition and food for them to pass through New Orleans, but even allowed the use of the river for American incursions into British territory. And when the longed-for opportunity came; a declaration of war between Spain and England, he it was who, burying all thought of O'Reilly in the memory of the brave, assembled the citizens of New Orleans in the public square, made them a speech, drawn sword in one hand, and royal commission in the other, and so aroused their martial ardour that he gained a little army of volunteers from them, by popular acclamation, whites, blacks, and Indians enlisting. And with them he conquered the river country as far as Natchez, swept Lake Pontchartrain of English vessels, captured Mobile by a brilliant coup de main, and closed the campaign by a last triumph at Pensacola . . . driving the English everywhere before him—and fixing forever his own reputation and the military prestige of the Louisianians.
It is an episode for Calliope, not Clio, and the muse of the lyre has not disdained it. Fortunately she had a votary in Louisiana, Julian Poydras de Lalande, a young French Protestant, who emigrated from St. Domingo to Louisiana, in time only to witness its transfer to Spain, sealed with the blood of the five patriots. He exemplified the dictum in the time of Law, that for a Frenchman to make a fortune in Louisiana, he must
