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It has been written by conscientious historians that commercial interests, not loyalty to French traditions, were the real cause of this struggle of 1768 Be that as it may, its leaders were found in the Superior Council, a body of governors older even than New Orleans, of which the patriotic Lafrénière was then the presiding officer, and whose membership contained such representative citizens as Foucault, Jean and Joseph Milhet, Caresse, Petit, Poupet, a prominent lawyer Marquis, a Swiss captain, with Bathasar de Masan, Hardy de Boisblanc, and Joseph Villere, planters of the upper Mississippi, as well as two nephews of the great Bienville, Charles de Noyan, a young ex-captain of cavalry, lately er brother, a lieutenant in the navy

On the twenty-seventh of October, 1768, every French toward New Orleans That sauns at the Tehoupitoulas Gate--the upper river corner--were spiked; while yet farther away, along a narrow road bordering the great strea pieces, muskets, even axes, the Arcadians, and the aroused inhabitants of the Ger down to unite with the iray of earlythey pushed past the spiked and useless cannon, and, with De Noyan and Villere at their head, forced the other gates and noisily paraded the streets under the fleur de lis The people rose en reet the tide of popular enthusiasate, which slipped her cables, and came to anchor far out in the stream Two days later, hurried no doubt by deovernor set sail for the West Indies, leaving the fair province under control of as little better than a headless e listlessness of the Southern nature reasserted itself, and frothen their position--no government was established, no basis of credit effected, no diplomatic relations were assumed They had battled for results like men, yet were content to play with them like children For more than seven htful as their sunny summer-ti co by the report that Spaniards were at the ned on every hand; scarcely a hundred men rallied to defend the town; yet no one fled The Spanish fleet consisted of twenty-four vessels For more than three weeks they felt their uncertain way around the bends of the Mississippi, and on the eighteenth of August, 1769, furled their canvas before the silent batteries Firing a single gun froate "Santa Maria," Don Alexandro O'Reilly, accompanied by twenty-six hundred chosen Spanish troops and fifty pieces of artillery, landed, a forht his soldiers patrolled the streets, and his cannon swept the river front, while not a Frenchman ventured to stray beyond the doorway of his home