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Nine years afterward came the high water of 1711 which nearly washed the settlement away.
Bienville decided to move again, this time to the present site of Mobile. He set up his new headquarters there in the following year, 1712.
Our French settlers were having trouble with the channel to their harbor at Isle Dauphin, south of Mobile, which was filling up. To add to their trouble came the triple alliance by which France, England and Holland patched up a treaty, precipitating war with Spain.
Bienville now had as good reason to leave Mobile for Biloxi as he had had in 1702 to leave Biloxi for Mobile. But first he slipped over to Pensacola and captured it from his erstwhile friends. This was in 1719. A Spanish fleet came up and ran him out but the Spanish could not hold it and Bienville recaptured Pensacola in September, holding it until after peace was signed in 1720. Bienville returned Pensacola to the Spanish in 1723, and they began borrowing from each other again.
He had established his capital at Old Biloxi in November of 1719. But as the location was marshy f,nd the water bad and many of his people had died there he and the Council of Commerce felt that for these and many other reasons the site of New Biloxi would be better and proceeded to move camp without even waiting for official sanction.
The spot selected was near the present light house. Here they moved in 1720.
Bienville did not mean to stay. Many years before questions of empire had arisen in his and his brother Iberville’s minds and command of the Mississippi river was seen to be necessary.
The Spanish were advancing from Texas; and in
1699	he had found an English sloop of war about seventy-five miles up the river, the commander of which he had succeeded in fooling into leaving. The spot where this occurred was thereafter known as English Turn.
As soon as he was permitted to do so, which was in 1718, he began the settlement of New Orleans. The location he selected was the nearest spot on the river by boat from Biloxi, almost due west through the Rigolets, Lake Pontchartrain and Bayou St. John. *Four years later Bienville left Biloxi. He made New Orleans the capital of the province of Louisiana in 1723.
Bienville had remained on the Coast for twenty-three years after having first seen the future site of the Crescent City.
Since that time Biloxi and New Orleans have been closely related. One notices today in Biloxi narrow streets and sidewalks and strange French names such as are found in the Vieux Carre (Old Rectangle) of New Orleans. Sailing vessels are still plying the old
*It seems remarkable that the site of New Orleans should have been determined chiefly because of its convenience to Biloxi.