This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

---

64	MISSISSIPPI:	THE	GENERAL BACKGROUND
crnor until March 1717. Approving the site of the New Orleans as the most favorable location for a great commercial center, he agitated for the removal of the capital to that point, though other influences favored Fort Rosalie. The opinion of Bienville prevailed; the village of New Orleans was laid out in 1717 or 1718, and in 1723 the seat of government was moved to the new location.
Despairing of making his Louisiana monopoly profitable, Crozat relinquished his charter to the King in August 1717. In that same year John Law, Scotch adventurer and financier living in France, originated his famous "Mississippi Scheme” to resuscitate French finances, then at low ebb because of the wars of Louis XIV. Louisiana was believed to abound in precious metals, and Law held that by developing the province money would flow into France. In 1717 the Compagnie des hides Occidentales, 'commonly known as the Mississippi Company, with Law as its director, was chartered and its shares were eagerly bought by the public. For the exclusive privilege of developing Louisiana, the company was obligated to introduce within 25 years 6,000 white colonists and 3,000 Negro slaves. As a result, in 1718 grants for settlement were made on the Yazoo River, on Bay St Louis, Pascagoula Bay, and at Natchez. In 1720 three hundred colonists settled at Natchez; and in the following year the same number, destined for the lands of Mme. de Chaumont, a court favorite, arrived at Pascagoula. In 1722 a company of Germans, settlers on John Law's grant on the Arkansas River, descended the river to a point near New Orleans, where they made a settlement.
In 1718 Law persuaded the Duke of Orleans, regent of France, to charter a national bank, which became the Banque Royale, with Law as director-general. When in 1719 the Compagnie des Indes absorbed the French East India Company, it marketed a large issue of shares which sold at enormous premiums. The Banque Royale, the National Bank, to keep pace with the astounding inflation of the company's stock, flooded the country with paper money. As the stock rose, paper currency to the face value of 2,700,000,000 livres went into circulation. But the expected flow of wealth from Louisiana into France did not materialize.
The French Government became more and more involved in the difficulties of the trading company, while Law gained increasing power over State finances. He controlled the mint, and his companies became the receivers-general of France. In March 1720 the Compagnie des Indes was merged with the national bank. A month later John Law, as its head, became comptroller-general of finances. Public confidence began to waver; shrewd financiers began to send their gold to Brussels and
AN OUTLINE OF FOUR CENTURIES	65
London. A run on the bank caused the government to issue an edict deflating both bank and company stock. Law sought to stave off disaster by forbidding the export of gold and silver, and by making the hoarding , of metallic currency a crime. But in July 1720, his great financial empire crumbled. The bank was compelled to stop payment, and Law fled from France. He died in Vienna in 1729.
With the collapse of the "Mississippi Bubble," followed by a devastating storm in the summer of 1723, began a series of troubles that eventually retarded the Louisiana colony. In 1726, Bienville was recalled to France and Perier, a harsh uncompromising character who lacked Bienville’s tact in dealing with the Indians, became commander-general of Louisiana. The pressure of the colonists on the Natchez Indians led to the massacre of the French garrison at Fort Rosalie on November 29, 1729. In retaliation, Perier virtually exterminated the Natchez tribe. In 1732, King George II of England extended British claims westward from the Carolina Colonies to the Mississippi River, including a part of Mississippi in the proprietary charter of Georgia. With British support, the warlike Chickasaw tribe blocked French expansion into northern Mississippi ; and in a series of wars against the French under the reinstated Bienville, this tribe successfully checked the rising fortunes of the colony. The repulse of the French at Ackia in 1736 was the turning point.
The intrigue of the British with the Chickasaw against the French was but one phase of the contest between France and Great Britain for sovereignty over the far-flung territory from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. In 1762, foreseeing defeat in her struggle with England, France ceded to Spain, New Orleans and all of the Louisiana territory west of the Mississippi; and the following year the Treaty of Paris awarded to England all of France’s territory east of the Mississippi and north of a little above Baton Rouge, Louisiana. George III thereupon supplanted Louis XV as the ruler of the valley.
The English genius for colonization, which had marked the development of the Atlantic seaboard, was demonstrated also in the settlement of the rich agricultural lands around Natchez. Fort Rosalie under Governor George Johnstone was rebuilt and renamed Panmure. Land grants to retired English army and navy officers, such as the Amos Ogden Mandamus on the Homochitto River (see Tour 3, Sec. b), were the spur to a migration of Protestants, land-loving settlers who contrasted greatly with the Catholic remnants of the French period. When the Thirteen Colonies revolted on the seaboard in 1776, British West Florida (including the Natchez District) remained loyal to the Crown. Its remoteness