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scribblemynameFrom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Le_Moyne_de_Bienville:
Bienville wrote to the Directors of the Company in 1717 that he had discovered a crescent bend in the Mississippi River which he felt was safe from tidal surges and hurricanes and proposed that the new capital of the colony be built there. Permission was granted, and Bienville set off in 1718 to start construction. By 1719, a sufficient number of huts and storage houses had been built that Bienville began moving supplies and troops from Mobile. Following disagreements with the chief engineer of the colony, Le Blond de la Tour, Bienville ordered an assistant engineer, Adrien de Pauger, to draw up plans for the new city in 1720. In 1721, Pauger drew up the eleven-by-seven block rectangle now known as the French Quarter or the Vieux Carre. After moving into his new home on the site of what is now the Custom House, Bienville named the new city "La Nouvelle-Orléans" in honor of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, the Prince Regent of France. New Orleans became the capital of French Louisiana by 1723, during Bienville's 3rd term.
In 1719, during the War of the Quadruple Alliance (1718–1720), Bienville had moved the capital of French Louisiana, from Mobile near the battlefront with Spanish Pensacola, back to Fort Maurepas (Old Biloxi).[5] However, due to shifting sand bars, the settlement was moved across Biloxi Bay to found New Biloxi (or Nouvelle-Biloxi or "Bilocci"), in 1719. After the move, Fort Maurepas was burned (in the French custom to avoid re-settlement by enemy forces). Also during 1719, the under-construction New Orleans had been entirely flooded (6 inches or higher), with the realization that higher ground or levees would be needed for the inland port of that Crescent City. The governing council wanted to keep the capital, on the Gulf of Mexico, at Biloxi. However, the sandy soil around Biloxi complicated agriculture, and storms also shifted sands into the Biloxi harbor, while the New Orleans site could be considered a deep-water port, closer to agricultural lands. Eventually, in June 1722, Bienville began moving the capital to New Orleans, completing the move in August 1722.[5] Year 1723 was the first full year with New Orleans as capital of French Louisiana.
On August 29, 2005, during Hurricane Katrina, Biloxi was entirely flooded mostly 30-ft (9-m) deep, while the inland New Orleans was partially flooded in only 70% of the city, rarely 7–10 ft (3 m) deep. Due to the elevation and nearby levees, Bienville's old French Quarter never flooded in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Instead, the city of Biloxi was devastated, with 3rd-floor levels being gutted and casino barges being pushed or rammed atop the 2nd floor of nearby hotels.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_New_Orleans:
French explorers, fur trappers and traders arrived in the area by the 1690s, some making settlements amid the Native American village of thatched huts along the bayou. By the end of the decade, the French made an encampment called "Port Bayou St. Jean" near the head of the bayou. They built a small fort "St. Jean" at the mouth of the bayou in 1701. These early European settlements are now within the limits of the city of New Orleans, though predating its official date of founding.
New Orleans was founded in 1718 by the French as Nouvelle-Orléans, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville. The site was selected because it was relatively high ground along the flood-prone banks of the lower Mississippi, and was adjacent to the trading route and portage between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain via Bayou St. John. From its founding, the French intended it to be an important colonial city. The city was named in honor of the then Regent of France, Philip II, Duke of Orléans. The priest-chronicler Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix described it in 1721 as a place of a hundred wretched hovels in a malarious wet thicket of willows and dwarf palmettos, infested by serpents and alligators; he seems to have been the first, however, to predict for it an imperial future. In 1722, Nouvelle-Orléans was made the capital of French Louisiana, replacing Biloxi in that role.
In September of that year, a hurricane struck the city, blowing most of the structures down. After this, the administrators enforced the grid pattern dictated by Bienville but hitherto previously mostly ignored by the colonists. This grid is still seen today in the streets of the city's "French Quarter" (see map).
Much of the population in early days was of the wildest and, in part, of the most undesirable character: deported galley slaves, trappers, gold-hunters and city scourings; and the governors' letters are full of complaints regarding the riffraff sent as soldiers as late as Kerlerec's administration (1753–1763).
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In 1795 and 1796, the sugar industry was first put upon a firm basis. The last twenty years of the 18th century were especially characterized by the growth of commerce on the Mississippi, and the development of those international interests, commercial and political, of which New Orleans was the center. Within the city, the Carondelet Canal, connecting the back of the city along the river levee with Lake Pontchartrain via Bayou St. John, opened in 1794, which was a boost to commerce.
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Through Pinckney's Treaty signed on October 27, 1795, Spain granted the United States "Right of Deposit" in New Orleans, allowing Americans to use the city's port facilities. In 1800 Spain and France signed the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso stipulating that Spain gave Louisiana back to France, though it had to remain under Spanish control as long as France wished to postpone the transfer of power.
In April 1803 Napoleon sold Louisiana (which then included portions of more than a dozen present-day states) to the U.S. in the Louisiana Purchase. A French prefect, Pierre Clément de Laussat, who had arrived in New Orleans on March 23, 1803, formally took control of Louisiana for France on November 30, only to hand it over to the U.S. on December 20. In the meantime he created New Orleans' first city council.
At the end of the colonial era, the city of New Orleans had a population of about 10,000 people.
The next dozen years were marked by the beginnings of self-government in city and state; by the excitement attending the Aaron Burr conspiracy (in the course of which, in 1806–1807, General James Wilkinson practically put New Orleans under martial law); by the immigration from Cuba of French planters; and by the American War of 1812. From early days it was noted for its cosmopolitan polyglot population and mixture of cultures. The city grew rapidly, with influxes of Americans, African, French and Creole French (people of French and African descent born in the Americas), many of the latter fleeing from the revolution in Haiti.
The Haitian Revolution of 1804 established the second republic in the Western Hemisphere and the first led by blacks. Haitian refugees, both white and free people of color (affranchis or gens de couleur libres), arrived in New Orleans, often bringing slaves with them. While Governor Claiborne and other officials wanted to keep out more free black men, French Creoles wanted to increase the French-speaking population. As more refugees were allowed in Louisiana, Haitian émigrés who had gone to Cuba also arrived. Nearly 90 percent of the new immigrants settled in New Orleans. The 1809 migration brought 2,731 whites; 3,102 free persons of African descent; and 3,226 enslaved refugees to the city, doubling its French-speaking population.[1] In addition, a 1809-1810 migration brought thousands of white francophone refugees from St. Domingue (deported by officials in Cuba in response to Bonapartist schemes in Spain).[2]
During the War of 1812 the British sent a force to try to conquer the city, but they were defeated by forces led by Andrew Jackson some miles down river from the city at Chalmette, Louisiana on January 8, 1815 (commonly known as the Battle of New Orleans). The city was attacked by a conjunct expedition of British naval and military forces from Halifax, Nova Scotia, and other points. The American government managed to obtain early information of the enterprise and prepared to meet it with forces (regular and militia) under the command of Maj.-Gen. Andrew Jackson. Privateers led by pirate Jean Lafitte were also recruited by Jackson for the battle. The British advance was made by way of Lake Borgne, and the troops landed at a fisherman's village on December 23, 1814, Major-General Sir E. Pakenham taking command there on the 25th. An immediate advance on the still insufficiently prepared defences of the Americans might have led to the capture of the city, but this was not attempted, and both sides remained inactive for some time awaiting reinforcements. At last in the early morning of January 8, 1815 (after the Treaty of Ghent had been signed, but before the news had reached across the Atlantic) a direct attack was made on the now strongly entrenched line of the defenders at Chalmette, near the Mississippi River. It failed disastrously with a loss of 2,000 out of 9,000 British troops engaged, among the dead being Pakenham and Major-General Gibbs. The expedition was soon afterwards abandoned and the troops embarked for England.
The population of the city doubled in the 1830s with an influx of settlers. A few newcomers to the city were friends of the Marquis de Lafayette and who had settled in the newly founded city of Tallahassee, Florida but due to legalities, lost their deeds. One new settler who was not displaced but chose to move to New Orleans to practice law was Prince Achille Murat, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. According to historian Paul Lachance, “the addition of white immigrants to the white creole population enabled French-speakers to remain a majority of the white population until almost 1830. If a substantial proportion of free persons of color and slaves had not also spoken French, however, the Gallic community would have become a minority of the total population as early as 1820.”[3] Large numbers of German and Irish immigrants began arriving at this time. The population of the city doubled in the 1830s and by 1840 New Orleans had become the wealthiest and third-most populous city in the nation.[4]
