ed to stakes, and an explosion of
musketry soon announced to the few inhabitants who remained in
the city, that their friends were no more.

"Posterity, the judge of men in power, will doom this act to
public execration. No necessity demanded, no policy justified
it. Ulloa's conduct had provoked the measures to which the
inhabitants had resorted. During nearly two years, he had
haunted the province as a phantom of dubious authority. The
efforts of the colonists, to prevent the transfer of their
natal soil to a foreign prince, originated in their attachment
to their own, and the Catholic king ought to have beheld in
their conduct a pledge of their future devotion to himself.
They had but lately seen their country severed, and a part of
it added to the dominion of Great Britain; they had bewailed
their separation from their friends and kindred; and were
afterwards to be alienated, without their consent, and
subjected to a foreign yoke. If the indiscretion of a few of
them needed an apology, the common misfortune afforded it.

"A few weeks afterwards, the proceedings against the six
remaining prisoners were brought to a close. One witness only
deposing against any of them, and circumstances corroborating
the testimony, Boisblanc was condemned to imprisonment for
life; Doucet, Mazent, John Milhet, Petit, and Poupet, were
condemned to imprisonment for various terms of years. All were
transported to Havana, and cast into the dungeons of the Moro
Castle."

O'Reilly was not satisfied with this bloody vengeance on the individuals
who had incurred his resentment and offended his pride. The "Superior
council" in a body must be prostrated by his power.

"A proclamation of O'Reilly, on the twenty-first of November,
announced to them that the evidence received during the late
trials, having furnished full proof of the part the superior
council had in the revolt during the two preceding years, and
of the influence it had exerted in encouraging the leaders,
instead of using its best endeavours to keep the people in the
fidelity and subordination they owed to the sovereign, it had
become necessary to abolish that tribunal, and to establish, in
Louisiana, that form of government and mode of administering
justice prescribed by the laws of Spain, which had long