were a number of Canadians who had served under
Iberville at Hudson Bay. The rest were largely of the sort who are
described by that officer as "beggars sent out to enrich themselves,"
and who expected the government to feed them while they looked for
pearls and gold mines. The paternal providence of Versailles, mindful of
their needs, sent them, in 1704, a gift of twenty marriageable girls,
described as "nurtured in virtue and piety, and accustomed to work."
Twenty-three more came in the next year from the same benignant source,
besides seventy-five soldiers, five priests, and two nuns. Food,
however, was not sent in proportion to the consumers; and as no crops
were raised in Louisiana, famine and pestilence followed, till the
starving colonists were forced to live on shell-fish picked up along the
shores.

Disorder and discord filled the land of promise. Nicolas de la Salle,
the _commissaire ordonnateur_, an official answering to the Canadian
intendant, wrote to the minister Ponchartrain that Iberville and his
brothers, Bienville and Chateauguay, were "thieves and knaves."[300] La
Vente, cure of Mobile, joined in the cry against Bienville, and stirred
soldiers and settlers to disaffection; but the bitterest accuser of that
truly valuable officer was the worthy matron who held the unenviable
post of directress of the "King's girls,"--that is, the young women sent
out as wives for the colonists. It seems that she had matrimonial views
for herself as well as for her charge; and she wrote to Ponchartrain
that Major Boisbriant, commander of the garrison, would certainly have
married her if Bienville had not interfered and dissuaded him. "It is
clear," she adds, "that M. de Bienville has not the qualities necessary
for governing the colony."[301]

Bienville was now chief in authority. Charges of peculation and other
offences poured in against him, and at last, though nothing was proved,
one De Muys was sent to succeed him, with orders to send him home a
prisoner if on examination the accusations should prove to be true. De
Muys died on the voyage. D'Artaguette, the new intendant, proceeded to
make the inquiry, but refused to tell Bienville the nature of the
charges against him, saying that he had orders not to do so.
Nevertheless, when he had finished his investigation he reported to the
minister that the accused was innocent; on which Nicolas de la Salle,
whom he had supplanted as intendant, wrote to Ponchartrain that
D