Around the Place d'Armes in those days of the city's youth, gathered that singular mosaic of humanity whose presence marked the first years of Europeanized Louisiana, where, as it were in a sort of villegiatura, and as if suddenly dropped from the clouds, Bienville and his officers of the Infantry of the Marine, cadets, most of them, of noble families of France, alternated their time in combating reptiles and the insects of the locality, and discussing the freshest chroniques scandaleuses of Versailles-the latest eccentricity of Monsieur the Regent, the last adventure of Mme. la Duchesse or of Mademoiselle, his daughters, the newest conquest of Richelieu, brought to them by the most recent arrival from the port of Orient in France.

Though the Place d'Armes (for in this sketch of its associations I shall give it its French Colonial name) be the heart of the ancient city, it is a quiet spot, lying in quiet precincts, measurably apart from the ebb and flow of the city's newer and busier life. An iron railing incloses it; at its back, overlooking it, is the Cathedral, with the old Cabildo, and its sister structure, of Spanish days, flanking it on either side. The streets on its northern and southern sides are occupied by rows of massively built brick houses the one row a counterpart of the other-erected many years ago by the owner of the property, the Baronne de Pontalba, who was the daughter and heiress of the former proprietor, Don Andres Almonaster, a Spaniard and resident of the city in the last century. Its serpentine and circular walks, amply furnished with iron benches, are covered with broken shells of the mussel species; along its four sides grow the wild orange-trees of Louisiana, their branches heavy, under the balmy February sun, with their fruit of tawny gold, while other tropical trees-the lemon, the fig, the palmetto and the banana-cast their shade on the greensward or blend it with that of evergreens of dense foliage cut into rounded tops. In parterres, symmetrically arranged, flowers and shrubbery and rare plants beautify the spot; and in the center of the Place, with an oblong railing surrounding it, rises an equestrian statue, done in bronze, of Andrew Jackson, the man whose memory New Orleans delights to honor.

Once the Place d'Armes looked out freely on the bosom of the river, with its shipping; but of late years a railroad shed has intervened to obstruct the view. The lounger or the wayfarer passes through the Place from the Rue de Chartres, in the direction of " down-town," to the first of the three or four structures fronting the levee, which constitute the old French Market, famous among the city's antiquities. It was to the site of these rambling markets, built on massive pillars, that one hundred and sixty years ago John Law's Germans were accustomed to come, floating down the river in their pirogues, on the Friday evenings of each week, from their

vegetable farms, a score or so of miles above the city, bringing with them
vegetables, fruit, poultry and eggs, which they sold to the citizens, then
perhaps three or four hundred in number; and since that early day, remote
in the history of New Orleans, the ground has been occupied by the mar-
kets. As the years elapsed; as the settlement passed from its stage of
hamlet to the dignity of a town, the water-mocassin was gradually ban-
ished from the square to take up its abode in company with malefactors
and fugitives from the municipal laws, in the tangled wilderness of weeds
and grasses in the almost houseless streets, and the deep-throated bull-frog
-the noisy ouararang of Louisiana swamps-was expelled from his embar-
rassing lurking-place under the windows of the little church. Then, by
degrees,
woof and
shore, in

the Place d'Armes began to weave for itself the checkered
web of a history that is full of surprises. Along the
its front, were tied the ships of the India Company, and
the King's frigates coming from the Orient at
intervals the former with their freightage of
merchandise and provisions, with missionaries
and Ursuline nuns, and women dispatched from
France by the Company as wives for those of
the soldiers and colonists who might choose to
marry them. It was here that these women,
some eight hundred or more, arriving at
various periods during six or eight
years, were landed, with all the male
population waiting on tiptoe of
expectation to receive them.
In 1730, along the entire
city front a levee (built in
1727 by Perier, the Gov-
ernor) protected the
Place and the town
from the annual
overflows of the
river. A carpeting
of grass covered the
Place, and in the
inclosure, as in a
new Campus Mar-
tius, the troops were
drilled or passed in

review on gala days. When the Natchez Indians, protesting against the insolence of the French commandant of the post, fell upon the officers and garrison of Fort Rosalie, slaying them and hundreds of Frenchmen, with their families and slaves, the news was brought to New Orleans in hot haste by a terrified survivor. Then, fearful of a general conspiracy and of the total destruction of the European population by the allied Indian nations of Louisiana, Perier called the city and the neighboring plantations, up and down the coast, to arms. In the Place d'Armes that day were throbbing hearts and pallid cheeks, the beat of drums, the tread of soldiers, the lamentations of a people. Muskets and ammunition were distributed among the planters and citizens wherewith to defend themselves from the anticipated attack, and from the Place all men capable of bearing arms were marched to the ramparts. But the shadow of danger passed away, the cloud of apprehension was dispelled; and the last scene of the Massacre of Saint André was enacted in the Place when, some months after the event, the population of the city and the convent of the Ursuline nuns received to their care and hospitality the French women and orphans who had survived the slaughter and subsequently had been surrendered to the authorities by the Natchez. Then the Place d'Armes resumed its old. peaceful condition, broken only, as year was joined to year, by the bustle of the parade; the sighs of funeral trains; the whispered vows of lovers; the laughter and talk of the promenade; the joyous shouts of children; the chanting of religious processions which found their beginning and their ending in the church opposite; the groans of malefactors condemned to be broken on the wheel or to be sawed to death inclosed between two planks, or of martyrs to principle shot to appease the vengeance of a military tyrant.

Chief of all the tragedies which the Place d' Armes witnessed in those years when men expiated there their crimes or fell beneath the blow of political or military wrath, was the execution of five gallant and countryloving Creoles for the offense of having endeavored to array their fellowcitizens against what they deemed the tyranny of the Spanish Governor, Ulloa, whom they expelled from the city. It was on the 26th of October, 1769, a date memorable in the history of the Colony, that the soil of the Place d'Armes absorbed the blood of these patriots who had proclaimed the "atrocious doctrines," as O'Reilly claimed them to be, that "Liberty is the mother of commerce and population; without liberty there are but few virtues."

Count don Alexander O'Reilly was a man of blended Irish and Spanish. blood. He was sent by Spain, when Ulloa was compelled to leave the

city, and it was from the Place d'Armes, where everything began and ended, that he took his departure, as the executor of her vengeance. He

came to the recalcitrant French city with twenty-four ships containing twenty-six hundred Spanish soldiers, landing in front of the Place d'Armes on the 18th of August. On the side of the square nearest the church, the

French troops were drawn up, Aubry, the representative of France, at their head, and surrounding the Square, in the streets, at windows, and on housetops, were the people, looking on in silence, agitated by conflicting feelings of doubt, fear and suspense. With the new Governor came a glittering following of officers, and after them the shining array of Spanish infantry and artillery, whose massed ranks filled up the three other sides of the inclosure. The solemnity and importance of the occasion was emphasized by the discharge of musketry and of cannon, to which the cannon on the ships answered. In response to Aubry's address of welcome, O'Reilly made a fair reply; the tiger's claw was still concealed in its velvet sheath. The gala was then transferred to the church, where was sung the Te Deum amid imposing religious ceremonies. Two months from that day the vengeance that O'Reilly had come to inflict was executed. Again was the Place d'Armes invaded by a throng of soldiers and citizens. O'Reilly had straightened out the tangles, and five of the citizens who had organized the opposition to Spanish rule were now led out to die. Amid profound silence, the books and documents relating to the movement were burnt; amid tears and suppressed utterances the public crier went the round of the Square proclaiming the following decree: "Whereas Nicholas Chauvin de Lafrénière, Pierre Marquis, Joseph Millet, Jean Baptiste de Noyan and Pierre Caresse have been found guilty; they are ordered to be shot for high treason committed against his Most Catholic Majesty the King of Spain." A grenadier advanced to bind the eyes of the condemned men. Lafrénière put him aside with his hand, rejecting the proffered mercy. The crier came forward and announced that General O'Reilly spared M. de Noyan in consideration of his youth; but M. de Noyan declared that as he had fought with his friends so would he die with them. Then an officer gave the order to a platoon of dragoons to fire, and with the execution of this order the tragedy was over.

Thirty-three years later the Place d'Armes was the scene of the most important events in its history. Spain transferred Louisiana to France on the 1st of October, 1800. Three years elapsed, however, before France took even the preliminary steps to reclaim her old colony. In the year 1803, while Laussat, the French Colonial Prefect, was waiting in New Orleans for the arrival of General Victor, with troops, to take possession in the name of France, news reached him that Louisiana had been ceded to the United States by Napoleon Bonaparte. The treaty by which this cession was accomplished was signed at Paris on April 30, 1803. "This accession of territory," remarked Napoleon, "strengthens forever the power of the United States, and I have just given to England a maritime rival that will, sooner or later, humble her pride."