Francisco Luis Hector, Baron de Carondelet was a governor of Louisiana and West Florida.
Background
Francisco Luis Hector, Baron de Carondelet, was born about 1748 at Noyelles, Flanders. He belonged to a distinguished Burgundian family, originally from Poligny and Dole, which had played an important part in the political and artistic life of Burgundy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He was the son of Juan Luis Nicolas de Carondelet, Baron de Carondelet y de Noyelles, Viscount hereditary of Langle, Lord of Hernue, Hayne-Saint-Pierre, la Hestre and Brietre, and of Rosa Plunkett of Dunsany (daughter of Edward Plunkett, Baron Dunsany in the Irish peerage, and of Maria de Alen).
Career
Despite his family connections and personal merit, his administration was most unfortunate for Spain, for the province, and for Carondelet himself. His task was one of extreme difficulty, and he was not fitted for it by either temperament or training.
The Baron devoted himself to public works, built a canal that gave New Orleans an outlet to the Gulf by way of Lake Pontchartrain, reformed the police and instituted a street lighting system in the capital, strove to ameliorate the condition of the slaves, risked his career to protect the commerce of Louisiana against the unwise policy of the Spanish Court, and labored incessantly to repel the rising tide of American frontiersmen and to extend Spain's dominion over the whole of the Mississippi Valley. The pressure of the American frontiersmen and their government, the schemes of Genet, G. R. Clark, and William Blount, the restiveness of the French Creoles, the menace of a servile insurrection, the vagaries of powerful Indian tribes and their British traders, the incompetent meddling of a distant court--in these were problems to tax a master mind; and Carondelet was a man of quite ordinary mentality. He came to his border province, from the governorship of San Salvador in Guatemala, utterly ignorant of the English language and of local conditions.
Accompanied by his wife and daughter, he arrived at New Orleans in the twenty-ninth year of his service of the king, and on December 30, 1791, he took over the government and intendancy of Louisiana and West Florida. One of the first problems that received his attention was that of Indian relations. He succeeded in capturing the interloper, W. A. Bowles, in persuading Alexander McGillivray to renounce his connection with the United States, in promoting the interests of the Anglo-Spanish fur traders, Panton, Leslie & Company, among the Southern Indians, in forming a defensive alliance with the four Southern tribes (October 1793), and in instigating the Indians to attack the American frontiersmen. He revived the separatist intrigue with James Wilkinson and other American frontiersmen, built a fleet of gunboats on the Mississippi, and extended Spain's military frontier by establishing additional posts within the territory in dispute with the United States. He made land grants to the victims of Gallipolis and to the Baron de Bastrop, and otherwise sought to stimulate the growth of Louisiana. His very successes, however, only embarrassed his government, for they were a heavy tax on the disordered finances of Spain, and offended the United States at a critical moment. His domestic policy was equally unfortunate. Arbitrary arrests alienated the Creoles, and lax enforcement of the commercial restrictions led to his removal from the intendancy in October 1793. After the treaty of San Lorenzo was signed (1795), he had some influence in delaying its execution, and continued the Kentucky intrigue with unabated vigor. On August 5, 1797, he closed his term of office as governor of Louisiana, having been named president of the Royal Audiencia and governor general of Quito. On June 20, 1798, he was ordered to take possession of this post, and on February 20, 1799, he reported that he had done so. He was granted release from the position on May 11, 1807, but died on August 10, 1807, while still discharging his duties. He was buried in the vault of St. Peter of the Cathedral Church of the city of Quito (according to documents now in the private archives of the Duke of Bailen).
Achievements
Personality
The Baron was a man of energy, moderately enlightened, conscientious, tenacious, and brave, but he was slow to learn, loath to take the advice of his better informed subordinates, and unable to discriminate between the false and the true, the fantastic and the probable, in the many wild rumors that came to his ears from all quarters of America and Europe.
Connections
He married a woman from Aragón whose family was very influential at the royal court, Maria Concepción Castaños y Aragorri.