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Liberté, Égalité, Dieu: A History of L'Etat Libre de Louisiane
Part One: A Fire on the Bayou


Plantation of Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent, Some Miles West of Nouvelle-Orléans, Louisiane

Night of October 24, 1768

Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent emptied and refilled his pipe, lighting it with a small length of wood drawn from the nearby fireplace. He carefully avoided showing any reaction to the proposal he had just been given. Across the simple carven wooden table, Joseph Villeré shifted uneasily from foot to foot. It was a simple power play, one that Maxent had learned years before in the French army. As a young recruit, he had a drill sergeant who, rather than screaming and shouting as most did, simply made sure that he seemed at ease and comfortable in any room he was in, and that those under his command did not. It had bred jealousy and dislike, true, but also a sort of respect that was hard-won by louder men.

With a sigh, Maxent banished his thoughts and looked up at Villeré. The two had known each other for years, since Maxent's time in the army, when Villeré had simply been an indentured servant laboring in the fields outside Nouvelle-Orléans. As long as they had known each other, the younger Villeré had been an upstanding man of strong morals, if a bit flighty when confronted with true violence. If it was anyone else, Maxent would have dismissed them out of hand and defied the arrogant merchants of the Crescent City. But it was not anyone else.

He took a few puffs from his pipe, letting the awkward silence draw out a couple of moments longer. Finally, he looked up through shaded eyes. "Yes, Villeré. I have never been much for revolutions or revolutionaries, and I despise traitors. But I am loyal to France, and Frenchmen, not to Spain and its intolerable policies. There will never be room in this free land for Ulloa(1) or any other Spanish cur." Villeré sagged in relief, and lit his own pipe. The rest of the night was consumed with planning and discussion and it was only as he saw the sun rise through bleary eyes that Maxent realized that there was no turning back now. (2)

Fort St. Jean Baptiste, west of Nachitoches

June 20, 1769

The stream of refugees had started before O'Reilly had even crossed the invisible border into Louisiane. Since Ulloa had been evicted from La Balize(3), Louisiane had enjoyed a strange sort of independence. Repeated envoys had been sent to the French crown, asking for a reassertion of imperial authority over the ex-colony, but all had been denied, even when support by evidence of the massive, province-wide revolt that the Louisiane Rising had become(4).

As 1768 changed to 1769 and it had become increasingly clear that Louisiane was on its own, the tone in the Supreme Governing Council and the hall meetings held in Nouvelle-Orléans had shifted from one of monarchism to hesitant talks of a free republic. Though Maxent, now Commandant-General of Nachitoches and Pierre Laclede, his business partner and the founder of St. Louis, had now shifted their argument to one in favor of an independent kingdom, the vast majority of the Council and indeed the populace favored a republic.

Some had feared Maxent would lead a coup to establish himself as monarch, something made seemingly more likely by his fiery and vitriolic speeches in the Cabildo(5), but Pierre Marquis, Commandant-General of Nouvelle-Orléans and the original commander of the militia, had privately given assurances that he would staunchly defend the new state were it to come to that. Besides, the republicans, though they were intensely divided on what the final republic would look like, had a much more efficient propaganda machine than even the wealthy Maxent could not match in the person of Nicolas Chauvin de Lafreniere.

Lafreniere had been the Attorney General under the French and Spanish both, and had remained so in the transitional government. He was a brilliant writer and amateur philosopher who fancied himself the heir to Rousseau and Paoli(6). He had recruited a hardworking corps of pamphleteers who worked around the clock to fill Nouvelle-Orléans with revolutionary fire, and a nascent messenger service that ran out the pamphlets to the northern and western villages. Before long, his efforts had led to a continual stream of recruits to the Légion de Louisiane(7), which had raised the militia force to approximately twelve hundred men, buttressed by several hundred native auxiliaries from the Nachitoches, Dakota, and Osage who had formally aligned themselves with the rebels(8).

He was a golden goose, Maxent thought sourly to himself as he watched the refugees pouring into Fort St Jean Baptiste. "And it's only due to his own foolish politics that he's not my golden goose." Maxent muttered to himself, causing a strange look from the blond Quebecois to his left. Captain Jean Matisse had emigrated from the now-British colony some years before, and had joined the colonial militia with nary a thought, having been a soldier all his life. His talent had caused him to rise high, and now he was ostensibly in command of the one hundred-odd men defending Louisiane's westernmost military outpost. Maxent waved a hand, dismissing both his incessant thoughts and Matisse's concerns. "Worries plaguing me like swamp-flies--it's nothing, captain. Listen. You won't be able to feed these poor souls fleeing from O'Reilly, if it comes to a siege. Send them east to Nachitoches when they're rested. I'll make sure they have temporary housing. We can't abandon our own in these times of strife." Matisse, clearly suppressing an eye-roll at the last statement, nodded reluctantly and began shouting orders to his men. Maxent, though annoyed at his subordinate, mounted his horse and began heading off, his bodyguards flanking him.

He sighed as he passed through the narrow gate; these walls would barely hold in a storm, much less a cannon barrage. Even with the best of luck, the fort would hold for naught but a week; he was sure of it.

The Cabildo, Nouvelle-Orléans

Night of July 15, 1769

Pierre Marquis leaned over a faded map of Louisiane, topped here and there with black and white chess pieces representing Freestater(9) and Spanish positions respectively. The middle-aged man had a hardened, sunburnt look at odds with his perfectly powdered wig and finely-embroidered clothes. He looked like a peasant dressed up as a nobleman, Maxent thought, somewhat unkindly. Marquis had been the force behind the initial organization of the revolt, and had, with his drill sergeant gusto, shouted the rest of the Council into fighting O'Reilly rather than simply submitting to the governor, as some had wanted to do. Despite his appearance, he was a formidable man, and a respectably wealthy one as well.

"The Spaniards took Fort St. Jean Baptiste two weeks ago, as I'm sure you're all aware. What you may not be aware of is that O'Reilly has immediately moved upon Nachitoches, leaving only a token garrison in the fort. Although the town is overpopulated at the moment, it can hold out indefinitely; the river makes it impossible for the Spanish to starve it out, while the good tribesmen nearby(10) have done an admirable job harassing their lines. This, then, presents an opportunity."

Marquis offered a rare grin, showing off a mouth full of holes, a legacy of a soldier's life. Maxent was already skeptical. Marquis was hardly a strategist; he was of too low breeding for such a thing(11). Marquis continued. "I can take a few hundred of the militia around through the bayou and retake the fort. If we do that, O'Reilly will have lost access to his supply lines and will be forced to retreat either towards harsher territory to the north or turn around and face us. If he does so, you, Maxent, can assault their rear with your men and surround them entirely."

Despite himself, Maxent was nodding along. Spain would pay for their arrogance in Louisiane.

Notes
(1) Ulloa was the first actually Spanish governor of Spanish Louisiana, replacing local French control. He was also, interestingly enough, a noted scientist.
(2) This is our POD. IOTL, Maxent refused to join the rebels and was arrested as a result, spending most of the revolt imprisoned in New Orleans.
(3) One of Ulloa's several faux pas during his time as governor was deciding to rule from La Balize instead of New Orleans, painfully insulting the growing creole merchant class that dominated politics and the economy.
(4) As IOTL, the French refuse to help the revolt, but not as IOTL, Louisiane is much, much more united and rebellious, with the northern and western villages joining the rebels.
(5) The Cabildo was the seat of Spanish government in New Orleans and ITTL the seat of the rebel government (which, by the way, is still technically ruled by the colonial government, the Supreme Governing Council. There will be a new constitution later). It burned down IOTL in 1778, and was rebuilt in a much more lavish style.
(6) Pasquale Paoli, the leader of the Corsican revolt that established a free Republic in the 1750s (which would fall in 1769 coincidentally), served as something of an inspiration for later republican revolutionaries, including the US's founding fathers and ITTL Louisiane.
(7) The Legion of Louisiana, the army of the revolutionary state.
(8) Unlike IOTL, where only the Nachitoches, and then only some of them, supported the rebels. With most of their domestic trading partners joining the rebels ITTL, more tribes have joined, and form a significant part of Louisiane's fighting force, and will be instrumental in the later history of the state.
(9) The "popular" name of the rebel state is the Free State of Louisiana (in English), hence Freestater.
(10) i.e. the Nachitoches. I will say, and this is a bit of a spoiler, this government will have a much more friendly relationship with natives than the US (which may or may not exist ITTL) ;) .
(11) Would like to say just to make sure no one gets confused that by no means do Maxent's opinions represent my own in any way.

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Figured I might as well just post the timeline I talked about in my interest thread and see if people like it. I've got how the war will go mapped out, as well as immediately postwar, and some ideas beyond that already!

Please do comment and critique. :)
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