We will be seeing the coronation of Britain’s Charles III this Saturday, May 6, so this a good time to acknowledge the tenure of another Charles III who had a major impact on Louisiana, especially New Orleans and the Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas.
First, we need to understand that the name “Charles” is a Germanic word that has variants in different languages. In Spanish Charles is known as “Carlos,” as in Carlos III who ruled Spain from 1759 to 1788, during an era when monarchs had near absolute power and the New World to the west provided many opportunities. Located with an opening to the Atlantic Ocean, Spain was in a position to be powerful, rich and to shape history.
Quick now, which country controlled New Orleans at the time of the American revolution? It wasn’t the United States because it did not exist but it was Spain, which was in full support of the revolution, anything that would drive the British away.
Carlos' Governor in Louisiana was Benardo de Galvez, one of many characters to be a source of New Orleans’ future street names.
In 1779, Galvez chased British occupiers out of Baton Rouge thereby freeing the Mississippi River for the American cause.
During Carlos’ reign, recruits from the Spanish-owned Canary Island were sent to be part of a Louisiana territory regiment. (Men who were married and tall were preferred; the former with the hope that they would relocate their families to the New World, the latter probably because they had more of a military presence. Basketball had not yet been invented.) That regiment would also be used to capture Mobile and Pensacola.
Though New Orleans was a distant outpost, overall Spain’s stabilizing control was good for the city; but there was a devastating setback.
A major fire on Good Friday 1788 destroyed much of the city, displacing thousands. Illness spread in the aftermath. The Spanish rebuilding efforts, led by Esteban Miró, preserved the city.
In the aftermath of the fire’s destruction, two of the most famous Spanish structures, the Cabildo (which housed the seat of government) and the Presbytere were built between 1795 and 1799.
Here began one of the major, but nevertheless colorful, contradictions of the Vieux Carre. Though it is popularly called, “The French Quarter” most of the significant architecture is Spanish.
Carlos III died in Madrid also in 1788. As with other historic Spaniards, a New Orleans street would honor the king. Given the Catholic European tradition of adding the title “Saint” to revered figures, it was the grandest of all – St. Charles Ave. (Not overlooked was Galvez after whom St. Bernard Parish would be named as well as the coastal Texas town of Galveston.)
Responding to Carlos’s death, Cabildo members in New Orleans planned a lavish state funeral. According to music writer Jason Berry, that funeral provided “the first account of musicians parading to honor the dead in New Orleans, a tradition that would eventually grow.”
As the music of street funerals in the future would suggest, it might be said of Carlos III’s empire, “Oh didn’t it ramble.”
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