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Having lost Canada (New France), King Louis XV of France proposed to King Charles III of Spain that France should give Spain "the country known as Louisiana, as well as New Orleans and the island in which the city is situated." [1] Charles ratified the treaty on November 13 and Louis ratified it on November 23, 1762.
De Soto claiming the Mississippi, as depicted in the United States Capitol rotunda. Louisiana (Spanish: La Luisiana, [la lwiˈsjana]), [1] or the Province of Louisiana (Provincia de La Luisiana), was a province of New Spain from 1762 to 1801 primarily located in the center of North America encompassing the western basin of the Mississippi River plus New Orleans.
In 1800, under duress from Napoleon of France, Spain ceded Louisiana and the island of New Orleans back to France, which promised to return them to Spain should France ever relinquish them. This cession did not include West Florida. In 1803, France then sold Louisiana and New Orleans to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. [3]
According to Monroe, France never dismembered Louisiana while it was in her possession (as he regarded November 3, 1762, as the termination date of French possession). After 1783 Spain reunited West Florida to Louisiana, thus completing the province as France possessed it, with the exception of those portions controlled by the United States.
In December 1801, 30,000 veteran French troops landed on Saint-Domingue; shortly after, Spain confirmed the transfer of Louisiana to France. [ 13 ] The presence of French troops in the Caribbean caused great concern in the US, but by October 1802, it was clear the expedition was a catastrophic failure; its leader, General Charles Leclerc died ...
France also ceded the eastern half of French Louisiana to Britain; that is, the area from the Mississippi River to the Appalachian Mountains. [8] France had already secretly given Louisiana to Spain three months earlier in the Treaty of Fontainebleau, but Spain did not take possession until 1769. Spain ceded Florida to Britain. [6]
In 1800, France's Napoleon Bonaparte reacquired Louisiana from Spain in the Treaty of San Ildefonso, an arrangement kept secret for some two years. Documents have revealed that he harbored secret ambitions to reconstruct a large colonial empire in the Americas.
The Spanish assault on French Florida began as part of imperial Spain's geopolitical strategy of developing colonies in the New World to protect its claimed territories against incursions by other European powers. From the early 16th century, the French had historic claims to some of the lands in the New World that the Spanish called La Florida.