in the Creek War, developed her Gulf port. Cotton was king, and it made her queen. Even in 1818, the year before Alabama became a State, Mobile had established her Bank of Mobile, and primitive steamboats, such as the Harriet and Cotton Plant, built much on the model of Fulton's Clermont, were already plying the rivers.
Everything was rude, as in frontier towns, but here could be found all kinds of people. Bertrand, Comte Clausel, the distinguished opponent of Wellington in Spain, lived for a number of years after 1816 on the bay, near present Arlington, the possible site of Bienville's villa. Here he wrote his Exposé Justicatif, explaining that defection to Napoleon during the Hundred Days for which the Bourbons condemned him to death; and here he raised vegetables and carried them to market in his own wagon. Through Mobile passed those other Napoleonic exiles who, in 1818, ascended the Bigbee to found the unfortunate Vine and Olive company, in what was called for them Marengo County. Near Clausel lived Lakanal, the regicide, the creator of the educational system of revolutionary France. He was for a short time president of the
