The French have begun dreaming of building a great empire by linking the Saint Lawrence and Mississippi basins and bottling up the English on the east coast.

This presents diplomatic problems because the Gulf coast is claimed, but not occupied, by Spain.

Montreal-born Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville is selected in 1698 to lead an expedition to establish a French colony at the mouth of the Mississippi River.

His younger brother Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, who has earned military honors during three years of naval campaigns against the English, accompanies him.

Louis Phélypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain, the minister for naval affairs and colonies, has assigned Iberville the task of relocating the mouth of the Mississippi, which La Salle had failed to find on his last voyage, and to build a fort which will block the river to other nations.

Departing Brest with four ships in October 1698, Iberville sails along the Florida coast.

He seeks to establish a fortified post at Pensacola, but the Spaniards, having arrived just before Iberville’s ships sail into the harbor, have established their own garrison.

Iberville is thus forced down the coast to Massacre (modern Dauphin) Island in Biloxi Bay.