by Paul A. Greenberg

The air on early spring nights in New Orleans is usually soft and calm, but on March 21, 1788 the wind blew continually from the south, causing precariously-hanging gas lamps to dance, their flames flickering madly through the night.

The city was quiet, save for a few old wooden-slatted gates banging in the wind, or the occasional whinny of a horse frightened by the night winds. Had it not been for the 1:30 a.m. cry of an old Irish beggar from the corner of Chartres and Toulouse Streets, much of the city's population may have vanished in raging, unmerciful flames that ultimately engulfed and destroyed 850 buildings.

"FIRE!" the beggar screamed in desperation. With that, Don Vincente Jose Nunez, paymaster of the army, was roused from a fitful sleep to find his home, the source of the fire, hopelessly burning. The flames, fanned by the relentless southern night wind, spread wildly through the city.

Women took to the street in their night clothes, fairly dragging their children in all directions. Men banded together in an effort to save what little they could of their possessions. But there were no safe havens that night in 1788, as the city crumbled in a swirl of deep orange flames and black smoke to the shrill and frantic shrieks of the displaced masses. The fire was exceptionally greedy and cruel, leaving virtually nothing standing.

"Starting with crude huts built on the swampy soil and an almost comically tender levee built to stave off flooding from the river, New Orleans was born."

New Orleans rebuilt itself into something grander and sturdier than the citizens of 1788 could ever have imagined. New Orleans has always been about fortitude, determination and true grit.

Exactly 60 years before the momentous night fire in New Orleans, Sieur de Bienville, a French Canadian, and Scottish Minister of Finance for France John Law had chosen the location together to create a new French city, one that would be named for the new Regent of France, Duc d'Orleans. Today's French Quarter is the city they mapped out with a triangle and a T-square.

Critics scoffed at Bienville and Law, saying their new city would simply sink into the swampy undergrounds or ultimately wash away.

If only the naysayers could see that it has done neither

Starting with crude huts built on the swampy soil and an almost comically tender levee built to stave off flooding from the river, New Orleans was born. No one could know how grand and internationally-renowned this muddy, damp, mosquito-infested swamp-city would become. No one could possibly predict that within less than a century New Orleans would become a glamorous and prosperous center of culture and commerce.

It would be French Louisiana, Bienville reasoned, with determined and pioneering settlers dotting the landscape.

But no one could have envisioned the great melting pot that New Orleans would rapidly become. When Bienville asked the French government to assist by providing settlers, France gladly sent swarms of citizens from its lowest rungs of society, including assorted misfits and criminals.

For his part, Law traveled throughout the European continent speaking of the new city as a place of the future, an agricultural and commercial wonderland, a place for royalty. In response to his persuasive marketing, the aristocracy of France began to arrive in New Orleans, along with a tough working class of farmers, merchants, soldiers and servants.

The land surrounding the city was painstakingly cleared by German farmers and slaves from Africa and French Caribbean locations.

The early history of New Orleans is one of unyielding determination and human suffering, wrought by hurricanes, disease, and floods that fairly spat at the levee and gushed through the new settlement.

Eighteenth-century New Orleans is simply a human drama peppered with natural disasters, gritty human persistence in the face of constant adversity and ultimately a French city being given away to Spain. Louis XV of France gave Louisiana to his cousin, Charles III of Spain, once France's treasury was depleted.

So it was that following the fire of 1788 that consumed the city, New Orleans was rebuilt with a Spanish architectural flair that it is so known for today. In 1800, the city was transferred back to France, and remained a French city until Napoleon sold it to the U.S. in 1803 for the unprecedented sum of $15 million.

What began as a two-man dream in a most unlikely spot blossomed into one of the world's great centers of commerce in the 1800's, with cotton and sugar cane plantations fueling the economy. The river that gently curved around the city became a commercial hub of international proportions.

Elegant hotels and restaurants accommodated the ever-increasing masses who arrived by ship from all corners of the world. Bordellos and gambling houses emerged and life in New Orleans took on a joyous air.

The atmosphere was a little naughty, a bit over the edge of cultured society and highly inspirational to poets, lovers and entrepreneurs, all of whom vied for a little piece of its magic.

Most amazing of all, by 1860, New Orleans was the wealthiest city in the United States.

But the city fell victim to its own geography, with hurricanes and floods claiming both architecture and people over the decades. Yellow fever killed a reported 8,000 New Orleanians in just one summer.

With the Civil War came occupation by Federal troops, and seemingly endless years of reconstruction characterized by rioting, social upheaval, corruption and chaos. With an economy that had been largely dependent upon slavery, New Orleans shifted into a less prosperous and flamboyant lifestyle.

Of course, flamboyance is a relative term.

The 1900s saw the birth of jazz, and once New Orleans began to make a joyful noise, it has never stopped. Jazz, it seems, is contagious.

Young Louis Armstrong used to make drugstore deliveries to the famed Storyville district, just to linger and soak up the jazz music that poured from every club and bordello, only to be shooed away by the great madams of New Orleans.

The jubilant sounds of the City that Care Forgot became a symphony of the human spirit over the years. Every major entertainer graced the stages of New Orleans, from Billie Holiday to Kate Smith to The Rolling Stones. Sweet noise is a local necessity.

As in every other major American city, life has progressed from the backbreaking, clip-clop agricultural age to the iron and steel industrial age to the currently wired age of information. But while other cities count megabytes, old New Orleans still loves to party till dawn, have stiff coffee by the meandering riverbank and wile away the hours in a city that legislators, royalty and armies alike have all tried vainly to tame.

New Orleans, of course, will never acquiesce. Instead it will continue to dance in the streets, find its way by the moonbeam over the river, and forever endure.

They say it's a forever kind of a place. They say that the hundreds of years of mixing cultures, cuisines and international traditions has brought forth a smooth mixture of mysticism, style and an uncommon grace.

This article was written by Paul A. Greenberg, freelance writer who contributes to Meeting News, Fodor's and other travel publications