The first harvest was very abundant; with the second it was possible to extend the cultivation prodigiously, but what favored multiplication, most singularly, was the fact that two years afterward all the cocoa trees of the country, which were the resource and occupation of the people, were uprooted and totally destroyed by horrible tempests accompanied by an inundation which submerged all the land where these trees were planted, land which was at once made into coffee plantations by the natives. These did marvelously and enabled us to send plants to Santo Domingo, Guadeloupe, and other adjacent islands, where since that time they have been cultivated with the greatest success. By 1777 there were 18,791,680 coffee trees in Martinique. De Clieu was born in Anglequeville-sur-Saane, Seine-Inferieure (Normandy), in 1686 or 1688.[19] In 1705 he was a ship's ensign; in 1718 he became a chevalier of St. Louis; in 1720 he was made a captain of infantry; in 1726, a major of infantry; in 1733 he was a ship's lieutenant; in 1737 he became governor of Guadeloupe; in 1746 he was a ship's captain; in 1750 he was made honorary commander of the order of St. Louis; in 1752 he retired with a pension of 6000 francs; in 1753 he re-entered the naval service; in 1760 he again retired with a pension of 2000 francs. In 1746 de Clieu, having returned to France, was presented to Louis XV by the minister of marine, Rouille de Jour, as "a distinguished officer to whom the colonies, as well as France itself, and commerce generally, are indebted for the cultivation of coffee." Reports to the king in 1752 and 1759 recall his having carried the first coffee plant to Martinique, and that he had ever been distinguished for his zeal and disinterestedness. In the _Mercure de France_, December, 1774, was the following death notice: Gabriel d'Erchigny de Clieu, former Ship's Captain and Honorary Commander of the Royal and Military Order of Saint Louis, died in Paris on the 30th of November in the 88th year of his age. A notice of his death appeared also in the _Gazette de France_ for December 5, 1774, a rare honor in both cases; and it has been said that at this time his praise was again on every lip. One French historian, Sidney Daney,[20] records that de Clieu died in poverty at St. Pierre at the age of 97; but this must be an error, although it does not anywhere appear that at his death he was possessed of much, if any, means. Daney says: This generous man received as his sole recompense for a noble deed the satisfaction of seeing this plant for whose preservation he had shown such devotion, prosper throughout the Antilles. The illustrious de Clieu is among those to whom Martinique owes a brilliant reparation.