In 1648 the Spaniards of Santo Domingo made another fruitless attempt to expel the buccaneers; but in 1653 the Spanish governor, the Count of Penalva, collected a force which caught the island unawares and was strong enough to overawe the inhabitants, who were permitted to leave, though abandoning all their property. The Spaniards left a garrison but the persistent Frenchmen returned and drove it out. In 1664 the French West India Company took possession, established a garrison, and appointed as governor an energetic man, D'Ogeron, under whom the country rapidly advanced in prosperity and commerce. With the idea of encouraging permanent settlement, D'Ogeron had women brought over from the slums of Paris and portioned out as wives to the rude colonists. The rapidly increasing population caused settlements to be made on the Haitian mainland, and the city of Port-de-Paix was founded on a beautiful bay opposite Tortuga. The city flourished to such an extent and the advantages of settlement on the mainland were so superior that the settlers of Tortuga gradually left the smaller island and settled along the Haitian coast. Within twenty years Tortuga was practically deserted and it so continues to this day. A better class of people now arrived from France. Families were brought in from Anjou and Brittany, and the French settlements continued to spread all the way down the western coast of the island, the French settlement at Samana being withdrawn. Slaves were imported from Africa, and in 1678 a rising took place among them, which was easily put down. In 1684 the French government formally sent out commissioners to provide for the regular government of the colony, and churches and courts of justice were established. The Spanish inhabitants of Santo Domingo meanwhile made attack after attack on the French, but the Spanish colony was in such reduced straits that no extended efforts were possible. Where the French were repulsed the Spaniards were too few numerically to hold the territory and it was soon reoccupied. Angered at the repeated aggressions, D'Ogeron sent out an expedition under Delisle in 1673, which landed at Puerto Plata and marched inland to Santiago. The inhabitants fled to La Vega and only avoided the burning of their city by paying a ransom of 25,000 pesos, whereupon Delisle returned to the French colony. D'Ogeron at this time proposed to the French government the conquest of the entire island for France, and would probably have attempted to carry out this plan, had not his death occurred shortly after.