Reports circulating about the disorders caused by this conflict between the French population and the Spanish authorities frightened the owners of merchant vessels that had been in the habit of trading at the colony and its commerce with them was for the time being almost suspended. The ordinance was rescinded, and Ulloa retired from New Orleans to the Balise. He had to be contented to establish Spanish rule at that spot and opposite Natchez at the river Iberville. Perhaps a man of different disposition would have been able to reconcile the colonists to the foreign régime. But Ulloa did not possess the amiable qualities that characterized the Governor of Cuba, Buccarelli. He had to learn, as did Lord Albemarle during his brief administration of Havana, that it was not an easy task to conquer the hearts of a people and win them over to the rule of foreign authorities. According to Bancroft this irritating state of things continued for more than two years. He writes (p. 123): "But the arbitrary and passionate conduct of Ulloa, the depreciation of the currency with the prospect of its becoming an almost total loss, the disputes respecting the expenses incurred since the cession of 1762, the interruption of commerce, a captious ordinance which made a private monopoly of the traffic with the Indians, uncertainty of jurisdiction and allegiance, agitated the colony from one end to the other. It was proposed to make of New Orleans a republic, like Amsterdam or Venice, with a legislative body of forty men, and a single executive. The people of the country parishes crowded in a mass into the city; joined those of New Orleans; and formed a numerous assembly, in which Lafreniere, John Milhet, Joseph Milhet, and the lawyer Doucet were conspicuous. 'Why,' said they, 'should the two sovereigns form agreements which can have no result but our misery, without advantage to either?' On the twenty-fifth of October, they adopted an address to the superior council, written by Lafreniere and Caresse, rehearsing their griefs; and in their petition of rights, they claimed freedom of commerce with the ports of France and America, and the expulsion of Ulloa from the colony."