Her estate was capably administered by her mother, Louise Denys de la Ronde, referenced as "a superbly competent businesswoman who had greatly increased the inheritance since Almonester's death.

Having failed, despite his concerted efforts over more than two decades, to gain possession of Micaela's entire inheritance, her father-in-law, Baron de Pontalba, eventually shot her four times at point-blank range with a pair of dueling pistols, and then committed suicide.

Despite that Christina Vella, in the introduction to her Pulitzer Prize-nominated biography, Intimate Enemies, describes Micaela's mother as "a poor French Creole, famed for marrying her father;"[7][page needed] Louise was, in reality, a highly regarded beauty from a very wealthy family of no little import whose marriage had been arranged to extend a powerful alliance with Almonester.

Prior to his death, her father had commissioned architect Gilberto Guillemard to design and construct the St. Louis Cathedral, the Presbytere and the Cabildo, all of which line one side of Place d'Armes.

The bride being seven years older than the groom was widely exaggerated, garnering much scorn from the local population, who showed their displeasure by conducting a riotous charivari that lasted for three days and nights, and featured effigies of her new bridegroom and dead husband in his coffin.

[12] Micaela was educated, along with other Creole daughters of the French and Spanish elite, by the nuns at the old Ursuline Convent on la Rue Conde, now Chartres Street.

According to Micaela's biographer, Christina Vella, the de Pontalbas had made the proposition to her mother by letter, having regarded a matrimonial tie between the two families as a "business merger that would transfer the Almonester wealth into their hands".

[5] The prospective groom duly arrived in Louisiana with his mother, Jeanne Françoise le Breton des Chapelles Delfau de Pontalba, and after an acquaintance of just three weeks he and Micaela were married.

Indicative of her high social rank amongst the Creole community, Micaela was given away at the wedding ceremony by nobleman and second cousin Bernard de Marigny, acting as a representative of Marshall Ney, the trusted military commander of Emperor Napoleon I.

They arrived in July 1812 and the couple took up residence with Célestin's family at Mont-l'Évêque, the moated, medieval de Pontalba chateau outside Senlis which was about 50 miles from Paris.

Her mother, Louise Castillon, went to live in a rented house in Paris before she set about astutely buying up property in the city including a home on the Place Vendôme.

Her father-in-law, Baron Joseph Delfau de Pontalba, who had served as an officer in the French and Spanish armies, was greedy and unstable, and over the years proceeded to make Micaela's life extremely unhappy and intolerable.

[17] The $40,000 in cash plus jewelry that Micaela brought to Célestin as her dowry, which had been the sum agreed upon when the marriage contract was drawn up, represented only one-quarter of her Almonester inheritance; the remaining three-quarters was retained and grown larger by Louise.

[18] The old baron, intent upon seizing the vast Almonester fortune, had forced Micaela into signing a general Power of Attorney giving her husband control over her assets, rents, and capital, both dotal and as heir of her father's estate.

[19] In the early 1820s, to escape the tyranny of her father-in-law, Micaela persuaded Célestin to set up his own household in Paris, and the couple and their children moved into one of his father's homes on Rue du Houssaie, close to her mother's residence.

The de Pontalbas furiously demanded that she sign over all of her New Orleans property to them, in exchange for her being allowed to assume control of her mother's Paris houses.

Also taking the opportunity to travel, Madame de Pontalba stopped in Washington DC where President Andrew Jackson sent his carriage and secretary of state Martin Van Buren to bring her to the White House as his guest.

[22] The decisive Night Attack had also been fought next door, on the plantation grounds of his half-brother, Micaela's Uncle, Colonel Pierre Denys de La Ronde (1762 - 1824), which was also mostly ruined, having afterward been commandeered by the invading British as a field hospital.

[6] In frustration, she took her children and returned to Paris, where she began a series of lawsuits to obtain a separation from Célestin; these initial attempts were not successful, due to the strict French marriage laws of the era.

[24] Despite her injuries, Micaela made an attempt to escape her father-in-law and outside the door she fell into the arms of her maid who had rushed up the stairs upon hearing the first gunshot.

[6] With some of the money her mother had willed her, she commissioned noted architect Louis Visconti to construct a mansion on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris which she used to host an endless, lavish succession of balls and soirées.

[9] French Quarter noted historian Sally Reeves adds, "Contemporaries called her persistent, bright-eyed, intelligent, vivacious, prompt, shrewd and business like.

Male historians characterized the Baroness as strong-willed, imperious, penurious, self-indulgent and vacillating, while her female biographer uncovered a life of affliction and resilience.

[33] The following year after obtaining an agreement from the city for a 20-year tax exemption, she personally designed and commissioned the construction of the beautiful red-brick town houses forming two sides of Place d'Armes which are today known as the Pontalba Buildings.