Under Louis XIV, the Sun King, his Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert oversaw both the construction of both Versailles and the preparation of a number of legal codes. With the 1685 Code Noir and the input of French planters in the Antilles, the revisers produced the Code Noir of 1724. In theory, it regulated slave operations in the French territories, prescribing laws to govern all interactions between white planters, white people, free black people, and the enslaved. Under this code, the enslaved had some rights and protections. In Lower Louisiana however, it was mostly ignored.
The Code Noir of 1685 (English Translation)
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/transcription-of-the-code-noir-the-black-code.htm
Article Five
We order all our subjects, whatever their rank and position, to observe faithfully Sunday and days of obligation. We forbid them to work or make their slaves work on said days from midnight, whether it is for the cultivation of the land or any other task, under penalty of arbitrary fines and punishment leveled against the masters as well as of confiscation of the slaves found working by our officials. The masters, however, will be allowed to send their slaves to market.
Article Six
We forbid our white subjects of both sexes to marry blacks under penalty of arbitrary punishment and fine. We forbid all priests and missionaries, secular or regular, as well as all ship chaplains, to perform such marriages. We also forbid our said white subjects, as well as the freed or free blacks, to cohabit with slaves. We decree that anyone who will have one or more children from such a union, as well as the masters who will have allowed the union, be condemned each to pay a 300 livres fine. If anyone is the master of the slave by whom he has had a child, we order that besides being fined, he be deprived of the slave and the children who will be given to the local hospital without being ever eligible for manumission. The present article, however, does not apply to a freed black or a free black, who was not married when he cohabited with his slave. He will marry, according to the forms prescribed by the Church, the said slave who will thus be freed as will be their children, thus freed and legitimatized.
Article Thirteen
We similarly forbid the slaves belonging to different masters to gather day or night under pretext of weddings, or any other pretext, be it on the place of their master or elsewhere, and even less on the highways or on remote roads, under penalty of corporal punishment which will not be less than the whip and branding with a fleur-de-lys. In case it happens frequently and in other aggravating circumstances, they will be liable to the death penalty at the discretion of the judges. We order all our subjects to pursue slaves violating this article, to arrest them and to bring them to jail even if they are not officials and if no writ has been issued against the said offender.
Article Fourteen
Masters who are convicted of having allowed or tolerated assemblies, made up of slaves other than their own, will be condemned in their own and private name, to make reparations for any damage done their neighbors on the occasion of the said assembly and to pay a thirty livres fine for their first offense and twice as much should they repeat the offense.
Article Fifteen
We forbid slaves to offer for sale at the markets, or to bring to private homes for the purpose of selling them, any kind of produce, even fruits, vegetables, firewood, grain or fodder for animals, or any kind of grain or other goods, clothes or used clothing, without the expressed permission of their master, permission given by a note or a recognized sign, under penalty of having the objects thus sold claimed, without any reimbursement, by the masters and of a six livres fine paid by the purchaser to the masters. This penalty applies to the sale of fruits, vegetables, firewood, fodder and grains. For the sale of merchandise, clothes or used clothing, we want the buyer to be fined fifteen hundred livres, with cost and damages, and we want them tried as thieves and receivers of stolen goods.
Article Sixteen
We want, for that Purpose, to have two persons appointed in each market by the officers of the Superior Council or the officers of the lower courts, to examine the produce and goods which will be brought by slaves as well as the notes or signs from their masters which they will carry.
Article Seventeen
We allow our subjects living in the region to seize the goods they will find the said slaves carrying when they do not have notes or recognized signs from their masters. The goods will be immediately restituted to the masters if their plantation is near the place where the slaves were apprehended If not, the goods will be immediately sent to the nearest storehouse of the company to be kept there until the masters are notified.
Article Eighteen
We want the officers of the Superior Council in Louisiana to send their opinion as to the amount of food and the type of clothing that masters should provide for their slaves, (the amount of food to be specified by the week, and the clothing by the year) so that we might order it done. In the meantime, we permit the said officers to regulate by decree the said food and clothing. We forbid the masters to give the slaves brandy instead of food and clothing.
Article Nineteen
We similarly forbid them to discharge their obligation to feed and care for their slaves by permitting them to work certain days of the week for their own account.
