CHAMP-D'ASILE. - L'HÉRITIER (Louis-François)]. Le Champ-d'as - Lot 13

CHAMP-D'ASILE. - L'HÉRITIER (Louis-François)]. Le Champ-d'asile, tableau topographique et historique du Texas, contenant des détails sur le sol, le climat et les productions de cette contrée ; des documens authentiques sur l'organisation de la colonie des réfugiés français ; des notices sur ses principaux fondateurs ; des extraits de leurs proclamations et autres actes publics : suivi de lettres écrites par des colons à quelques de leurs compatriotes. Paris, Ladvocat, 1819. Small in-8, viii-247-(one blank) pp. in ornate brown half-calf (Loutrel). ORIGINAL EDITION, RARE, published "for the benefit of the refugees" of the Champ-d'asile. A PROPAGANDA TOOL DESIGNED TO RAISE FUNDS AND RECRUIT COLONISTS AND SOLDIERS. Louis-François L'Héritier recounts the history of these "refugees" in Texas, detailing the composition of their group, with biographical notes on Marshal Grouchy, Generals Charles and Henri Lallemand and General Antoine Rigau. It also explains the organization of the camp, based on what are presented as testimonials from officers of the Champ-d'asile. OFFERING AN IDYLLIC PICTURE OF TEXAS. Claiming to have received his information from a French missionary who had lived in San Antonio, Louis-François L'Héritier describes the Champ-d'asile region from a number of angles: geography, natural history (botany, zoology, mineralogy), ethnology (numerous details on the Indian population), and the presence of Spanish and American frontiersmen. MILITARY HIJACKING OF A CIVILIAN COLONIAL ENTERPRISE AUTHORIZED BY THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. In New Orleans, where French immigrants for a variety of reasons converged, the idea was born of collectively establishing an agricultural colony dedicated to the cultivation of vines and olives. After a promotional campaign in a French-language newspaper, L'Abeille de La Nouvelle-Orléans, a colonial company was founded (The Vine and Olive Colony) whose shareholders included a hundred or so Bonapartists and revolutionaries who had left France after Waterloo, around two hundred refugees from the revolution in Saint-Domingue, and a hundred or so modest people who had emigrated for economic reasons. The society was initially chaired by General Lefebvre-Desnouettes, former commander of the Imperial Guard's light cavalry, and supported by other prominent exiles including Marshal Emmanuel de Grouchy, Generals Henri and Charles Lallemand (other Guard officers) and the regicide Conventionnel Joseph Lakanal. After a few months of prospecting, land was selected in Alabama. The Society's vice-president, the merchant William Lee, a former U.S. consul in Bordeaux and a supporter of the Empire, activated his contacts in Washington and obtained political support from Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe and Henry Clay: in February 1817, a Congressional decree ceded the lands in question to the Colonial Society on very favorable terms, with purchasers given 14 years to develop them before paying, and at an extremely low price. Charles Lallemand, who had succeeded General Lefebvre-Desnouettes, was put in charge of distributing the lots. In the autumn of 1817, however, this adventurous general began organizing a military expedition against Spanish Texas, recruiting from society and claiming to have the support of the American government: by December 1817, he found himself at the head of a small group of around 100 men, French and European veterans of Napoleonic armies, with his brother Henri Lallemand and general Antoine Rigau as lieutenants. He raised funds in a dubious manner by getting his supporters to sell their land at a discount to the colonial company's largest shareholders, who in turn helped finance the venture. Charles Lallemand, whose motives were in fact unclear, reversed his military aims and claimed to be forming an auxiliary troop for the Spaniards. The expedition was launched by sea, reached Galveston Island off the Texas coast, where the French privateer and pirate Jean Lafitte was master, and then, with his help, settled on land south of the disputed neutral strip of land between Louisiana and Mexico, near the Trinity River. To attract new funds and men, he organized an opinion campaign presenting his military camp as an "asylum field" for refugees who had fled Europe for reasons of political persecution: the French- and English-speaking American press was solicited, as were English newspapers and the liberal French press, including Benjamin Constant's La Minerve - a few fam