If
a few Frenchmen and their allies could have had their way, Texas
might have become part of a new Napoleonic empire. Two of Napoleon’s generals
seem to have had this in mind when they founded a colony called Champ D’Asile
(Place of Asylum) at a site about three miles up the Trinity River near the present-day
town of Liberty.
The
official version of the colony’s founding had it that Champ D’Asile would be a
place of asylum for officers and refugees from Napoleon’s army and empire after
the Battle of Waterloo ended Napoloen’s reign. One of Napoleon’s generals, Charles
Francois Antoine Lallemand, led the colonists into Texas
under a banner of agriculture. They were to cultivate “vines (grapes) and olives”
on that red Pineywoods dirt, a dubious proposition at best.
The real intention
seems to have been to establish a French military outpost in Spanish Texas that
might help Napoleon’s brother, Joseph Bonaparte, take Mexico, rescue his dictator-brother
from exile in St. Helena and then take over North America. This kind of plan –
taking over the world or at least a large part of it – was typical of the Bonaparte
boys. Joseph Bonaparte also had some experience as a ruler of Spain, courtesy
of his brother, and he was in the United States at the time.
A Gen. Antoine
Rigaud brought about 150 people to Galveston
early in 1818. The French settlers hung out with pirate Jean
Laffite and his brother Pierre until Lallemand showed up with a motley assortment
of more troops, including Spanish, Polish and Americans. Laffite’s
men led the colonists up the Trinity to their new home away from home in what
turned out to be a “neutral” territory.
Texas
was under Spanish rule at the time but an eastern portion was located in a neutral
territory that wasn’t well-defined in the Louisiana Purchase. (The man who would
eventually claim the state, Sam
Houston, was in Alabama fighting with Andrew Jackson against the Creeks at
the time.)
Both the Spanish and the United States had three concerns about
the new French settlement: location, location and location. Both countries wanted
the territory but had agreed to leave it alone until the boundaries of the Louisiana
Purchase could be more firmly established. Then here come the French, just barging
into the place like they owned it.
By
any material reckoning, the French fared poorly at Champ D’Asile. They spent a
lot more time with military maneuvers than they did with agriculture. No vines.
No olives. Nor had they anticipated the sultry heat of an East
Texas summer, or the mosquitoes. Though ostensibly an agricultural settlement,
the people at Champ D’Asile basically set about starving themselves to death.
Some drowned. Others poisoned themselves trying to live off the land. At least
a couple were captured and eaten by the Karankawa.
Perhaps a bigger mistake
was made in trusting a pirate. Jean Laffite provided
his fellow Frenchmen with provisions and boats but, ever loyal to the highest
bidder, he probably also reported their activities to the Spanish. Whether he
told them or not, the Spanish found out and ordered Mexican troops to find Champ
D’Asile and destroy it. Since the settlers were already in the process of destroying
the settlement without help from the Spanish or anybody else, Lallemand ordered
the settlement abandoned.
Most of the people at Champ D’Asile ended up
back at Galveston
as unwanted guests of Laffite. The colonists who
survived an 1818 hurricane at Galveston
soon scattered and went their own not-so-merry ways. And that was the end of Champ
D’Asile as its unfortunate inhabitants knew it.
The United States responded
to the incident by ordering Jean Laffite and his
men to pack their bags and sail away. The nettlesome “neutral territory” where
Champ D’Asile had been located was removed in an 1819 treaty and the Sabine
River was designated as the boundary between Texas
and Louisiana.
Meanwhile,
back in France, Champ D’Asile became a symbol of French resistance to the monarchy.
Artists opposed to King Louis XVIII portrayed the French vets as noble farmer-soldiers
whose peaceful pursuits were destroyed by the evil Spanish, who sent troops to
Texas to kill them.
Several French novels
were written about the failed experiment, most notably “Heroine du Texas.” Though
written from the vantage point of Paris, it might have been the first novel ever
set in Texas.
Less than two decades later,
perhaps swayed by the misty but unrealistic accounts of the patriots at Champ
D’Asile, the French became the first European power to officially recognize the
new Republic of Texas.
© Clay
Coppedge
"Letters from
Central Texas" March
1 , 2010 Column |
