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Champ d'Asile ("Field of Asylum") was a short-lived settlement founded in
From the N.Y. Daily Advertiser
''Delaware Gazette and Peninsula Advertister'', p. 2, col. 4-5 (reprinted from July 29 issue of New York paper)
{{Authority control Liberty County, Texas
Champ d'Asile ("Field of Asylum") was a short-lived settlement founded in Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
in January 1818 by 20 French Bonapartist
Bonapartism (french: Bonapartisme) is the political ideology supervening from Napoleon Bonaparte and his followers and successors. The term was used to refer to people who hoped to restore the House of Bonaparte and its style of government. In thi ...
veterans of the Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...
from the Vine and Olive Colony
The Vine and Olive Colony was an effort by a group of French Bonapartists who, fearing for their lives after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Bourbon Restoration, attempted to establish an agricultural settlement growing wine grapes and olive ...
. The party was led by General Charles Lallemand
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was " ...
. Land was offered to French settlers on March 3, 1817, after a vote by the United States Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...
. Champ d'Asile was situated along the Trinity River and was abandoned in July of the same year.
Lallemand, a Bonapartist General, was accompanied by his brother, Baron Charles François Antoine Lallemand. The colony was to bring some military men for protection, and concentrate on agricultural work, cultivating grape
A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus '' Vitis''. Grapes are a non- climacteric type of fruit, generally occurring in clusters.
The cultivation of grapes began perhaps 8,000 years a ...
s and olives. 100 officers joined Lallemand, and around a quarter to a third of these were foreigners of the Grande Armée; the rest were French. Lallemand financed the project through land speculation. On December 17, 1817 150 of the would-be-settlers sailed from Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
for Galveston, Texas, where they arrived on January 14. Lallemand and the other colonists convened in , and on March 10 left for Galveston with 120 volunteers. They sailed up the Trinity River to Atascosito where they built two small forts. Mexican governor Antonio María Martínez
Antonio María Martínez (died 1823) was a colonel in the infantry regiment of Zamora and the last governor of Spanish Texas.
History
He was born in Andújar, province of Jaén, Spain. He entered military service on July 7, 1785, and had a dis ...
, having heard about this expedition, sent his own troops to San Marcos
San Marcos is the Spanish name of Saint Mark. It may also refer to:
Towns and cities Argentina
* San Marcos, Salta
Colombia
* San Marcos, Antioquia
* San Marcos, Sucre
Costa Rica
* San Marcos, Costa Rica (aka San Marcos de Tarrazú)
...
, wary of an attack. The colony was abandoned shortly afterwards.
Some of the colonists, including pirate Jean Laffite
Jean Lafitte ( – ) was a French pirate and privateer who operated in the Gulf of Mexico in the early 19th century. He and his older brother Pierre spelled their last name Laffite, but English language documents of the time used "Lafitte". Thi ...
and other mercenaries, had caused concern to settlers of New Spain. The ''Champ d'Asile'' was founded at a time when disputes over territory were increasing, and the Adams–Onís Treaty, which settled a border dispute between the United States and Spain, was signed in 1819. Furthermore, the Bourbon Restoration in France made the existence of a Bonapartist colony doubtful, as the Spanish Bourbons
The House of Bourbon (, also ; ) is a European dynasty of French origin, a branch of the Capetian dynasty, the royal House of France. Bourbon kings first ruled France and Navarre in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Spanis ...
held the Spanish crown. Despite Lallemand's assurances, rumours had circulated about his motives, and there was little evidence of agricultural work on the site, while construction of a fortress and manufacturing munitions had begun.(5 August 1818)From the N.Y. Daily Advertiser
''Delaware Gazette and Peninsula Advertister'', p. 2, col. 4-5 (reprinted from July 29 issue of New York paper)
References
External links
{{Authority control Liberty County, Texas