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a CREOLE article
Cultures
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Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser May 25, 1999
Napoleon's soldiers had tough time getting to Louisiana
By Jim Bradshaw
When King Louis XVIII regained the throne after Napoleon Bonaparte's defeat at Waterloo, he proclaimed that there would be no pardon for men who had been closest to Napoleon.
In particular, the king named several high-ranking officers of Napoleon's army, but also took steps to deal with the common soldier, reducing them to all half pay - near near starvation wages. A law of amnesty was passed on Jan. 12, 1816, but it excluded high-ranking Napoleonic officers and all of Napoleon's relatives, and gave the king to months to exile anyone he thought had been to friendly to Napoleon or his cause. Giving the atmosphere, it is not surprising that there many takers when a charitable organization began to provide donations to veterans who wanted to leave France.
Because many of them had made war on most countries of Europe, the place of choice was the United States. A good number of them landed in Philadelphia, where they soon decided that they wanted to form settlement of their own. One of the soldiers, Col. Nicholas Paramentier, went to Washington and asked the federal government to give the ex-soldiers a piece of land. He lobbied well, and on March 3,1817, Congress approved the donation "four continuous townships, each six miles square, on vacant public lands lying in .... the Mississippi Territory" at the junction of the Black, Warrior, and the Tombigbee rivers, where the soldiers could settle and begin "cultivation of the vine and other vegetable production as may appear... reasonable"
Among the new breed of settlers were Gen. Bertrand Clausel and Legion of Honor winner, Gen. Charles Lefevre-Desnouettes. But the man who officially served as president of the Societe Agricole et Mecanique, as the settlement group was called, Charles Lallemond, a man who still had fighting in his blood and wasn't about ready to settle down to grow olives.
As Simone de la Souchere Delery. reported in her book," Napoleon Soldiers in North America", "He wanted adventures and men to command. The south would be good hunting ground, but not that tract of land where colonists dutifully would grow vine and olive trees and where the Choctaw Indians ... would be peaceful neighbors."
Lallemand wrote to the Spanish government of Texas, because he wanted to build his "asylum" or Champ d'Asile on the banks of the Trinity River. When he got no reply from the Texas government , he decided that "no news is good news" and made plans for the colony. He organized a group of volunteers, led them about 70 miles up the Trinity River from the Gulf of Mexico, got them settled, then sailed for New Orleans " on business."
It became apparent almost immediately that his "business" was the purchase of arms and ammunition, possibly for an invasion of Spanish Texas. It also became apparent that Lallemand had not been completely truthful with all of his settlers. Some men left Philadelphia convinced that they were heading for the Tombigbee Settlement, only to find that Lallemand had bribed the captain of their ship to deliver them to Texas. Other would-be Tombigbee settlers claimed that Lallemand forced them to sell their Tombigbee land and give him the money for the Texas Champ d' Asile.
Some of the settlers actually got to the Tombigbee, but found that it was not all honey and peaches there. As Delery writes," Several of them had brought their wives, who unpacked dainty dresses without the faintest idea of what pioneer life meant. Wooden cabins were being built while cities were being planned. The men hunted, fished, and worked with moderation. At night there was a guitar or harp playing and dancing on the banks of the river... The first shock was to learn that the foundation of the dreamed city Demopolis, had not had not been erected on the space provided by the United States government. New efforts were required to salvage bricks and beams and begin building anew.
And there were other problems. Plants imported from France arrived half dead. There wasn't enough drinking water. The streams spawned of mosquitoes and Malaria. With a group of hard working German settlers arrived in the area , many of the discouraged Frenchmen were ready to sell out. In some other cases, creditors seized the land . Many of the Tombigbee settlers headed for New Orleans.
As Delery tells his story. "First they had sent relatives and friends glowing descriptions of Texas...The task of clearing the forest and setting up camp performed with gusto.. it was a beautiful camp...(but then) from reveille to curfew the (were forced to begin drilling for Lallemand's planned Texas takeover ) little time was left to cultivate the land."
One day, Delery's account continues " A troop of five-hundred Mexicans marched against them. They were followed by Spanish regiments from San Antonio. Fearing for the fate of the women and the children. General Riuguad ( who was in command of Lallemand as usual was in New Orleans advised that they yield to the Mexicans demands and evacuate the camp...For days through underbrush and swamp the disheartened and half staved men and women made their way to Galveston. They reached as a huge tidal wave. Reduced by numbers the group clung to brush twisted by the wind. In the distance they saw their silhouettes approaching. The refugees of endless disaster acquainted with General Humbert.
Humbert himself a Napoleon refugee had made a sailing expedition from New Orleans and Mexico some months before and stopped on the way back. Lafitte's headquarters in Galveston while he was there, he found a pair of tarnished gold epaulette and a plumed hat among the pirates loot, put them on semi-ferociously proclaimed himself as Governor of Galveston. Some of the soldiers eventually returned to France some stayed in New Orleans, And some Delery writes, "All of the names of the exiles who scattered throughout Louisiana have not been recorded"
Among them Lois Gustas Bezou became an accountant of an Iberville Parish plantation Pierre Chalat made his his home Belle Alliance. A number of the old soldiers settled among Bayou Lafource riding riding to a general store in a region to share news and stories. The town grew up around a store called Napoleonville.