1860 Texas Champ d'Asile Adventures of a French Captain Texana Rare Antique Book

  

Of Just-Jean-Etienne Roy: Les Aventures d'un Capitaine Français, Planteur au Texas, Ancien Réfugié du Champ d'Asile. Howes R479: Fictionalized, but reasonably authentic, account of the French settlement at Champ d'Asile. Illustrated with an engraved frontispiece. Paris, Ad Mame et Cie, Bibliothèque des Ecoles Chretiennes, 2e série, 1860, in-8° 21 x 13.5 cm. Period full leather, gilt to spine and boards, marbled endpapers, marbled edges.

Second edition of a very popular French fiction on Texas. The first edition appeared in Paris in 1858, and after the present 1860 edition, there followed editions in 1862, 1864, 1866, 1868, 1872, and later.

An edition in English appeared at New York ca. 94: "Smacks somewhat of the marvelous". Lagarde, The French in Texas, p.

Monaghan 1273 cites a 1879 edition but states: This book was first published, according to Lorenz, in 1860. Streeter comments in his note to entry 1077: The account has the appearance of being for the most part factual, but the retelling of some of L'Heritier's stories as if true, such as the dances to which the inhabitants of the neighboring town of San Antonio were invited, casts doubts on its being first hand, and part in any event is fiction. Just Girard was one of the several pseudonyms that he often employed. He travelled widely and his travel accounts were extremely popular; he is said to have travelled in Mexico during the 1850s when it is possible that he might have visited Texas. Reeves, an authority upon French exiles in America, states that his book contains much historical background and that, despite its fictional form, it has a considerable historical value.

Champ d'Asile ("Field of Asylum") was a short-lived settlement founded in Texas in January 1818 by 20 French Bonapartist veterans of the Napoleonic Wars from the Vine and Olive Colony. The party was led by General Charles Lallemand.

Land was offered to French settlers on March 3, 1817, after a vote by the United States Congress. 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 grapes 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. [1] Lallemand financed the project through land speculation.

On December 17, 1817 150 of the would-be-settlers sailed from Philadelphia for Galveston, Texas, where they arrived on January 14. Lallemand and the other colonists convened in New Orleans, 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, having heard about this expedition, sent his own troops to San Marcos, wary of an attack.

The colony was abandoned shortly afterwards. Some of the colonists, including pirate Jean Laffite 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 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. This item is in the category "Books & Magazines\Antiquarian & Collectible". The seller is "antiquebooksro" and is located in this country: RO. This item can be shipped worldwide.

• Year Printed: 1860
• Modified Item: No
• Country/Region of Manufacture: France
• Topic: Texas
• Binding: Leather
• Region: Europe
• Subject: Literature & Fiction
• Original/Facsimile: Original
• Language: French
• Place of Publication: Paris