Last Filibustering Expeditions and Independence, I8I7-1820 149
The leader of the exploring party reported that a day or two before reaching the shore---difficult of approach because of the lagoons--he and his men had heard what sounded like a short, sharp cannonade but attached no great importance to it because they were fully aware of the frequent naval encounters between pirates and merchantmen along the coast. The Governor concluded that the settlement on Matagorda Bay had probably been destroyed by pirates from the Gulf; that the attack had been made from the sea by rivals who destroyed the fleet and carried away the booty.% · New French menace. Onis had watched with apprehension the arrival in the United States of prominent Napoleonic officers after the downfall of their emperor. Rumors of all sorts became rife after Joseph Bonaparte came to New York on board the American brig Clzarleston on August 28, 1815. The most persistent was the alleged plan of French officers to put Joseph on a Spanish-American throne. The fears of Spanish officials were increased by the arrival of such men as the Marquis de Grouchy, the Comte de Lefevre-Desnouettes, the Comte de Clausel, and the brothers Charles, Fran~ois, and Henri Lallemand. 3 Charles Lallemand, the eldest, was an ardent admirer of the Emperor and had, previous to his arrival in America, attempted to rescue the Corsican from Saint Helena. His leadership confirmed the assumption that the real objective of the refugees was the establishment of a safe retreat for Napoleon. By the fall of 1816, a French agricultural and manufacturing society had been organized, supposedly to promote the cultivation of the olive and the vine. Plans were made for an agricultural settlement in Alabama, in the Valley of the Tombigbee, by an organiza- tion variously known as the French Immigrant Association, the Society for the Cultivation of the Vine and Olive, and the Tombigbee Association. They obtained a grant of land of four townships on the Tombigbee River, and a group of sixty French exiles left Philadelphia on August 27, 1817, to settle.in the new lands.' 2 Antonio Martinez to the Viceroy, Bexar, August 10, 1817, Nacogdoc/s4s A,-c/sives. This explanation seems the only plausible one. It was not the Lallemand settlement which was reported so graphically, for the French colonists did not arrive until the spring of 1818. 3 Donald Joseph, The Story of Cham/ d'Asi/4 as told by two of lls4 colomsts. Translated J,-om the Frenc/1 by Donald Joseph and Edited with an /,u,-oduclion by Fannie E. Ratcliford, 9-11; Jesse Reeves, "The Napoleonic Exiles in America. A Study in American Diplomatic History, 1815-1819," in Johns Hopkins University Studus in Historical and Political Science, Series XXIII, Nos. 9 and 10. 'Warren, The Sword Was Th4if' Passport, 191-193.
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