Brooks: Diplomacy and the Borderlands


Napoleonic exiles, giving them counsel and even providing money
for some of their attempts to find themselves homes. The activities
of the Bonapartists were the subject of great discussion and con-
troversy in this country. Naturally the most scornful were the
British sympathizers, and particularly British Minister Charles
Bagot, who wrote in 1816 that "all the ragamuffins of the earth are
in the United States-more especially the French ragamuffins, as
I have been telling Lyttelton in the following nervous lines:
 "Joseph the Just, Iberia' King,
 Leferres Denonettes,
 Grouchy, ausel, St. Aagely,
 And all the patriot rt,
 "Who leapedd from Louia' iron way,
 Have reached thia happy ahore,
 And live upon Tobaaeo Quay
 In Lower Baltimore.""
 Ostensibly no more than a colonizing venture was the organiza-
tion called the "Society for the Cultivation of the Vine and Olive,"
which obtained four townships on the Tombigbee River in 1817.
Under a plan by which each settler was to pay a small price for
his land, and receive title after certain conditions of development
had been met, some hundred and fifty persons went to Alabama
in December of that year. A majority of the prominent exiles were
shareholders in the enterprise, the leading settler in the group be-
ing General Lefebvre Desnouettes. His large establishment proved
to be the only successful one in the colony. In a few months the
whole scheme collapsed, and the lands were mostly abandoned, in-
cluding Desnouettes'.
 At about the same time the more adventurous of the exiles were
 working out a plan which would have led to an invasion of Mexico
 through Texas. Generals Charles and Henri Lallemand headed this
 enterprise, which was to some extent financed by money borrowed
 on the members' land holdings in the Tombigbee River tract. As a
 result of the expedition, it was hoped that Joseph Bonaparte would
 be established on the throne of Mexico. Such success might enable
 his men to achieve the dream of all the Bonapartists-the release
 of Napoleon from St. Helena. It has not been proved, however, that
 Joseph Bonaparte gave his sanction to the Lallemand scheme,
 friendly as he may have been at times with the two generals.