Champ-d'asile, Tableau Topographique
Item #80160
[L'HERITIER, Louis Francois]. Le Champ-d'asile, Tableau Topographiqueet Historique du Texas.... Paris: Ladvocat, 1819. viii,247pp. Half title. Original brown wrappers, printed paper label. Wrappers rubbed, chipped at corners and edges. Minor scattered foxing and staining, else quite clean internally. Contemporary ownership inscription on three pages. Very good, untrimmed and in the original wrappers. In a half maroon morocco and cloth clamshell box, spine gilt. Streeter Texas 1072. Howes L329, "b" (incorrectly calling for [24]pp. of prelims). Sabin 95072. Monaghan 990. Raines, p.109. Graff 2487. Decker 39:378. Brinley 4731 ("Scarce"). First edition, first issue of an important early Texas work recording the abortive colony of exiled Napoleonic loyalists established on the Trinity River in 1818, here in original, unsophisticated condition. Along with accounts by Hartmann & Millard and the anonymous "C.D.," this work comprises one of the three chief publications on the colony. The French group, under Gen. C.F.A. Lallemand and his brother, left New Orleans and landed at Galveston in January 1818 and attempted to establish a colony about twelve to fifteen miles from the mouth of the Trinity River, where the French loyalists claimed they were attempting to cultivate grapes and olives. The Spanish under Mexico's final colonial governor Antonio Maria Martinez feared (apparently with good reason) that the French had more military than agricultural designs for the colony, and began to mobilize troops towards Champ-d'Asile. Armed conflict was never to arise however, and when food became scarce and news of the nearby Spanish troops came to Lallemand, the remainder of the starving colonists retreated to New Orleans. Despite itsshort life, the colony was the center of an important episode in the maneuvering for control of Texas between Spain, the United States, and the not yet independent state of Mexico. The French settlers dreamed of establishing a new Napoleonic empire in the New World, and with more support they might have succeeded. The idealized story of the ultimately short-lived effort nonetheless inspired the French people in Europe, and their fondness for Texas was borne out twenty years later when France became the first European nation to recognize Texan independence. L'Heritier's work contains important contemporary details o.
Price: $7,500.00