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 Introduction Pierre-Charles de Hault de Lassus de Luzières was one of very few French aristocrats to emigrate to America, live out his life here, and be buried here— although his grave in the historical cemetery in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, is unmarked and its exact location unknown. De Luzières had perhaps never heard of the francophone settlements in the Illinois Country when he, his wife, and three of their children fled Revolutionary France in the autumn of 1790. Their destination was the two-thousand-acre tract of real estate situated on the right bank of the Ohio River that de Luzières had “purchased” in Paris in June 1790 from the infamous Scioto Land Company. Arriving in the Ohio Valley late that year, they quickly discovered that they had been defrauded , that de Luzières had bought nothing but meaningless paper from the company’s American agent in Paris, Joel Barlow. Effecting a strategic retreat to the Pittsburgh area, the family bought substantial estates there in the spring of 1791 and settled down, apparently with the intention of remaining there for the duration of their lives on the North American continent. De Luzières’s attention was drawn to the Illinois Country by the dream of creating a vast commercial empire, an empire that would extend the entire length of the Ohio River and down the Mississippi from Ste.Genevieve to New Orleans. The basis of this enterprise was to supply Louisiana’s capital city with quantities of flour, hardtack, and whiskey, for the population of colonial New Orleans was always dependent on foodstuffs imported from distant locations; the purpose of the plan was to make de Luzières and his two business associates , Pierre Audrain and Bartholémé (his spelling)Tardiveau, wealthy. Promotion of this enterprise impelled de Luzières to move his family to Upper Louisiana and build his house on the hills overlooking the Mississippi River south of Ste. Genevieve. When, for a variety of reasons, this great entrepreneurial scheme foundered, de Luzières turned his attention to advancing his political career, with help from his Flemish countryman, Francisco Luis Hector de Carondelet, governor general of Louisiana (1791–1797).  Introduction To carve out a political niche for himself within the administration of Spanish Louisiana, de Luzières chose a bold approach. Indeed, audacity was his most pronounced character trait; over and over again he was willing to cast the dice in different directions: from France to the Ohio River valley, from there to Pittsburgh, from there to the Illinois Country, from agricultural to commercial to political schemes. His political initiative—the last, and indeed the most successful, venture of his life—was to erect a new administrative district in Upper Louisiana, a district of which he would be commandant on behalf of the Spanish monarchy. Spanish colonial officials were obsessed with bolstering the population of Louisiana as a means of creating a viable and defensible province. De Luzières would serve the Spanish regime by promoting population growth at New Bourbon, the settlement that he had founded on the west bank of the Mississippi in 1793, and the result of that growth would be the inevitable establishment of a new administrative district. The strategy worked to perfection. Between 1795 and 1797 de Luzières’s recruitment efforts—with Americans arriving from the Ohio Valley and local Creoles abandoning the flood-ravaged old town of Ste.Genevieve—succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. The most powerful evidence of this success is the census of the area that de Luzières compiled in 1797. This census, together with de Luzières’s lengthy accompanying commentary, is a rare and important source document for late colonial Louisiana. For his efforts to increase the population of Upper Louisiana, which the Spanish regime desperately wished to do, de Luzières was in 1797 appointed civil and military commandant of the New Bourbon District, created by Governor Carondelet specifically to satisfy his friend’s political ambitions. De Luzières tore up his deep roots in Flanders, took ship across the Atlantic , and transported himself and his family across the vastnesses of North America to the west bank of the Mississippi River. Heroic is the only appropriate word for a man in the sixth decade of his life to have accomplished such a feat. As for his enduring significance, de Luzières’s work promoting settlement in Upper Louisiana made him a minor, though not inconsequential , maker of history. But he was also...

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