In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

3 Double and Treble Treachery The European diplomatic corps in the United States followed closely the activities of the French expatriates.1 The French ambassador feared that, unless occupied in some wholesome enterprise like the Vine and Olive colony, the exiles might give in to the temptation of adventurous or revolutionary pursuits. Other European ambassadors shared his concern that men such as Clausel, Lefebvre-Desnouettes, and the Lallemands would not meekly accept their banishment and settle into inconspicuous new lives in America. Mindful of the abundant opportunities for mischief presented by the troubles of Spanish America, the diplomats found it hard to imagine that such desperate and capable men as these would refrain from joining the fray. Lending their swords to the cause of Latin American independence—or the more unsavory enterprises that cloaked their true nature in its banner—would be simple since, by 1815 the United States had become the headquarters, arsenal, and sanctuary for blows against Spain’s crumbling empire. In American seaports, reported Hyde de Neuville, representatives of the insurgency “readily found sailors and adventurers . . . to cruise under the insurgent ®ag against the Spanish royalists.” “It is of the utmost importance,” he urged, “to ¤nd out exactly what is going on in this part of the world.”2 On the frontiers of Louisiana, he found the situation positively explosive. “There is talk of war and plans of conquest are afoot. The states of the West, above all, want to take up arms; everyone sees Mexico as a new promised land.”3 To the diplomats of the Old World, the prospect that Spain’s venerable American empire might be replaced by a confederation of hostile republics was bad enough. That the Bonapartists might bend the Latin American revolutions to their own ends conjured up visions almost too terrible for these sentinels of legitimacy to contemplate. “The revolution of America is the revolution of Europe,” declared the Spanish government in an of¤cial communiqu é to the great powers of Europe. “To complete it, all that remains is for the Bonaparte family to enter directly into its machinations.”4 The “New Algiers” The con®ict in Spanish America attracted to the United States an international community of revolutionaries, mercenaries, and scoundrels whose plots and exploits threatened to upset the delicate calculations and negotiations of the established powers as they maneuvered to gain an advantage from the breakup of Spain’s empire.5 The Concert of Europe would have preferred to restrict the scramble to pick up the pieces to its own exclusive membership, but this was not to be. The end of both the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and the con®ict between Great Britain and the United States in North America swelled the ranks of this shifting population of “adventurers of all nations” and, if anything, increased their desperation.6 In the postrevolutionary and postwar world, the United States—with the exception of Haiti, the world’s only remaining republic—had become the principal “rendezvous of all the enemies of government .”7 While all the European governments instructed their diplomatic agents in the United States to keep close tabs on the activities of these people, those of France and Spain had special reason for concern. Within the ruling circles of Bourbon France, the presence of prominent Bonapartists among the international desperadoes gave rise to speculations of the wildest kind. To this was added another less evident cause for concern. Their political proclivities aside, the participation of so many renegade Frenchmen in the privateering and ¤libustering expeditions undertaken from American territory was a source of deep national embarrassment.8 Renegades they might be, but Frenchmen they remained in spite of their crimes against the ruling dynasty. Although ardent monarchists like Hyde de Neuville would not have admitted it, the Revolution had triumphed in at least one way: a sense of national belonging transcending even the sharpest political differences had taken root, even in the most reactionary minds.9 For its part, the Spanish government felt the menace of these foreigners even more sharply than the French, for they posed a direct threat to Spain’s tottering colonial authority. Don Luis de Onís, the Spanish ambassador to Washington during the critical period 1815–19, recalled that “increased associations of adventurers were immediately formed at various points of the Anglo-American territory to assist the malcontents of Spanish America. . . . Those who were proscribed and banished from the society of other European nations, vagabonds without the means of subsistence, or who...

Share