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6 The Fate of Vine and Olive What became of the grantees of the Vine and Olive colony? Some would lead lives of action and adventure; others would enjoy the comforts of family and wealth; and still others would pass the remainder of their days in laborious obscurity. But whatever course their lives took, for only a few did it lead to western Alabama. To be sure, many Vine and Olive shareholders remained in the Gulf South, but they tended to settle in Mobile and New Orleans . Another large concentration remained in Philadelphia, where they had been established for many years, and a substantial number eventually returned to France. And even most of those who settled on the grant left in the 1830s or 1840s. By the time of the Civil War, little was left in Marengo County of the former French presence. Unlike the interconnected families of Domingan refugees who made up the bulk of the colony’s resident French population, the most prominent grantees— the of¤cers and political ¤gures who had been exiled in 1815—never intended to settle on the grant, much less remain in the United States. Even before the foundation of the Vine and Olive colony, they had begun to seek amnesty from the Bourbon government and permission to return to France. The passage of the “Act to set apart and dispose of certain public lands, for the encouragement of the cultivation of the vine and olive” and the beginning of actual settlement on the grant did nothing to alter their determination. Few of the proscribed exiles ever left the East Coast. Instead they remained in Philadelphia , where they enjoyed the comforts of civilization and proximity to the French diplomatic corps, whom they assailed with protestations of repentance and petitions for clemency. Even the two generals who settled brie®y in Alabama had no intention of staying in America. Clausel seems to have gone to Mobile because he had several relatives—his cousin Constance Ogé (the widow Demerest), nephew Louis-Edmond Bourlon, and relative Odele-Marie Desmares née Pitot—already established there. From his home on the grant, Lefebvre-Desnouettes regularly addressed statements of contrition to the French legation and, on one of his trips to Washington, met with Hyde de Neuville to beg for a royal pardon.1 Few of the exiles ever reconciled themselves to living in the United States. Most hoped to recover their former lives in France. Their hopes were not ill placed. Indeed, it is striking how rapidly the royal government reversed the proscription measures of 1815–16 and allowed the exiles—some of whom had been sentenced to death for treason against the throne—to return to France and resume their military service. Nothing better illustrates the extent of Bourbon clemency than the postexile career of General Clausel.2 Pardoned in 1820, he immediately returned to France and was placed on the general of¤cers’ active list. In 1829 he was elected to the legislature as a deputy of the Ardennes. Having already recovered some of his former prominence under the Bourbons, Clausel was virtually catapulted to the summit of the French military profession after the July revolution of 1830, which brought Louis-Philippe, Duke d’Orléans to the throne. Three weeks after the revolution , he was appointed general-in-chief of the Army of Africa, which had just begun the conquest of Algeria. The following year, the regime bestowed on him the rank of marshal of France and in 1834 named him governor-general of Algeria. While serving in this capacity, he proposed the implantation at strategic points of agricultural colonies of demobilized soldiers, as a way of exerting French control over Algerian territory.3 Military historians have noted the Roman antecedents of this Napoleonic idea but have not recognized Clausel’s more immediate inspiration: the Vine and Olive colony. During his service in Algeria, which ended in 1837, he continued to win reelection to the legislature, for the last time in 1839, just three years before his death. Clausel’s brilliant career demonstrates not only the desire of the Bourbons to rehabilitate their former enemies, but also the extent to which the July Monarchy favored former servants of the Napoleonic regime. One category of exile, however, was excluded from Bourbon clemency—the regicides, barred from France for having violated the sanctity of kingship in the most unforgivable way. But of the three former members of the Convention who became Vine and Olive grantees, only...

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