[MUSIC]

Au Bénéfice des Français réfugiés au Texas. / LE CHAMP d'ASILE /
Romance. Tirée de la Minerve Française. Paroles de Mr. A. Beraud.
Musique de Mr. G. Kuhn.

Song for quartet, piano or harp accompaniment. 2 leaves, folio, unbound.
Signed by the composer on the last page: "G. Kuhn".

Paris, no date [circa 1819-1820].

$95.00

A scarce, interesting, and apparently undescribed song
dealing with, and apparently published for the benefit of, the
famous French military colony of Champ d'Asile in Texas.

The cover carries a half-page lithograph depicting a
French soldier in regimental uniform, with epaulettes, leaning on a
mattock or shovel, his cap, sword and other regalia lying on the
ground beside him. In the background another soldier conversing with
a kneeling Negro under a palm-tree, and in the far distance other
figures working with mattock and wheel-barrow.

The "Champ d'Asile", or Camp Asylum, was settled by
the exiled soldiers of the Grand Army in 1817 about twelve or fifteen
miles from the mouth of the Trinity River in Texas. The exact site
of the settlement has never been determined. The organization was
purely military, divided into two cohorts, commanded by Generals
Lallemand and Rigaud. Lallemand was one of the legatees of Napoleon.
On the approach of a Spanish army, the French burned their buildings
and fled to Galveston island, and thence to Louisiana.