EIGHT

The Rise of the Filibusters 1814

With these he mingles not but to command;
Few are his words, but keen his eye and hand.
Ne'er seasons he with mirth their jovial mess
But they forgive his silence for success.

THE NEW YEAR brought an escalation both in the complaints against the smuggling and in the Laffites' brazenness and determination to hazard any risk. On the evening of January 14 some thirty or more armed men came into Donaldsonville to move a cargo, and when Walker Gilbert approached them they simply sneered at him. Two days later John Foley reported signs of a major sale approaching. The word was that a cargo of 415 slaves from Guinea had arrived at Cat Island, and that the wealthy sugarcane planters were going down to make their purchases. He knew at least four of the prominent men who had passed his place heading south, and heard also that a cargo of sugar and coffee had come into Lake Verret.¹ In New Orleans Spanish consul Diego Morphy knew of that cargo, too, some three hundred barrels of coffee and two hundred boxes of sugar. He sent a warning to the Spaniard in command at Pensacola, cautioning him that every ship coming from there to New Orleans needed to have a precise manifest to prevent smugglers from trying to sneak goods into the city aboard her.²

The reports were right. In fact, the Laffites boldly advertised that they had a cargo of slaves they intended to auction within a few days. Gilbert pleaded to his superior in New Orleans that if he had only fifteen men he could stop the slaves en route.³ Gilbert's and Foley's warnings got the attention of Pierre Dubourg, who was about to succeed to the post of collector of customs for the port of New Orleans, and had already begun some of his duties. He informed Claiborne on January 20, and taking Gilbert at his word, asked for men to help Gilbert halt the proceeding.⁴ By then, however, events had come to a tragic, and inevitable, collision. In October 1813 Dubourg swore into service as a temporary revenue inspector John B. Stout, an experienced man who came highly recommended by concerned citizens thanks to his recent service as a city constable in New Orleans.⁵

Dubourg had stationed Stout and a dozen customs officers at the Temple, where they made camp and stood ready to halt traffic of contraband going northward or potential buyers going south. On or about January 16 Stout saw a substantial party of smugglers approaching in pirogues, most likely the same aggressive band that Gilbert met in Donaldsonville a few days earlier. The customs men took to their boats to give chase, but it is unclear who became the prey. Soon the smugglers opened fire. Two customs men went down with wounds, and then a musket ball hit Stout, who was either killed instantly or else drowned when he fell overboard and disappeared.⁶ The smugglers swarmed the officers and took them prisoner. News of the skirmish reached New Orleans on January 18 or 19, and with it began rumors that the privateers would take the captured officers to Cartagena.⁷ Within two weeks of the outrage news reached Donaldsonville that the smugglers had the captured men in close confinement, and one of them "sentenced" to ten years' hard labor with a fifty-six-pound weight chained to his leg.⁸

Surely this would be more than enough to stimulate a definitive response. At the first word of the incident, Governor Claiborne denounced the act, and on January 24 he attributed these "horrible violations of the Laws" to "Lafite &. his associates," adding that "some thing must be done to arrest the progress of these lawless men." Apparently one or more of the customs officers had escaped after recognizing Jean or Pierre in the attacking party, or else smuggling in Louisiana had become so dominated by the Laffites that Claiborne and others now attributed all of it to them. Either way, the Laffites were now wanted not only for smuggling, but possibly for murder. "It is high time that these contrabandists, dispersed throughout the State, should be taught to respect our laws," Dubourg declared. The problem was that General Flournoy did not have enough men available to detach some to deal with the problem, and federal authorities were too distracted with the war. Dubourg suggested to the governor that he order out militia, which Claiborne could do under his own authority. Afraid of the risk of failure, Claiborne prudently submitted the question to the legislature on January 25.

Claiborne confessed hesitance. The militia had failed before in dealing with the smugglers, and he suspected that loyalties to the Baratarians on the part of men in the state service could compromise the effort. "So numerous and bold are the followers of Lafitte, and, I grieve to say it, such is the countenance afforded him by some of our citizens, to me unknown—that all efforts to apprehend this high offender have hitherto been baffled." Nevertheless, "the evil requires a strong corrective," he demanded. "Force must be resorted to. These lawless men can soon be operated on by their fears and the certainty of punishment." The legislature showed even more hesitance than the governor, and simply tabled his appeal.

Which made it all the more irritating that, having consistently escaped the federal criminal court, Pierre Laffite could not stay out of trouble with the petty civil bench. Though he kept out of New Orleans by day to avoid arrest, he transacted business there through his attorney, Louis Morel, who coincidentally lived on the Bayou St. John smuggling route. Now the April 1813 suit that resulted in Pierre's brief arrest resurfaced. In June 1813 the plaintiff had transferred all claims in the suit to prominent Toulouse Street merchant Paul Lanusse, a thirty-year-old civic leader born on the French side of the Pyrenees. When Pierre failed to appear in court, he defaulted on the case, and now Lanusse came to collect. On February 21, 1814, he or a court officer searched the city but could find no known residence of Pierre Laffite, and no Pierre Laffite. ⁹

Lanusse and three other parties to the claim went to district court and obtained a judgment against Laffite for $9,557.62 for "money robbed by him from them." The judgment allowed them to seize any and all property belonging to Pierre, and a week later, on February 28, he responded in court—no doubt through Morel—with, of all things, a petition for bankruptcy. Being nothing if not brazen, Pierre claimed that he owned "nothing but his industry"—no house, no carriage, no assets in banks—in spite of the common knowledge that he and his brother were acquiring substantial assets. The court issued an order calling his creditors to meet, meanwhile staying execution against Laffite or his property.

Lanusse was not to be put off so easily, for he knew better. "In the fact," said Lanusse, "he is part owner of several armed vessels or privateers and of Ladiligente and he does also possess within the jurisdiction of your honorable court valuable effects and other moveable property, which he concealed from his creditors." Lanusse and the other parties also protested that since the stay of execution, Pierre had kept himself concealed, and they had strong reasons to fear that he was "about to depart fraudulently and permanently from this state and carry with him his concealed property." Thus they asked for a sequestration order against him and his arrest unless he posted bond of $21,454.62, representing the total amount that Pierre owed his creditors in his bankruptcy declaration.¹⁰

The court approved Lanusse's appeal, and on March 9 ordered the sheriff to sequester "all and singular the property of the said Lafitte, wheresoever the said property may be found in the Parish aforesaid," and that Pierre be arrested and held until he posted the security. Not surprisingly, when the sheriff went to serve the orders, he had to report that "after diligent search I have neither been able to find the body of the within named Peter Lafete nor any of the property to him belonging."¹¹ All he could do was leave a copy of the court petition and citation, along with orders to appear or file a response within eight days, "at the ordinary place of residence of the defendant"—meaning that even court officials knew where Pierre was likely to be found when he risked coming to town, just as Flournoy had known to no avail.¹² On March 15, the day before the deadline, Morel appeared in court and moved that the court order Pierre's creditors to show cause within ten days why his bankruptcy petition should not be ratified.¹³ Despite their knowledge of Pierre's deception, Lanusse and his associates could not offer definitive proof of Laffite having property within the jurisdiction of the court, and so the judge granted Pierre bankruptcy. Lanusse would not forget.

Where the sheriff expected to find Pierre is unclear, though most likely it was at the house on Dumaine Street that Marie Louise Villard purchased on April 9 from Pierre Delaronde, and almost unquestionably with money provided by Pierre. If Laffite did not legally own property in New Orleans, then it could not be seized.¹⁴ That Pierre would risk being in the city at all while the authorities groped toward a way to arrest both Laffites, and charge at least Jean with a capital crime, seemed incredible. Pierre's visits to Marie in spite of such danger suggest more than a casual relationship between the two. At the same time, Lanusse's belief that Pierre was about to leave the state raises the possibility that once again both Laffites thought of departing Louisiana.

While Pierre's legal and possible financial embarrassments occupied his lawyer, Pierre's and Jean's attention were directed to their business, current and future. Willful failure to pay debts was not good practice for a merchant, even a crooked one, for today's creditors could be tomorrow's customers. Pierre's bankruptcy may have been a legal dodge to avoid paying his debts, but more likely he did not have as much money available to him as rumor said. After all, his was a costly and uncertain business. For all their failures, the customs men did make seizures from time to time, and what they confiscated in New Orleans was almost certainly the Laffites' share of cargoes sold and distributed at Cat Island and elsewhere. Just as Lanusse was in court going after Pierre, Major Peire seized a substantial cache of contraband at Barataria.¹⁵

But most of the merchandise continued going through, and the local inspectors could only report it to New Orleans and perhaps send lists of the names of men trading with the smugglers to be charged as abettors.¹⁶ Helpful citizens were so cowed after Gilbert's experience and Stout's death, that when they did furnish information it often as not came anonymously.¹⁷ Claiborne told Dubourg that if the Laffite operation were to be disrupted, it would have to be United States forces that did it.

Flournoy came up with a means of breaking the logjam. Since Dubourg was a federal official, he said, if the collector asked the governor for help, then officially it would be a request from the United States government, and the governor could station a company of state militia at Donaldsonville without risk to his own prestige.¹⁸ That worked for the governor, who promised on March 1 to order one hundred militia to report to Dubourg.¹⁹ The next day Claiborne addressed the legislature once more, asking for a volunteer force of one hundred and four men and officers to serve for up to six months. He got around fiscal objections by averring that since the force would be used to enforce United States laws, Washington would reimburse any expenses.

Once again the assembly was not moved. Even if the assembly failed to act, though, encouraged by this glimmer of cooperation from Claiborne, the collector approached Commodore Patterson to ask if he could spare an armed vessel for an expedition against the smugglers, and though Patterson had to respond that he could not at the moment, he promised that he would help as soon as he could free one of his ships from more pressing duty off the coast.²⁰ At the same time, Flournoy detailed a sergeant's guard of United States soldiers—not much, but an encouraging start—for Dubourg's anticipated strike.²¹ The collector was marshaling forces to hit the smugglers, and in their small ways the governor, the army, and the navy were contributing and cooperating for the first time. It would not be the end of the Laffites, but it would be the beginning of the demise of their enterprise.

Meanwhile their privateering continued to bring in the goods for their sales. On April 9 the Spanish schooner the Amiable Maria sailed from Havana with a cargo of wax, paper, and dry goods, bound for Vera Cruz. Thirty miles from her destination Pierre Cadet and the Dorada, now mounting five cannon, came upon her on April 15 and raised the French flag. After capturing the merchantman, however, Cadet ran up the flag of Cartagena, and took the prize to Grand Terre, arriving May 15 to be detained a month while Jean Laffite oversaw sale of the cargo to buyers from New Orleans.²² Cadet proved himself to be "without comparison in kindness and attentions," according to a Spanish civil officer aboard. The privateers did not touch the passengers' personal luggage and possessions when they brought the Amiable Maria into Barataria, and shortly thereafter Cadet provided the Spaniards with passage back to Havana.²³

This civility was standard procedure for Laffite captains, and in time the Laffites' consideration toward Spanish seamen would work to their advantage. Indeed, there may have been some calculation in their attentions to Spaniards, for in the roiling world of Spanish America, allegiances shifted constantly. For the rest of their lives the brothers would find their fortunes linked both passively and actively to Spain's affairs in the New World. Of course they made their living preying on Spanish shipping, but far more was to be made by capitalizing on the political quicksands around them. Cartagena, Chile, Buenos Aires, and Venezuela had all declared independence by now, and Bolivar led revolutionary forces in New Granada in campaigns from Caracas to Cartagena. Their fortunes ebbed and flowed, Spain sometimes retaking lost ground, but the revolutionaries had the taste of independence in their mouths and were not to be dissuaded. At this moment Bolivar was in retreat, the revolutionaries under Bernardo O'Higgins had been defeated in Chile, and José Maria Morelos y Pavon, who had been leading a revolt in Mexico since 1810, was besieged just short of his goal of Mexico City.

The message to men of enterprise was not that Spain had the rebels on the run almost everywhere in mid-1814. Rather it was that with the mother country so distracted and so distant, there was opportunity in the vastness of New Spain. Eastern Florida seemed ripe, as did the province of Texas immediately west of the Sabine River. Moreover, Texas afforded a back door to northern Mexico that hopeful revolutionaries might use. The fabulous wealth that Spain had siphoned from Mexico and South America for centuries may have made the dons rich, but it also fed the dreams of adventurers, and the weakening of Spain during the Napoleonic wars in Europe, along with its defensive position on so many fronts in the New World, naturally gave daring men ideas of opportunity.

One such man was Louis Aury, now operating as a corsair out of Cartagena. He owned and commanded three privateers by February, and nearly three hundred men answered to his orders. He regularly sent prizes into Louisiana, and his agent in New Orleans, the merchant François Dupuis, held several thousand dollars of Aury's money in safekeeping at any given time. The junta at Cartagena had been good to Aury, and he to them with the money he brought them from his prizes. They gave him distinction and "have filled my strong box," he boasted. Speaking for Cartagena, Spanish America, and New Orleans he said, "Homage is paid here as in all times and countries to the strongest." ²⁴

The privateers produced by European wars and New World upheavals were among the first to attach themselves both to the independence movements like Cartagena's and to the shadier enterprises that soon took their name from the Dutch vrijbuiter, which sounded like and essentially meant "freebooter." It would have been strange if New Orleans had not become a seedbed for these "filibusters," for its access to the sea, the convenience and privacy of the coastal ports at Barataría, Cat Island, and elsewhere, and Louisiana's proximity to Texas, virtually dictated that the Creole city on the Mississippi be the center of plots against Texas, Mexico, and much of the rest of New Spain.

As early as 1791 Philip Nolan and the ever-scheming General James Wilkinson cast eyes toward exploiting Texas, and possibly something more, but Nolan lost his life in a skirmish with Spaniard soldados in 1801, and by that time Wilkinson was on Spain's payroll as a spy while also acting as commanding general of the United States Army. Another army officer, Augustus Magee, resigned his commission in 1812 and with José Bernardo Maximiliano Gutiérrez de Lara led an abortive invasion of Texas that resulted in Magee's death in February 1813, followed by Gutiérrez's brief success and then rapid descent into brutality. José Alvarez de Toledo, a Havana-born former officer in Spain's navy, maneuvered Gutiérrez out of his command, but led the army to disaster at the Battle of the Medina on August 18, 1813, after which Toledo escaped to New Orleans, arriving in early November 1813.

The hallmark of filibustering, however, was that defeat and disaster only seemed to whet the appetite of adventurers. After all, Gutiérrez had taken most of Texas before his downfall. A more able leader should do even better. The next would-be liberator on the scene appeared to be such a leader. Jean Joseph Amable Humbert had commanded a company in Napoleon's Imperial Guard in 1796, and thereafter rose rapidly in the emperor's esteem. A veteran of campaigns in Ireland and San Domingue, he asked Bonaparte in June 1812 to send him to the United States on a mission probably having to do with distracting Spain from Europe by starting insurrections in Mexico. Carrying a bogus passport identifying him as Jean Berthum—a transparent anagram of Humbert—he arrived in Philadelphia in November, where he established an uneasy partnership with the refugee plotter Toledo before Toledo departed to join Gutiérrez and Magee's ill-fated expedition.

In Philadelphia, Humbert also became acquainted with Juan Mariano Buatista de Picornell y Gomila. The fifty-three-year-old Picornell had been a revolutionary in Madrid, and had tried to incite revolt in Venezuela as early as 1798. In about 1806 he came to Philadelphia and started hatching plots to take Texas that saw him spending some time in New Orleans, but to no avail. He returned to Philadelphia by 1812, when he allied himself with Toledo, but after the Medina he returned to New Orleans, and then rejoined the remnants of the invading force at Natchitoches.

The fifty-eight-year-old Humbert was a man of commanding presence and personality. Slender and above-average height, he presented a long swarthy face and heavy beard that seemed dominated by a red drinker's nose like a plump strawberry. In mid-August 1813 he boarded ship for New Orleans, taking with him a number of French and Spanish officers whom he had enlisted in his enterprise. Their task was to maneuver Gutiérrez out of command of those remaining loyal to him, establish a base in Texas, and then encourage revolt in Mexico. Unfortunately, one of Humbert's hallmarks was his indiscretion, and while in Philadelphia he tried to persuade the Spanish minister Luis Onís to his cause. Onís had been in Philadelphia since about 1809, running a shadow legation because Washington refused to recognize his appointment as minister until King Ferdinand VII was restored to the throne taken from him by Napoleon. Onís constantly lobbied the State Department and other officials in Washington on behalf of Spanish interests, at the same time running an intelligence system in the United States, the Caribbean, and New Spain. A masterful politician and diplomat, Onís played along with the guileless Humbert, and as a result had word of his plans on the way to the viceroy in Havana even as Humbert sailed. ²⁵

As soon as Humbert reached New Orleans he began fomenting filibusters, and approaching the Baratarians to link them with his schemes. His contacts with the Laffites at this stage, if any, would have been few and probably indirect, for the brothers were seldom in the city, and then only clandestinely. But certainly they knew of his presence and probably his mission, and he could not have been in the city long without learning that they exercised more authority than anyone else over the loose brotherhood of corsairs and smugglers operating on the coast. Their bases at Grand Isle and Cat Island would be ideal staging points for any maritime arm of his Texas plan. First he had to deal with Gutiérrez, however, but that did not take long. After the debacle of his 1812–1813 expedition, Gutiérrez commanded little respect. Indeed, when Humbert reached New Orleans, Gutiérrez had gone underground and was nowhere to be found. Toledo was out with the remainder of the beaten volunteers from the Medina, and Picornell's ambitions were political rather than military. That left the field in New Orleans to Humbert.

He actively began enlisting men for his new "army," and found hundreds of Frenchmen and Creoles interested in following his guidon. Unfortunately, he both exaggerated his support and outright misled the men in telling them that he acted with Toledo's blessing, for Toledo soon disavowed Humbert entirely. Each presumed to be entitled to command the next "invasion" of Texas. Humbert apparently did achieve one thing, however. As early as mid-September the rumor spread outward from New Orleans that some Barataria-based privateers had agreed to make their ships available to convoy men and supplies to the Texas coast to support Humbert, no doubt in hopes of making new bases for their own operations. Gutiérrez had reportedly come to a similar understanding with them earlier that year, though nothing came of it. ²⁶

Nothing specifically links the Laffites with these first interactions between the privateers and the filibusters, but it is inconceivable that such an alliance would have been made without at least their knowledge and more likely their involvement. It made good business sense for them to shift their base outside United States territory now that being seen in New Orleans was no longer safe for them. Humbert's "army" would offer them a measure of protection against Spanish interference by land. Sailing from a base outside the United States on the Sabine River—or even closer on the Calcasieu, whose upper tributaries reached almost to the Red River—they should not be subject to harassment from Patterson and the navy, yet would be close enough to Louisiana to smuggle their goods in by the usual means.

Humbert worked on his plans and his recruiting until November, when he went to Natchitoches, the overland gateway to east Texas. On November 25 the motley remnant of earlier expeditions and new recruits created a Provisional Government of the Interior Provinces of Mexico and chose Picornell as president. Five days later Picornell gave Humbert a general's commission, and Humbert accepted.²⁷ With Toledo absent and maneuvered out of influence, Humbert took command of the so-called Republican Army of the North, and appointed none other than Arsené Latour an officer on his staff. ²⁸ But it was evident that they would continue to be paper tigers without more men and money, and Picornell and Humbert soon after returned to New Orleans, hoping to win the cooperation of prominent filibuster leaders like the Kempers, Henry Perry, who commanded much of the remnant after the Medina, and Dr. John Robinson, another would-be giant who had compromised Magee's operations prior to the Medina. Rumors spread that some three thousand men and one thousand Indians were ready and waiting to follow Humbert's lead.²⁹

The reality was vastly different, the plan doomed to failure, for by February 1814 an important participant in the filibusters' meetings had been "turned" and was feeding information to the Spaniards through the most unlikely of intermediaries, the Capuchin Fray Antonio de Sedella, the parish priest of New Orleans who lived behind the Cathedral of St. Louis on the Place d'Arms. Known to his parishioners as Père Antoine, Sedella was a fierce-looking and combustible cleric with an unyielding loyalty to his flock and an equally tenacious devotion to Spain, regardless of Louisiana's American ownership. In the past he had fed information on revolutionaries to Spanish authorities, and now with the filibuster leaders in New Orleans, he was determined to crack one of them open. Incredibly, he decided to start at the top, and on February 4 wrote to Juan Ruiz de Apodaca, the captain general in Cuba, that he intended to make a traitor of none other than Picornell.³⁰ More amazing still, within a week Sedella succeeded.

Apparently Picornell had been an uncertain revolutionary for some time, and after almost two decades of one insurrectionary plot after another he was tired, and no doubt disillusioned by the chancers and opportunists who filled his ranks. He had approached Onís about a pardon and resumption of allegiance to Spain a couple of years earlier, but the Texas dream had lured him back to the revolutionary fold. Now Picornell fell out with the bumptious and impractical Humbert, the vain Toledo, Perry, the treacherous Robinson, the brutal Gutiérrez, and the sort who followed them. Despite his title as president, he had lost control of the enterprise. Within a month Claiborne would issue a proclamation that made Picornell an outlaw in the United States as well as a traitor to Spain, and thus a man without a country. He was easy prey for Sedella, who approached with promises of a pardon. By February 11 Picornell had been turned, and the next day he officially resigned his presidency and submitted an application for pardon. ³¹ Hereafter he would work with Sedella in trying to compromise the efforts of the filibusters, and though henceforth he would be outside the inner circle of plotters, still Picornell knew much and could find out more.

Thus it is almost certain that Picornell was the source of the first piece of useful information about Humbert's plans that Sedella was able to feed Apodaca. Only days after Picornell's resignation, Sedella learned "through a person present in the meetings held to this respect," that the privateers and pirates of Barataría, soon to be joined by others out of Cartagena, intended to surprise and ransack Tampico, midway down the Mexican Gulf coast, and then sail up the coastline to Matagorda Bay, midway between the mouths of the Sabine and the Rio Grande rivers on the Texas coast. There, in a fine bay sheltered by barrier islands, they would remain in strength to establish a new base. Tabasco, on the southernmost Mexican Gulf coast shore, was another possible target.³²

Picornell's information did not mention the Laffites, but soon Sedella and Spanish consul Diego Morphy learned more that made the brothers' involvement unquestionable. On April 12, 1814, with Picornell and Toledo effectively out of the affair, Gutiérrez formed a new junta in New Orleans and held a meeting. This council included prominent merchants such as Abner Duncan and John K. West, the ambitious attorney Edward Livingston, and adventurers of the stamp of Ellis P. Bean and Henry Perry One of the members of the council was Pierre Laffite. They discussed a combined land and naval expedition against Matagorda and Tampico, with Gutiérrez and Humbert to be in command of seven hundred men, assisted, as the Spaniards put it, "by the pirates of Barataria." ³³ This assistance was what put Pierre in a seat on the council.

Morphy passed along the information to minister Onís, who immediately protested to Secretary of State Monroe. President Madison had issued a proclamation on June 29 proclaiming neutrality toward Spanish affairs, but people in New Orleans flagrantly violated that doctrine, he complained. Robinson and Toledo and Humbert were at large making their nefarious plans, as was "the traitor Picornel and even the monster Bernardo Gutierres the perpetrator of the atrocious assassinations committed in the Province of Texas." Louisiana citizens—the men on the council—were aiding "these convicted Traitors, these high way Robbers." He told Monroe of the anticipated expedition against Mexico, "assisted by the Pirates of Barataria who furnished five armed vessels and a portion of their People to carry the expedition into effect." Indeed, he went on, the plans were hardly a secret in New Orleans. Referring to the "ascendancy acquired by the Pirates of Barataria," he went on to ask the administration "to destroy that nest of Robbers."³⁴

The Onís protest put its finger on just one of the reasons that the initial Gutiérrez-Humbert plan came to nothing. Everyone knew about it. Moreover, typical of the short-range thinking of most of the filibusters, they soon discovered that money was a problem. Even the merchants on the council who subscribed personal funds wound up unable or unwilling to meet their obligations. That probably did not apply to the Laffites, since their contribution would have been the vessels and crew to carry the expedition. ³⁵ Nevertheless, the council had little choice but to postpone their grand plan. Meanwhile the experience of a Laffite privateer suggested an alternative approach.

The passengers of the Amiable Maria watched "with a lot of pain in our hearts" as Jean Laffite supervised the dismantling of their taken vessel, removing her equipment and landing her cargo. Morphy was quick to send word to Apodaca of the capture of the Amiable Maria.³⁶ The import of the rich prize could not be overlooked. While Humbert and Gutiérrez bumbled about in search of money, the Laffites could finance their own operation against Tampico or elsewhere. The Laffites learned the same lesson, but applied it differently, for soon a new plan emerged. This time Humbert would sail with a few score men on two of the Laffite goletas, to command the men in action if they attacked a city by land, and the Laffites would have at least three more vessels available in Barataria to join him if necessary. The corsairs' chief mission would be to prey on more of the Havana-Vera Cruz trade, especially money ships bringing soldiers' pay to the mainland. Once they had captured enough to meet the needs of the grander overland expedition, the original plan of April could be revived.

Men and events stopped them. Morphy feared that the resources of the privateers were sufficient that they might launch the attack even if Humbert and Gutiérrez could not deliver their end of the men and money. He knew from observing Humbert and Gutiérrez that this gang, or "pandilla" as he called them, was ineffectual. "They are always resolved to carry out their diabolic plans," he commented to Apodaca, "without considering all the big problems they have to overcome in order to fulfill them." But the Baratarians were another matter, for he saw firsthand in New Orleans how effective they could be, and how substantial were their military resources. By late May he believed the privateers were ready to start on their own by hitting Tampico and preying on Spanish money ships bound for Vera Cruz. ³⁷

Morphy had likely already taken steps to meet this eventuality. He contacted Patterson about his concerns, and the commodore told Morphy that he would keep a ship cruising Lake Borgne to stop the pirates from using that avenue to New Orleans, and would place at least one cannon, if not a whole battery, on shore to help.³⁸ In addition to the damage being done to customs revenues and the continuing entreaties of Governor Claiborne, Patterson had reasons to find the privateers inconvenient. Following the defeat and abdication of Napoleon that spring, Spain was once more a neutral nation, and the privateers' attacks on Spanish shipping caused diplomatic problems. Patterson was obligated to protect neutral commerce in American waters, making every Laffite prize an embarrassment.³⁹

Other events converged to stop the plan. On April 30, after years of dithering, the grand jury called by the district court issued the first of what would be a series of indictments for piracy, this one against a close Laffite associate, Manuel Joachim. It was the testimony of Andrew Whiteman that made the case, and he was testifying against many others, including both Laffites.⁴⁰ Meanwhile the number of seizures and surveillance increased by late spring, and authorities were becoming more resourceful at finding prize goods that the Laffites hid in the homes of friends, especially in the Faubourg Marigny section of New Orleans where most of the San Domingue refugees settled.⁴¹

Of course the prizes still came in. Dominique and his Tigre brought in a modest one at Cat Island early in May, and two or three more came into Grand Isle. Walker Gilbert believed that most of the population along the lower Lafourche were in motion toward the coast to participate in the Amiable Maria sale, or to do some illegal business with British ships briefly landing in order to trade goods for supplies.⁴² The Laffites' Dorada brought a prize loaded with dry goods into Barataria that month. Meanwhile Gambi and his Philanthrope, apparently following the revised plan for funding Humbert's campaign, took two prizes off Tampico in May and brought them to Grand Isle on June i. One was filled with silver ingots, and both with cocoa and more dry goods, all of which the Baratarians landed and sold to yet another concourse of buyers from New Orleans. Unlike the Laffites, Gambi paid little attention to the welfare of captured crew and passengers. He kept them for four weeks in what one described as "the most cruel situation," before he sent them home in one of the prize vessels.⁴³

Matters had changed by the time Gambi brought in these prizes. Within days after Gambi's arrival the cross-purposes, miscommunication, and organizational ineptitude of the filibuster leaders upset their plans once more. Gutiérrez announced on June 7 that he and Humbert intended to leave New Orleans for Barataria, then sail with several ships for the anticipated attack on Matagorda. But Gutiérrez never left the city, probably thanks to news that Toledo had a mere 120 men on the Sabine, and Robinson even fewer, with no cooperation between the two camps. This and maneuvering by Morphy, plus Picornell changing allegiances so suddenly, convinced Gutiérrez as of June 10 that the revised invasion plan was compromised. Undaunted, Humbert went to Grand Isle. He arrived at Barataria early that month, and there found Dominique in port after an eventful and embarrassing cruise.

Youx had returned to cruising the Mexican Gulf coast after delivering the prize to Cat Island early in May. Running under Cartagenan colors, he passed Nautla, some seventy-five miles north of Vera Cruz, and there saw signals from the shore that were intended to get him to land. Instead he continued on his way toward Vera Cruz, only to run into an armed British merchantman that chased him back past Nautla two days later. The Englishman opened fire and brought down one of Tigres masts, then sent two boats to board her, but the privateers fought them off and the ships separated. Unfortunately Dominique allowed his crew to celebrate their narrow escape rather intemperately, and everyone aboard got so drunk that they accidentally ran the crippled Tigre ashore near Nautla. Word of their situation reached Nautla soon enough, and before long Dominique saw a schooner approaching his beached corsair.

In it was Ellis P. Bean, the man who had signaled Dominique from shore several days earlier. General José Maria Morelos of the Mexican revolutionary junta had engaged Bean to acquire arms in the United States for his insurgency, and to aid and encourage the several competing filibuster plans for invading Texas, which would make his own task of defeating Spain in Mexico that much less difficult. Bean had raised something approaching $10,000 from wealthy patrons, but on reaching the coast at Nautla he had been unable to get anything better than a little schooner to take him to New Orleans. This was why he tried to signal Dominique to his aid, but now he went to Dominique's. The Tigre had to be abandoned. Bean transported the privateer crew to Nautla, where they made his schooner more seaworthy, and then they sailed to Grand Isle. Jean Laffite welcomed Bean ashore and entertained him generously, then gave him a guide for the journey through the bayous to New Orleans. In the process Laffite learned that Bean had money for arms, and that there was more to be had.⁴⁴

Humbert probably arrived at Barataria before Bean left, and what he learned would have encouraged him. The Mexicans could raise enough money to buy substantial arms, and that promised good business for the Laffites and their merchant associates in New Orleans. Morelos was anxious to cooperate with Texan ventures, which appealed to Humbert. Rather than act on their own as filibusters, with all the attendant risks of Spanish and American retaliation, perhaps Humbert, the Laffites, and their cohorts could legitimize their several ambitions under the aegis of the Mexican rebel regime, which included a congress and all the other forms of a working government. For the Laffites, the Morelos insurgency could offer legitimacy on the high seas, while his army afforded protection of any privateering base the Laffites established on the Mexican coast. This base would be essential, for even with Mexican letters of marque, the Laffites and their brethren risked prosecution in the United States if they operated out of Louisiana in taking neutral Spanish ships.

Between them, Humbert, the Laffites, and perhaps Bean decided that a chastened Dominique would carry Humbert to the Mexican coast in an unarmed Laffite felucca. His intentions were not yet entirely clear to the Spanish authorities in New Orleans.⁴⁵ Sedella, for instance, believed that Dominique was taking Humbert to Tampico or Vera Cruz bent on a pillaging raid.⁴⁶ Sedella passed the information along to Apodaca in Cuba using as a secret courier the merchant Francisco Brunetti, whose three-year-old mulatto daughter Silvania Catherina would fourteen years hence marry Pierre Laffite's son Martin.⁴⁷

However, Humbert's real intent was to meet with leaders of the insurgency and to obtain a commission to legitimize his Texas intentions, letters of marque for the corsairs involved in his plan, and some immediate profit to finance their efforts. The last they would achieve by Dominique taking along a cargo of several tons of gunpowder to sell to the rebels. On June 19 Humbert landed at Nautla, where he first posed as an envoy from the United States in order to make contact with the insurgent leaders. In fact, there were two rival leaders, Ignacio Rayón and Juan Rosains, and each had sent a representative to see Humbert. He met with both of them, José Antonio Pedroza and Juan Pablo Anaya. Each sought to take Humbert to his leader, especially after Humbert falsely presented himself as a United States agent authorized to discuss an alliance with the junta. His cargo of gunpowder was also most attractive, and even more so was his promise that other Laffite ships including the Dorada and Gambis Philanthrope would be coming with more.⁴⁸

On July 12 Anaya struck first when he gave Humbert a passport allowing him to travel inland to meet with Rosains.⁴⁹ While Humbert was gone, Anaya and Dominique sold the gunpowder for $5,000 and a variety of silver and gold jewelry. On hearing that the Rayon faction had taken control of the congress and ordered his arrest, Anaya decided it was time to leave Mexico. He manufactured for himself a bogus commission as emissary to the United States, then virtually kidnapped his enemy Pedroza, put the money and jewelry aboard Dominique's felucca, and set sail as soon as Humbert returned, reaching Barataria about the first of September. On their arrival they met Bean, who joined them for the trip to New Orleans. Dominique dropped them off in the city on September 6 and returned immediately to Grand Isle, for he had learned disturbing news on reaching Barataria.⁵⁰ During their absence the landscape had changed dramatically for the filibusters, for the progress of the American war with Britain, and most of all for the Laffites, beginning not least with the fact that Pierre Laffite was in jail.