Augustus Carl Büchel

Augustus Carl Büchel

Augustus Carl Büchel (born October 7, 1813 in Guntersblum , † April 15, 1864 in Mansfield ) was a German officer and colonel in the 1st Texas Cavalry .

Life

Augustus Büchel was born in Guntersblum in 1813 as the seventh child of the clerk Charles Frederic and the housewife and mother Christina Philippina, nee. Whim, born. After his very short school days he was admitted to the military academy in Darmstadt in 1828 . On September 1, 1831, he was finally appointed second lieutenant in the 1st Infantry Regiment Hessen-Darmstadt . To continue his education, he attended the École Militaire in Paris from 1833 . Büchel remained unmarried throughout his life.

In 1836 he made his first combat experience as a soldier in the Carlist War in Spain . After the Battle of Huesca , he was knighted in 1837 for his good military performance .

After the war, at the invitation of Mehmed Emin Ali Pasha, he went to Constantinople , today's Istanbul, to work as a trainer for the Ottoman army . The greatest success for him here was the appointment as colonel , the highest rank for a Christian at the time. He was also offered the appointment of a general , which he refused because he did not want the necessary transgression to Islam. He then resigned from the Ottoman army.

In the following years he returned to Germany and often worked as a duelist . In 1845, however, he left Europe again to arrive in Carlshafen, now Indianola (Texas) . He soon took part in the war here too: in the Mexican-American War , he set up a company as captain for the First Regiment of Texas Foot Rifles . At the Battle of Buena Vista in 1847 he was an orderly officer on General Zachary Taylor's staff . After Taylor became President of the United States , he planned to appoint Büchel as Honorary Consul of Brazil . Taylor's death prevented this.

The subsequent president Franklin Pierce appointed Büchel now to the customs collector in Port Lavaca , Texas. In addition to his job as a customs collector, Büchel also began to set up a timber and building materials business in Corpus Christi .

In 1859 he was active again as a soldier: He put together a volunteer unit called Indianola Volunteers to put an end to the activities of the well-known crook Juan Cortina in the Mexican border area around Brownsville (Texas) . He finally managed to do this just a few months later. When the American Civil War finally began, he was one of the most skilled soldiers here in Texas. In 1861 he was appointed lieutenant colonel of the 3rd Texas Infantry Regiment. Two years later he was promoted to colonel and regimental commander of the 1st Texan Cavalry. In 1864, shortly before his death, he was finally appointed Brigadier General.

Augustus Büchel finally died in Mansfield on April 15, 1864, after being seriously injured in the Battle of Pleasant Hill , Louisiana. Büchel was then buried with a state funeral in Mansfield. The Texas state erected an impressive monument in his honor over his current resting place in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin .

Honors

• In Cuero, Texas, a street, a park and a dam are named after him. Some irrigation projects also bear his name.
• In 1865 the city of Cuero erected a memorial stone in front of its courthouse to commemorate Augustus Büchel.
• In 1887 the Texas Parliament decided to name a Texas district called Büchel County after him.

literature

• Robert W. Stephens: August Büchel, Texan Soldier of fortune , Dallas, Texas 1970
• Guntersblumer Geschichte (n) , Volume 2, pp. 46-49

Web links

• Information about Augustus Büchel (English)