Heinrich Ludwig Villaume

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Heinrich Ludwig Villaume , also Louis Henri Ducoudray Holstein, (born September 23, 1772 in Schwedt / Oder ; † April 24, 1839 in Albany (New York) , USA) was general of the Napoleonic Army , fortress commander in the Republic of Cartagena, educator and author a book about Simón Bolívar's liberation of South America.

Life

youth

He was the son of the pastor and educator Peter Villaume , who came from a Huguenot family and who, after studying in Berlin, moved to a parish in Schwedt. Probably shortly after the birth of Heinrich Ludwig, because the inconsistent information about the place of birth leaves room for the birth of Heinrich Ludwig during the move. Later the father worked in Halberstadt, where he ran a girls' school. Then he taught at a Berlin high school. This environment gave the young Heinrich Ludwig an excellent education and also a desire to learn.

Napoleonic Army and Spain

In 1793 he joined the French Revolutionary Army, took over a battalion in 1795, but left the army the following year. When General Marie-Joseph de Lafayette was imprisoned in Olomouc in Moravia, he contributed to its liberation in 1797, acting as the Danish merchant Peter Feldmann. “After 1800” he writes himself, he was “employed in the staff of Napoleon Bonaprte .” In 1809 he changed his name to Ducoudray Holstein. In the French army he was a general in the Catalan General Staff of the Duke of Taranto in Barcelona in 1811, until he was deposed on September 2 and interned in the hospital. A decree by Napoleon had declared him a traitor. After two months in detention, he managed to escape.

America

After the success of the Duke of Wellington 1811-1812 (support of the English from Portugal) he fell into the hands of the Spaniards, who moved him to Cádiz . Here he managed in early 1813, with the help of a Spanish officer and unknown Mexicans, to free himself from prison in order to enter the USA. However, they denied him access to their military, so he left again. It is possible that he made a detour to Mexico to support the struggle for independence there before joining the League of Liberated Provinces of New Granada in Cartagena in early 1814.

Cartagena and Bolívar

Here he was first in the corsair unit of Louis Aury, with whom he cultivated a friendship, and later with the conservative general Manuel Castillo y Rada, who was fighting the loyal Santa Martas in the context of the wars of liberation on the Río Magdalena. When in January 1815 a government crisis occurred as a result of several coups in a short time with continued coups, Villaume stood on the side of Castillo y Rada, who ended the political instability militarily. It is here that he married the Colombian María del Carmen.

During Pablo Morillo's siege of Cartagena from late August to early December 1815, as general, he led the defense of the Bocachica fortress on the island of Tierrabomba in the port entrance. The day before the surrender, Villaume fled with Bolívar's officers on the ship of his friend, the privateer and naval commander of Cartagena, Louis Aury. He met the liberator Simón Bolívar in Haiti in January 1816 and joined him. Villaume participated in the landing on Margarita in May and the establishment of Bolívar as commander in chief. Despite the surprise capture of Carúpanos by the vanguard of Bolívar, he apparently foresaw the impending retreat and left the army of Bolívar on June 23. He embarked again for Haiti to get by there as a bookseller and music teacher.

Caribbean and USA

After four years, in 1820, he moved to Curaçao because he hoped for better earning opportunities here. Apparently the conditions on this island were not more lucrative either, so that in 1822 he went to the USA, where he procured weapons and a ship with false Dutch papers for the uprising in Puerto Rico. Via the then Danish island of Sankt Thomas he wanted to make a stopover there with a few hundred mercenaries to set up his troops. Although originally agreed with government agencies, the deal was prevented and he was sentenced to death. With the help of General Lafayette and government intervention, he escaped punishment and was allowed to move to the United States.

Here he became a father and taught New Languages, first in college and around 1835 at the Academy for Women in Albany, New York State. As a teacher, he took the view that in order to learn a language properly, one had to think in that language and not necessarily translate it. He stayed in the USA until his death.

book

Villaume is known for his book Memoirs of Simón Bolívar (Boston, 1829, London, 1830), which he published under the name Henri Louis Ducoudray Holstein after five years of work, but only five months with Bolívar.

content

Bolívar is not doing well in the work because Villaume did not appreciate Bolívar's “fiery enthusiasm” for his fatherland. (The situation of the independence fighters at that time was, from an overall strategic point of view, catastrophic, what was missing, the patriotism of Bolívar had to make up for.) The description in the book of Bolívar's appearance is still in use today (and fits well with the autopsy data).

For having spent over a year with the separatists of New Granada and Venezuela, Villaume confuses a surprising amount in the book. Certainly the possibilities that he had when researching the book also play a role in the quality of the book. Without wanting to diminish Villaume's linguistic abilities, there is a very good chance that he did not understand everything that was told to him. And the representations were of course always colored from the point of view of the reporter. (The events that he did not attend himself were reported to him by those involved.) It is therefore difficult to distinguish which details are correctly reproduced and which are distorted. In any case, his presentation is not necessarily in accordance with today's historiography.

There are also personal sensitivities. Although he himself denies taking part in the Creoles' freedom struggle for financial reasons, his later life points to financial bottlenecks. The displeasure with the food ration upon landing in eastern Venezuela in the first half of 1816, the arepa (cornmeal tarts) weighing "barely four loths" and two small fish a day for officers and men is again very credible. The reports of the executions of Spaniards should not be rejected as a matter of principle, since such aspects are often neglected in official historiography. There is no adequate work-up taking into account recent historiography.

Follow-up works

This book was the basis for the article “Bolívar y Ponte” that Karl Marx wrote for “The New American Encyclopedia” at the beginning of January 1858 and served Alfonse Violett as the basis for the also two-volume sequel: Histôire de Bolívar, par le Général Ducoudray Holstein ( Paris 1831). Marx's article is accordingly harsh on Bolívar, which is only correct here in certain points.

swell

Web links

  • His work in Colombia in 1815, as well as in Haiti and Venezuela in 1816, can be found here in the context of the wars of independence ( table of contents ).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Genealogy page (Danish), accessed October 20, 2010
personal data
SURNAME Villaume, Heinrich Ludwig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Henri Louis Ducoudray Holstein
BRIEF DESCRIPTION General on Napoleon's staff, officer in the war of liberation in South America, educator, author
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1772
PLACE OF BIRTH uncertain: Berlin , Kingdom of Prussia
DATE OF DEATH April 24, 1839
Place of death Albany (New York) , USA