Felícitas de Saint Maxent, a native of Louisiana and of French extraction, was a lady of surpassing loveliness, charitable, gracious, and intelligent.[1] Scarcely more than fifteen years had elapsed since the young general had been in Mexico in an humble position and with scanty means.[2] He had served as a subaltern in Portugal in 1762. The marqués de Croix gave him a commission in the Corona regiment. He finds himself a little later a captain in the same regiment, serving as comandante de armas in Nueva Vizcaya, where he punished the Apaches in several encounters, being himself wounded several times, once quite severely. He afterward went to Habana, and in 1772 to Spain, where he continued his military service, and followed it up in America with brilliant success, obtaining rapid promotion till he reached, with other honors, the highest rank but one in the army.[3]
- ↑ Spaniards and Mexicans came to regard her highly, making much of her, and she greatly contributed to her husband's popularity. Gayarré's Hist. Louisiana, 165.
- ↑ Of this he was good-naturedly reminded, after his exaltation, and some advice given him, in a pasquin that was found fastened on the wall of the palace the 9th of August:
'Yo te conocí pepita
Antes que fueras melon,
Maneja bien el baston
Y cuida la francesita.'Another quartette favorably compared him and his countess with the inspector of the troops and his wife who had come together with Galvez:
'El virey, muy bueno,
La vireina, mejor;
El inspector el diablo,
Y su muger; ————; peor!'The last two lines referred only to the ill-temper of the couple. Gomez, Diario, 206, 213-14.
- ↑ In 1775 as a captain of infantry he took part in the landing and fight of the Spaniards with the Algerines on the Algiers beach, and was seriously wounded. This won him promotion to lieutenant-colonel, and to superintendent of the military school at Ávila. The next time we see him a colonel in command of a regiment in Louisiana, and soon after placed in temporary charge of the government, wherein displaying good judgment, he also had some successful brushes with the British; he was then made a brigadier. His military record in Louisiana seems to have been marked by brilliancy, I have no space to detail his deeds. Suffice it to say that he defeated the British in several actions, and took from them aided by the French, Mobile with a large quantity of arms and many prisoners. After that, with his own forces he laid siege to Pensacola, and captured it with all its forts, artillery and other arms, and a large number of prisoners whom he granted the honors of war; among them were the governor, captain-general, and the general commanding the English forces. At Pensacola, which he entered in a brig called
