A Visionary Adventure: Arsène Lacarrière Latour 1778-1837, the Unusual Travels of a Frenchman in the Americas

The public records of Arsène Lacarrière Latour give no indication of the remarkable life story of the private person, whose roles as architect, engineer-geographer, and political observer went well beyond his activity as a principal actor and the first historian of the Battle of New Orleans.

The biography that Jean Garrigoux has devoted to Latour carefully spells out, thanks to the best available French, American, Cuban, Spanish, and Mexican sources, the various stages of a life full of passions and intrigues in the service of the United States and the Spanish Crown in the New World. The author brings the reader into the dangerous projects of France s Napoleonic émigrés, Caribbean pirates, and the secret agents with whom this magistrate s son trying to improve his condition while escaping the humdrum was deeply involved.