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Dominique Youx, Intrepid Warrior
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Salty Dog
Sailing Master
Posts: 10060



191991 Gold -

PostPosted: Thu Nov 02, 2017 6:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

When Dominique Youx and Renato Beluche joined Jackson on the 28th, they were given command of two 24 pounders (later known as Battery Number 3 and positioned directly opposite six British 18 pounders) on the right side of the American line about 150 yards from the Mississippi River. On New Year’s Day 1815, Dominique, a master gunner, peered at the enemy through his telescope. The British cannon opened fire, and a shell fragment struck his arm. Vincent Nolte, a German cotton merchant present at the battle, wrote in his memoirs:



. . . [Youx] caused it [the wound] to be bound up, saying, “I will pay them for that!” and resumed his glass. He then directed a twenty-four pounder, gave the order to fire, and the ball knocked an English gun-carriage to pieces, and killed six or seven men. (Nolte, 218)


In the hours before dawn seven days later, or so the story goes, Dominique and his men savored their coffee when Andrew Jackson remarked:


“H’m-mm! That smells like better coffee than we can get . . . Where do you get such fine coffee? Maybe you smuggled it?”

“Mebbe so, zénéral,” rejoined Dominique with a grin. The Baratarian chief then offered a small tin cupful from the pot. It was black as tar and its aroma could be smelled twenty yards away . . . Jackson drank it with gusto, thanked Dominique and then walked slowly towards the left of the line. “I wish I had fifty guns on this line, with five hundred such devils as those fellows are, at the butts,” he said the moment he and his aides were out of earshot of Battery No. 3. (Arthur, 119)


By this time, General Sir Edward Pakenham had assembled nearly 10,000 men on the British side of the battlefield.16 Later that morning, that army began its assault.


As the blazing trail of flame [from a rocket] rose into the gray clouds, the advance guards on both flanks ran forward toward Jackson’s line and the American guns opened fire. . . . For the brief moment before men began to die Pakenham’s army paraded in proud, colorful, and stirring display. Within five minutes the image was shattered; within ten the parade ground had become a churned field of mud heaped with tangled and bloodied masses of scarlet, tartan, and green. (Reilly, 317)

Within half an hour, two thirds of the three thousand soldiers who began the attack had been killed or injured. Though skirmishing continued for some hours afterward, the battle was over, and the Baratarian gunners had played an important role in breaking up the assault, with Dominique taking a second wound and Gambi shedding his blood as well. (Davis, 218)
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Salty Dog
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Posts: 10060



191991 Gold -

PostPosted: Thu Nov 02, 2017 6:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Between 23 December and 8 January, the Americans lost 333 men, but the dead totaled only fifty-five. In contrast, British causalities numbered around 2,500, which included those killed, wounded, and missing or taken prisoner. These engagements essentially divided the number of British men in half, which still left eight times as many men as the Americans had. “Analysis of the British casualties on January 8 does much to support claims that it was the American artillery which won the battle . . . .” (Reilly, 329) Captain R. N. Hill, the acting chief of artillery for the British Army, later wrote:



The Americans . . . opened in good earnest and, as soon became apparent along our line, with startling effect. For the first half-hour the weight of execution was undoubtedly in our favor. But the American defences – a heavy, solid earthwork – soon proved far superior to our flimsy protection, improvised from hogsheads of sugar or filled with loose dirt. These were soon knocked to pieces. Then our gun-carriages and ammunition-chests began to suffer. Moreover, our calibers were only 12- and 9-pounders, while the enemy had 18’s, 24’s and 32’s . . . Either by accident or design or because fate was against us, the enemy’s gunners bestowed most of their attention upon our heaviest and best guns. . . . The battery of theirs that did us by far the most injury was the third one from their right which brought it about opposite to the centre of our formation. This battery mounted 24-pounders, which were fired alternately with great deliberation and with unvarying effect. (Buell, 418-419)
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Salty Dog
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191991 Gold -

PostPosted: Thu Nov 02, 2017 6:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That battery, whose guns proved most effective, were those manned by men who just a month before awaited trial on charges of piracy. Their commanders were Dominique Youx and Renato Beluche.17

When Jackson congratulated his men on 21 January, he praised Dominique and Renato.


The general cannot avoid giving his warm approbation in which these gentlemen have uniformly conducted themselves while under his command, and of the gallantry with which they have redeemed the pledge they gave at the opening of the campaign to defend the country. (Latour, 340-341)


The following month, they received their full pardons from President Madison. In March, Judge Hall, who had postponed the Baratarians’ prosecutions, demanded the general appear in his court and pay of fine of $1,000 for contempt. Jackson did so. Among those gathered outside the court to support him were Dominique and Renato. Edward Livingston successfully represented Dominique in his case for compensation for the felucca, which Patterson had confiscated and was sold after the raid, four months later.

After a Spanish schooner, the Mexicain, was brought into port later that year, Dominique was hired to refit and make her seaworthy. Once that work was completed he would become her captain and she would cruise as a privateer again. Although he didn’t own the vessel, he incurred $1,061.25 in debt working on her, but the owner only reimbursed Dominique $580. He placed a lien on the privateer, but her sale in December failed to recoup his money and prevented him from continuing his career as a privateer for the next three years.

After procuring the Louise in September 1817, Dominique made repairs to the schooner, rechristened her Josephine, and acquired a Mexican commission. With the checkerboard flag of that republic atop a mast, he captured a Spanish schooner on 30 November and put in at Jean Laffite’s new base of operations, Galveston. In 1818 Dominique joined forces with Louis Aury, who had used Galveston as a base of operations before Laffite took over. Aury planned to attack Honduras seaports loyal to Spain, so Dominique added four additional guns to his schooner Guerrière with her crew of twenty-five and two long nine-pound guns. They attacked two strongholds in April and May of 1820, but Dominique preferred privateering to fighting an army.
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Salty Dog
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191991 Gold -

PostPosted: Thu Nov 02, 2017 6:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

With opportunities to legally seize enemy vessels in the Gulf of Mexico greatly diminished, Dominique bid adieu to the seafaring way of life. He returned to New Orleans, where he lived in a small cottage in the Faubourg Marigny section of the city. According to Stanley Faye, he served as an alderman for a time. Whenever Andrew Jackson ran for office, Dominique supported him. During the final two years of his life, he kept to himself and rarely went out. “At times, it is said, his humble home was without food” and he “was too proud to seek aid from ‘fair-weather friends’.” (Kendall, 27) They didn’t become aware of the direness of his situation until the day before he died.


Cathedral of St. Louis where mass was said for Dominique Youx

Death came to this privateer on 14 November 1830 at four in the afternoon.18 Although there were had no funds for his burial, New Orleans didn’t forget this hero of the battle who saved the city and its citizens from British occupation. He was given a military funeral with a mass at the cathedral. Businesses closed. Flags flew at half staff. Cannon were fired in his honor. Among those who attended his funeral were members of La Concorde No. 3, the Masonic lodge he joined in 1814. His body was transported to St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 for interment. The Louisiana Courier carried his obituary.


Captain DOMINIQUE YOU, well known for his virtues and his intrepidity, cherished and esteemed by every Louisianian and American, for the signal services which he rendered this State and Union during the invasion of the British, is no more; he ended his honorable career yesterday morning. Captain Dominique, to whom fortune has never been very favorable, died almost in want; but no sooner did these circumstances become known to the members of the city council, than they hastened to pay the sacred debt which this city owed for the efforts of this brave man, by procuring the suitable necessities for his funeral at the expense of the corporation. Our Legion, who ever know how to appreciate worth, and services rendered to the country, paid military honors to their old companion in arms, and numerous citizens of all classes accompanied his remains to the abode of rest. (Gentleman, 236)


On the marble slab of Dominique Youx’s sarcophagus are etched the following words from Voltaire’s La Henriade:


Intrépide guerrier sur la terre et sur l’onde
Il fut dans cent combats signaler sa valeur
Et ce nouveau Bayard, sans reproche et sans peur
Aurait pu sans trembler voir s’ecrouler le monde.

Intrepid warrior on land and sea
In a hundred combats showed his valor
This new Bayard without reproach or fear
Could have witnessed the ending of the world without trembling.
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Salty Dog
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Posts: 10060



191991 Gold -

PostPosted: Thu Nov 02, 2017 6:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Notes:

1. Some historians spell his name as You, others as Youx. Copies of documents from the Williams Research Center in New Orleans use the latter spelling, but the center itself uses the former. For clarity and to distinguish him from the pronoun, I use Youx.

2. When Stanley Clisby Arthur and Jane Lucas de Grummond, both reputable historians, published their books, they believed one of their consulted sources to be authentic. The controversy as to whether Le Journal de Jean Laffite is actually Laffite’s or a remarkable forgery continues today. Robert L. Schaadt, Director-Archivist of the Sam Houston Regional Library & Research Center for twenty-seven years, wrote: “. . . I believe that I have proved conclusively that [it] is filled with inaccuracies, inconsistencies and several glaring and outright distortions of the truth.” (Memoirs, 33) The position of The Laffite Society, whose members conduct research on the Laffites and their contemporaries, is that the journal is a forgery. I concur. Nor do I believe Youx was a Laffite.

3. Born in 1805, Gayarré was one day shy of his tenth birthday at the time of the Battle of New Orleans. His family’s plantation was located in what today is known as Audubon Park, and during his lifetime, he was a lawyer, politician, judge, historian, and writer. As a child he certainly knew of Dominique Youx, but whether the two ever met I don’t know.

4. A former war correspondent during the Spanish-American War, Arthur spent much of his life documenting Louisiana’s culture, history, and customs after he moved there in 1915. He was a regional director for the Survey of Federal Archives, a joint project of the Works Progress Administration and the National Archives during the Great Depression.

5. The Eleanor was captured in consort with another corsair, Victor Lesage.

6. La Vipre, a schooner out of Baltimore, Maryland, was declared a lawful prize on 15 December 1806.

7. The Gazette, the oldest continuously-published newspaper in the UK, began its run in November 1665 as the Oxford Gazette as a news sheet for Charles II and his court, which resided in Oxford because of the rampant spread of the plague in London. When the Court returned to the capital the following year, the name was changed to its current title. It had two columns on the front and back of a single sheet of paper and was published every Monday and Thursday. The principal readers were merchants, lawyers, and military officers.

8. The resources I had access to at the time of this writing do not permit me to delve deeper into this mystery to see if Youx, Houx, and Diron (in this instance) are the same person. The historians who name Diron as the infamous privateer that tangled with the Pitt may have confused him with Dominique Diron of the Decatur, a successful privateer out of Charleston, South Carolina, during the War of 1812.

9. The minutes of The Laffite Society (11 January 2000) state that this information was confirmed in a letter to the French ambassador of the United States. One member acquired the letter for the society’s archives, but whether it survived Hurricane Ike is unknown at present because those documents that did survive have yet to be indexed. Additional sources that confirm this are Mercurio de España 1807 (pages 239-240), La Gazeta de Madrid del martes 1 March 1807 (No. 18, page 218), and La Gazeta de Madrid del viernes 1 January 1808 (Vol. 1, pages 218-219). [My thanks to Elena Cros and her cousin for their archival research on Luis Arrúe Alcibar that unearthed Youx's association with this gentleman.]

10. David Ludlum coined the name in the second half of the 20th century while researching hurricanes between 1492 and 1870.

11. Dudley Callais’ article, cited below, puts the total cost at $6,000,000, which is equivalent to $85,000,000 today.

12. This passage is taken from an affidavit in the collection of The Williams Research Center in New Orleans. Frederic Teinburier (lieutenant), Pierre Mouillé (master carpenter), André Bertellau (second gunner), Thomas Raffo (topman), and Pierre Manuel (topman) were members of Youx’s crew aboard le Pandoure and gave testimony on 23 August 1812 before Jean Baptiste Laporte, Chancellor of the French Consul in New Orleans. Although I translated the majority of the document, I am indebted to Armand Robichaud of Canada for assistance in deciphering what I could not.

13. Eleven years after Dominique visited Cape Cruz, Commander David Porter led a squadron of naval vessels there with the intention of destroying a pirate stronghold. The leader of the landing force was Lieutenant David G. Farragut, best known for his “Damn the torpedoes!” statement during the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864.

14. Launched in 1809, Sophie was a brig sloop of eighteen guns. Lockyer and his men burned the Baltimore privateer Pioneer, with seventeen guns and 170 men, on New Year’s Eve 1813. In April of the following year, she captured another privateer, the Starks, a schooner with two guns and twenty-five men. At the time Patterson attacked Barataria, Sophie joined the British attack on Fort Bowyer at the mouth of Mobile Bay. Lockyer later led an attack on American gunboats on Lake Borgne in mid-December 1814.

15. Jean Laffite had absented himself from Barataria, perhaps because he knew the raid was imminent.

16. Pakenham, the brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, distinguished himself during the Peninsular War and the Battle of Salamanca in 1811. Sir John Lambert, the only British general of the four present at the Battle of New Orleans to survive, wrote to the war minister: “The brave commander of the forces, who never in his life could refrain from being at the post of honour . . . gallopped on to the front to animate them [the troops] by his presence; and he was seen with his hat off, encouraging them on the crest of the glacis. It was then (almost at the same time) he received two wounds, one in the knee, and another, which was almost instantly fatal, in his body. He fell into the arms of Major M’Dougall, his aide-de-camp. The effect of this in the sight of the troops, together with Major-General Gibbs and Major-General Keane being borne off wounded at the same time, with many other commanding officers . . . caused a wavering in the column . . . ." (Cole, 357-358)

17. Youx’s gun crew consisted of Jean Lulan (chef de piece), Etieme Tour, Jean Sapia, Jratrain, Baptiste Plauche, Pierre Brulor, Barthelemy, Lauriat, Jacques Alain, Joarmy, Mackerie, and Sterling. (This partial list can be found in Appendix A of the Historic Resource Study Chalmette Unit. A full list of the forty-two Baratarians who served with him can be found in Casey’s book.)

18. Sixty-five years after his death, Dominique Youx’ s exploits inspired Octavius Nash Ogden, a lawyer and judge who owned a cotton plantation in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, to write a three-act tragedy entitled Dominic You in 1895. It bears little resemblance to the privateer’s actual life and career.
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