[Among the tactics conceived by colonial officials in Louisiana to counter the threat of American invasion or seizure of Spanish territories was "buffer colonization" - the founding, at strategic sites, of agricultural communities composed of persons loyal to Spain.] [Such was the thinking in 1795 when two would-be colonization impresarios, Joseph, Marquis de Maison Rouge, a French Royalist in exile, and Philippe Enrique Neri, Baron de Bastrop, a Belgian, individually approached Governor Carondelet with schemes to establish European emigrant families in the Ouachita Valley in exchange for grants of vast tracts of land in the area. The planners secured generous concessions from Carondelet, but the results were not what the Spanish expected. Maison Rouge and Bastrop did not fulfill the visionary promises they had made, and the flourishing communities they had projected never materialized.] Governor Carondelet signed an agreement with the Marquis de Maison Rouge, who obligated himself to establish thirty immigrant families in the Ouachita Valley to form an agricultural colony for the cultivation and milling of wheat. The Spanish pledged themselves to provide money and land for the settlers and to pay their transportation expenses. An endorsement, dated 1795 July 14 and signed by Minister of Finance Diego de Gardoqui in Madrid, informed Royal Intendant Francisco Rendon that the King had given his approval to the Maison Rouge grant. [An English translation appears in Mitchell and Calhoun, "...The Maison Rouge and Bastrop Spanish Land 'Grants'," LHQ, XX, 303-304; American State Papers Public Lands, III, 409-410, IV, 50-51.]
