From the Périgord to Patagonia
This child of farmers was born on May 12, 1825 in Tourtoirac, France. In his youth, he was confronted very early with the strong peasant demands under the kingdom of King Louis-Philippe. Witnessing revolts between the lower classes and an indifferent nobility, the young boy was struck by the social injustices of his time. He grew up and became a solicitor in Périgueux in 1851. One day in 1857, he sold his business and disappeared, determined to set sail for the New World. Opinions were divided as to the quest he had promised himself: some claimed that he was seeking to proclaim himself king to a people naive enough to accept him, while others claimed that he wished to liberate South America from the rubble of the Spanish crown. In any case, the following year, in 1858, he landed in Chile; he had only 25,000 francs on him when he arrived in Coquimbo (the port of La Serena, some 400 km north of Santiago). It is only two years later, in 1860, that he finally reaches Araucania while the indigenous resistance is at its worst.
Long before his arrival to the Mapuche, Tounens had already fallen in love with this people through the reading of the epic poem La Araucana (a famous work evoking the bravery of the Mapuche against the Spanish invasions, written by Alonso de Ercilla and translated by Voltaire). The adventure of the Perigordian then switches to a world at the doors of fiction: he meets this people of warriors and is introduced to their chief, the lonko Quillapán. This one, well before the arrival of this presumed "white savior", is confronted with the creation of the Chilean and Argentinean republics: an emancipation synonymous with massacres for the indigenous people. However, for nearly three centuries, the treaty held by the Spanish Crown guaranteed the independence of the Mapuche: this will be reduced to smoke with the creation of Chile and Argentina. Quillapán then begins a series of dreams, supposed to guide him in the choices he will make for his people. In one of his visions, he sees the image of a white man appearing, who came to protect them. He considered that Tounens had the necessary qualities of a matchmaker and named him "witch-king". The myth of the "good savages" saved by a white man is not far away, but a question remains: did Antoine de Tounens impose himself or was he the chosen one of a people in contact with the horror of his time? Nothing seemed to predispose this unusual dream to enter in the History, however, incredible circumstances or an opportunism to any test made of Tounens the new king of Araucania. He established his Constitution and appointed several ministers to assist him. The sovereignty of this micro-kingdom was of course never recognized by any state. Everybody took him for a madman, and he was not much appreciated; he was even ridiculed and sarcasm was not lacking.The kingdom of all fantasies
Determined to defend their land and their culture, the Mapuche want to arm themselves, which Antoine de Tounens promises. It must be said that the new king of Araucania was not short of contacts and that France might have seen this establishment in the New World in a positive light: Tounens tried to propose diplomatic protection for his new kingdom to the Minister of Finance and advisor to Napoleon III, Pierre Magne. His logic, although zany, is nevertheless clear in his mind. This man of law wishes to rely on the diplomatic independence of the Mapuche recognized by the Treaty of Spain and "crown" the whole thing with a constitution that he wants Napoleon III to sign. A great speaker and a breath of hope for a people in perdition, he galvanized his troops and made them glimmer with the delights of a much hoped-for independence. The Chilean government, embarrassed by this intruder, took him prisoner on 5 January 1862. First of all, he was sentenced to death, then his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. However, the good offices of a certain Cazotte, Consul General of France in Chile, granted him freedom and Tounens was released in exchange for his word of honour: never to return to Chile again. In October 1862, he was repatriated to France but in 1871, he returned to South America: Chile put a price on his head. Undesirable on the whole territory, he ends up being recognized. Imprisoned again and sent back to France, he died on 18 September 1877.
A king mocked and despised
Comments are made about this backward conquistador in search of a kingdom. At the time, the question of royalty bothered many, but paradoxically, it bothered the Mapuche much less. To understand, we must go back slightly in history. Indeed, the one and only time that a Spanish army was severely defeated, it happened during a confrontation with the Mapuche. After the defeat, the king of Spain recognized the total independence of this people below a border drawn by the Rio Bío Bío. As a result of this agreement, the Mapuche had gained immense respect for the notion of royalty. However, Chile and Argentina later declared their independence and the Mapuche were immediately attacked and gained a great sense of contempt towards these two new republics. Thus, this could have served the ambitions of a daring megalomaniac, presenting himself in the right place at the right time. However, the work carried out during more than eight years by the author Jean-François Gareyte knew how to restore the blazon of this young périgourdin. And among the military, diplomatic and police archives of the Chilean State, the surprise is big: the written sources on Antoine de Tounens are not lacking and the veracity of all this affair is not to be proved anymore. There remains only one question: did he come with the idea of proclaiming himself king or was he destined to his destiny of "prophet"?
The true face of Antoine de Tounens
So? Revolutionary figure? French agent? Enlightened royalist? He embodies this hero wishing to defend his adopted culture against the Western wave as much as the prodigious madness of an ambitious conquistador. But is a man appointed as a warlord by a free people, respecting the beliefs and laws of that people, any less legitimate than a king of France? Recent researches have shown that Antoine de Tounens would have been discredited for a long time by Chile and Argentina who would have had the idea to caricature this affair to make him pass for a mystifying character. A freemason and a lawyer, Antoine de Tounens would have had Bolivar's dream: to federate the Latin American states in order to escape the control of the Western republics (the United States of America had just been formed). He was the subject of constant controversy, but he left a constitution and a strong memory in the Mapuche memory, which did not fail to pay him homage: even today, his tombstone reads " Marichiweu " (10 times we will win).
To read - To see: it is necessary to read of course the novel of Jean Raspail, I, Antoine de Tounens, king of Patagonia. Before him, Saint-Loup had rediscovered this epic in Le Roi blanc des Patagons. Bruce Chatwin evokes the character and many others in his travelogue In Patagonia. Jean-François Gareyte restores many historical truths in his two volumes Le Rêve du sorcier (La Lauze). In the cinema, the Argentine director Carlos Sorín, in The King's Film (La película del rey, 1986), sends a whole film crew to Patagonia to make a film in period costumes on the subject. More recently, in 2017, Chilean-American director Niles Atallah delivered a rather free and artistic vision of it in Rey, the story of the Frenchman who wanted to become king of Patagonia. Even the comic strip has recently taken up this romantic subject with Roi du vent - Un Gascon en Patagonie by Fabien Tillon and Gaël Remise and Roi des Mapuche by Christophe Dabitch and Nicolas Dumontheuil
