Texas played a unique role in the various revolutions that plagued New Spain in the early 1800s. Spain had only lightly colonized it, France had reportedly placed colonies there, and the United States of America thought they had purchased everything up to the Rio Grande from France in the Louisiana Purchase. And then Napoleon conquered Spain and threw the Spanish Empire into more chaos. Local Tejano independence movements sought friends in America as revolution raged in Mexico, but the Spanish Empire squashed one after another and executed the revolutionaries en masse. The United States and Spain eventually signed a treaty in 1819 that accepted Spanish rule over the area and everything was good. Then the First Mexican Empire established itself in 1821, Spain of course did not recognize the rebellious province, and that made everything far more complicated again.