In Cartagena he was first in the Corsairs of French privateer Louis Aury, with whom he maintained a friendship, and later at militia corps of General Manuel del Castillo y Rada, who just fought the royalists of Santa Marta during the liberation wars on the Río Magdalena.
When a government crisis arose in January 1815 as a result of several coups in a short period of time, Villaume stood at the side of Castillo y Rada, who ended the political instability militarily.
The day before the surrender, he fled to Haiti with the Venezuelan officers of Bolivar on the ship of his friend, the naval commander of Cartagena, Louis Aury.
He embarked again to Haiti where disappointed with the womanizing and totalitarian behavior of Simón Bolívar "in his eyes" who has repeatedly fled during engagements against the Spanish enemy, Ducoudray Holstein resigned in 1816, left Bolívar army and moved to Aux Cayes, Haiti in order to get by there as a bookseller and music teacher.
In 1822, Ducoudray Holstein conceived, carefully planned, organized and directed a for-profit commercial enterprise seeking to invade the Spanish colony of Puerto Rico and declare it the independent “Republica Boricua.”[2] His experience with Bolívar and with the independence wars in Venezuela are described in Holstein, Henri Louis Ducoudray (12 January 2011).