American History Hit - Napoleon in America

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

Napoleon Bonaparte. From military leader to revolutionary to Emperor of the French, his conquests and reforms have had a lasting impact across the world. But what impact did he have on the United States? And what if he had completed the journey across the Atlantic?Don speaks to author Shannon Selin, whose new book 'Napoleon in America' imagines Napoleon's life in the United States. Together, they discuss Napoleon's relationship with and reputation in the United States, and the French people who did make the journey.Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.Don’t miss out on the best offer in history! Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORYHIT1 sign up now for your 14-day free trial https://historyhit/subscription/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. After the French defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815, Bonaparte fled his enemies closing in. Secretly, he charters a ship, the brig, La Magrata, and on the night of July 24th, he rose out to her under the cover of darkness.

After all the pomp of his impressive life, in this moment, he is accompanied by just four trusted companions. One of them is a cook, how French. And just like that, he is gone from France. from Europe and from the battles he'd fought, bound for America and his new life. His only regret is that his brother, the more famous Bonaparte, Napoleon, had not joined him. Yes, the man setting sail across the Atlantic is Joseph Bonaparte. As for his brother, the stubborn Napoleon, well, he apparently felt that being a prisoner of the British on the godforsaken island of St. Helena was preferable to living free in America.

Ouch. Bad choice. Hello and welcome. Don Wildman here, and thanks for clicking through. Welcome to American History Hit. Around Thanksgiving, there's a new sweeping epic coming out in the theaters from the legendary director Ridley Scott, starring Joaquin Fidex and a cast of thousands, surely. Involving the pivotal figure of early 19th century European history, most Americans think was a fussy little Frenchman with his hand in the jacket. Napoleon Bonaparte, that domineering enigma, a military,

and political genius who in the early 1800s declared himself emperor of France, after there was a bloody revolution seemingly meant to do away with such things, who then for decades and numerous conflicts ran circles around his European rivals across the continent and picking fights with the British on land and sea, until the Duke of Wellington famously defeated him at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Surely Joaquin Phoenix will act it all out in subtle detail, while Ridley Scott captures the graphic horrors of war. And perhaps American audiences will finally understand how Napoleon's history matters so much to our own.

Because it really does. The Napoleonic Wars, from 1801 to 1815, set the table for fundamental developments here in the United States. The Louisiana Purchase being most notable, of course. For all those years, Napoleon was a dynamic and looming presence in the world. Even back when news from Europe took weeks to reach our shores. and his real-life biography is the backdrop for a work of historical fiction by Canadian author Shannon Saline, whose novel Napoleon in America, posed a prickly question. What if Napoleon I, instead of perishing in exile as he did in May 1821, had in fact escaped his island prison and made

his way to America? What if this actually happened? Well, let's find out. Hello, Shannon. Welcome to the show. Hi, Don. Thanks for having me. Napoleon's political and military career is complicated, Shannon. I've started several biographies I've never finished. But as succinctly as I can, Napoleon's rise to power starts in about 1799 when he stages a coup d'etat in reaction to the mess that the French Revolution had become at that point. And yet that 10-year revolutionary struggle empowered him. It had wiped out French feudalism, the aristocratic power structure of France, and replaced it with. a purified pride in the French nation. Really, that's the big headline of the French Revolution, right? It creates the idea of the modern nation state we live with today. Yes, that's right, Don. And that provided an opportunity for men like Napoleon to rise to the top because a lot of the French nobility was done away with in the French Revolution. So in the Army, for example, you had a whole group of generals that disappeared so young up-and-comers like Napoleon, who was an artillery officer,

was able to move fairly quickly through the ranks. He wasn't the only one, but there were others as well. And Napoleon certainly was a great opportunist and took advantage of any opportunity that he could exploit to his advantage. I've always wondered how he was poised in that position. Was it his genius of working through the ranks and so forth? I mean, how did he put himself in that place? Well, part of it was that he was a very intelligent man and a soldier and then a general. It was also a question of being in the right place at the right time, and again, taking advantage of opportunities as they came up.

He went to military school in France, and then he became, his first big break was at the siege of Toulon, where he commanded French forces and was able to place the artillery in a way that defeated the British, who had the sea at that area. Then he was put in command of the forces in Italy, and there he took a very ramshackle group of French soldiers, turned them into a force that was able to defeat the Austrians in many places. He also was sending reports back to France that rather aggrandized his battles and his successes. So, I mean, Napoleon was a master of propaganda, and this started early in his career and continued all the way throughout and reflect, affects his legacy today, actually. So he made a name for himself. Then he was sent off to Egypt. Again, didn't do particularly well there, but the reports he was sending back to France were quite glowing. And he happened to himself arrive back in France right after a victory of his at the Battle of

Abu Kier. The news had reached France about that. So he arrives to glowing acclaim and then uses his power there as a famous military general, a hero of France, to enable himself to take power in a coup d'etat, supported by others. It's so interesting. The French Revolution really does what gets capped off by World War I. I mean, it kind of clears the table of aristocracy being the monarchial bloodlines, the family bloodlines, all that which had defined Europe for, you know, all those feudalistic centuries before, is the process begins now. to sort of wipe that slate clean. And you end up with the modern nation state, which is such an interesting and important thing for modern audiences to understand

that this was a phenomenon of this time. And Napoleon had everything to do with this. Yes, very much so. He certainly did wipe the slate clean in France, at least of the Ancien regime or the old French monarchy that, of course, the French Revolution had discarded. But then Napoleon really, in terms of the

French state itself. He instituted a lot of measures that we see in the modern nation state and certainly are still in place in France today where it was a much more rationalized, efficient, centralized state. He set up the system of departments with the prefects that reported back to him. He also did a lot in terms of, of course, the army centralization and his... He was a master administrator. Oh, yes, exactly. That was certainly it. And as a result, he consolidates power, he really organizes power, and he kind of teaches the world how to create the modern nation state as we know it. America learns a lot from France. France and Britain, obviously, are the two major superpowers at this time. And we'll continue to be so throughout the 19th century.

We are really reacting to what's happening over there. So many American affairs that we learn in school as American things are really kind of reactions to European events, so much. the time. At the time of this coup, French and American negotiators are working to end what we today call the quasi-war between the U.S. and the first French Republic, 1798, 1800. We covered this, by the way, listeners, under the John Adams presidential episode. You might circle back to listen there. So we have peace at this moment between the United States and France. Also in 1802, the peace of Amiens concludes the French Revolutionary Wars against Great Britain and the recognition finally of this new French reality, this republic. But your story in Napoleon America really has

much to do with the Louisiana purchase. Can we talk about Napoleon's role in that sale? Oh, yes, very much so. I think there's three general large areas in which Napoleon had a big impact on the United States, and this is the biggest of them. Of course, his decision in 1803 to sell the Louisiana territory to the United States for $15 million. And as you've mentioned, previous episodes, when we talk about Louisiana in this context, it's not just what people think of today as a state of Louisiana. It was a huge amount of territory. 828,000 square miles of land between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains going up to what's today Canada in the north and down to the Gulf and the south. As for why Napoleon decided to sell this, you have to go back

a little bit. France had originally settled Louisiana starting in the late 1600s, but then at the end of the seven years war in 1763, it ceded Louisiana to Spain, a French ally, to keep it out of the hands of the British. Canada had gone to the British. It didn't want that happening to Louisiana. So when Napoleon came to power, Louisiana was under Spanish control. Napoleon in 1800 got Spain to seed Louisiana back to him because this was part of his grander strategy that involved rebuilding the French colonial presence in the Americas. His first step in that was actually to regain control of France's most prized colony, Saint-Doming or Haiti, which I know you've talked about in a previous episode as well. What Napoleon wanted to do was challenge Britain's dominance, again,

in the Americas and ended international trade by having the French Caribbean. colonies export things like sugar cane and coffee to France and Louisiana would provide food and lumber to the Caribbean colonies. So in 1802, when there was a piece of Mien, so there was peace with Britain, he could get his fleet across the sea, he tried to regain control of Haiti. So he sent his expedition, which of course was defeated by the Haitian guerrilla tactics and by yellow fever, which ravaged the French ranks. Meanwhile, Jefferson's administration learned that Napoleon had transferred Louisiana to France. This was a problem because the produce of the Western states was exported to the East Coast and abroad

through the port of New Orleans. Spain had temporarily granted the Americans the right to navigate the Mississippi and to use the port. But with this transfer, now the Spanish authorities in New Orleans shut down. down access to the port's warehouses to the Americans. So Jefferson sent instructions to Robert Livingston, our ambassador, minister to Paris, to purchase New Orleans, if he could, you know, try to get hold of the port at least. Napoleon's decision to sell not only New Orleans,

but the entire territory was due to the disaster in Haiti. I think as you talked in your episode about that, he knew by March of 1803 that war with Britain was likely to resume. So he would need his forces in Europe. He wouldn't have access to the sea again. So he knew that Haiti was lost. And if Haiti was lost, he no longer had a reason to hang on to Louisiana. He didn't see any independent value to holding that territory.

I mean, he said in reference to Canada, for example, that was just a matter of a few lakes or something like that. he really didn't think much of this. He was just willing to let it go. Yeah, exactly. So he was willing to let it go. And by selling it, he could get funds for his renewed war against Britain. He could keep Louisiana out of British hands. And he also thought he could encourage the United States to pursue a policy of friendly

neutrality towards France in the war that was about to come. Interesting. It had been really his great dream to create this sort of colonial empire, hadn't it? You know, and New Orleans would have been the capital. It would have been one of his great dreams. Napoleon had many great dreams and projects along the way. As I said, he was an opportunist, and when he saw something that might work out for him, this was one of his earlier projects, this idea of rebuilding France's empire in the America. Because it's not something he went back to later on. Napoleon actually didn't pay a lot of attention to the United States. I mean,

the population of the United States in 1800 was a little over 5 million, the population of France was about 29 million. So Napoleon was focused on Europe. He was not really that interested in the Americas. He thought the United States was weak because he thought the Republican system was a source of weakness because you could have a complete change of government at every election. He thought that the federal system was a sort of weakness. He saw America as a nation of merchants and tradesmen focused only on making money. Federal unity could be undermined by commercial rivalries and local interests. And he also thought the United States was weak because it had a volunteer army,

not a conscript army, and it relied mainly on the militia for defense. You know, he said something to the effect after he heard about the, or after America lost the War of 1812, which I'm not certain you're allowed to say, but as a Canadian, I can say that. He said that, you know, the blows of a few British frigates humbled America into signing a peace treaty amid the smoking ruins of Washington, all because the first requirement of a strong national defense is the permanence of its government, which again, he just didn't see that happening in a Republican system. Yeah. It's a very interesting conversation from a political science standpoint about the difference between a constitutional monarchy versus what we have. this republic that we take such pride in in America. But it's, we're definitely going through a phase

right now where, you know, it throws into question how stable this situation can be versus having a leader such as Napoleon. It's important to point out that Napoleon called himself emperor, but it was really the emperor of a constitutional republic, right? That was the idea of his governance. Well, I'm not so sure about that. I mean, France was technically a constitutional republic, But in practice, Napoleon muzzled the legislative branch of the government. He ruled like an absolute monarch. I mean, he wasn't a totalitarian dictator, but he was certainly a monarchical authoritarian ruler. And I think that was one of the great criticisms, actually.

Even in the United States, I mean, if you look at how he was viewed by people like Jefferson and Madison, they initially, of course, the federalist was more pro-Briton, and they were happy to have, they wanted to see Napoleon defeated. The Republicans tended to be more pro-French revolution. And when Napoleon came to power, they thought, well, here's this great Republican hero. But then Jefferson and Madison were concerned about the extent of Napoleon's aggressions in Europe and also about his disregard for constitutional law. And when he made himself emperor in 1804, there was a lot of sorrow and anger in the United States

that they saw this as a betrayal of Republican principles. Jefferson thought he was a calculating unprincipled usurper. Madison grew to hate him, and I think they were all quite happy when he was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo. Well, you're speaking to what I mentioned before, how much of American politics in the early, really the birth of this country had to do with the reaction to these two superpowers. You know, France and England were really setting the table for Western civilization in those days and maybe still are in some ways. But as a result, political parties were formed, you know, and the kind of the structure of American politics, certainly in those early days, was had much to do with that. And you mentioned also, I want to circle back to the War of 1812. These wars that we, you know, define mostly for simplicity. It's hard to teach these things. And so when we're in fifth grade, we learn about the War of 1812 as our war. But it really wasn't. It was an extension of that superpower struggle, wasn't it? Oh, very much so. In fact, you could call the War of 1812 the North American Theater of the Napoleonic Wars. And so when I said earlier that I think Napoleon had three major impacts on the states. The first, of course, was Louisiana Purchase. The second, I think, was his effect on shipping and trade resulting in the War of 1812. So, you know, as a neutral country, America could trade with both sides in the Napoleonic Wars. But then, of course, in 1806, Napoleon brought in his continental system, embargoed trade with Britain.

Britain retaliated by embargoing trade with France. The United States was caught in the middle as a neutral country. Both sides were seizing their searching and confiscating their ships. I think between 1806 and 1812, France seized about 400 American vessels and about $10 million worth of American property. Britain seized another 400 ships or so and of course impressed some 10,000 Americans. You know, they claimed they were Britons, but for the most part they were Americans and impressed them into service with the Royal Navy. So then you had Jefferson in 1807.

He got Congress to pass the embargo act trying to get Britain and France to respect America's commercial rights. Now, this was quite a draconian law because it embargoed. all exports, prohibited all exports from the United States, regardless of where they were going. It also prohibited imports from Britain. It was an economic disaster for the country, particularly hurt farmers, but also New England, shippers and merchants. And there was so much domestic opposition to it that in 1809, Madison had to replace it with

what's called the Non-Intercores Act. That reopened trade with every country except France and Britain. and then in 1810 Congress passed another bill that reopened trade with France and Britain, but said that if either country opened its trade with the United States, because of course the measure would have to be reciprocal, then the United States would put the trade restrictions back on the other country. So Napoleon jumped at this opportunity, and he said, yes, of course, I'm going to lift restrictions on trade with the United States,

but he had no intention of following through with this. And meanwhile, Madison went ahead and reimposed the embargo on trade with Britain, which of course worsened relations with Britain and along with impressment and other things, is what led to the war of 1812. So the whole thing spilled out from Napoleons and continental system and other aspects of the shipping wars. I hate to self-advertise here, but we can listen to that in the James Madison episode that we've done. which is really his war. Tell me about while Napoleon is in power, France is really growing.

It's Paris is redeveloping. It's in a remarkable time there, really, in so many ways. What did Americans think? Was there a great deal of travel there, especially with restrictions dropping? There was a bit of travel during the Napoleonic wars. It mostly came afterwards. It was still because there was war on most of the time, and because of the, you know, from 1806 to 1812,

the embarking. on trade, you know, any American vessel was going to be seized or searched by someone. So it was not easy to get over there, but some Americans did visit. And typical comments kind of commented on the authoritarian nature of Napoleon's rule, depending on which side they were on, you know, those who were more favorable to Britain. Right. I mean, we're not talking about tourism. I'm talking about mostly merchant travel and so forth. People going there to check out this market that they have to deal with and the diplomats and professionals, of course. And they would have public opinion. At this time, interestingly, I was just, you know, I was prompted to sort of look

back and see how did Americans get their news in those days. And these are the early days of newspapers. Broadsides are sort of developing into something else because of the printing press and all that stuff is happening. But it would have been a lot of word of mouth what they were getting from France. And how did that then kick over into the politics of our time as well? Yeah, that's an interesting question. I think, yes, as you say, so a lot of it was word of mouth or letters or just people on ships talking to others once they arrived. And sometimes it would get passed along that, you know, for example, news of Napoleon's death actually came. First it had to come from St. Helena to Britain, but then people got word of it along the route.

So, you know, you'd have somebody in the Zoris. I forget where it was exactly, I think it was perhaps the Azores was where the news was first conveyed to the United States. So it wasn't like any official communication. It's rather through ships encountering other ships and getting news from wherever they're coming from and passing that on. I suppose Napoleon was at least a certainty to people. The French Republic coming out of the revolution was a big mess, hard to deal with. Monroe in particular had an important relationship with Napoleon, didn't he? Yes. Monroe, of course, well, he'd been a minister to France from, I think it was 1794 to 7097. And he became a francophile. I mean, he could speak French fluently. His daughter was actually at school with Napoleon's

stepdaughter, Hortense, who was Josephine's daughter. So Monroe had a real fondness for France. In fact, when he was in the White House, he and his wife brought back a bunch of furniture from France from their time there. And when he was the White House, he imported more furnishings and other decorations. And so the White House actually had a French imperial flavor to it at the time, which is interesting. But he did meet Napoleon himself when he was there in 1803 to help negotiate the Louisiana Purchase Treaty, which he had a couple of interviews with Napoleon. They were brief. Napoleon didn't treat him as some important dignitary. It was kind of firing off a series of questions asking him a few things.

And then in 1804, Monroe was actually at Napoleon's coronation. He and his wife were there. Initially, their invitation was rescinded because Napoleon. Pauline at that point was annoyed with, I think it was to do with the Spanish Florida, as anyway, he was not happy with the United States at the time. So Monroe had to fight, you know, plead to get this invitation. And then when they got to the cathedral, they found that they weren't placed up in the ranks of the other foreign ministers or diplomats. They were kind of up in the gallery out of sight, couldn't even really see what was going on. I wonder if Monroe is in that famous painting in the Louvre, you know?

Oh, he isn't. Okay, there you go. Definitely not. He, Monroe, you know, pops up in these paintings at different times of his life. Anyway, we often ignore another member of this Napoleon story, his brother Joseph and his relationship with America. All this is fitting into your book, which we're going to talk about in a moment. Once Napoleon falls, there's two phases of this. He's defeated in 1813 in Leipzig and is exiled then, but he returns only to be surely defeated at Waterloo.

It's then that he's sent to St. Helena in... the Atlantic Ocean. His brother Joseph, though, in this time period, makes his way to the United States. What were his plans there? Well, okay, Joseph arrived in 1815 after that defeat at Waterloo. And actually, it's interesting, if you want to go back a little bit, that Napoleon himself actually considered coming to the United States. Because when he was, so after the Battle of Waterloo, he's forced to abdicate, and then he has to get out of France because Louis the 18th is returning to to reclaim the throne of France. So Napoleon asked the French provisional government,

this little interim government between Napoleon and Louis the 18th, to put two frigates at his disposal at Rochefort, a port on the east coast of France, so that he could go to the United States. And he asked for passports that would enable him and his companions to travel there. But when he got to Rochefort, he found that the British had been tipped off, that he was coming.

And so the port was blockaded. by the British and the passports weren't forthcoming. He then considered slipping out on a smaller boat through the blockade to get to the United States, but in the end, he decided not to, and he gave himself up to the British instead. The reason he did this, sir, the reason he didn't go to the United States, according to his valet, was that he considered it beneath his dignity to hide in the hold of his ship. And I think probably more to the point, he worried that if he got caught, he would have forfeited any goodwill that he hoped to achieve by giving himself up voluntarily to the British.

He also thought that he would be treated well by the British. He thought he could settle in the United Kingdom and live the rest of his life, or at least, you know, until he could get back to France kind of thing. But he was terribly misguided in this, of course. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. He is famously well treated in St. Helena. I mean, he gets a large ration of wine every day. He's living the life of the emperor, but in this very remote place.

Where is St. Helita, by the way, for listeners? Okay. St. Helena is a remote island in the South Atlantic. It's kind of between Brazil in South America and roughly, I guess, Mangola in Africa. And it's right smack in the middle of the ocean. I think the nearest island is something like 800 miles away. It's really on its own. there. When he was on Saint Helena, he actually said he would rather be a prisoner there

than live as a free man in the United States. He feared that he would be forgotten or assassinated if he went to America. And one of his companions said, I'm just going to read a quote here, I've actually put up because I thought it'd be interesting. However unhappy he is here, he secretly enjoys the sense of importance which is evident in his being guarded so closely and the constant interest which all the European powers take in him. Oh, I see, interesting. So I mentioned that about Napoleon at St. Helena because Joseph was actually with him at Rochefort, and he had chartered a ship to take him in disguise to the United States.

So he arrived in New York of 1815, and he set out for Washington. He actually wanted to meet with President Madison. He thought he could present his credentials. He's thinking in very European terms, but he was met outside Baltimore by someone who said to him, look, your visit's totally unnecessary and it's also unwanted. Madison and his cabinet didn't want to have any official relations with Joseph because, of course, that would create problems for American relations with the restored French monarchy. But Joseph was, of course, free to live like any other immigrant in the United States.

So he managed to transfer a large part of his fortune to the United States. He started out renting a house in Philadelphia. Then he bought this estate called Point Breeze on the Delaware River near Bordentown, New Jersey. And he eventually had about 1,800 acres there. He also owned 25,000 acres of land in upstate New York where he'd like to go to hunt. There's a lake there that's now called Lake Bonaparte. It was called Lake Diana by Joseph because of the goddess of the hunt. He, Point Breeze, he built a big mansion there after his original house burned down in a fire,

and it was said to be second in grandeur only to the president's house. Joseph had the largest collection of books in the country, about 8,000 volumes, more than the Library of Congress. Wow. He also had a very large and impressive art collection, over 150 paintings and sculptures. He'd imported all this stuff from Europe, of course, but. Most of the collection, in fact, had originally stolen from the Spanish crown because Napoleon had made him King of Spain. So Joseph was King of Spain between 1808 and 1813. Yeah.

Anyway, he entertained lavishly. He invited artists to come and sketch from his collection. He lent pieces to the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts and other places. And he's actually credited with being an important catalyst in disseminating European culture and artistic knowledge. to early 19th century Americans. Interesting. So he did have this impact on the states. And Philadelphia would have everything to do with that.

I say that as a proud Philadelphia. Yes. Those early art schools there probably were spirited by Napoleon in many ways, Joseph Noble Bonaparte. You know, you remind me of something I have to ask you about. This is part of a tradition by this point. I mean, Lafayette famously made several trips to the United States, of course, in the war, but even afterwards, touring.

those accounts would have made their way back to France. In a way, this was the beginning of a series of these kinds of famous visitations. Indeed, when Louis XVIth is taken into custody, there had been a whole plan, as I understand it. Maybe this is conspiracy theory that he would have been secreted away to the United States. In the northern part of Pennsylvania, there's a lot of stories of how he might have been creating his own little new chateau of Versailles up there. There are large amounts of immigrants coming from. Napoleonic France to the United States, particularly down south, right, in Alabama and Texas?

Yes. There was kind of three waves of French immigration occasioned by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic War as well. The first, of course, was the Haitian refugees from the Haitian Revolution, and they came, there was a wave of them in the late 1790s, early 1800s. They settled mainly in the New Orleans area, also the Philadelphia area. And then there was a second wave of them in 1809 when Cuba expelled the refugees from Hashi that had gone there. And they wound up in New Orleans primarily, I think about 10,000 of them and remained a distinct ethnic group in the city until about the 1830s. Then during Napoleon's reign himself, of course, there was a smaller wave of immigration of those who were opposed to his policies or kicked out of France or wanted to avoid conscription. Some examples would include John James Audubon, the famous naturalists, did Birds of America.

He was escaping, he didn't want to be conscripted, or his father didn't want him to be conscripted. That's why he came. Audubon was French. I didn't know that. He was. He originally Jean-Jacques Audubon. Get out. That's amazing.

No idea. Another one was General Jean-Victor Morrow, who was one of Napoleon's rivals, who was banished from France. He came, for a few years, he ultimately returned in 1813. to help defeat Napoleon. He joined the Russians. And then another character named Jean-Joseph Amabler Humber, who was a general. He had been on the Haitian expedition, and then back in France, he later got kicked out of the army for embezzling rations from the army. Anyway, he wound up in New Orleans, and he was involved in filibustering expeditions into Mexico or Texas, and also he assisted Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans.

But then the third wave, and what you were referring to earlier, came after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. And this was the mix of people who were just economic migrants because the Napoleonic Wars had driven the French economy into the ground. So a large number of French people came just looking for a new life and better opportunities there. And they settled primarily in Louisiana because, of course, French was still the dominant language there in New Orleans. in that area. But then there was another group of kind of the officer class and supporters of Napoleon who left because they were persona non-grata in the new restored monarchy. And some of them, the senior officers, in fact, were under death sentence if they returned to France. So they settled primarily in Philadelphia. And there were a couple of episodes. You mentioned the Alabama colony.

Well, that's also known as the Vine and Olive Colony. And what happened there was that In 1816, a number of the French emigrees. I think primarily it was the ones from Saint-Dominger from Haiti, actually, asked Congress to give them a grant of land so that they could settle somewhere in the United States. So in 1817, Congress granted them 92,000 acres of land, $2 an acre payable in 14 years to settle in Alabama. And the stipulation was that they had to cultivate grapes, and olives. So the settlers, there was, I think, about 347 people originally given allotments.

About 150 of them went there. The remainder didn't. A lot of them were already, by that time, well settled in Philadelphia and other cities. They didn't want to become pioneers on the Gulf Coast. One of the reasons, incidentally, that Congress granted this land, aside from generally being sympathetic to the French immigrants, I mean, a lot of these people when they came, particularly the senior generals and that were seen as Republican heroes who were escaping an oppressive monarchy in France and they were feted with banquets and parades and things like that. So Congress thought, well, this would help secure the Gulf Coast if you had this settlement of French people down here. And they also thought that

starting a domestic wine industry would be helpful because they wouldn't have to import European wines. But anyway, so the settlers got there. They discovered a dense forest. They had to clear the land, plow the land, and then they also had to import the great vines. And a lot of the great cuttings perished en route. All of trees didn't survive the winter. So the colony eventually did not flourish, at least under the French. In fact, by 1830, the majority landholders in the grant were Anglo-Americans. Right.

Interesting. Generally speaking, how does this plot play out? Is there a conspiracy involved in this, or is you going to just start a brand new life? How I put it in the novel, because I didn't want to get into details of how he might have escaped from St. Helena, because that would have been a virtual impossibility. And there were a lot of plots about how he might have escaped from there. What prompted the novel actually was a visit to a place called Napoleon House, which is a restaurant in New Orleans, where they describe on their menu why the place is called Napoleon House, which was that there was a mayor of New Orleans at the time named Nick. Le Chiraud and he was plotting with some pirates, including Jean Lafitte, to go and rescue Napoleon from Saint-Talina and bring him to New Orleans to live in that house. In real life? It's a legend, but this is a story.

And so I was just playing with this legend that's just saying, well, what if Napoleon would have come? I thought it was a fun and interesting idea. So I just kind of took that legend and started playing with it. So to the extent there was a conspiracy, there might have been a conspiracy there, but I don't think that there was one. real life. Anyway, there were lots of conspiracies to potentially rescue Napoleon, none of which ever reached any important stage. But then the question is, okay, what would he have done when he got

there? And there were kind of three options for Napoleon if he got to America. One is that he might have settled peacefully in the United States near where his brother Joseph was living in New Jersey. another is that he might have tried to start a colony, and this goes into, when you'd asked me earlier about Alabama, and there was another endeavor in Texas, was kind of linked to that, which was one of Napoleon's generals named Charles Lalamond, who was a fairly adventurous guy. He obtained the presidency of the society that got the vine and olive grant, and he encouraged some of his followers to sell their allotments as a means of raising funds for an expedition to Texas that he wanted to start and which he did start in 1818, Lalamanda, and one of his, another Napoleonic exile named

Anton Rigo took about 150 men and four women and four children up the Trinity River into Texas near what is today called Liberty. And they built an armed encampment called Champsazil or Field of Asylum. and set up there, and it's not clear what he wanted to do, what his ultimate objective was. This was contested territory between Spain, which, of course, was ruling Mexico at the time and the United States. So he might have wanted to put himself into a position of influence between these two governments. Anyway, the colony eventually collapsed through infighting attacks by Native Americans, lack of food, and the Spanish came to throw them out of there eventually.

So they sailed back down to Galveston and got hit by a hurricane and eventually straggled back to New Orleans with the assistance of Jean Lafitte. But all of which is going to say that there were, Napoleon did have followers in the United States that he could have called on to start a little colony there. And in fact, when he was on St. Helena and was talking about what he might have done, he said that founding the core of a new homeland would have brought him new glory. So that was another option that I play with a bit in the novel. And a third option, if he had gone to or escaped from Santalina and gone to the United States, might have been that he would have decided to meddle in Latin America. I mean, when Napoleon got the news that Joseph had made it safely to the United States, he said, well, if I were him, I would build a great empire in all of Spanish America.

And, of course, with all the Latin American independence movements happening at the time, that's certainly a possibility. Sure. Well, to this day, we celebrate Cinco de Mayo. And as you're, you know, tipping back the tequila, you're not, it's actually, you're celebrating the defeat of the French in Mexico, interestingly. There's so many, there's so much there to stitch a plot together with. It's so interesting. What have he gotten to Canada and taken over in Canada? Oh, my Lord. It could have gone on from there. Yeah, that's one of the things actually, I did play with in the novel. However, the point to make about Canada is that although there were French Canadians there, they were from the Aseigne regime. I mean, they had all primarily immigrated earlier. And so, and they were alarmed by the killing of the king and the French Revolution and their clergy, you know, this version of the church. So they were actually not sympathetic to Napoleon, the more sympathetic to old France. And of course, they supported the British in the War of 1812.

So talking about Napoleon's influence on America, I think apart from the Louisiana purchased the effect on shipping and trade, the third big thing he did for America. And this is inadvertent, was actually that he was the one who spurred. the Latin American independence movement because when he invaded Spain in 1808, put Joseph Bonaparte on the throne, none of Spain's Latin American colonies recognized Joseph as their king. They didn't think he was legitimate. They stayed loyal to Ferdinand the 7th, who of course had no authority over them. So many in Latin America took advantage of this opportunity to seek independence from Spain. And so when King Ferdin and the 7th came back into power after Napoleon's defeat, it was too late.

The cat was already out of the bag. And all of Latin America, except for Cuba and Puerto Rico, attained its independence between 1808 and 1826. So this was inadvertently thanks to Napoleon, and that, of course, opened the door towards the United States, eventually playing the dominant role in the hemisphere. I've never read something about this, but I wonder how much of a relationship between the Confederacy and the rise of the Confederacy and the secession from the United States had to do with all this revolution in the world at that time, you know, whether there was this impetus that would have come from knowing just down there in Mexico that this was happening

and certainly over in Europe. I've never understood whether there's a relationship, but I bet there is. Shannon Selene is an historical fiction writer living up there in Canada. We have been discussing her book, Napoleon in America, published back in 2014, in which the defeated emperor escapes the U.S. where he is nursed back to health by the likes of Marie LeVos in New Orleans and all that which comes next. What's going on in your work nowadays, Shannon? Well, I'm actually working on the sequel to Napoleon in America. It's called Napoleon in Texas, and I hope to have that out next year. I also write a history blog that focuses on the Napoleonic period and early 19th century, including early 19th century America. And you can find that at my

website, which is shannonseline.com. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Great to talk to you, Shannon. It's a pleasure, Don. Thank you very much for having me. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great. But you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend.

American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support.