Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 168 - The Napoleon Nerd Who Took Over a Country and Crowned Himself Emperor Part 2

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

The conclusion of the reign of Bokassa I Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now, back to the show. Hello, and welcome to yet another Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me today is Liam. Hello, Liam. Hello, Joe. Ready for our du-du-du-duology conclusion. How are you feeling about our boy Bukasa I love him in spite of myself that's kind of how I felt

reading the book obviously like a horrible fucking awful dude who's gonna do unspeakable evil but like he's kind of charming right like yeah I mean he's charming in a cartoonishly insane way right uh and i do have uh maybe not a new segment uh that we're going to introduce into the show i don't

know if i've given it that hard to consider this new segment fuck it so at the end of our namibian genocide series i played a bit of uh lbj ordering a pair of pants um where he's just like a gross disgusting old man uh burping and talking about how he loses and gains 15 pounds talking about his bunghole um and i can't guarantee that i'm gonna have an lbj lbj clip every week. But I can tell you that LBJ is a treasure trove of very, very funny presidential recordings. And this one, so this one has to have some background to it. He is on the phone with governor colony of Texas,

Connelly of Texas, who is the guy who was in the car when JFK got shot. Right. Right. Also a guy who probably had something car when JFK got shot. Right? Also, a guy who probably had something to do with funding a coup by neo-Nazis once.

Oh, cool. What a dick! So, the background of this is LBJ and Governor Connolly were riding in a car and they ran somebody off the road in southern Texas and the Washington, like they ran somebody off the road, uh, in Southern Texas and the Washington post wrote a bit about it and they are talking about it.

And, uh, then LBJ starts talking about how it's totally how, uh, it's only funny because they didn't know he was also drunk and driving. Oh, okay. Here's the clip.

I see where you are. Did I really? I didn't know it, but the paper's got a big headline in it. What does it say? I didn't see it. President Johnson was endangered Saturday when a convertible in which he was riding was forced into a narrow shoulder of a farm road to avoid a collision. The incident occurred as Governor Connolly drove

Johnson around his Floorsville Ranch. The Texas Highway Patrolman speeded up a hill to pass the motorcade and met an oncoming car had to cut sharply in front of the President's car. Connolly slowed and moved on to the shoulder. The incident did not interrupt the tour. Connolly continued to point out sights on each side of the road. I'm afraid to go to church. Every time I go, they say I'm driving 100 miles an hour. And I did get up to about 70 watching it one time, and maybe 80. But I was very cautious and careful of the people I was with.

And I did have a paper cup full of beer. I did have a paper cup full of beer. Like, like you said, an SEC tailgate, just like, yeah, you know, just what's the big fucking deal? Just a ripping ass down the road, running people off the road at 80 miles an hour and drinking and driving. America's greatest president, ladies and gentlemen. And I do have to say, like, I've been to Floresville. A paper cup full of beer is like what's left of an eight pack that you've already finished and you're driving home like that that's the kind of place floorsville is no more trades is my response to that

so yeah the the president was was drunk and running people off the road all your dreams kids all your fucking dreams i don't know what we're calling this new segment, but if you have anything funny like that you'd like to send me, please, you can email it to the show or send it to me in my DMs. It's great. But we left you last week talking about Jean-Baudel Bokassa, the now president for life and marshal of the Republic of Central Afrique or the Central African Republic. Now, at the end of the

last episode, France was kind of pulling the purse strings when it came to him and his bad habit of building palaces for all of his friends, despite the fact people were starving to death. So he had to look elsewhere um oh his wandering eye led him directly into the sights of momar gaddafi dictator brother colonel of the revolution or whatever other dumbass title he was giving himself at this point of libya uh the arab jamahiriya of libya i think it was called at the time uh gaddafi had a tendency to throw money at absolutely anybody who fancied themselves a revolutionary in any sense of the word to include one time a chicago street game called the elrukins

oh okay yeah he he sold anti he attempted to sell anti-aircraft missiles to a street gang. Good for him. Yo, dream big. Ride never stops, Joe. Now, he went through a lot of different phases. Now, if you are a subscriber to the show, you've probably listened to me

go more in-depth on this during our episode on the Toyota War. I'm not going to go super far into it. If you'd like to know more about gaddafi's very confusing politics go listen to that uh also that's a plug i want your money yes give joe and by extension me your money now gaddafi went through a lot of phases all of them um strange uh this included pan-arabism pan-islamism and also pan-africanism at various points of his life um now he didn't actually believe in any of these things what he really

was was a pan-gaddafiist uh he didn't really care in a united states of africa i think is what he called it once upon a time uh like he didn't believe in a caliphate he just wanted himself to be in charge of a rather large chunk of land which we can understand yeah I mean that he's only different from other people we've talked about in this show because of how weird he was and his weird obsession with Condoleezza Rice

he had like a crush on her he had a scrapbook full of pictures of Condoleezza Rice hey now Bokasa He had a scrapbook full of pictures of Kundalini's life. I'm just kidding, man. Hey. Now, Bokassa caught him smack dab in the middle of his pan-Islamist phase. So Bokassa traveled to Libya in 1976 for the celebration of the anniversary of the coup that brought Gaddafi to power, and the two became fast friends. Now, this is probably because Gadda, oil money is really not crazy.

But, upon his return to Bangui, Locasso decided that his government would now be modeled after Libyans. And, to tie that in a... Oh, the recipe for success! Yes. To be fair, good athlete ended up being in country way longer with them than Locasso. Ha ha ha ha ha! longer than Bocasso. That's true. Also, Bocasso would never get his ass kicked by a whole bunch of Chideans and pickup trucks. Now, Bocasso was never one

for political theory. He didn't care about capitalism, socialism, or really anything else. So he wasn't going to actually read the book that Gaddafi made. I think it was the Green Book. Green Book, yeah. He wasn't going to read a whole book. Uh, yeah, he,

he, he didn't really, he wasn't going to read a whole book. Uh, instead he decided he was just going to copy its aesthetic. Um, so he would change the names of various things, but keep the exact same people in charge,

you know, like revolutionary. Um, but now they'd be called the council of the revolution, which, you know, there was no revolution. It was just Picasso still.

Yeah. Uh, okay. Okay. Okay okay it's a jefferson starship uh uh airplane situation yeah he also began building a mosque uh and when gaddafi offered him one million dollars in personal checks he converted to islam and changed his name um now in order stops yeah uh he also tried to get a lot of people in his inner circle to do the same thing for the same amount of money this is very very weird um because while there is a small population of muslims in the central african republic at this time very small minority almost everybody's catholic or some version of animist. So no one really understood what Islam was. Like when Gaddafi visited the country and he left behind religious agents who were spies, but also their job was to teach the elite of the country how to pray

because they had no idea. And Mokassa seemingly didn't have much of an understanding of what Islam was either. When the convert. Well, he was really good at building palaces for his friends, I guess. I mean, to be fair, that probably means he'd be very good at building a mosque, right? It seems fine. Now, once the conversion went public, people were pretty shocked that this was a thing.

Islam would be like the fourth largest religion in the country at this point. Though his real goal in doing this is pretty obvious. Gaddafi wanted to invest in the country and also get his hand in that fucking uranium that France also wanted to get their hands on. Right. And Picasso just wanted money. He didn't care. He's like, you want uranium? You want Muslims?

Fine. Whatever. Just give me money. Yeah. I'll be like you want uranium you want muslims fine whatever just give me money yeah i'll be the best goddamn muslim you've ever seen while in palace please while i'm married to like 17 people and drinking a fifth of whiskey a day yeah crime never stops now what's interesting here is the french also supported gaddafi kind of during this point uh they would also support chad uh but you know things change rapidly in the region due to you know the the toyota war specifically so bloodshed yeah um the main reason it seems that bokasa wanted to do this isn't that bokasa actually wanted to become allies with gaddafi he didn't care about gaddafi but he knew how the french felt about him so like he's like well look i'm

cozying up to gaddafi you're going to up my allowance right because like you don't want this to happen and that's exactly what happened and then he just kind of stopped being muslim like he just pretend like he didn't do any um a large ceremony of him becoming Catholic again. He just stopped doing it one day and everybody's like, oh, I guess the president's over that phase. It's not a phase, mom. So I really am.

You and dad just don't understand. I had that argument, I'm sure. Except that he's yelling at the concept of France's dad. Now this is when we started cooking up another idea see a couple years ago when he was visiting ethiopia under then the leadership of emperor uh sassily he uh was amazed at the reception he had received uh like he got went into the palace and saw everybody fawning over the emperor he was in awe uh but then you know the

emperor is deposed uh ending his reign and the last empire in africa so like after that it was like well there's no more emperor uh and boccaso was always obsessed without doing everybody in grandeur rank and titles uh it's actually something that his own uh cousin thought david daco before he overthrew him pretty much everybody knew that he was quite literally like a napoleonic um stereotype where napoleon said people do dumb things if you give them simple baubles and but like it was that was his whole personality so he figured since there were no emperors or empires in africa anymore he should create one. After all, none of these bastards around me have empires, right?

Sure. All right. I mean, that is a weird flex, especially as a non-military power. Normally, an empire means that you are going to take things over. Territories and stuff, yeah. Or, at the very least,

there's a tradition of imperial power right um but there was no tradition of that in central african republic um so he was going to create one but he wasn't going to create a specific uh african traditional king uh of which there were some uh instead he wanted to recreate recreate the Napoleonic Empire and just drop it in Central Africa. He brought this little idea up to Giscard, who I'm sure had the same attitude of telling your drunk friend

that no, that guy doesn't actually want to fight you. What the fuck are you talking about, dude? Crowning an emperor in a country that is so bankrupt, they stopped keeping books. You want to be emperor now. Can you imagine being his handler just like, what? You did what?

JustGuard has all sorts of problems of his own, obviously. Like Chris Brown's agent, I feel like. Or working for Blizzard. Topical. It's topical, even though this episode doesn't come out for a couple weeks. I don't know Oh, God. Yeah. Or working for Blizzard. Oh, topical. Yeah, it's topical. Even though this episode doesn't come out for a couple of weeks.

I don't know why I bother. Oh, buddy. Now, nobody thought this is a good idea with the exception of Bocasa himself. Now, here's probably my favorite part

of this whole thing. Now, Bocasa's in France at the time. He's in Paris hanging out with Giscard because they're close personal friends because they're both kind of bad people and they love excess. They both

drink too much. They fuck too much. They eat too much. They make good friends. And it's not like either of them have to pay for it, right? They live... Both of them live on French taxpayer money. So in order to convince him, Bocasa, who was wearing his

fake field marshal uniform that he had made for himself based on Ney, just kind of stood around next to pictures of Napoleon that were around Giscard's house and tried to copy his pose. Like, see? I look like him. Look, me too,

mom. Don't I look so much like dad? No, son, no. Surprisingly, this did not convince the French president that this guy should be emperor of Central Africa. Now, he didn't seem that concerned convincing him. Giscard was willing to overlook pretty much everything. So he kind of knew because I knew that, you know,

if I just make myself emperor, he'll eventually just accept it. We'll just roll with it. Sure. Yeah. At this point, he hasn't stopped me from doing anything. Why the fuck would he stop me now?

Now he was actually more worried about becoming emperor, looking legitimate to his country. Wow. Which is absurd to me because my man, you've already made yourself president for life. Legitimacy is that ship has sailed a long time ago, even though you're landlocked, right? So he decided, even though he is president for life and rules by decree, he simply cannot name himself emperor.'s that's ridiculous so he ordered the one political party in the country which he was in charge of to declare

the establishment of the central african empire meaning of course they would have to declare him emperor of that empire right sure which is pointless right why go through whatever i gotta like that. I like the pointless posture. I was going to be like, no, no, the party did it. Yeah, it's simply the will of the people that I remember. Yeah. I just happen to be the benefactor of everything the government does.

Now, the prime minister on paper was technically in charge of the party, but had no political power uh themselves thought this idea was completely insane uh and that would make them a laughingstock of the entire world i mean spoiler alert she nailed that one uh but she was fired uh immediately fired uh for that and was replaced by someone who didn't think any of those things for fear of their job and life. The real reason for this drive is still quite questionable. Nobody knows why Bokassa did this except

we can just assume self-aggrandizement. He knew as well as everybody else that Central Africa was broke because his full-time job wasn't running the country. His full-time job was running around begging people to give him money. Right.

But he was more worried about losing power than anything else. And like Napoleon had, when Napoleon was first consul, he thought that it would be very, very hard to kill or depose an emperor. So like, well, what is a first council? Well, now you're emperor. That's a much loftier title. That's kind of what Bokassa seemed. He was simply a lowly president for life, marshal of the republic.

So nobody could coup an emperor, you know? Wow. Despite the fact that the emperor of Ethiopia was deposed, and that's where he got his idea. Now, he reached out to the governments of Japan, Iran, and Morocco in order to help them. They're all royalty at the time. The Shah of Iran, the emperor of Japan, the king of Morocco, in order to help him figure out this entire imperial court thing and so David Daco now free from jail and made an advisor uh to him to France to get them on board you know he said if they agreed to fund the transition to empire he would forget about that whole uh Islamic revolution thing entirely that he had going on with Gaddafi and he would never

speak to Libya again so France is like fine fuck it okay there's 500 million francs uh it's gonna be more than that yeah now my dude this is 19 late 1970s so you know with inflation this is a lot of money um honestly the best part of all this happened at the exact same year when he conferred to Islam and became buddies with Gaddafi. So within months of him going to Gaddafi. Friendship ended with Gaddafi. Now France is my best friend. Yes. He went to Gaddafi and was like, no, brother of the revolution.

I would like to join your glorious Jamahiri, but in Central Africa. And he's like, okay, here, have some oil moneyiri but in central africa and he's like okay here have some oil money and then like four months later he's like sorry sorry bro i'm emperor now uh i can't i can't do that and then months just in crazy turnaround uh like which tells me that this was his whole plan from the second that he went to talk to libya his whole plan was to somehow leverage this in becoming an emperor which you gotta kind of admire the grift there yeah grind never stops joe it's either this was planned from the beginning or he had the

most power that or he had like the most powerful ruling version of add that you've ever seen like because you you see like uh you know throughout time you see uh weird crazy and off the wall dictators emors, whatever they want to call themselves.

You generally don't see them ping-ponging around quite this hard. Which leads me to believe that Picasso isn't much of a plans guy. He's more of just like... No, he's not a plans guy. He wakes up in the morning and he's like, I'm going to be emperor today. Now, the party came together to, it came together in 1976 to declare the creation of the

Central African Empire and Bokassa I as its emperor. And Bokassa the only, it turned out. Oh, that's not gone well. Well, if you look at a map today or if you pay attention to any of uh france's current military interventions there's not a central

african empire anymore no so he got what he wanted but that still wasn't enough it would be very easy for him to be like yeah i'm emperor now i can just continue like wearing a suit to work as your president for life and nothing fundamentally changes here. But that was not what Bokassa wanted. Not at fucking all. He didn't want the title. I think what he was actually after was the coronation. And that's what he demanded.

Because it would make Central Africa and him the center of the world's attention for just that one day, which is what he wanted, right? He believed that this would bring prestige to the country, possibly investments for him to steal, you know, things like that. And because the entire government only worked in what he wanted them to work on, their entire purpose became to plan the imperial coronation set for the December of 1977, a year from that. So and around this time, he had about 12 wives and 60 odd children. All right. That's a hell of a procession, man. So he had to pick which one would become the Empress and which one would technically be his heir. Right.

Like, oh, shit, I got to pick one of you now. That's awkward. Can you imagine that? Just Sunday family dinner. Yeah. one of you now um that's awkward can you imagine that just sunday family dinner yeah uh everybody gather around the two mile long family dinner table and we're gonna we're gonna hash out who's gonna be we're gonna fix this yeah no one leaves until now his favorite wife catherine became empress uh though there is some uh back and forth if if she was his favorite wife, but it seems that his actual favorite

wife was a Belgian woman and he thought it would look bad if a black emperor had a white empress. So he picked Catherine. Fair enough. And their four-year-old son, Jean Bedell Jr. became crown prince for reasons I'm sure boil down to just his name.

More thinking by the wife though yeah i mean probably not wrong though hilariously enough uh he ended up being related to some european royalty through that uh whatever number of wife she was but yeah meanwhile in the capital people were put to task finding enough rooms for what bocasa assumed to be around 2500 guests that he had invited um this required him to kick out uh people from their homes and bulldoze others to make room for what he considered fitting palaces and houses what a dick yeah mind you he had never built any of these houses. These are all things that people had slapped together themselves, right? I mean, it was like he was hosting the Olympics. He's like, no, no, get rid of that whole

subdivision. We got to put something there that we're never going to use again. Statue of me. Yeah, the rotates to face the sun like the president of Turkmenistan. I don't have a reason to do an episode on the guy that I think is Nurazov, I think his name was, that was president for life of Turkmenistan. But

honestly, that guy might be in competition with Bokassa. He never made himself emperor, but Bokassa never made himself a rotating golden statue that always faced the sun. It's a toss-up. He also put other people to work building houses for other guests. The entire area

around the cathedral long allowed to fall into a state of disrepair because, you know, they were broke. It was totally rebuilt and remodeled. Anything that was considered unsightly, including other people's houses that weren't needed to be knocked down for space, were knocked down.

Good. Not good. Don't cancel that. Liam is actually a landlord in Bangui. We just don't know about it. That's true. This also would be the first time that Bokasa would attempt to invest in infrastructure,

but only for a small ring of roads that went from these houses to his palace and the cathedral. And then that would also be extended to a third area, which we'll talk about in a little bit. These were like the only roads in the country. And they were built solely to

chaperone people he thought was coming to his coronation. They didn't go anywhere. They just went in random places around the capital uh what uh napida the the new capital of uh um myanmar there's a lot like that from what i know about it having seen it on top gear that or grant uh yeah top gear that one time it's like eight lanes of traffic, but they're all empty. Yeah, exactly like that. Now, French sculptor Olivier Bryce was contracted to

retrofit the cathedral, which was... He also... His second job was to design and build an imperial carriage and build what has to be the most ugly and gaudy ass throne you will ever see uh now we don't like we're not a visual medium here but i'll make sure you're a podcast with

slides joe i know of a podcast that does have slides it's never talked about emperor belcasa once all right okay all right um but i'll make it the cover for this episode so you can see it but it is it looks like an eagle that so i can't draw right i'm but it looks like an eagle that i would attempt to draw um it but it's made it was 14 feet across uh and weighed two tons and took 30 men working full-time for a year at a cost of $2.5 million. It was so fucking tight. It was solid bronze and gold-plated with crushed velvet seating.

It's amazing. But we already talked about the carriage, right? So that leads you to believe, oh, he's going to have to have horses, right? He doesn't have any horses. Oh, no. I mean, there's some local draft animals, but they don't look right. He has to have white horses, right?

Right. So, they're flown in from Belgium. Now, this is a problem. They would also fly in white horses for the Imperial Guard to accompany him. Because there's going to be cavalry on both sides of the chariot and also horses for the chariot. Small problem. The Imperial Guard has never ridden horses before, and they certainly don't know how to ride it like this. So a troop of African soldiers had to be flown to Normandy to spend the whole next year learning equestrian. Oh, what an effective use of the taxpayer's time

and money. I mean, if I was French, I'd be very mad. If I was Central African, this is just more of the same, really. Like, oh, we're building roads. What are they up to fucking now? Yeah, we're like, what is fucking Bokassa doing now?

Why is he building one road that goes from his front door to his palace? God damn it. Where did all this goddamn horse shit come from? While all of this is going on, Bocasa was blind drunk. And according to some reports, he was drinking four fifths of scotch per day. Oh,

that's that. That's bad. Yeah, that is a lot of booze. I mean, to be fair, Bocasa is a big guy. I mean to be fair because he's a big guy uh i mean i mean he's dead so i got your i got i got my money on you

it's just gonna roll up and start punching his corpse celebrity death match one of them's already dead um and from like my understanding this is like thousands of dollars of uh of scotch because he's drinking very very good scotch. Sure. Of course he was. Right. So for the ceremony, everyone in the imperial government would have to be in full costume for the day, meaning they would all have to be tailor-made. And these are all imperial costumes straight out of Napoleon's coronation.

Everything was based on Napoleon's coronation to include what bokasa wore it was a as close to a replica as it could be to what napoleon was wearing now who else could have done this other than the same tailor that made napoleon's uniforms 200 years before uh hundreds would have to be made dozens of which were just forasa, even though he only wore two. This is amazing. Like I said, I'm rooting for him in spite of myself. I'm aware he's a horrifically narcissistic dictator,

letting his people starve at the price of his own hubris, but shit happens to people. Yeah, he's Icarus, except he flew too close to the sun and his golden throne melted. The gods will do that to you. They also changed the flag with an eagle holding a sun, too, so that works.

Now, these costumes included thousands of pearls and gems and various different kinds of diamonds. All of them would be inlaid in into the clothing, as well as jewelry, which we haven't quite got to yet. His clothes alone, just Bokasa's, would cost a million dollars. The Empress's clothes, which included 200,000 sequins made out of precious gems, would cost almost $200,000. Then a team of French jewelers... That's a little bit of duty, but all right.

You know... I assumed more on the clothes department. With inflation, it's probably closer to five or six million. But the real sweet spot comes with his imperial jewelry. A team of French jewelers went to work on the imperial crown and

scepter. It was all gold covered in jewels and probably weighed so much it needed to include neck support. By the time the jewelers were done it included an 80 carat diamond which according to google would now be worth around 10 million dollars um but he got it on a sweet discount of only five million dollars though when you count that into inflation that is nearly 20 million dollars today oh just for his crown yeah then came the food uh there was 240 tons of food and drink ordered for the coronation granted he never bothered to do any of this for like the population of his capital before or after this yeah i was gonna say weren't they starving

to death like two weeks ago and was invited to this coronation it's like everyone in the country oh no no no we'll get to the guest list. It's pretty much the only Central Africans invited or people in the Imperial Guard or people directly related to him. Now because he's crowning himself emperor of a destitute nation with no food all of this had to be flown in

which also included 40,000 bottles of wine, 24,000 bottles of wine, 24,000 bottles of champagne, and 10,000 bottles of Chivas Regal whiskey. Wow. Like, even if everyone showed up on his guest list, and we'll talk a little bit more about that later on, this would be enough to kill them all with alcohol poisoning.

Yeah. Several times over, actually. them all with alcohol poisoning yeah several times over actually now he because he was never able to build a functioning transport or road system he you would have to do that as well as to provide transport for all of his guests which he assumed would be remember 2500 people is who he invited on top of the the small circle of people he actually considered as part of his imperial circle in the country. So he bought every single person that would be coming a brand new Mercedes Benz.

Nice. Now the sticker price for those was not given in the book, but they're branded. It's a brand new luxury car. It wasn't like the busted ass Mercedes that you can get from the late 70s or 80s from

a used car dealership my favorite kind yeah that's the only kind i've ever driven uh but remember central african republic landlocked right how the fuck do you get a car there you can't just fly you can't just fly a car from uh i i think you bump directly from germany to the central african republic did you hire some guys to drive it, basically do the dock car by themselves? That would be rad, but no. Something even dumber, because that would actually probably be cheaper. They were sent to

Cameroon via ship and then flown to Bangui for the cost of $5,000 per car just for transport. There's 2,500 cars. Oh, okay. He bought more cars right then than there may have been in the entire country at that point

nobody's entirely sure but like the book Dark Ages says it's like there's a very good chance that is the case since most people outside the capital very agrarian existence living hand to mouth right their transportation is through Chevrolet.

Right. They don't have cars. Chevrolet. So you said that is what I said. You can use that. It's fine. I think I stole that from like, it was like a shitty old dad joke.

I don't remember. Now, how is he going to pay for all of this? I've already pointed out that the French is covering a lot of it, but not all of it. Right. Even they have their limits when it comes to crowning imaginary emperors.

That meant Bokassa had to wring out wealth from his already desperately poor people to help him pay for his emperor cosplay for the day, right? Sure. So, he reached out to the private sector. Generally, those, the only private sector that

really existed in Central Africa at the time was those who traded coffee, diamonds, and cotton. So these businesses have already been ringed pretty bare already. Whenever he needed money before he went to the French, he would just go demand pretty much tribute. They already have to pay taxes. But he would just show up and he's like, give me all your money. It was like unarmed robbery. So he went to those guys. He's like, you need to fucking empty your pockets. Now, the threat was obviously he could do Bocasa stuff and beat them to death with his cane of justice.

But more than that, he said that they just would not get their business licenses renewed next year if they didn't. So you will either give me everything that your company is worth or you will not be able to do business next year in this country. Now, a lot of people gave up everything because they're fearful of Bocasa, but the

Diamond Company actually pulled one over on him that was pretty good. Mostly because the Diamond Company was already fucking broke. Uh, they didn't have anything left to give. Uh, but they did have some stones in the back, which Bocasso was also willing to take.

Cause of course he was their diamonds. Right. And when he asked for a large diamond to be used in the ceremony, they knew if they gave him anything of worth, which they didn't have a diamond the size that he wanted anyway but if they gave him the biggest diamond he had or they had they would simply not have any materials to keep their business afloat should bokasa fuck off and let them do business right but he the manager knew that bokasa didn't know anything about diamonds like this guy's just like yeah

it's a big old rock. Thanks. Uh, so he took a large industrial diamond, you know, like the cheap ones that nobody wants. They break them down into tools, Paula and stuff like that. Yeah. Well,

he didn't break it down. Instead, he ordered it to be polished up and carved into the shape of Africa. Um, and when he presented it to Bocasa, he told him it was worth half a million dollars. In reality, it was worth less than $100. Ugh.

But it worked. During coronation, he wore it on his hand. And whenever journalists asked him about it, he would tell them, Oh, yeah, it's worth a million dollars. In reality, it's like shitty drill diamonds. Now, it was about now, after all the money had been spent, that Bocasa decided he didn't want to get crowned in the cathedral. Well, okay, dude. Remember, they've been working on this shit for months at this point.

Right. You see, he thought so many people around the world were going to show up to watch him get crowned emperor. There would simply not be enough room in this cathedral, right? Because of course not. So he moved it to a local basketball court, which had been built by the Yugoslav government. I'm just picturing like a queen's ass, like rec center basketball court. We're going to go get married at the Y.

Yeah, it was built by the Yugoslav government from back when he wanted to play communist for like a week and so at this point he and to be fair like if you look at the pictures and video of this which there is video of this you'll be able to tell it's a basketball court they did a really good job covering everything

up with big majestic banners and shit that is a Yugoslav basketball court if I ever get crowned emperor of the United States, I am going to go get crowned at the Y or like the local community center. Yeah. Just be like, all right,

figure this capacity, live it out. Shoot the fire marshal. If you have to, I don't care. Go get my cane of justice. It's just a wrench. Now he planned this coronation to a T.

He wanted it to look exactly like Napoleon's, which, I mean, there's painting of and stuff, which is what he's going off of, which meant that he wanted the Pope to show up and crown him himself, which had been what happened with Napoleon. Right. Right. Besides the fact that he had just converted and reconverted back from several different religions in the last couple of months, the local leader of the church had explained to him that times had changed and the church doesn't do the whole crowning of emperors thing anymore. I assumed he also left out the part where the pope has no fucking idea who he is. So let's get to the guest list. This is probably the part everybody's interested in. he invited every single head of state in the world okay all right good start this included several like state level governors of the

of like individual states of the united states uh like he invited all 50 governors and the president would you go i would have gone fuck it like i'll get to go to a coronation by napoleon's risen ghost or whatever uh he also included every single king and almost every single bit of nobility and emperor still left alive which included i think the only emperor alive at this point is um every single one of them turned him down. Oh, that's just rude. The only aristocrat who showed up was a minor

prince of Lichtenstein named Prince Emmanuel, and he only attended because he was very distantly related to one of Bocasa's wives. Ah. That's it. Every other even African head of state stayed away this included Idi Amin and Mubutu

Sese Seko they were like nope too much when Idi Amin has said you've gone too far you need to re-evaluate your life and of course Gaddafi wasn't going to show up because he'd already fucking pissed him off more than once we're not friends anymore don't call poor Mubar and of course Gaddafi wasn't going to show up because he'd already fucking pissed them off more than once we got his feelings hurt yeah

we're not friends anymore don't call poor Muammar Muammar just sitting in Tripoli like feel like shit just want him back yeah so most of these places that did

show up so not every country center representative but the ones that did what they were very minor people uh that they sent it like even the french president just guard who made this whole thing possible did not attend most people didn't even send like a vice president or like it was it it was some random ministerial posts. Like, uh, we said the minister of fucking transportation or commerce or whatever.

Right. Uh, France set the minister of cooperation, uh, which had a good point. Admittedly, when people asked him why he was going and giving Bocas a legitimacy, he said it was incredibly racist that nobody asked the same thing about going to the Queen of England's Jubilee, which you've accidentally come on to a good point here that royalty is bad.

Yes. Congrats, I guess. Yeah. By defending your own investments in Bokassa, I was going to say Central Afrique, but they didn't give Central Afrique any fucking money. They give it to Bokassa. I was going to say Central Afrique, but they didn't give Central Afrique any fucking money. They give it to Bokassa. By defending your supporting of Bokassa, you did a very good job

explaining why royalty is bad and they should all go. Which is why one of my favorite things is like one of Napoleon's marshals who then go on to become king of Sweden via marriage had a tattoo said death to kings on it oh okay all right i think it was right in the middle of his chest

so like whenever he after he was made you know king of sweden he's like i can't take off my shirt don't ask why but uh anyway because 2500 people and 600 showed up uh none of those people were people he actually invited uh those were all like secondary and tertiary people that the people he invited actually sent of those 100 were journalists uh assuming they were like us and have a morbid curiosity about this kind of thing. And before then, mind you, there's a huge part of the book about how Bocasa's security apparatus

grossly abused journalists. And they would actually charge journalists $400 a day to come to Central Africa and report. So nobody ever went there. Right. But for this point they waived the

hundreds of dollars a day so they could come and talk about his coronation. On the day of the event December 1977 the hundreds, not thousands, of guests were ferried into the Yugoslav basketball court to watch the coronation of Bukasa I.

And immediately the air conditioner broke. Soldiers, bands, and guests all dressed in traditional imperial French clothing as temperatures rose to the level that you assumed that they would get in the middle of the day in Central Africa. Soldiers dressed to the nines

in Napoleonic uniforms, mostly made out of wool, began to pass out. Yeah, fair enough. I would tell. Yeah. The emperor was supposed to show up at 9 a.m., but he didn't. Instead, he drank all night and woke up with a hangover,

and he got there an hour late. That's actually not too bad. When he was on his way there, he was in the imperial carriage. Now, the guy who designed the imperial carriage, the same guy who designed the throne, didn't account for the fact that this is going to be happening in this middle of Africa where December is not cold. And it was not equipped with an air conditioner, which meant as soon as he, his son and his wife packed into the un-air conditioned carriage with no opening windows, they began to suffer from heat stroke. the un-air-conditioned carriage with no opening windows, they began to suffer from heat stroke.

Mind you, he is wearing a fur cape. He is decked the fuck out. So they had to pull the carriage over, bring one of the... Fur capes are not well known for being lightweight. No.

Moisture-wicking. Don't worry, this is my moisture wicking fur cape uh so they had to pull the carriage over bring a car up to them bring them close enough but not so close that the people at the at the basketball court could see them and then switch because the car had an air conditioner they'd switch back into the carriage as it pulled into the basketball after the imperial family finally showed up the entire coronation lasted an hour. Now, the total cost for this was $22 million, but it was actually quite worse than that. Adjusted for inflation, this is closer to $100 million.

And it cost the entire French aid package for the month of December, as well as on top of an unknown amount of money Bocas had stripped from the country for his own purposes. And here's the crazy part. No one can actually figure out how much everything costs. The reason for this is because when the French asked to look at the country's finances prior to giving them aid, they discovered that nobody was keeping track of the national budget,

meaning nobody had any idea what the actual Central African Republic's GDP was because it wasn't calculated. Cool. Okay. I just lied to the World Bank. What do you care? Bokassa was just spending it like it was his personal bank account. And the only person that was trying to balance that sheet at the end of the day

was, remember, Bonza, who got shot over it. Right. So some estimates say the coronation cost a quarter of the day was, remember, Bonza, who got shot over it. Right. So some estimates say the coronation cost a quarter of the national GDP, but the French Minister of Cooperation later said there's a good chance that it actually cost the entire GDP and certainly more money,

like liquid cash, than the country had on hand, meaning that for one whole hour, he spent an entire nation's gross domestic product on making himself emperor only your dreams be dreams joe i mean just incredible stuff yeah i i go man i don't know if there's a case like this from history that could be possibly worse than this like i cannot think of one if there is like i need to find it. I've never heard of anybody

sinking the entire GDP in an hour. Now, if Bocasa was hoping his coronation would bring peace, stability, and legitimacy to his rule like he always talked about, he was fantastically wrong. Every bit of press that came out about his coronation was mercilessly roasting him.

With every African ally being embarrassed not only for themselves but for the entire continent one newspaper in zambia pointed out that bokasa had specifically helped the cause of apartheid rhodesia in south africa by making the entire race look bad uh now i do i do need to like explain that a bit for people uh unfamiliar with that concept uh brodija and south africa generally existed by saying that yes we think black people should be in charge they're just not ready yet right like that was one of the excuses that they used and after this happened they're like see look what happens when africans are in charge they do this so like zambia is like look what you fucking did bokasa like you made the apartheid assholes look like they were right

uh so yeah it was i've never seen anything quite like that before that's merciless yeah becoming an empire also didn't help his ability to govern or make his country any make any more sense. First, he moved out of the capital, 80 miles away, and established his own imperial cabinet, separate from the prime minister's cabinet. Both had powers that passed laws, which would and could be conflicting. On top of that, Bocasa could still rule by decree if he felt like it. It quickly became apparent where the real power was, and it was still on Bocasa, while his prime minister's job was to run around Europe and continue to ask for money so he could spend on stupid shit. Right.

At this point, Bocasa had pissed off all of Europe, who were rapidly closing the door on him. One of the straws that broke the camel's back, it seems, is when the European economic community gave him 60 million francs for a railroad project, which he then spent on his own house. Did it at least have a model train? I don't think so. Oh, lame. I know, right? I swear Bocas is the only place on Earth that... Bocas is the only person on Earth to be so hilariously

corrupt that he said that he would become a communist if someone built him a train, and even the communists were like no like we know where this is going fuck off now the job of getting Bocasa funding so he could continue running his little fiefdom here was so

stressful that the prime minister eventually keeled over from a heart attack within a year of taking the job France still kept Bocasa afloat however and he funneled that money into a presidential guard and then which then switched into an imperial guard armed in trade by an israeli general uh now that might sound impressive but it was actually a general fired due to fucking up during the yam kippur war but he's still a general still counts meanwhile the imperial army ceased to

function having no guns or ammo due to bokasa's fear of it could be used for an uprising or still counts meanwhile the imperial army ceased to function having no guns or ammo due to Bocasa's fear of it could be used for an uprising or a coup against him and he paid his guard massive salaries to retain their loyalty meanwhile Prince George one of Bocasa's sons

I believe his oldest son and had been forced into exile in France hardly survived he didn't have a work visa because they weren't considered french citizens and his dad didn't send him any money and he was forced to relate handouts from other expats oh george said that uh his emperor dad would fail miserably uh and the repression would only get worse going so far as saying his dad wouldn't last more than three years on the throne which would end up becoming prophetic

now if you were to pick all of the various stressors here that eventually lead to the downfall of Bokassa whether it be France being sick of his shit or the imperial guard or the actual prime minister or Chad or Libya any of these places what do you think would actually bring him down?

Let me get a curve ball and say one of his wives. Ooh, that'd be good. But would you have guessed literal school children? What? Yeah, not college students, mind you, but middle and high school kids joined by elementary school kids. So this requires a bit of explanation.

For the vast majority of people in the empire at this time, school simply did not exist. Bocasa didn't trust school thinking it was, it was going to impart harmful ideas onto kids, you know, like maybe food is good and the emperor has too many palaces, but he did open a few schools, mostly for the elite of the country people who worked in the

civil service the guard or you know maybe the army at certain ranks you can put their your kids in those schools he only did this because before they would send their kids abroad mostly to france to go to school where they'd pick up harmful ideas from french schools like maybe the head of state shouldn't beat people to death with a stick when he's bored. Food is good. Yeah. So he believes he kept all those people in-house. He could control them and their education. But he couldn't. Throughout the early 1970s,

these schools went on strike due to terrible conditions. Literal elementary school strikes. These were not led by teachers. These were students. That's fucking rad as hell. Okasa considered these acts of rebellion, deploying the military to put them down, beating, torturing, and killing literal school children

for demanding books and shit. Oh my god, okay. At another point, students at the University of, what else, Bokasa demanded their food stipends, something that was promised to them by the school. To stop them, they were simply drafted into the army for an undefined term so they couldn't go

to college anymore. Now, as Bocasa got more and more extreme and began arresting teachers for bringing up any political idea in the classroom that wasn't, damn, isn't Bocasa great, students once again rose up to defend their teachers. In most of these cases, entire schools were closed and students were forbidden from attending any other place of education for the rest of their lives. This all came to a head in 1977. The Imperial schools modeled after the

French one, and I guess at a high school level, you have to take a very important test, and it helps with placement for universities, stuff like that. On this particular year, for whatever reason, I'm sure, has nothing to do with their teachers randomly being fired and arrested.

The student body didn't do so good on the test. They scored pretty badly. Because their schools are lacking simple things like teachers and books. Yeah, fair enough. Bocasa looked at all of these problems and decided that the only reason why the students would fail in such a matter is because they have a lack of fucking discipline Liam oh no oh god

you sound like my middle school gym teacher Joe so he got on a plane and took a trip to China where he got an idea after seeing a whole bunch of Chinese kids march around and step together and other than being really creeped out by that he decided that all these kids are dressed the same. We should do school uniforms.

That was what he gleaned from that? That is what he gleaned from that. These kids need uniforms. You know what? At some point, you got to appreciate this guy. Now, these uniforms, which include a pin

with his face on it, like something out of North Korea, could only be manufactured by a single company and sold in a very specific storefront. Of course, that manufacturer was owned by him, and the retail store was owned by his wife, Empress Catherine. That's convenient.

Yeah. Nobody without the uniforms would be allowed to attend school. And while this was happening, the empire reached a critical mass of hyperinflation and being so broke that not even French money could bail them out anymore. The government simply stopped paying its civil service employees, which remember, were really the only employees not in the presidential guard that had children that would be buying these uniforms. You never stop paying the imperial guard. So while this is happening also, meat and sugar prices and the price of simple wheat

had tripled in a year. And even if you had enough money, there wasn't enough food to go around. So in the middle of all this, he wanted these people to buy a school uniform that would cost the equivalent of around $20 in a country where a normal person made $200 a year. Wow. That's cool.

Alright, cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. And that money would go directly to him. For him? Dude, this is genius. Yeah. Almost nobody bought the school uniforms because they couldn't, and the schools refused to admit them. So, student leaders took to the street and strike. The crowd grew to thousands,

and when cops and soldiers were dispatched to beat them in a submission, they did not go away. In many cases, the cops and soldiers got beaten by school children. So, soon, college students joined the protests. Now, looking at the date, the Shah of Iran had recently been deposed, and the students were chanting, quote, after the Shah of Bokhassa and looted stores owned by his family. Oh, that's tasty.

That went from like, we just want to go to school. Like, you know what? Fuck this guy. We're sick of this. Oh, okay. It's rebellion. We're rebelling now. These kids that were between the ages of 8 and 18

were joined by pissed off workers and union officials who began to form barricades out of cars in an armed wildcat strike, chasing off cops who were sent to disperse them. Yeah, dude. Alright. Labor is entitled to all it creates. No, end. All right. Labor is entitled to all it creates. No, end the story there.

There's always a time. At one point, soldiers untrained and given live ammo for the very first time panicked and ran from the students. And these, remember, some of them are eight years old, nearly captured their commanding general. That is, wow. That is not an orderly retreat. nearly captured their commanding general that is wow that is not an orderly retreat like fucking soldiers armed with AKs being chased off by like Tommy Pickles

from the Rugrats a baby's gotta do what a baby's gotta do as you're like executing a general eventually Bokasa declared martial law and sent in the Imperial Guard. Armed with Israeli training and Soviet weapons, including tanks, they

slaughtered hundreds in the street. The survivors were thrown in prison where the emperor himself beat several of them to death with his justice stick while chugging whiskey that cost more per bottle than anybody in the room made in their lifetimes. There are also several accounts of him eating his victim's brains after smashing open their

skulls. Yeah. This finally ended up being the straw that broke the camel's back in the international community. Everybody finally turned against him, to include France. It turned out that sometimes eating school children turns you into an international pariah.

Who knew? I mean, I think that's what finally got Idi Amin as well. Can you imagine? Can you believe this guy as you're like halfway through some poor eight-year-old's brain? Sir, you have gone too far. Slaughter and

dooming your nation to destitution by crowning yourself emperor is one thing, but eating people is another. I mean, yes, also, but like, come on now, I shouldn't have taken all this. It's fine. They got there eventually.

It's like voting Democrat. You really get it both sides, this cannibalism thing. How are we going to get the swing voters if we don't eat school children now Paul can eat six school children a day I mean to be fair he probably does

look at that man he eats babies that dude eats babies you keep that in there that's not liable allegedly eats children now France is going to cut off aid completely, but in order for...

Pussies. Yeah, there's a but there. Everybody was waiting for the end of an investigation being carried out into the incident by Rwanda that would almost certainly find him guilty when good old David Daco called up the French embassy and said he had an idea. I want to be president again.

Okay. But France knew the Imperial Guard was loyal, like he had bought their loyalty, and most people didn't like David Daco. He couldn't just walk in and take power. They'd have to flex their own military might onto the empire. But that was considered too much it would be hugely expensive and they were worried that like if bokasa was there the guard would stand strong they had decent

training and weapons they could inflict casualties on the french that would look bad probably not prepared to lose anyone to this to this thing yeah it doesn't really seem up there uh also there is a election coming up and just guard knew that you know if a couple dozen Frenchmen got owned by the Imperial Guard, it'd look bad and he'd probably lose. So he decided his plan to have to wait for Bocasaso left the country quite often and with french money gone he had no choice but to run back to where else libya now honey he called gaddafi back up and then flew off to libya to meet with them the next day the french began Operation Barracuda. Ooh. Yeah, I really should have cut like a Barracuda clip there, but I did not. Around 150 French paratroopers loaded into a plane and landed at the Bangui Airport,

where they calmly got off and took it over from the shocked guards without firing a single shot at them. Fair enough. Around 150 more French landed and fanned out over the capital. The Imperial Army threw their weapons down very confused and decided they didn't want to fight the French. Mostly because, again, remember, they barely had ammo or guns. They didn't even have training. At this point, David

Daco was so terrified that he refused to leave. He was still packed away, I believe, just across the border in southern Chad. And he's like, no, no, no, I don't want to go until you capture Bocas. I don't want to go. I don't want to go. So the French kind of had to get on the fucking plane, David. We are too far for you to fuck this up for us right now.

Now, the feared Imperial Guard stood at their post for a few hours, facing off the French paratroopers. And then finally, out of nowhere, they ran off back to their villages, leaving their uniforms and weapons scattered behind them. The Central African Republic-turned-Empire had fallen without a single shot being fired. Oh, well, that'll help his election chances at least. When Bokasa heard about this a few hours later,

he rushed in to talk to Gaddafi, only to find out that he had not even shown up in Benghazi where they were supposed to be meeting. You know who else didn't show up in Benghazi? Hillary Clinton. Charlie Daniels. Benghazi ain't going away.

You know who else ain't going away? Bocasa. There's actually a pretty decent conspiracy theory here is that the French called Gaddafi and was like invite him to Libya I mean that makes sense

and Gaddafi was like okay right because he probably wanted to be rid of the guy too yeah at this point he's pretty sick of him too and there's no evidence of that but it seems likely. That would make a ton of sense. I mean, why else would he fucking ghost him?

Right, right. Yeah, it's opined in the book that's a very real possibility. I would absolutely buy into that. Oh, I bet on that. Yeah. Now, Bokassa kind of moved temporarily into his own plane that was at the airport in Libya because he was officially nationless he discovered he did not qualify for French citizenship under the law and returning to Bangui

would have been suicide in fact he would eventually be tried in absentia and sentenced to death so like he's like whoop can't go there now one French historian who I will note has honestly the best one liner in the entire podcast to include either one of us said it was only right to give him to the English and let them banish him to St. Helena. I hope somebody appreciated the irony of that.

Yeah, I mean, like, this is the sense of humor historians have. I am here for it. Like, clearly, we need to honestly, he is the sense of humor historians have, and I am here for it. Like, clearly, we need to stay. Honestly, he probably would have been excited about that, right? Yeah, you know. He gets to go where dad went. Now, there was, he had like an aide with him that stayed remotely loyal for some time.

And he was making calls and trying to figure out where exactly he could go who would take our stray poor baby Picasso right right Gaddafi absolutely refused to take him noting that he was already taking care of Idi Amin I always said it too yeah he pointed out he's like I'm already taking care of this deposed dictator someone else has to take this one.

And Zaire refused as well, which is funny because, again, Mobutu says he's sick of going like, no, I don't want nothing to do with that guy. I just love the idea of Gaddafi being like, no, no, you take him. Who wants to

take his rights for the weekend? These were like Bokas to fall back countries he first wanted to go to france and france is like you're you're not a citizen um eventually he settled for the ivory coast who took them in putting him up in a free house in the suburbs now uh eventually france did cave and allow him to move to france and receive a pension for his military service, which was not that much money, mind you. Remember, his pension would have been dog shit.

Like a couple hundred francs a month, maybe. And using that, he rented out a house from, I wish I had a drumroll for this, the National Front. You're joking. No. He rented a house from Marine Le Pen's joking. No. He rented a house from

Marine Le Pen's dad who was given to him at massive discount because he did not have any money. Okay. What? That has to be the only time the National Front ever liked a black guy.

My mind truly is blown. And I wish I had a better explanation for this but in the book it literally is just like now he lived in a house that was rented to him personally by uh the national front and then just moves on i'm like come on man you're leaving out a lot of details here that's no i need a fucking rundown of that like a newspaper ad like do we know no uh i i got nothing man i i assume that the french neo-nazis were were fine with uh someone who really liked napoleon sure i i don't even i truly don't even have a joke uh yeah of of two hours or so of podcast full of weird shit that might be the weirdest that's that's the weirdest at least for me he stayed there for seven years uh where he spent

his full time sending letters to the french government bitching about not getting enough money from the french government something he you know he's done as a part-time job now he constantly complained his pension wasn't enough. But remember, he retired technically or whatever, got out of the French military as a captain. So his pension wasn't very high. He was like, no, no, no, I want the emperor pension, please.

What do you mean we don't recognize this address? I am... Remember emperor, guys? You keep writing Emperor Bocasa I. We're actually looking keep writing emperor Bocasa the first we're actually looking for a captain Bocasa like that's me

fuck imagine like the emperor going down to the VA it's like just wearing all of his fur capes and jewelry and crowns and shit just sitting in the VA waiting room in Pittsburgh.

Captain Bukasa. That's me. Now, he did try to make some money at one point by writing memoirs, but they were confiscated and destroyed by the French government because he kept talking about that time that him and the French president ran a train

on a woman. Oh, that's what they fought the French Revolution over, so they couldn't say that in a book? I'm actually surprised it was legal for the government to do that. Maybe it's because he was there on some special permit. I don't know. But in 1986, he returned from exile, landing triumphantly back at the Bangui Airport, and was arrested immediately upon arrival. Oh, okay.

He was not greeted by cheering crowds of supporters. I feel like they're all. He was charged with murder, treason, cannibalism, illegal use of property, assault and battery, and embezzlement. Now, throughout the trial, he just blamed everything on everybody else around him other than himself, saying that as emperor, it was the prime minister's job to do all this. It's like, well, you were president for eight years before then. Can we talk about that? It was like, moving on. You're focusing on the past.

He was found guilty of everything. We'll talk about our future, baby, like the Bomar Gaddafi. I'm called Gaddafi again. Fuck this. He was found guilty of all charges but the cannibalism, which strangely enough, was the most minor of the charges as it was only a misdemeanor.

I got nothing good to say to that. He escaped the misdemeanor charge of cannibalism. He was sentenced to death, but it was eventually overturned in 1988 uh with the sentence being reduced to life in prison and then um he got uh he got it reduced to 20 years so he he kind of went the same career path as a lot of nazis there at the end like oh no i got death oh no i have life ah see you in five years motherfucker admittedly 20 years in a south african prison or central african prison man sounds pretty bad yeah and it definitely seems like he absolutely lost his fucking mind he was released in a general amnesty in 1993 and quickly began to just show just how rapidly his

his mental capacity had declined. He began to claim himself as the 13th Apostle of Christ and that he hung out in secret with the Pope all the time. Yeah, he did the coronation or he was gutted. He just got sidetracked. Yeah. Three years later, he finally

keeled over and died of a heart attack at the age of 75. Wow, he made it longer than I would have thought. Yeah, now. Now, unfortunately, time is nothing if not a fucking bastard. We need to fast forward to 2010 for our last bit, and a guy named Francois

Bozay's. So, funny story about Francois, he was the president at this point, and he also was a general in Bocasa's Imperial Guard. Now, if you remember back when I said that Bocasa once just promoted a guy to general from private because he slapped a French

guy, that's him. Yeah, he is a Bocasa loyalist to this day. I mean, he also is the guy who commanded the slaughter of school children as a general in Bocasa's Imperial Guard. Okay. He was president.

Oh, good. Great. He also seized power in a different coup and then lost power in a different coup. Things aren't going great in Central Africa. I imagine they rarely deal. Currently torn apart by a civil war.

Now, anyway, Francois issued a decree rehabilitating Bocasa and calling him, quote, a son of the nation recognized all by a great builder. I dispute that. I would dispute that

hard, real, real hard. Son of the nation. That's right, he's the son of the nation man so Liam we do a little thing on the show called questions from the legion I know how it works Joe I am describing it for our listeners

you motherfucker that's fair okay okay nobody needs to get hurt put the gun down Joe so if you would like to ask us a question from the legion donate to the show and you too can slide to my DMS in the, uh,

what do you want to call it? Discord, uh, Patreon and ask us a question from the Legion. So this person asks, uh, during your time in the military, did you ever get any scary slash spoopy stories?

Liam, I know you were not in the military, but because you are from Pennsylvania, I will count that. Go birds. Go birds. Yeah, dude. Yeah, alright. A little bit. So, a little bit outside York,

there's this town called Hellam and there's an urban legend called the Seven Gates of Hell, where if you pass through these old gates, they're all factory where you're if you pass through these like old gates they're all factory gates if you pass through all seven like you know on a full moon or something like blah blah blah basically like a bloody mary type of thing okay but i was with some friends i was like in high school and like i don't believe in ghosts or anything you know it's not a third

like their their cops have gotten a lot more aggressive about, like, people trespassing down there. It's like, it's not safe, whatever. But I was there. It was like 1245 in the morning. And I remember there were, like, the sound of voices and this bright red light. Like, if you had covered a flashlight sort of in that like cellophane yeah uh bright red light and then the voices stopped but the light didn't and like we hit like we we flipped the car in reverse and when we uh we like got back up to the main road

there was still like a very bright red light and like clearly people had like followed us but like didn't say anything to us didn't say like hey get the fuck out like we're just like following us very closely and oh man that i did not like that yeah actually i have a fucking similar story um cannot remember uh where the town is in Michigan. I want to say Clarkston, Warren, something like that. Not Detroit. Oh, and because I'm going a little off the question, I don't have any spoopy stories from the military,

so I have to go to my civilian life as well. There is a place called Crooks Road. I remember what the road is called and it was that designated road that every teenage group is like no man it's totally haunted you have to go there at night and uh normally we would just get really high or drunk and i think i was like i want to say between the ages of 13 and 15 um you know being real classy being high and drunk and then you'd have a friend that would drive so they'd be the least high or drunk amongst Oh, boy. And then you'd have a friend that would drive, so they'd be the least high or drunk amongst you. Yes, yes. No, I

too was a teenager as well. Well, yeah, if you're listening, I was the least high or drunk friend. And we would drive down Crooks Road, and there was various stories, depending on who was telling it. It was the site

of a mental institution or there was a crazed incestuous family that lived out in the woods like the hills have eyes or whatever um and i mean what is probably true there's probably was some people that lived out the woods and didn't want people fucking messing with them yeah yeah or it was older people who knew that we would be out there and were also fucking with us. But one time on our drive back, we did get chased by a pickup truck out of the woods. Because it was a dirt road. It's like a hard pack dirt road.

And it was very, very skinny. So it's kind of a bitch to turn around on. Right. And we would drive down it, be drunk and high or whatever and then turn around drive back and as we were driving back and like this is a dead end road or it goes to nowhere someone in the area is probably saying i'm fucking this all up i don't remember again i was high and drunk uh but like a truck tore out of the darkness and like chased us out there and the fucking uh a poor bastard that was driving like driving our car got us out of there. And the fucking, uh, a poor bastard that was driving, like driving our car,

uh, got us out of there as fast as that shitty old, like Caprice classic would take us. Uh, and I never went back. Um, I'm not, I'm not someone that like,

I'm not religious. I don't believe in ghosts or whatever, but that like just hit the, my, my brain the right way that I feel that i want to fuck with that again i feel you absolutely there was a place um in kentucky when i was stationed there stationed at fort knox um there was a sanitarium i believe uh that was well known for being creepy they did a whole bunch of um like specials and documentaries and stuff on it and i never i wanted to go and fuck with it but the one like i got scared away not from like

ghosts because like no you'll get arrested to get a trespassing ticket oh okay so i never went there and then they end up bulldozing it so you know it's over but that is our show liam thank you for joining us plug your podcast uh, there's a problem. It's a leftist engineering disasters podcast with slides. Go listen to it. Also, buy my book, The Prisoner's Dilemma. It's free and Kindle Unlimited.

Almost. It's free and Kindle Unlimited, and if you don't have Kindle Unlimited, it is a dollar. Also, there's paperback and stuff. It's just more expensive. I know most people use e-books these days. Thank you, everybody. Thank you for joining us again on this two-part journey.

Until next time, do not crown yourself emperor of the Central African Republic. Or at the very least, understand how to maintain your friendships. Yeah. You know what? Friendship is a two-way street. Don't reevaluate your friendships. You have Muammar Gaddafi. Because he may deliver you

to the French.