Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 364 - The Pastry War

Episode Date: May 25, 2025

Come see us live in London June 22nd: https://bigbellycomedy.club/event/lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-big-fat-festival-southbank/ A conflict breaks out between a newly independent Mexico and a newly back-to-having-kings France. It culminates in a small series of armed incursions and blockades in 1838-39. Did it start because of an aggrieved French baker? Did Napoleon’s armies advance the science of military optics because their commander wanted to look at feet? In this episode (the first one where Nate has researched, written, and hosted), we get to the bottom of the semi-apocryphal Pastry War. Sources: Atwater, James D.; Ruiz, Ramon Eduardo. "Out from Under: Benito Juárez and the Struggle for Mexican Independence." Doubleday: Garden City, N.Y., 1969. Muñoz, Rafael Felipe. "Santa Anna, el dictador resplandeciente." Fondo de Cultura Económica: Mexico, 1982. Penot, Jacques. "L'expansion commerciale française au Mexique et les causes du conflit franco-mexicain de 1838-1839." Bulletin Hispanique 75-1-2, 1973. pp. 169-201 Toussaint, Éric. "Le système dette : Histoire des dettes souveraines et de leur répudiation." Les Liens qui libèrent: Paris, 2017.

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It's the year 1832 and we, the cast of the show, are officers in the Mexican Army, serving under General Don Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana. Our unit has bivouacked for the evening in a small town called Tacubaya, not far from the federal district of Mexico. We've decided to enjoy a candlelit dinner together, just the three of us, as a means of burying the hatchet for an incident, in which El Capitan Tomaso El Irlandes convinced us that the best way to chase a shot of burying the hatchet for an incident, in which El Capitan Tomaso El Irlandes convinced us that the best way to chase a shot of pulque involved licking the fleshy part of a specific

desert cactus. Needless to say, we gave some orders that night, but we can't recall them. I didn't make you lick it, Tomaso says. I just made a recommendation. El Coronel José Casabian, nicknamed El Armanio, cannot stand the idea that he's going to sit through another argument about popular French sheet music from at least 40 years ago. All those guys sucked anyway, and half of them got guillotined, and the ones that didn't

got drafted into the Grande Armée and died in Russia. And you know what? We're all better for it. Mycoronel, I know what songs you request at the regimental banquet, says El Capitan, Nathaniel Blanquitito. They all sound like they were written by gringos named Kyle who punch holes in shoddy mason work when they're mad at their girlfriends. No one laughs at this reference.

To save face, he signals to the waiter that they'd like another bottle of wine. The conversation continues apace, as does the food and alcohol consumption, and never does it dawn on the three of us that the restaurant owner, a Frenchman named Remontel, speaks Spanish. I mean, why would a guy living and working his entire life in Mexico, doing business there, with Mexicans, speak a language that people also speak in the country next door to France? Impossible.

Finally, Remontel cannot tolerate our presence any longer, and we're summarily booted from the restaurant. None of us is able to figure out what it was that we said that tipped him over the edge. Was it when Tom said that, quote, the problem is when people think Antoine de Saint-Juice had a strategy for guillotining people, when the truth is he was just bisexual? Was it when Joe said, quote, every single French consumer good I've ever held in my hands looks like it was made by someone who was committing adultery? Was it when Nate said quote if you opened up Napoleon's tomb, it would be like the library of Alexandria except for pictures of feet We'll never know

But we obviously refused to pay the bill since we weren't done anyway And this turns into a whole thing. And then Remintel says something about our mothers and then there's some light burglary and utensil theft. The whole event is something of a misunderstanding. Little do we know that six years later, a bricked up fleet of French military and mercantile vessels will arrive at the port of Veracruz to get revenge on us. Yes, on us. And in case you were wondering, bricked up is in fact the doctrinal term. Gentlemen, how are you doing? I love the idea that Napoleon's

tomb is just full of feet pics. Yeah, like lithograph drawings and engravings of feet, because they didn't have photography yet. That's the only thing he brought with him to exile is just picture after picture of feet. I love the idea that, like, because like cause like the gear didn't do his first test. Prince, I think it's like the 1840s, but I love the idea.

Actually it was 20 years earlier. It was a secret project from Napoleon to get feet. Top secret Imperial project. The feet carvings just don't do it for me anymore. Napoleon buried like a fucking pharaonic, like fucking tomb just full of feet picks and just like impressions in the wall of his favourite feet. Yeah, like, it's French hieroglyphics, it's just how do you interpret through feet pics.

No, it's like, you know, every parent who like, has that like, little impression mould of their child's hands, Napoleon just has all of his favourite women's feet. I hate that so much. So today's a little bit of upside down world as the listener can probably tell because instead of me distracting the living daylights out of YouTube and forcing Joe to aggressively write the ship while me and Tom are doing our best to use the ship's cannons to try to rocket jump it. I'm actually in charge of this episode. I wrote the script. It's me who's leading

the discussion. This is a first. Somehow I have no idea how it took this long for you to lead an episode of the show. It's been seven years, seven-ish years. Yeah, thereabouts. It's 2018. I started working with you. So yeah, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that none of us knows anything about the specific conflict we're gonna talk about today, which is the Pastry War of 1838 to 1839. And don't let the two years there fool you.

It's actually quite short. It just starts at the very end of the year. An armed conflict between Mexico and France or it's more official name, the first French intervention in Mexico. I presume you guys don't know much about it. I know very little about it. We covered the second French intervention in Mexico, but I I know I've heard of the payshare or before and I looked into it and it was unfortunately one of those things like I really

Wish I could cover this but all of the sources are in French Or in Spanish two languages that I famously do not speak. So enter our Trump card, the French speaking Nate. Yeah, I also speak Spanish, but not as well as French, but I can read Spanish pretty well. And I looked into this because you mentioned it and found some stuff and I'll say it in advance that I did my best to pull from things and to check different kinds of interpretations because a lot of this stuff is apocryphal and like there's a lot of exaggeration, reported speech, so on and so forth. So I'll do my best here.

And you know, cards on the table, I'm not a Mexican historian or historian of Mexico, but there's a lot of fun and a lot of detail. And at least in terms of the broad strokes, stuff is going to correspond pretty heavily with like how it's interpreted over the years. So I thought you were just going to stop short there and just say, I'm not Mexican. And it was like, pretty sure that's pretty apparent. You say that, but I had a very close friend of mine who's Mexican. And I kind of thought of him writing this. Unfortunately, he died in the most him way possible, which was whipping ass in a tiny helicopter and he crashed. But he was, he was my very good friend. He was

one of my medics in the army. He was from Sonora State, but joined the US army. My buddy Paco, rest in peace. Shouts out to Paco, miss you buddy. I really wish you were still alive and I could text you photos of fucked up Mexican food in Europe and you would respond with just a wall of all caps, ja, ja, ja, ja, ja, ja, ja, ja.

But yeah, I know a little bit about it and it's interesting, I think, reading into this because what I know of Mexican history is because of growing up in the US and learning about our encounters with Mexico bad because we were dickheads to them But what I didn't realize was because I'd heard of Antonio Santa Anna how much He wound up being responsible for a lot of the ways the US got over on Mexico because as we'll discover in this episode He's a piece of fucking idiot. Yes. He is Interesting guy famously lost the battle to the Texas revolutionaries due to a nap. Yes

His his nap schedule will actually come into play here as well I love a man that's constant in his nap schedule like no baby needs nappy. Yeah He fascinating guy Santa Anna's life is interesting in the sense that he was born in 1794 and died in I believe 1876 so like that's a pretty big like lots of long lifespans look insane when you look at the numbers, but that's a that's a pretty huge Period of history. So I would say that the three of us as a group are into or interested in weird historical ephemera enough to likely know some events here and there.

I'm fascinated by weird filibusters and people setting up breakaway states in former colonial possessions. Joe, we did cover the second French intervention in Mexico and Emperor Maximilian. I do think that for people who aren't aware, haven't listened to that episode, the idea that the Emperor of France installed a Habsburg on the throne of a newly created Mexican empire, and he was then shot to death three years later who did not speak Spanish at all somehow. And his, he surround himself with French speakers and tried to force Mexicans to learn

French. And his final words after being shot via firing squad were hombre. He did actually apparently give his last speech to the people shooting him in Spanish. So he had, he had done a little bit of studying, but yes, hombre. Um, also like his shirt full of bullet holes was like, uh, they made postcards of it. It's fascinating stuff. Um, he was embalmed and sent, but they, like, they argued about whether he could, they, the Mexicans would give him back like it's, it's throws body in the sea. But, uh, what I would say is that what we are going to talk about today is, is not particularly well remembered, certainly not

in English because it doesn't involve the English speaking world that much. Not even that well remembered in French history is except for kind of like a little bit of historical ephemera and people really into Naval history. And in, in Mexican history, you'd be surprised like it's just because they were obviously the 1861 1867 has so many so much more importance This is talked about but more of like a prelude to the bad thing prelude to the big thing It's kind of like that. I can't think off the top of my head of an American example But we've got lots of them in the 1850s kind of leading up to you know Like like call it a specific thing like maybe bleeding Kansas, but even less than that

However, this does lead to events that influence the US taking a lot of territory from Mexico, which is interesting to discover this tiny little event. So this is something of a first for us in that there is actually a very definite starting point when you tell this story, or rather, I'm going to abridge a lot of the prelude because Mexico declared independence from Spain. The struggle started in 1810 and the formal declaration was September 27th, 1821. And France had actually invaded Spain in 1810 and the formal declaration was September 27th, 1821. And France had actually invaded Spain in 1810 and Spain had actually invaded Mexico, what's now Mexico in 1516.

But for our purposes, we're just going to start at 1821. So it's autumn 1821. And for perspective, America has 24 states. The most recent is Missouri. Drawing and quartering is still a legal punishment in the UK, or at least for a few more months. I got to say, having your newest state be Missouri is not a strong point to leave off on. No, not at all. It's grim. That's right, Francis. That's a direct shot at you, buddy.

So Napoleon has died recently. France is now an autocratic monarchy. The age of European imperialism is still going extremely strong. And then suddenly Mexico is an independent country and no longer a colonial possession of France's long-time enemies in Europe. It's also worth noting that Mexico was at the time the richest colony in the Spanish empire, in the Americas and in Asia. There's absolutely zero effort in the centuries that had elapsed since colonization to establish any kind of domestic consumer production capacity or industrial capacity as it existed at the time in Mexico, as well as in places like Panama or Peru or Argentina or Chile or Costa Rica, El Salvador, Paraguay, name any Spanish possession in the Americas.

The purpose of the colonial economy was to buy things made in Spain and export natural resources or just precious metals. Colonial authorities made it incredibly difficult to trade with anyone or buy things from anyone that wasn't the official Spanish mercantile establishment. Sometimes they'd outright ban it, they would arrest it, they would arrest people, they would destroy it as contraband, or sometimes if they tolerated it, they would submit it to huge tariffs and impediments to basically make it so unprofitable that no one could do it. I know we've talked about this before, but like, yeah, and to say nothing of literally

any other colonial power, because this isn't about them at the moment, but like the Spanish colonial enterprise is fucking vicious. One of the reasons why they imported slaves to the so-called New World is because they wiped out the indigenous populations via extinction-based slavery. Yes, yeah, it was basically you work and we put you in conditions we know will kill you and we work you until you die

and then we just take more people into slavery and just keep doing it infinitely. And so in the case of, we're talking about the French in Mexico. I would say the French did this, but the British did it more so, which was just outright smuggling. This was the rule throughout all of New Spain.

But then all of a sudden in 1821, there's a newly minted independent country called Mexico, and this offered a massive opportunity for French merchants and traders because you could just trade with them. They were now an independent country. You didn't have to sneak it in under cover of darkness or through ports. So a lot of stuff got smuggled in through America and then, or with the British like basically finding excuses to be like, Oh yeah, we have a trade outpost or a survey site in Chile and we're actually selling all of our stuff. You could literally just do it. You could sell it. You didn't have to pretend you had a girlfriend who went to a different school and you could be free.

Yeah. Not to mention, it's not like the U S is patrolling its borders at the time. Like there was no border, particularly no patrol. There was, it's not like the US was patrolling its borders at the time. Like there was no border patrol, there was no controls or anything. Like the Mexican American border was wide the fuck open, both land and sea. Is it really considered smuggling if nobody's trying to stop you? I was going to say is like you're moving from out under the cudgel of the country whose main modern cultural export is t-shirts you buy in Benidorm that say I heart milfs and like moving into the realm of the country that sells t-shirts that just says J'adore Bush. Well, I mean, look, I'm just imagining like what if there was a different environment

and things had worked out and there was like a heavily francophone part of Mexico. And so you had a sort of like Springbrick destination that was both French and Mexican, like the Mexican version of Quebec war. They would have broken the sound barrier for pinching asses of either sex. Like it would have been told Napoleon that Mexican women had nice V you straight across the Atlantic. Yeah. Like the tectonic plates shift in St. Helena moves into Mexico, just crashes into the Mexican. Have you ever been so horny you reshape the earth? The point would be the first person since Alexander to the great to be so horny,

they have to redraw maps. Yeah, well, listen, in the beginning, it was only a small amount. In 1823, there was only one French merchant vessel that at least officially declared its cargo trading in Mexico. The primary port at the time was the port of Veracruz. There were significant amounts of British trade vessels as well as American ones. American trade vessels, you'll find actually it's a lot of boats and not a lot of cargo because it's a smaller craft. Whereas in the British case, it was actually pretty significant. But by 1826, so within three years of that first landing, France was making over 50 landings in

Mexico per year and was trading 50% more overall tonnage than the Brits and half the tonnage of the United States, which when you consider how close the US is, and I don't think I had to have a huge population, but a pretty significant population at the time. So that's an accomplishment. And within 10 years, French trade in Mexico was at record levels. The overall trade volume, so we're talking combined import, export, and currency remittance of nearly 40 million francs. Now here's the thing, we're talking about the 1820s.

It is extremely difficult to calculate what that would equate to in modern currency because we can look at just rates of inflation and we can make estimates. But the problem is, is that what money was worth, what things, what was expensive, what was cheap back then. In terms of what would make sense to us as hosts of this show and to our listeners, imagine a world where the studio rent for your studio in the Netherlands is only 15 euros a month, but a can of white monster is 20 euros and the ass dot give hat was 500 euros. This is a trade of willing to make, I should say immediately. That is respecting the real market value for the ass stock gave hats considering there's

only five of them in existence. Yeah. It has to be made by an artisan with, you know, like a lifetime guild membership and needlework to be able to embroider just vague enough outline so that people don't arrest us. A fucking silhouette of Osama bin Laden watching TV. Actually speaking of 20 euros, I got, I got a can of white monster right here. Hell yeah. Yeah. Look at you. Look at you. Yeah. I mean, can you, can you imagine how much synthesized liquid of tobacco would fetch on the market in 1830, 1826.

Could you imagine, jump back in time here, build a, carve out a stone fucking time machine made out of, we afford due to the money we pay selling hand carved ass dot gift hats. And you give one single can of white monster to one of these French traders in Vera Cruz. What do you think happens to their insides? It's fascinating to me because like one of the things you learn about reading this is that Vera Cruz's yellow fever was endemic, so it's safe to assume that the French just had diarrhea constantly. This could be a cure!

I'm going to sell it to a flim flam man! No, but everyone goes on about giving a Victorian child like a hot Cheeto, imagine giving like a Mexican farmer in like this period a single puff of a blueberry 10,000 puff last mary. They immediately throw off the fucking shackles of colonialism. They write a narco-corrito about the guy who invented this. But the tips of their boots grow fucking three centimeters. I had a read a theory from the ethnomusicologist in the course of researching this that actually, and I don't know, Joe, you might be able to speak to this with more authority because I was the first time I'd ever heard it that Maximilian brought lots of of European music, musicians, bands, performers with him, it's part of his

entourage and they all had to fuck off really fast to not get executed after the collapse of the Mexican empire. And most of them took refuge in remote parts of Mexico. And the theory is that like that actually led to a kind of like a flowering of Mexican music as like traditional music, because it was mostly indigenous areas or, or Mestizo areas, but like they, you know, suddenly had this influx of like Oompa and Polka from Central Europe. I don't know if that's true or not.

I mean an ethnomusicologist would know better than me, but I do know a lot of French people had to run for the Hills after Maximillian got ombraed. Well, yeah, yeah. Cause cause they didn't, you didn't have fucking like, what is it? Easy jet and goddamn like, like frontier airways. You just had to run as far and as fast as you could. So most estimates would put the trade volume that I cited previously at well over 100 million euros

in present money, but the thing is, is in terms of purchasing power, it's really like, who knows? It could be anywhere from half a billion to a billion euros in the trade volume between France and Mexico at the time in modern purchasing power. So it's a lot of money in an era where populations were much smaller. There was a

huge amount of risk involved and it took anywhere from 60 to 70 days typically to get from France to Mexico. And that's just one way on the trip. And obviously one of the stories we'll find out later is like a part of the later flotilla squadron expedition to punish Mexico. Like a ship just ran aground in Bermuda and crashed, for example. Like this is a constant risk. Happens to the best of us, man. At least they didn't accidentally crash into Australia this time. Well, like I said, many Europeans aspire, but very few can actually reach the heights of weirdness that the Dutch can get to. So, you know.

The French in Mexico doing money spread brackets evil. So French goods became very popular among Mexican consumers and there was an entire network of logistics and sales ventures that emerged to support this as well as any other occupation you could imagine might commit someone to venture over, for better or worse. But almost all the French presence there was mercantile. But when you dig through testimonies and reporting from the time, there were accounts of trade guildsmen, farmers, doctors, winemakers, liquor distillers, horse trainers, butlers, anything you can possibly think of. And at the peak, there were probably about 6,000 French citizens living in Mexico. And we should also mention at the time, referencing something I said earlier, that the sort of

container ships of the day were double-masted trade ships that would just be packed to the absolute gills with cargo. And in English, we call these brigs. The word in French is unbrick, spelled like the brick word in English, le brick. And so it was effectively, and I'm saying this in my role as co-host and amateur historical sleuth, that it was because of a bricked up navy that French mercantile society began to flourish in 1820s and 30s Mexico. C'est un brick maison. Oui, c'est le brick. Le prix d'un brick va hausser.

I've just said the price of a brick is going up. Sorry. I realize you guys don't speak French. But put more seriously, there were two large functions at work here. There were wholesalers and importers moving goods into Mexico. And then there were also retailers selling consignments or finished products in shops in Mexico. But the profits and the revenues from these were concentrated in French trade houses and missions, and French authorities would use those sites to also hear petitions, settle disputes, appeal to local

authorities. And we, I think, have an urge to consider this sort of thing in terms of modern day 21st century free trade, and I'm putting scare quotes on that, where every single one of these operations involves entrepreneurs and investors and shareholders and angel funds and regrettable purchases of whatever the 19th century equivalent of a bored ape NFT would be. But the truth is that everything on the French side was controlled through the government. And by this, we mean the King of France and his ministers because in 1814, the Bourbon Monarchy was restored post Napoleon, post revolution, and Louis XVIII was on the throne. Over the course of

this story, we'll also hear about Charles X a little, and then Louis Philippe I. Did they give the King a board ape? Like they gave Jimmy Fallon one? The King get a board ape stolen from him? No, but Joe, more importantly, did they give the king a slurp juice so he could turn his board ape into multiple board apes? That's true. Yes. These are the questions that historians refuse to answer.

Yes. To be honest though, the goings on within France are not really important to this story other than to like know names and know who was on the throne at the time. I just wanted to clarify that this isn't early stage capitalism. This is the French crown and the French crown's businesses making money for the French crown. And so with that in mind, there's two really important things we have to remember to understand this story. The first strong presidential federal republics are inherently unstable. Not that Joe and I know anything about this.

Unfamiliar. And point number two, Spain fucking sucks. I mean, yeah, it's a demonstrable fact. For the purposes of brevity, we'll just say it wasn't until 1836 that Spain actually recognized Mexican independence. And obviously they had fought them for 11 years before their defeat. And it wasn't until the, from 1821 until 1829, when the Mexicans defeated the Spanish at Tampico, there were significant attempts to recapture the country on this part of the Spanish. And this matters to our story for a

couple of reasons. The first is that because the Mexican government regularly forced French businesses and commercial entities to support the defense of Mexico with mandatory loans and press ganging of French citizens or trade vessels into their war efforts. God, that must have been awkward. Yes, I mean, genuinely you have stories where like French citizens of areas who were living in parts of Mexico were press ganged to go fight the Texans, like the Texan revolution. Boats were press ganged, trade vessels were fitted out with really shitty cannons. Like this is a thing.

And it did apply to every foreign entity in Mexico, but in the case of the French, I think it was most acute in 1821 to 1830 because that was the period of time before France actually recognized Mexican independence. So bearing in mind that at the time, importation and carriage fees could easily cover 50% of the value of the cargo imported into the territory. And Mexican authorities also impose a 10% surcharge on imports if they came from countries that hadn't yet recognized Mexico's independence, which is a boss move, I have to be honest. That's pretty legit.

And so this is relevant because the vast sums of money being made, but there's also a lot of this money is going to taxes to importation. And there's obviously an urge to both smuggle and undervalue the actual worth of shipments coming over. There's so much money at play. There's the fact that, I mean, there could be half this money at play and someone still could be smuggling. Oh, absolutely. This is something that's interesting going through historical documents, both like the peer reviewed historical stuff and also documents from the time, which is that everyone knew that a lot of the stuff that was coming from America was actually

re-imported. It was French goods that were brought into America and then exported from New Orleans and sold in Mexico. So they basically said, if you counted in the smuggling and re-importations from the United States, the actual figures of Francis trade volume with Mexico were much, much higher. Ah, yes. the Creole pipeline. Oh, I mean, we're talking about the 1820s and 30s. So it's just, it's an America that we wouldn't recognize today. Mostly worse, but also in some cases better. Because I mean, like there were some aspects of it that were less insane, less like fucking American Hitler

shit, but that's a topic for another day. So after the 1830 revolution in France, which was a period that was called the July monarchy, which maybe we can cover it someday, but effectively the France's constitutional monarchy, which then is overthrown in the 1848 revolution and lasts in the second French Republic until Napoleon III fucking does coup d'etat in 1854. Arguably the worst Napoleon. I mean, the first Napoleon, I said what I said, the first Napoleon did get a lot of French people killed in Russia and other stuff. Yeah. I see that as a positive. He didn't get so encircled that he became the bargaining chip for negotiations to end the war. He got goaded into a war and got captured in a battle because he's a fucking

idiot. And then part of the occupation of the Prussian occupation of France involved taking all their money in circulation and stamping the word sedan on any coin that had Napoleon III's face on it. So I mean like pettiness with the rule of the day, it still is, but certainly back then. But so after the 1830 revolution in France and the establishment of the July monarchy, there was definitely a lot more of an impetus towards the classical liberal free trade, let's make money versus the hardcore monarchist sentiment. And that's an oversimplification, but it's worth understanding that suddenly in 1830,

it didn't matter as much to the French government that it would be an abnegation of the right of kings to rule for them to recognize Mexico as an independent country. And so they did quite quickly actually after Louis Philippe I took the throne. And there was just a shift in priority towards make more money. And we're talking about exceptionally high rates of profit here. So I'm not trying to frame this from the side of the French. More than anything else, there was a lot of uncertainty involved and a pretty constant risk of getting a surprise bill or having your wares impounded and so on.

But I guess I'm saying this to mention that France does have legitimate grievances, but they were making money hand over fist. And a lot was happening in Mexico. Remember my first two points? Strong presidential federal republics are inherently unstable and Spain fucking sucks. That will explain a lot of why there was instability in Mexico at the time. So like France is making so much money that any perceived slight against them is like a rounding error. It doesn't really matter. Yes. And I think that part of the reason why this was France's complaints about, you know,

abuse or seizures, impoundments, and destruction of their property and basically wanting redress for damages was such a point of offense amongst Mexican elite, certainly, was that there was the knowledge that they were making so much money. But also, I think there was a tendency to exaggerate to make them seem even more ridiculous. At least as far as I can understand, there are instances in which an event where someone claimed damages wanting a relatively accurate amount of money. And by the time this does the telephone game around early 19th century Mexican newspapers, they're like, this guy wants a billion dollars for his donkey cart.

It could have been a really good donkey. The donkey have a valid appraisal on the books. And who am I to judge anybody for exaggerating about the French for comedic effect? I also have to say this, I bring this up because it's interesting to me that you forget that although this is not that long ago in terms of the kind of history we talk about on this show, like it might as well be like my uncle came to me in a dream and revealed the truth of history in terms of some of these sources. Like a lot of it is fucking apocryphal, even at the time. Like even, even people's journals and reports, like it's, we have to

kind of do our best to sift through. My source on this is as a message beamed to my brain directly from Hong Christ. If I was an impugnious French smuggler, I too would be very mad if my entire ship of foot daguerreotypes was like seized. Oh no, my finest camembert. They had to impound a lot of sand from Algeria to make the glass to make these foot daguerreotypes. Like you know, it's a long process. A lot of people put their heart and soul into this. Well, so I mean, the second reason why Spain refusing to let go of Mexico matters, I think, is the fact that it created a lot of anti-European, anti-foreigner sentiment in Mexico.

It was a lot more volatile for Europeans there. And there are stories where French people living in Mexico had struggled, reported that they struggled to convince Mexicans that they were not Spanish or British or American They're like no, there's actually a secret fourth category. Like I said, what you're saying is that they were the the old version of expats I Mean I had friends in the US Army who struggled to convince Afghans that they weren't Russian So I mean like this is a uniform a universal phenomenon I believe but I actually found that anecdote that there were stories reported of Mexican

priests telling their, their parishioners that Pontus pilot was French, which you could tell due to the smell, which implies that the Roman empire was also French, the Francophone Roman empire, which means Italy is France. And Judeo should have a lot of accordions buried under centuries of rubble that you can unearth, you know, fossilized accordions. And Lazarus came out of the, you know, was brought back to life, fucking smoking Galwaz's like- The Lance of Longinus was actually just a really hard baguette.

Drawing from a report given by a French ship captain named Le Coupe to the French naval minister July 1829, in which he describes his attempts to land in Veracruz around the time that Spain was preparing its expedition from Cuba. And bear in mind that these French ships had stopped in Cuba and then moved onwards so they would have taken the same route. He struggled upon arrival in Veracruz to convince them that he wasn't Spanish. He quote, my arrival caused a sensation and I found it infinitely difficult to obtain pilot boats when I dispatched an officer to land as they were convinced that these three French crown ships were in fact Spanish. No one wanted to believe that we were strangers to the aggression

that was underway. Listen, fellas, I can't dance and I'm not going to take a nap at all today. I've actually tasted something spicier than black pepper, believe it or not. Must have been so confusing when a Basque trader showed up. It was like, which is he? Yeah, the Basque guy and the Catalan guy point at each other. Andorans, stay the fuck away. Do not come here.

The Mexicans developing a very niche form of racism against the Andorans. Yeah, but they wouldn't have cared about the Andorans because the Uzi hadn't been invented yet. God damn it. Find some kind of niche European internecine thing. Get really mad about make fun of them because you'll find Mexicans are really sarcastic and it's very funny, but that actually leads to some of the consequences we're going to discuss here.

So we are obviously simplifying things to a great extent, but it's worth mentioning that these first decades of Mexican independence were tumultuous, to say the least. There were numerous loyalist actions against the Mexican federal government. There were regular Spanish attacks against Mexico mounted from their stronghold in Cuba, significant numbers of cities traded hands. It was a mess politically. And there were sweeping changes put into place by kind of 19th century Mexican liberalism, which was very anti-clerical, followed by military oppression and restoration of all the conservative church Catholic shit. Damn it.

Nate, don't make liberalism sound cool to me. I will say that it is interesting to see the liberals come to power in the first thing you'll be like tax the church and take church property that that just, but you realize like this is not long after the French revolution. There's just, yeah, we're getting Mexican Napoleon stuff, which is what Santa Ana's nickname ends up being called himself. Yes. He called himself the, the, he called himself the Napoleon of the West. There would be the dissolution of Congress, the cancellation of the constitution, lots and lots of things like people being

forced to swear loyalty oaths, people being forced into exile, opposition newspapers being banned. It was a mess politically. And one person whose loyalty switched from Spain to Mexico and from liberal to conservative and conservative to liberal. Every political position possible was a guy we've spoken about before in the show, Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana. He was born in Veracruz in 1794 and he joined the military at age 16 as an enlistee fighting on the side of the Spanish against the pro-independence movement. He was commissioned as an officer two years later. At one point when he was still an enlisted soldier, he was shot in the hand with an arrow.

Oof. It was a reminder, I suppose, that we are talking about the early 19th century. I used to be a Mexican emperor like you until I took an arrow in the hand. So in 1828, so first of all, Santa Ana joined the side of Mexican independence in 1821, which remember it was September 1821

that Mexico sort of declared its independence formally having achieved the position where the independence movement could more or less put this into effect. But man was a very long time coming and changing his mind. And in 1828, Santa Anna played a prominent role in the ouster of the newly elected president Manuel Gomez Pedraza, citing allegations that Gomez Pedraza had used his government role as I believe he was the minister of war to unduly influence the results. You have to bear in mind here is that

they didn't have direct election at the time. Basically, the state assemblies would decide the presidential candidate, who the next president would be. This was the second election in Mexican history. So Gomez Pedroaza was conservative. The-up was a liberal. And Santa Ana actually declared rebellion against Gomez Pedraza even before the results had been counted. And then another liberal politician named Lorenzo de Zavala eventually seized the federal armory in Mexico City.

I mean, effectively, they fought the government. They won. They took over. Gomez Pedraza was ousted. He was sent into exile. The runner-up, Vincente Guerrero, was installed as president. And so I guess I have to say this, talking about instability, it's only the second election they've ever had and they already had January 6th and then it succeeded. I mean, we started off from like 9-11 brackets good. So not long after this,

this is 1829, Spain made its final attempt to recapture Mexico, which culminated in the Battle of Tampico. And in this battle, none other than Santa Anna defeated Spanish force and effectively consolidated Mexico. There are some interpretations of this that because Santa Anna was born and raised in Veracruz, he had been exposed to yellow fever his entire life and that he and also the Veracruz troops with him were not as affected by it. Whereas the Spanish absolutely were.

Yeah. And we're just shitting themselves to death. This does come up yellow fever and the effects does, those do come up quite a bit. The famed Mexican Patriot, the humble mosquito. Well, yeah. And you talked about September 11th, September 11th, 1829 was the decisive victory at Tampico that made Santa Ana indisputably

a national hero. And then three months later, there was a coup d'état that saw a conservative president named Anastasio Bustamante installed. So yeah, they achieved victory against Spain. They immediately couped each other and did it again. I actually, because of this, us and this show, I have to give you his full name, which is Trinidad Anastasio de Salas Ruiz Bustamante Yosiguera. His name tag was held up on both sides like a fucking biplane wing. Obviously like some things people may not know this about like formal names in the Spanish language typically like you have a second last name because it's your mother's maiden

name. But like when you get everyone's full name will seem a little bit ridiculous like to us because it's just not the way we do it. And I'm not trying to poke fun at that, but that is a name. I'm sorry. Now, Bustamante, not a favorably remembered politician, nor is Santa Anna for that matter. But I think the thing about Bustamante that was quite shocking, and I bring him up, we have to get to him because we have to understand that he and Santa Anna are major politicians in this story. So Bustamante sees his power, he deposes Guerrero in a coup d'etat, and then Guerrero flees the city and starts a rebellion, which fails.

Bustamante captures Guerrero and has him executed, which as you'll find, this is not an untypical thing, but not for the former president. This is a bit of a like, whoa, y'all are getting a bit weird here. Santa Ana, who supported Guerrero, when the coup d'etat happened, he made himself the military governor breakaway Republic of Veracruz. He raided the Veracruz treasury. He pressed grant gang people into service. Everything you could possibly imagine. I mean, it was a civil war. It just wasn't called that. And he led a rebellion against Bustamante. We'd say they succeeded in the sense that he forced Bustamante to completely change his government

and then agree to elections in 1833, which happened. And Santa Ana won and became the president. So Santa Ana, first term, Mexico, completely bankrupt. Rebellions against liberals and conservatives were constant. Huge debates about anti-clericalism and church taxes, the rebellion in Texas, which succeeded and became a regular republic and then got annexed by the US, many other things. And also you have to realize that when you talk about this period, Santa Ana and Bustamante are basically trading off as president nonstop for like relatively short periods. It's very difficult.

But they just keep cooing each other? They keep cooing each other, their new power sharing agreements, or it's a matter of who's actually holding Mexico City. There will be informal agreements, like shadow presidencies, things like that, kind of like Putin-Metvedev things. I say this and I realize this is not my domain of study by any means, but if you dig through it, it's difficult to determine because so many different opinions exist as to how many official terms Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna

had as president. At some point, he's pretty much the anti-president in his Avignon Mexican presidential palace. He was much happier doing military campaigns and he hated governing. So he did love like looking like the military. I mean, there's a reason why he ends up claiming himself emperor and wearing a military uniform all the time.

Calling himself like Serenissimo, like his most serene highness and shit like that. It's a solid name. Like honestly don't like the guy, but if you're going to give yourself a fancy name, go all out that there's a reason why people remember him on top of napping his way to losing Texas, but yes and Being so hard up for money that he basically signed the Gadsden purchase before they actually had the map Negotiated for an advance on money that didn't wind up being that much and he just basically gave away almost the entirety of southern Arizona among other things so I don't want to sound totalizing and I have to give the caveat here that this obviously is going to refer to a different country in Latin America.

But I think that if you have ever read authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, particularly the book Love in the Time of Cholera, which I know is set in Columbia, the sort of endless back and forth coup and whatnot between the liberals and the conservatives, like that is, that is a representation of historical fact. It is a thing that occurs. Yeah. Yes. Oh, the liberals did a coup, the conservatives did a coup. And it's like, when you read Mexican history of this era and also the history of lots of other colonial possessions or independent

republics in Latin America that were Spanish colonies, it's the same. There's another kind of apocryphal and difficult to cite but very like sticks into people's historical memory figure is the claim that Mexico had at least 50 different governments between 1821 and 1861. Now I don't, once again, it's hard like how do you define a government? Like how do you like, is it these like these power sharing agreements, these sort of gentlemen's agreements? Well, if it makes you feel any better, the people in charge probably also didn't know. Well, yeah. But I mean, I think the thing about it is that it was a huge mess across the board. It was really unstable.

There was constant civil disturbance. There were rebellions, there were counter revolutions, all these things. And that's the business climate we're talking about when we talk about the pastry wars, that the French mercantile operation there is living in these cities, these port cities, et cetera, trading, doing business. And they are doing that at the sort of at the behest or with the express permission of the Mexican government, but also some stuff is afoot. And the Mexican government is perpetually broke. So I think this is important context to understand when you consider the cause

of the pastry war itself, which to be honest, the name, the pastry war, is actually just kind of a sarcastic joke from the Mexican press. So, France's grievance with Mexico stemmed from an inability to reach an agreement where Mexico would compensate French citizens in that country for losses incurred when their property was confiscated, destroyed, requisitioned, et cetera. And the government could be any, it could be, oh, Santa Ana is now the military governor dictator of Ericruz.

It could be any authority. It seems like it'd be quite gray and confusing in the time where there's so much instability and not to come to the defense of France at all, but in a situation like this, pretty much anybody could declare themselves an agent of the government and you'd have a hard time proving them wrong. And also I think there was another side thing here, which was that France and Britain were able to negotiate trade deals that gave certain legal protections. And for some reason, they could never get a trade deal ratified through the Spanish Congress.

Like genuinely over... It was nap time. ...more than 10 years, they just sort of like fill a buster in your ass. So they're like, wait, how come those guys get it? How come you hit it out to those guys, but not me? Why not me? What am I doing wrong? The spurned lover of France, just smoking Galwaz is on his scooter outside with the boom box over his shoulder playing, playing salsa music, playing the narco Corita about the vape playing the pastry Narco Corita. So Mexico's response to France about damages and about these, these indemnities and demands were demands were twofold. It was okay. They said

they wanted to pay, but they simply couldn't because they had no money. Their treasury was constantly empty. They also claimed that the damages were grossly inflated. And the fact that it was even called the pastry war, which in Spanish is La Guerra de los Pastilles and it's La Guerre de Patisserie in French. Well, it stems from a story from newspapers in Mexico that claimed that Santa Ana, some of soldiers, sometimes called officers, sometimes just line troops, ransacked a bakery owned by a French citizen whose name we only know as Remontelle or Monsieur Remontelle. And that the owner claimed he was owed 60,000 pesos for a bakery that was worth 1,000 pesos. The price aside, this does sound like something a group of drunk soldiers would do. Yes, 100%.

And the thing about it is that I also have seen in some articles and on the French side of this, claiming that like, no, if you go through the newspapers at the time, you'll see that like the original claim is about the right price. And then basically the newspapers trying to make this sound ridiculous keep inflating the price. So I don't know if this is true or not. Because like I said, it's so much as this is apocryphal and you have to consider the level of which journalism in the early 19th century throughout the world, certainly in the English language from what we can read, it'd be like, this politician is a snake in the grass, his enemy responds, he is a no good son of a bitch. The level of just, it

wasn't exactly helped, it wasn't an ombudsman. You know what I mean? Yeah, and there's also the shadow of yellow journalism as well in the Americas, which was, you know, just the name of the game. The turn of phrase was coined later on, but like the phenomenon was absolutely there. It had been going on for a very long time before someone coined a term for it, before it started a war with Spain. So much of the story is apocryphal, obviously. Journalism time was not great anywhere, really. And Bustamante and St. Anna, famously not friendly to opposition newspapers.

You know what they say, democracy dies in the pastry. Yes, perhaps it does, but I'm sure it tastes good as, I'm sure it slapped though, unless it gave you, I don't know, fucking Hauntavirus or something. Effectively, they were saying the French are such cry babies and they want us to pay all this money over a few lost pastries. Hence the term. It's kind of a term of derision.

Like trying to minimize it. Like this was nothing. Yeah. Like maybe some damage is done, but all they did was vandalize a fucking bakery. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Like, or I think it was Voltaire the famous line about losing losing Quebec that all we lost is a couple acres of snow

Which made kibak walk? I'm all about pissing off the Quebec. I don't know why it so brings me so much joy But it does they are an interesting group of people and I do really really when I encounter their accent I'm always just like double knock when I encounter their accent, I'm always just like, Quebecois French sounds like the real life version of when Milo does that accent of the Southern gentleman that sounds like it's from the lost city of Atlantis. Like, that is 100% how Quebecois French sounds to me as a French speaker. And they also use really just old fashioned 17th, 18th century vocabulary. So anyway,

Quebecois aside, there are numerous instances of pillage and looting in French stores. That is not a matter of dispute. Particularly when we remember we talked about the uprising against Gomez Pedraza, when Zavala's forces took Mexico City and actually seized the national armory, there were riots. And an area that's now in Zocalo Square in Mexico City at the time was called the Parian Market. There were luxury stores, Mexican, British, French, et cetera. There was a mass looting there. And this became one of the French government's demands for redress. It's important to note here that there are examples of French citizens being targeted because they are French, but this is probably not that because French losses made up only about

5% of the total losses incurred in this incident. It was a mass looting riot. You know what they say, when you see your homie looting the French store in Mexico City, no, you didn't. Right. There were only seven French stores in this great market here. And so that obviously became part of the complaint. But this isn't the only story. There in 1829, the French vice consul to Mexico actually had his property and business pillaged. But I think that Parian is important because of all the things we're talking about, it's one of the most significant in terms of what the French government at the time sought redress for. The bakery incident is not included in this. The pastries, no one gives a fuck about.

But obviously in the sort of like popular memory and Mexicans making fun of it, this is the thing that comes up because it sounds so ridiculous. There is the possibility that the French government understood that this bakery kind of sucks. Well, yeah, they're like, what if this guy actually made really shitty pastries and they deserve, he deserved to have his ass kicked? Exactly. Like maybe, I mean, he made a shitty croissant and this is the punishment is you get the lash you basically have to it's like it's like when the 1977 riots happened everyone stole the fucking DJ equipment and then

hip-hop was born fuck because everyone got turntables and mixers it's like if you let them raid their shit all the people in what's now Mexico City are gonna steal his kitchen implements and make the flyest meals you've ever had in your life. We have to let it happen. Yeah, the French now are just having the same reaction that the British had in 2011 of the guy who stole the bag of rice. What do you need that for? How many phones do you have to fucking dry out? We don't know how to cook rice. A similar grievance stems from an 1835 rebellion against Santa Ana led by Jose Antonio Mejia,

in which the exiled Mejia recruited a company's work to filibusters in New Orleans and led them to invade Mexico in what is known as the Tampico Expedition. It's so weird that this has happened more than once. Oh, plenty of times. 31 of these men were captured, of which 2 were French citizens. I found this to be a note I really wanted to include in the script. They appealed for clemency. They wrote a petition to Santa Ana, basically saying like, we're good people and good citizens

of a European country, blah, blah, blah, to which he responded with the following, shoot these foreigners immediately. Honking on that baguette pack, motherfucker. Bear in mind, mass reprisals and shootings of prisoners were absolutely the norm in Mexico from the start of the war of independence onwards.wards, these guys were also mercenaries, trying to get fancy with it, but they were mercenaries. It is impossible to have any sympathy for them at all. But for the purposes of understating the diplomacy involved,

yes, Santa Ana did execute French citizens. Yeah, at the same time, this isn't even the first time that a group of fucking mercenaries from Louisiana invaded Mexico. Yeah, 100%. So even by 1829, there were already proposals being floated in the sort of French governmental circles to potentially establish a blockade. They wanted to force redress on Mexico and they figured they could use the French Navy. Mexico didn't have a Navy or Marines to speak of. Yeah, they don't have any money.

And obviously Mexico in the 1830s was not a stable place to do business, but it wasn't actually until 1838 that the French Prime Minister, Louis-Matthieu Millet, issued an ultimatum demanding a payment of 600,000 francs. And obviously this was not paid. I mean, this has to be in those situations where the government requested so much money that they knew it could not be paid, right? Yeah. I mean, relatively speaking to the amount we're describing here, it's not a huge sum, but they understood that Mexico wasn't in a position to do it and that politically paying

off the French would have been very, very unpopular. So I think that what you'll find is that at the time, the biggest sources of income were obviously foreign trade and the biggest outlays were the military budget. And to be honest with you, as I understand it, a lot of church expenditure. The military was overwhelmingly the largest though. And I think that they would have potentially been able to arrange it. But yeah, oftentimes you will find these stories where it's like, the treasury is zero, they owe 11 million pesos to foreign creditors. It's an enormously bad financial situation. So this isn't a thing that they would have

volunteered for because as you can see also with the politics we've already described, if you were the person who did, you probably wouldn't last long in power. You just get cooed. Yeah, you get cooed. It's kind of like that drill tweet of like, Oh, someone helped me balance my budget. Food, water, electricity, gold hats for priests. Someone helped me out here. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, and, and I think too that, um, it's interesting because obviously you'll find this that even during the blockade, like it was eventually effective to an extent,

but like Mexico just started doing trade by smuggling it over the Rio Bravo from Texas. It was a fluid situation. And I think that in the case of, as I understand it, how it was interpreted, like there were obvious serious redress issues here, but also this was like Mexico being like, why is this European power just being so fucking, I don't know, hoity toity with us? Why are they, they are effectively trying to push us around. And that did not fly in the politics of the day. It wouldn't anywhere, but certainly not at the time.

I mean, remember the XYZ incident in America where we basically almost went to war with our biggest ally in the American war of independence in 1798 because we were mad about the French supposedly trying to solicit bribes. Like one of the, one of the heroes of the American revolution, like his whole home burned down because of people like, fuck the French, like genuinely. So yeah, you understand how this kind of thing would become a political impossibility. And so King Louis Philippe I authorized a blockade and to demand redress of the Mexican government. It wasn't actually the first time they tried. A smaller force blockaded Veracruz the year prior, so in 1837, under the command of Charles

Louis Joseph Buzasch. It was just a show of force. It was four boats. It was two frigates and two bricks. And it was enough to manage to blockade the port because Mexico didn't have a Navy. So they hung out in Veracruz and they confiscated cargo coming in and out. They surveilled and reconnoitered the nearby naval fort. However, it's very curious. And so they immediately got sick with yellow fever.

It doesn't submit. I might not have a Navy, but we do have an air force. Yes. At the time bizarre reconnaissance made it feel like with the force they had at hand, the fortress at San Juan de Ulua would have been impervious. Like they wouldn't have been able to engage with it. I was a successful show of force in the sense they were able to operate with impunity, but Mexico did not pay the demands and did not agree to anything. Hence the new blockade, which this time was under the command of Rear Admiral Charles Baudin. So Buzasch's vessels actually met with his, they absorbed them into the fleet. There were supposed to be five frigates, but one of them crashed in Bermuda, so it was four. Or rather, it was supposed to be,

well, rather, they added four and yeah, the fifth one crashed. Total of six, basically, war ships of the day. They also had two corvettes, they had eight bricks, two bomb vessels, two logistics corvettes, and two steamers. So in total, it was 380 guns, far outnumbering the amount of guns that the Mexicans had in the fort and the Mexican guns were much older. These were a newer kind of naval cannon and effectively they arrived, they parlayed with the government. They arrived at the end of October, 1838. Bustamante met with them or agreed to have his envoys meet with them, but they didn't

actually come to any agreement. The French used this time to reconnoiter the coast, reconnoiter the fort, got close enough to determine that the fort's guns were actually in very poor condition and were quite old. And finally, when the ultimatum went unanswered, Bodane gave the order to shell the fort of San Juan de Ulua. How busted do your cannons have to be for someone to actually be able to visibly tell? They're all covered in rust and old fucking melted brie. They're bent sideways.

French military optics had improved a lot because Napoleon needed spy glasses to check out feet. Yeah. He deployed an entire army of Ford observers to check out feet, to do sketches by hand of all the hot feet that he found. God damn. Look at those piggies. They didn't have the garrotypes yet. So weirdly, this is actually a hinge point in Naval history, or at least in the interpretation of some naval historians, because the way that they wound up employing gunboats and naval cannons, as well as the sort of the steam ships to assist this, both like for

reconnaissance and logistics hadn't been done this way before. And the bombardment lasted less than 24 hours before the Mexicans basically asked for a ceasefire in order to communicate with their leadership to negotiate a surrender. There were about 800 defenders. It's estimated about 220 of them died. They were completely outgunned. Right. There were famously David Farragut was there, the American. He's a historical figure involved in the US military. I don't know a ton about him. He would eventually go on to command the Union Navy during the Civil War, despite being from

the South. There also were British naval observers there too. This was a pretty important demonstration of what this new armament could do. And basically they were able to negotiate the surrender of the fort. They actually left a Mexican force there to more or less hold it to keep the local area secure, but they had surrendered. And then on the night of December 4th into December 5th, they landed about 1,500. What you call Marines, these weren't infantrymen because France didn't have bases anywhere near here that could have supplied an infantry force to the same degree.

Their closest bases were in the Antilles in Marignan and Martinique. And hilariously, they were able to stage all of their flotilla invasion squadron, et cetera, in Cuba because of the good graces of the Spanish, which you imagine made Mexicans fucking love them. Yeah. Like you guys are using these guys to do what? Yeah, go ahead and park them shits here. Go send your boys out to get yellow fever. It's going to be great. So this is where it gets interesting. But Dan lands his forces on the night of December 4th, 1838, and he disembarks about 1500 troops. They have an approach that they planned in

advance of splitting into columns to take high ground and to basically secure all of their crews. And there is no opposition at all. No one, no one holds them back. No one shoots at them because Santa Anna is there but he's asleep again My god, he's the sleepiest man It's the middle of the night and by the time that Santa Anna is a prize of the situation They have established control of the objective to use the military term. They have their limit of advance They've called general ceasefire now They obviously didn't you know take they didn't remove any kind of defensive posture

But like there wasn't any resistance they took their crews in the night. They were like, but fuck y'all got their crews Santa Ana like man, thank God this can't possibly happen to me twice in my life But Santa Ana then organized counter-attack they attacked French positions Some of this was building to building fighting some of this was out in the open. They attacked French positions. Some of this was building to building fighting. Some of this was out in the open. They were fucking slaughtered. There were only 12 French deaths amongst the casualties here. And most of these were friendly fire because they're like, wait, what the fuck people are shooting? Like there were 55 Mexican deaths. It ended very, very poorly. Santa Anna himself was hit in the leg with grape

shot. He was able to escape. However, his foot had to be amputated at the ankle and it wound up being gangrenous. So he wound up losing the entirety of his leg below the knee. Now here's the thing, Santa Ana, famous dumb ass, does a lot of things later in life that are even dumber. But remember he was the hero of Tampico. He now also was like, I shed blood for the Mexican nation. Now you shed blood by basically running into a glass door you didn't know was there, but you said people

into battle after the enemy had solidified their defensive positions. The battle was completely over and you're like, no, fuck you. And then yes, exactly. Like it's the equivalent of you won the battle against the cops by jumping off the highway bridge and dying. I didn't get arrested. The cops have arrested me. Exactly. And so this cemented Santa Anna's legacy to some extent. It certainly gave another mechanism with which he could portray himself as a national hero. And this is generous, despite being a world-class moron, the guy who lost Texas, so on and so

forth, having bled for the fatherland, he was now in a position to also go on to further accomplishments such as losing huge amounts of territory to the United States. At one point having to pay a ransom to the US to get his peg leg back for sentimental reasons. I'm dead serious. The leg repo'd by the US government? Yes, yes, yes. American troops in the Mexican-American war stole his leg and they probably were like using it to fucking do bong rip with it. You know what I mean? Like the 18th, 19th century, 1850s equivalent of that. So it's weird because

this guy is insane and this small conflict did significantly affect both naval history as we've discussed, but then also his legacy his reputation is like a see leg Yeah, it affected his leg and his legacy. You know, it affected his leg on the sea Yeah, you can't make this is why with English, you know Well, there should be more writing about this because we can make dumb jokes. You can't make jokes like that in Spanish or French They just wouldn't they wouldn't have the same stupid pun. So look, Mexico had obviously lost. There wasn't anywhere they're like, yep, you got us. You got Veracruz. Shit. They capitulated. They agreed to pay the indemnity. Now here's where it gets interesting to some extent. I have read a lot,

pulling from sources and also summaries of sources and ways that this is taught in history, the way that this is recounted. I can't actually confirm that it was paid because some accounts say that it was, and other accounts say it wasn't. And that was the reason for one of the grievances for the second French intervention in Mexico in 1861. Nah, bro, you know I'm good for it. I'll get you back later. I do know that by the late 1850s, Mexico had enormous foreign debts to the United States, to Britain, and to France. And at one point, because of a national emergency and just budget crisis, Benito Juarez froze foreign debt payments for two years. That included a 3 million peso debt to France.

So I think that people who may not know the backstory may have mixed this up, but it is extremely funny that I can't really certify whether or not they actually paid it or not. Obviously, this would not be the last that the Mexicans would hear of the French and vice versa. The French forces withdrew from Veracruz in April 1839. Mexico and France actually didn't formally settle their grievances until the 1880s. And I think they have a cagey relationship to this day, which is why movies like Amelia Perez exist. I mean, to be fair, France has something of a really good track record of holding historical grudges with former colonies in that specific region. Yeah.

Well, I mean, also a lot of pettiness, a lot of invented history, a lot of how dare you. In the French case, I think because of what happened with Emperor Maximilian being so embarrassing, I think a lot of this just isn't really talked about so much. When you do find historical records of it, what I have found of it is is that it's just kind of like it's a sort of an interesting Curio in the larger picture of like what France was like in the July monarchy I do like the idea of like a French flag of like a croissant on it It says like come and take it but in French Or or yeah, you'd have come out you cuckold and Santa Anna's leg with

this leg or upon it. I mean, frankly, you could have the, like the weird, the fucking snake cut into pieces, American colonies flag and it's Santa Anna and his leg is his join or die. I do plan on eventually covering the Mexican American war and the Texas revolution and all that in the future too. So this is not the last we'll hear of Santa Ana. I mean, what I've heard of, what's interesting about the Mexican American war or rather the Texas rebellion and the Alamo is that like in a rare instance of historians being pretty well decided on things, their opinion is that like Santa Ana knew that the fort of the Alamo would have fallen regardless. And like instead of marshaling his forces and building combat

power for a larger operation, he was like, no, we're fucking hit this thing. My pride demands it. My fucked up leg demands it. And then they, well, he wound up losing like a third of his force for something that didn't matter in the first place. So that gives you a snapshot of Antonio Lopez to Santa Ana. What if Leroy Jenkins was the Mexican military dictator? Yeah. Yeah. He, it's like Boris Johnson has an indeterminate number of children. Santa Anna has an indeterminate number of times he was president. Like it's just a fascinating type of guy. The only thing we know for sure about Santa Anna is how many legs he did not have.

Yes, that is true. That is well natural versus wooden because he did in fact lose one. Hey, I'm not here to debate nature versus nurture with you about legs. I mean, like, would you really think the, uh, the guy who would be a brilliant military commander who spent his childhood or FK maxing exposure therapy is like, how many times can I get yellow fever until I am a genetic super soldier? I find it very funny that the American Mexican history of diplomacy combat, etc. does involve a sort of recreation of that scene from the Sopranos about your leg. I'm sorry. There's a stolen prosthetic leg subplot.

I realized the Sopranos came out over like 20 odd years ago, 25. For some reason, weirdly modern as well because there was very recently, a couple of weeks ago, a spot in WWE where someone takes a prosthetic leg from someone that someone hands them in the crowd and hits a wrestler with it. Brilliant. It's the thing is, it's a universal phenomenon. We think of Grendel getting his arm ripped off or whatever and fucking people beating each other with their own damaged limbs. There's something funny and enthralling about this phenomenon. But I have to ask, what can we draw from this story?

And I feel like it did mark a significant development in naval combat tactics in the 19th century. It did contribute to mutual animosity that would eventually lead to France trying to create a European Mexican empire. And whether or not it was caused by the pillage of a pastry shop, we don't know. And legitimately, we don't even know if it was a pastry shop, like a sweet baked goods

shop because the Spanish word pastel or pasteles can also mean kind of like a pate or a casserole. How it was translated, they were translating French cuisine at the time, we don't know. It might literally have been a savory meat pie. It might have been the tortured remains of an overfed goose's liver, but Mexicans are as a people so avowedly sarcastic that they created a story about like a jumped up self-important French pastry chef being like, no, you must pay me the one of my cookies. And like that lives on to this day. And that is like the vision of a French Baker that we all have rather than a guy

sifting out like large spoonfuls of pate or whatever. Yeah exactly like spreading spreading it on toast doesn't have the same as versus like you want my meat substance. When they did like the international release of the Little Mermaid in Mexico it must have been such a valid experience to see the French chef and everyone's like I know this guy through historical memory through stories my grandparents passed down to me. He's just a guy that has existed before. He is the harbinger of colonialism. This story lives on to some extent, but it's weird because I have obviously found a lot of reference to this because in Mexican history, because it is a story that happened to Mexicans,

but not as much in French. And frankly, it's relatively briefly addressed. I mean, I think, and what I saw it was to some extent a bit even broader strokes than what I've gone with. But I find this very funny because in a way, we don't know what actually took place in this, what was effectively a small town that's now part of the greater metro area of enormous Mexico city, one of the biggest cities on earth. And that's to imply that Monsieur Raimontel has never actually had his grievances addressed. He has never been avenged, which is to suggest his delicious baked goods cry from the ground. They want to be avenged. And I suppose the only answer here is in the future, when dealing with French pastry chefs, I suppose you just have to assume they're going to make up a story about

you anyway. So you should just take what you want If you want that spoon you want that whisk you want the hat where they keep the rat that teaches you how to cook do It we get turned into a fleshy Gundam I do like the idea that a true French bakery cannot be built in Mexico City Which I'm sure multiple of multiple them is until mr. Rimentel is avenged his ghosts must be assuaged still, Monsieur Remontel is avenged. His ghosts must be assuaged. Now you enter in a third category here, where what if you made an anime about French-Mexican relations, but from the perspective of a Japanese anime artist and avenging the curse of Monsieur

Remontel, I feel like this could go... I mean... I feel like we're entering light novel territory. So thus ends the War of the Pastries. The end. So gentlemen. Made flaky, crusty, brown shell rest in peace. This almost operates like a chubilet for just all French grievances because they're all just so petty and center around cultural artifacts of France. It's like, Oh, the pastry chef was robbed. Let's go to war. You disrespected our culinary traditions. I mean, weirdly here, like, I would expect to catch a swing from a Frenchman for doing something fucked up with French food.

Yeah. I genuinely think though, with the absence of actual complaints about the specific thing being taken super seriously by the French government, that like it's not that it actually happened. It's not that it actually happened It's just that it feels real and like Mexicans at the time absolutely knew that they're like we hate these pompous fuckers And so they that it feels so real that it winds up being a story that grows wings I'm interested in you guys's reactions to this because it's a it's an interesting little curio And I was sad to determine that it didn't actually really seem to hinge that much on the pastry shop so much as just Mexicans making fun of the French, which kind of rules.

That part is pretty great. I do think it probably had very little to do with the pastry shop, if anything at all. But kind of like you said, Mexicans are kind of notoriously sarcastic and it's funnier that way. And it's funnier because we all believe it. Like this is a thing that could happen. And more specifically, like looking at France's colonial history from, you know, the 1700s to modern age, this is something that they would use as a catalyst to further get up in somewhat shit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, I find myself understanding more of my own kind of like shortcomings and just how much more research I could do to dig into certain things and how even a relatively

small topic like this can spiral out into a much bigger story. Oh boy, do I know what you mean. I was going to say, Joe, I mean, I admire your ability to kind of keep it into something coherent because like, yeah, in search of the lost document about like a really funny anecdote that would be amazing to source, you could spend so much time on it. So that's, that's been an experience. But I was going to say, gentlemen, this has been a lot of fun. Before I relinquish the, the wheel to the, the big family car, the, the lion sled by donkeys. I feel like we would drive a Homer.

I feel like we would drive a Homer. Jeepney, the fucking Houston slab, whatever it is that we're driving. We do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion, and this is a free episode, which means that if you want to ask us a question and also get lots of bonus episodes from all the way back to when we opened the Patreon in 2018, you just have to sign up and you can ask us anything you want to know about us, the hosts. So this question, you're treaded on a few times here and there, but I do find it interesting. It says, you're all expats basically. What is your favorite food from your adoptive country?

Now expat is a word we can argue about all day and fucking recreate the scene from the French restaurant where we get thrown out and burn the place down. However, Tom, you live in a country that's not the country you're originally from. Same with me and Joe. I am interested in your opinions. Ironically, I fall on the side of the topic of this episode. I find I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but I do really like Dutch pastries. They're very, very good. It is kind of ironic considering the thread that was going around on social media recently about Keir Starmer saying, Oh, we're oh we're at risk of becoming a nation of strangers in that like, everything that's good about Britain was brought here by immigrants and British culture is just slop. If it wasn't for immigrants

they'd still be eating mud with their hands. But I would say personally, I absolutely fucking love Schwarm and like there is a place near where I live that does like the best shawarma in London. And one of my really good friends is a classically trained French chef. And he came over, we watched the rugby and we went for some beers and went to the shawarma place and he was like, this is the best shawarma in all of London. So I have to tack onto mine as well. Yeah. I have to tack on to mine as well. Yeah. I have to take that into mind as well. I'll capsule on undefeated thinly shaved meats

are great anywhere in the world. That's true. Yeah. I mean, for me it's, it's probably pretty basic because I mean, to be honest with you, I, I Swiss food is what I like it a lot, but like it's going to be in a certain genre and not outside of it. And it's typically going to involve Swiss cheeses, Swiss pickled stuff, dried meats, et cetera. One thing that I'd never had before, and I'm not really a desserts person either, that I really, really like is it's actually quite simple, this dessert you'll get here. And it's basically meringue with double cream. But the way they make the double cream here is insanely like... Dairy in general

in this country is really good. And what you effectively get is a sweet meringue, dried kind of baked good thing. There's that fluffiness to crunchiness to it. And then they put double cream on top of it. And sometimes they put fruit as well and you eat it that way. Cynthia was like, this is absolutely... The first time we were here, she was like, this is absolutely dessert. You have to try. It's genuinely the best thing I've had in terms of sweet food here. And I was like, this is absolutely dessert. You have to try. It's genuinely the best thing I've had in terms of sweet food here. And I was like, this is insane. And you can basically buy the ingredients in the grocery store because it's meringues. They buy them, they're made, they're great. It's double

creaming by it. It's great. I don't want to have a heart attack, but I should... I'd want to eat it every day, genuinely. So I'd say it's that. I love raclette, love fondue, but I mean, I don't know. If I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, the thing I like food most about Switzerland is the fact that it's just Lots of grocery stores and stuff is pretty good quality and like you would spend so much money on not great takeout if you try To do it that way so it's kind of forced me to cook all the time Mmm, so it actually like I really I really like that a lot

so thank God for my lack of sweet tooth or I'd be like Like dying from the amount of Dutch butter cake. would eat. Cause it's so fucking good. I can't really handle dairy. I can't either. It just erupts my inside. For some reason in this country, it doesn't really bother me. I mean, I'm not going to go around just drinking big tall glasses of milk, like a freak, but I, I, I do handle dairy. Okay. In this country, which is nice. Cause like, it's a,

it's a big old dairy producing country. Weirdly the same. Yeah. But my, I don't, I don't eat dairy. it from time to time. I just prepare ahead of time. Like it, like me going and eating a capsule on those, not like planning a night out now, now, cause I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm time. I just prepare ahead of time like Me going and eating a capsule. I'm not like planning a night out now now because like I know the next day is a complete wash

Yeah, yeah, I'm going to be fucked in a half so like you basically have to atone you have to perform acts of contrition Yeah, yeah, I mean I've tried to whip myself In pet nance, but it does nothing to stop the diarrhea. Oh my goodness. I think it's really funny because like my answer is kind of a little bit strange because like coming from Ireland, it's not a massively multicultural society and it like it's getting there through like immigration, but like simply being able to walk out my door within five minutes there's like an incredible Ethiopian place. There's an incredible Jamaican place. There is an incredible Lebanese place.

It's like just living in a country where so many different parts of the world are represented cuisine wise is just fucking incredible. I do love it a lot. I know it sounds weird probably coming from an American, but like you don't exactly have that array of different restaurants where I'm from in the US and we certainly didn't have them in Armenia. We had Armenian food for the most part, which is very good, but you know, for variety. For my own personal health, and it's probably not a good idea, but I, or it wasn't a good idea at the time, but I will say that living in the United Kingdom, something I love was

just like, I mean, because of Britain's history and lots of bad Things there are tons and tons of options so many options are just about any kind of South Asian food you want in Greater London and best South Asian food I've ever had was when we were there's so much stuff that I just never had in my life Even though like I tried to I mean I I've never been to to India But I've been to Nepal for example, but like I can get really good Nepali food in in Britain It's it's not like there's so much of this stuff where I really did appreciate that even if like there's a lot of Negatives living in the United Kingdom, but gentlemen, I've been a hand the the podcasting sword back to Joe The Buster Sword now has materia from all three hosts But before I'm gonna plug my shows Tom, you should plug yours as well.

And Joe will then take, take the, take the buster sword back from the hilt and execute the lions led by donkeys limit break. So please listen to trash future. What a hell of a way to dad killed James Bond and no gods, no mayors beneath the skin. And this guy sucked. And keep an eye on my social media. My book is coming out soon. Uh, this is the only show that I host except except today Nate hosted, but we're all materials in the

Buster Sword of Life. So if you like what we do here consider supporting us on Patreon, leave us a review on where it is you listen to podcasts, and we still have live show tickets for our show June 22nd in London at the Big Fat Festival. You can see us and like two dozen other people, but also come and see us and check out our merch table. We'll have new merch. I should have books there. Waiting on the mailing from that one which I know for everybody that's listening it's a great time to be a US-based author shipping your books into Europe. So I will do my best but come and see us, leave us a review and until next time, kill someone over a pastry. It's been done before.