Speaker 1: Oh yes, gaze upon me and know me, for I
Speaker 1: am the christ Child of podcasting. Yes, well, the sins
Speaker 1: of all podcasters. That's right. I will reborn, be reborn,
Speaker 1: and sit at the right hand of my father, the
Speaker 1: pod Save America, guys, but John's John the Baptists. This
Speaker 1: is this is Behind the Bastards, the only podcast hosted
Speaker 1: by the man that Vulture Magazine called the Jesus Christ
Speaker 1: of podcasting. Look it up. Look it up. It's there,
Speaker 1: it up, it's there somewhere. Probably. Um, maybe if enough
Speaker 1: people look it up and harass their reporters over email,
Speaker 1: they'll have to report on it in a story, and
Speaker 1: then I can take an excerpt out of that article
Speaker 1: and make it look like they called me that Jesus
Speaker 1: Christ of podcasting, which would be worth it. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean that's how you play, you know, the beat the
Speaker 1: media at their own game. If you get them to
Speaker 1: quote other people's complaints, and then you take that complaint
Speaker 1: you say, hey, we all learned a lot from Donald J. Trump.
Speaker 1: Yes we did, Yes, we did. Can we not do
Speaker 1: this weird bit you're doing? So it's not a bit,
Speaker 1: it's my life. It is my life. Um. Anyway, Matt
Speaker 1: Lee was here. Hey, I'm back, Met Lee. So glad
Speaker 1: to be here. Love being on this this pod, Love
Speaker 1: talking to you guys. Love you know, just plugging my
Speaker 1: podcasts and just begging your listeners to just check it out.
Speaker 1: Not Yourself the Wire the only the World's Only The
Speaker 1: Wire podcast, and pod Yourself a Gun the World's Only
Speaker 1: the Sopranos podcast. Yeah, check out pod Yourself the Wire
Speaker 1: and check out Yourself a Gun. Um, And I pause
Speaker 1: for a second because I just saw the worst thing
Speaker 1: I've ever seen on Twitter. Oh no, what is it? Uh?
Speaker 1: Christi yamagucci main a k at wobble House on Twitter
Speaker 1: who's a fan of our show posted a picture of
Speaker 1: a decale on somebody's car that says messy buns and
Speaker 1: loaded guns and then it's a picture of the American
Speaker 1: flag and then and then says raising lions not sheep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a that's a person who was threatened
Speaker 1: to murder a barista. That is the first city who
Speaker 1: was pulled a firearm on a Starbucks with my friends here, beautiful.
Speaker 1: That's a person who is unlawfully detained black people for
Speaker 1: riding a bike and asked them whose bike is that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That that is a person who has pulled a glock
Speaker 1: on a FedEx driver who was not as white as they, uh,
Speaker 1: speaking of which you know, who would have definitely pulled
Speaker 1: a clock on a FedEx driver. Poleon the Third actually
Speaker 1: probably not, that was not super a problem that he
Speaker 1: had um, but he had a shot one in the mouth.
Speaker 1: He would have showered in the mouth, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: that much. This guy. One thing about this Napoleon guy
Speaker 1: loves the mouth shooting, real mouth shooter. Napoleon the third
Speaker 1: straight we can my favorite meme again, the shaking hands
Speaker 1: meme with Napoleon the Third and suburban Americans shooting people
Speaker 1: who absolutely shouldn't be shot, shooting innocent people in the
Speaker 1: mouth in a panic and a panic. Yeah, yes, there's
Speaker 1: there's another hand holding. It's a third one. It's just
Speaker 1: the cops. Yeah. We can have a lot of debates
Speaker 1: about gun control, but Napoleon the Third is definitely a
Speaker 1: man whose gun needed more controlled, a little bit more. Bonapartes.
Speaker 1: He has a right to bear arms, but not a
Speaker 1: tear mouths. That's right, that's right. Anyway, Yeah, you're doing good.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Uh, Napoleon the third um. In the space
Speaker 1: of about a decade, the first ten years or so
Speaker 1: he's in power, Napoleon the Third takes France from being
Speaker 1: one of the sick men of Europe it was seen
Speaker 1: as kind of an ailing power like the ottomans Uh
Speaker 1: and a pariah, and turns it into what is probably
Speaker 1: the dominant political and military force on the European continent.
Speaker 1: Right after the Crimean War. He's got sort of what's
Speaker 1: seen is like the largest, most cohesive and effective ground army.
Speaker 1: He's expanded like like over the course of the first
Speaker 1: like decade and change of his reign, he doubles the
Speaker 1: population of France by because he's conquered all of Indo China,
Speaker 1: He's conquered effectively now parts of Algeria, Western Africa. Like
Speaker 1: he he had something like like millions of people to
Speaker 1: French dominion. I thought people just like the new Empire
Speaker 1: so much that they were they were just fucking making
Speaker 1: a lot more babies. Yeah, you know, Managa, way more
Speaker 1: than for this guy, because Louis Napoleon horny motherfucker Napoleon
Speaker 1: the TI. But first I did want to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about a fun fact I found about him,
Speaker 1: about how he used his new found wealth and prestige
Speaker 1: to laun his position over everyone else. Right, and that's
Speaker 1: normal for emperors. You know that you wouldn't be an
Speaker 1: emperor if you weren't going to do some of that.
Speaker 1: But due to a quirk of metallurgy and history, he
Speaker 1: wound up doing this in a very funny way. When
Speaker 1: the emperor would host other world leaders for lavish balls
Speaker 1: and high society events, he would have his servants bring
Speaker 1: out gold plate at dinnerware for them, right, you know.
Speaker 1: And this was not to honor them. This was specifically
Speaker 1: to contrast them too from him, because he had a
Speaker 1: much nicer set of dinner ware, and all of his
Speaker 1: plates and bowls and cups and spoons were made from
Speaker 1: what was at the time one of the most valuable
Speaker 1: materials on earth. Aluminum. Yeah, with it out is aluminum cups.
Speaker 1: Enjoy your gold poppers. Yeah, I'm just gonna crack open
Speaker 1: this cold beer, this cold beer of precious aluminum. Watch
Speaker 1: me crash it. I'm gonna crunch it right on my head,
Speaker 1: shotgunning mead. So, the general public didn't start to become
Speaker 1: aware of aluminium till the end of the eighteen hundreds. Um.
Speaker 1: The metal exists all throughout the earth, right, It's been
Speaker 1: around forever, We've been using it forever. But due to
Speaker 1: realities of geology, this silver from clay, as it was called,
Speaker 1: was generally mixed up with other ship and we just
Speaker 1: didn't have the ability to like separate it and gather
Speaker 1: it in significant quantity. For an example of how valuable
Speaker 1: aluminium was, during the reign of Louis Napoleon, the United
Speaker 1: States put a six pound aluminum cap on the top
Speaker 1: of the Washington Monument and this was like a big
Speaker 1: flex This was the US being like, yeah, motherfucker's we
Speaker 1: had six pounds of aluminum, bitches, would you got you
Speaker 1: got nothing? It was, We're gonna wrap this whole thing
Speaker 1: and foil It was the largest piece of the metal
Speaker 1: ever used at that time. Most Napoleon actually granted a
Speaker 1: scientist named Henri de Ville a massive public subsidy to
Speaker 1: study how to gather larger quantities of aluminum. He ordered
Speaker 1: military standards to be made from aluminum poles for his
Speaker 1: troops to carry, because he was so enchanted by the
Speaker 1: site of aluminum. None of this worked very well, but
Speaker 1: that hardly mattered the Royal family wore aluminum jewelry. Um
Speaker 1: Lewis's son had a baby rattle made of aluminum. It
Speaker 1: was a wild time for what is today the most
Speaker 1: boring metal on earth. They've got like he's giving us,
Speaker 1: He's given us relatives like aluminum rings, throwing their gold
Speaker 1: in the trash. This ship, it's got an aluminium aluminum
Speaker 1: allum aluminium carriage that just keeps folding. God damn it.
Speaker 1: Can we make this stronger? Napoleon the third was also
Speaker 1: notorious for his his can we say oxmanship, his coxsmanship? Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: he is. He's a he's a he's a he's a
Speaker 1: he's a funk guy. You know, he's a fun guy.
Speaker 1: He's a funk guy. Now, his wife, who he married
Speaker 1: shortly after taking power and is pretty controversial herself and sucks,
Speaker 1: is the Impress Eugenie. Um. She is a huge prude.
Speaker 1: Some biographers right that she hated sex. Um. So this
Speaker 1: is going to be particularly a problem because Louis Napoleon
Speaker 1: really likes sex. Another thing he does the way he
Speaker 1: threads this needle is by cheating on her constantly. Yeah
Speaker 1: that makes sense, Yeah, yeah, it makes see where this
Speaker 1: is going. You know, that's what he's gonna do so
Speaker 1: because things aren't working out great for Eugenie. Um and
Speaker 1: because after a while this is not there's no romance
Speaker 1: in their relationship, Louis Napoleon has to increasingly go further
Speaker 1: afield in search of love. And this is where we
Speaker 1: get the story of the Countess of Castiglion born Virginia
Speaker 1: Elizabetta Luisa Carlotta Antonietta Teresa Maria Oldoini. Which is nobody
Speaker 1: needs a name that long, you know, three in mambo
Speaker 1: number five exactly, Yeah, this bitch is her own Mamo
Speaker 1: number five. Her parents were Tuscan nobles who saw the
Speaker 1: fact that she's hot as hell, right, Um, So they
Speaker 1: decide that since she's so gorgeous, they're going to solve like,
Speaker 1: this is a problem. Right, you don't really want to
Speaker 1: have a daughter who's like famously beautiful when you're high society,
Speaker 1: because like she's gonna get up to some stuff. So
Speaker 1: the only thing her parents are just like, we gotta
Speaker 1: get we gotta deal with this hot daughter problem. We
Speaker 1: gotta marry her off as soon as we can. Um.
Speaker 1: And so they hit her off at age seventeen to
Speaker 1: a nine year old. Um. This is not a happy union.
Speaker 1: They have actually a famously disastrous marriage, and she basically
Speaker 1: leaves him immediately to move to Paris and become the
Speaker 1: mistress of the Emperor of France. This leads to a
Speaker 1: lot of drama, particularly when she wore a dress covered
Speaker 1: in hearts with no corset. She's famous for this just
Speaker 1: just just let them let him, like but letting it
Speaker 1: hang um while. And she she goes like shows up
Speaker 1: at this fancy ball in this heartcover dress with no corset. Well,
Speaker 1: she's on Lewis Napoleon's arm and Empress Eugenie is there.
Speaker 1: She's like sitting in the ballroom as the emperor comes
Speaker 1: in with his chick on his arm, which is like,
Speaker 1: you know, people expect an emperor to sleep around, but
Speaker 1: that's still kind of like a little bit. She's not
Speaker 1: wearing a corset. She's breathing normal. She's breathing normal, not weason. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Everyone's like this is yeah, So we don't know why
Speaker 1: the two stopped dating, which happened in around eighteen sixty,
Speaker 1: but they did break up suddenly. Now all of this
Speaker 1: is mostly interesting because the Countess is widely considered to
Speaker 1: be the first supermodel due to her habit of taking
Speaker 1: and publicizing lurid photos of herself, often wearing things that
Speaker 1: were like considered pornographic in the day, so she would
Speaker 1: put out pictures of herself and sandals visible. Yeah, she's
Speaker 1: showing off them toes little and she's she's got this
Speaker 1: access to photographers in part because she's dating the emperor,
Speaker 1: and as a result, if you look at the way
Speaker 1: she's posing, she kind of invents the selfie, like this
Speaker 1: is the She's the first person who has the ability
Speaker 1: to do this, to like dress up in the morning
Speaker 1: and be like, I look cute, I'm gonna take a picture,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna send it out to everybody, right like she
Speaker 1: she she has turned the world media into Instagram. She
Speaker 1: invented the duck face. Yeah, yeah, she kind of figured
Speaker 1: all that out. So that's fun. Anyway, it's probably time
Speaker 1: to stop talking about court life and get back to
Speaker 1: everybody's favorite topic. Blood drenched imperialism. Yea, oh god, isn't
Speaker 1: it good? You just like to rub it all up
Speaker 1: into yourself, get it all in your crevice. Is nice,
Speaker 1: warm blanket of blood. Yeah, the bloodiest crevice in the
Speaker 1: French Empire at this point in time, is Algeria. Now
Speaker 1: in March of eighteen sixty four, again, in like eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight, they had quote unquote pacified it. Right in
Speaker 1: March of eighteen sixty four, tribesmen in the mountains of
Speaker 1: pacified Algeria launched yet another insurrection. Napoleon a third was
Speaker 1: forced to send twenty more soldiers to the colony, just
Speaker 1: as he was planning to take his first royal trip
Speaker 1: there to embark on a new phase of investments in
Speaker 1: the area. All of this came at a bad time.
Speaker 1: His brother in law, a valued adviser, had just died,
Speaker 1: and at age fifty seven, Louis Napoleon is himself in
Speaker 1: pretty poor shape. Um, I'm gonna give you a little
Speaker 1: list of all the different ailments. This man has rheumatism, gout, hemorrhoids,
Speaker 1: a terrible cough from decades of smoking, and a heart condition.
Speaker 1: So he's just falling the funk apart. But he decides still,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to fucking Algeria and I'm going to
Speaker 1: fix things up personally. And this troubled imperial possession that
Speaker 1: you know, my predecessors took on. Now, one of the
Speaker 1: things that's interesting about him he's a liberal, right, he's
Speaker 1: a monarchist, but he's a liberal, and as a liberal,
Speaker 1: he doesn't think that like he's not. He doesn't talk
Speaker 1: about France's imperial possession the way that like you get
Speaker 1: a lot of British Empire guys talking about. Um. He
Speaker 1: talks about like he he talks about from this position
Speaker 1: of like we're going to you know, I want this
Speaker 1: to be an Arab nation and we just want to
Speaker 1: help them, you know, like we're here, We're here to
Speaker 1: like fix things up for them. We're not trying to
Speaker 1: take money out of them, and we're not trying to
Speaker 1: We're just trying to make them a little bit better
Speaker 1: so they can stand on their own. We're just trying
Speaker 1: to spread democracy. Yeah, exactly, He's trying to spread democracy
Speaker 1: in the Middle East. Um. Now, I want to read
Speaker 1: a quote from the Shadow Emperor that kind of makes
Speaker 1: it clear the way in which he saw himself here.
Speaker 1: The Turks had governed Algeria as a province of the
Speaker 1: Ottoman Empire until eighteen thirty and had done nothing for them,
Speaker 1: according to Louis Napoleon's Lights. Apart from collecting taxes, the
Speaker 1: Turks had let them run their own lives, leaving traditional
Speaker 1: tribal affairs and customs unchanged. They had not encouraged them
Speaker 1: to abandon tribal tribal life, acquire private property, or try
Speaker 1: to produce agricultural surplus beyond their own tribal needs for
Speaker 1: overseas sales. All of this was wrong in the eyes
Speaker 1: of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. The Algerians needed guidance and entering
Speaker 1: the modern world European civilization, everything had to change, but
Speaker 1: it must be done patiently and respectfully. You must be
Speaker 1: given equal rights, the same rights as the French population.
Speaker 1: Such an idea, of course, had never even occurred to
Speaker 1: the most enlightened Algerian Tribal councils popularly elected and chosen
Speaker 1: throughout the centuries, should now be disbanded, and along with
Speaker 1: them tribal chiefs, dismantled the tribe and its administration, and
Speaker 1: become like France, he insisted. And yet Louis Napoleon specifically
Speaker 1: forbade the creation of cantonments or reservations. His knowledge of
Speaker 1: the whole scale popular transportation and relocation of the American Indians,
Speaker 1: he said, had cautioned him enough to not repeat that experiment,
Speaker 1: and that's part I find that really interesting. Um, this
Speaker 1: is part of what that's what he learned from us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't don't do reservations now, absolutely end their way of
Speaker 1: life and destroy their cultures so they can participate in
Speaker 1: specifically so that they can participate in global capitalism. You know.
Speaker 1: The problem is and again he sees this as like
Speaker 1: the Ottomans being foolish. Now, the Ottomans knew how to
Speaker 1: run an empire, which is that like, yeah, all we
Speaker 1: needed out of Algeria was Algiers as a training area,
Speaker 1: and we don't really care what other people do as
Speaker 1: long as they don't funk with trade and you know
Speaker 1: what's easy just letting them lift their lives. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we just collect a little bit of tax and fucking
Speaker 1: move on. This goes reasonably well for the Ottomans, um,
Speaker 1: but it's like it's going to be this fucking nightmare
Speaker 1: for France. And it all comes out of this idea
Speaker 1: that like, well, their their culture is a failure because
Speaker 1: they're not part of the global capitalist system. They're not
Speaker 1: producing a surplus to sell. Now, the Algerians would say,
Speaker 1: because we have enough food, Yeah, yeah, we don't. We
Speaker 1: don't we don't really need this. What do we want
Speaker 1: money for? We've got our own thing going on. We're okay,
Speaker 1: we don't need money. We're doing what I can buy stuff.
Speaker 1: What are you talking about? What? What do I need
Speaker 1: global capitalism for? When there's a market right down the street.
Speaker 1: I have grown animal skins and all the all the
Speaker 1: things that I need, you know. Um, Napoleon the third
Speaker 1: is like horrified by this and the fact that he
Speaker 1: the fact that he like while he's trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how do I dismantle and destroy this tribal structure,
Speaker 1: the fact that he won't do reservations is part of
Speaker 1: a fun trend in European history in the late eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: We talked about this a little bit at the start
Speaker 1: of this series. Um, you know of Behind the Bastards
Speaker 1: when we did Karl May, who is this German author
Speaker 1: who wrote cowboy books that Hitler just loved. But there's
Speaker 1: this trend in in European culture in the late eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds where indigenous Americans are glorified and idolized in European
Speaker 1: popular society, particularly in fiction. And there are a number
Speaker 1: of reasons for this. Some of it is just that like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: it's it's a real bad genocide that that was fucked up.
Speaker 1: What was done, um, and what it was, you know,
Speaker 1: it is still being done into that objectively tragic figures
Speaker 1: exam objectively a tragic thing that happened. But a lot
Speaker 1: of it also is that there's this growing anti American sentiment. Right.
Speaker 1: Some of it's because of you know, the United States
Speaker 1: doing Manifest Destiny ship, but a lot of it's also
Speaker 1: just like you know, they're they're new on the scene,
Speaker 1: and they're kind of like gross upstarts, right, So there's
Speaker 1: that asked act of it, and they to avoid like
Speaker 1: all of the the hundreds of years of European conflicts,
Speaker 1: you know, they get to just be over there. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because they while they there's this aspect
Speaker 1: of kind of idolization of Indigenous Americans, it doesn't come
Speaker 1: with any real respect for their cultures, and in fact
Speaker 1: is often based entirely on fantasy presentations of these cultures.
Speaker 1: And it brings us back to Napoleon the Third Louis.
Speaker 1: Napoleon was adamant that he wanted the Algerians to rule themselves,
Speaker 1: and he would claim that his administration was simply a
Speaker 1: way to help raise them up to a point where
Speaker 1: they could exist as a modern nation. But in practice
Speaker 1: this was an incredibly bloody process. See, people don't like
Speaker 1: having their way of life demolished by strangers at gunpoint.
Speaker 1: So early in eighteen sixty four, a tribal chief massacred
Speaker 1: four dozen French soldiers, and the Emperor's men responded by
Speaker 1: burning villages and rendering a huge junk of the ore
Speaker 1: in province uninhabitable. Right, this is this is the process
Speaker 1: of bringing them democracy. They killed some of our armed
Speaker 1: men trying to destroy their try and so we must
Speaker 1: burn villages. Hey, the tree of liberty has gotta be,
Speaker 1: you know, watered by blood YadA, YadA, by the blood
Speaker 1: of the people you're freeing, Yes, exactly. In his writings
Speaker 1: on the Colony, Louis sketched out grand dreams of democratic
Speaker 1: rights and institutions for Algerians patterned off the French system.
Speaker 1: And a lot of this has to do with like,
Speaker 1: I want this, you know, enlightened electorate, and I want
Speaker 1: this education system all this. But but most Algerians couldn't
Speaker 1: read or write, right, um, because that's just not a
Speaker 1: part of their lives. A lot of their culture has
Speaker 1: passed on in an oral tradition, all that stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: And as it happens, the system they already lived under
Speaker 1: was super democratic. It was in fact more democratic than
Speaker 1: either France or the United States at the time. Tribal councils.
Speaker 1: All of each of these different tribes was kind of
Speaker 1: governed by tribal councils that were made up of adult
Speaker 1: men who reached consensus on major decisions. Um. This was
Speaker 1: a stateless system. These are not nations, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: not to say that it wasn't like again, it's all men,
Speaker 1: but so is the United States actorate. So it is
Speaker 1: the French electorate at this point. It's not like anybody's
Speaker 1: good on that stuff. And it's it is consensus driven
Speaker 1: rather than like we have these elections in one party
Speaker 1: takes power. It's these councils representing all of the families
Speaker 1: and the tribe figure out what to do and vote
Speaker 1: kind of select representatives of the oldest, wisest men in
Speaker 1: order to help make calls about things like you know,
Speaker 1: when we go to fight against another tribe, or like
Speaker 1: if if somebody encroaches on our grazing lands, or what
Speaker 1: to do if there's a drought, is Robert, they're not
Speaker 1: wearing wigs. Yeah, they're not wearing wigs while they do it.
Speaker 1: It's not democratic, Like, I don't see how this is.
Speaker 1: This seems worse because like, how are you going to
Speaker 1: make democratic decisions without like old real fucking big gass
Speaker 1: whigs exactly huge and weird, fucking massive wigs. This is
Speaker 1: a again one of the things I find this interesting
Speaker 1: because this is a stateless system, and it was one
Speaker 1: that for a long time Algerians had been relatively peaceful
Speaker 1: and avoided starving. Right the system like this, you can
Speaker 1: you can call these things like primitive if you want,
Speaker 1: like and people that the fucking French should do. But
Speaker 1: like this works for a lot of people for a
Speaker 1: very long time and a pretty tough part of the
Speaker 1: world geographically, Algeria is a complicated place to stay alive
Speaker 1: in um it works pretty well, uh, and by all accounts,
Speaker 1: life was relatively decent there before the French took over.
Speaker 1: Napoleon's attempts to impose a different way on life, and
Speaker 1: the people who had never seen themselves as part of
Speaker 1: the same entity was always destined for failure. They didn't
Speaker 1: see themselves as Algerians because they weren't. They were just
Speaker 1: like some tribes living in an area they just get
Speaker 1: someone just gave them labels, and they were just like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not I think this is another area where like
Speaker 1: the things he'd been reading about Native Americans had colored
Speaker 1: his opinion because he saw the Algerians as a race
Speaker 1: in decline, which is definitely how the Europeans looked at
Speaker 1: Indigenous Americans, even though there was no evidence that they've
Speaker 1: been in any kind of trouble under the Ottomans, right, Um,
Speaker 1: they were not like having serious problems. It was again,
Speaker 1: you know, this is not a perfect I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to paint this as like a fucking paradise, but like
Speaker 1: there was no evidence that they were having any particular
Speaker 1: kind of issues. Um, but Napoleon's gonna fix all that.
Speaker 1: He's gonna give them some serious goddamn problems and we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about that. But first, Matt, what you know
Speaker 1: what Napoleon would love, um me to use my soundboard
Speaker 1: right now? That's right, baby? Sorry, No, what what would
Speaker 1: be like? You should get a soundboard from from Bill
Speaker 1: and Ted's excellent adventure Stick a Stick Napoleon Bonaparte on
Speaker 1: and that shit too late for that. But hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: you just remember one of the classic lines from that movie,
Speaker 1: all of which I have forgotten at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the guitar sound when they're excited, George, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Think about Keanu Reeves coming and then buy some products.
Speaker 1: That's the way it sounds. Baby. We're back and we're
Speaker 1: just thinking about how it sounds when Kiana Reeves comes.
Speaker 1: Um like a normal person. Yeah, I think so. I
Speaker 1: think one day I'll meet him and I'll ask what
Speaker 1: it sounds like, what does it sound like when you come,
Speaker 1: Kiana Reeves. I'm sure he'd answer. He seems cool. I'm
Speaker 1: sure he would have an answer. I'm not sure he'd
Speaker 1: appreciate that specific question appreciate it, but he would have
Speaker 1: something for it. So Napoleon the Third's whole goal is
Speaker 1: to take the Algerian people out of the place they
Speaker 1: had been living, out of the their ancestral homelands, to
Speaker 1: pub make so basically no one owned land in Algeria, right,
Speaker 1: You had like, these is our hunting ground, this is
Speaker 1: where we graze our sheep, and if a tribe comes in,
Speaker 1: maybe there will be a conflict over it, but it
Speaker 1: was not nobody. People didn't have like yeah, yeah. He
Speaker 1: basically is going to, over the course of his time
Speaker 1: in power, take away all of the lands owned by
Speaker 1: tribes because there's initially this sense of like, well, what
Speaker 1: if we give the tribes some land and some of
Speaker 1: it becomes frances He's going to get rid of all
Speaker 1: of that over time because his goal is to force
Speaker 1: all of these people who are again perfectly happy being
Speaker 1: living in the fucking hills and mountains and whatnot of
Speaker 1: Algeria um and force them to move into modern cities
Speaker 1: with wide French style boulevards, electric power, and parliamentary democracy.
Speaker 1: Now that will work out. It doesn't. There's a fucking insurrection,
Speaker 1: and the first thing Napoleon does when this insurrection happens
Speaker 1: is he appoints a new leader, and a non military leader,
Speaker 1: because he's like, well, maybe they kill those soldiers because
Speaker 1: the military is being too aggressive. You know what I'll do.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put my best guy in charge of things.
Speaker 1: You know who that's gonna be, Greg Napoleon. Yeah, old
Speaker 1: Prince Jerome, the guy who had fucking fled the field
Speaker 1: in crimea old. It's Jeri Nipoli po. So he puts
Speaker 1: gutless Bonaparte in charge, replacing the old military leader of
Speaker 1: the colony. And again the military their solution to problems
Speaker 1: was massacring villages. So I'm not saying like he should
Speaker 1: have let those guys stay in power. But but Prince
Speaker 1: Jerome is like a high society liberal, and he brings
Speaker 1: with him to Algiers a coterie of Parisian high society liberals. Um,
Speaker 1: and he's going to attempt to democratize Algeria. And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna read again from the Shadow Whimper here quote the
Speaker 1: Brooding Plan. Plan that's his his other nickname. Personally knew
Speaker 1: nothing about Algeria, its history, or its people, and had
Speaker 1: no plans to learn by touring the country or indeed
Speaker 1: even to leaving the capital of Algiers. He was only
Speaker 1: interested in introducing his personal theoretical liberal reforms. But when,
Speaker 1: for instance, on February eighteen fifty nine, he announced from France,
Speaker 1: where he had returned in December of eighteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: but the natives would be free to sell or acquire land,
Speaker 1: including tribal land, all sides were up in arms. Strictly
Speaker 1: defined lands could no longer easily be confiscated by the state.
Speaker 1: The result the tribes would eventually break up, disintegrate, and disappear,
Speaker 1: as the totality of their tribes literally constituted Algeria. This
Speaker 1: meant the entire social structure protecting the members of each
Speaker 1: tribeould no longer exist, resulting in a veritable das for
Speaker 1: a tribesmen. And today one of the big social problems
Speaker 1: France has is that there's this constant wave of people
Speaker 1: fleeing Algeria, which has caused a lot of particularly racist
Speaker 1: in France. Racist in France had a lot of issues
Speaker 1: with that. This is where that all starts, right, This
Speaker 1: is like why they come over to France because the
Speaker 1: French emperor destroys the entire social structure exactly, and suddenly
Speaker 1: people have like no where to be. Yeah, it turns
Speaker 1: out that's a bad idea. I just wanted them wear
Speaker 1: wigs and have papers that say this my house. That's all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then they came to France and all of the
Speaker 1: racists were angry about it for forever um. So when
Speaker 1: this uprising starts in eighteen sixty four, it's clear that
Speaker 1: plant plant has failed. And when he visits Algeria. The
Speaker 1: emperor brings with him an authoritarian regime to replace plan
Speaker 1: plants liberal one which was going to use terrible force
Speaker 1: to bring peace. He appoints a military officer, Patrice Diy McMahon,
Speaker 1: who goes on a spree of massacres. Despite this, Algeria's
Speaker 1: vast size and diffuse population proved difficult to control. The population.
Speaker 1: Migrations caused by land reform policies and waves of refugees
Speaker 1: from the fighting ran up against a horrible drought that
Speaker 1: hit in eighteen sixty seven and eighteen sixty eight, devastating
Speaker 1: local agriculture. Next came a series of earthquakes and then
Speaker 1: cholera and typhoid epidemics. These disasters had all occurred in
Speaker 1: the past and had been handled by Algerians through mutual aid. Right,
Speaker 1: These tribes had ways of This is the same thing
Speaker 1: you see in India when the East India Company takes
Speaker 1: over destroy all these different trading agreements within villages. Because
Speaker 1: people had always dealt with like bad times, and when
Speaker 1: one village doesn't produce enough food, other villages didn't tend
Speaker 1: to let them starve to death. Tribes and Alderia work
Speaker 1: the same way, right, we take care of each other
Speaker 1: when things are really bad, because that's just better for everybody.
Speaker 1: Napoleon the Third has destroyed all of these structures that
Speaker 1: used to protect people, that used to allow folks to
Speaker 1: deal with this kind of ship, in addition to killing
Speaker 1: a shipload of them. So the chaos of the upheaval
Speaker 1: of Napoleon meant that there was nothing in place to
Speaker 1: protect these people. More than three hundred thousand Algerians die
Speaker 1: in a four year period. This is from disease, along
Speaker 1: with three d and fifty thousand who are killed by
Speaker 1: the military and an ethnic cleansing. This amounts to one
Speaker 1: third of the Algerian population pre lowis Napoleon ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is like pretty bad genocide. Um, so you know
Speaker 1: that's uh. If you're wondering why Algeria has had a
Speaker 1: rough time of it in the last century or so,
Speaker 1: little history do it. Yeah, might be a little bit
Speaker 1: of history. There might might be a super might be
Speaker 1: entirely Francis fault right broke the Yeah. Yeah, well now
Speaker 1: they are so at around the same time, while all
Speaker 1: this is going on in Algeria, Louis Napoleon is fucking
Speaker 1: around in a weirdly similar way in a completely different
Speaker 1: part of the world Mexico. Now, as I had said,
Speaker 1: he's spent years, most of the early eighteen sixties trying
Speaker 1: to convince Maximilian Habsburg to become the emperor of Mexico.
Speaker 1: They're talking about this for years now. Maximilian is an
Speaker 1: interesting dude. Again. He's the younger brother to Franz Joseph,
Speaker 1: the Emperor of Austria Hungary, who Lewis had recently bested
Speaker 1: in a war, and max had kind of a fraud
Speaker 1: relationship with his brother. They were close as kids, but
Speaker 1: as they get older, his brother thinks that he's gunning
Speaker 1: for the throne and so keeps trying to foist him
Speaker 1: off on these do nothing jobs. Maximilian is kind of
Speaker 1: running Austrian Italy for a while before he gets overthrown
Speaker 1: basically um, and he's when he's kind of running Austrian
Speaker 1: he's trying to be like this liberal right where he's like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe they'll like being ruled Austria if if I introduced
Speaker 1: reforms and like that never works because people don't like
Speaker 1: to be ruled anyway. Like, no, but you can have
Speaker 1: some speech, yeah, not against the Austrian. Yeah, anyway, it
Speaker 1: doesn't work great. Uh he gets run out of town
Speaker 1: on the fucking rails and yeah, Louis, uh you know,
Speaker 1: he's he's got this. His older brother kind of wants
Speaker 1: him away. And so the fact, the idea, like the
Speaker 1: Franz Joseph, actually winds up backing Napoleon's plan to make
Speaker 1: him the Emperor of Mexico for a while because sign
Speaker 1: him across and well, in part because he can make
Speaker 1: him sign a contract saying I give up my right
Speaker 1: to inherit the Habsburg throne because you can't, you know,
Speaker 1: be the king of the Emperor of Mexico and be
Speaker 1: the emperor you know, in line for the Empire of
Speaker 1: Austria Hungary. Arbitrary rules are arbitrary rules. Yeah. And Maximilian
Speaker 1: is a very similar kind of guy to plan Plan.
Speaker 1: He's this idealistic, night eve, arrogant liberal who wants to
Speaker 1: reform things and be seen as a reformer, but also
Speaker 1: wants to be the guy running things and wants it
Speaker 1: all to be done his way. Um, and he does.
Speaker 1: He wants to reform Mexican society in what you might
Speaker 1: call vaguely center left directions. Um, and doing this means, though,
Speaker 1: defeating the already pretty for the time left wing legitimate
Speaker 1: government of Mexico, which is a republic currently governed by
Speaker 1: the elected leader who was an indigenous Mexican man named
Speaker 1: Benito Warez. Like he said, he's got indigenous ancestry, and
Speaker 1: he's Warez is a fascinating, fascinating man, a tough son
Speaker 1: of a bitch. Cool asked dude. He had been elected
Speaker 1: president after finishing a vicious civil war, um beating the Conservatives,
Speaker 1: who sought an autocratic, dictatorial form of government different from
Speaker 1: war as his republic. So Maximilian, he wants kind of
Speaker 1: a broadly similar social structure to what the Mexican Republicans
Speaker 1: are pushing. He just wants to run it. Which is
Speaker 1: when it's not like he's it's not like Mexico would
Speaker 1: had this like horrible dictatorship. They had just fought a
Speaker 1: war and a republic had been elected kind of along
Speaker 1: the lines that Maximilian thought was good. He just wanted
Speaker 1: to kill them and do it himself. Yeah yeah, He's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: but what you guys got this Mexican doing the job.
Speaker 1: This is the problem they come taking our look at
Speaker 1: my chin it's funny. This guy, this guy isn't even
Speaker 1: in bread. What the fuck? People will make a Hapsburg
Speaker 1: chin jokes at Edward Habsburg on Twitter and will always
Speaker 1: respond by, like, get another joke, guys. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: that's the joke. Because your family ruled the world while
Speaker 1: like constantly fucking each other and producing kids who like,
Speaker 1: didn't like, couldn't functionally rule the countries they were born
Speaker 1: to inherit, and it lent the millions of deaths, millions
Speaker 1: and millions of deaths. That's the joke, Edward. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's what makes it funny. That's what another joke
Speaker 1: about my genoidal, fucking bloodline. Fucking Habsburg's. God, you are
Speaker 1: never wrong in ship talking a Hapsburg always always go
Speaker 1: after Hapsburg's. So you know, you know who learned that lesson? Well, Gaffrolo,
Speaker 1: princep O. God, we love we love a Hapsburg dropping king. Um,
Speaker 1: we we love a good dead Fralls joke. Yeah, good stuff.
Speaker 1: So um. Anyway, Maximilian he has all these political theories
Speaker 1: that he wants to test out. He's thinking about, if
Speaker 1: you like again and I really do the book The
Speaker 1: Last Emperor of Mexico by Edward Shawk Cross fucking good book,
Speaker 1: incredibly readable. I had I finished it in just a
Speaker 1: couple of days because I couldn't put the thing down.
Speaker 1: Really really well written book. Um. It's one of the
Speaker 1: points that he makes is that, or at least the
Speaker 1: way in which I inter britten Maximilian as being based
Speaker 1: on the way he portrays him in the book, is
Speaker 1: a guy who has all these little fun theories about
Speaker 1: how he might want to run a country, and he
Speaker 1: almost approaches being the Emperor of Mexico is like playing
Speaker 1: a game of civilization. He's excited to try a new
Speaker 1: thing out in his game. Um, but he does. He
Speaker 1: makes a He draws a hard line with Louis Napoleon,
Speaker 1: which is that he won't agree to go to Mexico
Speaker 1: and try to be the emperor unless the Mexican people
Speaker 1: themselves acclaim their desire to be governed by him. Now,
Speaker 1: this was never going to happen. From one thing, Mexico
Speaker 1: is very large and most of the people living there
Speaker 1: have absolutely no connection to like centralized Yeah, exactly, Like
Speaker 1: go to somebody in the fucking Chihuahbo and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: do you want a Hapsburg emper? Like dude, what the
Speaker 1: funk man? I like, I got stuff going on? Um,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about there? The idea that these
Speaker 1: guys would be able to rule a land mask based
Speaker 1: on borders that they just kind of invented is it's great,
Speaker 1: To be honest, It's never worked out well for the
Speaker 1: Mexican government. Someone has ever been good at governing Mexico.
Speaker 1: No one can figure it out. Yeah. Um, So basically
Speaker 1: what happens is that Napoleon the Third works with achadra
Speaker 1: of defeated conservative Mexican officers to trick Max into thinking
Speaker 1: that his reign is supported, and then he sends a
Speaker 1: French army into Mexico to conquer it from the legitimate government. Now,
Speaker 1: this first army gets its ass kicked because Benito Airez
Speaker 1: pretty good military commander. But also again, the Mexican state
Speaker 1: has just finished several civil wars. It's battered. They don't
Speaker 1: have a super functional military compared to the French military,
Speaker 1: which a lot of people will say is the best
Speaker 1: in the world in this period of time, or at
Speaker 1: least one of them. So Louis Napoleon sends a much
Speaker 1: larger army next, which succeeds in smashing all resistance and
Speaker 1: conquering Mexico. But it conquers Mexico the same way the
Speaker 1: US conquers Afghanistan. They conquer a bunch of cities leading
Speaker 1: to the capital and kind of control the roads, right,
Speaker 1: But that's all they have because they only send like
Speaker 1: fifty men I think at the height, which is again
Speaker 1: Mexico is quite big, yeah, a big place, sizeable, sizable nation.
Speaker 1: So they're able to and the French can beat because
Speaker 1: they've got a modern army, modern guns. The Mexican military
Speaker 1: doesn't really have a lot of that stuff. They can
Speaker 1: beat any field army that will raise itself against their
Speaker 1: main force, but that main force can only be in
Speaker 1: like one area at a time, and they can't with
Speaker 1: splitting the army up. Number one, sometimes you're gonna lose
Speaker 1: groups of the army, right because you can beat a
Speaker 1: hundred French soldiers or something. And then the other problem
Speaker 1: is that, like you can't hold anything but the cities
Speaker 1: in the roads. Now, they do try to build up
Speaker 1: a Mexican army like an imperial army. There's an imperial
Speaker 1: Mexican army. It is of debatable competence. Again, think of Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: This is actually very similar to fucking Afghanistan um and
Speaker 1: it costs very quickly. Skyrocket. Now, Napoleon the Third, basically
Speaker 1: his business plan here had been, will conquer Mexico, will
Speaker 1: stick this guy on the throne. You know, pretty soon
Speaker 1: he'll be able to He'll just take over the Mexican
Speaker 1: army and they'll keep the peace, and then France will
Speaker 1: get to basically to get its pick of all of
Speaker 1: the resources in Mexico, get all that silver. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of good ship in Mexico, and it's like this
Speaker 1: will be this will work out a couple of years
Speaker 1: of costs and then it'll be worth it. He is
Speaker 1: as good a businessman as Elon Musk. Yes, that's how
Speaker 1: this ship works. Dollars is going to go now everyone
Speaker 1: gets a blue check mark. The Mexican people here are Twitter,
Speaker 1: and they're about to do what Twitter did when Musk
Speaker 1: took over, which is start a massive grassroots rebellion against
Speaker 1: the empire. Just has fake accounts saying they're Habsburg. Just
Speaker 1: a shipload of Habsburg accounts. Um So, Maximilian enjoys fairly
Speaker 1: little popular support. He is handicapped by the fact that,
Speaker 1: again he's a liberal so he keeps pushing through these
Speaker 1: liberal reforms and announcing these very liberal laws, but his
Speaker 1: entire base of support are like ghoulish right wingers. So
Speaker 1: the people who he is trusting to back him hate
Speaker 1: the way he wants to run the country. And when
Speaker 1: he does things that like Benito Uarez's supporters probably would
Speaker 1: have liked in a different circumstance, his primary backers desert
Speaker 1: him um. And so he has to like crack down
Speaker 1: on the people of Mexico in order to like get
Speaker 1: their support back, which fuels the rebellion. It's just a
Speaker 1: doomed situation. Threading an un Yeah, it's not even a needle.
Speaker 1: He's just like sticking a string into a solid nail.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't you go through? Can't get anything through this
Speaker 1: fucking needle. This is bullshit. This shouldn't be as hard.
Speaker 1: So the fucor he reaches its peak under what becomes
Speaker 1: called the Black Decree or Bondo Negro of eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: and which all captured Republican soldiers are to be executed
Speaker 1: without aisle um. Now do you think this lowers the tensions? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think it definitely just completely equalizes that everyone's like oh, man, funk,
Speaker 1: I guess we won't do this no more. So what
Speaker 1: happens that, what this actually results in is the Republicans
Speaker 1: are like, well, then whenever we capture French soldiers and
Speaker 1: Mexican imperial soldiers or government officials, we will kill them
Speaker 1: without trial. And of course this leads to the slaughter
Speaker 1: of thousands and thousands and thousands of people, just nightmarish
Speaker 1: blood letting. When max had headed over to take command
Speaker 1: of the government, Louis Napoleon had promised him that all
Speaker 1: the resources of the French state would be dedicated to
Speaker 1: seeing the success of his imperial project. But costs quickly
Speaker 1: outstripped what Louis had been willing to pay, and since
Speaker 1: the Imperial government didn't control much actual territory, exploiting Mexican
Speaker 1: resources for Frenche profit proved impossible. In eighteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: all of this came to a head for several reasons. One,
Speaker 1: the US Civil War ended. The reason why Louis Napoleon
Speaker 1: had timed sending Maximilian over there was that the US
Speaker 1: was fighting a civil war, and he was like, this
Speaker 1: will keep occupied for a while, they won't be able
Speaker 1: to get involved. His plan was to make a firebreak
Speaker 1: for US power. Right while they're busy fighting themselves. I
Speaker 1: will establish control over Mexico using Maximilian and then by
Speaker 1: the time they finished, this will just be done and
Speaker 1: they won't be able to stop it. Um. Now, so
Speaker 1: the US Civil War ends, um. And you know, now
Speaker 1: the US is no longer distracted. The Union starts sending
Speaker 1: weapons across the river to Benito Uarez because we're like, well,
Speaker 1: we don't really like this at all, um uh. And
Speaker 1: there are constant worries, it's legitimate worried that the Americans
Speaker 1: might just invade and attack the French army in Mexico. Um,
Speaker 1: which we could have done, and it would have been
Speaker 1: the only time US troops centered Mexico for a reason
Speaker 1: that wasn't fucked up. Yeah, we almost invaded Mexico for
Speaker 1: a good reason. Don't worry. We didn't. We didn't. We
Speaker 1: continued our streak of only fucking over Mexico, a proud
Speaker 1: and time honored American American fucking with Mexico, stealing land
Speaker 1: and destroying entire political structures. This is kind of the
Speaker 1: one time in which we were almost nice to Mexico. Man. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we will talk about what happens next. But first,
Speaker 1: you know who is nice to Mexico Me, that's right,
Speaker 1: Matt leeb Our primary sponsor. Why do you don't know this?
Speaker 1: This whole podcast is paid for by Matt leeb He
Speaker 1: just keeps getting credit cards. I just listen. I am
Speaker 1: in a lot of debt right now. But is people.
Speaker 1: People can get their bastards content. I'm willing to pay
Speaker 1: so by my product, Matt leeby mean, just send him
Speaker 1: money so he can he can keep financing this debt. Hell,
Speaker 1: we're back. So at the same time that his Maximilian's
Speaker 1: Mexican Empire is collapsing, ship in Europe starts to go wrong,
Speaker 1: with the Prussian otto von Bismarck launching a war against Austria.
Speaker 1: Uh Napoleon in a secret meeting with Bismarck, agrees not
Speaker 1: to defend Austria's France Joseph, and part of it was like,
Speaker 1: so Bismarck is like, hey, man, I gotta go to
Speaker 1: war with Austria. You don't really like this guy, you
Speaker 1: fought him an a war. Just let me do it once.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take some ship, and you know what, you'll
Speaker 1: get some territory. Right. So this territory it's kind of
Speaker 1: like on the border of like Italy and France and
Speaker 1: all this stuff we'll get. You'll get some of that
Speaker 1: you know will work out great for you all. You know,
Speaker 1: you just gotta let me deal with him and I'll
Speaker 1: give it to you. Like trust me. You know it'll
Speaker 1: be good. Trust me. I'm Otto von Bismarck, most trustworthy
Speaker 1: man in Europe. So Bismarck, like Napoleon, decides to do
Speaker 1: this because number one, I'm gonna get some land out
Speaker 1: of it. That'll be good. At number two, this is
Speaker 1: gonna be years. Right, Austrian Germany fight at each other.
Speaker 1: They're basically equal, you know they'll be They'll be locked
Speaker 1: into this brutal it will weaken both of them and
Speaker 1: then France will be even stronger. There's no way those
Speaker 1: will get done quickly. Seven weeks it is. It is
Speaker 1: over almost immediately because what Otto von Bismarck has done
Speaker 1: is invent Germany. And if you know one thing about Germany,
Speaker 1: pretty good at war, pretty good at war in Western Europe,
Speaker 1: like the way ours is baseball. There's is doing war. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in Western year once they go east, it gets a
Speaker 1: lot messier for them solid and Western Europe. So, as
Speaker 1: you said, they basically win this war against Prussia immediately
Speaker 1: um and then as soon as they do, Napoleon's like, so,
Speaker 1: how about that territory that you guys said I could
Speaker 1: get and the fucking Bismark's like, what was that? What
Speaker 1: was that all? You didn't I said psych afterwards and
Speaker 1: going into this prior to the start of that war
Speaker 1: with Austria, the kind of assumption everyone else would have
Speaker 1: made is that, like France was the premier land power
Speaker 1: in Europe. But part of what Napoleon the Third and
Speaker 1: everyone else realized when he when Prussia goes to war
Speaker 1: with Austria is that like they got like seven thousand
Speaker 1: guys they can call up and they're like, they're pretty
Speaker 1: good at this. This is actually a very frightening situation.
Speaker 1: I've just realized. And tens of thousands of my best
Speaker 1: soldiers are in Mexico. Yeah oops, yes, uh fuck. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that you guys would get like really good
Speaker 1: at this. This has all gone terribly for me. So
Speaker 1: so he uh, Napoleon, Louis Napoleon is suddenly much less
Speaker 1: interested pouring men and resources into Mexico. He begins pressuring
Speaker 1: Maximilian to abdicate, but max doesn't want to leave his empire.
Speaker 1: He's dedicated to it and the brave men fighting for him.
Speaker 1: He's very delusional, is what's actually in Spanish and everything?
Speaker 1: Like leave now? I have a castle and everything. Yeahcienda
Speaker 1: and Spaniel. Yeah, I don't understand why I have to
Speaker 1: leave now? People love me. It is very funny because
Speaker 1: he like tries to eat a Mexican meal as soon
Speaker 1: as he arrives, and he gets sick because it's too hot, Like, man,
Speaker 1: you can't eat fucking chilies. And you think you're going
Speaker 1: to be the Emperor of Mexico. My god. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so Louis Napoleon, Yeah, it's about to abandon him. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote from the Emperor of Mexico, the last Emperor
Speaker 1: of Mexico again here. In August, Napoleon the Third tried
Speaker 1: to claim the territories that Bismarck had promised, but the
Speaker 1: Prussian Chancellor responded with a diplomatic equivalent of laughing in
Speaker 1: the French Emperor's faces, pointing out that the Prussian army
Speaker 1: was already mobilized. Now it was war, not only on
Speaker 1: the other side of the Atlantic that Napoleon the Third
Speaker 1: had to worry about now. But across the Rhine, where
Speaker 1: Bismarck marshaled the forces of German nationalism behind a militaristic regime,
Speaker 1: France was in an was in a state of feverish crisis,
Speaker 1: and attacks on Napoleon the third policy towards Prussia were rife.
Speaker 1: Even Napoleon the Third's wife, Eugenie, berated him for being
Speaker 1: outwitted by Bismarck. The last thing the French emperor wanted
Speaker 1: was an unpleasant reminder of another unpopular foreign policy disaster.
Speaker 1: He tried to delay meeting with Carlotta, pleading illness. He
Speaker 1: urged her to visit her brother in Brussels first, but
Speaker 1: Carlotta had already telegrammed the courts at Brussels in Vienna
Speaker 1: informing them that she would not be visiting because of
Speaker 1: the refusal to send more volunteers. Ignoring the French empruce excuses,
Speaker 1: she proceeded to Paris. So Napoleon the Third has Eugenie
Speaker 1: try to stop Carlotta from meeting with him, but she
Speaker 1: will not be dissuaded, and she eventually gets her audience
Speaker 1: with Napoleon the third, and she's been over in Mexico
Speaker 1: for a while, and while she's been over, things have
Speaker 1: gone a lot worse for him, and he's gotten sick
Speaker 1: and old. So she she sees this guy that all
Speaker 1: of her and her husband's hopes layon continued French support.
Speaker 1: They cannot hold onto their empire without France. She suddenly
Speaker 1: realizes that he's he's fucked like he's he's old and broken,
Speaker 1: and she loses her mind. She spends like the rest
Speaker 1: of her husband's reigned, locked into castle and completely out
Speaker 1: of her mind. Um. She had been so invested in
Speaker 1: the idea of being the Empress um and as soon
Speaker 1: as it becomes clear weird doomed, she just she can't
Speaker 1: function anymore. It's very funny like her and fuck him um. Maximilian, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: being equally deranged, tries to continue the fight as French
Speaker 1: troops began to withdraw. And I will give him credit
Speaker 1: for this. Unlike plant Plant, he kind of ends on
Speaker 1: a courageous note. Like. He leads his army into a
Speaker 1: disastrous battle where they're under siege in this city for weeks. Um.
Speaker 1: They win a couple of like battles where they like
Speaker 1: push out against the Mexican army and he like stays
Speaker 1: there until the bitter end in this really nasty situation.
Speaker 1: So there's a degree of at least physical courage he
Speaker 1: has while still being completely deranged. Um, he gets captured
Speaker 1: and executed. They fucking shoot his ass, they firing squad,
Speaker 1: and they Benito Warez again. The whole world, all of
Speaker 1: the governments of the world start like begging. Mexico starts
Speaker 1: sending people to Benito Ware's saying, please, don't kill him.
Speaker 1: Don't kill him. He's a habsburg. You know. The American
Speaker 1: presidents like, guy, don't do this, don't do this. But
Speaker 1: Benito Warez, being Radish ship is like, look, man, he
Speaker 1: was the emperor, he passed the Black Decree. All captured
Speaker 1: soldiers get executed. I'm not going to hold him do
Speaker 1: a different standard than the tens of thousands of men
Speaker 1: he had killed. Like fuck him. The NATO RS kind
Speaker 1: of sick um, the goat um. Maximilian died cursing Napoleon
Speaker 1: the Third for failing to come to his aid. Very funny.
Speaker 1: The second French intervention in Mexico lasted five and a
Speaker 1: half years and caused as many as seventy thousand deaths,
Speaker 1: all of which happened at the instigation of Napoleon the Third.
Speaker 1: So by eighteen seventy Louis Napoleon is a sick man
Speaker 1: and steep decline. France is still powerful and in fact
Speaker 1: wealthier than ever, but it's military is geared towards the
Speaker 1: kind of colonial wars they've been fighting in Mexico. Think
Speaker 1: about how the US military specialized for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: It's it's a small, professional force capable of besting insurgents
Speaker 1: and holding cities. The problem was Russia. Prussia had focused
Speaker 1: on becoming a land power with a massive base. Of
Speaker 1: the French military. On paper, they can maybe get four
Speaker 1: thousand troops together, and that's gonna be hard for them.
Speaker 1: It's gonna take them some time to get everybody. Like
Speaker 1: in the same place, the Prussian military can in the
Speaker 1: space like a week or two, have seven hundred thousand
Speaker 1: men armed in marching like they are very very good
Speaker 1: at this. Figure it out, this war thing. They figured
Speaker 1: out this war thing, and otto On Bismarck makes it
Speaker 1: his goals during the late eighteen sixties, I'm want to
Speaker 1: have a war with France. Number one, we lost a
Speaker 1: couple against Napoleon and that still rankles us. And number two,
Speaker 1: I want some of this territory that's like currently France,
Speaker 1: but that's right on the edge of Germany. I want
Speaker 1: to take that ship and I'm gonna make a Germany.
Speaker 1: So Bismarck starts jinking and pushing to like make it
Speaker 1: kind of find a way in which to justify having
Speaker 1: a war with He needs a pretext. He needs a pretext,
Speaker 1: and specifically he wants France to start the war. Right,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that he wants most. So In eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, the same year Maximilian gets shot to death
Speaker 1: in Mexico, Prussia forms the North German Confederation, the immediate
Speaker 1: precursor to the nation of Germany. Now everything comes to
Speaker 1: a head over the question of who will be the
Speaker 1: next King of Spain. For a brief period of time,
Speaker 1: the King of Prussia. Who's who Bismarck works for the
Speaker 1: King of Prussia. Right, Germany is not a thing yet
Speaker 1: the thing that Germany becomes a thing based around the
Speaker 1: scaffolding of Prussia. Um or is scaffold it around the
Speaker 1: core that is Prussia. The Prussian king puts forward a
Speaker 1: German prince to be the King of Spain, and it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe this guy could do it. And the Emperor of
Speaker 1: France is terrified by this, right Louis Napoleon is like, well,
Speaker 1: if that happens, then France is going to be surrounded
Speaker 1: on both sides by states led by German emperors. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to let that happen. And the Prussian king,
Speaker 1: who also doesn't really want war, Bismarck, is orchestrating this
Speaker 1: is like okay, hey, hey, you know, just an idea,
Speaker 1: just an idea, just psioned out. You know, there are
Speaker 1: no bad suggestions. So this this gets this gets rescinded,
Speaker 1: which should have been a big win for Napoleon the
Speaker 1: Third um but he's still really worried that the Prussians
Speaker 1: are going to try something, so he sends out his
Speaker 1: foreign minister, and this guy, Count Benedetti, is the same
Speaker 1: as everyone else. Napoleon the Third picks for a job
Speaker 1: shit eatingly incompetent. Right, if we know one thing about
Speaker 1: the man, he he is not good at pickings people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just all of his drinking buddies and
Speaker 1: it's just like, hey, better, dummy, you do it. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you get in there, Benny, Yeah you got it. You
Speaker 1: got it, Benny, you got it out Yeah. So um
Speaker 1: he had. He sends Count Benedetti over to the King
Speaker 1: of Prussia, who's like at a fucking bath, you know,
Speaker 1: he's doing like a big spad um to ask him
Speaker 1: to promise not ever to put a German prince on
Speaker 1: the throne, and the conversation goes pretty well. Obviously, the
Speaker 1: King of Prussia doesn't want to war with France over this,
Speaker 1: but outivon Bismarck decides to do a little bit of
Speaker 1: fake news and spin this up as a diplomatic incident
Speaker 1: in which the French ambassador had been kicked out of
Speaker 1: the King's presence, never allowed, never to be allowed back again.
Speaker 1: This was not true, but Bismark knows, like all the
Speaker 1: matters is getting this bad news out there. Quote. By
Speaker 1: July fourteenth, the news is on the newspaper's desk all
Speaker 1: over Europe. As soon as the news of this supposed
Speaker 1: diplomatic incident is published, the streets of the French capital
Speaker 1: are taken over by demonstrations against the Germans. The windows
Speaker 1: of the Prussian embassy are smashed by rioters. Meanwhile, in Germany,
Speaker 1: Bismarck fans the flames of nationalism by distributing for free
Speaker 1: copies of newspaper of copies of newspapers with his own
Speaker 1: version of the event, in order to make it look
Speaker 1: like Benedetti was pestering the king with haughty demands. By
Speaker 1: the fifteenth of July, the French government is in turmoil
Speaker 1: and must compose with the allies clamoring for war and
Speaker 1: the suspicion of the opposition. There was a last attempt
Speaker 1: to ask clarifications from the Count Benedetti, but the telegram
Speaker 1: law arrives too late, and the careful examination of the
Speaker 1: diplomatic papers asked for by the opposition is refused. And
Speaker 1: so basically there's this, you know, Bismarck puts out this
Speaker 1: fake news that you know, they they insulted our, our
Speaker 1: national honor. Yeah, and this is called the m's dispatch.
Speaker 1: Um this like this, this like diplomatic cable that goes
Speaker 1: out that like Bismarck, uh fucking fox with real confidence
Speaker 1: to be like, I'm gonna make this country clamor for
Speaker 1: war with us. And it it works. The French people
Speaker 1: do and Louis Napoleon. He is old, and he is sick,
Speaker 1: and he does not think this is a good idea.
Speaker 1: But all of these generals, the same ones who'd convinced him,
Speaker 1: you know, to invade into China, say it's a good idea.
Speaker 1: And most importantly, his wife Eugenie is like, if you
Speaker 1: don't do this, you're fucking coward. This is how I come. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is I don't want to fuck you, but I
Speaker 1: want you to go to war against fucking Prussia. I
Speaker 1: don't have sex. This is how I do it. They
Speaker 1: have a son. At this point, she's like, your son
Speaker 1: will have nothing to inherit if you don't go to
Speaker 1: war against Germany. Right now, you know what, what what
Speaker 1: kind of example are you putting for your son if
Speaker 1: you don't start a pointless war against the new great
Speaker 1: land power in Europe. Um. So, Louis Napoleon, being fundamentally
Speaker 1: a coward in a lot of ways, declares war on Germany. Smart. Um,
Speaker 1: this goes pretty bad. So for one thing, on paper,
Speaker 1: he's supposed people to get about four thousand dudes together, which,
Speaker 1: even though the Prussians outnumber that, you're on the defense.
Speaker 1: You've got castles and fortresses. You can. You can win
Speaker 1: a war, a defensive war that way, especially if it's
Speaker 1: just kind of your first wave. But he actually has
Speaker 1: trouble getting more than like a quarter of a million
Speaker 1: dudes together. The other problem is that, so you know
Speaker 1: how he forgot to bring artillery to the Crimean war. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that, never learns that lesson. So the artillery
Speaker 1: that the French bring into the Franco Prussian War is
Speaker 1: the same artillery in some case literally the same guns
Speaker 1: that Napoleon had brought into battle in eighteen twelve. Yeah. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the Prussians have have breech loading steel cannons with modern artillery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they got the shelves and stuff. They're not just firing balls,
Speaker 1: but they're shooting heavy balls real fast. Basically, the French
Speaker 1: cannons are like hucking a Mazda Miata like pretty fast,
Speaker 1: and the German can and their actual canons um. The
Speaker 1: other thing that's so the French aren't entirely like it's
Speaker 1: not like they're entirely like, uh, behind the curve militarily,
Speaker 1: they've just been optimizing for these little, these little brush
Speaker 1: fire wars. So one thing they have on their side
Speaker 1: the French regular forces. These colonial troops have the best
Speaker 1: rifle in the world at the time. Just the Germans
Speaker 1: are astonished and how well this fucking gun works. It's
Speaker 1: a great, great infantry rifle. Very few of their soldiers
Speaker 1: actually have it, right, the actual territorial French army just
Speaker 1: has old as musket. So anyway, he goes and he
Speaker 1: goes with this army to command in the field because
Speaker 1: again you Jenny like basically tells him that he's a
Speaker 1: fucking cuck if he doesn't go in the battle. And
Speaker 1: he is. He is, he is dying of him a
Speaker 1: roids rights. He can't sit, he can't stand, certainly he
Speaker 1: can command the field. He can barely move. He's got
Speaker 1: his like teenage boy with him. Um. And they have
Speaker 1: they have this one little battle where like um, they
Speaker 1: move into Prussian territory and like kill sixty guys and
Speaker 1: his he has he gets his air close enough that
Speaker 1: like a bullet whizzes over his head. He's like, there
Speaker 1: you go, you did it. You've been blooded in combat. Um.
Speaker 1: And then they then they try to do a battle
Speaker 1: in a place called Sedan. And this is not a
Speaker 1: military history podcast, but it doesn't go well. Um. In short,
Speaker 1: they get their asses absolutely handed to them. Um. For
Speaker 1: all of military history since the age of Hannibal, one
Speaker 1: of the things that like generals will talked about is
Speaker 1: is doing a can i. Right. Can I is this
Speaker 1: famous battle where there's this hundred thousand man Roman army
Speaker 1: and Hannibal surrounds it completely and then just spends a
Speaker 1: day butchering everyone slowly to death inside. It's one of
Speaker 1: the most famous victories and all of military history. The
Speaker 1: Germans do a can i at Sedan. They surround the
Speaker 1: entire French military and kill quite a few of them.
Speaker 1: And this is actually kind of one of the last
Speaker 1: acts of roism of Louis Napoleon. The maybe the only one,
Speaker 1: I guess would probably be to say is that his
Speaker 1: generals are like, no, no, no, We've got a fight
Speaker 1: until relief comes. We've got to keep it going. He
Speaker 1: looks out at what's happening. It's like, there's ninety thousand
Speaker 1: men here and the Prussians will kill them all. Like,
Speaker 1: if we keep fighting, they will kill everyone here unless
Speaker 1: I personally surrender. Um. Now, this isn't the first thing
Speaker 1: he does. In fact, he attempts to get himself killed
Speaker 1: by Prussian fire multiple times before he does this. He does,
Speaker 1: he does go for suicide again, that is our boy, um,
Speaker 1: and he cannot kill himself. He does get his his
Speaker 1: aid to camp gets killed and like two of them
Speaker 1: get wounded when he just kind of like stands in
Speaker 1: front of these Prussians guns. But he doesn't get hurt
Speaker 1: at all. So he tries to kill himself. He accidentally
Speaker 1: he shoots another French soldier right in the fucking throat. Uh.
Speaker 1: Very funny. Um. So yeah, he eventually uh goes to
Speaker 1: the Germans and it's like, hey, you know the Emperor
Speaker 1: of France and they're like yeah, and he's like he's
Speaker 1: me and they're like seriously, they have no idea that
Speaker 1: he's there. They don't know that he So this is
Speaker 1: a real dub for the Germans. And he like when
Speaker 1: he surrenders the like basically one of the conditions he
Speaker 1: doesn't is that he is surrendering his army. He's not
Speaker 1: surrendering for the nation of France. And very quickly after that,
Speaker 1: the French respond by having a revolution while they're fighting
Speaker 1: and losing this war, um, and he is no longer
Speaker 1: the Emperor of France. Um. He spends some time in
Speaker 1: in custody of the Prussians. They lock him up, but
Speaker 1: like rich guy style, you know, he's he's in like
Speaker 1: some sort of castle. Yeah, nice, nice prison. He's writing stuff.
Speaker 1: He's fucking you know, he's living his worst life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's living his worth worst life. His his family has
Speaker 1: to deal with the fact that they are no longer
Speaker 1: running France. France kind of falls apart. The Germans lay
Speaker 1: siege to Paris. People are eating rats. It is ugly
Speaker 1: and it does not leave the people of France very
Speaker 1: well induced towards Napoleon the Third, although he never gives
Speaker 1: up hope of proclaiming another empire like he because he
Speaker 1: flat He goes back to exile in England, and he
Speaker 1: spends the last couple of his years he is actively
Speaker 1: working on another plan to return the France and take
Speaker 1: over the monarchy yet again. But then he dies in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy three, just before he can try his fourth
Speaker 1: coup attempt um. That would have been Honestly, I think
Speaker 1: I think that time he'd have gotten it right. I
Speaker 1: think he would have gotten it right that time. I
Speaker 1: think it would have worked out everything that one of
Speaker 1: the sad things because he gets like attacked a lot
Speaker 1: by the French and by like even particularly conservatives in France.
Speaker 1: For um surrendering at Sedan. His last words are we
Speaker 1: weren't cow words at Saddan, were we? Which is like, no, dude,
Speaker 1: that was like the only thing you did that, the
Speaker 1: only thing you did that was actually putting other people's
Speaker 1: lives before you your own. Yeah, that was like the
Speaker 1: first time like that empathy bone that your dad tried
Speaker 1: desperately to instill into you really really gave everything he
Speaker 1: could still being an absent father. Uh to push it
Speaker 1: to you, I mean you know, hey, at the at
Speaker 1: that time, that was that's the best kind of father
Speaker 1: and you can have. This is he is. Louis Bonaparte
Speaker 1: is the best father we've talked about on this show.
Speaker 1: Saying that, yes, just based on those like letters alone,
Speaker 1: you're just like, oh, yeah, you know, he's sure. He
Speaker 1: wasn't there and was like I don't love you and
Speaker 1: I think you're dumb and to his face and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think, what did he say, read your book?
Speaker 1: Hated it, hated it, hated it? Stupid book? How dare
Speaker 1: you think you could write this? Still? Best dad, best
Speaker 1: best dads so far on the show. Yeah, well, Matt,
Speaker 1: that's the podcast. Well that is a that is a
Speaker 1: wonderful story of a great, great failed son and uh,
Speaker 1: the failest of sons, the failest of sons. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've got to hand it to him. He was able
Speaker 1: to actually achieve just enough to fail spectacularly. You know,
Speaker 1: getting captured is just chef's kiss. Yeah. That's a beautiful
Speaker 1: way to end your empire, being captured and giving everyone Germany.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, inventing modern Germany. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: that's uh, hey, how's that going to go for the future? Thin?
Speaker 1: You know. I actually stopped reading my German history textbook
Speaker 1: in August first, nineteen fourteen, but it's going well yeah,
Speaker 1: so good. Yeah. I would love to meet whoever the
Speaker 1: current Kaiser is over there. Yeah. I'm sure he's cool
Speaker 1: and has been in power and stability and peace. That
Speaker 1: sounds like Germany. I probably know. God, you know, this
Speaker 1: was a fun one. It wasn't about Nazis, but it
Speaker 1: was about proto fascism. Yeah. I love that. It is cool.
Speaker 1: It's cool and good. Can people find you anywhere? You
Speaker 1: can find me on the world's only the wire rewatch podcast,
Speaker 1: Pod Yourself the Wire or the World's Only Sopranos podcast,
Speaker 1: Pod Yourself a Gun and once again, Um, we're doing
Speaker 1: a live show at s F Sketch Fest Saturday, janu
Speaker 1: pm over at the Piano Fight Theater. Go to s
Speaker 1: F sketch Fest dot com and please buy tickets because
Speaker 1: it would be embarrassing if no one came. It would
Speaker 1: be embarrassing. Go go there, go now, find Matt Leeb
Speaker 1: at s F Sketch Fest. You can see me in person.
Speaker 1: You can assassinate me. Ya, sell your possessions, fly to
Speaker 1: San Francisco live on the streets in the weeks leading
Speaker 1: up to the event. You know should and then murder
Speaker 1: him murder me please and uh and also yeah, give
Speaker 1: us five stars a review. That's really all I want. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, there's enough listeners out there on this podcast
Speaker 1: that I should be able to break a thousand. Come
Speaker 1: there we go? All right, Yeah, that's those are my plugs. Guys.
Speaker 1: I love you. I love you too. I love you
Speaker 1: more than my my five week old daughter. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's true, but I want you to think
Speaker 1: it's true. There you go, gaslight me, gas light me. Daddy.
Speaker 1: We have a Behind the Bastard's live stream event coming
Speaker 1: up with Margaret Kiljoy on December eight at six pm Pacific.
Speaker 1: You can get tickets moment house dot com, slash bTB,
Speaker 1: Heroic eroticick it out. I'll be there watching on the
Speaker 1: live stream. You don't you don't have to do that.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna and I'm going to be in the comments
Speaker 1: section going kill me, kill me, do it, and no
Speaker 1: one will be able to do it. I'm like Napoleon
Speaker 1: the Third in that way, and we are dumb boomsaka
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 1: zone media dot com, or check us out on the
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Speaker 1: your podcasts.