Speaker 1: M did theoria that's a disease, and I'm Robert Evans,
Speaker 1: and this is Behind the Bastards, a podcast that's not
Speaker 1: about diseases. It's about the worst people in all the
Speaker 1: history who are kind of a disease on the human condition.
Speaker 1: I couldn't think of anything else to shout at the
Speaker 1: start of the episode, so I went with diphtheria. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the show has begun. My guests today are one of
Speaker 1: our very best guests, the wonderful, the incomparable Lazy Mobery.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to be here. I haven't seen you
Speaker 1: in so long, Robert, yet it has been a minute.
Speaker 1: It has been a minute. How have How are you
Speaker 1: doing in in this year of plague and also general
Speaker 1: uprisings and also a political election and also an economic collapse.
Speaker 1: Um I was in the beginning, in the beginning of this,
Speaker 1: I know when you say it all together, when you
Speaker 1: talk about what's been happening, it sounds very bad because
Speaker 1: the new cycle is so crazy. Like that the one
Speaker 1: week where Malaia was like, Chris, I can't do her voice,
Speaker 1: but she's like and then taxes came out the same week.
Speaker 1: Also he got COVID. It was like so many things happened,
Speaker 1: and we were like, oh, this is just Tuesday. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm doing a lot better. In the beginning. I'm a
Speaker 1: like an introvert. People don't know that about me because
Speaker 1: I do a lot of this ship, but like, I
Speaker 1: am alone a lot and I like it. So I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, putting up on TV's Netflix movies, honey.
Speaker 1: And then when we got into June, it was like, okay,
Speaker 1: Black Liberation and that kind of kept me busy. And
Speaker 1: then I took a real dump like after that of
Speaker 1: like closing my blackout curtains. Like I was like a shutting,
Speaker 1: bedridden pregnant woman in the eighteen hundreds and just like
Speaker 1: laying in the dark for a few days. But now
Speaker 1: I'm back, I'm going working out every day and you know,
Speaker 1: I just trying to keep myself safe. You know how
Speaker 1: they used to be like Google, gott I had a
Speaker 1: king's baby, so get your aunts in bed and closed
Speaker 1: these curtains. Yes, So that was me except for no baby,
Speaker 1: no quarantine baby. Thank god, I have not had a
Speaker 1: quarantine baby either. Um. I did adopt a riot son,
Speaker 1: but but but no quarantine baby. Um lazy, How do
Speaker 1: you feel about but I do. I really love them.
Speaker 1: It's a complicated relationship though, because I don't love when
Speaker 1: people are victimized. I hate to see it happened. Actually
Speaker 1: this morning, my little sister got scammed. Oh no, what
Speaker 1: kind of scam I was doing with the family crisis
Speaker 1: before nine am? Chair because they two hours ahead of me.
Speaker 1: And so basically, my sister met this girl and they've
Speaker 1: been hanging out through a mutual friend for three months.
Speaker 1: And the girl was like talking about how she needed
Speaker 1: to move out from her parents house and how during
Speaker 1: quarantine things have just got so bad, you know, side story,
Speaker 1: side story, honey. So she's like, I'm selling my art
Speaker 1: online and I don't want to put the money in
Speaker 1: my bank account because I don't want my parents to
Speaker 1: know that I'm saving up to leave. So she asked
Speaker 1: my little sister, is she could put the money in
Speaker 1: her bank account cut to some man named Clad or
Speaker 1: some ship emailing my sister four checks for eight hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: Why my sister didn't think? I was like you, I
Speaker 1: literally the first thing I text, because she was like,
Speaker 1: don't tell my mom dad. I was like, first of all,
Speaker 1: I have to Second of all, I know this is petty,
Speaker 1: but I was like, I run a show called scam Guys.
Speaker 1: I was like, y'all support your sister and listen to
Speaker 1: her show, because girl, i'n't talked about this scam like
Speaker 1: eleven times. I'm trying to help you seventeen so all
Speaker 1: enough to know about her. It's like it's like if
Speaker 1: your job was to give out flu vaccines and then like,
Speaker 1: your sister gets the flu and she's like, well I
Speaker 1: didn't know there was a vaccine, Like what the funk
Speaker 1: are you? Like? Right, I'm like, I spent a whole
Speaker 1: section of my life just talking about scams. You ain't
Speaker 1: think nothing, thought like let me text my older sister
Speaker 1: before I make a devilas and nothing. So she said,
Speaker 1: up the hundred dollars because they cleared it automatically, which
Speaker 1: is there, so we're dealing with them. But it was
Speaker 1: total and so the bank of course did a charge
Speaker 1: back and then that coin flew right out of her
Speaker 1: account and she was like, well, my friend didn't know.
Speaker 1: I was like, your friend did no, Okay, she scammed
Speaker 1: and she got your friend and don't talk to her again.
Speaker 1: And also I will pull up to whatever slide whatever
Speaker 1: swing set. I need to to be her ass uh.
Speaker 1: I will fight children. Um yeah, if you're five one,
Speaker 1: you can fight kids. Mostly I will fight children. Have one.
Speaker 1: It's a fair fight. Okay? He is her friends seventeen two? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they're around the same A. Yeah, but a
Speaker 1: surprise bastard. Yeah, surprise. I didn't expect to talk about
Speaker 1: this one. Sorry, it was on my heart. You know
Speaker 1: who else would fight children? Probably probably the subject of
Speaker 1: today's podcast, I assume based on everything else he did so, Lacy,
Speaker 1: you and I are both are both connoisseurs of con men.
Speaker 1: You know, we love we love us some connors right,
Speaker 1: like it's it's there's something just you gotta you love
Speaker 1: a grifter like they're they're monsters, but they're fascinating. And
Speaker 1: most of the grifters, at least that I talk about,
Speaker 1: I know, you cover kind of a different branch of them.
Speaker 1: Most of the ones I talk about are either like
Speaker 1: hawking some sort of miracle medical treatment, or like a
Speaker 1: path to easy riches. I guess that that's basically all
Speaker 1: of them, right. Um. There are like, you know, a
Speaker 1: couple though, who rise above the rest. There's people like
Speaker 1: oh Ron Hubbard, right, who like drifted a whole religion
Speaker 1: and it's like, you know, and today's grifter is that
Speaker 1: level of grifter. Um, he didn't make a religion. But
Speaker 1: the guy we're talking about today, Sir Gregor McGregor, count
Speaker 1: people into believing he had a whole country. And that's
Speaker 1: pretty ambitious. It is good, you know travel. He's like, no,
Speaker 1: you don't have to come, just no, oh no, he
Speaker 1: he convinced them to come. Now, this was a different
Speaker 1: era we're talking about. Out the eighteen hundreds, um, and spoiler,
Speaker 1: a lot of them died. Um. This is a high
Speaker 1: body count scammer. Um. But our first episode is going
Speaker 1: to be about the rest of his back because like
Speaker 1: every grifter, he had to like build up, you know,
Speaker 1: just start by faking a country, right, Like you gotta
Speaker 1: that's like, that's like the marathon of grift ing and
Speaker 1: like you gotta do some tin ks, some twenty k's
Speaker 1: like before you can you know, before you can get
Speaker 1: that ship. So. Gregor McGregor was born in Sterlingshire, Scotland,
Speaker 1: on Christmas Eve, seventeen eight six. His family were somewhat
Speaker 1: famous among the contentious peoples of Scotland. One of his
Speaker 1: ancestors was a guy named rob Roy McGregor, a cattle
Speaker 1: wrestler and a bandit who basically charged people not to
Speaker 1: steal their ship. He was a gangster Um. He controlled
Speaker 1: a large group of raiders who would like steal cows
Speaker 1: and then ransom them back to their customers or just
Speaker 1: like get money from them not to steal their cows
Speaker 1: in the first place. The origin, yeah, yeah, he was.
Speaker 1: He was kind of like a towing company, but an
Speaker 1: a legal towing company. Um, we're like some guy with
Speaker 1: a gun comes out and said, oh, you want your
Speaker 1: fucking car back, Like, yeah, I have definitely had my
Speaker 1: car toad, but it was unfortunately legal, although I felt
Speaker 1: as if it was not, and if it were a
Speaker 1: bandit perhaps that would have been nicer. Um because there
Speaker 1: were cops involved anyway, So he piste off a local
Speaker 1: noble by stealing stealing his cows eventually, and that got
Speaker 1: the McGregor clan kicked off. There's like a roster of
Speaker 1: official Scottish clans. It's like a it's like a whole deal.
Speaker 1: And so the McGregor family got kicked off for like
Speaker 1: decades um and rob Roy's family got like tossed out
Speaker 1: of their home in the dead of winter. Um, and
Speaker 1: he was he was really it seems like just a criminal,
Speaker 1: like just like not a good criminal either, Like you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not judgmental of criminals, but he's just like stealing
Speaker 1: people's ship. But because of like for whatever reason, it's complicated.
Speaker 1: He's still he turned into a folk hero in Scotland
Speaker 1: and he's kind of you now is the Scottish Robin Hood.
Speaker 1: So this is Gregor McGregor's like famous ancestor, and he's
Speaker 1: he's only born like sixty years before Gregor's birth, but
Speaker 1: like you know, back in the seventeen hundreds, that's like
Speaker 1: a billion years, you know. Yeah. So by the time
Speaker 1: Gregor McGregor comes into the world, his family, his clan
Speaker 1: had been re estate and stated to the roles, and
Speaker 1: he's got like this famous tradition of like we're we're
Speaker 1: we're we're both warriors and and freedom fighters, YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: His family weren't rich, but they were really very comfortable
Speaker 1: local aristocrats, like upper middle class. They were eating every day,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, yeah, and they were eating well. Um, he
Speaker 1: would have grown up hearing tales of like his ancestors glory,
Speaker 1: YadA YadA. Uh. We don't know any details about Gregor's
Speaker 1: education or his early life because people didn't keep great
Speaker 1: notes in the seventeen hundreds about folks who weren't like
Speaker 1: super rich. But we know that his father worked for
Speaker 1: the British East India Company and would have been absent
Speaker 1: all the time doing you know, genocides and stuff. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's likely that Gregor was raised by his mom and
Speaker 1: his aunts and showered with attention because he was the
Speaker 1: only boy in the family and I think most people
Speaker 1: know what that kind of does to you. He was
Speaker 1: like the original influencer of the seventeen hundred. It sounds
Speaker 1: like he would have had like, maybe like eighty four
Speaker 1: Instagram followers. Yeah, it's weird how quickly you've picked up
Speaker 1: on where this story is going lazy. Um so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: His His modern biographer, a guy named David Sinclair, posits,
Speaker 1: based on his later life he was probably showered with
Speaker 1: attention and grew used to getting whatever he wanted, like
Speaker 1: he was he was the special boy of the family, right.
Speaker 1: Um So, he probably left school at about age fifteen
Speaker 1: because that's when Scottish boys became adults, which is interesting
Speaker 1: to me because like pretty much everywhere else in Urope,
Speaker 1: it was like age fourteen. So I guess the Scots
Speaker 1: you get an extra year of being a kid. That's nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're progressive. Uh. The next year, at age sixteen, he
Speaker 1: enlisted in the British Army. Uh. Sixteen was the earliest
Speaker 1: age at which this was allowed. And before you get
Speaker 1: all judge, you should know that seventeen year olds joined
Speaker 1: the U s Army all the time, so things aren't
Speaker 1: changed all that much. Like we added a year. We're
Speaker 1: the Scotsman of the modern era. So um, yeah, Gregor
Speaker 1: joins the army and uh. He would claim later that
Speaker 1: he spent the year between graduation and joining the university
Speaker 1: and joining the army at the University of Edinburgh, But
Speaker 1: everything he ever said was a lie, so don't put
Speaker 1: too much stock in that. There's no evidence that he
Speaker 1: ever attended college. Now. Back in those days, as a
Speaker 1: result of changes made by King Charles the Second, young
Speaker 1: men with money could buy their way into the British Army,
Speaker 1: and it's almost certain that Gregor's father paid for him
Speaker 1: to be commissioned as an incident, which was like the
Speaker 1: lowest officer rank at the period and cost about four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty pounds, which was equivalent to around twenty
Speaker 1: five dollars in modern money. So like this was expensive,
Speaker 1: it was also the normal way that officers got promoted, right,
Speaker 1: you could either wait years to earn a promotion or
Speaker 1: you could pay for it. Um. Poorman had to settle
Speaker 1: for being promoted the old fashioned way through like hard
Speaker 1: work and courage, and so the you know that took
Speaker 1: a long time. Um. Until fairly late in the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: every officer rank in the British Army worked this way
Speaker 1: up to the rank of lieutenant colonel. UM. So the
Speaker 1: people who are at least qualified. It's interesting because it
Speaker 1: did work very badly a lot of the time, and
Speaker 1: that's why it was eventually stopped. UM. And obviously, like
Speaker 1: the thing that you'd imagine did happen, a bunch of
Speaker 1: idiots got to command the lives of thousands thanks to
Speaker 1: their rich dad's UM. And you can look at ship
Speaker 1: like the famous charge of the Light Brigade during the
Speaker 1: Crimean War, and even the I mean they'd stopped that process,
Speaker 1: but still a lot of the officers in charge during
Speaker 1: that war had paid to become officers Um, and even
Speaker 1: the British loss of North America is like maybe partial
Speaker 1: consequences of the fact that the system work this way. Um,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't like it wasn't all bad actually, And
Speaker 1: this is the I found like a really interesting letter
Speaker 1: to the editor in an eighteen sixty issue of The
Speaker 1: New York Times, Um, We're like a British military veteran
Speaker 1: explained why the system wasn't quite as as simple as
Speaker 1: people thought it was. And one of the points he
Speaker 1: made is that it allowed people who were good leaders
Speaker 1: to speed up their rise to through the ranks and
Speaker 1: then thus spend more time commanding armies in the prime
Speaker 1: of their lives. And there's actually at least one really
Speaker 1: good example of this. The Duke of Wellington paid for
Speaker 1: all of the seven biable promotions he could possibly have paid.
Speaker 1: And like, by the time he was a lieutenant colonel,
Speaker 1: he'd never seen combat, had no functional experience, and he
Speaker 1: went on to beat Napoleon at Waterloo. So like, sometimes
Speaker 1: it worked sometimes, Yeah, he was a strategist, he was Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was good at what he like. Sometimes this worked out, um,
Speaker 1: And like one of the one of the famous defenses
Speaker 1: when people would talk about canceling this system in the
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds, was that, like, well then we'd have
Speaker 1: to pay all these officers back for the money they
Speaker 1: paid to like get their promotions, and that would cost
Speaker 1: way too much money. Um, so let's just let's just
Speaker 1: keep having idiots and charity. It was a very silly
Speaker 1: thing for the most part. Now. The unit Gregor's dad
Speaker 1: bought his son into was the fifty seventh Foot, a
Speaker 1: Scottish regiment famous for the fact that almost everyone in
Speaker 1: it was a criminal. Their name their nickname was the
Speaker 1: Steelbacks because were flogged with whips so many times for
Speaker 1: their disobedience. So it said that like you had to
Speaker 1: have a strong back to survive because they'd regularly get
Speaker 1: like nine lashes and ship for like all of the
Speaker 1: crimes they committed. Now, is that pre army or during
Speaker 1: the army? That's during the army. I feel like they
Speaker 1: shouldn't beating all people that you need to fight. The
Speaker 1: British Army did that all the time. There was in fact,
Speaker 1: there was like a saying that like the British Navy
Speaker 1: was kept in order by rum, sodomy and the lash. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so like they're drunk, they get to funk each other
Speaker 1: and we beat them when they step out of line.
Speaker 1: And that's why there's the there's also a great Pogues
Speaker 1: album called Rum Sodomy and the Lash wonderful. That's a
Speaker 1: good time. Some people would like it, like there are
Speaker 1: some stores I've been to in San Francisco that specifically
Speaker 1: catered to that set of things. But these were not
Speaker 1: fun lashes, you know, like these would do real damage
Speaker 1: to you. Um. The commander of the fifty seven foot
Speaker 1: once nicknamed them the fighting Villains, um, because again, they're
Speaker 1: all criminals. So McGregor did well there at first. He
Speaker 1: actually earned a promotion from instant to lieutenant without having
Speaker 1: to pay for it. Um. So he had like promise
Speaker 1: he there was a chance he could have lived a
Speaker 1: legitimate life at one point. Is what I want you
Speaker 1: to keep. They're always there. Yeah. Yeah. There was that
Speaker 1: moment where John McAfee had to choose to murder a
Speaker 1: bunch of people in the jungle, and when he chose Crack,
Speaker 1: his choice was paid for him to do. The Crack
Speaker 1: stepped into the Crack entered the chat and it's like
Speaker 1: one of those Jesus take the wheel posters, but Crack
Speaker 1: John McAfee closed his eyes and let crack take the wheel.
Speaker 1: Do take the wheel, y'all. Ever, so at this point
Speaker 1: in history, the British were real scared about Napoleon because
Speaker 1: Napoleon was, you know, be pretty good at war. Uh
Speaker 1: And yeah, Gregor spent the bulk of his military career
Speaker 1: being sent around a different islands as forts and forts
Speaker 1: is part of like a big chess game between the
Speaker 1: Empire and Napoleon. The British were terrified the French were
Speaker 1: going to invade you know, England, so like they were
Speaker 1: just always moving soldiers and fleets around. It was so
Speaker 1: he spends he doesn't actually fight, He spends all of
Speaker 1: his time like moving from post to post. And his
Speaker 1: favorite part of life in the military was all the
Speaker 1: fancy parties because all of these fortresses and posts are
Speaker 1: near like towns and cities, and they all of these
Speaker 1: big social lives, and of course the visiting young officers
Speaker 1: are the you know, the biggest thing in town whenever
Speaker 1: they come in. And he was a very handsome guy.
Speaker 1: He was meticulous about his uniform. He wore every decoration
Speaker 1: he possibly good on it um and he he you know,
Speaker 1: he stood out at these parties, and as a result
Speaker 1: of standing out when he was still like a teenager,
Speaker 1: he met a lady. Her name was Maria bowater Um
Speaker 1: and her father had been an admiral, and so their
Speaker 1: family had fuck you money. They get married and yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and in those days, you get married to
Speaker 1: a girl and she comes with money, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you get like yeah, said handsome question mark. I just
Speaker 1: google searched. The standards were lower in those days. Everybody.
Speaker 1: Everybody's got the typhoid he has, he has, I just
Speaker 1: farted face. Yeah, but he didn't. He's not actively shifting
Speaker 1: himself to death. So like that's that's kind of the
Speaker 1: standard is like, oh, you're not You're not having fatal diarrhea.
Speaker 1: What a handsome man. You don't have both ears. It
Speaker 1: was a rough time, so uh yeah. They get married
Speaker 1: and her dowry is like huge. So Gregor has fuck
Speaker 1: you money too, at least for a while. Um. And
Speaker 1: unfortunately this has a bad effect on him. Number one,
Speaker 1: it swells his head because immediately he's like, oh, now
Speaker 1: I'm like a fucking rich officer guy. But also like
Speaker 1: he marries into this family that has this tradition of
Speaker 1: like being very powerful people and he's just a lieutenant
Speaker 1: and they don't. That does not impress them. So to
Speaker 1: earn their respect, he uses some of the money that
Speaker 1: he their money that he got to buy himself a
Speaker 1: promotion to captain. He's got douche face. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: his face, but he's it was good looking for the day. No,
Speaker 1: it's not. You know, I could see him being a
Speaker 1: baddie back in the day. I'm just saying he's got
Speaker 1: that douchey face of like everything I want. Like, it's
Speaker 1: just he's no, No, he would have. He would have
Speaker 1: been in a fraternity and he would have been one
Speaker 1: of those guys that there were unfortunate stories about because yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's this guy. Um, not that he actually does anything
Speaker 1: like that, I'm just assuming because of other things he does.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna quote next from David Sinclair's The Land
Speaker 1: That Never Was, which is a biography of Gregor McGregor. Quote,
Speaker 1: the young captain's progress should have been assured. Using his
Speaker 1: newfound wealth, McGregor could have bought himself the rank of
Speaker 1: regimental major, which could take anything between six and seventeen years,
Speaker 1: on the basis of promotion, and then with war with certainty,
Speaker 1: could have either counted on distinguishing himself sufficiently to move
Speaker 1: up to lieutenant colonel, or else paid again for the
Speaker 1: highest purchasable rank in the army. There appeared to be
Speaker 1: no reason why, in due course he should not become
Speaker 1: a general, as his wife's uncle had and as her
Speaker 1: brother subsequently would. By this time, however, certain traits in
Speaker 1: the young man's character were beginning to turn him into
Speaker 1: his own worst enemy. One of his later military comrades,
Speaker 1: if that is the right term for a man who
Speaker 1: disliked him intensely, observed McGregor was spoiled by prosperity, and
Speaker 1: his versatility and haughtiness of disposition soon overturned his flattering prospects.
Speaker 1: So he gets a big ass head. That's a fancy
Speaker 1: way of saying he gets a big head. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this guy's a hater. Whoever this comrade is is definitely
Speaker 1: a hater. He's probably like had to work his way up.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. Yeah, he's like he's he's actually gotta do ship.
Speaker 1: Um so. One of his other comrades later noted that
Speaker 1: he began to show a growing fascination with extreme affectation
Speaker 1: of dress and fashion and an overpowering fondness for the
Speaker 1: nicest distinctions of rank and the over or in the
Speaker 1: imposing spectacle of honorary badges and tangible tokens of merit.
Speaker 1: And this means like he would. You know, there's all
Speaker 1: sorts of bullshit awards you get in the military for
Speaker 1: like showing up and not doing anything, and most like
Speaker 1: most like grunts, the people who actually fight, like don't
Speaker 1: don't wear that ship. And he like he would, he
Speaker 1: would wear that ship because, like he always he wanted
Speaker 1: to have everything he possibly could on him. It was
Speaker 1: about like looking good. Right, he's like a rapper. He's
Speaker 1: showing up to these cities like he's Travis Scott and
Speaker 1: you know, showing off for the bitches. He said, there's
Speaker 1: a party in every town, and I gotta have my
Speaker 1: gold chains. And his health chains were purple hearts and
Speaker 1: medals of freedom. Yeah exactly. Yeah, that's why the like,
Speaker 1: that's the fucking you know. I grew up like really conservative.
Speaker 1: I talked about this a lot, and like the discourse
Speaker 1: around rappers when I was a kid was like, oh,
Speaker 1: look at how like look at how look at how
Speaker 1: like shameful This culture is because of like these men
Speaker 1: with their like big golden chains bragging about like you
Speaker 1: know what, like the stuff that rappers brag about, and
Speaker 1: it's like money, car, fucking Yeah, it's the same thing
Speaker 1: rich white people brag about. It's just different money, different cars,
Speaker 1: different women. Like there's nothing different about it. It's just
Speaker 1: what men do, like grossmen do at least, like it's
Speaker 1: just a thing. Yeah, So I don't see, but I
Speaker 1: get it that it's like if you're really doing work
Speaker 1: and you're in the military and you're looking at this
Speaker 1: guy and people are dying all around you, and you're
Speaker 1: on the battlefield and you have phone boy who doesn't
Speaker 1: even have to touch the soil, and he's like dripped
Speaker 1: down with every medal and accomplishment, and I were talking
Speaker 1: cash it at all these functions and being a douche Yeah,
Speaker 1: because at least, like you know, it's like like if
Speaker 1: you've got a fucking gold chain or whatever, you probably
Speaker 1: had to earn that gold chain. You had to fucking hustle,
Speaker 1: Like he just married some lady and then took her money, uh,
Speaker 1: and then bought a promotion. I'm looking at a picture
Speaker 1: of him pose with a sword like he is my sword,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, has he ever had to swing the
Speaker 1: sword on anybody? Or is he just posted up like
Speaker 1: this is how rappers pose with guns and music videos.
Speaker 1: He does eventually swing his sword, not at this point. Not.
Speaker 1: And at this point he's never done anything. He's wearing
Speaker 1: all the medals and he's he's forcing all of the
Speaker 1: men under his command to never show up outside of
Speaker 1: their rooms unless they're wearing a full dress uniform with
Speaker 1: a handsome walking cane. Okay, so he was swaggy, he
Speaker 1: was had the Swag Brigade. Yeah, he wanted, he wanted,
Speaker 1: and yeah, and that that frustrates the men around him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So and like these guys don't want to be the
Speaker 1: Swag Battalion, their criminals like they want to they want
Speaker 1: to get drunk and fight. Um, they don't want to
Speaker 1: wear walk around with canes. So in the winter of
Speaker 1: eighteen oh seven, France invades Portugal. In Spain, the British
Speaker 1: counter invade, and although Gregor and his unit were nearby,
Speaker 1: they didn't take any part in the fighting until like
Speaker 1: eighteen o nine, when they're sent to Portugal to fight
Speaker 1: under the Duke of Wellington. After deploying to Portugal. The
Speaker 1: fifty seven fought heroically at the Battle of Albuera, which
Speaker 1: was this horribly bloody, grinding affair that killed like ten
Speaker 1: thousand people and was like a hugely famous battle of time.
Speaker 1: And it has now been forgotten by everybody but war nerds,
Speaker 1: because that's what happens when you sacrifice yourself in hugely
Speaker 1: famous battles, is everybody but nerds forgets you. Um, And
Speaker 1: I wish that that wasn't the case, because yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: now we should remember all the battles. Obviously we're still
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan, like we should remember all the ship that's
Speaker 1: still going on. But it's more interesting to me sometimes
Speaker 1: the olden time battles because he's just gotta be in
Speaker 1: good shape. I gotta be out here stabbing you. That's
Speaker 1: a lot of work. And I have that multiple people,
Speaker 1: like I gotta be out here. How long are you?
Speaker 1: How many hours are you outside stabbing? I know, everybody's
Speaker 1: gotta be out of breath, just like and they're all
Speaker 1: wearing like these thick cotton uniforms like now ship breeds
Speaker 1: right like right now we got breed material. They have
Speaker 1: to dress like they're about to go to a kaya
Speaker 1: West fans hat certain pounds, like yeah, it's it sucks,
Speaker 1: it sounds terrible. I have to take a break. Is
Speaker 1: there a point in the fight where we both just
Speaker 1: like hold on, listen, just take yo. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: they're actually we're so time. Everybody stretched. We don't know
Speaker 1: we're gonna keep the battle going. We just saw me
Speaker 1: so like yeah. They So his unit fights in this
Speaker 1: very famous battle, um and they earned the nickname the
Speaker 1: die Hards because like they're they're such good of fighters.
Speaker 1: And Gregor would spend the rest of his life bragging
Speaker 1: about the fact that he served with the die Hards
Speaker 1: and he fought in this battle, and he didn't. It's
Speaker 1: a total lie because when it happened, he was actually
Speaker 1: back in England, because months before the fighting happened, he
Speaker 1: got into like what was probably a fistfight with a
Speaker 1: superior officer and then got kicked out of his unit
Speaker 1: and eventually the entire British Army um um. And we
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what happened, but one of his comrades
Speaker 1: did write that he was much addicted to the pleasures
Speaker 1: of the table gambling and was frequently intemperate, drunk to
Speaker 1: excess Um so he was probably got wasted and got
Speaker 1: into a dumb fight with somebody he shouldn't have been
Speaker 1: fucking with, and he got kicked out of the army. Wow,
Speaker 1: I love how classy it sounds back then like he
Speaker 1: loved the table bowl, the table. Yeah. Now it's like,
Speaker 1: but you're sitting at a slot machine for sixteen hours.
Speaker 1: It's called the table. It's if you smoke a cigar
Speaker 1: and we're white gloves while you do it. It's classy
Speaker 1: and not. It's a very depressing problem. Oh goodness, this guy.
Speaker 1: So he just came to war for the turn up.
Speaker 1: He said, it's gonna be cute. The girls are gonna
Speaker 1: be a statue. I'm gonna give you fashion, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give you decoration, decorative warrior. And then he gets kicked
Speaker 1: out before the fighting starts. But that's perfect. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the thing about the eighteen hundreds is like he just
Speaker 1: went on claiming, oh no, I served with this unit
Speaker 1: at that famous battle, like I'm one of them, like
Speaker 1: I'm and he had like the regimental badges and there's
Speaker 1: no internet, like nobody gets like nobody can check up
Speaker 1: on this ship. Um so he just it's the perfect
Speaker 1: situation for him. He's like, because of his comrades fought
Speaker 1: and died bravely and earned a name for themselves, he
Speaker 1: gets to use that name. But he also got to
Speaker 1: be hanging out back in fucking Edinburgh sorry not Lyne
Speaker 1: Edinburgh at the time. Like it's great situation for It's like,
Speaker 1: how are we going to tweet that he got headed
Speaker 1: out the army before the fild, Like there's no way
Speaker 1: to do that? Yeah, exactly, yea heat it out the
Speaker 1: r I like. So his first biographer, who was a
Speaker 1: soldier who served with him, Colonel Rafter, And we'll talk
Speaker 1: about this guy a little bit later. Um, who hated him,
Speaker 1: by the way, wrote that quote. McGregor now appeared to
Speaker 1: enjoy the free, his freedom with little foresight and less reflection.
Speaker 1: So he's very happy to be kicked out of the army.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, I will be Yeah, fuck it. I mean
Speaker 1: it seems like a bad thing to be in. And
Speaker 1: he got everything he needed. He got the drip and
Speaker 1: he got the rep and he had to go to war.
Speaker 1: That's the perfect recipe. It is perfect. And like it
Speaker 1: was a dumb Like there's been like three wars ever
Speaker 1: that like we're worth it to fight in, and like
Speaker 1: the fucking Napoleonic Wars were not one of them. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, rafter goes on to write, quote, having honored
Speaker 1: the city of Edinburgh with his residence for some time,
Speaker 1: he there assumed the title of colonel. He was not
Speaker 1: actually a colonel. He's just one of these guys in
Speaker 1: the eight hundreds who's like, I'm gonna call myself a
Speaker 1: fucking colonel. Um. He decorated his heels with guilt spurs,
Speaker 1: that's like golden spurs, and his breast with the badge
Speaker 1: of a Portuguese Order of Knighthood, which he had not
Speaker 1: earned either. His lady foreign contessa his footman were dressed
Speaker 1: in a fairy, whimsical livery, and the panels of his
Speaker 1: chariot were highly emblasmed and shown with all the blushing
Speaker 1: honolds honors of a coronet, which as they could. So
Speaker 1: he's he's just lying, and he's got the money to
Speaker 1: buy all of the fancy things to claim that he's
Speaker 1: a colonel, and like his wife is royalty. And and again,
Speaker 1: the only way to know somebody was fancy back then
Speaker 1: was whether or not they could afford to pretend they
Speaker 1: had honors and nobody is able to check up on ship,
Speaker 1: so he's got the money. So it's true. It works
Speaker 1: out great for him. Well, actually it doesn't. It doesn't
Speaker 1: work out great quite at this point because he's a
Speaker 1: Scotsman and all of the people around him or Scotsman
Speaker 1: and Scottish people don't give a shit about this because
Speaker 1: there's scott it right, Like, they don't like, they don't
Speaker 1: they like, oh, you're covered in golden ship, like we
Speaker 1: all spend all of our time getting into naked fist
Speaker 1: fight fist fights in the wood woods were fucking Scottish Like,
Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, your your medals are cute, but we
Speaker 1: don't care. Yeah we don't care. Yeah, they do not.
Speaker 1: He will later figure out how to trick his native people,
Speaker 1: but at this point his native people are like, so
Speaker 1: what the fuck, Like, who cares if you're if you're
Speaker 1: a colonel and you married a rich lady like go
Speaker 1: go likes piss up a rope buddy, Um uh so
Speaker 1: yeah they Gregor decides to leave Scotland forever and he
Speaker 1: moves to the Isle of Wight with all of his
Speaker 1: fancy stuff because the Isle of Wight, as you might
Speaker 1: have guessed by the name was filled with a lot
Speaker 1: of dumb, rich white people who through ostentatious parties, and
Speaker 1: all of these people believe his lies as long as
Speaker 1: he dresses well. So like this is the place for him.
Speaker 1: I'm glad he finally found his scammera paradise. He get
Speaker 1: his great gats beyond who's the great gass the military,
Speaker 1: and I love it. Yeah, yeah, he's doing it. He's
Speaker 1: doing it right. Um. As Rafter wrote, quote, he there
Speaker 1: represented himself as an heir to the to a Highland
Speaker 1: baronet and to a castle with an estate in the Highlands.
Speaker 1: His gay disposition, handsel and figure and good address procured
Speaker 1: him ready admission to all circles, and the assemblies of
Speaker 1: the isle were considered devoid of their principal attraction unless
Speaker 1: graced by the presence of the lively Scotsman. So it
Speaker 1: becomes like the biggest name on the island. He's like,
Speaker 1: he's he's he does have that like thing. He would
Speaker 1: have been a good like reality star or something at
Speaker 1: the time. He's good at self. Yeah, yeah, and everybody
Speaker 1: everybody on this island charismatic, specifically to rich people, like
Speaker 1: he's really good at impressing rich people. Um, right, and
Speaker 1: everyone's board, especially if you're rich, you actually have people
Speaker 1: to do the day to day ship that you had
Speaker 1: to do that Ben, if you don't have to plush
Speaker 1: your own hand cart and make your own damn food,
Speaker 1: then you probably need some entertainment. Yeah. Why would you
Speaker 1: care if somebody's lying through their teeth at you? As
Speaker 1: long as they tell a good story. Like that's literally
Speaker 1: the only thing that matters. Because you're so bored you
Speaker 1: want to die all the time. Time. But you know
Speaker 1: who's not so bored, they want to die all the time. Lacy,
Speaker 1: the products and services that support this podcast we have returned.
Speaker 1: That was a little more energy than that deserved. I
Speaker 1: was trying to be like Gregor McGregor and like and
Speaker 1: do the hype you know. Yeah, yeah it works for me.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Lacy, thank you, thank you for keeping my
Speaker 1: confidence high. As a confidence man, I um, maybe one day.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he dominates the social scene in the Isle
Speaker 1: of Wight. Um, but he gets bored because like he's
Speaker 1: he's one. Like it's kind of like he beat that
Speaker 1: level and he's the big fish and the alo whites
Speaker 1: kind of a small pond. So he decides he wants
Speaker 1: to go somewhere bigger and fancier and like take yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Never satisfied, so he goes to London, um, which is
Speaker 1: the fanciest place in the world then and maybe now,
Speaker 1: I guess it's it's still pretty fancy, still pretty fancy, um.
Speaker 1: But you know, London is kind of like a different
Speaker 1: fucking ballpark than the Isle of White and he's gonna
Speaker 1: need more than just like fake credentials to make a
Speaker 1: mark there because there's a lot of colonels and fucking
Speaker 1: barons and ship like there's kings and ship it's fucking
Speaker 1: it's London. So thankfully for him, his dad had just
Speaker 1: died um. And even though his dad wasn't the clan chieftain,
Speaker 1: Gregor was able to start lying and pretend that he'd
Speaker 1: inherited the position as the chief of Clan McGregor. So
Speaker 1: he starts calling himself Sir Gregor McGregor. And again, no Internet,
Speaker 1: so nobody gets to check this ship. And for a
Speaker 1: while it worked, largely because Gregor burned through his wife's
Speaker 1: dowry at an extraordinary pace, bribing his way into high
Speaker 1: society and buying all the expensive uniforms and a kouchrama
Speaker 1: that he needed to look like the man he was
Speaker 1: pretending to beat all of this eight through you know,
Speaker 1: the money that he had. And then in eighteen eleven,
Speaker 1: tragedy struck. His wife Maria died. Now, this was not
Speaker 1: a tragedy because he cared anything about her. This was
Speaker 1: a you know fucker. Um, this was a tragedy because
Speaker 1: it severs his ties with her rich family, and he
Speaker 1: was starting to run low on cash and he didn't
Speaker 1: make no babies with her. Come on, oh, scam a McGregor.
Speaker 1: You didn't make you about one seed with Honestly, you
Speaker 1: have a little connection. He's not taking a hit. I
Speaker 1: love how angry that you are with him that he
Speaker 1: did not pregnant impregnate his wife before she died tragically. Um,
Speaker 1: because it's bad, it's bad. Uh, it's bad craft. You
Speaker 1: know you gotta make a baby right? Also, like if
Speaker 1: you're gonna run through your coins, like are you just
Speaker 1: looking for affirmation, sweetheart? Like you gotta be trying to
Speaker 1: have Like there has to be some kind of en goal.
Speaker 1: Are you trying to make more money? Are you gonna
Speaker 1: rope people into your new pyramid scheme? McGregor McGregor LLC
Speaker 1: co of Riches, Like, what's the end goal here? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the thing about at this point he doesn't really
Speaker 1: have an end goal. He's just kind of he just
Speaker 1: kind of wants to feel fancy. Um. He doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to have a plan in this period that will come later.
Speaker 1: He grows. He this is a growth story, lazy um.
Speaker 1: But at this point, yeah, he's so. I'm actually gonna
Speaker 1: quote from it right up in the Rothchild archive about him. Quote.
Speaker 1: McGregor could not face the prospect of returning to his
Speaker 1: family farm in Scotland. His only real experience was military,
Speaker 1: and his interest was aroused by the colonial revolts against
Speaker 1: Spanish rule in Latin America, particularly Venezuela. The Venezuelan revolutionary
Speaker 1: general Francisco de Miranda had been fedted in London during
Speaker 1: a recent visit, and McGregor had formed the idea that
Speaker 1: exotic adventures in the New World might earn him similar celebrity.
Speaker 1: He sold the small Scottish estate he had inherited and
Speaker 1: sailed for South America via Jamaica in the early eighteen twelve. Now,
Speaker 1: this guy, General Francisco de Miranda, is is a really
Speaker 1: interesting dude. So like this period. We'll talk about this
Speaker 1: a little later, but like everybody's fucking the South. America
Speaker 1: is full of revolutions, and this guy, Francisco de Miranda
Speaker 1: is like a revolutionary, like a very successful general who's
Speaker 1: won a bunch of battles and like he just travels
Speaker 1: around Europe when he's not fighting and fox absolutely everybody.
Speaker 1: Um So, he rules. He's like, he's like he's like
Speaker 1: a cool figure, like he's the soldier of fortune, this
Speaker 1: like fighter for liberty. And he's also just like he's
Speaker 1: like James Bond, just like sleeping with everybody in every
Speaker 1: city he can. Um So, he's like McGregor sees this
Speaker 1: guy and he's like, that's the fucking life I warrant um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he goes to Jamaica. It's supposed to just be a stopover,
Speaker 1: but he falls in love with Jamaica as soon as
Speaker 1: he lands there, and he tries briefly to make a life.
Speaker 1: But for McGregor, making a life somewhere meant hanging out
Speaker 1: at rich people's parties and pretending to be a war hero.
Speaker 1: And in those days, traveling dandies had to carry letters
Speaker 1: from other rich and famous people who knew the rich
Speaker 1: and famous people in the area they'd travel to and
Speaker 1: that was how you'd get introduced to high society. And
Speaker 1: he didn't have any of that, so nobody would let
Speaker 1: him into their parties. Dang, he didn't think he just
Speaker 1: makes some letters up. Yeah, that's what's surprising to me,
Speaker 1: because he's not above it. I guess he just didn't
Speaker 1: He wasn't confident that he could. Maybe he didn't know
Speaker 1: who to fake the letter from. Right right, right right.
Speaker 1: You do need that information, you need to you need
Speaker 1: to have a name, and he probably didn't have that.
Speaker 1: And again he's he's he's a baby scammer at this point,
Speaker 1: you know, he's he's he's not good yet. So he
Speaker 1: was waiting outside the club and he couldn't get in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he could not get in. Nobody's letting him through the rope.
Speaker 1: So in spring of eighteen twelve, he continues on to
Speaker 1: Venezuela and he lands in Caracas two weeks after much
Speaker 1: of the city had been destroyed by an earthquake that
Speaker 1: killed like thirty people. Um horrible, horrible earthquake. So he
Speaker 1: introduces himself as Sir Gregor to anyone who'd listened, and
Speaker 1: he starts talking to representatives of the Republican Army uh
Speaker 1: and claiming that he's a colonel and a knight in
Speaker 1: the Portuguese or Order of Christ and all of his
Speaker 1: old lives. Now at that point, Venezuela's in the middle
Speaker 1: of a revolution against Spanish authority. And this was part
Speaker 1: of a broad trend across South America, like all like
Speaker 1: all of these places in South America are erupting into
Speaker 1: like liberation struggles, um and as times of chaos and
Speaker 1: political change tend to do. This period opened up the
Speaker 1: door to Charlottean's and Conman. It's real easy to like
Speaker 1: work on a grift in a in a in a
Speaker 1: situation like I mean, look at COVID. You know many COVID,
Speaker 1: Yes there all right, and we haven't even had our
Speaker 1: evolution yet, like like thirty days away or so. Literally
Speaker 1: it's like a few days away from the revolution, not far. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I need to get my revolution scams together. What am
Speaker 1: I going to be selling out here on the streets.
Speaker 1: I think Colonel Moseley has actually a nice ring to it.
Speaker 1: Could be a colonel, yeah, I think so. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: just gotta pick a militia that's not actually going to
Speaker 1: fight to be a colonel of because you don't want to.
Speaker 1: You don't want to get tested on that ship. Right, No,
Speaker 1: I gotta go somewhere on people like Tooth, like like
Speaker 1: New Guinea, like very small. Yeah. So all these con
Speaker 1: men and stuff start popping up in Venezuela, and not
Speaker 1: just conmon but all of these Like it's just like
Speaker 1: there's a big vacuum of power and a bunch of
Speaker 1: dudes who want power kind of flooded. Yeah. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote from a write up by the Bulletin of Latin
Speaker 1: American Research to kind of discuss this period. Quote. The
Speaker 1: end of Spanish rule in the Americas is generally seen
Speaker 1: by scholars as a period in which a power vacuum
Speaker 1: came to be filled by Cardillos. These were popular leaders,
Speaker 1: strongmen competing on the basis of their charisma. There's strong
Speaker 1: social constituencies i e. Them in from their land economic
Speaker 1: basis and political projects, and the absence of a state
Speaker 1: monopoly of violence. Physical force was rarely irrelevant to explanations
Speaker 1: of their rise to power on these criteria. Despite his
Speaker 1: foreignness and Scottish birth, but Gregor certainly had the capacity
Speaker 1: to become a successful cutty Low, even though the quintessential
Speaker 1: cutty Low was a local figure whose ability to function
Speaker 1: as a leader rested primarily on local support and resources.
Speaker 1: So this is like, these kinds of guys are are
Speaker 1: writing into this gap and gaining power for themselves, and
Speaker 1: he's got the potential to be one of them. Right.
Speaker 1: He has the skills, um, which is that he's charismatic
Speaker 1: and good at getting people to to follow him. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and if people have no leadership, then that's when you
Speaker 1: pull up with the leadership when everything Yeah, hey, look
Speaker 1: I just happened to be here and you do now
Speaker 1: I'm a leader. Does he speaks Spanish? Are you all
Speaker 1: willing to die for me? Oh? Yeah? It's been taken
Speaker 1: over by Spade yet yeah no, no, no no, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're fighting for freedom from Spain. But like so
Speaker 1: they're fighting a war like as He lands and Caracas
Speaker 1: has liberated, but like there's Spanish troops all over the place,
Speaker 1: like there's a and the war is not going very well. Um,
Speaker 1: and yeah he has to he learns at some point,
Speaker 1: you know, he started he grew up speaking Gaelic, I
Speaker 1: think so he had to learn English, like he's good
Speaker 1: at acquiring languages, as a lot of people tended to
Speaker 1: be in that era. So the Venezuelan Republicans were desperate
Speaker 1: for men, and they were desperate particularly for seasoned military leaders. Um.
Speaker 1: And the British armies like the most powerful army in
Speaker 1: the world at the time. They're the guys who beat Napoleon.
Speaker 1: So like, if you come in saying like, oh, I
Speaker 1: I was a British military officer to like this group
Speaker 1: of people trying to raise an army from nothing, like
Speaker 1: they're gonna be like, oh, ship, can you can you
Speaker 1: help us out? Like we really we could use some
Speaker 1: help here. So obviously he inflates his record. He lies
Speaker 1: and says that he's that he commanded the infamous fifty
Speaker 1: seven foot regiment the die Hards and turned them into
Speaker 1: the elite unit that held the Lion at the Battle
Speaker 1: of Albuera that he had not been at. But he yeah,
Speaker 1: I fought Napoleon. Yeah yeah. The Venezuelans had no way
Speaker 1: to know that he was lying because he was far
Speaker 1: away then, uh, and he owned a nice uniform, so
Speaker 1: they assumed he was telling the truth. Um, and he's
Speaker 1: you know, a convincing guy. So Gregor also made a
Speaker 1: good call by going directly to the commander in chief
Speaker 1: of the nascent Venezuelan state, General Miranda. That guy was
Speaker 1: just talking about at this point, he's basically the dictator
Speaker 1: of Venezuela because like they're trying to win a war
Speaker 1: and they do this thing that you see a lot
Speaker 1: of republics do in times of strife, where they're like, here,
Speaker 1: have all the power for a limited time, if you can,
Speaker 1: like if you can win this thing for us and all.
Speaker 1: But what's what's crazier is what's crazy isn't that like
Speaker 1: that happened and people usually wound up living under a
Speaker 1: dictator for the rest of the lives. What's crazy, Like
Speaker 1: sometimes those dictators actually did give back the power. It's
Speaker 1: the weird story. Yeah, yeah, it happened in Rome a
Speaker 1: couple of times. That's where you know Cincinnati, like the
Speaker 1: city of Cincinnati. It's named after a Roman leader named
Speaker 1: Cincinnatis who was this He was like a military leader
Speaker 1: who became the dictator of Rome during like this horrible
Speaker 1: like war that like threatened the life of the republic
Speaker 1: and they made him a dictator for like a temporary
Speaker 1: period of time, and he won the war and then
Speaker 1: he like gave up everything, all of his power and
Speaker 1: went back to being a farmer. And he was he
Speaker 1: was a chill dude. Yeah. Um yeah, that's why Cincinnati
Speaker 1: is called Cincinnati. Um. There there you go a little
Speaker 1: bit of extra history for you. So uh yeah, back
Speaker 1: to back to Gregor McGregor. So yeah, he goes straight
Speaker 1: to General Miranda, and David Sinclair's biographer notes that Miranda
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, the man that Gregor dreams of being. Um.
Speaker 1: But I also think that maybe because Gregor idolized this
Speaker 1: guy and had studied him so much he had he
Speaker 1: gained a really deep understanding of like what Miranda needed
Speaker 1: and wanted. Because he basically turns himself into the person
Speaker 1: that this guy needs and becomes his right hand man. Um,
Speaker 1: because like the war is not going well, Miranda needs
Speaker 1: a guy that he can trust to like train a
Speaker 1: lot of his troops and like he needs like a
Speaker 1: because Miranda is an old guy too, he needs a
Speaker 1: strong right hand and Gregor kind of becomes that. He
Speaker 1: gets immediately made a colonel for real this time. So
Speaker 1: he's actually he faked his way into being a colonel.
Speaker 1: So that's nice. Uh, And he gets a unit of
Speaker 1: cavalry um and he's sent straight into battle, this time
Speaker 1: near a town called mary Kay that was under deadly
Speaker 1: siege by the Spanish forces who were attempting to retake
Speaker 1: Venezuela for their king. For weeks, Venezuelan and Spanish soldiers
Speaker 1: clashed at various points along along front line. Gregor finally
Speaker 1: saw combat, and, as David Sinclair writes, he actually was
Speaker 1: really good at fighting. Like he he does the thing finally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a liar at first, but like when it
Speaker 1: comes down to actually going into battle, he's good at it.
Speaker 1: We love to see a good fake it till you
Speaker 1: make it story. Yeah, he faked his way into being
Speaker 1: a war hero until he made his way into being
Speaker 1: a war hero. I'm gonna quote from David Sinclair here.
Speaker 1: Colonel McGregor stirred Republican spirits when he led his cavalry
Speaker 1: into the route of a of a royal force near
Speaker 1: Sarah Gordo between mary Kay and Valencia. But it was
Speaker 1: something of a peripheral action and could not be developed
Speaker 1: into a general offensive by Miranda's troops. So he earns
Speaker 1: a promotion through his heroics, but they don't really affect
Speaker 1: the battle, and the fact that he gets a lot
Speaker 1: of attention for being brave spurs him on to do
Speaker 1: another like super brave dangerous cavalry charged during another battle
Speaker 1: at a place called Los Guios, and this time it
Speaker 1: gets most of his men killed and horribly maimed. Um
Speaker 1: too much your chip always yeah, yeah, but General McGregor
Speaker 1: survives and uh, his scheme works to the extent that
Speaker 1: his bravery again, like it impresses all of the other officers,
Speaker 1: who of course don't care that he got a bunch
Speaker 1: of guys killed. They care that, like he showed bravery
Speaker 1: and stuff, um, because that's the way war was at
Speaker 1: that point. Um, So yeah, that's that's cool. And getting
Speaker 1: his you know, getting his men massacred convey the other
Speaker 1: European soldiers in the serving in the Venezuelan cause that
Speaker 1: Gregor was a real war hero. So they like they
Speaker 1: all believe him now because he he leads this incredibly
Speaker 1: bad idea. Well of course, then also he can tell
Speaker 1: the story because he's the one, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the few who lived. He can be like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was crazy, it's not now it's not an error
Speaker 1: in judgment. It's like, oh, the opposing side. But I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what, I would not be in Gregor's battalion
Speaker 1: if they're like, oh Gregor, I'm no, no, no, no no,
Speaker 1: because his men die for sure, they die and dye
Speaker 1: in I want a chance in life. No, my men
Speaker 1: absolutely weren't cursing my name as they bled to death
Speaker 1: on the sands. You can ask them, well, you can't
Speaker 1: because they're dead. But like I'll tell you, I was there.
Speaker 1: They were happy about dying. They actually were like, this
Speaker 1: is great, thanks for getting us a chance to die.
Speaker 1: Greg It was so easy to be a military scammer
Speaker 1: back then. So another dude who was running around in
Speaker 1: the same circles of this period was fighting on the
Speaker 1: same side, was a guy named Simone Boudivar, who was
Speaker 1: at that time considered to be one of the brightest
Speaker 1: minds in the Venezuela military. And he was a colonel. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Simone Boulevard, very famous guy. He went on to become
Speaker 1: the Liberator, a nickname he earned like he really really
Speaker 1: earned by freeing modern day Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru,
Speaker 1: and Panama from Spanish rule. So like, yeah, the girls
Speaker 1: knew they were about to be free. Yeah yeah, so
Speaker 1: yeah I like that. Um. And he's a fascinating dude.
Speaker 1: And it is also like everyone who gets a bunch
Speaker 1: of statues kind of a piece of ship too. Um.
Speaker 1: But for our purposes today, you just need to know
Speaker 1: that he was like a popular officer when Gregor started
Speaker 1: fucking his young cousin. Um. And I'm gonna quote from
Speaker 1: of course. Hell yeah, man, it goes okay, it actually
Speaker 1: goes pretty well for Gregor. Um. The scene that he
Speaker 1: was he seems to have actually been in love with
Speaker 1: this woman because they stayed together for like twenty something
Speaker 1: years until she dies. Why don't they just keep is
Speaker 1: he killing them? They? I mean, you know she did
Speaker 1: have kids, and like that wasn't a good idea back then,
Speaker 1: but with what with the deaths, that's why birthdays are
Speaker 1: a thing now, because he was like, oh, your kid
Speaker 1: made it, your kid made it, and you made it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from Colonel Rafter's biography here, and this
Speaker 1: is like after he starts fucking this girl. Um, I
Speaker 1: think Josepha is her name. Yeah, the mother of this
Speaker 1: lady finding that reports president, prejudicial to her daughter's reputation
Speaker 1: had obtained circulation in consequence of McGregor's intimacy with her,
Speaker 1: appealed to General Miranda, who, acquainting McGregor with the circumstance,
Speaker 1: recommended him strongly to marry her, to which he answered,
Speaker 1: with all that apathy for which she is remarkable, with
Speaker 1: all my heart, I have no objection. So he starts
Speaker 1: sucking this girl, but like not not in an official way,
Speaker 1: and like you're not supposed to do that at this point.
Speaker 1: And this girl's mom finds out and she's like, the
Speaker 1: hell do you think you're doing? And she goes to
Speaker 1: General Miranda because she's like, this is a high society
Speaker 1: woman that he's like fucking and he's not. He's not
Speaker 1: getting hitched to. And so Miranda basically sits him down
Speaker 1: and says like, hey, if you don't marry this girl,
Speaker 1: bad things will happen to you. Because this is a
Speaker 1: dictatorship and I have that power and his responses, I
Speaker 1: have no objection to marrying her. So yeah, he doesn't
Speaker 1: even say that, he's just like I don't hate her,
Speaker 1: Yeah fine, yeah, yeah, no, ringer here, what do y'all
Speaker 1: want to do it whatever. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, this
Speaker 1: is this is basically a shotgun wedding um and it
Speaker 1: would it would be one of General Miranda's last orders
Speaker 1: because the war very quickly went to ship for the
Speaker 1: Republican side. And to make a long story short, Miranda
Speaker 1: was again an old man and kind of losing it,
Speaker 1: and as his chances shout A soured, he retreated into fantasy.
Speaker 1: And like he and he, he promotes McGregor to a
Speaker 1: general and they would spend all of their time and
Speaker 1: his like mansion in the hills away from the front line,
Speaker 1: have big parties and they're actually having like a giant
Speaker 1: fancy party on July twelve when the entire Venezuelan lion
Speaker 1: collapses under a renewed Spanish assault, and obviously the guy
Speaker 1: being the McGregor is he's very happy to be having
Speaker 1: a party rather than like fighting at the front line
Speaker 1: when things are actually bad. What a party spoiler though,
Speaker 1: you know, someone coming in and be like, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: everybody died, everybody's dead. We don't really have an army anymore.
Speaker 1: It looks like we lost this one. Is that a
Speaker 1: coop for Champagne? I know I will thank you so
Speaker 1: the whole defeat happened in part because Simone Boulevard, who
Speaker 1: was not yet the Liberator, kind of abandoned his post.
Speaker 1: Because Boulevard is one of these guys was a real
Speaker 1: sense of his own destiny and he's like, oh, we're
Speaker 1: gonna lose. I don't I don't want to be around
Speaker 1: for this ship. So he's not a loser. General Miranda
Speaker 1: returns to Caracas to try to organize a defense, and
Speaker 1: Boulevard gathers a bunch of his allies and comes back
Speaker 1: and arrests the general and hands him over to Spain,
Speaker 1: and as a result, Bolivar is able to kind of escape,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a very shady thing that happens, but
Speaker 1: it seems to be mostly his desire to save his
Speaker 1: own ass and like the fact that the war was
Speaker 1: clearly lost. So they yeah, so Boulevard like runs the
Speaker 1: funk away to Jamaica basically uh. And Gregor McGregor does
Speaker 1: the same thing. While a lot of brave Republicans die
Speaker 1: fighting the Spanish. Gregor's like, oh no, no, no, no no,
Speaker 1: and he got I am not a causes guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he he very pointedly gets on the boat with
Speaker 1: all of the Republican sides money, like all of their
Speaker 1: gold that they're taking away so that they can continue
Speaker 1: the revolution. Like he makes sure he's on the money.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he's watching the money. That's what he's there
Speaker 1: to do. And they go back to sorry, the Jamaica,
Speaker 1: to curus ou Um. Yeah, you know, the Bahamas, Like
Speaker 1: that's that's that's that's that's where you go run to
Speaker 1: when you lose a war in South America. Then and
Speaker 1: now wind up in the Bahamas. When I lose my
Speaker 1: war in South America, I'm planning to go to a
Speaker 1: beautiful yeah now refugees, a strong yeah yeah, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was a freedom fighter. Yeah. So Bolivar winds up
Speaker 1: there too. In the defeated revolutionaries immediately start planning their comeback.
Speaker 1: But like Gregor is not really interested in that. The
Speaker 1: reputation he had earned during the war, Like he kind
Speaker 1: of liked being a cardillo and he liked he liked
Speaker 1: he was a man people would follow. He had like
Speaker 1: a name in South America. Now he was he was
Speaker 1: kind of famous for being on the size of liberation,
Speaker 1: and he figures that kind of leaning into this is
Speaker 1: going to be his best chance to make a shipload
Speaker 1: of money. So he travels to New Granada, which is
Speaker 1: a Spanish colony on the border Venezuela that was fighting
Speaker 1: like hell to not be a Spanish colony anymore. It
Speaker 1: had a leader who was a general named Narinho who
Speaker 1: had been given dictatorial power again and the hope that
Speaker 1: he would beat Spain. Same kind of deal, and and
Speaker 1: McGregor does the same thing. He like gets in good
Speaker 1: with this guy. He gets given like an army by
Speaker 1: this guy, and high too like hired to train them basically,
Speaker 1: and he was not good at training armies um and
Speaker 1: they he tended to mainly focus on making them look
Speaker 1: fancy and march around a lot which they like gowns
Speaker 1: beautiful downs can fight without a gown. Where's you want
Speaker 1: to die in this war? So his subordinates complained that
Speaker 1: he was basically a little dictator himself. Uh, but before
Speaker 1: you know that can come to a head. General Narinho
Speaker 1: loses a major battle and the Spanish army basically wins,
Speaker 1: and seeing the advancing Spanish forces, Gregor runs like funk
Speaker 1: again and he winds up retreating to the public to
Speaker 1: the Republic of Cartagena in a in modern Columbia UM.
Speaker 1: So we all know Cartagena uh for different things these days.
Speaker 1: At that point it was like a little independent republic.
Speaker 1: So this is a very complicated and messy period in
Speaker 1: Latin American history. I'm the furthest thing in the world
Speaker 1: from an expert from it. There's all these different figures.
Speaker 1: Bol Far comes back and fights again and loses again
Speaker 1: and runs away again, and like all this ship's happening,
Speaker 1: Like it's just a fucking constantly revolution revolutions and rebellions
Speaker 1: and fight and fight happening. It sounds like, yeah, everything
Speaker 1: is just like it's very very confusing time to try
Speaker 1: to understand. Gregor exhibited a great skill in latching himself
Speaker 1: to whatever soldiers and whatever soldiers were hanging around him
Speaker 1: to like whatever cause seemed like the best bet at
Speaker 1: the time, and he was not always good at judging that,
Speaker 1: which is why he wound up trapped in the city
Speaker 1: of Cartagena while a massive Spanish army blasted the walls
Speaker 1: away with big guns. He yeah, he managed to survive
Speaker 1: the siege, just barely, and he characteristically got out because
Speaker 1: he volunteered to organize the retreat after helping to convince
Speaker 1: that's what I volunted there before. There in the room,
Speaker 1: they're like, Okay, who's gonna do the charge? Who? You
Speaker 1: know what, I got the retreat. I'm actually very good
Speaker 1: at organizing. I majored in retreated college. I can take
Speaker 1: care of this. You guys die holding them off, which
Speaker 1: is what happens, like the bravest men die holding them off,
Speaker 1: and Gregor organizes the retreat. Uh. And of course he
Speaker 1: winds up taking another boat back to Jamaica, and this
Speaker 1: time he's welcomed by the island's British high society types
Speaker 1: because now he's a famous freedom fighter. Because the British,
Speaker 1: they don't they like that all of these places are
Speaker 1: freeing themselves from Spain, because every country that frees itself
Speaker 1: from Spain is another place the British can set up
Speaker 1: shopping and sell stuff to right themselves. Yeah, but they're
Speaker 1: kind of colonization. So the British thought that Spanish colonialism
Speaker 1: was barbarous because they murder all these people, they enslave
Speaker 1: all these people, as opposed to the British kind of colonization,
Speaker 1: where the countries are independent, we just bring in corporations
Speaker 1: that force people to labor forests and in conditions that
Speaker 1: are basically slavery, right, Jeff bay selves murder and college. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's cute over here like people that, but we at
Speaker 1: leastwork and we get to talk, yeah, and we get
Speaker 1: to talk a good game about supporting liberation in freedom right, um,
Speaker 1: and so like these high society types are all for
Speaker 1: the freedom of these nations from Spain. And McGregor is
Speaker 1: now a famous freedom fighter and he's the best kind
Speaker 1: of he's the best kind of Latin American freedom fighter.
Speaker 1: A white guy, right, he's not Latin American. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: and also like honestly, like a lot of the Latin
Speaker 1: American freedom fighters who were natives, we were basically white.
Speaker 1: Like we're white guys because like people, so uh quote.
Speaker 1: McGregor was delighted to find himself welcomed as a hero
Speaker 1: among the British community of Jamaica, and enthralled many a
Speaker 1: dinner party there with heavily embellished accounts of his part
Speaker 1: in the siege of Cartagena. Some of those listening received
Speaker 1: the impression that McGregor had taken personal charge of the
Speaker 1: defense of the city, with one of them recorded as
Speaker 1: leaping to his feet and proposing an enthusiastic toast to
Speaker 1: the Hannibal of modern Carthage. One of the names McGregor
Speaker 1: made was that he had lost two children during the
Speaker 1: Terrible Siege. This was almost certainly a lie, probably designed
Speaker 1: further to dramatize McGregor sacrifices in the car fake kid
Speaker 1: death scamp. Hell, yeah he did. That's the best kind
Speaker 1: of death to fake. You get so much. I fake that.
Speaker 1: I faked my children's deaths all the time. But did
Speaker 1: he bring the kids that he had with the Spanish
Speaker 1: woman with him or is he just a debbie dad
Speaker 1: who was like, yeah, and then they killed my kids
Speaker 1: for sure? He never had kids. Oh I thought the
Speaker 1: homegrown got pregnant before she died. The second wife, Uh no, no,
Speaker 1: she's dead as hell. I don't think she had any kids.
Speaker 1: The second wife didn't have kids either, Okay, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: the second wife no, sorry, the second wife is still alive,
Speaker 1: but they haven't had kids. Okay, he just made up
Speaker 1: some kids. He was like, yeah, I missed le Jr. M. McGregor,
Speaker 1: Gregor Gregor and us Stephanie. Those are my kids so weird. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: my my child fake too for s own in my chad. Anyway,
Speaker 1: they're dead now, horrible, real, sad, real, sad? Can I
Speaker 1: have more wine? Yeah? Uh, that is my My advice
Speaker 1: to all of you is pretend that your children are
Speaker 1: dead if you want to be famous. It helps you
Speaker 1: know what, won't fake the deaths of your children. Wait, anyway,
Speaker 1: here's ads. We're back, and Sophie's being mean to me
Speaker 1: because I don't understand pop culture. And you know that's
Speaker 1: the kind of bigger tree that I faced daily. So
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not my fault that you don't know.
Speaker 1: As my kids died in the siege of Cartagena. I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry for you. A lot kids have been dead
Speaker 1: longer than he's been alive. By the time McGregor wound
Speaker 1: up back in Jamaica again, as I said, Boulivard had
Speaker 1: attempted deliberate Venezuela again and it hadn't worked out. Um,
Speaker 1: And this is like he's a boulevard is like a
Speaker 1: fucking committ a dude, Like he does believe in what
Speaker 1: he's doing. He's just you know, he's the kind of
Speaker 1: guy who's able to get it done, which is the
Speaker 1: kind of guy who's willing to like time for me
Speaker 1: to abandon this army. The same kind of work out.
Speaker 1: You gotta know when to cut your losses, my losses,
Speaker 1: I mean people. Yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Like you gotta know when to hold them,
Speaker 1: when to walk away, and when to run from them
Speaker 1: and lave them to die at the hands of the
Speaker 1: Spanish army. That's what um. Yeah. So the two meet
Speaker 1: up again on the island uh, and this time Bolivar
Speaker 1: offers to make McGregor a general again. And it was
Speaker 1: eighteen sixteen by this point. Um. In short order, both
Speaker 1: men managed to rally together another army. I don't know
Speaker 1: how they do it, but they're always able to keep
Speaker 1: making armies. And they invade Venezuela again, and this one
Speaker 1: goes better. At first, Bolivar's forces win a major victory,
Speaker 1: but then Spain counter attacks and a bunch of people die,
Speaker 1: and Bolivar finds himself retreating to a town called Sharoni,
Speaker 1: where his trust trustworthy friend, General Gregor McGregor was waiting
Speaker 1: with a fresh force of men. By the time he
Speaker 1: got there, though, Gregor was long gone because as soon
Speaker 1: as he heard that Bolivar had law he retreated. Look
Speaker 1: that's said, and he's give Hi credit this. He's incredible
Speaker 1: at retreating UM and this is the moment. This is
Speaker 1: his real moment of heroism, like the one that we're getting.
Speaker 1: This is like the one legitimate moment of heroism that
Speaker 1: he really has. UM. Also, like Bolivar feels to me
Speaker 1: just like McGregor. Word's like, okay, we usually third times
Speaker 1: the charm, but the third time we still didn't defeat
Speaker 1: the Spanish army. Like bro, let's just pack it up, okay,
Speaker 1: Like I'm not fighting an award for boulevard. Are you
Speaker 1: gonna die? The thing that differentiates them is that Bolivard
Speaker 1: really does believe in liberation, and that's why he keeps
Speaker 1: doing this right, like he's just willing to kind of
Speaker 1: like he's not. He believes so much in his destiny
Speaker 1: that he's not willing to like die because he he
Speaker 1: has to make the cause happen. Gregor doesn't believe in
Speaker 1: anything um, but he's really good at retreating UM. So
Speaker 1: he's got this army which is mostly made up of
Speaker 1: freed slaves who didn't really know they had any option
Speaker 1: but to fight for a bunch of indigenous people. Um.
Speaker 1: But to his credit, he didn't like abandon them. He
Speaker 1: he leads them on this retreat and it's like the
Speaker 1: most herobic moment in his life because it's it's a
Speaker 1: horrible like situation to be in, because like they're fleeing
Speaker 1: through these heavy like woodland areas and they're they're being
Speaker 1: pursued constantly by all of these Spanish armies and they
Speaker 1: keep getting into like these battles that they keep winning.
Speaker 1: Like he's actually really good at this. He keeps getting
Speaker 1: attacked while he's fleeing and like beating these Spanish armies
Speaker 1: that are trying to capture him as he's trying to
Speaker 1: link up with his other allies further north. And like
Speaker 1: by day nine of this, their ammunitions almost spent and
Speaker 1: like their their clothing is in tatters and they're just
Speaker 1: they've just been like murdering their way through this this
Speaker 1: incredibly rugged terrain. Um. It's like it's it's actually a
Speaker 1: really impressive military feat that he's able to keep this
Speaker 1: army together and winning. But he owes a lot of
Speaker 1: it to his wife because like kind of when they're
Speaker 1: at the end of their rope and exhausted and ammunition,
Speaker 1: and out of ammunition, they wind up running into like
Speaker 1: get an their Spanish army, and they don't really like
Speaker 1: they don't have the ammo to fight them in the
Speaker 1: traditional way, and so his wife picks up a lance
Speaker 1: and leads the army on her horse into like this
Speaker 1: desperate suicidal charge against the Spanish lines, and they break
Speaker 1: the Spanish army against all odds and win. It's like
Speaker 1: this this fucking wild thing that happens. UM, And so
Speaker 1: General McGregor and his victorious army limp into the city
Speaker 1: of Barcelona after thirty four days of constant fighting and fleeing,
Speaker 1: and it's like it's it's it's seen as like a
Speaker 1: miracle basically that they'd survived Um and this incredible feat
Speaker 1: and it makes him like a legendary figure within South America. UM,
Speaker 1: And it is an act of like really like it's sucking.
Speaker 1: It was a crazy thing that he was able to
Speaker 1: like succeed at Um so simone Bolivar sin sem a
Speaker 1: letter hailing him as one of the great military geniuses
Speaker 1: of the era, and like he kind of deserved it
Speaker 1: at that point. Um And if he'd stayed with the
Speaker 1: Venezuelan cause, he would have had a guaranteed place of
Speaker 1: honor and privilege when they eventually won their war. But
Speaker 1: he gets into another big fight with a guy in
Speaker 1: charge of him, and when that guy like won't take
Speaker 1: the advice that McGregor gives him, McGregor just abandons, like
Speaker 1: the Venezuelan army and leaves. He was like, Okay, enough liberation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got into an argument with a guy. Fuck it, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't believe in this anymore, so he he fucks off.
Speaker 1: Bolivar like writes him a series of letters, desperate to
Speaker 1: try to get this guy to come back, but there
Speaker 1: was no getting McGregor back because he had fallen in
Speaker 1: love with a new dream, Lacey, the dream of every
Speaker 1: red blooded man and woman invading and conquering Florida. So
Speaker 1: he travels to Haiti and he hand picks a group
Speaker 1: of mercenaries for this endeavor, and he finds like a
Speaker 1: hundred and five guys, but they all abandoned him as
Speaker 1: soon as it's time to leave for the United States,
Speaker 1: so he winds up sailing to Philadelphia with just his wife,
Speaker 1: and he immediately sets to work recruiting get another army
Speaker 1: to invade Florida, which at that point belonged to Spain.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, and I'll so at that point it was
Speaker 1: a time in the world where you could just kind
Speaker 1: of like show up in an American city and been like,
Speaker 1: who has a gun and wants to do some war
Speaker 1: with me, Let's go to Florida, And like people would be, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to do that to Jethro about the war,
Speaker 1: let's go. Have you been to philadel It doesn't get nicer,
Speaker 1: Like we might as well go to war. So yeah,
Speaker 1: um he gets some yeses. And I'm gonna quote again
Speaker 1: from the land that never was here. He claimed that
Speaker 1: he had received a commission from the government of the
Speaker 1: United States, together with a considerable sum of money, to
Speaker 1: take possession of Florida on behalf of the Republican movement
Speaker 1: to New Granada, with a tacit agreement of the Spanish government.
Speaker 1: He had, he said, attended daily meetings in March eighteen
Speaker 1: seventeen with the American Secretary of State and the Spanish
Speaker 1: ambassador in Washington, and they had agreed that he should
Speaker 1: take a small force to occupy Amelia Island off the
Speaker 1: east coast of Florida, which he would subsequently hand over
Speaker 1: to the Americans. Spain would not attempt any military interventions
Speaker 1: so long as McGregor was seen to be acting in
Speaker 1: the interests of New Granada and was willing to see
Speaker 1: it Amelia to the Americans, but could not do so
Speaker 1: directly for political reasons, mainly that any display of willingness
Speaker 1: to give up its American possessions would serve to spread
Speaker 1: and encourage revolution. Now this was all a lie, like
Speaker 1: Spain did not agree to give up any part of Florida.
Speaker 1: Uh and the Secretary of State, who McGregor claims that
Speaker 1: he had worked with to set up this plan was
Speaker 1: not even in the United States at the time. He
Speaker 1: was in like France or something. But McGregor, nonetheless, somehow,
Speaker 1: somehow still walked away with a State Department mandate authorizing
Speaker 1: him to take control of Amelia Island and East and
Speaker 1: West Florida. Now, the paper was not signed by the
Speaker 1: Secretary of State, but it was signed by representatives of
Speaker 1: several Latin American liberation movements. And like some random dude
Speaker 1: who worked in the Secretary in the Department of State
Speaker 1: or in the State Department, and as best I can tell,
Speaker 1: he basically convinced these South American liberation leaders who were
Speaker 1: in Washington, d c. To like support their cause, that
Speaker 1: he was going to conquer Florida for them. And then
Speaker 1: he used their clout to score a meeting with some
Speaker 1: random State Department functionary who wrote down what he told him,
Speaker 1: and that gave McGregor the most important thing in the
Speaker 1: world in the eighteen hundreds, which was a fancy piece
Speaker 1: of paper with nice stamps on hit that he could
Speaker 1: use to convince dumb soldiers of fortune that he was legitimate.
Speaker 1: So like that's what he does. Like he needs the papers.
Speaker 1: He gets the papers, and so he starts trawling around
Speaker 1: New York and South Carolina and Georgia, calling himself Brigadier
Speaker 1: General of all the forces both naval and military, destined
Speaker 1: to affect the independence of the Florida's Look at my papers.
Speaker 1: I kind of want to steal that one someday when
Speaker 1: I invade Florida. I mean, someone needs to invade Florida,
Speaker 1: so I can use a Colonel Lazy. It could be you,
Speaker 1: just you. You just show up tall, and it's my
Speaker 1: job to raise the army and never get close to Florida.
Speaker 1: Someone else actually has to try invading it and stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm just here to raise a bunch of money and
Speaker 1: then take it and run. See, that's why I want
Speaker 1: to be I don't want to be the president doing
Speaker 1: the work of liberating Florida. No, No, nobody deliberate Florida.
Speaker 1: That's why it's still the way it is. So. Uh.
Speaker 1: He gathers an army of several hundred men, which is
Speaker 1: enough to cut Like a couple hundred guys, you could
Speaker 1: conquer a Florida. Back in those days things were easier. Uh.
Speaker 1: To fund his journey, he did the only thing he
Speaker 1: knew how to do besides fight, and he hatched an
Speaker 1: elaborate scheme. I'm gonna quote here from Colonel Rafters book.
Speaker 1: The Americans had long been looking with eyes of desire
Speaker 1: on the fertile and extensive tracts of East Florida, and
Speaker 1: now gladly embraced the opportunity which seemed to offer itself
Speaker 1: of gratifying their long cherished wishes. McGregor saw and took
Speaker 1: advantage of the public feeling. He issued and issued papers
Speaker 1: which he called scripts, which he engaged to convey to
Speaker 1: every person advancing one thousand dollars or to the holder
Speaker 1: of the script, which was transferable two thousand acres of
Speaker 1: land in Florida or to repay the sum advanced with interest.
Speaker 1: The world was is at all times the dupe of
Speaker 1: some hubble or another. And although it is scarcely credible,
Speaker 1: yet it is a certain fact that McGregor obtained by
Speaker 1: this means a hundred sixty thousand dollars. So he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: give me a thousand bucks and I'll give you a
Speaker 1: land in Florida. And people do it and he makes
Speaker 1: a lot of money. How you don't, Oh, I love it.
Speaker 1: That's what That's what all great con men do, though,
Speaker 1: is sell land they don't own. That's the great con
Speaker 1: our president kind of. Yeah, I mean it's still happening.
Speaker 1: You have to be careful if you're renting a house
Speaker 1: or something because there's so many people out here. We're
Speaker 1: still renting homes to that they don't own too people.
Speaker 1: So I love it. Yeah, it is. He is doing
Speaker 1: an Airbnb, right, Like the Airbnb is just like a
Speaker 1: dressed up like they're selling Florida to Yeah. No, you
Speaker 1: got this lang out so you see right there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: have you have you ever been there? No, I'll sell
Speaker 1: it to you. No, it's nice. You don't love it,
Speaker 1: You're gonna you're gonna love it. Florida, great weather, no snakes.
Speaker 1: So most con men would have just taken the money
Speaker 1: and run, but Gregor actually used it to equip an
Speaker 1: army and charter a boat, which he used to take
Speaker 1: sixty hand picked men to Amelia Island, which is that
Speaker 1: that point, just kind of a lawless island for haven
Speaker 1: for pirates and prostitutes. He defeats the tiny Spanish garrison
Speaker 1: and then like conquers the island, and he delivers this
Speaker 1: baffling speech to his soldiers, who again are all like
Speaker 1: drunk mercenaries, promising, the children of South America will resound
Speaker 1: your names and their songs, your deeds will be handed
Speaker 1: down to succeeding generations, and will cover yourselves and your
Speaker 1: latest posterity with a never fading wreath of glory. So
Speaker 1: he really he's talking. He's talking this up like the
Speaker 1: girls are gonna know you. Okay, everyone's gonna know your name.
Speaker 1: They're gonna singing songs about you. Tom, Tom oh Tom.
Speaker 1: He he fought real good. He's so good at fighting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So McGregor calls for reinforcements, but rather than invade Florida
Speaker 1: is promised, he's set to work trying to turn Amelia
Speaker 1: Island into like an independent nation. And not because anyone
Speaker 1: had asked him to do us, but because he just
Speaker 1: kind of he was just kind of thought it was
Speaker 1: a neat So he like he builds a seal. He
Speaker 1: like designs a seal for the Amelian government. He puts
Speaker 1: himself at its head. Uh, he like and he like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote here from from David Sinclair talking about
Speaker 1: like what he kind of gets up to in this period.
Speaker 1: The main purpose of his administration seems to have been
Speaker 1: to raise money for One of the first acts of
Speaker 1: Citizen McGregor, which is the title he gives himself, was
Speaker 1: to establish what he described as an admiralty court that
Speaker 1: would officially value the booty brought back to the island
Speaker 1: by its resident privateers and pirates. For the service, the
Speaker 1: court would demand a fee of sixteen and a half
Speaker 1: percent of the gross value of the treasure. Whether any
Speaker 1: of the island's maritime entrepreneurs ever he took advantage of
Speaker 1: the offer is not recorded, but to encourage them further
Speaker 1: in their brutal trade, McGregor issued so called letters of mark,
Speaker 1: which were officially government licenses for buccaneers. So again he
Speaker 1: probably no one it. It's not anyone took like him
Speaker 1: up on this. But he decides, like, I'm gonna start
Speaker 1: at government so that I can get pirates to pay
Speaker 1: me for being pirates, like what comes to interstate con Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he issues banknotes. He starts having money printed and
Speaker 1: he just signs it with his last name McGregor, which
Speaker 1: is a flex. I'll give him that it is. I
Speaker 1: would like some McGregor's. Yeah. Yeah. So he spends the
Speaker 1: next few months just kind of drinking and fucking and partying,
Speaker 1: celebrating the fact that he's in charge of a country,
Speaker 1: and ignoring the fact that he had promised a lot
Speaker 1: of people he was going to conquer Florida. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's on the back burner. I'll ask for him. Spain
Speaker 1: realizes eventually that he's conquered their island and they don't
Speaker 1: like this, so they send an army to take it back,
Speaker 1: and the instant McGregor realizes that there's a Spanish army coming.
Speaker 1: He abandons all of his soldiers in country and he
Speaker 1: flees by boat with his wife, his script. That's his script,
Speaker 1: and ironically, the guys he leaves behind actually beat the
Speaker 1: Spanish invasion. They beat two of them. Um, and then
Speaker 1: Mexico sends in troops and like takes over the island
Speaker 1: and it becomes a part of Mexico briefly. But then
Speaker 1: the United States invades and like kills all the Mexican
Speaker 1: soldiers and annexes Amelia from Mexico, and President Monroe justifies
Speaker 1: this by saying, like, well, hey, Mexico stole it from Spain,
Speaker 1: or Mexico stole it from these random mercenaries who stole
Speaker 1: it from Spain, so like it's on the open market now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we just came in and ticket, like what are you?
Speaker 1: What are you complaining about? Pirates can take it, but
Speaker 1: we can't. Fuck you. Yeah, we're America. Baby. The manifest
Speaker 1: my favorite scam manifest Destiny, which is like God told
Speaker 1: us to steal his land. So yeah, that's how it.
Speaker 1: The United States gets its first piece of Florida. WoT
Speaker 1: fun had to involve a con man at some point,
Speaker 1: So on November nine, eighteen seventeen, Josepha McGregor, his wife
Speaker 1: gives birth to a son and they're still on board
Speaker 1: a boat at this point that they're using to flee
Speaker 1: to North America with all flee North America with all
Speaker 1: the money they'd grifted because he stilled like fifty grand
Speaker 1: from his army money. Uh. So gregor makes a medallion
Speaker 1: to commemorate his son's birth, which is the kind of
Speaker 1: guy he is. He's like, he's he's he has a kid,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I gotta get an award for this ship.
Speaker 1: I gotta give myself an award for him. My wife
Speaker 1: who's having a baby in olden times on a boat.
Speaker 1: What did she do? What did she do? Tell me that.
Speaker 1: So this medallion he makes has an engraving of the
Speaker 1: flag of the Florida's and two phrases written in Latin
Speaker 1: on it Amelia I came, I saw I conquered, and
Speaker 1: liberty for the Florida's Under the leadership of McGregor, neither
Speaker 1: of these things happened. Like you didn't want to fun
Speaker 1: like nothing, nothing, the baby, like okay, it's not about
Speaker 1: the baby. The baby is an excuse to have a medallion.
Speaker 1: The girls are gonna love this at the next party. Okay,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. So McGregor was now a rich guy, but
Speaker 1: not as rich as he wanted to be. Fifty grand
Speaker 1: you could retire on in those fucking days, um, but
Speaker 1: he wanted, he wanted to be fuck you rich and
Speaker 1: it was not quite that much. Yeah. So he regarded
Speaker 1: the con and then lost of a loss of Amelia
Speaker 1: Island as a big success because he'd made a bunch
Speaker 1: of money off of it, and it convinced him that
Speaker 1: being a freebooter, basically a pirate, you know, but on
Speaker 1: the national scale was kind of the way to go.
Speaker 1: Uh And I'm gonna quote now from a rite up
Speaker 1: in the Rothschild archive. He then oversaw two calamitous operations
Speaker 1: in New Granada during eighteen nineteen that each ended with
Speaker 1: his abandoning British volunteer troops under his command. McGregor conferred
Speaker 1: and invented decorations and titles on his officers, fraudulently obtained
Speaker 1: and squandered money, and generally and generally behaved abominably. And
Speaker 1: during this period of time, I've been telling about this guy,
Speaker 1: Colonel Rafter, who wrote this biography of him. The reason
Speaker 1: Rafter is obsessed with McGregor is that his brother, who
Speaker 1: is another Rafter, who was like an office. Was an
Speaker 1: officer in McGregor's army, and McGregor abandoned him and he
Speaker 1: was executed. The one thing you're gonna see of McGregor,
Speaker 1: it's the back of his head, okay, because the girls
Speaker 1: war better his face. Well, I got you all here.
Speaker 1: My job is done. I feel like he doesn't even
Speaker 1: announce when he's leaving. It's like the new Irish goodbye,
Speaker 1: Just turn around, looks starting the wars, half the battle.
Speaker 1: I figured y'all would do the rest. You go back
Speaker 1: to have a meeting with him. They're like, no, his
Speaker 1: tent is gone. Like his tent is gone, so is
Speaker 1: all of our money. Who went out for battle? Actually
Speaker 1: he started backing. It was very bizarre. He took all
Speaker 1: of the gold and left us with the fake money
Speaker 1: with his name on it. Right, y'all trying to pay
Speaker 1: for beers with McGregor. So McGregor arrives at the court
Speaker 1: of King George Frederick Augustus on the on the Mosquito
Speaker 1: Coast after he loses these these two wars that he's
Speaker 1: gotten involved with, and because of his like his fame
Speaker 1: in the area, he's able to convince the King of
Speaker 1: the Mosquito coast. Who's this this guy George Frederick to
Speaker 1: sign a document giving him in his airs, like a
Speaker 1: huge chunk of Mosquito territory in an area larger than Wales.
Speaker 1: It's said that he does this in exchange for rum
Speaker 1: and jewelry. There's some debate um and it's so he
Speaker 1: gets this big he cons his way into like having
Speaker 1: a bunch of land, but it's useless land from a
Speaker 1: financial point of view, Like it's pretty, it's got a
Speaker 1: lot of game on it, it's able to support like
Speaker 1: an indigenous population, but like the soil is not great,
Speaker 1: it's a bad place to grow crops, and there's like
Speaker 1: it's in no way established or settled. He he has
Speaker 1: this land that's not very useful. But what's more important
Speaker 1: than that is that he has this land, and he
Speaker 1: has a letter from this king telling him that he
Speaker 1: owns a bunch of land in Latin America. And this
Speaker 1: gives McGregor an idea because he's like, I've been trying.
Speaker 1: I've been putting all this effort into trying to conquer
Speaker 1: countries or conquered chunks of land and turn them into countries,
Speaker 1: and like that's hard. What if I just pretend that
Speaker 1: I already have a country and then make people buy it,
Speaker 1: and then can vince people to buy it from me.
Speaker 1: So he he gives a name to this territory that
Speaker 1: he's he's kind of grifted, Poier, which he names after
Speaker 1: the inhabitants of the highlands of the area. And yeah, Poier,
Speaker 1: nice name. And this is this is where the story
Speaker 1: of his great con begins, because McGregor didn't actually move
Speaker 1: to the land he'd acquired, nor did he like do
Speaker 1: anything with it, Like he's got this land, but he doesn't,
Speaker 1: he doesn't use it. Instead, he takes the letters saying
Speaker 1: it's his, and he sails back to Great Britain with
Speaker 1: a scheme in mind. And over the way on the
Speaker 1: like boat over to Great Britain, he starts calling himself
Speaker 1: the Kazik, which he claimed meant prince in in the
Speaker 1: local language. So he starts claiming that this tract of
Speaker 1: land he's been given as like personal property is actually
Speaker 1: an independent country and he's been made royalty in this
Speaker 1: in this tribe, and so he's he's the Prince of Poier.
Speaker 1: And when he gets back to Great Britain, he's going
Speaker 1: to try to convince people to to buy into this
Speaker 1: scheme with him. Um, and that's what we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about out in part two. Lazy Robbert, what would you
Speaker 1: name your fake country? Oh, that's a great question. Oh gosh,
Speaker 1: it needs to be something like, uh, maybe like oh,
Speaker 1: I want to go with an L I don't know why.
Speaker 1: It's like leaves. Oh you went with a fancy name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and go to La Bos. I don't think of something
Speaker 1: that sounds good like in a Drake song, like and
Speaker 1: popping bottles and La Bas. Yeah, l Bos. That's that's
Speaker 1: my fake That's that does sound fancy. I was gonna
Speaker 1: call it fuck Valley and just like like, yeah, everybody
Speaker 1: gets laid in fun Valley, Like all these frat boys
Speaker 1: pay me a hundred bucks, you get to go to
Speaker 1: fuck Valley and then it's just a bunch of frat
Speaker 1: boys stuck in a valley and then they all get dehydrated.
Speaker 1: That fire festival, the fire festival is my plan. I
Speaker 1: was about to say that sounds like your plan is
Speaker 1: the fire festival. That's exactly what it was. It's a
Speaker 1: great plan as long as you don't have the internet,
Speaker 1: so people find out it's a con and you can
Speaker 1: just take the money and run away to Norway or
Speaker 1: some ship. Right. I wish I could have run scams
Speaker 1: before there was Internet. I still think about old shadder
Speaker 1: hands and like checking people's money. Oh to see it
Speaker 1: was real? Oh yeah, Lacy Pluggables, Yeah sure, guys. As always,
Speaker 1: you can find me a d I D A l
Speaker 1: A c I deva Lacey on all platforms. And if
Speaker 1: you like robbery and comedy, listen to my podcast Scam Goddess.
Speaker 1: Enjoin Lacey's Army Comication. Yes, people liberating Florida. Maybe tea
Speaker 1: next two days a good time? Look out? Look out
Speaker 1: for that on Twitter with you. We're just gonna show
Speaker 1: up and liberate Florida. Yeah yeah, you gotta live. I
Speaker 1: mean to be honest, could you some liberating these days?