Speaker 1: Test tests. Wow, Jesus gosh, I can't believe Sophie just
Speaker 1: said that about the entire nation of Paraguay. Strange. Wow.
Speaker 1: I feel like I say that like once a week.
Speaker 1: People are going to be angry when they hear this episode. Wow.
Speaker 1: I mean it's just like, first of all Monte videos
Speaker 1: in Uruguay, I know, right, like immediately obvious problem. But
Speaker 1: second of all, I just don't I've never heard that
Speaker 1: particular stereotype. I'm shocked. It's incredible, honestly impressed the creativity
Speaker 1: every week. How are you not picking up on it? Wow? Anyway,
Speaker 1: this is behind the bastards. Chief bastard being our producer,
Speaker 1: Sophie Lichterman and her Actually I don't know enough about
Speaker 1: Paraguay to fill this joke out anyway, to dig into
Speaker 1: that's how little known Paraguay is of the staff of
Speaker 1: this podcast. Yeah, I know it's one of the guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a second Guay. Let's lean on that one. I
Speaker 1: feel like it's a landlocked way. I feel like all
Speaker 1: the Guays are landlocked, right, you're aga. I feel like
Speaker 1: isn't landlocked? Is no? I think You'uguay is pretty landlocked.
Speaker 1: There's no way to answer this question with For example,
Speaker 1: the devices were all using to record this podct. I
Speaker 1: did google what are major stereotypes people have about Paraguay
Speaker 1: into what extent are they true? And the first answer
Speaker 1: is there the short answer there really isn't anything special
Speaker 1: in quotes about it. So I think they really like
Speaker 1: they really like Lady Gaga. Oh wow, yeah, you can't
Speaker 1: get them shutting up about Lady Yeah, I think that's true.
Speaker 1: Bunch of monsters. Did you call them monsters something like that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've forgotten most of the things about Lady Gaga. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know nothing. I just don't remember. So much
Speaker 1: has happened since Lady Gaga was in the news. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like literally, yeah, what do you remember about Ashton Kutcher?
Speaker 1: Very little? I remember that his name is not Aston,
Speaker 1: there's Ashton Ashton. That's how little I remembered his name.
Speaker 1: That's how I told you. I don't remember much about
Speaker 1: the man in action with him. I was at a
Speaker 1: coffee shop. He was ahead of me in line. He
Speaker 1: forgot his wallet and went back to his car to
Speaker 1: pay for his two dollar coffee. Instead of being an
Speaker 1: asshole celebrity. That was like well, I'm Ashton Kutcher, so
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna take this. I offered to pay for it,
Speaker 1: and then when I got up there, I'd be like,
Speaker 1: psych he just got punked. And then I would have
Speaker 1: waited for him to see if I was joking or not,
Speaker 1: and then I would just to be clever, so clever.
Speaker 1: That's very generous for this bit. Podcast is not about
Speaker 1: Ashton or Ashton Kutcher. This is no This is a
Speaker 1: podcast where I don't know okay, sopranos podcast sorry, where
Speaker 1: we talk about I don't know Soprano's character book a Tibeppo.
Speaker 1: You gotta learn names, man, you gotta know. One of
Speaker 1: them's name is Soprano. It is to Tony right, Tony, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got it, I got it. I remember that, and
Speaker 1: I remember a lot about Napoleon the Third who we
Speaker 1: are who we are talking about now. When we left
Speaker 1: off with our hero, he has just tried to take
Speaker 1: over France, failed, shot a man in the face for
Speaker 1: no reason, and then repeatedly attempted to commit suicide as
Speaker 1: he was taken to jail. Yeah. So not a great coup, yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the worst. But I respect the attempt. I
Speaker 1: always respect a good coup at him. I always respect
Speaker 1: a good at coup attempt, right, Um, this is I
Speaker 1: have to I think, you know, it's debatable. Is this
Speaker 1: the worst coup attempt than Hitler's. You know, Hitler's ended
Speaker 1: with him and all of his men getting machine gunned
Speaker 1: in the street. Uh, and then he did try to
Speaker 1: kill himself. But there's something about the impotence of shooting
Speaker 1: an unarmed man in the face for no reason whatever,
Speaker 1: in the mouth, like, come on, man, yeah he was there.
Speaker 1: It's a weird panic button, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Or you're just like, I'm panicking. Where's the nearest mouth.
Speaker 1: It was the nearest mouth that can put a fucking
Speaker 1: musket ball in good lord. Yeah, that's what you do
Speaker 1: when some people, you know, some people play better when
Speaker 1: they're panicking. Not him, not him. No, he did not.
Speaker 1: He did not rise to the moments. He didn't. This
Speaker 1: the opposite of Michael Jordan's flu game. This was if
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan's had the flu during Game four the NBA
Speaker 1: Finals and then shot Scottie Pippen in the mouth. Because
Speaker 1: I forget which game was the flu game. I mean
Speaker 1: it might have been a game too. And uh, was
Speaker 1: it game five when he had the flu? Believe it
Speaker 1: was game six games So so he won an NBA
Speaker 1: final with the flu. That's crazy. Michael Jordan's pretty amazing
Speaker 1: basketball play. A lot of people the Napoleon Finals against
Speaker 1: the Jazz So Napoleon. So the reaction in the media
Speaker 1: and the reaction in general from like the government to
Speaker 1: Coup two was very different from Coup number one. One
Speaker 1: newspaper proposed that Napoleon the Third might have dementia. The
Speaker 1: government of Louis Philippe, who is the king, described the
Speaker 1: attack as a vain and vicious attempt to overthrow the government,
Speaker 1: during which an unarmed soldier had nearly been murdered, which
Speaker 1: was accurate. Um, So this is, you know, the first
Speaker 1: time Louis Philippe kind of just wants to usher him out,
Speaker 1: like they have a court case, but he doesn't want
Speaker 1: him in the country. He doesn't really want to like
Speaker 1: punish it too harshly to his I don't know, very
Speaker 1: mild credit. Louis Philippe reacts more stringently to this one,
Speaker 1: but it and it's interesting because his Louis, Louis Napoleon's dad,
Speaker 1: Louis Bonaparte, has mostly been very much against all the
Speaker 1: things his son has tried to do, and was against
Speaker 1: this coup attempt. But the invective against his son and
Speaker 1: like the public media and from the French government forces
Speaker 1: Louis Bonaparte to actually finally stand up in his son's defense. Now, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: and my son's defense. Yeah, he's really bad at everything,
Speaker 1: and he didn't succeed, and so what do you know,
Speaker 1: it's wayne when he had fun. We had fun, everyone
Speaker 1: had fun. It's interesting. That's actually not that far from
Speaker 1: what he does. So obviously, being the guy that he
Speaker 1: is and being a principled man, he can't defend his
Speaker 1: son's attempt to overthrow the government, nor he can he offend,
Speaker 1: like defend like shooting a man in the face. So
Speaker 1: instead of doing that, he writes a letter to be
Speaker 1: published in the Italian press which complains that his son
Speaker 1: is quote the victim of an infamous conspiracy, seduced by flatterers,
Speaker 1: false friends, and perhaps from insidious advice. So he's basically
Speaker 1: he was. He was like, it's like a cult thing, right,
Speaker 1: like he got he got wrapped up in by some
Speaker 1: bad people. But he's not a bad kid. He just
Speaker 1: got given some bad advice. You know that is not
Speaker 1: completely wrong, because that's part of what happened, Right, Louis
Speaker 1: Napoleon is not a very smart guy, and he's very
Speaker 1: vulnerable to the people around him if they're nice to him.
Speaker 1: This is to continue to be a factor in his
Speaker 1: life through his entire reign. And I think some of
Speaker 1: this is that actually Louis Bonaparte kind of understands his
Speaker 1: son um, but he also he's a little blinded too,
Speaker 1: because he can't believe that his son was really a
Speaker 1: driving force behind the attempt. Writing the quote, it is
Speaker 1: quite impossible that a man surely not lacking the financial
Speaker 1: means and common sense, should have, with his eyes wide open,
Speaker 1: willingly thrown himself over such a political precipice. Basically, like,
Speaker 1: look if he if he did, if he was a
Speaker 1: driving factor behind this, he would have had to be
Speaker 1: an idiot. And I know he's not an idiot, right, Yerey,
Speaker 1: you are his dad. I can't blame you for specialty. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So Louis Napoleon goes to court, uh, this time he's
Speaker 1: actually in country for it, and it does not go
Speaker 1: well for him law wise. Again, he's gotten kind of
Speaker 1: like he got off the hook basically last time. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, he got two dollars, yeah, and acquitted. He's
Speaker 1: not going to get acquitted this time. But it actually
Speaker 1: kind of goes better for him because Louis Napoleon is
Speaker 1: dumb in a lot of ways, but he understands some
Speaker 1: things about politics and the new mass media that no
Speaker 1: one has figured out yet. Um. And, as Hitler was
Speaker 1: going to learn about eighty years later, if you're on
Speaker 1: trial for trying to overthrow the government, you can do
Speaker 1: pretty well by firing off a populist rant that makes
Speaker 1: the case for your reign. Um. Yeah, and uh, here's
Speaker 1: here's the speech that he gives, or an exert from
Speaker 1: the speech that he gives in court. For the first
Speaker 1: time in my life, I have been permitted to speak
Speaker 1: in France and to speak freely before the French people,
Speaker 1: in spite of the guards on either side of me,
Speaker 1: In spite of all the accusations I have just heard,
Speaker 1: I find myself here within the walls of the Senate
Speaker 1: that I had first visited as a child, with Napoleon
Speaker 1: in your midst, you whom I know, gentlemen, I do
Speaker 1: not believe that I have to justify myself, nor that
Speaker 1: you could be my judges. A solemn occasion has offered
Speaker 1: me here to explain to my fellow citizens my conduct,
Speaker 1: my intentions, my projects, what I think and what I desire.
Speaker 1: The nation has never revoked the Grand Act of Sovereignty,
Speaker 1: the one that had established Napoleon Bonaparte's kingdom, And as
Speaker 1: the Emperor himself said, everything done without adhering to it
Speaker 1: is illegal, and that includes this trial. And to do
Speaker 1: not think for a moment that I might have wanted
Speaker 1: to attempt any imperial restoration in France without the backing
Speaker 1: of the people of this country through a plebiscite. As
Speaker 1: for my undertaking, and alone I had no other accomplices.
Speaker 1: I alone am responsible. I represent before you a principle,
Speaker 1: a cause, and a defeat one principle, the sovereignty of
Speaker 1: the people, the cause stead of our empire, and to
Speaker 1: defeat Waterloo. So he's saying, like, you know, the government
Speaker 1: that my uncle established is still legitimate. This court has
Speaker 1: no right to hold me for anything. But also I
Speaker 1: never wanted to become the emperor without a plebiscite. I
Speaker 1: was only trying to do what I think the people
Speaker 1: wanted me to do, right, I was just going to
Speaker 1: do a coup and then see if people were cool
Speaker 1: with that. You know, that's why it's called a coup.
Speaker 1: And it's not really the cool because a coup because
Speaker 1: like Napoleon's constitution is still valid clearly, right, yeah, is
Speaker 1: it a coup if you guys are the ones who
Speaker 1: originally did the coup exactly, the Bourbon restorations, who Cou
Speaker 1: who Cou? Who? Whose line is it? Anyway? Cou'se line
Speaker 1: isn't any whatever. So this goes really well for him actually,
Speaker 1: because again Louis philip is a terrible king. Right, we're
Speaker 1: laughing at Louis Napoleon, but Louis Philippe is not a
Speaker 1: good king, and his monarchy is kind of a ship show.
Speaker 1: People are very unhappy, and they hear this guy. He's
Speaker 1: hearkening back to this defeat which still wounds the French
Speaker 1: soul Waterloo and the victories and of Napoleon before it,
Speaker 1: and he's saying, like, look, we never stopped being those
Speaker 1: guys who could win. We just let guys like this
Speaker 1: tell us that we weren't there anymore. And if we
Speaker 1: get them, we can make France great again, right, that's
Speaker 1: what I mean. That's yeah, that's that's that's what he's saying,
Speaker 1: and it works really well. And the fact that this
Speaker 1: speech goes so well for Lewis Napoleon does not at
Speaker 1: all mitigate the King's desire to see him lock the
Speaker 1: funk away, right, Louis Philippe designs, I gotta keep this
Speaker 1: dude in a fucking cage, and on October six, Lewis
Speaker 1: Napoleon is sentenced to life in prison, which is honestly
Speaker 1: not an entirely unfair sentence for shooting an unarmed man
Speaker 1: in the face for absolutely no recent Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: just beyond the even attempted coupart, just shooting a guy
Speaker 1: in the face. Look, I'm not a car serile guy,
Speaker 1: but of the things you might lock someone up for,
Speaker 1: randomly shooting a man in the face is not a
Speaker 1: bad one, right, Yeah, I mean we're talking about, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the eighteen forties France. Chances are you locking
Speaker 1: people away for far less? Yes, ex actly, exactly, um so,
Speaker 1: broadly speaking, and again, his his prison. This is not
Speaker 1: a hard prison, right, he is not locked away in
Speaker 1: the fucking beastial. This isn't some like limb Zer rob
Speaker 1: ship where he's breaking rocks or whatever while Javert sings
Speaker 1: at him. Um, he's he's got like a suite of
Speaker 1: rooms and what is effectively a castle. Um. He lives.
Speaker 1: He has all of the books that he wants. He
Speaker 1: gets regularly visited, he gets invited to dinner by the warden. Um.
Speaker 1: He is a celebrity prisoner. He lives better than a loop.
Speaker 1: He is in fact writing a book. Yes, um so
Speaker 1: uh and part of the Obviously, he shot a man
Speaker 1: in the face and tried to overthrow the government France
Speaker 1: has killed people for less. They were still guillotining dudes. Um,
Speaker 1: that would not have been out of the You could again,
Speaker 1: as the leader of the country, you can easily make
Speaker 1: a case for doing that. But Louis Napoleon or Louis Philippe, sorry, god,
Speaker 1: there's too many fucking lewis Is in this fucking series.
Speaker 1: King Louis Phillip can't do that because there's unrest building
Speaker 1: all throughout the country. And right around the time that
Speaker 1: Lewis Napoleon is on trial, he has finally agreed and
Speaker 1: carried out this massive logistical hurdle to bring the corpse
Speaker 1: of Napoleon Bonaparte back to France a decade after his death.
Speaker 1: So while all this is going on, the French government
Speaker 1: and military are preparing for this massive ceremony where Napoleon's
Speaker 1: corpses being carried through the country and put up. This
Speaker 1: is an actual thing, Like, yes, they're actually gonna exhume
Speaker 1: his corpse. Yeah yeah, they're gonna to take it and
Speaker 1: bury it in a crypt. Yeah, in in France, back
Speaker 1: on his home soil, well not his home soil because
Speaker 1: he was coursing, but whatever. Um. Yeah, So this is
Speaker 1: it's a it's a dangerous time. You don't want to
Speaker 1: be executing his nephew while people everyone is like weeping
Speaker 1: as his coffin is taken through the streets, right, because
Speaker 1: people still love Napoleon. The crowds to see Napoleon's casket
Speaker 1: numbered half a million men, many of them veterans. So
Speaker 1: again this is particular literally a crowd of people you
Speaker 1: don't want to piss off, Like there's half a million
Speaker 1: men in the street who have been under musket fire together.
Speaker 1: They stood for hours to watch his um you know,
Speaker 1: the whatever, the thing with the coffin pass, even though
Speaker 1: it was so half a million people standing for like
Speaker 1: a lot of eight to twelve hours to watch this
Speaker 1: procession when it is negative twenty two degrees fahrenheit outside.
Speaker 1: That's how much people love Napoleon. They really like this guy.
Speaker 1: They really like Napoleon. Yeah. It says also a lot
Speaker 1: about how much, you know, the Bourbons are sucking up
Speaker 1: all the time, you know, because they lose sleep is
Speaker 1: a he's a he's the duke to or Leon. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, I mean he is part of that family.
Speaker 1: He was just like because they're all yeah, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: all except well now the Bonapartes. Well yeah, but it
Speaker 1: just shows us how much they fucked up in that.
Speaker 1: Like at the end of like Napoleon's ringing, everyone's like,
Speaker 1: can we get this guy out? Because he keeps trying
Speaker 1: to do invasions of stuff. We just kind of retired
Speaker 1: of it. And at this point everyone's like, hey, remember
Speaker 1: when ship was cool? Yeah, when like Napoleon was around,
Speaker 1: they were just kicking those fucking Austrians asses, just like
Speaker 1: kicking everyone's ass, just like, oh dude, Ship was so sick.
Speaker 1: And also there was order, and people love remembering order. God,
Speaker 1: people do love order. Um As noted by the documentary
Speaker 1: whichever Star Wars movie was the most recent one. That's right, Actually,
Speaker 1: a Star Wars theme Law and Order could be a
Speaker 1: pretty fucking fun show. You could do a lot with that.
Speaker 1: You know it's gonna happen. You can make that work.
Speaker 1: You could make that work very well. Um. Anyway, Look,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to skip ahead of it through the
Speaker 1: next piece of history because I have to tell you,
Speaker 1: this guy does so much in his fucking life. He's
Speaker 1: involved in so much shit. Uh. Anyway to summarize the
Speaker 1: next part of his story, what happens after he gets
Speaker 1: thrown in prison, I'm going to turn to yet another book,
Speaker 1: The Last Emperor of next a Code by Edward Shaw
Speaker 1: cross quote Undeterred. Six years later, while the prison was
Speaker 1: undergoing construction, Lewis Napoleon, dressed in the clothes of a workman,
Speaker 1: picked up a wooden plank, put it over his shoulder,
Speaker 1: and walked out the front gate before fleeing to London.
Speaker 1: It was so easy to break out of prisons. He
Speaker 1: didn't even have to get like a readA Hayworth poster
Speaker 1: and like a tiny little pickaxe he worked out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like, excuse me, I'm just going to move
Speaker 1: this wooden plank. This was before the invention of the door,
Speaker 1: so people really had no way to keep someone in something.
Speaker 1: All prisons had worked on the honor system previously. Exactly,
Speaker 1: it was like, hey, where are you going? He's like,
Speaker 1: oh no, he's a workman. He's the most famous friend.
Speaker 1: He has wood on his shoulder. It can't be him.
Speaker 1: He would never hold wood. Limperor would never hold the
Speaker 1: wooden He has not Bin Shapiro at home depot. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: I'm a hundred and fifty years apart. When the son
Speaker 1: of or the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte and rich guy
Speaker 1: been Shapiro need to feel like a cut pretend to
Speaker 1: be a common man, they both picked the same tactic.
Speaker 1: Gonna get some wood, hold it up from my sheltering.
Speaker 1: It's the number one thing that rich people th work
Speaker 1: like working class people do. It's just whatever or do again.
Speaker 1: I think they just like hold wood and they that's
Speaker 1: what they do. That's what they do. Just told pieces
Speaker 1: of wood and say, oh, my brow has beads of
Speaker 1: sweat upon it. All right, I'm gonna continue that quote.
Speaker 1: And there it would have ended, had it not been
Speaker 1: for the providential moment. Louis Napoleon had been waiting for
Speaker 1: the European revolutions of eighteen forty eight. After the abdication
Speaker 1: of the French king, a republic was hastily proclaimed and
Speaker 1: elections announced, despite no experience of democratic politics or a
Speaker 1: political party to support him. Louis Napoleon grandiosely told a cousin,
Speaker 1: I'm going to Paris. A republic has been proclaimed. I
Speaker 1: must be its master. His cousin responded, you are dreaming
Speaker 1: as usual, and yet this is the wild thing. He's
Speaker 1: completely right. He wins this election in a fucking landslide. Um. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the fact that he's a Napoleon is most of what
Speaker 1: a lot of the voters need to hear. Um. And
Speaker 1: also that he had been very visibly in opposition to
Speaker 1: the hated king who had just been overthrown. Um. But
Speaker 1: he's also he's he is particularly unpopular with the people
Speaker 1: who had been the political elite and the only people
Speaker 1: who were able to vote previously to the proclamation of
Speaker 1: the republic. Alexis de Toqueville. Um, who's a political smart
Speaker 1: guy thinker. Um, he was he was there, he was there.
Speaker 1: Uh fucking um. I don't know what's a terrible political columnist.
Speaker 1: Rynick Um, he's there, Bill Crystal, Yeah, he's there. Bary Wise, Um, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. People are gonna be so angry at me,
Speaker 1: all the scholars in the audience. But he does not
Speaker 1: like Louis Napoleon. He compares him to a dwarf who, quote,
Speaker 1: on the summit of a great wave, is able to
Speaker 1: scale a high cliff which a giant placed on dry
Speaker 1: ground would not be able to climb. Which is actually
Speaker 1: a really accurate summary of what's happened, right. It's not
Speaker 1: his own personal character because he has not accomplished a
Speaker 1: single thing in his life other than shooting that guy
Speaker 1: in the face. But there's this wave and he expertly
Speaker 1: the thing that he actually is good at is number one.
Speaker 1: He's he does have this degree of understanding of the
Speaker 1: French populace and he knows where to place himself to
Speaker 1: take advantage of this wave. Um. I guess my only
Speaker 1: disagreement with dak Fill there is that like that is
Speaker 1: actually a skill. It's a really dangerous skill, but it
Speaker 1: is a skill. Most people. It's a high political you know.
Speaker 1: It's like we all want to it's the same type
Speaker 1: of you know, like critique that people have of Trump
Speaker 1: where you're just like he's stupid and he's He's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's an idiot, Like he is dumb in a thousand ways,
Speaker 1: but he is very very good at manipulating people and
Speaker 1: he has a high political Like you, you would hope
Speaker 1: that like the thing we would get out of Trump,
Speaker 1: And also guys like Dr Oz and guys like what's
Speaker 1: the other fucking expert Ben Carson? Is that like, intelligence
Speaker 1: isn't a thing. People are good at things and they
Speaker 1: are bad at things, but nobody is smart, right, Like
Speaker 1: that's not the way brains work. Yes, exactly exactly, Like
Speaker 1: I'm really good at geography, but I'm an idiot, So
Speaker 1: me being good at geography doesn't make me a smart guy.
Speaker 1: It just means I'm good at one thing. And Elon
Speaker 1: Musk being a competent engineer in some specific things clearly
Speaker 1: does not make him smart in other ways. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: it's very clearly. Like knowing why a blue check mark
Speaker 1: is a thing, it's it's good. Um, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: continue that quote. Writer and politician Victor Hugo penned a
Speaker 1: series of vitriolic attacks on Louis Napoleon, one title Napoleon
Speaker 1: le petite, exhorting the French to look at this hog
Speaker 1: wallowing in his own slide him on a lion's skin.
Speaker 1: Even the Dolf Tears, leader of the conservative politicians in
Speaker 1: France who supported Louis Napoleon, thought him an idiot who
Speaker 1: could be easily controlled. Certainly, Louis Napoleon did not seem
Speaker 1: to have his uncle's drive, except when it came to women. Indeed,
Speaker 1: his mistress at this time and financial backer, was a
Speaker 1: notorious English courtisan and failed actress, a combination too much
Speaker 1: even for French politics. To the relief of many, the
Speaker 1: Constitution of the Republic limited the presidency to one four
Speaker 1: year term. Louis Napoleon, however, was not going to allow
Speaker 1: a constitution he had sworn to uphold to get in
Speaker 1: the way of destiny. So obviously, when he comes to
Speaker 1: power here forty eight, this is a year of massive
Speaker 1: left wing revolutions, a lot of which fall just kind
Speaker 1: of a little short of actually, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: this kind of failed revolution year in a lot of points,
Speaker 1: not everywhere, but in a lot of ways. And prior
Speaker 1: to Napoleon the third. Most people who'd supported the return
Speaker 1: to monarchy anywhere were staunchly anti democratic. Right, there was
Speaker 1: a wide understanding that democratic government's inevitably led to radical
Speaker 1: left wing policies that would undermine and threatn elites. Napoleon
Speaker 1: the thirds great innovation, and the thing that actually is
Speaker 1: a kind of genius from him is that he saw
Speaker 1: that this was bullshit. Right. The masses would be perfectly
Speaker 1: happy endorsing hereditary authoritarian rule if you sold it to
Speaker 1: them the right way, and in fact, that would make
Speaker 1: your rule more stable. More than this, he saw that
Speaker 1: royalist coups and crackdowns against democratic against or democratic policies
Speaker 1: were fundamentally doomed. But if you could put a monarch
Speaker 1: on the throne through democratic acclaim, that would act to
Speaker 1: legitimate the regime using the ballot box. This is exactly
Speaker 1: what Napoleon did, holding two plebiscites in which he got
Speaker 1: voters to first back a coup against the Republic and
Speaker 1: then declare him emperor. He won both with at least
Speaker 1: one of them was more than of the electorate. Right,
Speaker 1: and this is this is the thing every dictator who
Speaker 1: follows after him. Napoleon is kind of the start of
Speaker 1: the wave of like, now, if you're a dictator, you
Speaker 1: don't just say I'm the dictator and I'm in charge.
Speaker 1: You say I'm the president or you know, the premier
Speaker 1: or whatever. And I've been a elected we do an
Speaker 1: election every couple of years and get the vote. You know, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Now it's like you always have the guys of you know,
Speaker 1: I am a democratically elected uh president or prime minister,
Speaker 1: any of that stuff. Just make it up. The elections
Speaker 1: can be fake as long as it looks like you're
Speaker 1: democratic and you you do lip service, that's all that matters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's I mean, yeah, it's interesting. This right up
Speaker 1: by History today provides more context as to why he
Speaker 1: was able to to get so much get so far
Speaker 1: with the electorate. He was a fresh figure on the scene,
Speaker 1: which was a great advantage. He had total faith in
Speaker 1: his destiny, which was another, and he could parade as
Speaker 1: a person above party politics. Karl Mark sourly remarked because
Speaker 1: Louis Napoleon that because Louis Napoleon was nothing, he could
Speaker 1: appear to be everything. His opponents attempt at ridicule, caricaturing
Speaker 1: him writing a goose he was trying to transform into
Speaker 1: an imperial eagle merely rebounded to his advantage by reminding
Speaker 1: people of his Napoleonic connection. He wowed the electorate with
Speaker 1: promises to restore rances lost glory and assurances of prosperity, advancement,
Speaker 1: and a happy future for every group in social class
Speaker 1: in the country. As one of his biographers commented, he
Speaker 1: came down impartially on all sides. Yeah, he was everything
Speaker 1: to everybody. You could kind of just put your own
Speaker 1: politics into him. And this is you know that that
Speaker 1: Marx quote history comes once his first as a tragedy
Speaker 1: and second as a farce that he writes that about
Speaker 1: Louis Napoleon. Napoleon Bonaparte is the tragedy because millions die,
Speaker 1: and Louis Napoleon is the farce, right, because he's literally
Speaker 1: a parody. He's literally a parody of his uncle. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like we all our version, our vision of like Napoleon
Speaker 1: that we have now is actually just Louis Napoleon. It's
Speaker 1: like he's very very tiny, weird mustache, like bad goatee.
Speaker 1: Uh looks like a clown. That's that's the parody of
Speaker 1: his uncle. Yeah, it's it's pretty fucking cool. And you
Speaker 1: know what's a parody of bad products? What the good
Speaker 1: products that support our podcast? That's right. I love that,
Speaker 1: love that for us. Um, I'm just gonna say it,
Speaker 1: hot as ship Robert, I sent the entire team the
Speaker 1: Columbus et. Uh boy, howdy, I tell you what. We're back.
Speaker 1: And I have never I have never, never once. So
Speaker 1: we're talking about Napoleon the third and how he how
Speaker 1: he got himself into the good books of the French
Speaker 1: electorate and won election and then became the emperor. Um.
Speaker 1: And is this strategy he makes of like being like
Speaker 1: I'm going to restore our lost glory. Everything's gonna get
Speaker 1: better for everybody. It works really well with like particularly
Speaker 1: the peasants, the country folks, who in fact a big
Speaker 1: way in which they show there when kind of like
Speaker 1: these plebiscites are going on. One of the ways in
Speaker 1: which Napoleon's strongest supporters show they love him is by
Speaker 1: marching around the streets, shooting guns in the air and
Speaker 1: getting wasted. Um. Yeah, which that sounds right, That sounds
Speaker 1: about right, sounds about right. That's how we celebrate everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know if that's the modern way of celebrating. It
Speaker 1: was created by Louis Napoleon. Yeah, I get it. I
Speaker 1: get why that would be the way that would happen. Um.
Speaker 1: If you've ever seen, you know, any team from Philadelphia
Speaker 1: when a championship in sports of some sort, you'll understand
Speaker 1: that this is how we celebrate. They also do do
Speaker 1: off the street, but yeah, that's probably going on here too. Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of Vets who had fought with his uncle
Speaker 1: put on their uniforms and would march around. Um. They
Speaker 1: are funnily enough as they like march to the polls.
Speaker 1: They're shouting ship like death to the rich and aristos
Speaker 1: and users to the guillotine, which again he is literally
Speaker 1: the nephew of the emperor. Um. But he does very well. Um. Quote.
Speaker 1: Professional politicians were shocked, but the new president and most
Speaker 1: of France had had quite enough of them. He went
Speaker 1: on to rid himself of the Party of Order and
Speaker 1: destroy the Second Republic with the support of a handful
Speaker 1: of bonapartists in the National Assembly, steering his men and
Speaker 1: a key positions in the army. In the administration, he
Speaker 1: took advantage of an economic slowdown downturn in one to
Speaker 1: present himself as the strongman who would say France from
Speaker 1: socialism and collapse. In December, he carried out a successful coup,
Speaker 1: put down his opponents by force and Cynthia assembly packing. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's interesting to me. I don't think this
Speaker 1: history is widely known outside of France, certainly not outside
Speaker 1: of Europe, but it's it's fucking fascinating to me that
Speaker 1: France has two democratic governments in a row, ended by
Speaker 1: members of the same family. Um. Like, it's like if
Speaker 1: Hitler had come along in the nineteen seventies, like another
Speaker 1: one and ended German democracy again. Like you said, another
Speaker 1: Hitler and he's like, yeah, let's give him another shot. Listen,
Speaker 1: Greg Hitler is different than his uncle Adolf. Okay, we
Speaker 1: can trust Greg. Greg. A different kind of Hitler, a
Speaker 1: different kind of Hitler for a modern era, a modern
Speaker 1: Hitler for modern Germany. Shows him like arm in arm
Speaker 1: with a Rabbi. Things are cool now between the Hitlers
Speaker 1: and the Jews. Yeah, it's going to be different this time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he did what God damnit, he invaded poland he
Speaker 1: did it again. That's sort of a bit you know,
Speaker 1: known fool me once. Yeah, it is kind of insane that, uh,
Speaker 1: like how quickly he went from like being president, you know,
Speaker 1: Louis Napoleon too, just immediately being going like what are
Speaker 1: we doing here? We all know I'm going to be
Speaker 1: emperor and then boom, Napoleon the third just like that,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, it's uh, it's cool. So on December second,
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty two, Louis Napoleon became Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte the Third.
Speaker 1: And technically it was wrong every time before this one
Speaker 1: I called him Napoleon the third, But it's fine, He's
Speaker 1: Napoleon the Third. Edward shaw Cross notes that he quote
Speaker 1: aimed to plow a middle way between liberalism and conservatism,
Speaker 1: much like Bill Clinton. In this he built the example
Speaker 1: of the recently overthrown king Louis Philippe, lover of the
Speaker 1: centrist just Milieu. But Napoleon the Third was willing to
Speaker 1: go further and based his regime on direct democracy is
Speaker 1: expressed through universal male suffrage. As one of his aphorisms
Speaker 1: supposedly went, do not fear the people. They are more
Speaker 1: conservative than you. And this is this is why I
Speaker 1: want to talk about this guy, because he is kind
Speaker 1: of not not kind of He absolutely is the model
Speaker 1: of all future authoritarian populists in democratic societies. Um, I
Speaker 1: it's it's I find him fascinating for that reason. It's
Speaker 1: weird because his instincts were dead on and remained true
Speaker 1: to this day. Yes, he absolutely was not wrong about
Speaker 1: any of this stuff in terms of like how to
Speaker 1: get elected and ship. I mean, he's a clown and
Speaker 1: he does all this like stupid ships, shooting the guy
Speaker 1: in the mouth. He's, you know, just a couple failed coups.
Speaker 1: So you're kind of just like this is like what
Speaker 1: the ultimate fails soun, right or failed nephew. Um, but yeah, no,
Speaker 1: his instincts were right on when it came to re
Speaker 1: establishing the French Empire. Yeah, it works very well. So
Speaker 1: the early days, as we said, the early days of
Speaker 1: his domestic policies are a staggering success. The French economy
Speaker 1: recovers from its long slump, the nation begins to industrialize rapidly,
Speaker 1: and just as critically, Louis Napoleon turns France into a
Speaker 1: major player on the European stage again. Right, the couple
Speaker 1: of decades after Napoleon, France is a bit of a
Speaker 1: pariah state, Right, kind of the same way the Germans,
Speaker 1: where where everyone's like, I don't know if we can
Speaker 1: trust these guys given you know history, everything that happens repeatedly, um,
Speaker 1: which is again not an unreasonable whole thing to think.
Speaker 1: But this, this is where that all turns around. This
Speaker 1: he brings France back into kind of the standing of
Speaker 1: a responsible nation state. Right, you can call that bullshit
Speaker 1: or not, but like that, that's he effectively changes the
Speaker 1: way people think about France in a big way by
Speaker 1: changing the way France acts as a power. Um. And
Speaker 1: the major way he does this the first kind of
Speaker 1: big thing he does to turn around. You know, France's
Speaker 1: political position in Europe is to ally with Great Britain
Speaker 1: for the Crimean War in eighteen fifty three. This is
Speaker 1: right after he can so this is basically one of
Speaker 1: the first things he does is Limberg. Now, the Crimean
Speaker 1: War is often considered the first modern military conflict, and
Speaker 1: it is one of the two wars, the other being
Speaker 1: the eighteen seventy war between Prussia and France that we'll
Speaker 1: talk about the end of these episodes that sets up
Speaker 1: the preconditions for World War One, and the gist of
Speaker 1: this war is that Russia and Turkey they've been fighting
Speaker 1: for each other for centuries, right, like you got your
Speaker 1: Ottoman Empire and they keep trying to push into Europe
Speaker 1: and and they got the Ballins, and the Russians are
Speaker 1: seen by a lot of Europe for a decent chunk
Speaker 1: of time, the Russians, just Russia is seen as like
Speaker 1: the great barrier to the Optimise right to the Muslim hordes. Um.
Speaker 1: And these periodic military conflicts are ever complicated by the
Speaker 1: political situation over in the Holy Land, which at the
Speaker 1: time is under Ottoman control. But the English are involved
Speaker 1: in like mediating things and you've got it's not you
Speaker 1: know today we think about like religious conflicts in the
Speaker 1: Holy Land and it's like, oh, well, you got your
Speaker 1: Muslims and Jews and Christians and whatnot. Back in that day,
Speaker 1: one of the big conflicts is between Greek Orthodox and
Speaker 1: Catholic monks who are rioting. There there are times where
Speaker 1: they'll kill each other. There will be like riots over
Speaker 1: these like holy spaces where people are beating each other
Speaker 1: to death. Um. It fucking rules, It's super funny. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the Czars see themselves as protectors of Orthodoxy, and since
Speaker 1: the Ottomans are in charge of the Balkans at this period.
Speaker 1: Remember so the Ottoman Empire is still ruling what we
Speaker 1: would call a decent chunk of eastern Europe today. Um,
Speaker 1: they're about twelve and unorthodox Christians living under Ottoman rule,
Speaker 1: and Russia wants to take that area away from the
Speaker 1: Muslims and also added to Russia. Um. And while you know,
Speaker 1: you might expect all of the other Christian nations to
Speaker 1: back them, but everybody is scared of Russia. They're considered
Speaker 1: a dangerous power. And so for the most part, like,
Speaker 1: while they'll pay lip service to like, oh, yeah, we
Speaker 1: gotta free those Christians from the evil Muslims, most of
Speaker 1: the other states in this period are like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: don't want Russia to have the whole Balkans. Like that's
Speaker 1: that's that's not a good idea. They're they're also scary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're also very scary. Both of these people are hordes people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to deal with Hords. We just don't
Speaker 1: like Hords that much anymore. Just like could you thin
Speaker 1: out numbers a little less hordes more justwards. So for
Speaker 1: a lot of the eighteen hundreds, the British try to
Speaker 1: keep some sort of balance. They're often brought in as
Speaker 1: kind of the mediators here, um do and they you know,
Speaker 1: they've got again. Another part of this is that like,
Speaker 1: the British have massive financial interests inside the Ottoman Empire.
Speaker 1: So they're like, because the Ottomans are kind of falling
Speaker 1: apart in this period right there, being called the sick
Speaker 1: man of Europe, and so the Russians are like, well,
Speaker 1: we actually we could, we could take them right now,
Speaker 1: you know, we might be able to actually fucking push
Speaker 1: them out of here. And the British are like, well,
Speaker 1: but that's not that's actually not gonna work out great
Speaker 1: for us. We have a lot of it. It It works
Speaker 1: out really. We don't want to control, we don't want
Speaker 1: to take over the Ottoman Empire. That sounds like a
Speaker 1: giant pain in the ass. That's just gonna be expensive.
Speaker 1: But right now their government will basically do whatever the
Speaker 1: funk we say, um, And so we can make a
Speaker 1: shipload of money, you know, not doing anything. Um. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's cool. Um. So there. You know, this
Speaker 1: goes on for years for most of the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: in fact um and kind of massive conflicts are just
Speaker 1: barely avoided here and there. But then in July of
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty three, the Czar invades Moldovia and Wallachia, which
Speaker 1: is like modern day Romania. UM. Now, Louis Napoleon had
Speaker 1: no desire to start his reign with another land war
Speaker 1: in Europe. He'd campaigned on the premise that quote the
Speaker 1: Empire stands for peace. But the connections he'd built with
Speaker 1: the English prior to his rise for power. Remember that's
Speaker 1: where he's hanging out the whole time, as he's in
Speaker 1: between coups, means that he can't just sit back if
Speaker 1: they choose to get involved. This is further complicated by
Speaker 1: the fact that a lot of French people hated the
Speaker 1: English um, so they didn't really want to be on
Speaker 1: their side, but they hated the Russians too, which I
Speaker 1: think helped a little bit. Um. Ultimately, Louis tells the
Speaker 1: French Assembly that he's sending his army some three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand men east to help England defend the Sultan against
Speaker 1: Russian aggression. And this war effectively brings France back to
Speaker 1: the world stage as a major player, and it is
Speaker 1: the This is why if you've ever wondered, given all
Speaker 1: of the centuries they were fighting each other, well, why
Speaker 1: do France and England wind up on the same side
Speaker 1: in World War one and two? Well it starts here, right,
Speaker 1: This is kind of the first time where they wind
Speaker 1: up wrapped together, um, in a major war. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's um, yeah, it's a big deal special relationship now, yeah,
Speaker 1: this this is the start of that. And this is
Speaker 1: often like in kind of the high level summaries of
Speaker 1: like what happens in the Crimean War, you'll hear it
Speaker 1: described as like, well, this is the first modern war.
Speaker 1: You know, the French and the British had had better
Speaker 1: rail lines and better transit, and like the Russians were
Speaker 1: so just like funk ups and stuff. But also the
Speaker 1: French and British militaries are also disasters in this war. This,
Speaker 1: this war is a terrible, terrible war for everybody involved. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's a ship show. Because the military that France
Speaker 1: has built since Napoleon isn't really good at fighting in
Speaker 1: conventional wars. They become a colonial policing force built to
Speaker 1: like lockdown Algeria and West Africa, and Louis is calling
Speaker 1: upon them to like fight these human wave attacks. The
Speaker 1: logistical hurdles are made worse by the fact that Louis
Speaker 1: picks his cousin Jerome Bonaparte as the divisional general who's
Speaker 1: running the military now. Jerome gets the job because his cousin,
Speaker 1: also named Jere, had fallen alongside Napoleon Bonaparte. I know,
Speaker 1: it's so fucking stupid, Jerry, pick new names, you asks
Speaker 1: like God, I hate you. There's Louis and there's Jerry.
Speaker 1: There's only two kinds of names a person could have.
Speaker 1: Call him Mitch, have a mitch, Napoleon Bonaparte, Bonaparte, God Almighty.
Speaker 1: So so, Jerome gets this job because his uncle had
Speaker 1: fought with Napoleon. But the thing his uncle was famous
Speaker 1: for was abandoning Napoleon Bonaparte during the marriach to Russia
Speaker 1: in eighteen twelve, and like fleeing the empire because he did,
Speaker 1: which is not bad look not bad judgment, Like not
Speaker 1: bad judgment. Yeah, but also that might be a red flag.
Speaker 1: And sure enough, the instant cousin Jerome sees gunfire, he
Speaker 1: goes home, he flees back to Paris. It's in the blood.
Speaker 1: It's in the blood. He learned the thing his dad
Speaker 1: learned about are which is naa no ship. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: this earns him the nickname sans plume or gutless Bonaparte.
Speaker 1: That's what they call him now is is gutless bonaparte Um,
Speaker 1: which is quite a nickname. And I'm gonna quote next
Speaker 1: from the book The Shadow Emperor. It was a grim
Speaker 1: beginning for what was to prove a very grim campaign
Speaker 1: under sweltering summer temperatures, as dysentery, typhus, typhoid and the
Speaker 1: most deadly cholera epidemic ravaged the ranks. On the fifteenth
Speaker 1: of October, they fought and narrowly won the indecisive victory
Speaker 1: of Balaclava, where the seventh Earl, the mad General Black
Speaker 1: Bottle Lord Cardigan Lewis, Napoleon's landlord during his youthful exile
Speaker 1: in London, led his historic six hundred and sixty one
Speaker 1: man cavalry in the Charge of the Light Brigade, of
Speaker 1: which only four hundred and fourteen young men along with
Speaker 1: some three hundred horses survived. So the Charge of the
Speaker 1: Light Brigade guy is his former landlord. He hires hires
Speaker 1: well the breath you know, he does not in charge
Speaker 1: of the British Army. UM. This was followed by the
Speaker 1: Allied victory of Increment on November fifty four, and then
Speaker 1: began the unanticipated Eleventh Month Siege against the Russian Marshal
Speaker 1: Marshal Menshikov's fifty to seventy men and they're stoutly defended
Speaker 1: port fortress of Sebastopol. They're the French, who had failed
Speaker 1: to bring the heavy artillery for this war, were obliged
Speaker 1: to strip their navy of most of their guns to
Speaker 1: form thirteen batteries of thirty and fifty pound cannon. Um.
Speaker 1: So again he sends the the the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte,
Speaker 1: an artilleryman, sends his army to war without heavy artillery.
Speaker 1: And they taken from the boat. Taken from the boat,
Speaker 1: there's not like there's any water near. No, it's very funny. Um.
Speaker 1: And again they win because this is also looked. You know,
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian military has gotten praised a lot for its
Speaker 1: stick tuitiveness. If you spend time talking to people who
Speaker 1: are are there, talking to people have been over there,
Speaker 1: it's still a bit of a ship show. It's a
Speaker 1: messy military, right, But again as is the case here.
Speaker 1: The Russians are just so much messier, right that, like
Speaker 1: you can you can afford to funk up some when
Speaker 1: the Russians are here, because they're gonna make a lot
Speaker 1: of mistakes. Yeah. Um, the Czar is not going to
Speaker 1: be planning this very well. Um, you only need to
Speaker 1: be just a little bit more organized than Russia. Just
Speaker 1: have your ship more together than the Russians. But like barely,
Speaker 1: but barely. That that is the case of everyone who
Speaker 1: wins a war against Russia. Um. So, in the end,
Speaker 1: the Allies one and the Crimean War was broadly good
Speaker 1: for Louis's new regime, but much of this was due
Speaker 1: to luck in great Russian incompetence again, rather than good
Speaker 1: decisions by the Emperor. He sends three thousand men into
Speaker 1: the Crimea and d of them die, mostly from disease
Speaker 1: due to cholera outbreaks, because he doesn't have anyone in
Speaker 1: his army who can manage sanitation very well. Um. So,
Speaker 1: you know, some people will say he's kind of traumatized
Speaker 1: by this um just because like that Louis Napoleon that yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he feels like bad about this um like that he's
Speaker 1: because he's the one. He was the one who gets
Speaker 1: to make the decision, right, he was the one man
Speaker 1: who sent them into war, and ninety five thousand of
Speaker 1: them didn't come back, and that does kind of this
Speaker 1: is what your dad has been telling you. This is
Speaker 1: like never, this is literally what your dad was warning
Speaker 1: you about. Sting is pretty bad. Is bad, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna feel bad you don't. Don't do it. And then
Speaker 1: he does it. He's like, damn, dude, I don't know
Speaker 1: he's going to feel that bad when I should know
Speaker 1: his dad is is parent passed on by this point.
Speaker 1: His dad dies while he's in prison, so he doesn't
Speaker 1: ever get to be like, oh, yeah, I get what
Speaker 1: you were saying about war being bad. Um. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: he's you know that this is this is literally the
Speaker 1: exact thing you were told. Um. Anyway, he finally gets it.
Speaker 1: After CRIMEA. Lewis reiterates his dedication to peace, and then
Speaker 1: he sends soldiers to Italy to crush an independence movement
Speaker 1: against the Pope Um. This is basically identical to the
Speaker 1: independence movement he had fought for as a younger man,
Speaker 1: and his brother had died for Um. But now that
Speaker 1: he was King. You know, the church is kind of
Speaker 1: an important ally for him, so he now to be fair.
Speaker 1: He kind of makes up for this in eighteen fifty
Speaker 1: nine when he goes to war with Austria and defeats
Speaker 1: the Habsburg Emperor Franz Joseph, who's a big old prick
Speaker 1: in battle for an idea of like, Franz Joseph massive
Speaker 1: piece of shit. He loses a war in eighteen fifty
Speaker 1: nine that like leads to the end of Austrian domination
Speaker 1: of Italy. Right, Um, eighteen fifty nine, franc Joseph loses
Speaker 1: that war against Napoleon. The third Guess who the Emperor
Speaker 1: of Austria Hungary is when World War One starts? Uh,
Speaker 1: same guy? Same guy really? Yeah? Fifty four years later,
Speaker 1: five years later, the same guy, Yeah he is. He
Speaker 1: is in charge of Austria Hungary for for fucking ever.
Speaker 1: It is ludicrous how long this guy is running that
Speaker 1: fucking country, that fucking train wreck of a country. Um,
Speaker 1: France Joseph like never dies. It sucks so bad because
Speaker 1: he's terrible. He's still around. Yeah, he's still alive right now,
Speaker 1: He's still running Austria. Go over there, you'll see, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's trying to get hungry to come back. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: saw that. There's that picture going around and that like
Speaker 1: one monk somewhere in Southeast Asia who looks like a
Speaker 1: skeleton because he's so old. That's that's Franz Joseph. It's
Speaker 1: just fucking skeletor on the throne. Damn fight Prussia. So
Speaker 1: Algeria gets officially conquered in eighteen fifty eight. Uh, and
Speaker 1: again they've said this a couple of times, but they
Speaker 1: basically cracked down on the worst of the uprisings again
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty eight. And after this point, with like
Speaker 1: kind of Algeria temporarily pacified, French power begins to expand
Speaker 1: rapidly across Southeast Asia. Um, during the time that Napoleon's
Speaker 1: like early to mid reign, the French military will conquer
Speaker 1: v Vietnam, Cambodia, and Lao, creating Yeah, would eventually become
Speaker 1: known as French Indo China. This is a nasty thing.
Speaker 1: There are a lot tens of thousands die and eventually
Speaker 1: millions are going to die because of this. Um. Napoleon
Speaker 1: the third lets it happen. He is not a driving
Speaker 1: force behind it. The people who orchestrate this and push
Speaker 1: this are his generals and admirals. The French Navy is
Speaker 1: a big driving force with this. And the primary thing
Speaker 1: that you could you should blame Loose Napoleon for is
Speaker 1: that again they kind of sit down and talk nice
Speaker 1: to him and he just agrees to let them do
Speaker 1: whatever they want. Um and uh, yeah, it's it that
Speaker 1: he doesn't resist and he he lets this thing happen
Speaker 1: in part because like people said nice things about him
Speaker 1: and he's kind of that. That's that's basically his big vulnerability. Um.
Speaker 1: So he loves compliments, he loves when um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like Trump with the Saudis. They let him hold
Speaker 1: the globe, you know, the glowing orb, and then he's like,
Speaker 1: all right, here, have some more planes. You give an
Speaker 1: app man an ORB and he'll have an ORB for
Speaker 1: a day. You teach a man to find his own orbs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the new book by Robert Evans, Teach Your Man to Orb,
Speaker 1: funded by Peter Teal. Finally gonna get that Palentier money
Speaker 1: for something appropriate. Speaking of palent here, you know who
Speaker 1: sponsors this podcast, Palentier. So go spy on somebody you know,
Speaker 1: Palentteer's new Everybody's Spy program. Just record someone, anybody, anybody
Speaker 1: who doesn't know you're recording them, and then mail that
Speaker 1: in an envelope to Peter Teal. He'll stick it up
Speaker 1: on a drop box somewhere. Don't worry about what happens
Speaker 1: to it. Ah, we're back, boy, howdy. I sure love
Speaker 1: recording people with out there express consent me too, It's
Speaker 1: my favorite thing to do. That's why I enjoyed the
Speaker 1: services of Palanteer Palentier. If you touch it, you'll see
Speaker 1: Sauron's great eye. It is so fucked up that a
Speaker 1: guy named a company that. It's insane. It's insane. It's
Speaker 1: so on the nose. If people talk about like I
Speaker 1: wonder what token would have felt about like the Lord
Speaker 1: of the Rings movies and stuff like, No, I want
Speaker 1: to know nobody would have felt about that ship that
Speaker 1: there's like like someone literally built a palatiner. It's named
Speaker 1: it Palenteer. That's fucking ridiculous. It's a bit on the nose, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little bit on the nose. Over that's an Oxford
Speaker 1: dawn accent. Whatever, crying under beach, the two accents. I
Speaker 1: can do it. Would be funny to do a movie
Speaker 1: on Jaire or Token, but like hire somebody with one
Speaker 1: like a re accent to play token. I got to
Speaker 1: spike to you and now fish I am English dead Brilli.
Speaker 1: So it's probably fair to say anyway, whatever, this is
Speaker 1: going to be a problem for tens of millions of
Speaker 1: people in the future. Um, and it all happens at
Speaker 1: least without any resistance by Napoleon the Third. Back in Europe,
Speaker 1: the negotiations at the end of the Crimean War had
Speaker 1: made Napoleon the Third into one of the central diplomats
Speaker 1: of European power politics. Italian unification would eventually owe a
Speaker 1: great deal to his lobbying and fighting with Austria. He
Speaker 1: began to look overseas to the America's where Louis Napoleon
Speaker 1: was greatly concerned with the expansion of the United States.
Speaker 1: He'd liked America, and he had admired a lot of
Speaker 1: aspects of like American are technologically driven culture while he
Speaker 1: was there. But he was canny enough to see like, well,
Speaker 1: they kind of like murdered their way into control of
Speaker 1: most of the world's resources. Um, they have like a
Speaker 1: dozen Europe's worth of country that they just own now,
Speaker 1: and uh, it kind of seems like they might become
Speaker 1: the pre eminent power in the world, and I should
Speaker 1: do something to stop that because I would like that
Speaker 1: to be France. Yeah, that's supposed to be me. That's
Speaker 1: supposed to be me. So in the late eighteen fifties,
Speaker 1: he begins courting Maximilian Habsburg, who's the brother of the
Speaker 1: Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph Um and trying to convince him
Speaker 1: to become the Emperor of Mexico. So, first off, brilliant plan, incredible,
Speaker 1: no notes. You know all Mexico's there, Well, it needs
Speaker 1: an emperor. What if Yeah, you know what, the solution
Speaker 1: to all of Mexico's problems are a German speaking guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a German emperor. I think it's a great idea. Walk
Speaker 1: around Warez right now. What you know, you guys got
Speaker 1: a lot of problems with Cartel's and not enough water,
Speaker 1: all this good stuff. What if a German was in charge?
Speaker 1: You think that will help? Uh? So, first I want
Speaker 1: to say, last been great. So I am going to
Speaker 1: be how you say, and um, you people are just
Speaker 1: going to uh, you're going to be my amigos do you,
Speaker 1: uh compreende, It's very hard to do with has basically
Speaker 1: gotten all of it right though that if that is
Speaker 1: this guy fucking Maximilian Habsburg just an out. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that I do for fun is I
Speaker 1: will troll Edward Habsburg, who is the current heir to
Speaker 1: the Hapsburg family and a monarchist piece of shit um
Speaker 1: and like some weirdly ais onto the Catholic Church, he's
Speaker 1: a fucking asshole. He loves anime though weirdly enough anyway,
Speaker 1: I will troll him, and I will troll him specifically
Speaker 1: about the fact that Maximilian von Habsburg is eventually executed
Speaker 1: by a firing squad, And every time I do, I
Speaker 1: get fucking royalists in my mentions, being like, well, he
Speaker 1: was actually a great leader in if Mexico would fall, No,
Speaker 1: he wasn't. They shot him to death. That doesn't happen
Speaker 1: to you if you're a great Great leaders do sometimes
Speaker 1: great leaders get assassinated by a lone guy with a gun.
Speaker 1: Share We've all seen that happen. Great leaders do not
Speaker 1: get executed by the mass acclaim of the populace right exactly,
Speaker 1: and then completely wiped from the general history exactly. Like
Speaker 1: I like to think I know a little bit about
Speaker 1: Mexican history, and I don't celebrate this guy. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: so I know about like the whole like the peri
Speaker 1: at a regime that happened during that time and whatnot.
Speaker 1: Battle comes out of this, right, But Inferio Diaz, I
Speaker 1: think is his name is one of the generals, one
Speaker 1: of the generals who fights Maximilian Um. So anyway, we're
Speaker 1: getting ahead of ourselves. So the way that Napoleon the
Speaker 1: Third proceeds with cooking the ship up is he gets
Speaker 1: a handful of Mexican academics and politicians, most of whom
Speaker 1: are living in Europe and have been like because Mexico
Speaker 1: tons of civil wars. Right, so you have a bunch
Speaker 1: of like di as for guys who are like in
Speaker 1: Europe trying to like raise money and support for some
Speaker 1: kind of revolution or another. He gets a bunch of
Speaker 1: these guys back to back the idea that like the
Speaker 1: regular Mexican people are just like clamoring for a European emperor,
Speaker 1: just like the big countries. Right, yeah, please, there is
Speaker 1: zero evidence of this. There's absolutely no evidence of this
Speaker 1: um And in fact, so the Tuba music we like
Speaker 1: too for an idea of like how little the Mexican
Speaker 1: people wanted an emperor. So there's this, you know, there's
Speaker 1: this like Mexico gets its its independence in like eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty one um from Spain, and the guy who like
Speaker 1: leads the independence movement is this dude, Augustine a turbine
Speaker 1: um who then declares himself the Emperor of Mexico. And
Speaker 1: do you know what the Mexican people do to a
Speaker 1: turbine They fucking murder him, They fucking kill him because
Speaker 1: they don't like having an emperor. Like, no, we don't,
Speaker 1: We're not with that, Yeah, which you take is evidence
Speaker 1: that Mexicans don't want to have an emperor. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems historically true. Napoleon the Third assumes this has to
Speaker 1: just be some like like fluke of history. Uh, and
Speaker 1: he keeps on plotting. And while he's playing power politics,
Speaker 1: Napoleon the Third also presides over the creation of modern party.
Speaker 1: The city as we know it today, with its wide
Speaker 1: boulevards and iconic architecture, was largely created during Louis Napoleon's reign.
Speaker 1: And I want to quote now from a write up
Speaker 1: in the Conversation by Samuel Raybone quote. Louis Napoleon inherited
Speaker 1: a cramped, crumbling, and crime ridden capital. Paris is one
Speaker 1: million inhabitants lived cheek by jowl in a vast tangle
Speaker 1: of densely packed buildings. There was even a slum in
Speaker 1: the courtyard of the Louver. Modernizing Paris promised more than
Speaker 1: practical benefits. I want to be a second Augustus, wrote
Speaker 1: Louis Napoleon in eighteen forty two. Because Augustus made Rome
Speaker 1: a city of marble, it meant glory. So he hired
Speaker 1: a ruthlessly efficient administrator, Baron Houseman, to knock down the
Speaker 1: old slums. The city became a building site. Charles Marvel's
Speaker 1: photographs record the squalor of the slums, the chaos of
Speaker 1: their transformation, and the spectacle of their rebirth. Thousands of
Speaker 1: men were drafted into an army of construction, battling away
Speaker 1: on this new field of honor for the glory of
Speaker 1: the nation and it's increasingly power hungry leader. Now, the
Speaker 1: downside of using populist rhetoric to get people to endorse
Speaker 1: your dictatorial regime is that you really can't afford to
Speaker 1: pish your base off too much, right, because that's how
Speaker 1: you've justified your power, and Lewis had taken power, promising
Speaker 1: to renew France and bring hope for the working class.
Speaker 1: One commenter noted that quote a week's interruption of the
Speaker 1: building trade would terrify the government. Everything rode on continued
Speaker 1: mass public employment. So he's giving people jobs to do
Speaker 1: all this rebuilding and the perception of continuous progress. To
Speaker 1: ensure that people believe this. Napoleon the Third turned to
Speaker 1: the still very new silence of photography, which would only
Speaker 1: come about in the eighteen forties. He commissioned the best
Speaker 1: photographs refers of the day to document the renovation of
Speaker 1: the Louver, the construction of new bridges, and an opera house.
Speaker 1: These photos were published widely, building on a national and
Speaker 1: international image of Paris as a city being renewed. Other
Speaker 1: photographers at the time noted that the pictures Napoleon the
Speaker 1: Third commissioned to focus on the titanic scale of his
Speaker 1: new public works projects and the clean lines of new construction.
Speaker 1: The workers erecting it, by contrast, were always tiny quote,
Speaker 1: trapped in the labyrinth of scaffolding. As one commenter put it,
Speaker 1: the mighty ends for Napoleon stamped on every new project,
Speaker 1: dwarfed the humans who made them. Raybone continues as Napoleon
Speaker 1: the Third's interior minister knew in industry has its injured
Speaker 1: like war, and the rebuilding of Paris too had its
Speaker 1: glorious war wounded. In eighteen fifty five, Napoleon the Third
Speaker 1: ordered the construction of a convalescent asylum to care for
Speaker 1: workers injured during the building works. Charles Negra visited the
Speaker 1: asylum around eighteen fifty eight to photograph its buildings, patients,
Speaker 1: and staff. To get paid. Negro knew he had to
Speaker 1: tow the party line, yet the body season he encountered
Speaker 1: had been wounded in the war for Napoleon the Third
Speaker 1: self aggrandizement, giving the lie to his image of populist benevolence.
Speaker 1: Never's challenge was to celebrate Napoleon the Third's care for
Speaker 1: their sufferers suffering without review his culpability for it. So
Speaker 1: never and this is this hasn't happened before. Photographs have
Speaker 1: not been used in this way. And you can't. You
Speaker 1: can't use paintings and ship like this, right. There are
Speaker 1: ways to use them for propaganda, sure, but not the
Speaker 1: way that photograph. There's a sense that a photograph is
Speaker 1: a depiction of reality in a way that is not
Speaker 1: the case. Everyone even always understood, like, yeah, the Emperor
Speaker 1: puts up these fucking statues and these reliefs, but like
Speaker 1: they're carvings and stone. It's not like literal photograph that's reality.
Speaker 1: And so Napoleon is the first world leader to really
Speaker 1: comprehensively use photographs and in order to like craft an
Speaker 1: alternate vision of reality in his propaganda. Um yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like as soon as we invent like
Speaker 1: a new mass media technology, where like, how can I
Speaker 1: use this for political propaganda? Yeah? Um never a position
Speaker 1: to patients and medical staff angled towards a marble bust
Speaker 1: of Napoleon the third, his face clear, and there's indistinct
Speaker 1: individually meaningless patients only be shown eating, playing, and reading.
Speaker 1: Actual medical procedures were forbidden to be shown, as was
Speaker 1: evidence of permanent disability or injury. Generations of authoritarians would
Speaker 1: build on the work Napoleon did to turn his photography
Speaker 1: into part of his cult of personality. But it all
Speaker 1: started here. It just it sucks so much because it's, uh,
Speaker 1: you realize that like a lot of these people. You
Speaker 1: know that, Like you said, this empire's populist empire is
Speaker 1: built on like making sure the population is like loves
Speaker 1: you and stays in line. And I think another big
Speaker 1: part of uh, like the complete renovation of Paris and
Speaker 1: like basically these people were employed to destroy their own
Speaker 1: homes and build newer, uh different homes and wider boulevards.
Speaker 1: That made it much much harder to do a popular revolution.
Speaker 1: That is also a big part of why they're redesigning
Speaker 1: Paris this way. It's like, yes, we keep having government's
Speaker 1: get overthrown by the people, right because that harder. I
Speaker 1: want to make it easier to shoot a lot of
Speaker 1: people very quickly right right there, Like they built it,
Speaker 1: I think I remember it's something like they built it
Speaker 1: to be just the size of a whole regiment of
Speaker 1: like cavalry or some ship. Like yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is him basically making it all those like cool barricades
Speaker 1: from the past like not possible. And that sucks because
Speaker 1: there's so much institutional history of them building them barricades. Dude,
Speaker 1: Like what are people gonna do with that knowledge? Yeah,
Speaker 1: now you're never going to get the sequel to Limisserab. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sucks, dude, that that's the tragedy. There's not gonna
Speaker 1: be another role for Russell Crowe to sing in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fucking what's Russell Crowe gonna do with his career? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Did anyone think about Russell Crowe before they expanded the boulevards? Once?
Speaker 1: Think about Russell Crowe? I don't think so, not once,
Speaker 1: not a single time? Bullshit? And is that his greatest
Speaker 1: I'm greater than conquering Indo China, greater than killing all
Speaker 1: of those people in the rebuilding projects, you know, greater. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're all in agreement anyway. I love Russell Crowe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, he's just like, how did we get on
Speaker 1: Russell Crowe talk? I'm gonna say it's Sophie. He's the
Speaker 1: only actor. That's not true. He's the only actor. No
Speaker 1: one else isn't. Pedro. Yeah, that's not acting, not like
Speaker 1: Russell Crowe can. I'd love to see Pedro Pascal badly
Speaker 1: sing all of the tunes and Mr Rob exactly. He
Speaker 1: couldn't rememorize all those you've actually watched the because he
Speaker 1: probably it was it is. Look, there's some good parts
Speaker 1: to that visually, but man, Russell Crowe is not a singer.
Speaker 1: He's in that band like something. However, many feet of runs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure he's doing a lot of music. That's what
Speaker 1: I think. I mean, it's not I will say this,
Speaker 1: the Limissa rob adaptation with Russell Crowe is not nearly
Speaker 1: as bad as the adaptation of Sweeney Todd with fucking
Speaker 1: Johnny Depp, who It's heartbreaking because I love Sweeney Todd.
Speaker 1: It's a great music. It's a great musical. Fucking Alan
Speaker 1: Rickman incredible, jod like his voice, very wonderful, the kid
Speaker 1: they get to play Toby, perfect voice, beautiful voice. And
Speaker 1: then you've got fucking Sweeney Todd played by like Johnny Depp,
Speaker 1: outside of all of the other things that are wrong
Speaker 1: with Johnny Depp, not a strong singer, and for fucking
Speaker 1: Sweeney Todd, you have to be a strong goddamn singer.
Speaker 1: It's that's the lead musical. Get a good singer, God,
Speaker 1: Russell Crow, get Russell Crow, make him be Sweeney Todd. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the solution. That's the solution. I'm glad we figured
Speaker 1: all this out, matt leebug before we rull out for
Speaker 1: the day. So much to plug follow me on you know,
Speaker 1: Instagram at matt Leap jokes. But I do a podcast.
Speaker 1: I do a couple of podcasts that our TV rewatch podcasts,
Speaker 1: and uh, Pod Yourself a Gun is a Sopranos podcast,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to be doing a live show of
Speaker 1: Pod Yourself a Gun at San Francisco Sketch Fest Saturday,
Speaker 1: January at ten pm Piano Fight main Stage. Please if
Speaker 1: you like the Sopranos um or the Wire, because now
Speaker 1: we do the Wire podcast, check that out. Go to
Speaker 1: s F sketch Fest dot com look up Pod Yourself
Speaker 1: a Gun and buy tickets please because that would be support,
Speaker 1: Matt support and Robert and I have a couple of
Speaker 1: events coming up, don't we Robert. That seems like a lie, okay.
Speaker 1: One of them is a live virtual event that we
Speaker 1: are doing with moment House and featuring Margaret kill Joys
Speaker 1: and Behind the Bastard's livestream show that will be happening
Speaker 1: on December eighth at six pm Pacific and if you
Speaker 1: can't make it, we'll be on demand for up to
Speaker 1: a week um and you can get tickets at moment
Speaker 1: house dot co, slash bTB and it's should be smart
Speaker 1: splattered all over social So how do you say that splattered?
Speaker 1: I'm going with it, Yes, all over splooged all over
Speaker 1: social media. And if I remember, I will link it
Speaker 1: in the description. UM and Robert and I will also
Speaker 1: be at SF sketch Fest. Hell yeah, hell yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know, uh, what if we went on strike
Speaker 1: at sketch Fest, You know, Matt, what if we struck
Speaker 1: for more? I what do I remember about sketch Fest.
Speaker 1: They gave us a bunch of those those waters that
Speaker 1: are like big beer cans. For more of those? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's strike for more of that ship more liquid death.
Speaker 1: And I think also, um, I forget. I don't know
Speaker 1: if Audible is a sponsor again this year, but if
Speaker 1: they are, I'm I said, we strike for more UM
Speaker 1: free credit codes and gift cards. Yeah. I like audio
Speaker 1: books and I don't like having to pay. I don't
Speaker 1: I love audio books and I hate paying for things.
Speaker 1: So help us, help Matt and I strike against uh
Speaker 1: the good people at SF sketch who have invited us
Speaker 1: but definitely but definitely by tickets, but also support our
Speaker 1: strike against there They're evil, not giving me like right now,
Speaker 1: I would like one of those liquid death cans and
Speaker 1: I don't have it, and I'm furious. Man, they make
Speaker 1: caffeinated Anyways, I believe Behind the Bastards will be there
Speaker 1: on January. I don't have any more information when we're
Speaker 1: recording this, but I'm sure you'll see more in the future.
Speaker 1: Also by Robert's book After the Revolution. Yes, I do it?
Speaker 1: Did I do the plugs? Yeah? Episode fucking over, Bye bye,
Speaker 1: goddamn right bye. Behind the Bastards is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more from cool zone Media, visit
Speaker 1: our website cool zone media dot com, or check us
Speaker 1: out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.