Napoleon and New Orleans. Bonaparte retiring to a house in New Orleans sounds like a skit from Monty Python. It doesn’t appear in textbooks, and isn’t included in the new movie “Napoleon”, but the French Emperor apparently had bold plans to start a new life in the US. I was amazed to learn this, as I imagine you might be.
In the interior garden courtyard of Napoleon House, a warm breeze murmurs over wrought-iron bistro tables. It swells, turning the hum of conversation and clinking of silverware into a quiet symphony. Bow-tied waiters glide between tables at the New Orleans restaurant, depositing the signature Pimm’s cup cocktail, Creole classics like jambalaya and red beans and rice, and Italian muffalettas stacked high with sliced meat, cheese and piquant giardiniera. This beacon of casual yet high-style dining is visited by thousands of people each year both for its food and its history.
If you closed your eyes, you might be swept back in time to when the city, settled by the French in 1718, and still celebrating its greatest land victory against the British in the War of 1812, was populated by Francophone expats enamored with the brilliant Napoleon Bonaparte.
Although Napoleon never ended up making it to the US, travelers to New Orleans can still see glimpses of infamous dictator’s fascinating connection to the city, and learn more about his thwarted desire to start a new life in the United States.
France had ceded Louisiana to Spain in 1762, but Napoleon negotiated with King Carlos IV, in 1801, to regain it: He considered a piece of the New World as key to France’s ambitions.
The Louisiana Territory, an 828,000-square-mile tract of land that included not just Louisiana itself, but the modern-day states of Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North and South Dakota and Oklahoma, as well as parts of Colorado, Minnesota and Wyoming. The territory was a vital area for resupplying and sheltering troops deployed in the valuable “sugar islands” of the Caribbean, especially Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti).
However, in 1801, an uprising of the enslaved people on Saint-Domingue resulted in an embarrassing loss for France. Having ceded control of the island, Napoleon opted to sell the Louisiana Territory to America – a solution he found more palatable than allowing the land to fall into the hands of his sworn enemy, the British. Napoleon offered the Americans the entire territory – almost all of it still owned and occupied by Indigenous tribes – for $11,250,000, or less than 3 cents per acre. America assumed control of the land in May 1803, doubling the area of the nascent country and strengthening its world strategic position practically overnight.
By the early 1800s, New Orleans had thousands of French immigrants – and Bonaparte loyalists. “There was basically a cult of Napoleon at that time,” said Karen Leathem, historian at the Louisiana State Museum. Among them was Nicolas Girod. Born in the Duchy of Savoy, a portion of north-western Italy annexed by France, Girod arrived in New Orleans while it was under Spanish colonial rule (1763-1803). A tavern keeper and smuggler, before eventually working his way up to become a successful commission merchant, Girod was elected mayor of New Orleans in 1812. The newly-wealthy Girod purchased several properties in what is now known as the French Quarter. In 1814, on Chartres Street, he commissioned a grand home – the place now known as Napoleon House.
By then, Napoleon’s fortunes had turned. Following the disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, Napoleon was defeated in 1813 by a coalition of Britain, Russia, Austria, Prussia and Sweden. He abdicated a year later, and was exiled to the Italian island of Elba, only to escape nine months later and reclaim his title.
Napoleon’s return galvanized his old enemies. They clashed again in Belgium, where Napoleon was eventually defeated in the Battle of Waterloo. According to Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne’s Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1815 Napoleon confided to a friend, Antoine Marie Chamans, the Comte de Lavallette, “If they do not like me to remain in France, where am I to go? To England? My abode there would be ridiculous or disquieting… America would be more suitable; I could live there with dignity”.
Correspondence between Napoleon’s younger brother Lucien Bonaparte and Emmanuel-Augustin-Dieudonné-Joseph, Comte de Las Cases, shows that Napoleon’s initial plan was to retire on the shores of the Mississippi, or Ohio, rivers. Upon learning his brother Joseph had beaten him to American shores, he said, “If I were in his place, within a year I would create a great empire in the Spanish Americas.”
Napoleon continued to dream of emigrating to America, and instructed his staff to start packing books from his vast library, for shipment. According to Mikhaberidze, he was spotted reading books about the Americas, and, during a conversation with famed botanist and traveler, Aime Bonpland, invited the author to visit him in the US.
Napoleon requested that France’s Provisional Government prepare a frigate on which he could embark for his retirement in America. The written order to the ship’s captain never arrived, and Napoleon made it only as far as the central western coast of France. After several days spent trying to commission various captains to convey him to the United States, he was captured by the English and exiled a second time, to the heavily guarded island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic.
In America, whispers began to spread. “There were Bonapartist exiles in New Orleans, most of them diehard supporters of Napoleon,” explained Mikaberidze. “They believed that if given an opportunity, they should rescue him.” Likewise, Napoleon believed the Bonapartist enclave in the Spanish colonies of America would attract talented and ambitious people from across the world, who would help rise against Spain and found a “new homeland”, with him as their emperor of course.
“I would have loved to realize this dream,” he noted, “It would have brought me new glory.”
Among the grand schemes of the groups in New Orleans, were building a submarine, or sending a flotilla of pirates, to liberate the former emperor. Dominique You, a New Orleans‒based privateer and frequent collaborator of famed pirate Jean Lafitte, was said to have organized a group that would cross the ocean on the yacht Seraphine – an expedition financed by Girod. Girod was believed to have offered his third-floor apartments to the exiled dictator. Before You could make the trip, Napoleon died in 1821 from stomach cancer.
The Napoleonic legacy in The Big Easy ended there, although remnants of the Napoleonic past exist all around New Orleans to this day.
As I said, I am amazed at this story. It appears to be true…..and not a Monty Python skit.
I saw Napoleon House when we visited New Orleans, but never sampled the menu – next time?
Another seemingly unusual “French Connection” in New Orleans is a golden statue of Joan Of Arc on a horse?! We took a tour when we visited the first time, and, as we drove past, our tour guide said “nobody really knows why she is there, and we call her “Joanie On A Pony”!