Part Three: Napoleon III: The Worst Bonaparte

Robert is joined by Matt Lieb for part three of our series on Napoleon III. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Test tests. Wow, Jesus gosh, I can't believe Sophie just
said that about the entire nation of Paraguay. Strange. Wow.
I feel like I say that like once a week.
People are going to be angry when they hear this episode. Wow.
I mean it's just like, first of all Monte videos

(00:23):
in Uruguay, I know, right, like immediately obvious problem. But
second of all, I just don't I've never heard that
particular stereotype. I'm shocked. It's incredible, honestly impressed the creativity
every week. How are you not picking up on it? Wow? Anyway,
this is behind the bastards. Chief bastard being our producer,

(00:45):
Sophie Lichterman and her Actually I don't know enough about
Paraguay to fill this joke out anyway, to dig into
that's how little known Paraguay is of the staff of
this podcast. Yeah, I know it's one of the guys. Yeah,
there's a second Guay. Let's lean on that one. I

(01:06):
feel like it's a landlocked way. I feel like all
the Guays are landlocked, right, you're aga. I feel like
isn't landlocked? Is no? I think You'uguay is pretty landlocked.
There's no way to answer this question with For example,
the devices were all using to record this podct. I
did google what are major stereotypes people have about Paraguay

(01:27):
into what extent are they true? And the first answer
is there the short answer there really isn't anything special
in quotes about it. So I think they really like
they really like Lady Gaga. Oh wow, yeah, you can't
get them shutting up about Lady Yeah, I think that's true.

(01:49):
Bunch of monsters. Did you call them monsters something like that? Yeah,
I've forgotten most of the things about Lady Gaga. Um,
I don't know nothing. I just don't remember. So much
has happened since Lady Gaga was in the news. Yeah,
it's like literally, yeah, what do you remember about Ashton Kutcher?

(02:11):
Very little? I remember that his name is not Aston,
there's Ashton Ashton. That's how little I remembered his name.
That's how I told you. I don't remember much about
the man in action with him. I was at a
coffee shop. He was ahead of me in line. He
forgot his wallet and went back to his car to

(02:34):
pay for his two dollar coffee. Instead of being an
asshole celebrity. That was like well, I'm Ashton Kutcher, so
I'm just gonna take this. I offered to pay for it,
and then when I got up there, I'd be like,
psych he just got punked. And then I would have
waited for him to see if I was joking or not,
and then I would just to be clever, so clever.

(02:57):
That's very generous for this bit. Podcast is not about
Ashton or Ashton Kutcher. This is no This is a
podcast where I don't know okay, sopranos podcast sorry, where
we talk about I don't know Soprano's character book a Tibeppo.

(03:22):
You gotta learn names, man, you gotta know. One of
them's name is Soprano. It is to Tony right, Tony, Yeah, yeah,
I got it, I got it. I remember that, and
I remember a lot about Napoleon the Third who we
are who we are talking about now. When we left
off with our hero, he has just tried to take
over France, failed, shot a man in the face for

(03:44):
no reason, and then repeatedly attempted to commit suicide as
he was taken to jail. Yeah. So not a great coup, yeah,
one of the worst. But I respect the attempt. I
always respect a good coup at him. I always respect
a good at coup attempt, right, Um, this is I
have to I think, you know, it's debatable. Is this

(04:05):
the worst coup attempt than Hitler's. You know, Hitler's ended
with him and all of his men getting machine gunned
in the street. Uh, and then he did try to
kill himself. But there's something about the impotence of shooting
an unarmed man in the face for no reason whatever,
in the mouth, like, come on, man, yeah he was there.

(04:27):
It's a weird panic button, you know what I mean.
Or you're just like, I'm panicking. Where's the nearest mouth.
It was the nearest mouth that can put a fucking
musket ball in good lord. Yeah, that's what you do
when some people, you know, some people play better when
they're panicking. Not him, not him. No, he did not.
He did not rise to the moments. He didn't. This

(04:52):
the opposite of Michael Jordan's flu game. This was if
Michael Jordan's had the flu during Game four the NBA
Finals and then shot Scottie Pippen in the mouth. Because
I forget which game was the flu game. I mean
it might have been a game too. And uh, was

(05:13):
it game five when he had the flu? Believe it
was game six games So so he won an NBA
final with the flu. That's crazy. Michael Jordan's pretty amazing
basketball play. A lot of people the Napoleon Finals against
the Jazz So Napoleon. So the reaction in the media

(05:40):
and the reaction in general from like the government to
Coup two was very different from Coup number one. One
newspaper proposed that Napoleon the Third might have dementia. The
government of Louis Philippe, who is the king, described the
attack as a vain and vicious attempt to overthrow the government,
during which an unarmed soldier had nearly been murdered, which
was accurate. Um, So this is, you know, the first

(06:01):
time Louis Philippe kind of just wants to usher him out,
like they have a court case, but he doesn't want
him in the country. He doesn't really want to like
punish it too harshly to his I don't know, very
mild credit. Louis Philippe reacts more stringently to this one,
but it and it's interesting because his Louis, Louis Napoleon's dad,
Louis Bonaparte, has mostly been very much against all the

(06:23):
things his son has tried to do, and was against
this coup attempt. But the invective against his son and
like the public media and from the French government forces
Louis Bonaparte to actually finally stand up in his son's defense. Now, okay, okay,
and my son's defense. Yeah, he's really bad at everything,
and he didn't succeed, and so what do you know,

(06:45):
it's wayne when he had fun. We had fun, everyone
had fun. It's interesting. That's actually not that far from
what he does. So obviously, being the guy that he
is and being a principled man, he can't defend his
son's attempt to overthrow the government, nor he can he offend,
like defend like shooting a man in the face. So
instead of doing that, he writes a letter to be
published in the Italian press which complains that his son

(07:07):
is quote the victim of an infamous conspiracy, seduced by flatterers,
false friends, and perhaps from insidious advice. So he's basically
he was. He was like, it's like a cult thing, right,
like he got he got wrapped up in by some
bad people. But he's not a bad kid. He just
got given some bad advice. You know that is not
completely wrong, because that's part of what happened, Right, Louis

(07:30):
Napoleon is not a very smart guy, and he's very
vulnerable to the people around him if they're nice to him.
This is to continue to be a factor in his
life through his entire reign. And I think some of
this is that actually Louis Bonaparte kind of understands his
son um, but he also he's a little blinded too,
because he can't believe that his son was really a
driving force behind the attempt. Writing the quote, it is

(07:53):
quite impossible that a man surely not lacking the financial
means and common sense, should have, with his eyes wide open,
willingly thrown himself over such a political precipice. Basically, like,
look if he if he did, if he was a
driving factor behind this, he would have had to be
an idiot. And I know he's not an idiot, right, Yerey,
you are his dad. I can't blame you for specialty. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(08:15):
So Louis Napoleon goes to court, uh, this time he's
actually in country for it, and it does not go
well for him law wise. Again, he's gotten kind of
like he got off the hook basically last time. Um,
but yeah, he got two dollars, yeah, and acquitted. He's
not going to get acquitted this time. But it actually
kind of goes better for him because Louis Napoleon is

(08:36):
dumb in a lot of ways, but he understands some
things about politics and the new mass media that no
one has figured out yet. Um. And, as Hitler was
going to learn about eighty years later, if you're on
trial for trying to overthrow the government, you can do
pretty well by firing off a populist rant that makes
the case for your reign. Um. Yeah, and uh, here's

(08:58):
here's the speech that he gives, or an exert from
the speech that he gives in court. For the first
time in my life, I have been permitted to speak
in France and to speak freely before the French people,
in spite of the guards on either side of me,
In spite of all the accusations I have just heard,
I find myself here within the walls of the Senate
that I had first visited as a child, with Napoleon
in your midst, you whom I know, gentlemen, I do

(09:20):
not believe that I have to justify myself, nor that
you could be my judges. A solemn occasion has offered
me here to explain to my fellow citizens my conduct,
my intentions, my projects, what I think and what I desire.
The nation has never revoked the Grand Act of Sovereignty,
the one that had established Napoleon Bonaparte's kingdom, And as
the Emperor himself said, everything done without adhering to it
is illegal, and that includes this trial. And to do

(09:43):
not think for a moment that I might have wanted
to attempt any imperial restoration in France without the backing
of the people of this country through a plebiscite. As
for my undertaking, and alone I had no other accomplices.
I alone am responsible. I represent before you a principle,
a cause, and a defeat one principle, the sovereignty of
the people, the cause stead of our empire, and to
defeat Waterloo. So he's saying, like, you know, the government

(10:06):
that my uncle established is still legitimate. This court has
no right to hold me for anything. But also I
never wanted to become the emperor without a plebiscite. I
was only trying to do what I think the people
wanted me to do, right, I was just going to
do a coup and then see if people were cool
with that. You know, that's why it's called a coup.
And it's not really the cool because a coup because

(10:27):
like Napoleon's constitution is still valid clearly, right, yeah, is
it a coup if you guys are the ones who
originally did the coup exactly, the Bourbon restorations, who Cou
who Cou? Who? Whose line is it? Anyway? Cou'se line
isn't any whatever. So this goes really well for him actually,

(10:48):
because again Louis philip is a terrible king. Right, we're
laughing at Louis Napoleon, but Louis Philippe is not a
good king, and his monarchy is kind of a ship show.
People are very unhappy, and they hear this guy. He's
hearkening back to this defeat which still wounds the French
soul Waterloo and the victories and of Napoleon before it,
and he's saying, like, look, we never stopped being those
guys who could win. We just let guys like this

(11:10):
tell us that we weren't there anymore. And if we
get them, we can make France great again, right, that's
what I mean. That's yeah, that's that's that's what he's saying,
and it works really well. And the fact that this
speech goes so well for Lewis Napoleon does not at
all mitigate the King's desire to see him lock the
funk away, right, Louis Philippe designs, I gotta keep this
dude in a fucking cage, and on October six, Lewis

(11:31):
Napoleon is sentenced to life in prison, which is honestly
not an entirely unfair sentence for shooting an unarmed man
in the face for absolutely no recent Yeah, yeah, but
just beyond the even attempted coupart, just shooting a guy
in the face. Look, I'm not a car serile guy,
but of the things you might lock someone up for,
randomly shooting a man in the face is not a
bad one, right, Yeah, I mean we're talking about, like,

(11:53):
you know, the eighteen forties France. Chances are you locking
people away for far less? Yes, ex actly, exactly, um so,
broadly speaking, and again, his his prison. This is not
a hard prison, right, he is not locked away in
the fucking beastial. This isn't some like limb Zer rob
ship where he's breaking rocks or whatever while Javert sings

(12:15):
at him. Um, he's he's got like a suite of
rooms and what is effectively a castle. Um. He lives.
He has all of the books that he wants. He
gets regularly visited, he gets invited to dinner by the warden. Um.
He is a celebrity prisoner. He lives better than a loop.
He is in fact writing a book. Yes, um so

(12:38):
uh and part of the Obviously, he shot a man
in the face and tried to overthrow the government France
has killed people for less. They were still guillotining dudes. Um,
that would not have been out of the You could again,
as the leader of the country, you can easily make
a case for doing that. But Louis Napoleon or Louis Philippe, sorry, god,
there's too many fucking lewis Is in this fucking series.

(13:00):
King Louis Phillip can't do that because there's unrest building
all throughout the country. And right around the time that
Lewis Napoleon is on trial, he has finally agreed and
carried out this massive logistical hurdle to bring the corpse
of Napoleon Bonaparte back to France a decade after his death.
So while all this is going on, the French government

(13:20):
and military are preparing for this massive ceremony where Napoleon's
corpses being carried through the country and put up. This
is an actual thing, Like, yes, they're actually gonna exhume
his corpse. Yeah yeah, they're gonna to take it and
bury it in a crypt. Yeah, in in France, back
on his home soil, well not his home soil because
he was coursing, but whatever. Um. Yeah, So this is

(13:43):
it's a it's a dangerous time. You don't want to
be executing his nephew while people everyone is like weeping
as his coffin is taken through the streets, right, because
people still love Napoleon. The crowds to see Napoleon's casket
numbered half a million men, many of them veterans. So
again this is particular literally a crowd of people you
don't want to piss off, Like there's half a million

(14:03):
men in the street who have been under musket fire together.
They stood for hours to watch his um you know,
the whatever, the thing with the coffin pass, even though
it was so half a million people standing for like
a lot of eight to twelve hours to watch this
procession when it is negative twenty two degrees fahrenheit outside.
That's how much people love Napoleon. They really like this guy.

(14:23):
They really like Napoleon. Yeah. It says also a lot
about how much, you know, the Bourbons are sucking up
all the time, you know, because they lose sleep is
a he's a he's the duke to or Leon. Yeah yeah, yeah,
but you know, I mean he is part of that family.

(14:46):
He was just like because they're all yeah, yeah, they're
all except well now the Bonapartes. Well yeah, but it
just shows us how much they fucked up in that.
Like at the end of like Napoleon's ringing, everyone's like,
can we get this guy out? Because he keeps trying
to do invasions of stuff. We just kind of retired
of it. And at this point everyone's like, hey, remember
when ship was cool? Yeah, when like Napoleon was around,

(15:08):
they were just kicking those fucking Austrians asses, just like
kicking everyone's ass, just like, oh dude, Ship was so sick.
And also there was order, and people love remembering order. God,
people do love order. Um As noted by the documentary
whichever Star Wars movie was the most recent one. That's right, Actually,

(15:31):
a Star Wars theme Law and Order could be a
pretty fucking fun show. You could do a lot with that.
You know it's gonna happen. You can make that work.
You could make that work very well. Um. Anyway, Look,
we're gonna have to skip ahead of it through the
next piece of history because I have to tell you,
this guy does so much in his fucking life. He's
involved in so much shit. Uh. Anyway to summarize the

(15:53):
next part of his story, what happens after he gets
thrown in prison, I'm going to turn to yet another book,
The Last Emperor of next a Code by Edward Shaw
cross quote Undeterred. Six years later, while the prison was
undergoing construction, Lewis Napoleon, dressed in the clothes of a workman,
picked up a wooden plank, put it over his shoulder,
and walked out the front gate before fleeing to London.

(16:16):
It was so easy to break out of prisons. He
didn't even have to get like a readA Hayworth poster
and like a tiny little pickaxe he worked out. Yeah,
it's just like, excuse me, I'm just going to move
this wooden plank. This was before the invention of the door,
so people really had no way to keep someone in something.

(16:38):
All prisons had worked on the honor system previously. Exactly,
it was like, hey, where are you going? He's like,
oh no, he's a workman. He's the most famous friend.
He has wood on his shoulder. It can't be him.
He would never hold wood. Limperor would never hold the
wooden He has not Bin Shapiro at home depot. Excuse me,

(17:04):
I'm a hundred and fifty years apart. When the son
of or the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte and rich guy
been Shapiro need to feel like a cut pretend to
be a common man, they both picked the same tactic.
Gonna get some wood, hold it up from my sheltering.
It's the number one thing that rich people th work
like working class people do. It's just whatever or do again.

(17:26):
I think they just like hold wood and they that's
what they do. That's what they do. Just told pieces
of wood and say, oh, my brow has beads of
sweat upon it. All right, I'm gonna continue that quote.
And there it would have ended, had it not been
for the providential moment. Louis Napoleon had been waiting for

(17:46):
the European revolutions of eighteen forty eight. After the abdication
of the French king, a republic was hastily proclaimed and
elections announced, despite no experience of democratic politics or a
political party to support him. Louis Napoleon grandiosely told a cousin,
I'm going to Paris. A republic has been proclaimed. I
must be its master. His cousin responded, you are dreaming

(18:07):
as usual, and yet this is the wild thing. He's
completely right. He wins this election in a fucking landslide. Um. Obviously,
the fact that he's a Napoleon is most of what
a lot of the voters need to hear. Um. And
also that he had been very visibly in opposition to
the hated king who had just been overthrown. Um. But

(18:27):
he's also he's he is particularly unpopular with the people
who had been the political elite and the only people
who were able to vote previously to the proclamation of
the republic. Alexis de Toqueville. Um, who's a political smart
guy thinker. Um, he was he was there, he was there.
Uh fucking um. I don't know what's a terrible political columnist.

(18:47):
Rynick Um, he's there, Bill Crystal, Yeah, he's there. Bary Wise, Um, yeah, yeah,
I'm sorry. People are gonna be so angry at me,
all the scholars in the audience. But he does not
like Louis Napoleon. He compares him to a dwarf who, quote,

(19:08):
on the summit of a great wave, is able to
scale a high cliff which a giant placed on dry
ground would not be able to climb. Which is actually
a really accurate summary of what's happened, right. It's not
his own personal character because he has not accomplished a
single thing in his life other than shooting that guy
in the face. But there's this wave and he expertly
the thing that he actually is good at is number one.

(19:30):
He's he does have this degree of understanding of the
French populace and he knows where to place himself to
take advantage of this wave. Um. I guess my only
disagreement with dak Fill there is that like that is
actually a skill. It's a really dangerous skill, but it
is a skill. Most people. It's a high political you know.
It's like we all want to it's the same type
of you know, like critique that people have of Trump

(19:51):
where you're just like he's stupid and he's He's like, yeah,
he's an idiot, Like he is dumb in a thousand ways,
but he is very very good at manipulating people and
he has a high political Like you, you would hope
that like the thing we would get out of Trump,
And also guys like Dr Oz and guys like what's
the other fucking expert Ben Carson? Is that like, intelligence

(20:13):
isn't a thing. People are good at things and they
are bad at things, but nobody is smart, right, Like
that's not the way brains work. Yes, exactly exactly, Like
I'm really good at geography, but I'm an idiot, So
me being good at geography doesn't make me a smart guy.
It just means I'm good at one thing. And Elon

(20:34):
Musk being a competent engineer in some specific things clearly
does not make him smart in other ways. Yes, yes,
it's very clearly. Like knowing why a blue check mark
is a thing, it's it's good. Um, so I'm gonna
continue that quote. Writer and politician Victor Hugo penned a
series of vitriolic attacks on Louis Napoleon, one title Napoleon

(20:55):
le petite, exhorting the French to look at this hog
wallowing in his own slide him on a lion's skin.
Even the Dolf Tears, leader of the conservative politicians in
France who supported Louis Napoleon, thought him an idiot who
could be easily controlled. Certainly, Louis Napoleon did not seem
to have his uncle's drive, except when it came to women. Indeed,
his mistress at this time and financial backer, was a

(21:16):
notorious English courtisan and failed actress, a combination too much
even for French politics. To the relief of many, the
Constitution of the Republic limited the presidency to one four
year term. Louis Napoleon, however, was not going to allow
a constitution he had sworn to uphold to get in
the way of destiny. So obviously, when he comes to
power here forty eight, this is a year of massive

(21:38):
left wing revolutions, a lot of which fall just kind
of a little short of actually, you know, it's it's
this kind of failed revolution year in a lot of points,
not everywhere, but in a lot of ways. And prior
to Napoleon the third. Most people who'd supported the return
to monarchy anywhere were staunchly anti democratic. Right, there was
a wide understanding that democratic government's inevitably led to radical

(21:58):
left wing policies that would undermine and threatn elites. Napoleon
the thirds great innovation, and the thing that actually is
a kind of genius from him is that he saw
that this was bullshit. Right. The masses would be perfectly
happy endorsing hereditary authoritarian rule if you sold it to
them the right way, and in fact, that would make
your rule more stable. More than this, he saw that

(22:19):
royalist coups and crackdowns against democratic against or democratic policies
were fundamentally doomed. But if you could put a monarch
on the throne through democratic acclaim, that would act to
legitimate the regime using the ballot box. This is exactly
what Napoleon did, holding two plebiscites in which he got
voters to first back a coup against the Republic and

(22:40):
then declare him emperor. He won both with at least
one of them was more than of the electorate. Right,
and this is this is the thing every dictator who
follows after him. Napoleon is kind of the start of
the wave of like, now, if you're a dictator, you
don't just say I'm the dictator and I'm in charge.
You say I'm the president or you know, the premier
or whatever. And I've been a elected we do an
election every couple of years and get the vote. You know, yeah, yeah, exactly.

(23:05):
Now it's like you always have the guys of you know,
I am a democratically elected uh president or prime minister,
any of that stuff. Just make it up. The elections
can be fake as long as it looks like you're
democratic and you you do lip service, that's all that matters. Yeah,
and it's I mean, yeah, it's interesting. This right up

(23:26):
by History today provides more context as to why he
was able to to get so much get so far
with the electorate. He was a fresh figure on the scene,
which was a great advantage. He had total faith in
his destiny, which was another, and he could parade as
a person above party politics. Karl Mark sourly remarked because
Louis Napoleon that because Louis Napoleon was nothing, he could

(23:47):
appear to be everything. His opponents attempt at ridicule, caricaturing
him writing a goose he was trying to transform into
an imperial eagle merely rebounded to his advantage by reminding
people of his Napoleonic connection. He wowed the electorate with
promises to restore rances lost glory and assurances of prosperity, advancement,
and a happy future for every group in social class
in the country. As one of his biographers commented, he

(24:08):
came down impartially on all sides. Yeah, he was everything
to everybody. You could kind of just put your own
politics into him. And this is you know that that
Marx quote history comes once his first as a tragedy
and second as a farce that he writes that about
Louis Napoleon. Napoleon Bonaparte is the tragedy because millions die,

(24:28):
and Louis Napoleon is the farce, right, because he's literally
a parody. He's literally a parody of his uncle. Yeah. Yeah,
like we all our version, our vision of like Napoleon
that we have now is actually just Louis Napoleon. It's
like he's very very tiny, weird mustache, like bad goatee.

(24:49):
Uh looks like a clown. That's that's the parody of
his uncle. Yeah, it's it's pretty fucking cool. And you
know what's a parody of bad products? What the good
products that support our podcast? That's right. I love that,
love that for us. Um, I'm just gonna say it,

(25:09):
hot as ship Robert, I sent the entire team the
Columbus et. Uh boy, howdy, I tell you what. We're back.

(25:30):
And I have never I have never, never once. So
we're talking about Napoleon the third and how he how
he got himself into the good books of the French
electorate and won election and then became the emperor. Um.
And is this strategy he makes of like being like

(25:50):
I'm going to restore our lost glory. Everything's gonna get
better for everybody. It works really well with like particularly
the peasants, the country folks, who in fact a big
way in which they show there when kind of like
these plebiscites are going on. One of the ways in
which Napoleon's strongest supporters show they love him is by
marching around the streets, shooting guns in the air and
getting wasted. Um. Yeah, which that sounds right, That sounds

(26:14):
about right, sounds about right. That's how we celebrate everything. Yeah,
you know if that's the modern way of celebrating. It
was created by Louis Napoleon. Yeah, I get it. I
get why that would be the way that would happen. Um.
If you've ever seen, you know, any team from Philadelphia
when a championship in sports of some sort, you'll understand

(26:36):
that this is how we celebrate. They also do do
off the street, but yeah, that's probably going on here too. Um.
A lot of Vets who had fought with his uncle
put on their uniforms and would march around. Um. They
are funnily enough as they like march to the polls.
They're shouting ship like death to the rich and aristos
and users to the guillotine, which again he is literally

(26:57):
the nephew of the emperor. Um. But he does very well. Um. Quote.
Professional politicians were shocked, but the new president and most
of France had had quite enough of them. He went
on to rid himself of the Party of Order and
destroy the Second Republic with the support of a handful
of bonapartists in the National Assembly, steering his men and
a key positions in the army. In the administration, he

(27:17):
took advantage of an economic slowdown downturn in one to
present himself as the strongman who would say France from
socialism and collapse. In December, he carried out a successful coup,
put down his opponents by force and Cynthia assembly packing. Um.
And yeah, it's interesting to me. I don't think this
history is widely known outside of France, certainly not outside
of Europe, but it's it's fucking fascinating to me that
France has two democratic governments in a row, ended by

(27:40):
members of the same family. Um. Like, it's like if
Hitler had come along in the nineteen seventies, like another
one and ended German democracy again. Like you said, another
Hitler and he's like, yeah, let's give him another shot. Listen,
Greg Hitler is different than his uncle Adolf. Okay, we
can trust Greg. Greg. A different kind of Hitler, a

(28:01):
different kind of Hitler for a modern era, a modern
Hitler for modern Germany. Shows him like arm in arm
with a Rabbi. Things are cool now between the Hitlers
and the Jews. Yeah, it's going to be different this time. Yeah.
And he did what God damnit, he invaded poland he

(28:21):
did it again. That's sort of a bit you know,
known fool me once. Yeah, it is kind of insane that, uh,
like how quickly he went from like being president, you know,
Louis Napoleon too, just immediately being going like what are
we doing here? We all know I'm going to be

(28:43):
emperor and then boom, Napoleon the third just like that,
you know, yeah, it's uh, it's cool. So on December second,
eighteen fifty two, Louis Napoleon became Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte the Third.
And technically it was wrong every time before this one
I called him Napoleon the third, But it's fine, He's
Napoleon the Third. Edward shaw Cross notes that he quote

(29:04):
aimed to plow a middle way between liberalism and conservatism,
much like Bill Clinton. In this he built the example
of the recently overthrown king Louis Philippe, lover of the
centrist just Milieu. But Napoleon the Third was willing to
go further and based his regime on direct democracy is
expressed through universal male suffrage. As one of his aphorisms
supposedly went, do not fear the people. They are more

(29:24):
conservative than you. And this is this is why I
want to talk about this guy, because he is kind
of not not kind of He absolutely is the model
of all future authoritarian populists in democratic societies. Um, I

(29:46):
it's it's I find him fascinating for that reason. It's
weird because his instincts were dead on and remained true
to this day. Yes, he absolutely was not wrong about
any of this stuff in terms of like how to
get elected and ship. I mean, he's a clown and
he does all this like stupid ships, shooting the guy
in the mouth. He's, you know, just a couple failed coups.

(30:07):
So you're kind of just like this is like what
the ultimate fails soun, right or failed nephew. Um, but yeah, no,
his instincts were right on when it came to re
establishing the French Empire. Yeah, it works very well. So
the early days, as we said, the early days of
his domestic policies are a staggering success. The French economy

(30:31):
recovers from its long slump, the nation begins to industrialize rapidly,
and just as critically, Louis Napoleon turns France into a
major player on the European stage again. Right, the couple
of decades after Napoleon, France is a bit of a
pariah state, Right, kind of the same way the Germans,
where where everyone's like, I don't know if we can
trust these guys given you know history, everything that happens repeatedly, um,

(30:58):
which is again not an unreasonable whole thing to think.
But this, this is where that all turns around. This
he brings France back into kind of the standing of
a responsible nation state. Right, you can call that bullshit
or not, but like that, that's he effectively changes the
way people think about France in a big way by
changing the way France acts as a power. Um. And

(31:19):
the major way he does this the first kind of
big thing he does to turn around. You know, France's
political position in Europe is to ally with Great Britain
for the Crimean War in eighteen fifty three. This is
right after he can so this is basically one of
the first things he does is Limberg. Now, the Crimean
War is often considered the first modern military conflict, and

(31:40):
it is one of the two wars, the other being
the eighteen seventy war between Prussia and France that we'll
talk about the end of these episodes that sets up
the preconditions for World War One, and the gist of
this war is that Russia and Turkey they've been fighting
for each other for centuries, right, like you got your
Ottoman Empire and they keep trying to push into Europe
and and they got the Ballins, and the Russians are

(32:01):
seen by a lot of Europe for a decent chunk
of time, the Russians, just Russia is seen as like
the great barrier to the Optimise right to the Muslim hordes. Um.
And these periodic military conflicts are ever complicated by the
political situation over in the Holy Land, which at the
time is under Ottoman control. But the English are involved
in like mediating things and you've got it's not you
know today we think about like religious conflicts in the

(32:23):
Holy Land and it's like, oh, well, you got your
Muslims and Jews and Christians and whatnot. Back in that day,
one of the big conflicts is between Greek Orthodox and
Catholic monks who are rioting. There there are times where
they'll kill each other. There will be like riots over
these like holy spaces where people are beating each other
to death. Um. It fucking rules, It's super funny. Um. Anyway,

(32:47):
the Czars see themselves as protectors of Orthodoxy, and since
the Ottomans are in charge of the Balkans at this period.
Remember so the Ottoman Empire is still ruling what we
would call a decent chunk of eastern Europe today. Um,
they're about twelve and unorthodox Christians living under Ottoman rule,
and Russia wants to take that area away from the
Muslims and also added to Russia. Um. And while you know,

(33:09):
you might expect all of the other Christian nations to
back them, but everybody is scared of Russia. They're considered
a dangerous power. And so for the most part, like,
while they'll pay lip service to like, oh, yeah, we
gotta free those Christians from the evil Muslims, most of
the other states in this period are like, yeah, we
don't want Russia to have the whole Balkans. Like that's
that's that's not a good idea. They're they're also scary. Yeah,

(33:31):
they're also very scary. Both of these people are hordes people. Yeah,
I don't want to deal with Hords. We just don't
like Hords that much anymore. Just like could you thin
out numbers a little less hordes more justwards. So for
a lot of the eighteen hundreds, the British try to
keep some sort of balance. They're often brought in as

(33:51):
kind of the mediators here, um do and they you know,
they've got again. Another part of this is that like,
the British have massive financial interests inside the Ottoman Empire.
So they're like, because the Ottomans are kind of falling
apart in this period right there, being called the sick
man of Europe, and so the Russians are like, well,
we actually we could, we could take them right now,
you know, we might be able to actually fucking push

(34:13):
them out of here. And the British are like, well,
but that's not that's actually not gonna work out great
for us. We have a lot of it. It It works
out really. We don't want to control, we don't want
to take over the Ottoman Empire. That sounds like a
giant pain in the ass. That's just gonna be expensive.
But right now their government will basically do whatever the
funk we say, um, And so we can make a
shipload of money, you know, not doing anything. Um. It's

(34:38):
it's it's it's cool. Um. So there. You know, this
goes on for years for most of the eighteen hundreds
in fact um and kind of massive conflicts are just
barely avoided here and there. But then in July of
eighteen fifty three, the Czar invades Moldovia and Wallachia, which
is like modern day Romania. UM. Now, Louis Napoleon had

(34:58):
no desire to start his reign with another land war
in Europe. He'd campaigned on the premise that quote the
Empire stands for peace. But the connections he'd built with
the English prior to his rise for power. Remember that's
where he's hanging out the whole time, as he's in
between coups, means that he can't just sit back if
they choose to get involved. This is further complicated by
the fact that a lot of French people hated the

(35:19):
English um, so they didn't really want to be on
their side, but they hated the Russians too, which I
think helped a little bit. Um. Ultimately, Louis tells the
French Assembly that he's sending his army some three hundred
thousand men east to help England defend the Sultan against
Russian aggression. And this war effectively brings France back to

(35:40):
the world stage as a major player, and it is
the This is why if you've ever wondered, given all
of the centuries they were fighting each other, well, why
do France and England wind up on the same side
in World War one and two? Well it starts here, right,
This is kind of the first time where they wind
up wrapped together, um, in a major war. Yeah, and
it's um, yeah, it's a big deal special relationship now, yeah,

(36:03):
this this is the start of that. And this is
often like in kind of the high level summaries of
like what happens in the Crimean War, you'll hear it
described as like, well, this is the first modern war.
You know, the French and the British had had better
rail lines and better transit, and like the Russians were
so just like funk ups and stuff. But also the
French and British militaries are also disasters in this war. This,

(36:25):
this war is a terrible, terrible war for everybody involved. Um.
And it's a ship show. Because the military that France
has built since Napoleon isn't really good at fighting in
conventional wars. They become a colonial policing force built to
like lockdown Algeria and West Africa, and Louis is calling
upon them to like fight these human wave attacks. The

(36:47):
logistical hurdles are made worse by the fact that Louis
picks his cousin Jerome Bonaparte as the divisional general who's
running the military now. Jerome gets the job because his cousin,
also named Jere, had fallen alongside Napoleon Bonaparte. I know,
it's so fucking stupid, Jerry, pick new names, you asks

(37:09):
like God, I hate you. There's Louis and there's Jerry.
There's only two kinds of names a person could have.
Call him Mitch, have a mitch, Napoleon Bonaparte, Bonaparte, God Almighty.
So so, Jerome gets this job because his uncle had
fought with Napoleon. But the thing his uncle was famous

(37:31):
for was abandoning Napoleon Bonaparte during the marriach to Russia
in eighteen twelve, and like fleeing the empire because he did,
which is not bad look not bad judgment, Like not
bad judgment. Yeah, but also that might be a red flag.
And sure enough, the instant cousin Jerome sees gunfire, he
goes home, he flees back to Paris. It's in the blood.

(37:56):
It's in the blood. He learned the thing his dad
learned about are which is naa no ship. Yeah, so
this earns him the nickname sans plume or gutless Bonaparte.
That's what they call him now is is gutless bonaparte Um,
which is quite a nickname. And I'm gonna quote next

(38:16):
from the book The Shadow Emperor. It was a grim
beginning for what was to prove a very grim campaign
under sweltering summer temperatures, as dysentery, typhus, typhoid and the
most deadly cholera epidemic ravaged the ranks. On the fifteenth
of October, they fought and narrowly won the indecisive victory
of Balaclava, where the seventh Earl, the mad General Black
Bottle Lord Cardigan Lewis, Napoleon's landlord during his youthful exile

(38:39):
in London, led his historic six hundred and sixty one
man cavalry in the Charge of the Light Brigade, of
which only four hundred and fourteen young men along with
some three hundred horses survived. So the Charge of the
Light Brigade guy is his former landlord. He hires hires
well the breath you know, he does not in charge
of the British Army. UM. This was followed by the

(39:00):
Allied victory of Increment on November fifty four, and then
began the unanticipated Eleventh Month Siege against the Russian Marshal
Marshal Menshikov's fifty to seventy men and they're stoutly defended
port fortress of Sebastopol. They're the French, who had failed
to bring the heavy artillery for this war, were obliged
to strip their navy of most of their guns to
form thirteen batteries of thirty and fifty pound cannon. Um.

(39:22):
So again he sends the the the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte,
an artilleryman, sends his army to war without heavy artillery.
And they taken from the boat. Taken from the boat,
there's not like there's any water near. No, it's very funny. Um.
And again they win because this is also looked. You know,

(39:44):
the Ukrainian military has gotten praised a lot for its
stick tuitiveness. If you spend time talking to people who
are are there, talking to people have been over there,
it's still a bit of a ship show. It's a
messy military, right, But again as is the case here.
The Russians are just so much messier, right that, like
you can you can afford to funk up some when
the Russians are here, because they're gonna make a lot

(40:05):
of mistakes. Yeah. Um, the Czar is not going to
be planning this very well. Um, you only need to
be just a little bit more organized than Russia. Just
have your ship more together than the Russians. But like barely,
but barely. That that is the case of everyone who
wins a war against Russia. Um. So, in the end,

(40:27):
the Allies one and the Crimean War was broadly good
for Louis's new regime, but much of this was due
to luck in great Russian incompetence again, rather than good
decisions by the Emperor. He sends three thousand men into
the Crimea and d of them die, mostly from disease
due to cholera outbreaks, because he doesn't have anyone in
his army who can manage sanitation very well. Um. So,

(40:51):
you know, some people will say he's kind of traumatized
by this um just because like that Louis Napoleon that yeah, yeah, yeah,
he feels like bad about this um like that he's
because he's the one. He was the one who gets
to make the decision, right, he was the one man
who sent them into war, and ninety five thousand of

(41:13):
them didn't come back, and that does kind of this
is what your dad has been telling you. This is
like never, this is literally what your dad was warning
you about. Sting is pretty bad. Is bad, and you're
gonna feel bad you don't. Don't do it. And then
he does it. He's like, damn, dude, I don't know
he's going to feel that bad when I should know
his dad is is parent passed on by this point.

(41:35):
His dad dies while he's in prison, so he doesn't
ever get to be like, oh, yeah, I get what
you were saying about war being bad. Um. Yeah, but
he's you know that this is this is literally the
exact thing you were told. Um. Anyway, he finally gets it.
After CRIMEA. Lewis reiterates his dedication to peace, and then

(41:56):
he sends soldiers to Italy to crush an independence movement
against the Pope Um. This is basically identical to the
independence movement he had fought for as a younger man,
and his brother had died for Um. But now that
he was King. You know, the church is kind of
an important ally for him, so he now to be fair.
He kind of makes up for this in eighteen fifty

(42:17):
nine when he goes to war with Austria and defeats
the Habsburg Emperor Franz Joseph, who's a big old prick
in battle for an idea of like, Franz Joseph massive
piece of shit. He loses a war in eighteen fifty
nine that like leads to the end of Austrian domination
of Italy. Right, Um, eighteen fifty nine, franc Joseph loses
that war against Napoleon. The third Guess who the Emperor

(42:39):
of Austria Hungary is when World War One starts? Uh,
same guy? Same guy really? Yeah? Fifty four years later,
five years later, the same guy, Yeah he is. He
is in charge of Austria Hungary for for fucking ever.
It is ludicrous how long this guy is running that
fucking country, that fucking train wreck of a country. Um,

(43:06):
France Joseph like never dies. It sucks so bad because
he's terrible. He's still around. Yeah, he's still alive right now,
He's still running Austria. Go over there, you'll see, Yeah,
he's trying to get hungry to come back. Yeah, I
saw that. There's that picture going around and that like
one monk somewhere in Southeast Asia who looks like a
skeleton because he's so old. That's that's Franz Joseph. It's

(43:26):
just fucking skeletor on the throne. Damn fight Prussia. So
Algeria gets officially conquered in eighteen fifty eight. Uh, and
again they've said this a couple of times, but they
basically cracked down on the worst of the uprisings again
in eighteen fifty eight. And after this point, with like

(43:47):
kind of Algeria temporarily pacified, French power begins to expand
rapidly across Southeast Asia. Um, during the time that Napoleon's
like early to mid reign, the French military will conquer
v Vietnam, Cambodia, and Lao, creating Yeah, would eventually become
known as French Indo China. This is a nasty thing.

(44:07):
There are a lot tens of thousands die and eventually
millions are going to die because of this. Um. Napoleon
the third lets it happen. He is not a driving
force behind it. The people who orchestrate this and push
this are his generals and admirals. The French Navy is
a big driving force with this. And the primary thing
that you could you should blame Loose Napoleon for is

(44:28):
that again they kind of sit down and talk nice
to him and he just agrees to let them do
whatever they want. Um and uh, yeah, it's it that
he doesn't resist and he he lets this thing happen
in part because like people said nice things about him
and he's kind of that. That's that's basically his big vulnerability. Um.

(44:50):
So he loves compliments, he loves when um, you know,
it's like Trump with the Saudis. They let him hold
the globe, you know, the glowing orb, and then he's like,
all right, here, have some more planes. You give an
app man an ORB and he'll have an ORB for
a day. You teach a man to find his own orbs. Yeah,

(45:12):
the new book by Robert Evans, Teach Your Man to Orb,
funded by Peter Teal. Finally gonna get that Palentier money
for something appropriate. Speaking of palent here, you know who
sponsors this podcast, Palentier. So go spy on somebody you know,

(45:34):
Palentteer's new Everybody's Spy program. Just record someone, anybody, anybody
who doesn't know you're recording them, and then mail that
in an envelope to Peter Teal. He'll stick it up
on a drop box somewhere. Don't worry about what happens
to it. Ah, we're back, boy, howdy. I sure love

(45:59):
recording people with out there express consent me too, It's
my favorite thing to do. That's why I enjoyed the
services of Palanteer Palentier. If you touch it, you'll see
Sauron's great eye. It is so fucked up that a
guy named a company that. It's insane. It's insane. It's

(46:19):
so on the nose. If people talk about like I
wonder what token would have felt about like the Lord
of the Rings movies and stuff like, No, I want
to know nobody would have felt about that ship that
there's like like someone literally built a palatiner. It's named
it Palenteer. That's fucking ridiculous. It's a bit on the nose, Yeah,
a little bit on the nose. Over that's an Oxford
dawn accent. Whatever, crying under beach, the two accents. I

(46:49):
can do it. Would be funny to do a movie
on Jaire or Token, but like hire somebody with one
like a re accent to play token. I got to
spike to you and now fish I am English dead Brilli.

(47:14):
So it's probably fair to say anyway, whatever, this is
going to be a problem for tens of millions of
people in the future. Um, and it all happens at
least without any resistance by Napoleon the Third. Back in Europe,
the negotiations at the end of the Crimean War had
made Napoleon the Third into one of the central diplomats
of European power politics. Italian unification would eventually owe a

(47:36):
great deal to his lobbying and fighting with Austria. He
began to look overseas to the America's where Louis Napoleon
was greatly concerned with the expansion of the United States.
He'd liked America, and he had admired a lot of
aspects of like American are technologically driven culture while he
was there. But he was canny enough to see like, well,
they kind of like murdered their way into control of

(47:57):
most of the world's resources. Um, they have like a
dozen Europe's worth of country that they just own now,
and uh, it kind of seems like they might become
the pre eminent power in the world, and I should
do something to stop that because I would like that
to be France. Yeah, that's supposed to be me. That's
supposed to be me. So in the late eighteen fifties,
he begins courting Maximilian Habsburg, who's the brother of the

(48:18):
Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph Um and trying to convince him
to become the Emperor of Mexico. So, first off, brilliant plan, incredible,
no notes. You know all Mexico's there, Well, it needs
an emperor. What if Yeah, you know what, the solution

(48:39):
to all of Mexico's problems are a German speaking guy. Yeah,
a German emperor. I think it's a great idea. Walk
around Warez right now. What you know, you guys got
a lot of problems with Cartel's and not enough water,
all this good stuff. What if a German was in charge?
You think that will help? Uh? So, first I want

(49:01):
to say, last been great. So I am going to
be how you say, and um, you people are just
going to uh, you're going to be my amigos do you,
uh compreende, It's very hard to do with has basically

(49:24):
gotten all of it right though that if that is
this guy fucking Maximilian Habsburg just an out. So one
of the things that I do for fun is I
will troll Edward Habsburg, who is the current heir to
the Hapsburg family and a monarchist piece of shit um
and like some weirdly ais onto the Catholic Church, he's
a fucking asshole. He loves anime though weirdly enough anyway,

(49:45):
I will troll him, and I will troll him specifically
about the fact that Maximilian von Habsburg is eventually executed
by a firing squad, And every time I do, I
get fucking royalists in my mentions, being like, well, he
was actually a great leader in if Mexico would fall, No,
he wasn't. They shot him to death. That doesn't happen
to you if you're a great Great leaders do sometimes
great leaders get assassinated by a lone guy with a gun.

(50:07):
Share We've all seen that happen. Great leaders do not
get executed by the mass acclaim of the populace right exactly,
and then completely wiped from the general history exactly. Like
I like to think I know a little bit about
Mexican history, and I don't celebrate this guy. Yeah, Like

(50:28):
so I know about like the whole like the peri
at a regime that happened during that time and whatnot.
Battle comes out of this, right, But Inferio Diaz, I
think is his name is one of the generals, one
of the generals who fights Maximilian Um. So anyway, we're
getting ahead of ourselves. So the way that Napoleon the
Third proceeds with cooking the ship up is he gets

(50:49):
a handful of Mexican academics and politicians, most of whom
are living in Europe and have been like because Mexico
tons of civil wars. Right, so you have a bunch
of like di as for guys who are like in
Europe trying to like raise money and support for some
kind of revolution or another. He gets a bunch of
these guys back to back the idea that like the
regular Mexican people are just like clamoring for a European emperor,

(51:12):
just like the big countries. Right, yeah, please, there is
zero evidence of this. There's absolutely no evidence of this
um And in fact, so the Tuba music we like
too for an idea of like how little the Mexican
people wanted an emperor. So there's this, you know, there's

(51:33):
this like Mexico gets its its independence in like eighteen
twenty one um from Spain, and the guy who like
leads the independence movement is this dude, Augustine a turbine
um who then declares himself the Emperor of Mexico. And
do you know what the Mexican people do to a
turbine They fucking murder him, They fucking kill him because

(51:54):
they don't like having an emperor. Like, no, we don't,
We're not with that, Yeah, which you take is evidence
that Mexicans don't want to have an emperor. Yeah, it
seems historically true. Napoleon the Third assumes this has to
just be some like like fluke of history. Uh, and
he keeps on plotting. And while he's playing power politics,

(52:15):
Napoleon the Third also presides over the creation of modern party.
The city as we know it today, with its wide
boulevards and iconic architecture, was largely created during Louis Napoleon's reign.
And I want to quote now from a write up
in the Conversation by Samuel Raybone quote. Louis Napoleon inherited
a cramped, crumbling, and crime ridden capital. Paris is one

(52:35):
million inhabitants lived cheek by jowl in a vast tangle
of densely packed buildings. There was even a slum in
the courtyard of the Louver. Modernizing Paris promised more than
practical benefits. I want to be a second Augustus, wrote
Louis Napoleon in eighteen forty two. Because Augustus made Rome
a city of marble, it meant glory. So he hired
a ruthlessly efficient administrator, Baron Houseman, to knock down the

(52:57):
old slums. The city became a building site. Charles Marvel's
photographs record the squalor of the slums, the chaos of
their transformation, and the spectacle of their rebirth. Thousands of
men were drafted into an army of construction, battling away
on this new field of honor for the glory of
the nation and it's increasingly power hungry leader. Now, the
downside of using populist rhetoric to get people to endorse

(53:19):
your dictatorial regime is that you really can't afford to
pish your base off too much, right, because that's how
you've justified your power, and Lewis had taken power, promising
to renew France and bring hope for the working class.
One commenter noted that quote a week's interruption of the
building trade would terrify the government. Everything rode on continued
mass public employment. So he's giving people jobs to do

(53:41):
all this rebuilding and the perception of continuous progress. To
ensure that people believe this. Napoleon the Third turned to
the still very new silence of photography, which would only
come about in the eighteen forties. He commissioned the best
photographs refers of the day to document the renovation of
the Louver, the construction of new bridges, and an opera house.
These photos were published widely, building on a national and
international image of Paris as a city being renewed. Other

(54:04):
photographers at the time noted that the pictures Napoleon the
Third commissioned to focus on the titanic scale of his
new public works projects and the clean lines of new construction.
The workers erecting it, by contrast, were always tiny quote,
trapped in the labyrinth of scaffolding. As one commenter put it,
the mighty ends for Napoleon stamped on every new project,
dwarfed the humans who made them. Raybone continues as Napoleon

(54:26):
the Third's interior minister knew in industry has its injured
like war, and the rebuilding of Paris too had its
glorious war wounded. In eighteen fifty five, Napoleon the Third
ordered the construction of a convalescent asylum to care for
workers injured during the building works. Charles Negra visited the
asylum around eighteen fifty eight to photograph its buildings, patients,
and staff. To get paid. Negro knew he had to

(54:46):
tow the party line, yet the body season he encountered
had been wounded in the war for Napoleon the Third
self aggrandizement, giving the lie to his image of populist benevolence.
Never's challenge was to celebrate Napoleon the Third's care for
their sufferers suffering without review his culpability for it. So
never and this is this hasn't happened before. Photographs have
not been used in this way. And you can't. You

(55:08):
can't use paintings and ship like this, right. There are
ways to use them for propaganda, sure, but not the
way that photograph. There's a sense that a photograph is
a depiction of reality in a way that is not
the case. Everyone even always understood, like, yeah, the Emperor
puts up these fucking statues and these reliefs, but like
they're carvings and stone. It's not like literal photograph that's reality.

(55:29):
And so Napoleon is the first world leader to really
comprehensively use photographs and in order to like craft an
alternate vision of reality in his propaganda. Um yeah, it's uh,
you know, it's like as soon as we invent like
a new mass media technology, where like, how can I
use this for political propaganda? Yeah? Um never a position

(55:51):
to patients and medical staff angled towards a marble bust
of Napoleon the third, his face clear, and there's indistinct
individually meaningless patients only be shown eating, playing, and reading.
Actual medical procedures were forbidden to be shown, as was
evidence of permanent disability or injury. Generations of authoritarians would
build on the work Napoleon did to turn his photography

(56:12):
into part of his cult of personality. But it all
started here. It just it sucks so much because it's, uh,
you realize that like a lot of these people. You
know that, Like you said, this empire's populist empire is
built on like making sure the population is like loves

(56:33):
you and stays in line. And I think another big
part of uh, like the complete renovation of Paris and
like basically these people were employed to destroy their own
homes and build newer, uh different homes and wider boulevards.
That made it much much harder to do a popular revolution.

(56:55):
That is also a big part of why they're redesigning
Paris this way. It's like, yes, we keep having government's
get overthrown by the people, right because that harder. I
want to make it easier to shoot a lot of
people very quickly right right there, Like they built it,
I think I remember it's something like they built it
to be just the size of a whole regiment of

(57:16):
like cavalry or some ship. Like yeah, this is this
is him basically making it all those like cool barricades
from the past like not possible. And that sucks because
there's so much institutional history of them building them barricades. Dude,
Like what are people gonna do with that knowledge? Yeah,
now you're never going to get the sequel to Limisserab. Yeah,

(57:37):
that sucks, dude, that that's the tragedy. There's not gonna
be another role for Russell Crowe to sing in. Yeah,
fucking what's Russell Crowe gonna do with his career? Yeah?
Did anyone think about Russell Crowe before they expanded the boulevards? Once?
Think about Russell Crowe? I don't think so, not once,
not a single time? Bullshit? And is that his greatest

(58:00):
I'm greater than conquering Indo China, greater than killing all
of those people in the rebuilding projects, you know, greater. Yeah,
we're all in agreement anyway. I love Russell Crowe. Yeah,
you know, he's just like, how did we get on
Russell Crowe talk? I'm gonna say it's Sophie. He's the

(58:21):
only actor. That's not true. He's the only actor. No
one else isn't. Pedro. Yeah, that's not acting, not like
Russell Crowe can. I'd love to see Pedro Pascal badly
sing all of the tunes and Mr Rob exactly. He
couldn't rememorize all those you've actually watched the because he

(58:43):
probably it was it is. Look, there's some good parts
to that visually, but man, Russell Crowe is not a singer.
He's in that band like something. However, many feet of runs. Yeah,
I'm sure he's doing a lot of music. That's what
I think. I mean, it's not I will say this,

(59:05):
the Limissa rob adaptation with Russell Crowe is not nearly
as bad as the adaptation of Sweeney Todd with fucking
Johnny Depp, who It's heartbreaking because I love Sweeney Todd.
It's a great music. It's a great musical. Fucking Alan
Rickman incredible, jod like his voice, very wonderful, the kid
they get to play Toby, perfect voice, beautiful voice. And

(59:28):
then you've got fucking Sweeney Todd played by like Johnny Depp,
outside of all of the other things that are wrong
with Johnny Depp, not a strong singer, and for fucking
Sweeney Todd, you have to be a strong goddamn singer.
It's that's the lead musical. Get a good singer, God,

(59:50):
Russell Crow, get Russell Crow, make him be Sweeney Todd. Yeah,
that's the solution. That's the solution. I'm glad we figured
all this out, matt leebug before we rull out for
the day. So much to plug follow me on you know,
Instagram at matt Leap jokes. But I do a podcast.

(01:00:12):
I do a couple of podcasts that our TV rewatch podcasts,
and uh, Pod Yourself a Gun is a Sopranos podcast,
and I'm going to be doing a live show of
Pod Yourself a Gun at San Francisco Sketch Fest Saturday,
January at ten pm Piano Fight main Stage. Please if

(01:00:36):
you like the Sopranos um or the Wire, because now
we do the Wire podcast, check that out. Go to
s F sketch Fest dot com look up Pod Yourself
a Gun and buy tickets please because that would be support,
Matt support and Robert and I have a couple of
events coming up, don't we Robert. That seems like a lie, okay.

(01:00:58):
One of them is a live virtual event that we
are doing with moment House and featuring Margaret kill Joys
and Behind the Bastard's livestream show that will be happening
on December eighth at six pm Pacific and if you
can't make it, we'll be on demand for up to
a week um and you can get tickets at moment
house dot co, slash bTB and it's should be smart

(01:01:23):
splattered all over social So how do you say that splattered?
I'm going with it, Yes, all over splooged all over
social media. And if I remember, I will link it
in the description. UM and Robert and I will also
be at SF sketch Fest. Hell yeah, hell yeah yeah.
So you know, uh, what if we went on strike

(01:01:46):
at sketch Fest, You know, Matt, what if we struck
for more? I what do I remember about sketch Fest.
They gave us a bunch of those those waters that
are like big beer cans. For more of those? Yeah,
let's strike for more of that ship more liquid death.
And I think also, um, I forget. I don't know
if Audible is a sponsor again this year, but if

(01:02:06):
they are, I'm I said, we strike for more UM
free credit codes and gift cards. Yeah. I like audio
books and I don't like having to pay. I don't
I love audio books and I hate paying for things.
So help us, help Matt and I strike against uh
the good people at SF sketch who have invited us

(01:02:30):
but definitely but definitely by tickets, but also support our
strike against there They're evil, not giving me like right now,
I would like one of those liquid death cans and
I don't have it, and I'm furious. Man, they make
caffeinated Anyways, I believe Behind the Bastards will be there
on January. I don't have any more information when we're

(01:02:50):
recording this, but I'm sure you'll see more in the future.
Also by Robert's book After the Revolution. Yes, I do it?
Did I do the plugs? Yeah? Episode fucking over, Bye bye,
goddamn right bye. Behind the Bastards is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more from cool zone Media, visit

(01:03:13):
our website cool zone media dot com, or check us
out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.