Guess where Napoleon was headed when captured by a British warship in 1815?

Darien, Georgia . . . near the real site of Fort Caroline

Oui! It seems implausible, but it is true. English language references typically say that he was headed to “America” or the United States, but if you dig a little into the French-language sources, one uncovers a fascinating story, which reveals another side of Napoleon’s complex personality.

Now, most of you have probably never heard of Darien, but it was a bustling seaport at the mouth of the Altamaha River and one of Georgia’s wealthiest per capita cities until Union troops burned it down during the Civil War. That atrocity was glorified in the movie, “Glory” over 30 years ago. However, there is much, much more to the story that scholars on both sides of the Atlantic have missed for over two centuries.

by Richard L. Thornton, Architect and City Planner

The Darien waterfront today is filled with fishing and shrimp boats. Most of the commercial buildings and wharves were not rebuilt after being burned in the Civil War.

After being thoroughly defeated at Waterloo, Napoleon returned to Paris, hoping to continue the war with England and Prussia with new recruits. However, the French people, although admiring the reforms that Napoleon had instituted and the glory of past victories, had grown weary of seeing their sons’ blood spread across the soil of Europe. Several enemy armies were at the gates of Paris.

Government leaders began meeting to determine the optimum actions to prevent the destruction of Paris and France as a nation. The Marquis de LaFayette, leader of the Liberal Party, put forth a motion that (1) Napoleon abdicate and (2) the select committee immediately negotiate a peace treaty with the Coalition leaders. Within hours, Napoleon abdicated.

An astonishing, little known plan, by Napoleon

On 25 June Napoleon left Paris for the final time and briefly stayed at the Palace of Malmaison. He soon learned that a troop of Prussian cavalry had been dispatched to either arrest him or kill him. At this point, he discussed his plans with the few confidents that he could still trust. 

Napoleon was only 46 years old at the time. He said that he was tired of war and wanted to go to a location, where he could spend the remaining years of his life in peace, away from the demands of politics and war. He then stated that he had always dreamed of living on a plantation in the State of Georgia in the United States, perhaps near St. Marys, GA and Cumberland Island. However, his plantation would have no slaves. 

Napoleon talked about having a family in America. He was completely estranged from his second wife, an Austrian duchess, but was still legally married. Not sure how he would have wriggled his way out of that dilemma. .

Napoleon was quite aware how how the invention of the cotton gin on Cumberland Island, GA by Eli Whitney in 1795 was changing the world’s economy. He planned to gather together the brightest engineering minds from the United States and France to create machinery that would eliminate the need for slave labor. He then planned to finance large industrial plants in Georgia to manufacture the machinery,

Napoleon also hoped to develop the ship construction industry around St. Marys and St. Andrews Sound, where Georgia cypress and long leaf logs could be assembled into state-of-the-art ships. Europe was running out trees. The Southeastern United States was still a sea of forests.

The final phase of Napoleon’s dream was to build a world class university in Georgia that would a progressive institution, known for its scientific and technological discoveries. In his golden years, he hoped to be a professor of math and mechanical engineering at his university. So, in an alternate history today, I would be singing, “I’m a Rambling Wreck from Bonaparte Tech and a helluva Architect.” 

Why Georgia? That’s a good question. It had been the youngest of the colonies and still was under-developed. Georgia in that era was the mirror-opposite of sophisticated Paris. Why would Napoleon even know that Georgia existed? He was a very busy man, while defeating most of the armies of Europe. 

We know that like all Frenchmen, Napoleon was taught about the bold attempt to establish a French colony on what is now the mouth of the Altamaha River on the Georgia Coast . . . and about the tragic massacre of Fort Caroline.

French maps continued to claim Georgia and South Carolina, which they labeled Florida française until 1763. In fact, for much of the past three centuries, the only people, who thought that Fort Caroline was in Florida, were members of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce. LOL Perhaps, Napoleon wanted to restart the history clock and inject French culture into Florida française.

Oh . . . here is something that all of the scholars, on both sides of the Atlantic have missed for over two centuries! Did I mention that the United States Minister (Ambassador) to France in 1815 was William Crawford from Lexington, Georgia? Prior to being appointed to France at the beginning of the War of 1812, Crawford had been President of the United States Senate. 

Crawford was a close friend of President James Madison and in fact, one of the most powerful men in the United States government. Since at that time, both France and the United States were at war with Great Britain . . . Crawford undoubtedly had a very important role in intelligence-gathering. That is the only way one could explain him jumping from being President of the U..S. Senate to being an ambassador.

But there is more. William Crawford’s lovely wife, Susanna Jourdaine Gerardine, was was a French Huguenot. Both of her parents were French. That fact is not so extraordinary, because many French Protestant refugees immigrated to South Carolina and Georgia. However, this particular French Huguenot-Georgia Belle had partied often with Napoleon and Josephine Bonaparte.  Hm-m-m . . . methinks that covert diplomacy by the U. S. Department of State did not begin in the 20th century,

Obviously, William Crawford had arranged for Napoleon to be given asylum in the United States. It is probable that French Huguenot families on the Georgia coast had already agreed to house Napoleon until he could buy a plantation.  Most certainly, arrangements had been made to transfer Napoleon’s gold to a bank in the United States . . . probably in Darien or Savannah.

Now, THAT would have changed the history of the United States. With the end of slavery and a booming industrial complex in Georgia, manufacturing farming machinery for the world, the Civil War would never have happened. Inevitably, an offspring of Napoleon and his American Huguenot wife, would have been elected president.

Alas, things did not go long as Napoleon had planned them. On the day that the French King, Louis XVIII, made his public entry into Paris again occupied the throne, Napoleon Bonaparte symbolically embarked at Rochefort, France on board the fast French frigate Saale for Georgia. It was accompanied by another smaller, but fast frigate, the Méduse. 

During the Napoleonic wars, these two frigates had frequently hid out from British fleets in the estuaries, marshes and tidal rivers of the Altamaha River Sound, St. Andrews Sound and St. Marys River Sound on the Georgia Coast. Now, it all made sense.

Two days later the ships were trapped in weak easterly winds, which enabled the much more powerful, British man-of-war HMS Bellerophon, to catch up with them. 

Rather than sending two French crews to their death for a hopeless cause, Napoleon sent word to the captain of the HMS Bellerophon that he would voluntarily surrender. He never saw France again.

Life is stranger than fiction