Empire's Eagles: The Fate of the Napoleonic Elite in America
Crocker, Thomas E (Author)
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Prometheus (September 8, 2020)
ISBN-13: 9781633886544
The never-before told story of how Napoleon's top brass escaped to America after Waterloo. Empire's Eagles is colorful, new, and an effectively unknown chapter in American history. In its center is the mystery of whether Napoleon's "Bravest of the brave," Marshal Ney, cheated a firing squad to escape under an alias and reinvent himself in America.
At sunset on June 18, 1815 Napoleon Bonaparte was in desperate flight from the battlefield at Waterloo. Racing to reach Paris, he abandoned on the road his armored coach and Imperial necessaire containing a fortune in precious gems and cash. Would he stand and fight again or flee to the United States of America? On the run and with his options dwindling by the day, Napoleon came within one hour of secretly slipping to America on a Baltimore privateer with the active collusion of the United States consul in Bordeaux. Empire's Eagles tells the details of this story for the first time ever.
Author
Thomas E. Crocker is the author of BRADDOCK'S MARCH: How the Man Sent To Seize a Continent Changed American History, which received the 2011 Distinguished Book Award from both the New York and District of Columbia Societies of Colonial Wars. Mr. Crocker is currently a member of the Cox Book Prize committee of the Society of the Cincinnati and of the Distinguished Book Prize committee of the General Society of Colonial Wars. In addition to being a published historian, the author is an honors graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School. For over 40 years he was a partner in a major national law firm and a U.S. diplomat. He lives in Washington, DC.
I await this title with interest. Many years ago I read the Toby Giese book on Ney's supposed escape to America but I'm not sure if I was totally convinced in the end. Perhaps there is some new evidence? Would like to think this fine marshal may have escaped the firing squad though...
Although this book is about the elite does anyone have any info on Louis "Moses" Rose who was one of Bowie's contingent at the Alamo in 1836, age 50? Although he left the Alamo before the final battle.
He was born in Lafaree, Ardennes, France (d.1850) and had served in the Grand Armee as a private. He was reputedly at Waterloo but I'm not sure if this has been confirmed - I believe this was by his own admission. Not very important perhaps but interesting all the same. (Ref. The Alamo Sourcebook 1836... (1998, Austin), by Tim & Terry Todish