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The first lines of a biography read "Napoleon Bonaparte was a military general who became the first emperor of France. His drive for military expansion changed the world."
A newspaper article published more than a hundred years ago reveals a possible Eastern Shore connection to Napoleon!
October, 1902
The Indianapolis Journal (Indianapolis, Ind.)
A BIT OF HISTORY.
How Napoleon Was to Be Brought from La Rochelle to Virginia.
Baltimore American.
The sale of the colonial silver and antique furniture in the old King mansion, three or four miles south of Princess Anne, Somerset county, Maryland, marks the severance of the present and the past in a stately old home where a century ago fashion and wealth reigned and where centered the political and social influence of the county. Piece by piece the land was sold, but the house, of solid brick, weathered the storm and stands to-day a monument to the past.
In the King house at the beginning of the last century, and for many years thereafter, lived Colonel King, a stately gentleman of the old school, with business and social connections in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington. Among his friends was Stephen Girard. Tradition has it that Colonel King had planned for the escape of Napoleon from France after the second fall of Paris, a disaster which he plainly foresaw.
Mr. Girard Is said to have informed Napoleon of his plan, which was to spirit him away to America. For this purpose the fastest clipper which Mr. Girard could procure was dispatched to La Rochelle, where Napoleon was to take passage. Bonaparte acceded to the plan, and after his abdication in Paris he hastened to La Rochelle to embark for America.
His enemies, however, were in hot pursuit and on the alert and when he reached the port he was alarmed to find the harbor filled with the ships of the allies. He realized the impossibility of reaching the clipper ship, and even if once on board he saw the futility of escape from the harbor. He did not long hesitate what to do.
He selected the British warship Bellerophon, then in the harbor, and went aboard committing himself, as he stated in a letter at the time, "to the protection of the laws of the most powerful, the most persevering and the most generous of his foes." He little realized at the time that he was surrendering himself into life captivity and that the barren island of St. Helena was to be his prison.
Mr. Guard's plan was to bring Napoleon to America and to land him on the coast of Accomac county, Virginia, whose numerous inlets and bays afforded a most desirable harbor for the ship. The residents of the interior were most hospitable and would gladly have aided Mr. Girard in the concealment of the deposed Emperor had such course been deemed necessary by developments in France or on the continent.
Mr. Girard selected the eastern shore of Virginia as an asylum for Bonaparte because the Philadelphian had once lived there, and because, knowing its people, he knew he could trust them. When the young Frenchman first arrived in America he settled In Accomac county, and it was thence that he removed to Philadelphia.
Communication was slow in those days. There were no steamships which crossed the ocean in a few days. There were no submarine cables. Weeks were required then, where only days now count, for a voyage from Europe to America. Colonel King had heard of the battle of Waterloo and of the overthrow of Napoleon, and when a rumor reached Princess Anne that Napoleon had landed on the coast of Accomac he believed Mr. Girard's plans had carried safely and that the greatest military genius of the age was in America.
The report of the landing seemed so well known that Colonel King concluded that secrecy had not been deemed a necessary precaution by Mr. Girard. It was also reported that Napoleon would visit Princess Anne. According to legend Colonel King ordered out the local militia, of which he was commander, and all preparations were made to march to the Virginia line, about fifteen miles distant, to meet Bonaparte.
In the absence of more specific information as to the movements of the French Emperor the march was not immediately begun. After waiting for several hours for news the citizen soldiers returned to their homes, fully prepared to be called together to essay forth to greet the great Frenchman.
The story of the origin of the intimacy of Napoleon and Stephen Girard is an interesting one and is of sufficient explanation of the activity of the latter in providing means of escape for the Emperor. They first met while Mr. Girard was negotiating for America the loan by which France was paid for the territory of Louisiana, during the administration of President Jefferson. Then began the friendship which lasted throughout that long imprisonment of Napoleon on the solitary rock-bound island in the Atlantic and who can tell but that in those legends of the plots to rescue Napoleon from his dreary prison and to give the world another flash of his genius was Stephen Girard with his enormous wealth the chief actor?
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