0:00

M did

0:03

theoria that's a disease,

0:06

and I'm Robert Evans, and this is Behind the Bastards,

0:09

a podcast that's not about diseases. It's about

0:11

the worst people in all the history who are kind

0:13

of a disease on the human condition. I

0:15

couldn't think of anything else to shout at the start

0:17

of the episode, so I went with diphtheria.

0:20

Anyway, the show has begun. My guests

0:22

today are one of our very best

0:25

guests, the wonderful, the incomparable

0:27

Lazy Mobery.

0:30

I'm so happy to be here. I haven't seen you in so long,

0:32

Robert, yet it has been a minute.

0:34

It has been a minute. How have How are you

0:37

doing in in this year of plague

0:39

and also general uprisings

0:41

and also a political election and

0:44

also an economic collapse. Um

0:47

I was in the beginning, in

0:49

the beginning of this, I know when you say it all together,

0:52

when you talk about what's been happening, it sounds

0:54

very bad because the new cycle is so crazy.

0:57

Like that the one week where Malaia was like, Chris,

1:00

I can't do her voice, but she's like and

1:02

then taxes

1:04

came out the same week. Also he got COVID.

1:07

It was like so many things happened, and we were like, oh,

1:10

this is just Tuesday. Okay,

1:12

I'm doing a lot better. In the beginning.

1:15

I'm a like an introvert.

1:17

People don't know that about me because I do a lot of this

1:19

ship, but like, I am alone a lot and I

1:22

like it. So I was like, oh, putting up on TV's

1:24

Netflix movies, honey. And then

1:26

when we got into June, it was like, okay, Black

1:28

Liberation and that kind of kept me busy. And

1:30

then I took a real dump like after

1:33

that of like closing my blackout curtains.

1:35

Like I was like a shutting, bedridden

1:38

pregnant woman in the eighteen hundreds and

1:40

just like laying in the dark for a few days.

1:43

But now I'm back, I'm going working

1:45

out every day and you know, I just trying

1:47

to keep myself safe.

1:52

You know how they used to be like Google, gott I had a king's

1:54

baby, so get your aunts in bed and closed

1:57

these curtains. Yes, So

2:01

that was me except for no baby, no quarantine

2:03

baby. Thank god, I have

2:06

not had a quarantine baby either. Um.

2:08

I did adopt a riot son, but

2:11

but but no quarantine baby. Um

2:13

lazy, How do you feel

2:15

about but

2:17

I do. I really

2:20

love them. It's a complicated relationship

2:22

though, because I don't love when people

2:24

are victimized. I hate to see it happened. Actually

2:26

this morning, my little sister got scammed.

2:29

Oh no, what kind of scam

2:31

I was doing with the family crisis before nine am?

2:33

Chair because they two hours ahead of me. And

2:36

so basically, my sister met

2:38

this girl and they've been hanging out through a mutual

2:40

friend for three months. And the girl was

2:42

like talking about how she needed to move

2:44

out from her parents house and how during quarantine

2:47

things have just got so bad, you know, side story,

2:49

side story, honey. So she's like, I'm selling

2:51

my art online and

2:54

I don't want to put the money in my bank account because I

2:56

don't want my parents to know that I'm saving up to leave.

2:58

So she asked my little sister, is she could put

3:01

the money in her bank account cut

3:03

to some man named Clad

3:05

or some ship emailing my sister

3:08

four checks for eight hundred dollars. Why

3:10

my sister didn't think? I was like you, I literally

3:12

the first thing I text, because she was like, don't tell my mom dad. I

3:14

was like, first of all, I have to

3:17

Second of all, I

3:21

know this is petty, but I was like, I

3:24

run a show called scam Guys. I was like, y'all support

3:26

your sister and listen to her show, because girl, i'n't talked about

3:28

this scam like eleven times. I'm

3:30

trying to help you

3:34

seventeen so all enough to know about

3:36

her. It's like it's like if

3:38

your job was to give out flu vaccines

3:40

and then like, your sister gets

3:42

the flu and she's like, well I didn't know there was a vaccine,

3:45

Like what the funk are you? Like? Right, I'm

3:47

like, I spent a whole section of my life just

3:49

talking about scams. You ain't think nothing, thought

3:52

like let me text my older sister before I make

3:54

a devilas and nothing. So

3:56

she said, up the hundred dollars because

3:59

they cleared it automatically, which is

4:01

there, so we're dealing with them. But it was total

4:05

and so the bank of course did a charge back and

4:07

then that coin flew right out of her account and

4:09

she was like, well, my friend didn't know. I was like, your friend

4:12

did no, Okay, she scammed and she

4:14

got your friend and don't talk to her again. And

4:16

also I will pull up to whatever slide whatever

4:19

swing set. I need to to be her ass

4:21

uh. I will fight children.

4:24

Um yeah, if you're five one, you

4:27

can fight kids. Mostly

4:29

I will fight children. Have

4:32

one. It's a fair fight. Okay? He is

4:35

her friends seventeen two? Yeah,

4:37

I think they're around the same A. Yeah,

4:40

but a surprise bastard. Yeah,

4:43

surprise. I didn't expect to talk

4:45

about this one. Sorry, it was on my heart.

4:49

You know who else would fight children? Probably

4:53

probably the subject of

4:55

today's podcast, I assume based

4:58

on everything else he did so, Lacy, you

5:01

and I are both are both connoisseurs of con

5:03

men. You know, we love we love us some connors

5:05

right, like it's it's there's something just you

5:07

gotta you love a grifter like they're they're

5:10

monsters, but they're fascinating. And

5:12

most of the grifters, at least that I talk about,

5:14

I know, you cover kind of a different branch of them. Most of

5:16

the ones I talk about are either like hawking

5:19

some sort of miracle medical treatment, or

5:21

like a path to easy riches. I guess that

5:23

that's basically all of them, right. Um.

5:26

There are like, you know, a couple

5:28

though, who rise above the rest.

5:30

There's people like oh Ron Hubbard, right, who like drifted

5:32

a whole religion and it's like, you know, and

5:35

today's grifter is that

5:37

level of grifter. Um, he didn't

5:39

make a religion. But the guy we're talking

5:41

about today, Sir Gregor McGregor, count

5:44

people into believing he had a whole country.

5:47

And that's pretty ambitious.

5:49

It is good, you know travel.

5:53

He's like, no, you don't have to come, just no, oh

5:56

no, he he convinced them to come. Now, this

5:58

was a different era we're talking about. Out the eighteen

6:00

hundreds, um, and spoiler, a lot

6:02

of them died. Um.

6:05

This is a high body count scammer.

6:08

Um. But our first episode is going

6:10

to be about the rest of his back because like every

6:12

grifter, he had to like build up, you know,

6:14

just start by faking a country, right,

6:17

Like you gotta that's like, that's

6:19

like the marathon of grift ing and like

6:21

you gotta do some tin ks, some twenty k's

6:23

like before you can you know, before you can

6:25

get that ship. So. Gregor

6:28

McGregor was born in Sterlingshire,

6:30

Scotland, on Christmas Eve, seventeen eight

6:33

six. His family were somewhat

6:35

famous among the contentious peoples

6:37

of Scotland. One of his ancestors was a

6:39

guy named rob Roy McGregor, a

6:41

cattle wrestler and a bandit who

6:43

basically charged people not to steal

6:45

their ship. He was a gangster Um. He controlled

6:47

a large group of raiders who would like steal cows

6:50

and then ransom them back to their customers or

6:52

just like get money from them not to steal their

6:54

cows in the first place. The origin, yeah,

6:58

yeah, he was. He was kind of like a towing company, but

7:00

an a legal towing company. Um,

7:02

we're like some guy with a gun comes out and said, oh, you want

7:04

your fucking car back, Like, yeah,

7:09

I have definitely had my car toad, but it was

7:11

unfortunately legal, although I felt

7:14

as if it was not, and if it were a bandit

7:16

perhaps that would have been nicer. Um

7:18

because there were cops involved anyway, So he

7:21

piste off a local noble by stealing stealing

7:23

his cows eventually, and that got the McGregor

7:25

clan kicked off. There's like a roster of

7:27

official Scottish clans. It's like a it's

7:30

like a whole deal. And so the McGregor family

7:32

got kicked off for like decades um

7:35

and rob Roy's family got like tossed out

7:37

of their home in the dead of winter. Um,

7:39

and he was he was really it seems like just a

7:41

criminal, like just like not a good criminal

7:44

either, Like you know, I'm not judgmental of criminals,

7:46

but he's just like stealing people's ship. But because

7:48

of like for whatever reason, it's complicated.

7:51

He's still he turned into a folk hero in Scotland

7:53

and he's kind of you now is the Scottish Robin

7:55

Hood. So this is Gregor McGregor's

7:58

like famous ancestor, and he's he's only

8:00

born like sixty years before Gregor's birth,

8:02

but like you know, back in the seventeen hundreds,

8:04

that's like a billion years, you know. Yeah.

8:07

So by the time Gregor McGregor comes

8:09

into the world, his family, his clan had

8:11

been re estate and stated to the roles,

8:14

and he's got like this famous tradition of

8:16

like we're we're we're we're both warriors

8:18

and and freedom fighters, YadA, YadA, YadA.

8:21

His family weren't rich, but they were really very

8:23

comfortable local aristocrats,

8:25

like upper middle class. They

8:27

were eating every day, yeah yeah, yeah,

8:30

and they were eating well. Um, he would have grown up

8:32

hearing tales of like his ancestors glory, YadA

8:34

YadA. Uh. We don't know any details

8:36

about Gregor's education or his early

8:38

life because people didn't keep great notes in the

8:40

seventeen hundreds about folks who weren't like super

8:43

rich. But we know that his father worked for

8:45

the British East India Company and would have been

8:47

absent all the time doing you know, genocides

8:49

and stuff. Uh. It's likely

8:51

that Gregor was raised by his mom and his aunts

8:54

and showered with attention because he was the only boy

8:56

in the family and I think most people

8:58

know what that kind of does to you. He

9:01

was like the original influencer of the seventeen

9:04

hundred. It sounds like he would have had like, maybe like eighty

9:06

four Instagram followers.

9:10

Yeah, it's weird how quickly

9:12

you've picked up on where this story is going lazy.

9:17

Um so. Yeah. His His modern

9:19

biographer, a guy named David Sinclair, posits,

9:21

based on his later life he was probably showered

9:23

with attention and grew used to getting whatever he wanted,

9:25

like he was he was the special boy of the family,

9:27

right. Um So, he

9:30

probably left school at about age fifteen

9:32

because that's when Scottish boys became adults,

9:34

which is interesting to me because like pretty much

9:36

everywhere else in Urope, it was like age fourteen. So

9:38

I guess the Scots you get an extra

9:40

year of being a kid. That's nice. Yeah, they're

9:42

progressive. Uh. The next year, at

9:44

age sixteen, he enlisted in the British Army.

9:47

Uh. Sixteen was the earliest age at which

9:49

this was allowed. And before you get all judge, you

9:51

should know that seventeen year olds joined the U s

9:53

Army all the time, so things aren't changed all that

9:55

much. Like we added

9:58

a year. We're the Scotsman of the modern

10:00

era. So um,

10:02

yeah, Gregor joins the army and uh.

10:05

He would claim later that he spent the year between

10:07

graduation and joining the university and

10:09

joining the army at the University of Edinburgh,

10:11

But everything he ever said was a lie, so don't

10:14

put too much stock in that. There's no evidence that he

10:16

ever attended college. Now. Back

10:18

in those days, as a result of changes made by

10:20

King Charles the Second, young men with money

10:22

could buy their way into the British Army, and

10:24

it's almost certain that Gregor's father paid for

10:26

him to be commissioned as an incident, which was like

10:29

the lowest officer rank at the period

10:31

and cost about four hundred and fifty pounds,

10:33

which was equivalent to around twenty five dollars

10:35

in modern money. So like this

10:38

was expensive, it was also the normal way

10:40

that officers got promoted, right, you could

10:42

either wait years to earn a promotion or

10:44

you could pay for it. Um. Poorman

10:46

had to settle for being promoted the old fashioned

10:48

way through like hard work and courage, and so the

10:50

you know that took a long time. Um. Until

10:53

fairly late in the eighteen hundreds, every officer

10:55

rank in the British Army worked this way up to the rank

10:57

of lieutenant colonel. UM. So

11:00

the people who are at least qualified. It's

11:05

interesting because it did work very badly a

11:07

lot of the time, and that's why it was eventually stopped.

11:10

UM. And obviously, like the thing that you'd imagine did

11:12

happen, a bunch of idiots got to command

11:14

the lives of thousands thanks to their rich dad's

11:17

UM. And you can look at ship like the famous charge

11:19

of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War,

11:21

and even the I mean they'd stopped

11:23

that process, but still a lot of the officers in charge

11:26

during that war had paid to become officers

11:29

Um, and even the British loss of North America

11:31

is like maybe partial consequences of the fact

11:33

that the system work this way. Um,

11:36

but it wasn't like it

11:38

wasn't all bad actually, And

11:40

this is the I found like a really interesting

11:42

letter to the editor in an eighteen sixty

11:45

issue of The New York Times, Um, We're

11:47

like a British military veteran explained

11:49

why the system wasn't quite

11:51

as as simple as people thought it

11:53

was. And one of the points he made is that it allowed people

11:55

who were good leaders to speed up

11:57

their rise to through the ranks and then thus

12:00

spend more time commanding armies in the prime of their

12:02

lives. And there's actually at least one

12:04

really good example of this. The Duke of Wellington

12:07

paid for all of the seven biable promotions

12:09

he could possibly have paid. And like, by the

12:11

time he was a lieutenant colonel, he'd never seen combat,

12:14

had no functional experience, and he went

12:16

on to beat Napoleon at Waterloo. So like,

12:18

sometimes it worked sometimes,

12:22

Yeah, he was a strategist, he

12:24

was Yeah, he was good at what

12:26

he like. Sometimes this worked out, um,

12:28

And like one of the one of the famous defenses when

12:30

people would talk about canceling this system

12:32

in the late eighteen hundreds, was that, like, well then we'd

12:35

have to pay all these officers back for the money they

12:37

paid to like get their promotions, and that would

12:39

cost way too much money. Um, so let's

12:41

just let's just keep having idiots and charity. It

12:45

was a very silly thing for the most

12:47

part. Now. The unit Gregor's dad

12:49

bought his son into was the fifty

12:51

seventh Foot, a Scottish regiment

12:54

famous for the fact that almost everyone in it was

12:56

a criminal. Their name their nickname

12:58

was the Steelbacks because were

13:00

flogged with whips so many times for their

13:02

disobedience. So it said that like you had to

13:04

have a strong back to survive because they'd regularly

13:06

get like nine lashes and ship for

13:09

like all of the crimes they committed. Now,

13:11

is that pre army or during

13:14

the army? That's during the army.

13:16

I feel like they shouldn't beating all people that you need

13:19

to fight. The British Army did

13:21

that all the time. There was in fact, there

13:23

was like a saying that like the British Navy

13:25

was kept in order by rum, sodomy

13:27

and the lash. Yeah,

13:30

so like they're drunk, they get to funk each

13:32

other and we beat them when they step out of line.

13:34

And that's why there's the there's also a

13:36

great Pogues album called Rum Sodomy and the Lash

13:39

wonderful. That's a good time. Some

13:43

people would like it, like there

13:46

are some stores I've been to in San Francisco

13:48

that specifically catered to that set of things.

13:55

But these were not fun lashes, you know,

13:57

like these would do real damage to you.

14:00

Um. The commander of the fifty seven

14:02

foot once nicknamed them the fighting Villains,

14:04

um, because again, they're all criminals. So

14:07

McGregor did well there at first. He actually earned

14:10

a promotion from instant to lieutenant without having

14:12

to pay for it. Um. So he had

14:14

like promise he there was a

14:16

chance he could have lived a legitimate life at one point.

14:18

Is what I want you to keep. They're

14:21

always there. Yeah. Yeah.

14:23

There was that moment where John McAfee had to

14:25

choose to murder a bunch of

14:28

people in the jungle, and when he

14:30

chose Crack, his choice was paid for him to

14:33

do. The

14:36

Crack stepped into the Crack entered the

14:38

chat and it's

14:41

like one of those Jesus take the wheel posters,

14:44

but Crack John

14:46

McAfee closed his eyes and

14:48

let crack take the wheel. Do take

14:51

the wheel, y'all. Ever, so

14:55

at this point in history, the British were real

14:57

scared about Napoleon because Napoleon

14:59

was, you know, be pretty good at war.

15:02

Uh And yeah, Gregor spent the bulk of his

15:04

military career being sent around a different islands

15:06

as forts and forts is part of like a big chess

15:08

game between the Empire and Napoleon. The British

15:10

were terrified the French were going to invade you

15:13

know, England, so like they were just always

15:15

moving soldiers and fleets around. It was

15:17

so he spends he doesn't actually fight, He

15:19

spends all of his time like moving from post to post.

15:22

And his favorite part of life in the military

15:25

was all the fancy parties because all of these fortresses

15:27

and posts are near like towns and cities,

15:29

and they all of these big social lives, and of course

15:31

the visiting young officers are the you

15:33

know, the biggest thing in town

15:36

whenever they come in. And he was a very

15:38

handsome guy. He was meticulous about his uniform.

15:41

He wore every decoration he possibly good

15:43

on it um and he he you

15:45

know, he stood out at these parties, and

15:47

as a result of standing out when he was still like

15:49

a teenager, he met a lady. Her

15:52

name was Maria bowater Um

15:54

and her father had been an admiral, and so

15:56

their family had fuck you money. They

15:58

get married and yeah, you know, and

16:00

in those days, you get married to a girl and she

16:02

comes with money, right, yeah, yeah,

16:04

you get like yeah, said

16:07

handsome question mark. I just google

16:09

searched. The

16:12

standards were lower in those days.

16:14

Everybody. Everybody's got the typhoid

16:16

he has, he has, I just farted

16:19

face. Yeah, but he didn't. He's

16:21

not actively shifting himself to death. So

16:24

like that's that's kind of the standard is like, oh,

16:27

you're not You're not having fatal

16:29

diarrhea. What a handsome man. You

16:31

don't have both

16:35

ears. It

16:38

was a rough time, so

16:41

uh yeah. They get married and her dowry

16:44

is like huge. So Gregor has

16:46

fuck you money too, at least for a while. Um.

16:48

And unfortunately this

16:51

has a bad effect on him. Number one, it swells

16:53

his head because immediately he's like, oh, now I'm like

16:55

a fucking rich officer guy.

16:58

But also like he marries into this family

17:00

that has this tradition of like being

17:02

very powerful people and he's just a lieutenant

17:05

and they don't. That does not impress them. So

17:07

to earn their respect, he uses some of the money

17:09

that he their money that he got to buy

17:11

himself a promotion to captain. He's got

17:13

douche face. I'm looking at his face, but he's it

17:16

was good looking for the day. No, it's

17:18

not. You know, I could see him being a baddie back

17:21

in the day. I'm just saying he's got that douchey face

17:23

of like everything I want. Like,

17:25

it's just he's no,

17:28

No, he would have. He would have been in a fraternity

17:30

and he would have been one of those guys that there were unfortunate

17:33

stories about because yeah,

17:35

yeah, yeah, that's this guy. Um,

17:38

not that he actually does anything like that, I'm just

17:40

assuming because of other things he does. So I'm

17:43

gonna quote next from David Sinclair's The

17:45

Land That Never Was, which is a biography

17:47

of Gregor McGregor. Quote, the

17:49

young captain's progress should have been assured. Using

17:52

his newfound wealth, McGregor could have bought himself

17:54

the rank of regimental major, which could take anything

17:56

between six and seventeen years, on the basis

17:58

of promotion, and then with war with certainty,

18:00

could have either counted on distinguishing himself sufficiently

18:03

to move up to lieutenant colonel, or else paid

18:05

again for the highest purchasable rank in the army.

18:07

There appeared to be no reason why, in due course

18:10

he should not become a general, as his wife's uncle

18:12

had and as her brother subsequently would. By

18:14

this time, however, certain traits in the young man's character

18:17

were beginning to turn him into his own worst enemy.

18:19

One of his later military comrades, if that

18:21

is the right term for a man who disliked him intensely,

18:24

observed McGregor was spoiled

18:26

by prosperity, and his versatility and haughtiness

18:28

of disposition soon overturned his flattering

18:30

prospects. So he gets a big ass head. That's a

18:32

fancy way of saying he gets a big head. Yeah,

18:35

and this guy's a hater. Whoever this comrade

18:37

is is definitely a hater. He's probably like had to work

18:39

his way up. Yeah

18:44

exactly. Yeah, he's like he's he's actually

18:47

gotta do ship. Um so. One

18:49

of his other comrades later noted that he began

18:51

to show a growing fascination with extreme

18:54

affectation of dress and fashion and

18:56

an overpowering fondness for the nicest

18:58

distinctions of rank and the over or

19:00

in the imposing spectacle of honorary

19:02

badges and tangible tokens of merit. And

19:05

this means like he would. You know, there's all sorts of bullshit

19:07

awards you get in the military for like showing

19:09

up and not doing anything, and most

19:11

like most like grunts, the people who actually

19:14

fight, like don't don't wear that ship. And he like

19:16

he would, he would wear that ship because, like

19:18

he always he wanted to have everything he possibly could

19:20

on him. It was about like looking good. Right,

19:23

he's like a rapper. He's showing up to these

19:25

cities like he's Travis Scott and

19:27

you know, showing off for the bitches. He said, there's a

19:29

party in every town, and I gotta have my gold chains.

19:31

And his health chains were purple hearts and

19:34

medals of freedom.

19:36

Yeah exactly. Yeah,

19:38

that's why the like, that's the fucking you know.

19:41

I grew up like really conservative. I talked about this

19:43

a lot, and like the discourse around

19:45

rappers when I was a kid was like, oh,

19:47

look at how like look at how look

19:49

at how like shameful This culture is

19:52

because of like these men with their like big golden chains

19:54

bragging about like you know what, like

19:56

the stuff that rappers brag about, and it's

19:58

like money, car, fucking Yeah, it's the same

20:01

thing rich white people brag about. It's just different

20:03

money, different cars, different women. Like there's

20:05

nothing different about it. It's just what men

20:07

do, like grossmen do at

20:09

least, like it's just a thing. Yeah,

20:13

So I don't see, but I get it that it's like if

20:15

you're really doing work and you're in the military

20:17

and you're looking at this guy and people are dying

20:19

all around you, and you're on the battlefield and

20:21

you have phone boy who doesn't even have to touch the

20:23

soil, and he's like dripped down

20:26

with every medal and accomplishment, and

20:28

I were talking cash it at all these functions

20:31

and being a douche Yeah,

20:33

because at least, like you know, it's

20:35

like like if you've got a fucking gold chain or whatever,

20:38

you probably had to earn that gold chain. You had to fucking

20:40

hustle, Like he just married some lady

20:42

and then took her money, uh, and then bought

20:45

a promotion. I'm looking at a picture of him

20:47

pose with a sword like he is my

20:49

sword, and I'm like, has he ever had to swing

20:52

the sword on anybody? Or is he just posted up

20:54

like this is how rappers pose with guns and music

20:56

videos. He does

20:58

eventually swing his sword, not at

21:00

this point. Not. And at this point he's never done

21:03

anything. He's wearing all the medals and

21:05

he's he's forcing all of the men under his

21:07

command to never show up

21:09

outside of their rooms unless they're wearing a

21:11

full dress uniform with a handsome

21:13

walking cane. Okay, so he was swaggy,

21:16

he was had the Swag Brigade. Yeah,

21:18

he wanted, he wanted, and yeah, and that

21:20

that frustrates the men around him. Yeah.

21:24

So and like these guys don't want to be the Swag Battalion,

21:26

their criminals like they

21:30

want to they want to get drunk and fight. Um,

21:32

they don't want to wear walk around with canes.

21:35

So in the winter of eighteen

21:37

oh seven, France invades Portugal. In Spain,

21:39

the British counter invade, and although

21:41

Gregor and his unit were nearby, they didn't take any

21:43

part in the fighting until like eighteen o nine, when

21:46

they're sent to Portugal to fight under the Duke of

21:48

Wellington. After deploying to Portugal.

21:50

The fifty seven fought heroically at the Battle

21:52

of Albuera, which was this horribly bloody,

21:54

grinding affair that killed like ten

21:57

thousand people and was like a hugely

21:59

famous battle of time. And it has now been forgotten

22:01

by everybody but war nerds, because that's what happens

22:04

when you sacrifice yourself in hugely famous

22:06

battles, is everybody but nerds forgets you. Um,

22:09

And I wish that that wasn't the case, because

22:11

yeah, absolutely, now we should remember all the

22:14

battles. Obviously we're still in Afghanistan, like we

22:16

should remember all the ship that's still going on.

22:18

But it's more interesting to me sometimes

22:20

the olden time battles because he's just

22:23

gotta be in good shape. I gotta be out here

22:25

stabbing you. That's a lot of work. And

22:27

I have that multiple people, like

22:29

I gotta be out here. How long are you? How many hours

22:31

are you outside stabbing? I know, everybody's

22:33

gotta be out of breath, just like and

22:37

they're all wearing like these thick cotton

22:40

uniforms like now ship breeds right

22:42

like right now we got breed material.

22:44

They have to dress like they're about to go to a kaya West

22:47

fans hat certain pounds,

22:49

like yeah, it's it sucks, it sounds terrible.

22:53

I have to take a break. Is there a point in the fight where

22:55

we both just like hold on, listen, just take yo.

22:58

Yeah, I mean they're actually we're so time. Everybody

23:01

stretched. We don't know we're gonna keep the battle going.

23:03

We just saw me so

23:06

like yeah. They So his unit

23:08

fights in this very famous battle, um and

23:10

they earned the nickname the die Hards because

23:12

like they're they're such good of fighters. And Gregor

23:15

would spend the rest of his life bragging about the

23:17

fact that he served with the die Hards and he fought in

23:19

this battle, and he didn't. It's a total

23:21

lie because when it happened, he was actually back

23:23

in England, because months before the fighting

23:25

happened, he got into like what was probably

23:28

a fistfight with a superior officer and

23:30

then got kicked out of his unit and eventually the

23:32

entire British Army um

23:38

um. And we don't know exactly what happened,

23:40

but one of his comrades did write that he was much

23:42

addicted to the pleasures of the table gambling

23:45

and was frequently intemperate, drunk to

23:47

excess Um so he was probably

23:50

got wasted and got into a dumb fight with somebody

23:52

he shouldn't have been fucking with, and he got kicked

23:54

out of the army. Wow,

23:56

I love how classy it sounds back then like

23:58

he loved the table bowl, the table.

24:02

Yeah. Now it's like, but you're sitting at a slot machine

24:04

for sixteen hours. It's called the table.

24:06

It's if you

24:09

smoke a cigar and we're white gloves while

24:11

you do it. It's classy and not. It's a very

24:13

depressing problem. Oh

24:16

goodness, this guy. So he just came to war

24:18

for the turn up. He said, it's gonna be cute. The

24:20

girls are gonna be a statue. I'm gonna give you

24:22

fashion, I'm gonna give you decoration,

24:25

decorative warrior. And then he gets

24:28

kicked out before the fighting starts. But

24:30

that's perfect. Yeah. And the

24:32

thing about the eighteen hundreds is like he just

24:34

went on claiming, oh no, I served with this unit

24:36

at that famous battle, like I'm one of them, like I'm and

24:39

he had like the regimental badges and there's no

24:41

internet, like nobody gets like nobody

24:43

can check up on this ship. Um

24:45

so he just it's the perfect situation for

24:47

him. He's like, because of his

24:50

comrades fought and died bravely and earned

24:52

a name for themselves, he gets to use

24:54

that name. But he also got to be hanging

24:56

out back in fucking Edinburgh sorry not Lyne

24:58

Edinburgh at the time. Like it's great situation for

25:00

It's like, how are we going to tweet that he

25:03

got headed out the army before the fild,

25:05

Like there's no way to do that? Yeah,

25:07

exactly, yea heat it out the

25:09

r I like. So his

25:11

first biographer, who was a soldier

25:13

who served with him, Colonel Rafter,

25:16

And we'll talk about this guy a little bit later. Um,

25:19

who hated him, by the way, wrote

25:21

that quote. McGregor now appeared to enjoy

25:23

the free, his freedom with little foresight and

25:25

less reflection. So he's very

25:28

happy to be kicked out of the army. Um

25:31

yeah, I will be Yeah, fuck it.

25:33

I mean it seems like a bad thing to be in. And he got

25:35

everything he needed. He got the drip and

25:37

he got the rep and he had to go to war.

25:40

That's the perfect recipe. It is perfect.

25:42

And like it was a dumb Like there's been like three

25:44

wars ever that like we're worth it to

25:46

fight in, and like the fucking Napoleonic

25:49

Wars were not one of them.

25:53

Um. So yeah, rafter goes

25:55

on to write, quote, having honored the city

25:57

of Edinburgh with his residence for some time,

25:59

he there assumed the title of colonel. He was

26:02

not actually a colonel. He's just one of these guys in the eight

26:04

hundreds who's like, I'm gonna call myself a fucking colonel.

26:07

Um. He decorated his heels with guilt

26:09

spurs, that's like golden spurs, and his

26:11

breast with the badge of a Portuguese Order

26:13

of Knighthood, which he had not earned either.

26:16

His lady foreign contessa

26:19

his footman were dressed in a fairy, whimsical

26:21

livery, and the panels of his chariot were highly

26:23

emblasmed and shown with all the blushing honolds

26:25

honors of a coronet, which as they could. So

26:28

he's he's just lying, and

26:30

he's got the money to buy all of the fancy

26:32

things to claim that he's a colonel, and like his

26:34

wife is royalty. And and

26:37

again, the only way to know

26:39

somebody was fancy back then was whether

26:41

or not they could afford to pretend they had

26:43

honors and nobody is able to check up on ship,

26:46

so he's got the money. So it's true. It

26:48

works out great for him. Well, actually it

26:50

doesn't. It doesn't work out great quite at

26:53

this point because he's a Scotsman and

26:55

all of the people around him or Scotsman and

26:57

Scottish people don't give a shit about this because

26:59

there's scott it right, Like, they don't like,

27:01

they don't they like, oh, you're covered in golden ship, like

27:03

we all spend all of our time getting into naked

27:05

fist fight fist fights in the wood woods

27:07

were fucking Scottish Like, They're

27:10

like, yeah, your your medals are cute, but we don't

27:12

care. Yeah we don't care.

27:15

Yeah, they do not.

27:17

He will later figure out how to trick

27:19

his native people, but at this point his

27:21

native people are like, so what the fuck, Like,

27:24

who cares if you're if you're a colonel and you married

27:26

a rich lady like go go likes

27:28

piss up a rope buddy, Um

27:31

uh so yeah they Gregor decides to

27:33

leave Scotland forever and he moves to the Isle

27:35

of Wight with all of his fancy stuff because the Isle

27:37

of Wight, as you might have guessed by the name

27:40

was filled with a lot of dumb, rich white people who

27:42

through ostentatious parties, and all

27:44

of these people believe his lies as long as

27:46

he dresses well. So like this is

27:48

the place for him. I'm glad

27:50

he finally found his scammera paradise. He

27:53

get his great gats beyond who's the great gass the

27:55

military, and I love it. Yeah, yeah,

27:57

he's doing it. He's doing it right. Um. As

27:59

Rafter wrote, quote, he there represented

28:01

himself as an heir to the to a Highland

28:04

baronet and to a castle with an estate

28:06

in the Highlands. His gay disposition, handsel

28:08

and figure and good address procured him ready

28:10

admission to all circles, and the assemblies

28:13

of the isle were considered devoid

28:15

of their principal attraction unless graced by the presence

28:17

of the lively Scotsman. So it becomes like the

28:19

biggest name on the island. He's like, he's

28:22

he's he does have that like thing. He would have been

28:24

a good like reality star

28:27

or something at the time. He's good at self. Yeah,

28:30

yeah, and everybody everybody on this

28:32

island charismatic, specifically to rich

28:35

people, like he's really good

28:37

at impressing rich people. Um,

28:40

right, and everyone's board, especially if you're rich,

28:42

you actually have people to do the day to day ship

28:44

that you had to do that Ben, if you don't have to plush your

28:46

own hand cart and make your own damn

28:48

food, then you probably need some entertainment. Yeah.

28:51

Why would you care if somebody's lying through their teeth

28:53

at you? As long as they tell a good

28:55

story. Like that's literally the only thing that

28:57

matters. Because you're so bored you want to die

28:59

all the time. Time. But you know

29:01

who's not so bored, they want to die all the time.

29:03

Lacy, the products

29:05

and services that support this podcast we

29:13

have returned. That

29:15

was a little more energy than that deserved.

29:17

I was trying to be like Gregor

29:20

McGregor and like and do the hype you know.

29:22

Yeah, yeah it works for me. Thank

29:25

you, Lacy, thank you, thank you for keeping

29:27

my confidence high. As a confidence

29:29

man, I um,

29:34

maybe one day. So yeah,

29:36

he dominates the social scene in the Isle

29:38

of Wight. Um, but he gets bored because

29:40

like he's he's one. Like it's kind of like he beat

29:44

that level and he's the big fish and the alo whites kind

29:46

of a small pond. So he decides he wants

29:48

to go somewhere bigger and fancier and like

29:50

take yeah, exactly. Never

29:53

satisfied, so he goes to London, um,

29:55

which is the fanciest place in the world then

29:58

and maybe now, I guess it's it's still

30:00

pretty fancy, still pretty fancy,

30:03

um. But you know, London

30:05

is kind of like a different fucking ballpark than the Isle

30:07

of White and he's gonna need more than just like fake

30:10

credentials to make a mark there because there's a

30:12

lot of colonels and fucking barons and ship

30:14

like there's kings and ship it's fucking it's London.

30:16

So thankfully for him, his dad had

30:19

just died um. And even though his dad wasn't

30:21

the clan chieftain, Gregor was able to start

30:23

lying and pretend that he'd inherited the position

30:25

as the chief of Clan McGregor. So he

30:27

starts calling himself Sir Gregor McGregor.

30:29

And again, no Internet, so nobody gets to check this

30:31

ship. And for a while it worked, largely

30:34

because Gregor burned through his wife's dowry

30:36

at an extraordinary pace, bribing his way

30:38

into high society and buying all the expensive

30:40

uniforms and a kouchrama that he needed to look

30:43

like the man he was pretending to beat all

30:45

of this eight through you know, the money that he had.

30:47

And then in eighteen eleven, tragedy struck.

30:49

His wife Maria died. Now, this was not

30:52

a tragedy because he cared anything about her.

30:54

This was a you know fucker. Um,

30:56

this was a tragedy because it severs his ties with

30:58

her rich family, and he was starting to run low

31:00

on cash and he didn't make no babies with her.

31:04

Come on, oh, scam a McGregor.

31:06

You didn't make you about one seed with Honestly,

31:08

you have a little connection. He's not taking

31:11

a hit. I love how angry

31:13

that you are with him that he did not pregnant

31:15

impregnate his wife before she died

31:17

tragically. Um, because it's

31:19

bad, it's bad. Uh, it's bad

31:21

craft. You know you gotta make

31:23

a baby right? Also, like if you're

31:25

gonna run through your coins, like are you just

31:27

looking for affirmation, sweetheart?

31:30

Like you gotta be trying to have Like there has to be some kind

31:32

of en goal. Are you trying to make more money? Are you gonna

31:34

rope people into your new pyramid scheme?

31:36

McGregor McGregor LLC

31:39

co of Riches, Like, what's the

31:41

end goal here? Yeah, that's the thing about at

31:43

this point he doesn't really have an end goal. He's just

31:45

kind of he just kind of wants to feel

31:47

fancy. Um. He doesn't seem

31:50

to have a plan in this period that will come later.

31:52

He grows. He this is a growth story, lazy

31:55

um. But at this point,

31:57

yeah, he's so. I'm actually gonna quote from

31:59

it right up in the Rothchild archive about

32:01

him. Quote. McGregor could not face

32:04

the prospect of returning to his family farm in

32:06

Scotland. His only real experience

32:08

was military, and his interest was aroused by the

32:10

colonial revolts against Spanish rule in Latin

32:12

America, particularly Venezuela. The

32:14

Venezuelan revolutionary general Francisco

32:17

de Miranda had been fedted in London during

32:19

a recent visit, and McGregor had formed

32:21

the idea that exotic adventures in the New World

32:23

might earn him similar celebrity. He sold

32:25

the small Scottish estate he had inherited and sailed

32:28

for South America via Jamaica in the early

32:30

eighteen twelve. Now, this guy, General

32:32

Francisco de Miranda, is is a really

32:35

interesting dude. So like this period.

32:37

We'll talk about this a little later, but like everybody's

32:39

fucking the South. America is full of revolutions,

32:42

and this guy, Francisco de Miranda is

32:44

like a revolutionary, like a very

32:46

successful general who's won a bunch of battles

32:48

and like he just travels around

32:51

Europe when he's not fighting and fox absolutely

32:53

everybody. Um So, he

32:55

rules. He's like, he's like he's like a cool figure,

32:57

like he's the soldier of fortune, this like

33:00

fighter for liberty. And he's also just like

33:02

he's like James Bond, just like sleeping with everybody

33:05

in every city he can. Um So,

33:07

he's like McGregor sees this guy and he's

33:09

like, that's the fucking life I warrant um.

33:12

Yeah, he goes

33:14

to Jamaica. It's supposed to just be a stopover,

33:16

but he falls in love with Jamaica as soon as he lands

33:19

there, and he tries briefly to make a life.

33:21

But for McGregor, making a life somewhere

33:24

meant hanging out at rich people's parties and pretending

33:26

to be a war hero. And in those days, traveling

33:28

dandies had to carry letters from other rich

33:30

and famous people who knew the rich and famous people

33:32

in the area they'd travel to and that was how you'd get

33:34

introduced to high society. And he didn't

33:36

have any of that, so nobody would let him into their

33:39

parties. Dang, he didn't

33:41

think he just makes some letters up. Yeah,

33:43

that's what's surprising to me, because he's not above

33:45

it. I guess he just didn't He wasn't confident

33:47

that he could. Maybe he didn't know who to fake the letter

33:49

from. Right right, right right. You do need that

33:51

information, you need to you need to have a name, and

33:54

he probably didn't have that. And again he's

33:56

he's he's a baby scammer at this point,

33:58

you know, he's he's he's not good yet.

34:01

So he was waiting outside the club and he couldn't

34:03

get in. Yeah, he could not get in. Nobody's

34:05

letting him through the rope. So in

34:07

spring of eighteen twelve, he continues on to Venezuela

34:09

and he lands in Caracas two weeks after much

34:12

of the city had been destroyed by an earthquake that

34:14

killed like thirty people. Um

34:17

horrible, horrible earthquake. So he introduces

34:19

himself as Sir Gregor to anyone who'd

34:21

listened, and he starts talking to representatives of

34:23

the Republican Army uh and claiming

34:26

that he's a colonel and a knight in the Portuguese or Order

34:28

of Christ and all of his old lives. Now at

34:30

that point, Venezuela's in the middle of a revolution

34:32

against Spanish authority. And this was part of a

34:34

broad trend across South America, like

34:36

all like all of these places in South America are

34:38

erupting into like liberation struggles,

34:41

um and as times of chaos

34:43

and political change tend to do. This period

34:45

opened up the door to Charlottean's and Conman.

34:47

It's real easy to like work on a

34:49

grift in a in a in a situation like I

34:52

mean, look at COVID. You know many COVID, Yes

34:54

there all

34:57

right, and we

34:59

haven't even had our evolution yet, like like

35:01

thirty days away or so. Literally

35:04

it's like a few days away from the revolution,

35:06

not far. Yeah, I need to get

35:08

my revolution scams together. What am I going to be

35:10

selling out here on the streets. I

35:13

think Colonel Moseley has actually a nice ring

35:15

to it. Could be a colonel, yeah, I

35:17

think so. Yeah, you just

35:19

gotta pick a militia that's not actually

35:21

going to fight to be a colonel of because you

35:23

don't want to. You don't want to get tested on that ship. Right,

35:26

No, I gotta go somewhere

35:28

on people like Tooth, like like New Guinea,

35:30

like very small. Yeah.

35:33

So all these con men and stuff start popping up

35:36

in Venezuela, and not just conmon

35:38

but all of these Like it's

35:40

just like there's a big vacuum of power

35:43

and a bunch of dudes who want power kind

35:45

of flooded. Yeah. I'm

35:47

gonna quote from a write up by the Bulletin of Latin

35:49

American Research to kind of discuss

35:52

this period. Quote. The end of Spanish rule

35:54

in the Americas is generally seen by scholars

35:56

as a period in which a power vacuum came to

35:58

be filled by Cardillos. These were

36:00

popular leaders, strongmen competing on the basis

36:02

of their charisma. There's strong social constituencies

36:05

i e. Them in from their land economic

36:07

basis and political projects, and the absence

36:09

of a state monopoly of violence. Physical force

36:11

was rarely irrelevant to explanations of their rise

36:14

to power on these criteria. Despite his

36:16

foreignness and Scottish birth, but Gregor certainly

36:18

had the capacity to become a successful cutty

36:20

Low, even though the quintessential cutty Low

36:23

was a local figure whose ability to function as a

36:25

leader rested primarily on local support and resources.

36:27

So this is like, these kinds of guys

36:30

are are writing into this gap

36:32

and gaining power for themselves, and

36:34

he's got the potential to be one of them. Right.

36:36

He has the skills, um, which is

36:38

that he's charismatic and good at getting people

36:40

to to follow him. So yeah,

36:44

and if people have no leadership, then that's when

36:46

you pull up with the leadership when everything

36:50

Yeah, hey, look I just happened to

36:52

be here and you do now I'm

36:54

a leader. Does he speaks Spanish?

36:57

Are you all willing to die for me? Oh? Yeah? It's

37:00

been taken over by Spade yet

37:03

yeah no, no, no no, yeah, they're they're fighting

37:05

for freedom from Spain. But like so

37:07

they're fighting a war like as He lands

37:10

and Caracas has liberated, but like there's

37:12

Spanish troops all over the place, like

37:14

there's a and the war is not going very well.

37:16

Um, and yeah he has to he learns

37:19

at some point, you know, he started he grew up speaking

37:21

Gaelic, I think so he had to learn English, like he's

37:23

good at acquiring languages, as a

37:25

lot of people tended to be in that era. So

37:28

the Venezuelan Republicans were desperate for men,

37:30

and they were desperate particularly for seasoned

37:32

military leaders. Um. And the British

37:35

armies like the most powerful army in the world at the time. They're

37:37

the guys who beat Napoleon. So like, if

37:39

you come in saying like, oh, I I was a British

37:41

military officer to like this group of

37:43

people trying to raise an army from nothing, like

37:46

they're gonna be like, oh, ship, can you can you help us

37:48

out? Like we really we could use some help here.

37:50

So obviously he inflates

37:52

his record. He lies and says that he's

37:54

that he commanded the infamous fifty

37:57

seven foot regiment the die Hards and turned

37:59

them into the elite unit that held the Lion

38:01

at the Battle of Albuera that he had not been

38:03

at. But he yeah,

38:06

I fought Napoleon. Yeah

38:09

yeah. The Venezuelans had no way

38:11

to know that he was lying because he was

38:14

far away then, uh, and he owned a nice

38:16

uniform, so they assumed he was telling the truth. Um,

38:18

and he's you know, a convincing guy. So Gregor

38:21

also made a good call by going directly

38:23

to the commander in chief of the nascent Venezuelan

38:26

state, General Miranda. That guy was just talking about

38:28

at this point, he's basically the dictator of Venezuela

38:30

because like they're trying to win a war and they do

38:33

this thing that you see a lot of republics do in

38:35

times of strife, where they're like, here, have

38:37

all the power for a limited time, if you

38:39

can, like if you can win this thing for us

38:43

and all. But

38:48

what's what's crazier is what's crazy

38:50

isn't that like that happened and people

38:52

usually wound up living under a dictator for the

38:54

rest of the lives. What's crazy, Like sometimes those

38:57

dictators actually did give back the power.

38:59

It's the weird story. Yeah, yeah, it happened in

39:01

Rome a couple of times. That's where you know Cincinnati,

39:04

like the city of Cincinnati. It's named after

39:07

a Roman leader named Cincinnatis who

39:09

was this He was like a military leader

39:11

who became the dictator of Rome during like

39:13

this horrible like war that like threatened

39:15

the life of the republic and they made him

39:17

a dictator for like a temporary period

39:19

of time, and he won the war and then

39:22

he like gave up everything,

39:24

all of his power and went back to being a farmer. And

39:28

he was he was a chill dude. Yeah. Um yeah,

39:30

that's why Cincinnati is called Cincinnati. Um.

39:33

There there you go a little bit of extra history for

39:35

you. So uh yeah, back to back

39:37

to Gregor McGregor. So yeah, he goes straight

39:40

to General Miranda, and David

39:42

Sinclair's biographer notes that Miranda was

39:44

like, yeah, the man that Gregor dreams of

39:46

being. Um. But I also think that

39:49

maybe because Gregor idolized this guy

39:51

and had studied him so much he had he

39:53

gained a really deep understanding of like

39:55

what Miranda needed and wanted. Because

39:58

he basically turns himself into

40:00

the person that this guy needs and becomes

40:02

his right hand man. Um, because

40:05

like the war is not going well, Miranda

40:07

needs a guy that he can trust to like train

40:09

a lot of his troops and like he needs

40:12

like a because Miranda is an old guy too, he needs

40:14

a strong right hand and Gregor

40:16

kind of becomes that. He gets immediately made a colonel

40:18

for real this time. So he's actually

40:21

he faked his way into being a colonel. So that's

40:23

nice. Uh, And he gets a unit of cavalry

40:26

um and he's sent straight into battle, this

40:28

time near a town called mary Kay that was under

40:30

deadly siege by the Spanish forces who were attempting

40:32

to retake Venezuela for their king. For

40:35

weeks, Venezuelan and Spanish soldiers clashed

40:37

at various points along along front line.

40:39

Gregor finally saw combat, and, as

40:41

David Sinclair writes, he actually was really

40:44

good at fighting. Like he he does

40:46

the thing finally. Yeah, he

40:48

was a liar at first, but like when it comes down

40:50

to actually going into battle, he's good

40:52

at it. We love to see a good fake it till you make it

40:54

story. Yeah, he faked his way into being

40:56

a war hero until he made his way

40:59

into being a war hero. I'm gonna quote from David

41:01

Sinclair here. Colonel McGregor

41:03

stirred Republican spirits when he led his cavalry

41:05

into the route of a of a royal force near

41:08

Sarah Gordo between mary Kay and Valencia.

41:10

But it was something of a peripheral action and could

41:12

not be developed into a general offensive by Miranda's

41:14

troops. So he earns a promotion

41:17

through his heroics, but they don't really affect the battle,

41:20

and the fact that he gets a lot of attention for being

41:22

brave spurs him on to do another like

41:24

super brave dangerous cavalry

41:26

charged during another battle at a place called Los

41:28

Guios, and this time it gets most of his

41:30

men killed and horribly maimed. Um too

41:34

much your chip always yeah,

41:36

yeah, but General McGregor

41:38

survives and uh, his

41:41

scheme works to the extent that his bravery

41:43

again, like it impresses

41:45

all of the other officers, who of course don't care that

41:47

he got a bunch of guys killed. They care that, like he

41:49

showed bravery and stuff, um,

41:52

because that's the way war was at

41:54

that point. Um, So yeah, that's

41:56

that's cool. And getting his you know, getting

41:58

his men massacred convey the other

42:00

European soldiers in the serving in the Venezuelan

42:03

cause that Gregor was a real war hero. So

42:05

they like they all believe him now because he

42:08

he leads this incredibly

42:10

bad idea. Well of course, then also he

42:12

can tell the story because he's the one,

42:14

you know, one of the few who lived. He can be like,

42:16

yeah, yeah, it was crazy, it's not now it's

42:19

not an error in judgment. It's like, oh,

42:21

the opposing side. But I'll tell you

42:23

what, I would not be in Gregor's battalion if they're

42:25

like, oh Gregor, I'm no, no, no, no no,

42:27

because his men die for sure, they die and dye

42:29

in I want a chance in life.

42:33

No, my men absolutely weren't cursing my name

42:35

as they bled to death on the sands. You can

42:37

ask them, well, you can't because they're dead. But

42:39

like I'll tell you, I was there. They were happy

42:41

about dying. They actually were like, this is

42:44

great, thanks for getting us a chance

42:46

to die. Greg It

42:49

was so easy to be a military scammer

42:52

back then. So another dude who was

42:54

running around in the same circles of this period was

42:56

fighting on the same side, was a guy named

42:58

Simone Boudivar, who was at

43:00

that time considered to be one of the brightest

43:02

minds in the Venezuela military. And he was a colonel.

43:05

Yeah, yeah, Simone Boulevard, very famous

43:07

guy. He went on to become the Liberator,

43:10

a nickname he earned like

43:12

he really really earned by freeing

43:14

modern day Venezuela, Bolivia,

43:17

Colombia, Ecuador, Peru,

43:19

and Panama from Spanish rule. So

43:22

like, yeah,

43:24

the girls knew they were about to be free.

43:27

Yeah yeah, so yeah

43:31

I like that. Um. And he's

43:33

a fascinating dude. And it is also like

43:35

everyone who gets a bunch of statues kind of

43:37

a piece of ship too. Um. But for our

43:39

purposes today, you just need to know that he was like a popular

43:42

officer when Gregor started fucking his young

43:44

cousin. Um. And I'm gonna quote from

43:50

of course. Hell

43:52

yeah, man, it goes okay,

43:54

it actually goes pretty well for Gregor. Um. The scene

43:56

that he was he seems to have actually been in love with

43:58

this woman because they stayed together for like twenty

44:01

something years until she dies. Why

44:03

don't they just keep is he killing them?

44:05

They? I mean, you know

44:08

she did have kids, and like that wasn't

44:10

a good idea back then, but

44:13

with what with the deaths, that's why birthdays

44:15

are a thing now, because he was like, oh, your kid

44:17

made it, your kid made it, and

44:19

you made it. Yeah.

44:24

I'm gonna quote from Colonel Rafter's biography

44:26

here, and this is like

44:28

after he starts fucking this girl. Um,

44:30

I think Josepha is her name. Yeah, the

44:33

mother of this lady finding that reports president,

44:35

prejudicial to her daughter's reputation had obtained

44:38

circulation in consequence of McGregor's intimacy

44:40

with her, appealed to General Miranda, who, acquainting

44:43

McGregor with the circumstance, recommended

44:45

him strongly to marry her, to which he answered,

44:47

with all that apathy for which she is remarkable,

44:49

with all my heart, I have no objection.

44:52

So he starts sucking this

44:54

girl, but like not not in an

44:56

official way, and like you're not supposed to do that at

44:58

this point. And this girl's mom finds out and she's

45:01

like, the hell do you think you're doing? And

45:03

she goes to General Miranda because

45:05

she's like, this is a high society woman that he's

45:07

like fucking and he's not. He's not getting hitched

45:10

to. And so Miranda basically sits him down and says like,

45:12

hey, if you don't marry this girl,

45:15

bad things will happen to you. Because this is

45:17

a dictatorship and I have that power and

45:21

his responses, I have no objection to marrying

45:24

her. So yeah,

45:27

he doesn't even say that, he's just like I don't hate

45:29

her, Yeah fine, yeah, yeah,

45:31

no, ringer here, what do y'all want to do it whatever.

45:34

Yeah, yeah, so yeah,

45:37

this is this is basically a shotgun wedding um

45:39

and it would it would be one of General Miranda's

45:41

last orders because the war very quickly went

45:44

to ship for the Republican side. And to make a long story

45:46

short, Miranda was again an old man

45:48

and kind of losing it, and as his chances shout

45:51

A soured, he retreated into fantasy. And like

45:53

he and he, he promotes McGregor

45:55

to a general and they would spend all of their time and

45:57

his like mansion in the hills away from the front

45:59

line, have big parties and they're actually

46:01

having like a giant fancy party on

46:03

July twelve when the entire

46:06

Venezuelan lion collapses under a renewed

46:08

Spanish assault, and obviously

46:10

the guy being the McGregor is he's very happy

46:13

to be having a party rather than like fighting at

46:15

the front line when things are actually bad. What

46:17

a party spoiler though, you know, someone coming in

46:19

and be like, hey, hey,

46:22

everybody died, everybody's

46:24

dead. We don't really have an army

46:27

anymore. It looks like we

46:29

lost this one. Is that a coop

46:31

for Champagne? I know I will thank

46:33

you so

46:36

the whole defeat happened in part because Simone Boulevard,

46:38

who was not yet the Liberator, kind of abandoned

46:40

his post. Because Boulevard is one of these

46:42

guys was a real sense of his own destiny and

46:45

he's like, oh, we're gonna lose. I don't I don't want to be around

46:47

for this ship. So he's

46:49

not a loser.

46:55

General Miranda returns to Caracas to try

46:57

to organize a defense, and Boulevard

46:59

gathers a bunch of his allies and comes

47:01

back and arrests the general and hands him

47:03

over to Spain, and as a result, Bolivar

47:05

is able to kind of escape, and it's it's

47:07

a very shady thing that happens, but

47:10

it seems to be mostly his desire to save his own

47:12

ass and like the fact that the war was clearly

47:14

lost. So they yeah, so

47:16

Boulevard like runs the funk away to Jamaica basically

47:19

uh. And Gregor McGregor does the same

47:21

thing. While a lot of brave Republicans die

47:24

fighting the Spanish. Gregor's like, oh no, no,

47:26

no, no no, and

47:28

he got I

47:31

am not a causes guy. Yeah, and

47:33

he he very pointedly gets

47:36

on the boat with all of the Republican sides

47:38

money, like all of their gold that they're taking

47:40

away so that they can continue the revolution.

47:43

Like he makes sure he's on the money. But yeah,

47:45

he's watching the money. That's what he's there to do.

47:48

And they go back to sorry, the Jamaica, to curus ou

47:50

Um. Yeah, you know, the Bahamas,

47:53

Like that's that's that's that's that's where you go

47:55

run to when you lose a war in South America.

47:57

Then and now wind up in the Bahamas.

48:00

When I lose my war in South America, I'm

48:02

planning to go to a beautiful

48:07

yeah now refugees,

48:09

a strong yeah

48:12

yeah, no, yeah, I was a freedom fighter.

48:14

Yeah. So Bolivar

48:16

winds up there too. In the defeated revolutionaries

48:18

immediately start planning their comeback. But like

48:20

Gregor is not really interested in that. The reputation

48:23

he had earned during the war, Like he kind

48:25

of liked being a cardillo and he liked he liked he

48:28

was a man people would follow. He had like a name

48:30

in South America. Now he was he was kind

48:32

of famous for being on the size of liberation,

48:35

and he figures that kind of leaning into this is

48:37

going to be his best chance to make a shipload

48:39

of money. So he travels to New Granada, which

48:41

is a Spanish colony on the border Venezuela

48:44

that was fighting like hell to not be a Spanish colony

48:46

anymore. It had a leader who was a general

48:48

named Narinho who had been given dictatorial

48:51

power again and the hope that he would beat Spain. Same

48:53

kind of deal, and and McGregor does

48:55

the same thing. He like gets in good with this guy. He gets

48:57

given like an army by this guy, and

48:59

high too like hired to train them

49:01

basically, and he was not good at training

49:04

armies um and they he tended to

49:06

mainly focus on making them look

49:08

fancy and march around a lot which

49:11

they like gowns

49:13

beautiful downs can

49:16

fight without a gown. Where's you want

49:19

to die in this war? So

49:23

his subordinates complained that he was basically a little

49:25

dictator himself. Uh, but

49:27

before you know that can come to a head. General

49:29

Narinho loses a major battle and the

49:31

Spanish army basically

49:34

wins, and seeing the advancing Spanish forces,

49:36

Gregor runs like funk again and he winds up

49:38

retreating to the public to the Republic of Cartagena

49:41

in a in modern Columbia UM.

49:44

So we all know Cartagena uh

49:47

for different things these days. At that point it

49:49

was like a little independent republic. So

49:52

this is a very complicated and messy period in

49:54

Latin American history. I'm the

49:56

furthest thing in the world from an expert from it. There's

49:58

all these different figures. Bol Far comes back and

50:01

fights again and loses again and runs away

50:03

again, and like all this ship's happening, Like

50:05

it's just a fucking constantly revolution revolutions

50:07

and rebellions and fight

50:09

and fight happening. It sounds like,

50:12

yeah, everything is just like it's very

50:15

very confusing time to try to understand.

50:18

Gregor exhibited a great skill

50:20

in latching himself to whatever soldiers

50:22

and whatever soldiers were hanging around him to like

50:25

whatever cause seemed like the best bet at the time,

50:27

and he was not always good at judging that, which

50:29

is why he wound up trapped in the city of Cartagena

50:31

while a massive Spanish army blasted the walls

50:34

away with big guns. He yeah,

50:36

he managed to survive the siege, just

50:39

barely, and he characteristically got

50:41

out because he volunteered to organize

50:44

the retreat after helping to

50:46

convince that's

50:49

what I volunted there before. There in the room, they're like,

50:51

Okay, who's gonna do the

50:53

charge? Who?

50:56

You know what, I got the retreat. I'm actually very

50:58

good at organizing. I

51:01

majored in retreated college. I can take

51:03

care of this. You guys die holding

51:05

them off, which is what happens, like the bravest

51:07

men die holding them off, and Gregor

51:10

organizes the retreat. Uh.

51:12

And of course he winds up taking another boat back to

51:14

Jamaica, and this time he's welcomed by the island's

51:16

British high society types because now he's

51:18

a famous freedom fighter. Because the British,

51:22

they don't they like that all of these places are

51:24

freeing themselves from Spain, because every country

51:26

that frees itself from Spain is another

51:28

place the British can set up shopping

51:31

and sell stuff to right themselves.

51:36

Yeah, but they're kind of colonization. So

51:38

the British thought that Spanish colonialism

51:40

was barbarous because they murder

51:43

all these people, they enslave all these people, as

51:45

opposed to the British kind of colonization,

51:47

where the countries are independent,

51:50

we just bring in corporations

51:53

that force people to labor

51:55

forests and in conditions that are basically

51:58

slavery, right, Jeff bay selves

52:00

murder and college. Yeah, Okay, it's cute

52:02

over here like people that, but we at leastwork

52:06

and we get to talk, yeah, and we get to talk

52:08

a good game about supporting liberation in

52:10

freedom right, um, and

52:12

so like these high society types are all

52:14

for the freedom of these nations from Spain. And

52:17

McGregor is now a famous freedom fighter and

52:19

he's the best kind of he's the best kind of Latin

52:21

American freedom fighter. A white guy, right,

52:23

he's not Latin American. Yeah.

52:26

So and also like honestly, like a lot

52:28

of the Latin American freedom fighters who were natives,

52:31

we were basically white. Like we're white guys

52:33

because like people, so

52:37

uh quote. McGregor was delighted to

52:39

find himself welcomed as a hero among the British

52:41

community of Jamaica, and enthralled many a dinner

52:43

party there with heavily embellished accounts of his

52:45

part in the siege of Cartagena. Some of

52:47

those listening received the impression that McGregor had

52:49

taken personal charge of the defense of the city,

52:52

with one of them recorded as leaping to his

52:54

feet and proposing an enthusiastic toast

52:56

to the Hannibal of modern Carthage.

52:59

One of the names McGregor made was that he had lost

53:01

two children during the Terrible Siege. This

53:04

was almost certainly a lie, probably designed

53:06

further to dramatize McGregor sacrifices

53:08

in the car fake kid

53:11

death scamp. Hell, yeah he did.

53:13

That's the best kind of death to fake. You get so

53:15

much. I fake that. I faked my children's deaths

53:17

all the time. But did he bring the

53:20

kids that he had with the Spanish woman with

53:22

him or is he just a debbie dad who was

53:24

like, yeah, and then they killed my kids

53:26

for sure? He never had kids.

53:29

Oh I thought the homegrown got pregnant before she died.

53:31

The second wife, Uh

53:34

no, no, she's dead as hell. I don't think she had any kids.

53:36

The second wife didn't have kids either, Okay, no,

53:38

no, no, the second wife no, sorry, the second wife is still alive,

53:40

but they haven't had kids. Okay, he

53:43

just made up some kids. He was like, yeah, I missed

53:45

le Jr. M. McGregor, Gregor

53:47

Gregor and us

53:50

Stephanie. Those are my kids

53:52

so weird. Yeah,

53:54

yeah, my my child fake

53:57

too for

53:59

s own in my

54:01

chad. Anyway,

54:05

they're dead now, horrible, real, sad,

54:08

real, sad? Can I have more wine? Yeah? Uh,

54:11

that is my My advice to all of you is pretend

54:14

that your children are dead if you want to be famous.

54:17

It helps you know what, won't fake

54:19

the deaths of your children. Wait, anyway,

54:22

here's ads. We're

54:29

back, and Sophie's being mean to me because I

54:31

don't understand pop culture. And you

54:34

know that's the kind of bigger tree that I faced

54:36

daily. So I mean, it's not my fault that

54:38

you don't know. As my kids died in the siege

54:40

of Cartagena. I'm

54:42

so sorry for you. A lot kids

54:46

have been dead longer than he's been alive. By

54:50

the time McGregor wound up back in Jamaica

54:52

again, as I said, Boulivard had attempted deliberate

54:54

Venezuela again and it hadn't worked out.

54:56

Um, And this is like he's a boulevard

54:59

is like a fucking committ a dude, Like he does believe

55:01

in what he's doing. He's just you know, he's the

55:03

kind of guy who's able to get it done, which is the kind of guy

55:05

who's willing to like time for me to

55:07

abandon this army. The same kind of work out. You

55:10

gotta know when to cut your losses, my losses,

55:12

I mean people. Yeah, yeah, I

55:14

mean yeah, that's what we're talking about. Like you gotta know

55:16

when to hold them, when to walk away, and when to run

55:19

from them and lave them to die at the hands of the

55:21

Spanish army. That's what um.

55:25

Yeah. So the two meet up again on the island

55:27

uh, and this time Bolivar offers to make

55:29

McGregor a general again. And it was eighteen

55:32

sixteen by this point. Um. In short order, both

55:34

men managed to rally together another army.

55:37

I don't know how they do it, but they're always able to keep making armies.

55:39

And they invade Venezuela again, and this

55:42

one goes better. At first, Bolivar's forces win

55:44

a major victory, but then Spain counter attacks

55:46

and a bunch of people die, and Bolivar finds himself

55:48

retreating to a town called Sharoni, where

55:50

his trust trustworthy friend, General Gregor

55:52

McGregor was waiting with a fresh force of men.

55:55

By the time he got there, though, Gregor was long

55:57

gone because as soon as he heard that Bolivar had law

56:00

he retreated. Look that's

56:04

said, and he's give Hi credit

56:07

this. He's incredible at retreating UM

56:09

and this is the moment. This is his real moment

56:11

of heroism, like the one that we're getting. This is like the

56:13

one legitimate moment of heroism that he really

56:15

has. UM. Also, like Bolivar

56:18

feels to me just like McGregor. Word's like, okay,

56:20

we usually third times the charm, but the

56:22

third time we still didn't defeat the Spanish army.

56:25

Like bro, let's just pack it up, okay,

56:27

Like I'm not fighting an award for boulevard.

56:29

Are you gonna die? The thing that

56:31

differentiates them is that Bolivard really does

56:33

believe in liberation, and that's

56:36

why he keeps doing this right, like

56:38

he's just willing to kind of like he's

56:41

not. He believes so much in

56:43

his destiny that he's not willing to

56:45

like die because he he has to

56:47

make the cause happen. Gregor doesn't believe in anything

56:50

um, but he's really good

56:52

at retreating UM. So he's got this army

56:54

which is mostly made up of freed slaves who

56:56

didn't really know they had any option but to fight for

56:59

a bunch of indigenous people. Um.

57:01

But to his credit, he didn't like abandon them. He he

57:03

leads them on this retreat and it's like the

57:05

most herobic moment in his life because it's it's

57:08

a horrible like situation to

57:10

be in, because like they're fleeing through these heavy

57:12

like woodland areas and they're

57:14

they're being pursued constantly by

57:16

all of these Spanish armies and they keep

57:18

getting into like these battles that they keep

57:20

winning. Like he's actually really good

57:22

at this. He keeps getting attacked while he's

57:25

fleeing and like beating these Spanish armies

57:27

that are trying to capture him as he's trying to

57:29

link up with his other allies further north.

57:32

And like by day nine

57:34

of this, their ammunitions almost spent

57:37

and like their their clothing is in tatters

57:39

and they're just they've just been like murdering

57:41

their way through this this incredibly rugged

57:43

terrain. Um. It's like it's it's actually

57:46

a really impressive military feat that he's able

57:48

to keep this army together and winning. But

57:50

he owes a lot of it to his wife because

57:52

like kind of when they're at the end of their

57:55

rope and exhausted and ammunition, and out

57:57

of ammunition, they wind up running

57:59

into like get an their Spanish army,

58:01

and they don't really like they don't have the

58:03

ammo to fight them in the traditional way, and

58:05

so his wife picks up a lance and

58:07

leads the army on her horse into like this

58:10

desperate suicidal charge against the Spanish

58:12

lines, and they break the Spanish army

58:14

against all odds and win. It's like

58:16

this this fucking wild thing that happens.

58:19

UM, And so General McGregor and his victorious

58:21

army limp into the city of Barcelona after

58:24

thirty four days of constant fighting and

58:26

fleeing, and it's like it's

58:28

it's it's seen as like a miracle basically

58:30

that they'd survived Um and this incredible

58:33

feat and it makes him like a legendary

58:35

figure within South America. UM,

58:37

And it is an act of like really like it's sucking.

58:39

It was a crazy thing that he was able to like succeed

58:41

at Um so simone

58:44

Bolivar sin sem a letter hailing him as one of

58:46

the great military geniuses of the era, and

58:48

like he kind of deserved it at that point. Um

58:51

And if he'd stayed with the Venezuelan

58:53

cause, he would have had a guaranteed place

58:55

of honor and privilege when they eventually won

58:58

their war. But he gets

59:00

into another big fight with a guy in charge

59:02

of him, and when that guy like won't take the advice that

59:04

McGregor gives him, McGregor just abandons,

59:07

like the Venezuelan army and leaves.

59:09

He was like, Okay, enough liberation. Yeah,

59:12

I got into an argument with a guy. Fuck it, Like, I don't

59:14

believe in this anymore, so

59:18

he he fucks off. Bolivar

59:20

like writes him a series of letters, desperate to try

59:22

to get this guy to come back, but there

59:24

was no getting McGregor back because he had fallen

59:26

in love with a new dream, Lacey, the

59:29

dream of every red blooded man and woman

59:31

invading and conquering Florida.

59:38

So he

59:40

travels to Haiti and he hand picks a group

59:42

of mercenaries for this endeavor, and he finds like

59:44

a hundred and five guys, but they all abandoned him

59:46

as soon as it's time to leave for the United States, so he

59:48

winds up sailing to Philadelphia with just his

59:51

wife, and he immediately sets to work recruiting

59:53

get another army to invade Florida, which

59:55

at that point belonged to Spain. Um

59:58

yeah, and I'll so at that point

1:00:01

it was a time in the world where you could just kind of like

1:00:03

show up in an American city and been like, who

1:00:05

has a gun and wants to do some war with me, Let's

1:00:07

go to Florida, And like people

1:00:09

would be, oh, yeah, I want to do that to

1:00:14

Jethro about the war, let's

1:00:17

go. Have you been to philadel It doesn't

1:00:19

get nicer, Like we might as well go to

1:00:21

war. So

1:00:25

yeah, um he gets some yeses.

1:00:27

And I'm gonna quote again from the land that never

1:00:29

was here. He claimed that he had received

1:00:31

a commission from the government of the United States, together

1:00:34

with a considerable sum of money, to take possession

1:00:36

of Florida on behalf of the Republican movement

1:00:38

to New Granada, with a tacit agreement of

1:00:40

the Spanish government. He had, he said,

1:00:42

attended daily meetings in March eighteen seventeen

1:00:44

with the American Secretary of State and the Spanish

1:00:46

ambassador in Washington, and they had agreed

1:00:49

that he should take a small force to occupy Amelia

1:00:51

Island off the east coast of Florida, which

1:00:53

he would subsequently hand over to the Americans.

1:00:56

Spain would not attempt any military interventions

1:00:58

so long as McGregor was seen to be acting in the interests

1:01:00

of New Granada and was willing to see it Amelia

1:01:02

to the Americans, but could not do so directly for

1:01:04

political reasons, mainly that any display

1:01:07

of willingness to give up its American possessions would

1:01:09

serve to spread and encourage revolution. Now

1:01:11

this was all a lie, like Spain did not agree

1:01:13

to give up any part of Florida. Uh and

1:01:15

the Secretary of State, who McGregor

1:01:17

claims that he had worked with to set up this plan

1:01:20

was not even in the United States at the time. He was in like

1:01:22

France or something. But McGregor, nonetheless,

1:01:25

somehow, somehow still walked away with a State

1:01:27

Department mandate authorizing him to take

1:01:29

control of Amelia Island and East and West

1:01:31

Florida. Now, the paper was not signed

1:01:34

by the Secretary of State, but it was signed by

1:01:36

representatives of several Latin American liberation

1:01:38

movements. And like some random dude who

1:01:40

worked in the Secretary in the Department of State

1:01:43

or in the State Department, and as best I can tell, he

1:01:46

basically convinced these South

1:01:48

American liberation leaders who were in Washington,

1:01:50

d c. To like support their cause, that

1:01:52

he was going to conquer Florida for them. And

1:01:54

then he used their clout to score a meeting with

1:01:56

some random State Department functionary

1:01:59

who wrote down what he told him, and that

1:02:01

gave McGregor the most important thing in

1:02:03

the world in the eighteen hundreds, which was a

1:02:05

fancy piece of paper with nice stamps

1:02:07

on hit that he could use to convince dumb

1:02:09

soldiers of fortune that he was legitimate. So like

1:02:11

that's what he does. Like he needs the papers.

1:02:14

He gets the papers, and so he starts trawling

1:02:16

around New York and South Carolina and Georgia,

1:02:18

calling himself Brigadier General

1:02:21

of all the forces both naval and military,

1:02:23

destined to affect the independence

1:02:25

of the Florida's Look

1:02:28

at my papers. I kind of want

1:02:30

to steal that one someday when I invade

1:02:32

Florida. I mean, someone

1:02:34

needs to invade Florida, so I can use a

1:02:36

Colonel Lazy. It could be

1:02:38

you, just

1:02:41

you. You just show up tall, and

1:02:44

it's my job to raise the army and never

1:02:46

get close to Florida. Someone else actually has

1:02:48

to try invading it and stuff. I'm

1:02:51

just here to raise a bunch of money and then take it

1:02:53

and run. See, that's why I want

1:02:55

to be I don't want to be the president doing the work of liberating

1:02:57

Florida. No, No, nobody deliberate

1:03:00

Florida. That's why it's still the way it is. So.

1:03:03

Uh. He gathers

1:03:05

an army of several hundred men, which is enough

1:03:07

to cut Like a couple hundred guys, you could conquer a

1:03:09

Florida. Back in those days things were easier.

1:03:12

Uh. To fund his journey, he did the only thing he knew

1:03:14

how to do besides fight, and he hatched an elaborate

1:03:17

scheme. I'm gonna quote here from Colonel

1:03:19

Rafters book. The Americans

1:03:21

had long been looking with eyes of desire on the fertile

1:03:23

and extensive tracts of East Florida, and now

1:03:25

gladly embraced the opportunity which seemed to

1:03:27

offer itself of gratifying their long cherished

1:03:30

wishes. McGregor saw and took advantage

1:03:32

of the public feeling. He issued and issued

1:03:34

papers which he called scripts, which he engaged

1:03:37

to convey to every person advancing one thousand

1:03:39

dollars or to the holder of the script, which was

1:03:41

transferable two thousand acres of land in

1:03:43

Florida or to repay the sum advanced

1:03:45

with interest. The world was is at all

1:03:47

times the dupe of some hubble or another.

1:03:50

And although it is scarcely credible, yet it

1:03:52

is a certain fact that McGregor obtained by this

1:03:54

means a hundred sixty thousand dollars.

1:03:57

So he's like, yeah, give me a thousand

1:03:59

bucks and I'll give you a land in Florida. And

1:04:02

people do it and he makes a lot of money.

1:04:04

How you don't, Oh, I love

1:04:06

it. That's what That's what all

1:04:09

great con men do, though, is sell land they don't

1:04:11

own. That's the great con our president

1:04:13

kind of. Yeah, I mean it's still happening.

1:04:16

You have to be careful if you're renting a house or

1:04:18

something because there's so many people out here. We're still

1:04:20

renting homes to that they don't own too

1:04:22

people. So I love it. Yeah,

1:04:25

it is. He is doing an Airbnb, right,

1:04:27

Like the Airbnb is just like a dressed

1:04:29

up like they're selling Florida to Yeah.

1:04:33

No, you got this lang out

1:04:35

so you see right there?

1:04:38

Yeah, have you have you ever been there? No, I'll

1:04:40

sell it to you. No, it's

1:04:42

nice. You don't love it, You're gonna you're

1:04:44

gonna love it. Florida, great weather, no

1:04:48

snakes. So

1:04:50

most con men would have just taken the money and run,

1:04:52

but Gregor actually used it to equip an

1:04:54

army and charter a boat, which he used to take sixty

1:04:57

hand picked men to Amelia Island,

1:04:59

which is that that point, just kind of a lawless island

1:05:01

for haven for pirates and prostitutes.

1:05:04

He defeats the tiny Spanish garrison

1:05:06

and then like conquers the island,

1:05:08

and he delivers this baffling

1:05:10

speech to his soldiers, who again are all like drunk

1:05:13

mercenaries, promising, the children

1:05:15

of South America will resound your names and their

1:05:17

songs, your deeds will be handed down to

1:05:19

succeeding generations, and will cover

1:05:21

yourselves and your latest posterity with a

1:05:24

never fading wreath of glory.

1:05:26

So he really he's talking. He's

1:05:28

talking this up like the

1:05:30

girls are gonna know you. Okay, everyone's

1:05:33

gonna know your name. They're gonna singing songs about you. Tom,

1:05:36

Tom oh Tom. He

1:05:42

he fought real good. He's

1:05:45

so good at fighting. Yeah.

1:05:48

So McGregor calls for reinforcements,

1:05:50

but rather than invade Florida is promised,

1:05:52

he's set to work trying to turn Amelia

1:05:54

Island into like an independent

1:05:57

nation. And not because anyone had

1:05:59

asked him to do us, but because he

1:06:02

just kind of he was just kind of thought it was a neat So

1:06:04

he like he builds a seal. He like designs

1:06:06

a seal for the Amelian government. He puts

1:06:08

himself at its head. Uh, he like and

1:06:11

he like I'm gonna quote here from

1:06:13

from David Sinclair talking about like what he kind

1:06:15

of gets up to in this period. The main

1:06:17

purpose of his administration seems to have been

1:06:19

to raise money for One of the first acts of Citizen

1:06:22

McGregor, which is the title he gives himself,

1:06:24

was to establish what he described as an admiralty

1:06:26

court that would officially value the booty brought

1:06:29

back to the island by its resident privateers

1:06:31

and pirates. For the service, the court would demand

1:06:33

a fee of sixteen and a half percent of the

1:06:35

gross value of the treasure. Whether any

1:06:37

of the island's maritime entrepreneurs ever he took advantage

1:06:39

of the offer is not recorded, but to encourage

1:06:42

them further in their brutal trade, McGregor issued

1:06:44

so called letters of mark, which were officially government

1:06:46

licenses for buccaneers. So again

1:06:49

he probably no one it. It's not anyone

1:06:51

took like him up on this. But he decides,

1:06:53

like, I'm gonna start at government so that I can get pirates

1:06:55

to pay me for being pirates, like

1:06:59

what comes to interstate con Yeah,

1:07:03

and he issues banknotes. He starts having

1:07:05

money printed and he just signs it with his

1:07:07

last name McGregor, which is a flex.

1:07:10

I'll give him that it is. I would like some McGregor's.

1:07:13

Yeah. Yeah. So

1:07:15

he spends the next few months just kind of drinking and fucking

1:07:17

and partying, celebrating the fact that

1:07:19

he's in charge of a country, and ignoring the fact that he

1:07:21

had promised a lot of people he was going to conquer

1:07:24

Florida. Um, yeah,

1:07:27

it's on the back burner. I'll ask for

1:07:29

him. Spain realizes eventually that

1:07:31

he's conquered their island and they don't like

1:07:33

this, so they send an army to

1:07:35

take it back, and the instant McGregor realizes

1:07:37

that there's a Spanish army coming. He abandons

1:07:40

all of his soldiers in country and he flees by boat

1:07:42

with his wife, his

1:07:45

script. That's his script,

1:07:48

and ironically, the guys he

1:07:50

leaves behind actually beat the Spanish

1:07:52

invasion. They beat two of them. Um,

1:07:54

and then Mexico sends in troops and

1:07:56

like takes over the island and it becomes

1:07:59

a part of Mexico briefly. But then the United

1:08:01

States invades and like kills all the Mexican

1:08:03

soldiers and annexes Amelia from Mexico,

1:08:06

and President Monroe justifies this by

1:08:08

saying, like, well, hey, Mexico stole

1:08:10

it from Spain, or Mexico stole

1:08:12

it from these random

1:08:14

mercenaries who stole it from Spain, so like

1:08:17

it's on the open market now. Yeah, we

1:08:21

just came in and ticket, like what are you? What are you

1:08:24

complaining about? Pirates can take

1:08:26

it, but we can't. Fuck you. Yeah, we're America.

1:08:28

Baby. The manifest

1:08:30

my favorite scam manifest Destiny,

1:08:32

which is like God told us to steal his

1:08:35

land. So yeah, that's how it. The

1:08:37

United States gets its first piece of Florida.

1:08:40

WoT fun had

1:08:43

to involve a con man at some point, So on

1:08:45

November nine, eighteen seventeen, Josepha

1:08:47

McGregor, his wife gives birth to a son and they're

1:08:50

still on board a boat at this point that they're using

1:08:52

to flee to North America with all flee North

1:08:54

America with all the money they'd grifted because

1:08:56

he stilled like fifty grand from his army money.

1:08:59

Uh. So gregor makes a medallion to

1:09:01

commemorate his son's birth, which is the kind

1:09:03

of guy he is. He's like, he's he's he has

1:09:05

a kid, and he's like, I gotta get an award for this ship.

1:09:07

I gotta give myself an award for him. My

1:09:09

wife who's having a baby in olden times

1:09:12

on a boat. What did she do? What

1:09:14

did she do? Tell me that. So this

1:09:17

medallion he makes has an engraving

1:09:19

of the flag of the Florida's and two phrases

1:09:22

written in Latin on it Amelia

1:09:24

I came, I saw I conquered, and

1:09:27

liberty for the Florida's Under the leadership

1:09:29

of McGregor, neither

1:09:31

of these things happened. Like you didn't want to fun

1:09:35

like nothing, nothing, the baby, like okay,

1:09:38

it's not about the baby. The

1:09:41

baby is an excuse to have a medallion. The

1:09:44

girls are gonna love this at the next party. Okay,

1:09:47

Oh yeah. So McGregor

1:09:49

was now a rich guy, but not as rich as he wanted

1:09:51

to be. Fifty grand you could retire on in those fucking

1:09:53

days, um, but he wanted, he wanted to

1:09:55

be fuck you rich and it was not quite that much.

1:09:58

Yeah. So he regarded the con and

1:10:00

then lost of a loss of Amelia Island as

1:10:02

a big success because he'd made a bunch of money off

1:10:04

of it, and it convinced him that being a freebooter,

1:10:06

basically a pirate, you know, but on the national

1:10:09

scale was kind of the way to go. Uh And

1:10:11

I'm gonna quote now from a rite up in the Rothschild

1:10:13

archive. He then oversaw

1:10:15

two calamitous operations in New Granada

1:10:18

during eighteen nineteen that each ended with

1:10:20

his abandoning British volunteer troops

1:10:22

under his command. McGregor conferred

1:10:25

and invented decorations and titles on

1:10:27

his officers, fraudulently obtained

1:10:29

and squandered money, and generally and

1:10:31

generally behaved abominably. And

1:10:33

during this period of time, I've been telling about

1:10:35

this guy, Colonel Rafter, who wrote this biography

1:10:37

of him. The reason Rafter is obsessed

1:10:40

with McGregor is that his brother,

1:10:42

who is another Rafter, who

1:10:45

was like an office. Was an officer in McGregor's

1:10:47

army, and McGregor abandoned him and he

1:10:49

was executed. The

1:10:52

one thing you're gonna see of McGregor, it's the back

1:10:55

of his head, okay, because the

1:10:59

girls war better

1:11:01

his face. Well, I

1:11:03

got you all here. My job is done. I

1:11:06

feel like he doesn't even announce when he's leaving.

1:11:08

It's like the new Irish goodbye, Just turn

1:11:11

around, looks starting

1:11:13

the wars, half the battle. I figured y'all would do the

1:11:15

rest. You

1:11:18

go back to have a meeting with him. They're like, no, his tent

1:11:20

is gone. Like his tent is gone,

1:11:23

so is all of our money. Who went

1:11:25

out for battle? Actually he started backing. It

1:11:27

was very bizarre. He took all of

1:11:29

the gold and left us with the fake money with his

1:11:31

name on it. Right,

1:11:34

y'all trying to pay for beers with McGregor. So

1:11:38

McGregor arrives at the court of King George

1:11:40

Frederick Augustus on the on the Mosquito

1:11:43

Coast after he loses these these

1:11:45

two wars that he's gotten involved with, and

1:11:48

because of his like his fame

1:11:50

in the area, he's able to convince

1:11:52

the King of the Mosquito coast. Who's

1:11:54

this this guy George Frederick to sign

1:11:57

a document giving him in his airs, like a huge

1:11:59

chunk of Mosquito territory in an area

1:12:02

larger than Wales. It's said that he does

1:12:04

this in exchange for rum and jewelry. There's

1:12:06

some debate um

1:12:08

and it's so he gets this big he cons his way

1:12:10

into like having a bunch of land, but it's useless

1:12:13

land from a financial point of view, Like it's

1:12:15

pretty, it's got a lot of game on it, it's able

1:12:17

to support like an indigenous population,

1:12:19

but like the soil is not great, it's a bad place

1:12:22

to grow crops, and there's

1:12:24

like it's in no way established

1:12:26

or settled. He he has this

1:12:28

land that's not very useful. But what's

1:12:31

more important than that is that he has this land,

1:12:33

and he has a letter from this king

1:12:36

telling him that he owns a bunch of land

1:12:38

in Latin America. And

1:12:40

this gives McGregor an idea because

1:12:43

he's like, I've been trying.

1:12:45

I've been putting all this effort into trying to conquer

1:12:47

countries or conquered chunks

1:12:49

of land and turn them into countries, and

1:12:52

like that's hard. What if I just pretend

1:12:55

that I already have a country and

1:12:57

then make people buy

1:12:59

it, and then can vince people to buy it from me. So

1:13:01

he he gives a name to this territory that he's

1:13:04

he's kind of grifted, Poier, which

1:13:06

he names after the inhabitants of the highlands of the

1:13:08

area. And yeah, Poier,

1:13:11

nice name. And this is this is where the story

1:13:13

of his great con begins, because

1:13:16

McGregor didn't actually move to the land he'd acquired,

1:13:18

nor did he like do anything

1:13:21

with it, Like he's got this land, but

1:13:23

he doesn't, he doesn't use it. Instead,

1:13:25

he takes the letters saying it's his, and he sails

1:13:28

back to Great Britain with a scheme in mind. And

1:13:30

over the way on the like boat

1:13:33

over to Great Britain, he starts calling himself

1:13:35

the Kazik, which he claimed meant prince

1:13:37

in in the local language. So he

1:13:40

starts claiming that this tract of land he's

1:13:42

been given as like personal property is

1:13:44

actually an independent country and he's been

1:13:46

made royalty in this in this tribe,

1:13:49

and so he's he's the Prince of Poier.

1:13:52

And when he gets back to Great Britain,

1:13:54

he's going to try to convince people to to

1:13:57

buy into this scheme with him. Um, and that's

1:13:59

what we're gonna talk about out in part two.

1:14:01

Lazy Robbert, what

1:14:05

would you name your fake country? Oh,

1:14:08

that's a great question. Oh

1:14:10

gosh, it needs to be something like, uh,

1:14:14

maybe like oh,

1:14:18

I want to go with an L I don't know why.

1:14:20

It's like leaves. Oh

1:14:23

you went with a fancy name. Yeah,

1:14:25

and go to La Bos. I don't think of something that sounds

1:14:27

good like in a Drake song, like and popping

1:14:30

bottles and La Bas. Yeah, l Bos.

1:14:32

That's that's my fake That's that does sound

1:14:34

fancy. I was gonna

1:14:36

call it fuck Valley and just like

1:14:38

like, yeah, everybody gets laid in fun Valley,

1:14:41

Like all these frat boys pay me a hundred

1:14:43

bucks, you get to go to fuck Valley and then it's just a

1:14:45

bunch of frat boys stuck in a valley and

1:14:47

then they all get dehydrated. That

1:14:50

fire festival, the fire festival is my plan.

1:14:52

I was about to say that sounds like your plan

1:14:55

is the fire festival. That's

1:14:58

exactly what it was. It's

1:15:00

a great plan as long as you

1:15:03

don't have the internet, so people find out it's

1:15:05

a con and you can just take the money and run away

1:15:07

to Norway or some ship. Right. I wish I could

1:15:09

have run scams before there was Internet. I still

1:15:11

think about old shadder hands and like checking

1:15:14

people's money. Oh to see it

1:15:16

was real? Oh yeah, Lacy

1:15:19

Pluggables, Yeah

1:15:22

sure, guys. As always, you can find

1:15:24

me a d I D A l A c I

1:15:26

deva Lacey on all platforms.

1:15:28

And if you like robbery and comedy, listen to

1:15:31

my podcast Scam Goddess. Enjoin

1:15:34

Lacey's Army Comication.

1:15:37

Yes, people liberating Florida. Maybe

1:15:40

tea next two days a good time? Look

1:15:42

out? Look out for that on Twitter with you. We're

1:15:44

just gonna show up and liberate Florida. Yeah

1:15:46

yeah, you gotta live. I mean to be honest,

1:15:49

could you some liberating these days?