Napoleon is Dead

Stockmarkets are now battlefields. An aide-de-camp arrived in Dover with the startling, thrilling news that Napoleon had been killed, and the British stock market behaved accordingly. The problem was, Napoleon wasn't dead.

SOURCES:
Napoleon Is Dead by Richard Dale
Trial transcript

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart Podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Folks. It's a hug. No, I haven't seen when us
to see this last?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Welcome to Hoax, a podcast about the lies we wish were.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
True and truths that sound like lies.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
I'm the ghost of Danish Schwartz.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
And I'm the evil twin of Lizzie Logan. Welcome to
the show, Lizzie.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
I have to ask, what is your familiarity with the
feature film Master and Commander.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
I believe it's Master and Commander of the Far Side of.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
The World, Master Commander Colin the Far Side of the World,
And I think you answered my question.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Meant to be the first in a plan franchise. It's
based on a series of very popular Like Dad novels. Yeah,
I came to it late. I think it was a
pandemic watch for me because people were talking about it
online and it rips. It's a great movie.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Great movie.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, The Lesser of Two Weavils is a great moment. Oh,
I remember why I watched it. It was because, yes,
it was a pandemic watch, because WandaVision made everyone like
really excited about Paul Bettany, who is great in that movie.
And so people were like, if you like Paul Bettany
and WandaVision, you should check out A Night's Tale and

(01:22):
Master and Commander, both of which rip and you should.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
You should check both of those films out. Yeah, if
you haven't watched Master Commander to anyone listening to the show,
you absolutely should. But just to contextualize you for this episode.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Oceans are bat out battlefields.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
That's what's happening right now.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Okay, So, uh, Napoleonic Napoleonic warfare.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
The majority of this episode, like the main hoax, is
going to take place during the Napoleonic Wars in eighteen fourteen.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Okay, so people wearing the same outfits. I can just
keep picturing it.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yes, But before we even get to the hoax, I
need to introduce you to a man who is he single,
very charming, actually not dating material, but he is the
inspiration for Russell Crowe's character in Mastering Command.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Wait, excellent, Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
So his name is Thomas Cochrane. He's not that well
known as a figure, even though I feel like if
you're like, he's the guy who inspired the author of
the books at Master and Commander, you'd be like, well,
that seems like he should be maybe more famous.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Well, I mean, I feel like that series is famously,
like very popular among its fans, but not. I mean,
it's not like the Jack Ryan series.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
You know, it's true, and maybe I am also underestimating
how you know, English listeners might be like, oh, Thomas Cochrane,
we all know who he is. I don't think he
has a translated Stateside. He's sort of the Kylie Minogue
of maybe know who it is?

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Isn't Kyle Igustrian Australian? You know who is like blows
British people's mind. Is Robbie Williams The Monkey? Yeah? Well
now now Americans know him as the guy who made
a movie in which he was played by a monkey.
But like the fact that he's just not famous here,
Like I've had friends, you know hum his most famous

(03:15):
song I'm Gone who knows? And I yeah, no, so
you do know that, and I have to explain to them, No, no,
he is not famous.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Here at Yeah, I've heard that song. I wouldn't before
the Monkey movie, which I saw and genuinely enjoyed. Did
you see it?

Speaker 2 (03:34):
No? I heard it was good, It's really good.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
I had no idea who Robbi Williams was, So maybe
Thomas Cochrane is the is the.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Robbie Williams of Napoleonic naval captains.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yes, But actually what we will discover over the course
of talking about him is like part of the reason
he maybe isn't as famous as he should be for
his individual exploits is he never really commands like a
whole fleet. He's never like he's mostly like, I'm kind
of doing what Russell Crow's doing. He has a a
small squadron. But to get into his backstory, he was

(04:03):
born in seventeen seventy five in southern Scotland to Lord
Cochrane to like a noble family. His dad in his
lifetime becomes the Earl of Dundonald. His mom is the.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Daughter of a distinguished Scottish family. He has six brothers.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
There's like a big military legacy on both sides. So
his uncle, his paternal uncle is Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane.
You know, his cousin was appointed Governor of Newfoundland. Some
of his family fought in the if you can picture
Outlander that situation but on the British.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Side, oh sure, God Outlander another pandemic watch for me,
but then I had to stop because it was too violent.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, so his family would have been on the Loyalists
Jacobite side. They are like very noble, but on the
British side their title and history rich but cash poor
in when he's a young man, his family has to
sell their ancestral estate.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Are they cash poor in the way that like the
Bennetts are poor in pride and prejudice, where like they
still have a cook. Yeah, they just don't really have
like in a state. But it's like, okay, you're not poor.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Oh no, no, he's never going to be poor. But
again they do have to sell their ancestral estate. They're downsizing.
They're not doing great. His dad. When Tom's Cochrane's young man,
his dad gets in a position in the army, but
he does not like it. He writes in his autobiography
that they make him like slick back his hair and
make him wear collars up to the neck.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Like.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
He doesn't like that. It's rules that he has to
follow in the army, and he wants to go join
the navy, which kind of is the beginning of a
lifelong habit of him doing what he wants and being
a pain in the butt to anyone in a position
of authority around him, where someone's like, hey, I got
you a position in the army and you're like, nope,
Navy for me. So he goes to see as a

(05:56):
midshipman under his uncle, who again was an admiral. He's
sort of a naval nepo baby. Yeah, in the sense
that there's like a thing that connected people do where
they could list you as a member of a crew
that you weren't actually on from the time you were
a child. So then by the time you actually do
get on a boat, you can be at a higher position.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Oh it's like how Blue Ivy is already a millionaire
because they just listed her on a couple of her
mom's songs and then they can pay her and then
it's a compounding interest.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
Compounding interest. So that's it. He's been like listed as
a member of naval crews since he was a child,
which is a common practice. But then he gets to,
you know, be on as a midshipman under his uncle.
He gets this pretty prestigious post run by this man
named Admiral Keith. But even as a young man, he
is court martialed for quote unquote flippancy. That would be

(06:52):
one hundred percent what I get. Court martialled to the
ship's first lieutenant, Philip Beaver, so supposedly, and this is
the story, was upset that Cochrane had reported himself aboard
the ship late after shore leave and he said that
I'm only late because I had to change my money clothes,
and they get in a fight about it. He's court martialed.
He's given the chance to apologize, but he doesn't. And

(07:15):
so from that point on he's just like on the
admiral's bad side.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
Okay, and this uncle the admiral.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
This is this is Admiral Keith. He's like a different
admiral that he's under. But this is again what's going
to happen with Lord Cochrane as he comes to be known.
He just like can't leave well enough alone and doesn't
know how to make good or play nice or play
the game. So people above him are always gonna hate him,

(07:42):
and kind of for good reasons sometimes, like he is
a pain.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
In the butt, especially in the military where following orders
is like pretty crucial and it's pretty consistent.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Superiors don't like him, subordinates don't really like him, colleagues
don't really like him.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Is he Why doesn't he get fired? Is good at
being a midshipman? Oh well, we're gonna we're gonna get
to that. I mean, part of it is like he's
a well connected family. He is good and like flippan, see,
you'll get court martialed, but you're not going to get
fired for being flippant, okay, although he does.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
As a young man, he gets in a duel with
a French royalist officer, and again, French royalists are our
allies at this point if you're kindished, because Napoleon is
not royalist. So he's at a costume party and he's
dressed his costume is a common British sailor, and he
isn't let into the party because he's not dressed fancy enough,

(08:35):
and then this French person starts treating him like he's
an ordinary sailor, which he is dressed as for the
costume party. And then he challenges him to a duel
and the other guy gets injured and he's fine, there
are no fatalities. But again you're like if you're dressed
as a common person and then they treat you as
a common person you can't get mad at that.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
You can't duel. I mean he explained that it was
his cost. He was doing it to be funny and
make fun of the poor.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
He was doing it to make fun of the poor.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Maybe it's a great excuse.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
But this is just this guy's character, okay, and this
is just what he's like his entire life. But he is,
like you said, really good at his job. He captures
this French ship kind of against all odds, brings it
back through enemy territory, even through a huge storm, and
it's so impressive that he gets promoted to be commander
of the HMS Speedy, which is like, you get promoted,

(09:29):
you have your own ship. The thing is, it's a
very small ship with only a handful of small guns,
and so it kind of feels like it's a little
bit of a punishment to get him out of the way.
Like you are really good, but you're a pain in
our butt. So like here's your promotion, but now like
go over there. Yeah, but like jokes on them. This
turned out to be the start of a legendary run

(09:52):
for him.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
I'm really intrigued by this story, and I am like,
when is it going to be a hoax.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
We to meet this man.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
We're gonna and I I'm not saying I'm impatient. I'm like,
this is crazy because I'm already so intrigued and we
haven't even gotten to the hoax part yet.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
Well, the good news is that there's gonna be a
few mini hoaxes a long.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
I love a mini hooaks.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
So the thing about the hmas speedy and maybe you
can tell from her name.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
She's well she's speedy.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yeah, she can like slip in and out undetected.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Are you stark?

Speaker 1 (10:20):
He literally, like a few weeks into his job, he
captures a ton of French privateers, so his bosses can't
even be mad at him. Okay, he has this classic
move of like literal false flags.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
Where So there's this big one of his most famous
exploits is there's this big Spanish ship called El Gamo,
and he Cochrane is outnumbered six to one, and they
have a huge ship with like a ton more guns
and weapons.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
And.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
He's such a big threat that it's pretty likely that
Spain just like deployed this big ship just to get
rid of him because he's such a pest. He flies
an American flag and sales really close, allegedly close enough
to see the whites of the Spanish cruise eyes. And
Spain isn't gonna, you know, fire on an American ship
because they're allies with America at this point, or at

(11:10):
least neutral. They're not gonna like And so as soon
as he gets really early close, American flag down, Union
jack up, jokes on you. And then they're so close
that this big ship keeps firing over them. Oh that's
so funny, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, And so then
anytime that they tried to board him, he would like
pull away and fire on them. And then he boarded

(11:31):
them and kind of through like strategy and trickery, like
the way to manage this, he like prioritized pulling down
the Spanish flag. So then the other off people on
the ship, the Spanish people on the ship thought that like, oh,
our officers have already given up, and they got demoralized.
And he won this massive ship, which is just like, wow,

(11:53):
you had a tiny little ship, and through trickery and
strategy you got this big Spanish warship. Amazing, great job.
But again other people also do the trickery thing, and
he'll do you know a lot of like trickery to
get what he wants. Allegedly, he has like a I'm
imagining like a children's costume, like a chest of yeah,

(12:14):
but for him it's like flags of other countries.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
I kind of I mean, I guess like the nobility
of war, but like, why don't people why doesn't everybody
just do that all the time.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
He has the mo of just like I am going
to win if I can.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
So he's almost taken at one point by the Spanish
frigate that they was disguised as a merchant ship. He's like, oh, no,
I'm gonna get taken. What do I do? He flies
a Danish flag and he brings a Danish quartermaster on
deck to tell the Spanish ship like, oh, we're plague
grind and don't come on.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
There's a play oh, which is smart, We're just Danish
people with a plague.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
And it works and they don't get captured again. He
has a legendary run, takes down fifty three enemy ships
at one points, captured and held hostage by the French.
But even this is like a very like noble beings
being held hostage, like the French captain will like come
to him and ask advice and they'll hang out. Imagine
like drinking tea together. Yeah, he's not in like a

(13:14):
dingy prison cell.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
No, it's like honor among sailors.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, and he is released in a prison exchange and
you know, honorably acquitted for the capture of the Speedy.
Everyone's really really impressed that he had this run on
a really small ship. He's a character. He writes, not
a biography. People are already writing about his adventures. Frederick
Marian Marriott. I'm sure he's a famous author that that

(13:42):
I am mispronouncing. But he writes like a famous fictionalized
version of these exploits. He inspires. Jack Aubrey and Horatio Hornblower.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
I don't know either of those.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
Jack Aubrey is Russell Crowe in Chara.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
Horatio Hornblower, I'm sure is a famous if you're a
British naval reader.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
But he's another fictional character, yes, okayat but he's a character. Yeah,
he's he's a sort of a Davy Crockett type. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
But after this sort of like prisoner exchange, he was captured,
he lost his ship. But everyone's like find about it,
he doesn't immediately get promoted and does not get a
new ship, and he becomes resentful and he starts openly
criticizing the Lord Admiral Saint Vincent, which is not a
thing that you should do if you want to get
a promotion.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
No, but men be doing it anyway.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah, and then in eighteen oh three the Napoleonic Wars
heat up again. He's sent on board this ship called
the HMS Arab that's a bad ship. Punished. He sees
it as punishment. He's patrolling northern Europe and he calls
it naval exile in a tub. Luckily for him, the
Lord Admiral Saint Vincent is replaced by a guy named Melville,

(14:57):
who does not hate him quite as much. And at
this point he gets a bigger ship, gets in the
HMS Palace, which is a top of the line frigate,
a lot more trickery, which is very fun. So this
is like another of our mini hoaxes that he'll do.
At one point he'll be outnumbered by three French ships
and his boat is just men manned by a skeleton

(15:19):
crew at this point, and so he's like, oh no,
if they know that there's like, so few of us
on board, they'll take us immediately and we'll lose. So
how do we trick them into thinking there's a bunch
of us on board.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
I'm picturing the party scene and home alone. He has
Standy's to create this that there's a lot of people.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
He gets Michael Jordan carbod No, I mean it is
really clever. He rigs the sails with rope yarn. So
he rigs all the sails of his ship with yarn
and figures it out in such a way that he
can cut the yarn and all the sails come down
at once. So it's like, whoa, they had all those
men to release.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
All those sales.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
But the other ship runs off and he attacks, and
the ship runs aground, The friendship runs aground in a panic,
and then the other ships ground themselves rather than fight him.
He just has like a ton of victories like this.
He's a guy with a lot of good ideas. Yeah,
he's a war hero. Napoleon himself personally orders his capture

(16:20):
and calls him le loupe de maire, which is French
for the sea wolf.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
That's a cool nickname.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
Can you imagine Napoleon giving you that nickname.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
I know. It also is really close to that Shakira
song she Wolf. He's a sea wolf. He's a sea yeah, yep, okay.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
His sort of most famous battle trickery exploit at the
end of his naval career comes at this thing called
the Battle of Basque Roads and he's in charge. It's
like a very I don't want to get into the
military logistics of it, but it just imagined. It's like
a very important protected mouth of a river and they

(16:59):
have to prevent to the French from escaping to the Atlantic.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
So they're trying to keep them in the river.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yeah, they're just trying to stop them from like Vietnam,
and their strategy is fireships, which is like lighting ships
on fire is part of your strategy on purpose, And
he's like, I'll do you want better exploding ships?

Speaker 2 (17:15):
Oh great?

Speaker 1 (17:17):
So he hates the admiral that he's fighting under, but
that's classic Cochrane. But he's like, all right, I'll still
do a great job. He lights the ship that he's
going to explode on purpose. They're sailing away and they're
like dinghy getaway. He realizes that his dog was left
on board, so he sailed They rode back, he runs in,
he gets his dog, they go out.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Dog is totally safe. That's going back staving Matilda behind,
I know, but he's They rode back, they got the dog,
and the ship blew up and it was exciting and
the French were like, whoa, why would anyone do that?

Speaker 1 (17:51):
That was nuts. But what happens is it's not like
a cohesive British victory. After that, basically, Cochrane gets very
mad that the Admiral Gambier didn't like sweep in and
finish the job, and so he publicly after all of this,
is like, yeah, this would have been great if the

(18:11):
admiral had known what he was frickin' doing.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
And the embarrassing for the admiral.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
Well, the admiral gets so angry that he requests that
he himself get court martialed to clear his name.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Oh yeah, I get that I didn't do anything under oath.
I will answer all the questions.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
But from this point on, you know, Gambier has a
bunch of aristocratic friends. People think of Cochrane as impudent,
which he is, and he says, this whole thing has
put a sour taste in my mouth. I don't want
to do any more naval postings. I'm just going to
get into.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Politics, okay. Classic.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
But also coincidentally, at this time, the spoil system was
being adjusted.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
Maybe I don't know what that is.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
It's where if you are a Lord Cochrane captain of
a ship and you capture a Spanish pirate.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
Ship, oh, like the spoils, the spoils of war.

Speaker 1 (19:08):
You there's like a rules about like, okay, I'm the
captain of the ship you get. I'm gonna say thirty
percent of all the booty. Thirty percent is the crew,
you know, your cruise and like the last whatever seventy
percent goes to the admiral or England or whatever. Yeah,
And at this point it was being shifted to that
like the captain got less and like the crew got more.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
And oh so he's like, good time for me to
leave being a captain.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Yeah, And he also publicly was like really against that.
Like coincidence, he becomes a politician in Parliament, being a
real like man for the people, even though again with
the spoil system, he was like man for me. He
kind of has like libertarian politics.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
I would say that makes a lot of sense because
he doesn't like being beholden to anybody.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
Yeah, and that's very like, I know that's anachronistic to say,
but he's generally just anti authority populist, just like wants
his own good things to be recognized and thinks everyone's
out to get him. Oh classic, And even though even
when he's a member of parliament he can't get anything
done because nobody likes him. Yeah, even people that he

(20:16):
should ally with he.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
Doesn't, Yeah, because he's such a jerk.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
But his support he's like a war hero and his
people like him. But again, he's just.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
He's kind of an asshole.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah, So that is just kind of the prologue to
this episode.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Wonderful.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
We need to just know who Lord Cochrane is. You
have his character, Lord Cochrane. The Napoleonic War is happening
at this point in the story. Lord Cochrane is no
longer at sea. He's a member of parliament.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
What year is it?

Speaker 1 (20:45):
This is eighteen fourteen. Oh you told me that before.
Good to anchor us. And something else to know is
that people are trading stocks at this time. There is
a London Stock Exchange and what we're focusing on mostly
for the point of this podcast episode is government securities,
which they call stocks but are really more like bonds

(21:07):
as we know them today.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
I didn't know the difference between stocks and bonds and
you don't have to. Great, what I'm just going to
tell you is you're investing in like I mean, the government. Yeah,
you can buy government things. When good things happen. For
the British government, it goes up when bad things happen.
Imagine it goes down. The one what it's called is
Omnium is the name of like the British government security

(21:30):
that we're going to be focused on. But it's especially
volatile in this period because financial systems aren't very regulated.
The first financial regulations for the stock exchange only came
about in like eighteen twelve, which again we're like two
years into that, so people don't really know these rules.
And you can also buy these government stocks without paying upfront, okay,

(21:56):
so you can kind of buy on credit and like
but bet on it. So you're like, okay, yeah, well
I will probably make a profit in a month and
then I will just get the profit and not get
the capital.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
Okay. But it's just like really.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Volved because you don't need to put that money up front,
so people can just like bet a lot. People go
into debt a lot too.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
So if if I'm like this thing is worth ten
dollars and I don't have ten dollars, but I'll just
like put I'll just like say I'm buying it. Yeah,
and then in a month when it's worth fifteen dollars,
I'll just get five dollars and I never have to
have ten dollars.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
You never had to have ten dollars in your pocket.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
But if it goes down, debtor's prison for you will
then somebody be like, where's the ten dollars?

Speaker 1 (22:40):
Yeah, well it'll there's like a due date for like
when you do have Okay, you can just sort of defer,
you can affirm. What's is that called a firm that
buy now, pay later klarna?

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Oh yeah, there's a bunch of them.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
You can just do that. That's how you're buying it.
You're like, I'm buying this government bound for ten dollars.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Well, Klarna is like you pay a quarter of it
now and then a quarter of it in a week
and then like it's like space sing it out into
little mini pagers.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
I guess this is more like a credit card where
I'm buying it. Now, I'm buying it for ten dollars.
Now I'm like, well in a month, I really hope
it'll be fifteen, because in a month I owe ten dollars. Okay,
but again, if people are just doing that, it's pretty volatile.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
So that's what's happening in the world right now. And
the Internet doesn't exist. That's also important that you.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
Love to say the Internet doesn't exist to explain how
people don't know things. But it's like they had libraries
and newspapers and like other places to get information.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
For the context of this story specifically, you can't get
information quickly. You can't just google something, Okay, yes, but.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
I just for listeners. Like pre Internet, we did know
how to look things up. It was called going to
the library. There's a thing called the Encyclopedia Britannica. Okay,
maybe in this story there was a moment for the
Encyclopedia Britannica, but I don't think so.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Okay, Okay, So where in Dover, England, which is the
southern there's cliffs.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
There's cliffs. I've heard of the Cliffs of Dover.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
There's right across the channel from France. Okay, England is
fighting Napoleon, and they always we're hoping to restore the
you know, French royalists, the people who supported the now
deceased king and queen.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
But they're you know whatever.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
But on the morning of February twenty first, eighteen fourteen,
it's one am and in Dover on the streets, this
very tired man in a red uniform and a gray
coat appears exhausted. He looks like he's been traveling for hours.
He bangs on the door of an inn middle of
the night. No one answers the inn because it's one

(24:40):
in the morning, but he's banging so much that the
owner of the pub next door hears him and is like, hey,
what's going on. And they rouse the night porter of
the inn, and everyone gets together and goes inside. And
this man in this red uniform says, I've been traveling
and I have very very important news. I can't tell you,
very important. I need pen and paper to tell the authorities,

(25:03):
don't ask any more questions. And also I need a
horse and a rider to carry a message to the
Admiral at Deal, which is like the naval base nearby,
And I'm also gonna need a carriage and four horses
to take me to London as fast as possible, and
they're like, great, we'll get on that. Seems like you
have money for that. Yeah, you do have to pay
for that, okay. I also thought this because at certain

(25:23):
points in the story he's like, bring me refreshment, and
like they bring him like wine, and I'm.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
Like to see, you surely have to pay for that,
and you do, okay.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
At this point it's sort of caused this excitement, so
more people are gathering the inns, like regular landlord and
an agent for the newspaper, the Traveler are all gathering
in uh, I guess like the inn lobby, being like
something's happening here. A lot of newspapers have like not spies, reporters,
I guess stationed at Dover because it's right across the

(25:53):
channel from France.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
To get keep an eye on the keep an eye
on the front.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, this mysterious man in a red uniform. We find
out his name is Lieutenant Colonel de Bergh, who's the
aid to camp to Lord Carthcart, who's a British officer.
And he writes a letter to the Post Admiral, saying
he has dispatches of the happiest nature. Bonaparte was overtaken

(26:19):
by a party of Cossacks who immediately slayed him and
divided his body between them. The white cockade is universal
and immediate peace is certain. So he's writing this letter.
He's being like, I can't tell you what's going on,
but he is, you know, writing this letter to the Admiral.
The landlord is like one of my personal boys will
deliver the letter to the Admiral and set off to

(26:41):
London straight away. So Colonel de Burgh sets off to
London in the carriage along the way while the letter
is going to the Admiral. Ironically, you know, it's kind
of a long journey to London several hours when he
stops at an inn at Rochester to eat something. The
landlord is the brother of the guy who owned the
show in Oh funny, So like the landlords are brothers,

(27:02):
which is like kind of cute, yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
Because they have like a string of best Westerns.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
And yeah, truly, and like this landlord was always like
I knew you were coming. I knew something was happening
because there already was like a messenger coming through saying
there was news, so people are already spreading the word,
and de Burg sort of off the record, is like,
by the way, Napoleon is dead.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
Does de Burg explain how he's like the one person
who knows this. Yes, He's like, I feel like if
Napoleon were killed and chopped into pieces by Russian cossacks, yeah,
m in Russia.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
No, the Russian troops came to.

Speaker 2 (27:39):
Christ to find Paris. Yeah, in Paris, a lot of
people would be talking about that.

Speaker 1 (27:45):
He has not a story. I mean, he clearly came
to dover all be draggled. He came on a French
ship and the friendship didn't want to come too close
because he was worried. They were worried that the British
would fire on them because they might think they were
the enemy. And basically this happened very very recently, and
he's just the first. Okay, he just is like I

(28:06):
just made it, Okay, this just happened. Okay, someone, I
mean someone has to be the first to say no totally.
And he's chatting with these postboys along the way and
sort of being like, I'm not supposed to say anything,
but Pollyan is dead and these postboys are you know,
probably running into London to tell the news their newspapers.
He tells everyone his story is like, yeah, when I

(28:29):
got here, even I had to walk two miles once
I came ashore because the French crew didn't want to
get too close to Dover, like it was a whole thing.
He has this big story. As Colonel de Bergh starts
getting closer to London, he seems to start getting nervous,
nervous about being seen, which is kind of unusual. He

(28:50):
needs to get into a like a coach, like a
coach like a taxi basically, but he doesn't want to
go to a coach stand that's too crowded. He goes
he asks to go to like a less crowded coach stand,
and he transfers carriage to coach like with the doors
opened so no one can see him.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
Oh sneaky, which is just.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
Sort of like an unusual move. He had started this
journey at one am. By the time he gets to London,
it's about nine am, and he tells the driver to
bring him to an address in London, and that address
just so happens to be the home of Lord Cochrane. Okay,

(29:34):
so this is where these stories connect. So we have
a lot of witnesses that will emerge later because spoiler alert,
there's going to be a court case. But in case
you're wondering, how we know what address he was delivered to, one,
we'll talk to the cab driver later basically. But also
what I think is very funny is there's a bank

(29:55):
clerk named Richard Barwick who basically happened to see this
like pretty suspicious man getting into this hackney coach, this
like taxi from a carriage where the horses were like sweating.
Like he's like, oh, this guy just came and something
exciting is happening. And so he is a banker and
he wants inside information, and so he follows this guy's

(30:19):
carriage to be like, where's this guy going, what's he
up to? And he eventually has to turn around because
he doesn't want to be late to work at nine am,
but he did as a witness. We have like a
lot of witnesses to basically pin where Colonel de Berg
was at anytime, and one of them was a banker
being like, something exciting is happening.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
He needs those tips.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
So meanwhile, the boy beckoned over had delivered the letter
to the admiral at three am, and the admiral is like, huh, well,
that's interesting news if Napoleon died, But he's not like
sure about it.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Yeah, I feel like you get false tips a.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
Lot, yeah, or you just want confirm you're not going
to act on that. He sends the note along to
with like a note of his own being like I
don't know the providence of this to the Secretary of
the Admiralty, okay, which is I think what he did
the right thing, to be honest, That's.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
What I would do. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
But meanwhile in London, word is spreading because merchants, dealers
and brokers have all gotten a word from like postboys
and the coaching and landlords and all the gossip. And
so by the time the stock market opens at ten am,
government bonds, which were pretty much at the same level
they were at, you know, the weekend before, begin to jump.
So Omnium, the government stocks that we had been talking about.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
What day of the week is it Friday? Okay?

Speaker 1 (31:37):
No Monday?

Speaker 2 (31:39):
Okay, yes, So they've just been chilling all week.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
They've been chilling all weekend, okay. Omnium, which had been
at twenty six and a half. And again I don't
know what these mean.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
Like conceptually or currency.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
Currency, okay, but just the stock was at twenty six
and a half. Great, and then it rises to thirty
and a quarter oh my goodness, which you know, it's
a boost, but there's no confirmed, you know, official account
of the Allied victory and Napoleon dying, So then stock
prices begin to trickle back down. But then midday, this
carriage drawn by four horses decorated with laurels appears in

(32:16):
the city and men inside are wearing the blue uniform
of French royalists, celebrating. They're riding over London Bridge. They're shouting,
and they're scattering like pamphlets that say Viva le Roi
and Vive le Barbon, and they're celebrating because Napoleon's dead.
And then omnium jumps back up to thirty two and
a half.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
Crowds are gathered outside the Mansion house waiting for the
Lord Mayor to appear to make an official announcement because
they're waiting to hear that Napoleon died. It's like a
good day on Twitter.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
I so much of this reminds me of things going viral.
But it's like until we hear.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
For sure, until we hear for sure, we don't know.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
But like right now it's on desmis yet, but it
hasn't been in people yet.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
It's not secure. And then even by the end of
the day, the government says, we don't think this is real,
this is not confirmed. We think this is an elaborate hoax,
and omnium goes back down to twenty six and a half.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
So this is all.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
That's exactly where it started, exactly where it started, all
over the course of just literally one day, and people
are really mad. I think people don't like to be
taken for fools, no, and they don't like to get
their hopes up. But also the stock market had been
manipulated and people have money in there.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
And that's I mean, at least nowadays, like a felony.
I think it's like stock market.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
It's something you're not supposed to do it.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
I have seen a few seasons of the show Billions.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Oh I haven't.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
It's pretty good. Yeah, And I know that our listeners
don't love it when I go on tangents, but I'm
going to do a really quick one which is that
they do an episode of a very serious not very
serious but like within the context of the show, it's
a big move where they do a stock market manipulation
over the course of one day. But the company that

(34:10):
they're trading is called Ice Juice. Oh no, just so stupid.
And so it's Paul Giamatti very seriously being like, what's
happening with Ice Juice?

Speaker 1 (34:18):
I mean, this is me going on a tangent. My
husband and I have both declared that we're beginning a
rewatch of John Adams. Oh have fun. So that that's
where we are right now. Just visa Paul Giamatti, you
have v Paul Jamatti, great, an iconic person. We love him.
But the Stock Exchange a committee is formed very quickly.

(34:39):
The Committee of the Stock Exchange meet and puts a
subcommittee together and pretty immediately spring into action. Great, and
we're like, we're really upset this happened. Yeah. They there's
sort of three main things that they're going to be
looking for. There's a two hundred and fifty pounds reward
for anyone who knows the identity of this Colonel de Berg,
because turns out Colonel de Berg is not a real person,

(35:00):
no kidding. They're looking for the identity of those French
guys who are celebrating in the carriage. Yeah okay, And
they're looking at who made money in the stock market,
like who bought suspiciously and then sold suspiciously really good timing.
And with that last thing, they look at who bought

(35:21):
and sold the most suspiciously. And it turns out it's
a syndicate composed of Cochrane, Lord Cochrane, his uncle Cochrane Johnson,
and delightfully their stockbroker.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
His name I am P. T. Barnum. What I'm pleasing
to tell you is Richard.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
But his name is Dick Butt. B you T T
two Tea's great Dick, but Dick, but what a dick Butt.
So the three of them, Cochrane, Johnson, the uncle.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
Is Johnson, and Cochrane are not cock.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
Johnson and Butt.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah, yeah, this is who we're dealing with.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
He's his uncle, but he's one of those uncles. He's
only eight years older than him.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
Oh yeah, I have nieces who I can drink with.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
Yeah, he's like a cool uncle. And he's described as
a quote charmer and a rogue. But to me, it
kind of seems like more of the rogue part and
in bad ways. This uncle was governor of the island
of Dominica, but he also like dabbled in the slave
trade and then was forced to resign from the army
for underhand financial dealings if you believe it. Yeah, he's

(36:31):
in debt for around sixteen pounds and the only thing
that has sort of kept him out of debtors prison
is he is a member of parliament. But it's like
at this point, being a member of parliament, a lot
of seats are notoriously corrupt where you can just bribe people,
ok And he's like, had bought a notoriously corrupt seat.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Oh you can, Okay, you can just bribe people to
get into parliament, Yeah, to vote for you. Okay.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
But that's that's who this uncle is, just so you
have a context of him. But is like a day trader,
their investment advisor. And we know who Lord Cochran is.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
Are all three of these men British? Yes, okay, so
they're manipulating their own stock exchange. I thought this was
going to be like a prank by the French. No,
that would be really fun, but it's not like in
their war that they would do like like financial war
like how I don't know. I feel like Russia is

(37:26):
always trying to mess with us.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
I know these are just men trying to enrich themselves.
Oh and at this point, I do want to point
out and I've made it interesting. I've made a note
in the document there is a difference between a scam
and a hoax. Yes, and a scam is for personal
financial benefits, yes, And a lot of this episode is

(37:48):
in scam territory. But I do think there's overlap in
the ven diagram, absolutely, And one of the key pieces
of overlap in the venn diagram is whimsy.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
And there are multiple costumes involved in and I think
that that costumes brings it squarely over to hoax territory.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
I mean we are, like, you know, coming up with
fake names and like getting on horses and riding around
about it. So I think that is I think, all out,
thank you.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
I'm like, you'll find out later. But the guy like
Colonel Desberg had to like go to a costume shop.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
And this is our second costume of the episode because
Cochrane wore that poor person.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
Costs costume and see you see how well it did
he this conglomerate of the three of them, had bought
a bunch of government stock just a few days before
the hoax. And they didn't pay cash like we were saying.
They sort of bought it on credit and the settlement,
which means they would like have to pay February twenty third,
And this all happened on the twenty first. Oh, okay,

(38:51):
so it's like you got to make your money before then.
So it's like, well, that's really convenient timing. And Cochrane
hadn't had any government securities as of February eleven, but that,
you know, a week and a half before all this,
Like he.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
Was not a frequent trader of these things, he all
of a sudden took an interest in the stock market.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
Yeah, and he in this one day made one hundred
and seventy five the equivalent today of one hundred and
seventy five thousand pounds. It's like two at the time.
The profit is like twenty five hundred pounds, but again
that's almost like two.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
A lot of money.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
But and even more astonishing, there had been an order
that But had tried to put through. Mister Butt had
tried to put through to get five times as many bonds,
but it hadn't gone.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
Through h so it was like they were really trying
to do something.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
Yeah, yeah, so pretty much immediately the Committee of the
Stock Exchange is like, okay, so we're going to keep
an eye on these three because that's suspicious.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
I mean maybe, sorry, we'll probably get to this, but
like this seems really obvious, and like, did they think
they wouldn't get hot?

Speaker 1 (39:56):
Well, it's not illegal to buy and sell stocks.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
Right, but insider treating is illegal, and like, I mean, okay.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
We will. It's not he didn't get any insider information
at this point. It's not like he bought it because
he knew Napoleon had died, you know, ten days earlier. Okay,
And he will argue I'm getting ahead of ourselves, but
I do think it's worth pointing out. Cochrane as he's
defending himself, will argue, well, I bought government bonds. I've
bought I've been in the stock market for years. I

(40:26):
buy a lot of things, and I told my investor,
when you can make a profit of one percent, sell them.
And so I had them and then it went up,
so we sold them. Okay, Okay, okay, I mean like
you can believe. You're like, oh, well, my crime is
that a week ago I bought these stocks and then
when it was out of profit, I sold them. Like
you're like, you can't get no.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
But they're obviously going to prove that they did the room.
I mean, is you got to prove it though, Okay, okay,
it's not so that's that's that's the part they think
they won't be caught for. He's like, they're not going
to know that it was us.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
Yeah, the the fake French guys, the fake French royalists.
The committee finds them pretty immediately because they basically just
trace the carriage to an inn. And the landlord's like, yeah,
I got a letter from this guy, this regular named Sandam,
who's like asked me to arrange a carriage. And this

(41:20):
one of his housemates, Murray, who's the other guy who
did this, had been like loudly asking around. He had
brought he had brought home a blue French officer coat
and had his wife make the white cockades like the
Royalist signals, and he shared a house with like other
lodgers and people are like, why are you doing this?

(41:43):
And he's like, in order to deceive the speculators, and
then he was penniless before and then right after this
had a bunch of fifty fifty you know, you have
like fifty pound bills, and he pretty much loudly he
had asked this guy named mister Vin, who was not involved,
to meet him at a coffee shop and he's like, hey,

(42:03):
I have a great business opportunity.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
You can get it on.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
And Vin is like that sounds illegal. I don't want
to have anything to do with it. But Vin did
know French, and so he wrote out like Viva Viva
le Roy. He's like, I'll do the French phrases. Okay,
I'll help you translate because they don't have internet, they
don't have a Google Translate.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Okay, I can there like French English Dictionary. Well, Dana
forgot about books.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
But they confess almost immedia great.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
But also they don't seem like both smartest got No, they.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
Did not cover their tracks. They will claim that they
did this completely independently of the de Burg thing. He
was like, we were just trying to increase our own
stock market holdings.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
That doesn't make any sense, but okay.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
No it doesn't. And there are some tenuous links between
these people and Cochran Johnson to make it seem like
it was. That is not the case, but the courts
actually won't try to prove that because that's at this point.
They're like, we only really need to prove the link
between de Borg and Cochran Cochran Johnson. But again, these

(43:09):
fake French guys did not do very well. Immediately confessed
they found them and with this two hundred and fifty
pound ransom, someone comes forward with Colonel de Bergh's identity
and it is a guy named Charles Random de Barringer.
He is so Random's so random, de Barringer a cool name.

(43:33):
De Barringer is described as he's forty two years old.
He's described as an adventurer, which I just think is
kind of like a euphemistic rich person with no.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
Job or poor person with no job.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
And this guy with no job, yeah, his family actually
very interestingly had lost all of their property because they
had settled in America, but they had been loyalists during
the Revolutionary War, so then they came back to England
with nothing. He is heavily in debt and he is
like confined as quote an insolvent debtor under the rules

(44:07):
of the King's Bench, which means he's basically under local
house arrests. Okay, like he can only stay in the neighborhood.
And is it the neighborhood in Dover, No, it's it's London.
He didn't want to.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
That's why he didn't want to be seen. I get it.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
He serves as a volunteer in like a core of
sharpshooters under this guy named Lord Yarmouth. He wears a
green uniform, which is very important.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
But as they're all trying to investigate this Colonel de
Burgh situation, they find the red uniform that Colonel de
Bergh had been wearing, like wrapped up and it had
been thrown in the Thames.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
Oh yeah, I was about to say you should get
rid of it, but he did it. I guess it
must have washed out. They're not like ragging the tan
a fisherman finds, Okay, But they find it and they're like, oh,
this is you know something doesn't have his name, No,
but it hasn't proved that it was his the specific insignia.
And again all of these witnesses on the route saw him.

(45:05):
I mean it's like the innkeepers, like multiple innkeepers, multiple coachmen,
multiple postboys, and all of them in court will point
at the barringer and be like, that's him, Yeah, okay,
that's him, and this is what he was wearing. It's
a lot of witnesses. And also they find him trying
to escape the country at length, and he has banknotes

(45:25):
that specifically can be traced back to Cochrane, Cockran Johnson.
And but even without the Internet, even without the Internet
they can trace banknotes.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
They can't which actually I do think tracing banknotes is
probably easier back then because I think you had to
write them out.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
I guess, yeah, yeah, okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
But suspicious, Yeah, Lizzie Loogan, if you had to guess
who is guilty in.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
This case, who do you say? It is? All of them? Right?

Speaker 1 (45:52):
You mean the guy who famously hates following rules and
does false flags when he's in battle, who hates regulators
in the admiral You think he would be involved in
something tricky.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
But are you asking me who was found guilty or
who I think actually did it?

Speaker 1 (46:07):
Who you think actually did it? I think they all yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, correct.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
The Cochrane, Cochran, Johnson, but the four I'm gonna call
them like the actors, yeah, and the faked burg guy. Yeah,
that's they were all in on it.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
They're all in on it. Lord cochrane is not going
to stand.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
For that, okay. He He's like, my uncle and my
friend were in on it, but I wasn't.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
He writes a preemptive voluntary affidavit, uh huh, trying to
clear his name, being like, I am literally completely innocent
of this. The fact that I am even being involved
in this is evident of a vast conspiracy against me.

Speaker 2 (46:47):
So he is doing the move that his superior once
did of being like court martial me, court marcial mean,
come at me, bro, I mean like, I will take
a polygraph. It's like when people are always like, well,
I'll take a polygraph. The crazy thing is he's like,
I'll take a polygraph.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
Writing this voluntary affidavit, but because it's a voluntary affidavit,
it's like they're no legal consequence.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
Oh yeah, but that's it.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
It's like he's like, I'll take a polygraph, dude, and
it's like, no, you're just doing it. You got it
off Amazon and is a real polygraph, Like if you
lie under a voluntary affidavit, you're not going to be
held in contempt, okay, But his story is that Look,
on the morning of February twenty first, I was out
to breakfast with some people and a messenger came to

(47:28):
me and said, Hey, someone's waiting at your house. My
brother is sick on his ship.

Speaker 2 (47:34):
And this is true.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
And so I was like, oh, if someone has like
a message for me my brother about my brother, I
want to go back quick. So he raced back. He
returns it's not about his brother. It's the Bearringer in
a green uniform and he's familiar with de Bearnger. He's
like a sharp, you know, in the low core, and
he's wearing the green uniform that he would normally have

(47:57):
and he's asking for Cochrane's help in getting him a
position on a ship that he's going to command at
some point.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
And isn't he hander local arrest? How can you get
on the ship? I think maybe he's probably maybe his
Like he's like, once I paid these, once I pay
the debts.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
Like maybe because I you know, will you give me
this exception? Like he needs a favor from this military hero.
And he came in uniform. According to Cochran because he
like expected that he would go straight on board the ship, okay.
And Cochrane is like, okay, well that's not going to happen,
but you should go meet with like your commanding officer,

(48:33):
like maybe i'll like write you a note or just
help you. Like he sends him off to meet with
his commanding officer and is like, well, you shouldn't like
go out in your full uniform, so here borrow my
black great coat, okay, because that's another sort of suspicious
detail that people call will call out later. It's like,
so this guy showed up and then left wearing one

(48:54):
of Lord Cochrane's coats, okay, which if he had been
wearing a red unim that then he rolled up and
threw in the Thames, he would need a new coat.
He would need a new coat to borrow from someone.
But Lord Cochrane is arguing, well, it would be weird
to wear your green dress uniform just casually out. So

(49:15):
here have my coat, okay. And with regards to the
stock market, he says, my stock group has bought and
sold government stocks. Before we do we buy a lot
of stocks. We had bought some government stocks and we
had instructed our advisor, mister butt that when it makes
one percent profit, automatic sell.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
Yeah okay, I mean that part. I mean the timing
of when they bought it is suspicious, but the timing
of when they sold it is not suspicious because the
stock went up. Yeah okay.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
But also if you think that the I'm just going
to say, you think that the war is over and
that Napoleon is dead, you might think that like it'll
go higher when it's even officially announced, right, like it's
only going go up selling then even like before it's
announced is like kind of like we know this as
a hoax, we better sell quick.

Speaker 2 (50:06):
Yeah, I mean yeah, Like if he was under strict
orders to sell as soon as it hit one percent, he.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
Could just be like well yeah yeah, and that's what
they said.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
Well okay, But also like what if they think what
if they think it's a hoax but not one that
they planned. Also if it's like, oh my god, this
stock that I happened to own is like on a bubble.
This rumor is unsubstantiated. There's a fifty to fifty chance
that Napoleon's not dead. I better sell and get out
while the gettin's good. Yeah, not illegal, not illegal, but

(50:36):
they totally planned it.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
Okay, but not illegal, but not like Look, you can't
get mad at me. But the thing is, it's pretty
suspicious that de Bergh, who also happens to be Debarringer,
did this thing in Dover and immediately came to Lord
Cochrane's house, changed his coat and then left the country

(51:02):
with banknotes from you tried to leave the country.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
He didn't was. Yeah, it's just suspicious.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
But the thing that would make it not suspicious is
if du Bourg wasn't de Bearringer.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
Sure, two similar looking guys.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
Maybe it's just two guys. And de Behringer is going
to insist on an alibi defense, saying that all of
his servants will attest to the fact that he never
went to Dover and stayed around town. Even his lawyer
will be like before the statement will be like, for
the record, I do not think this is the best defense.
But this is what my client says, because again, all

(51:39):
of these people, so he met all these people along
the way and they all are like that they identify
him in the courtroom with a positive ID. Yeah, which
like a bunch of people being like that's him. You're
gonna get convicted, and he had one guy's like oh yeah,
but like his whiskers were different, because like sometimes he
had whiskers and sometimes he shaved them. But like that's

(52:02):
the closest someone's like, yeah, I think that's him, except
he had shaved. No, that's him, he just shaved. But
the big thing that Lord Cochrane really holds onto is
the fact that de Barringer when he showed up, even
if he was to Berg, who knows what he had
been doing in Dover, he was in a green coat
when he came to my house.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
Okay, So is there like a version of events where
to Barringer does the hoax and is then like, you know,
it would be really convenient for me to be on
a ship while all of this happens. Why don't I
change coats, try to get a job, yeah, and then
leave town. And Cochrane is none the wiser.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
Yeah, okay, I mean that's what he will say. He'll
be like, I don't know, maybe he changed into a
green coat. But again, Lord Cochrane knows this guy. If
he had shown up to his house in a red
Aid DeCamp uniform, he would have been like, that's weird. Yeah,
that's not your uniform. Yeah, so his story like relies
on the fact that he was not wearing a red

(53:06):
aid DeCamp uniform. Okay, he would have had to change
at some point, and he's like he definitely was in
green when I saw him. Sure, and all of his servants,
Lord Cochrane makes all of his servants also submit voluntary
affidavits even though he.

Speaker 2 (53:20):
Sounds really voluntary when your boss is making you do it,
and he wrote them out, Oh sure, sure, sure. But
the problem is the prosecution brings a bunch of witnesses
that all identified to Barringer in court, and everyone says
he was in a red uniform, including the like taxi
cab driver who dropped him off. So he would have
had to Cochran have his green coat like under his

(53:43):
red coat and like run to the Thames and back.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
And also like even in the book I read about
this hoax is like logistically maybe he had like changed
in the carriage, Yeah, but he didn't have like a
suitcase with him that was big enough to hold two
uniform and it was like a very short, bumpy carriage
ride that would have been like very hard for him
to change uniforms. The guy who ran the military surplus

(54:10):
uniform store remembers the Behringer coming in and buying the
red Aide de Camp uniform and when the guy running
the store was like, do you want to rent it?
You're like, you don't need to buy it, and he's like, nope,
I'm buying it, and then he identifies it as the
one that was bunched up and thrown into the Thames.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Yeah. See, you gotta get a friend to do your
shopping for you when you're planning a hoax.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
Gotta get a friend. This trial goes on all day. Literally,
you think, like, oh, trials like break for whatever. The
judge at this point is aware that it involves a
lot of like professional and government people who might not
be able to come the next day, so he just
does not break.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (54:49):
The defense doesn't start until ten thirty at night, oh Jesus, which,
to be fair, it's one of these situations where you're like, okay,
even if they are guilty, court case was that is
like a really challenging position to be and everyone is tired,
and you're starting your defense yeah at ten thirty at night,
and like goes until two in the morning.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
Okay, Yeah, I would be like mistrial or like you know,
you can appeal appeals court. Yeah, Cochrane's lawyer even in
his like final defense statement, is like, okay, look, maybe
even Cochrane got mixed up and he was so used
to seeing his friend to Barringer in a green uniform
that he like forgot and just like misremembered what color

(55:30):
of the uniform was. And that's not a crime, No
it's not. But lo and behold he is found guilty. Okay,
they are all guilty. All found guilty. Okay.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
Oh in the banknotes. Their excuse for like why they
had banknotes was he was like, yeah, well, Cochrane, Johnson
owed de Barrenger money because de Barringer had like worked
on his pleasure garden and then like that money. We're
all we're all, you know, we all owe each other money.
People venmo each other, people venmo each other. So like,
is it crazy that I gave my investment manager money

(56:02):
and then he gave it to someone he owed money
to and then he gave it to him, Like whatever, sure,
all right, they're all found guilty. Uh huh, he is sentenced,
Lord Cochran, I mean they all are. But like Lord Cochrane.
Who's I say, they all are but Cochrane Johnson has
fled the country.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
Oh, another sure sign of innocence. Yeah, when you flee,
he has.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
Made it up. He is wherey to go Dominica, where
he was previously the governor, classic place to go. He
is going to try to reclaim his property that has
been sold to pay off his debts. Unsuccessfully, but he
does make it out okay. But they're all found guilty,
sentenced to twelve months in prison, a thousand pound fine.

(56:46):
And the pillary. Do you know what a pillary is?

Speaker 2 (56:48):
Is that like the stocks?

Speaker 1 (56:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (56:50):
Yeah, It's where you are put in like a device
that sort of clamps your head and your wrists. Yeah,
and then people throw fruit at you. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
It's like public shaming, public shaming, except Lord Cochrane is
a war hero. Yeah, and like a hero of the
popular people.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
All of his like parlor.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
He's one of those like parliamentarian who like talks big
talk but never actually got anything done. But people do
love him.

Speaker 2 (57:15):
I also feel like he has the reputation where if
I'm a local, I'm like, yeah, I could throw a
tomato at this guy, and the moment he gets out,
he's gonna beat my ass, Like I'm not making an
enemy of this. Do you throw a tomato like he will.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
Fucking beat me. The government, I think pretty smartly does
away with the pillary They like wave that because they're like,
I think the public will actually respond badly to this,
because it's very humiliating. And again he's like a naval
hero and a champion of the people. But he is
kicked out of the Navy, stripped of his naval ranks
and position, all of his honors. Genuinely sad like he's

(57:56):
like things are torn out down from Westminster Abbey. He's
kicked out of Parliament, sent to prison for twelve months.
He is I wanted kicked out of Parliament. He is
immediately re elected by his constituents. Oh incredible, which is great.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
Even the other people withdraw so that he can run
on a post. It's because I he'p beat there.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
But Cochrane also just another example of himself just getting
in his own way. He just cannot keep his mouth
shut in a way that really hurts him. At his sentencing,
like before they actually sentence him to twelve months in prison,
he like is in front of the judge, and he's
actually like really level headed and even keeled, and like, look,
my defense lawyer like didn't touch on this, Like they

(58:38):
didn't even call my servants to the stand, and like
he like lays out his defense in a really level headed,
easy way, but the judge is like, sorry, no retrial. Yeah,
and he kind of goes nuts. He gives a speech
basically accusing everyone of conspiracy to sabotage him. It's the

(59:00):
government and or the Admiralty, all of the servants and witnesses,
and the judge and his own defense team. So yeah,
he just kind of gets really angry again. And you're
doing this behavior where you're like this is the kind
of guy who would do this sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
Yeah, It's like it doesn't make you seem more credible
when you start making up other crimes yeah that supposedly
are going on, like to say I was swindled versus
like I was framed, you know, like I got roped
into this thing. Okay, Yeah, like your uncle or whatever

(59:37):
convinced you to buy some stock when he knew he
was gonna be manipulating it, Like that is more feasible
than like so your uncle and your financial advisor have
been scheming against you, and they knew that they would
get caught for this crime, and they wanted to bring
you down too, And.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
Your defense team also wanted to make sure you'd be convicted.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
They are willing to go to prison to make sure
you also go to prison.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
Well, you know, he had made all these enemies among
the admiralty for flippancy and insubordination, and he's like, and
now they take their evenge. Several months into his prison sentence,
he gets a contraband rope and escapes from prison.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
Dude literally climbs down.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
From the window, gets a concussion, like it's not like
a clean landing, but he is fine. He immediately goes
to Parliament to try to get his seat.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
Back and they're like, you know, you're back. He gets
rearrested immediately, and he kind of admired this guy, honestly,
like what huts book.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
He immediately gets rearrested and they put him in like
solitary confinement, like I wasn't all without windows. But that
again is like the insane sort of delusional thinking of
him being like, I'll just go to Parliament and they'll
let me back in that I think is why he
did do this crime. Yes, and to be very transparent
orians disagree.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Okay, so it's not settled.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
It's not fully settled, but I will say there are
a lot of holes in his story. That it's a
lot of circumstantial evidence, and I could definitely see the
argument made that you could say like there was a mistrial.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
Yeah, bad proof.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
And again a lot of the evidence is circumstantial, but
it's pretty convincing. I would say, like his story that
like I got this note, you know, and I of
course rushed back because it could be my sick brother
from breakfast. Where it's like, if I'm de Bearringer and
I just arrived at the house of this lord who

(01:01:40):
I'm about to ask a favor from and he's at breakfast.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
Would I send one of his servants to go bother him?

Speaker 1 (01:01:46):
Yeah, when I send a note being like urgent, come
back now, I expected you to be home, where it's
like that is what you would send if you were
like in a conspiracy with someone. Yeah, and all these
people testify like part of his story was when Lord
Cochrane is like, well, I didn't want him like out
and about going to see his supervising officer and his

(01:02:07):
green drill coat. But all these people testify that they're like, no,
wearing your green coat is not weird at all. The
officer testifies, like, no, it would have been totally normal
for him to wear his coat, and his landlady is like, no,
he comes in wearing his green coat.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
It's not that weird.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
And again, his entire Lord Cochrane's entire personality is just
like thinking the rules don't apply to him and using
costumes and trickery to try to make as much profit
as he can.

Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
Yeah, he'll he'll fly a false flag.

Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
He'll literally fly a false flag and try to make money.
And I mean not to pathologize him, but it's like
if you are someone who grew up with a noble
family that then had money problems, like money has been
a thing that you're touchy about, like want to make
as much as he can. Financial regulation, as I mentioned,
is really new, and I think he just thought.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
He would get away with it. I mean, I do
think oceans are now battlefields, like maybe stock markets are
now oceans where it's like hey, man, like fairs fare,
like shooters, shoot, I'm going in, I'm gonna do a
little get what I can. Who's it hurting except you know,
other people? But yeah, and also who's it hurting other
fat cats investing in the stock market? Yeah, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):
He will spend the rest of his life saying he's
innocent of this, I thus wrong fully convicted. Okay, so
before I should also mention before all of this, like
actually before, like you know, the day even the fake
Napoleon is dead hoax. He had married a teenager, oh Fantos,
who was twenty years younger than he was, and it
was one of those situations where it's like we eloped

(01:03:46):
and she had a baby, but we definitely eloped. Oh,
and then they'll get married more officially later. What I
like is that out of their six kids, one of
their daughters is named Lizzie No, and they have a
son named Arthur Lizzy and Arthur Lozian Arthur and his
two other sons not Arthur. Arthur's a good boy, but

(01:04:08):
his two other sons will get into debt problems, but
not Arthur, which I think is not Liz and not
Lizzie to the best of my knowledge, although I didn't
look into her financial future, he has this sort of
astonishing second act or correct yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
I think ACTE was his naval career act to intermission
for a hoax that he didn't do parliament or didn't
write anything in Parliament. I keep forgetting.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
He is like, great, I got kicked out of the navy,
which is the one thing I'm really good at. I
need to make money. What am I going to do?
South America is like, hey, we're trying to get some
independence from Spain and Portugal. Here, can we hire you
to come and like navy for us? Oh yeah, He's
like great.

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
He becomes like a Chilean hero. Amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
He's like he fights for the Chilean independence against Spain.

Speaker 2 (01:04:57):
Amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
They're like street in Chilean named after him and like statues,
and then he does it for Brazil against Portugal and
like before you're like he did this, like he will
again spend like the rest of his life being like
they didn't pay me enough and they still owe me money.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
Yeah, but still it's fun. It's great, it's fun. I
want him on a boat. He's on a boat.

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
He's fighting for Chile, he's fighting for Brazil. I mean
they win, yeah, good for them. He really is like
a Chilean and Brazilian hero. I believe if you're a
Brazilian or Chilean listener, I would love to hear the
insider's perspective on him. But again, he was a naval
commander for the independence of our navies, and then they'll

(01:05:35):
fight for the Greeks against the Ottomans. But by this
point he's really lost his touch and he's like, does
a bad job there and is actually like fully shown
up by his second in command. But Chile and Brazil
does a great job. Great comes back to England, keeps
trying to clear his own name. It doesn't work until
King George the fourth dies and then King William, the

(01:05:57):
next king is on the throne. And like for con text,
if you're trying to anchor this, King William is right
before Queen Victoria. It's her oh okay okay. And the
George who died is the son of the Bridgerton George King.
I don't know if that if like I'm helping you
like costumes.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
Because Bridgerton King is also Hamilton.

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
King's Hamilton King, Hamilton King, one of our sons.

Speaker 2 (01:06:23):
This is how Americans understand British history. Sorry, British listeners,
this is what we need. But now you know with
William more liberal whigs are in office and then his
it literally takes his wife. They're they're keep trying to
like push it through Parliament and it gets like gridlocked
and it literally being it being like his uh like

(01:06:43):
to pardon.

Speaker 1 (01:06:44):
Yeah, it literally takes his wife going to the king
and being like please, you have the power to do
this unilaterally, can you just pardon him? Yeah, because he's
like a war he's like a celebrated navel here okay,
and he had already done these amazing things internationally, and
you're like, like he's one of ours, we.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
Want credit for him.

Speaker 1 (01:07:02):
He got him back, and so King William pardons him
and he gets all of his navy rank back, and
I'll kind of spend the rest of his life getting
pretty like cushy naval jobs and increasingly nice titles and
wasting moneies on his bad inventions.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
Oh fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
Like so actually, during all this court case situation, he
was like, I'm actually just working on a lamp. I
don't even care about going back to see I'm working
on a new lamp.

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
I love lamp.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
He loved lamp. He's like, I'm making a more efficient lamp.
It's very important. I'm working on this. That's actually it's
not even about the money that captains don't get on
chips anymore. It's not about the spoil system. I need
more time to work on my inventions and work on
my lamp. But he's working on an oil lamp and
they're gonna transition to gas lamps like immediately, so it

(01:07:56):
doesn't matter. And he also tries to design a new
type of steamship that's a huge failure. It doesn't work.
And he's terrible inventions and apparently he spends twenty thousand
pounds on inventions with no return. And just for context,
remember the prophet allegedly ill gotten in this Napoleon hoax

(01:08:16):
was twenty five hundred Oh goodness. So it's like he's
just throwing money at his terrible inventions.

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
I mean, I will say, like there's something to be
said for betting on yourself. Yeah, like he he he
believed in Cochrane, but he does not stop rallying against
the people he thinks wronged him. She has like a
long vendetta against the judge of the case, Lord Ellenborough,

(01:08:43):
and he keeps maintaining that he was framed by the
government and the Admiralty or both. He also tries to
sue the prosecution witness his name was Crane, who was
the Hackney coachman who had driven de Burgh to Cochrane's house.
Like he had testified like yeah, yeah, this guy.

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
Up in a red uniform and dropped him off at
Cochrane's house. And he's like this Blaggert shall not besmirch
my name any longer. And he keeps trying to lobby
the government for half pay for the time that he
was kicked out of the navy, like the back pay
that he had, he like keeps fighting for that for
the rest of his life. He dies at eighty five

(01:09:21):
years old in eighteen sixty and even though his banner
and insignia like did get restored to the chapel in
Westminster Abbey before his funeral, he never got his back
pay that he thought he was out okidding. But in
eighteen seventy eight, so eighteen years after he dies, in
his will he had granted He's like, and when I

(01:09:44):
get my backpay, it go to my grandson. And in
eighteen seventy eight a grant of five thousand pounds was
made to Lord Cochrane's grandson by this point, the new
Lord Cochrane, which is said to be like the arrears
of half pay without interest. So it's like his vindication.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
Why because he's a kame hero. Okay, I think they're
just like, let's this guy's been dead for eighteen years,
but for some reason we still feel like paying him.

Speaker 1 (01:10:09):
Well. His family kind of kept being pests about it. Okay,
They're like, we we've been betrayed by our government. All
he's done is fight for his country and this is
the pay we get. And you know he did he
did fight for the country. Sure, sure, but it is
kind of funny that they did. He did get that
back pay even though I think he was guilty.

Speaker 2 (01:10:29):
I think so too.

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):
Again, everyone else in this story ends up pretty badly.
As I mentioned before, Cochrane Johnson flees, tries unsuccessfully to
keep his property in Dominica from being sold for his debts,
and he dies a fugitive in eighteen thirty three, but
is in and out of prison heavily in debt. But

(01:10:51):
poor butt de Barringer actually does seem pretty okay.

Speaker 2 (01:10:56):
Okay, I mean he does have a flare, so you know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:59):
After he's served his punishment, he stayed with his like
sharpshooter unit and then started working as the manager of
a sports stadium in Chelsea, teaching shooting. It seems like
he was like a pretty good use your skills. He
sort of like became a gym teacher. But at Cranmore House,

(01:11:19):
the sports stadium that he ran, he held an quote
Olympic festival in eighteen thirty two to commemorate Queen Victoria's coronation,
and another in eighteen thirty eight. And what's interesting is
the modern Olympics as we know it weren't you know,
created until eighteen ninety six. So he just sort of
created this thing that was like the precursor to the

(01:11:41):
modern Olympics, which, as we are recording, are happening right
this very.

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):
Much, right at this very moment. Figure Skating tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (01:11:48):
Figure Skating Tomorrow. He still gets into some financial problems
and he dies in eighteen forty five, but.

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
Not terrible, no, as far as these things decent legacy.

Speaker 1 (01:11:58):
He started in financial problems, So didn't there you go
get way worse?

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
You know who? I This whole episode is giving me
such an appreciation for Martha Stewart because she was like, peop,
you know, the target of such misogyny. Yeah, and then
she did do insider trading. Yeah. And then she did
go to prison and she took it like a woman,
and she didn't try to whine and complain and do vendettas.

(01:12:25):
And now everybody loves her so true.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
She owned her truth.

Speaker 2 (01:12:29):
She owned her truth. She got out and she was like, Okay,
I still do exactly what I've always done, but like
I'm a little bit chiller now and I'm gonna hang
out with Snoop Dogg and post thirst traps and everyone's like, cool,
you're forgiven. Literally no one cares that you did financial crimes.

Speaker 1 (01:12:44):
And Lord Cochrane again maintained that he was innocent for
the rest of his life. And I think just waited
long enough that people are like, oh, that was one day,
Like we don't really care about that anymore. I think
he just waited until people didn't care that much.

Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
Yeah, because probably, I mean, did Napoleon actually die eighteen
twenty one, Okay, so like Napoleon has been for real dead,
so who cares about that time he was fake dead?

Speaker 1 (01:13:08):
It was fake dead.

Speaker 2 (01:13:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:10):
I also find it kind of a fun twist of
fate that like, thank goodness he was kicked out of
the British military because then he helped the Chilean military,
the Chilean Navy and the Brazilian Navy. Yeah, he wouldn't
have done that if he was still in the British Navy.

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
No, not at all.

Speaker 1 (01:13:25):
But it just goes to show that, like, you.

Speaker 2 (01:13:28):
Can't keep a good man down, but I think you can.

Speaker 1 (01:13:31):
I really do think if this guy had like played
the game a little yeah, and like didn't bad mouth
his superiors constantly at every turn, he would there would
be statues of him everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
He'd be like the king of the world.

Speaker 1 (01:13:43):
I think we would know his name. I think like
he would be like, we know, you know Horatio Nelson.

Speaker 2 (01:13:50):
Do we though? Because I don't know who that is,
all right, I'm like, I think.

Speaker 1 (01:13:53):
There are some like admirals that we know.

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
I know Matthew Perry Washington, Admiral Matthew Perry. That is
the name of the actor from Friends and An Admiral. Okay,
but I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:05):
It's like he really did get in his own way.
He was really cocky. I think he conchran. He was
really cochrane. I really think he just thought he would
get away with it. And then I also kind of
think he convinced himself he was innocent.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
Oh absolutely, That's the thing about I mean, it's interesting
because this guy obviously was not a total liar, like
not everything in his life was a hoax. Yeah, but
like if you ever confront a compulsive liar with the truth,
like they just double down. Yeah, and they convinced themselves,
Like the Firefest guy is like completely delusional.

Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
I really do think like on his grave he would
be like, no, I was wrongfully, you know, accused in
a conspiracy by the admirals and government who hated me.

Speaker 2 (01:14:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:14:57):
I think in his heart of hearts he believed that
even though it's not true. Even though hey, Danish Swartz's
personal opinion is at its mantrue.

Speaker 2 (01:15:04):
It's also Lizzie Logan's personal opinion. Lizzie, where can the
good people find you? The good people can find us
at at Hoax the Podcast on Instagram. We love hearing
from you, and uh, it's it's fun to chat, Dana.
Where people find you?

Speaker 1 (01:15:20):
You can email Hoax the Podcast at gmail dot com.
I will read those emails and get back to you
sometimes slowly but sometimes very quickly, depending on how busy
the rest of my life is. And you can follow
me on Instagram and TikTok at Danish Swartz with three
z's at the end.

Speaker 2 (01:15:35):
Listen to Noble Blood.

Speaker 1 (01:15:36):
Listen to Noble Blood. Please and pre order the book
The Arcane Arts, which is out in May. And if
you pre order it, that's actually huge help. Thank you
so much for listening.

Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
Please hoax responsibly Bye. Hoax is a production of iHeart podcast.
Our hosts are Danish Schortz and Lizzie Logan. Our executive
producers are Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, with supervising producer

(01:16:07):
Rima L. Kali and producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk.
Our theme music was composed by Lane Montgomery. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.