(MENAFN- AFP) It's a little-known fact about Napoleon Bonaparte: the French emperor thought about emigrating to the United States after his defeat at Waterloo.
That bid for a fresh start in the New World came together in June 1815 in the wake of Napoleon's loss at Waterloo to the British-Prussian forces and his subsequent abdication. But it came to naught within three weeks when the triumphant allies vetoed it.
While still at the Elysee Palace in Paris, he had gone as far as to request two warships to take him and his close entourage across the Atlantic to America.
"The plan was being seriously entertained by the provisional (Paris) government, which saw it as a way to get rid of him fast," explained Christophe Pincemaille, joint curator of an exhibition about the episode mounted at the Chateau of Malmaison, the elegant residence just outside Paris that Napoleon's wife Josephine de Beauharnais bought for the couple in 1799, when he was fighting in Egypt, and to which Napoleon returned after Waterloo.
- 'Why not America' -
For Napoleon, the American ambition was about definitively closing the door on his political life in France -- and putting distance between him and any temptation to revive it.
"Where am I to go To England My abode there would be ridiculous or disquieting," Napoleon told the Swiss-French politician and writer Benjamin Constant, according to the "Memoirs" of Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, a French diplomat friend of Napoleon's.
"America would be more suitable; I could live there with dignity," he said.
Bourrienne said he later tried to change Napoleon's mind, arguing in favour of exile in England, but the ex-emperor replied: "Why not America"
Napoleon believed the victorious British would endorse his move across the Atlantic and foresaw a new life on a continent to which his family already had links.
Josephine, his first wife of six years before they divorced in 1810 -- and who died a year before the fateful 1815 Waterloo battle -- was born on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, "and his brother Jerome had married the daughter of one of Philadelphia's richest families," Pincemaille said.
And so the ex-emperor's staff began preparing his possessions for the move: folding field furniture, paintings, clothes, rifles, saddles, even his bathtub. Books and maps about the United States were gathered, as were scientific instruments. A French astronomer and physicist, Francois Arago, was also to make the voyage.
Crockery, furniture, silverware were also packed, some of it taken from the state's collections. Enough to furnish the two residences Napoleon envisaged: one in the city, and another in the country.
There was a time Napoleon had dreamed of a great American Empire, spreading out from Louisiana, which France then possessed. But a disastrous attempt in 1801-1803 to regain authority over the Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) from ex-slaves ended that project. Napoleon ended up selling Louisiana to the United States for $15 million.
The French emperor maintained an interest in American affairs, however, as his diplomatic correspondence showed. The new country was seen as "the land of hope", according to Pincemaille. Napoleon's brother Joseph, who lived in Switzerland, had bought huge tracts of land in America, and a large French community lived there.
"The richest man in the US was a Frenchman born in Bordeaux, Stephen Girard," Pincemaille said. A shipbuilder and banker, he would later finance ephemeral colonies of Bonapartists in Alabama and Texas.
- Foiled by the British -
On July 8, 1815, Napoleon boarded the warship La Saale, anchored off the western French port with his eyes levelled to the west.
But after five days of waiting, it became clear that the British navy was not going to let him sail, and his authorisation for safe passage was not forthcoming.
The alternative was to leave furtively, a scenario put forward by Joseph who offered to take his brother's place by exploiting their physical resemblance. But Napoleon refused. In any case, Bourrienne wrote, the wind was against slipping away fast.
On July 15, as France's provisional government made to arrest him, a tired Napoleon climbed aboard the British ship HMS Bellerophon and placed himself under the good graces of his enemy.
Ten days later, Joseph, using a false passport under the name Surviglieri, evaded British watchers -- with the help of his fellow Freemasons, Pincemaille said -- to find passage on a commercial ship to New York, and he ended up living in the United States, in New Jersey and Philadelphia, until 1840.
As for Napoleon, he was taken to the British-ruled isle of Saint Helena in the south Atlantic, with his luggage packed for America following him. He died there on May 5, 1821.
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