Part One: The Con Artist Who Invented A Country

I'm so happy to be here. I haven't seen you in so long, Robert, yet it has been a minute. It has been a minute. How have How are you doing in in this year of plague and also general uprisings and also a political election and also an economic collapse. Um I was in the beginning, in the beginning of this, I know when you say it all together, when you talk about what's been happening, it sounds very bad because

the new cycle is so crazy. Like that the one week where Malaia was like, Chris, I can't do her voice, but she's like and then taxes came out the same week. Also he got COVID. It was like so many things happened, and we were like, oh, this is just Tuesday. Okay, I'm doing a lot better. In the beginning. I'm a like an introvert. People don't know that about me because I do a lot of this ship, but like, I am alone a lot and I like it. So I was like, oh, putting up on TV's Netflix movies, honey.

And then when we got into June, it was like, okay, Black Liberation and that kind of kept me busy. And then I took a real dump like after that of like closing my blackout curtains. Like I was like a shutting, bedridden pregnant woman in the eighteen hundreds and just like laying in the dark for a few days. But now I'm back, I'm going working out every day and you know,

I just trying to keep myself safe. You know how they used to be like Google, gott I had a king's baby, so get your aunts in bed and closed these curtains. Yes, So that was me except for no baby, no quarantine baby. Thank god, I have not had a quarantine baby either. Um. I did adopt a riot son, but but but no quarantine baby. Um lazy, How do you feel about but I do. I really love them. It's a complicated relationship though, because I don't love when

people are victimized. I hate to see it happened. Actually this morning, my little sister got scammed. Oh no, what kind of scam I was doing with the family crisis before nine am? Chair because they two hours ahead of me. And so basically, my sister met this girl and they've been hanging out through a mutual friend for three months. And the girl was like talking about how she needed to move out from her parents house and how during quarantine things have just got so bad, you know, side story,

side story, honey. So she's like, I'm selling my art online and I don't want to put the money in my bank account because I don't want my parents to know that I'm saving up to leave. So she asked my little sister, is she could put the money in her bank account cut to some man named Clad or some ship emailing my sister four checks for eight hundred dollars. Why my sister didn't think? I was like you, I literally the first thing I text, because she was like,

don't tell my mom dad. I was like, first of all, I have to Second of all, I know this is petty, but I was like, I run a show called scam Guys. I was like, y'all support your sister and listen to her show, because girl, i'n't talked about this scam like eleven times. I'm trying to help you seventeen so all

enough to know about her. It's like it's like if your job was to give out flu vaccines and then like, your sister gets the flu and she's like, well I didn't know there was a vaccine, Like what the funk are you? Like? Right, I'm like, I spent a whole section of my life just talking about scams. You ain't think nothing, thought like let me text my older sister before I make a devilas and nothing. So she said, up the hundred dollars because they cleared it automatically, which

is there, so we're dealing with them. But it was total and so the bank of course did a charge back and then that coin flew right out of her account and she was like, well, my friend didn't know. I was like, your friend did no, Okay, she scammed and she got your friend and don't talk to her again. And also I will pull up to whatever slide whatever swing set. I need to to be her ass uh. I will fight children. Um yeah, if you're five one, you can fight kids. Mostly I will fight children. Have one.

It's a fair fight. Okay? He is her friends seventeen two? Yeah, I think they're around the same A. Yeah, but a surprise bastard. Yeah, surprise. I didn't expect to talk about this one. Sorry, it was on my heart. You know who else would fight children? Probably probably the subject of today's podcast, I assume based on everything else he did so, Lacy, you and I are both are both connoisseurs of con men.

You know, we love we love us some connors right, like it's it's there's something just you gotta you love a grifter like they're they're monsters, but they're fascinating. And most of the grifters, at least that I talk about, I know, you cover kind of a different branch of them. Most of the ones I talk about are either like hawking some sort of miracle medical treatment, or like a path to easy riches. I guess that that's basically all of them, right. Um. There are like, you know, a

couple though, who rise above the rest. There's people like oh Ron Hubbard, right, who like drifted a whole religion and it's like, you know, and today's grifter is that level of grifter. Um, he didn't make a religion. But the guy we're talking about today, Sir Gregor McGregor, count people into believing he had a whole country. And that's pretty ambitious. It is good, you know travel. He's like, no, you don't have to come, just no, oh no, he he convinced them to come. Now, this was a different

era we're talking about. Out the eighteen hundreds, um, and spoiler, a lot of them died. Um. This is a high body count scammer. Um. But our first episode is going to be about the rest of his back because like every grifter, he had to like build up, you know, just start by faking a country, right, Like you gotta that's like, that's like the marathon of grift ing and like you gotta do some tin ks, some twenty k's like before you can you know, before you can get

that ship. So. Gregor McGregor was born in Sterlingshire, Scotland, on Christmas Eve, seventeen eight six. His family were somewhat famous among the contentious peoples of Scotland. One of his ancestors was a guy named rob Roy McGregor, a cattle wrestler and a bandit who basically charged people not to

steal their ship. He was a gangster Um. He controlled a large group of raiders who would like steal cows and then ransom them back to their customers or just like get money from them not to steal their cows in the first place. The origin, yeah, yeah, he was. He was kind of like a towing company, but an

a legal towing company. Um, we're like some guy with a gun comes out and said, oh, you want your fucking car back, Like, yeah, I have definitely had my car toad, but it was unfortunately legal, although I felt as if it was not, and if it were a bandit perhaps that would have been nicer. Um because there were cops involved anyway, So he piste off a local noble by stealing stealing his cows eventually, and that got the McGregor clan kicked off. There's like a roster of

official Scottish clans. It's like a it's like a whole deal. And so the McGregor family got kicked off for like decades um and rob Roy's family got like tossed out of their home in the dead of winter. Um, and he was he was really it seems like just a criminal, like just like not a good criminal either, Like you know, I'm not judgmental of criminals, but he's just like stealing people's ship. But because of like for whatever reason, it's complicated.

He's still he turned into a folk hero in Scotland and he's kind of you now is the Scottish Robin Hood. So this is Gregor McGregor's like famous ancestor, and he's he's only born like sixty years before Gregor's birth, but like you know, back in the seventeen hundreds, that's like

a billion years, you know. Yeah. So by the time Gregor McGregor comes into the world, his family, his clan had been re estate and stated to the roles, and he's got like this famous tradition of like we're we're we're we're both warriors and and freedom fighters, YadA, YadA, YadA. His family weren't rich, but they were really very comfortable local aristocrats, like upper middle class. They were eating every day,

yeah yeah, yeah, and they were eating well. Um, he would have grown up hearing tales of like his ancestors glory, YadA YadA. Uh. We don't know any details about Gregor's education or his early life because people didn't keep great notes in the seventeen hundreds about folks who weren't like super rich. But we know that his father worked for the British East India Company and would have been absent

all the time doing you know, genocides and stuff. Uh. It's likely that Gregor was raised by his mom and his aunts and showered with attention because he was the only boy in the family and I think most people know what that kind of does to you. He was like the original influencer of the seventeen hundred. It sounds like he would have had like, maybe like eighty four Instagram followers. Yeah, it's weird how quickly you've picked up on where this story is going lazy. Um so. Yeah.

His His modern biographer, a guy named David Sinclair, posits, based on his later life he was probably showered with attention and grew used to getting whatever he wanted, like he was he was the special boy of the family, right. Um So, he probably left school at about age fifteen because that's when Scottish boys became adults, which is interesting to me because like pretty much everywhere else in Urope, it was like age fourteen. So I guess the Scots

you get an extra year of being a kid. That's nice. Yeah, they're progressive. Uh. The next year, at age sixteen, he enlisted in the British Army. Uh. Sixteen was the earliest age at which this was allowed. And before you get all judge, you should know that seventeen year olds joined the U s Army all the time, so things aren't changed all that much. Like we added a year. We're the Scotsman of the modern era. So um, yeah, Gregor

joins the army and uh. He would claim later that he spent the year between graduation and joining the university and joining the army at the University of Edinburgh, But everything he ever said was a lie, so don't put too much stock in that. There's no evidence that he

ever attended college. Now. Back in those days, as a result of changes made by King Charles the Second, young men with money could buy their way into the British Army, and it's almost certain that Gregor's father paid for him to be commissioned as an incident, which was like the lowest officer rank at the period and cost about four hundred and fifty pounds, which was equivalent to around twenty

five dollars in modern money. So like this was expensive, it was also the normal way that officers got promoted, right, you could either wait years to earn a promotion or you could pay for it. Um. Poorman had to settle for being promoted the old fashioned way through like hard work and courage, and so the you know that took a long time. Um. Until fairly late in the eighteen hundreds, every officer rank in the British Army worked this way up to the rank of lieutenant colonel. UM. So the

people who are at least qualified. It's interesting because it did work very badly a lot of the time, and that's why it was eventually stopped. UM. And obviously, like the thing that you'd imagine did happen, a bunch of idiots got to command the lives of thousands thanks to

their rich dad's UM. And you can look at ship like the famous charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War, and even the I mean they'd stopped that process, but still a lot of the officers in charge during that war had paid to become officers Um, and even the British loss of North America is like maybe partial

consequences of the fact that the system work this way. Um, but it wasn't like it wasn't all bad actually, And this is the I found like a really interesting letter to the editor in an eighteen sixty issue of The New York Times, Um, We're like a British military veteran explained why the system wasn't quite as as simple as

people thought it was. And one of the points he made is that it allowed people who were good leaders to speed up their rise to through the ranks and then thus spend more time commanding armies in the prime of their lives. And there's actually at least one really good example of this. The Duke of Wellington paid for all of the seven biable promotions he could possibly have paid. And like, by the time he was a lieutenant colonel, he'd never seen combat, had no functional experience, and he

went on to beat Napoleon at Waterloo. So like, sometimes it worked sometimes, Yeah, he was a strategist, he was Yeah, he was good at what he like. Sometimes this worked out, um, And like one of the one of the famous defenses when people would talk about canceling this system in the late eighteen hundreds, was that, like, well then we'd have to pay all these officers back for the money they paid to like get their promotions, and that would cost way too much money. Um, so let's just let's just

keep having idiots and charity. It was a very silly thing for the most part. Now. The unit Gregor's dad bought his son into was the fifty seventh Foot, a Scottish regiment famous for the fact that almost everyone in it was a criminal. Their name their nickname was the Steelbacks because were flogged with whips so many times for their disobedience. So it said that like you had to have a strong back to survive because they'd regularly get like nine lashes and ship for like all of the

crimes they committed. Now, is that pre army or during the army? That's during the army. I feel like they shouldn't beating all people that you need to fight. The British Army did that all the time. There was in fact, there was like a saying that like the British Navy was kept in order by rum, sodomy and the lash. Yeah, so like they're drunk, they get to funk each other and we beat them when they step out of line. And that's why there's the there's also a great Pogues

album called Rum Sodomy and the Lash wonderful. That's a good time. Some people would like it, like there are some stores I've been to in San Francisco that specifically catered to that set of things. But these were not fun lashes, you know, like these would do real damage to you. Um. The commander of the fifty seven foot once nicknamed them the fighting Villains, um, because again, they're

all criminals. So McGregor did well there at first. He actually earned a promotion from instant to lieutenant without having to pay for it. Um. So he had like promise he there was a chance he could have lived a legitimate life at one point. Is what I want you to keep. They're always there. Yeah. Yeah. There was that moment where John McAfee had to choose to murder a bunch of people in the jungle, and when he chose Crack,

his choice was paid for him to do. The Crack stepped into the Crack entered the chat and it's like one of those Jesus take the wheel posters, but Crack John McAfee closed his eyes and let crack take the wheel. Do take the wheel, y'all. Ever, so at this point in history, the British were real scared about Napoleon because

Napoleon was, you know, be pretty good at war. Uh And yeah, Gregor spent the bulk of his military career being sent around a different islands as forts and forts is part of like a big chess game between the Empire and Napoleon. The British were terrified the French were going to invade you know, England, so like they were just always moving soldiers and fleets around. It was so he spends he doesn't actually fight, He spends all of

his time like moving from post to post. And his favorite part of life in the military was all the fancy parties because all of these fortresses and posts are near like towns and cities, and they all of these big social lives, and of course the visiting young officers are the you know, the biggest thing in town whenever they come in. And he was a very handsome guy.

He was meticulous about his uniform. He wore every decoration he possibly good on it um and he he you know, he stood out at these parties, and as a result of standing out when he was still like a teenager, he met a lady. Her name was Maria bowater Um and her father had been an admiral, and so their family had fuck you money. They get married and yeah, you know, and in those days, you get married to a girl and she comes with money, right, yeah, yeah,

you get like yeah, said handsome question mark. I just google searched. The standards were lower in those days. Everybody. Everybody's got the typhoid he has, he has, I just farted face. Yeah, but he didn't. He's not actively shifting himself to death. So like that's that's kind of the standard is like, oh, you're not You're not having fatal diarrhea. What a handsome man. You don't have both ears. It was a rough time, so uh yeah. They get married and her dowry is like huge. So Gregor has fuck

you money too, at least for a while. Um. And unfortunately this has a bad effect on him. Number one, it swells his head because immediately he's like, oh, now I'm like a fucking rich officer guy. But also like he marries into this family that has this tradition of like being very powerful people and he's just a lieutenant and they don't. That does not impress them. So to earn their respect, he uses some of the money that he their money that he got to buy himself a

promotion to captain. He's got douche face. I'm looking at his face, but he's it was good looking for the day. No, it's not. You know, I could see him being a baddie back in the day. I'm just saying he's got that douchey face of like everything I want. Like, it's just he's no, No, he would have. He would have been in a fraternity and he would have been one of those guys that there were unfortunate stories about because yeah, yeah, yeah,

that's this guy. Um, not that he actually does anything like that, I'm just assuming because of other things he does. So I'm gonna quote next from David Sinclair's The Land That Never Was, which is a biography of Gregor McGregor. Quote,

the young captain's progress should have been assured. Using his newfound wealth, McGregor could have bought himself the rank of regimental major, which could take anything between six and seventeen years, on the basis of promotion, and then with war with certainty, could have either counted on distinguishing himself sufficiently to move up to lieutenant colonel, or else paid again for the

highest purchasable rank in the army. There appeared to be no reason why, in due course he should not become a general, as his wife's uncle had and as her brother subsequently would. By this time, however, certain traits in the young man's character were beginning to turn him into

his own worst enemy. One of his later military comrades, if that is the right term for a man who disliked him intensely, observed McGregor was spoiled by prosperity, and his versatility and haughtiness of disposition soon overturned his flattering prospects. So he gets a big ass head. That's a fancy way of saying he gets a big head. Yeah, and this guy's a hater. Whoever this comrade is is definitely a hater. He's probably like had to work his way up.

Yeah exactly. Yeah, he's like he's he's actually gotta do ship. Um so. One of his other comrades later noted that he began to show a growing fascination with extreme affectation of dress and fashion and an overpowering fondness for the nicest distinctions of rank and the over or in the imposing spectacle of honorary badges and tangible tokens of merit.

And this means like he would. You know, there's all sorts of bullshit awards you get in the military for like showing up and not doing anything, and most like most like grunts, the people who actually fight, like don't don't wear that ship. And he like he would, he would wear that ship because, like he always he wanted to have everything he possibly could on him. It was about like looking good. Right, he's like a rapper. He's showing up to these cities like he's Travis Scott and

you know, showing off for the bitches. He said, there's a party in every town, and I gotta have my gold chains. And his health chains were purple hearts and medals of freedom. Yeah exactly. Yeah, that's why the like, that's the fucking you know. I grew up like really conservative.

I talked about this a lot, and like the discourse around rappers when I was a kid was like, oh, look at how like look at how look at how like shameful This culture is because of like these men with their like big golden chains bragging about like you know what, like the stuff that rappers brag about, and it's like money, car, fucking Yeah, it's the same thing rich white people brag about. It's just different money, different cars,

different women. Like there's nothing different about it. It's just what men do, like grossmen do at least, like it's

just a thing. Yeah, So I don't see, but I get it that it's like if you're really doing work and you're in the military and you're looking at this guy and people are dying all around you, and you're on the battlefield and you have phone boy who doesn't even have to touch the soil, and he's like dripped down with every medal and accomplishment, and I were talking cash it at all these functions and being a douche Yeah, because at least, like you know, it's like like if

you've got a fucking gold chain or whatever, you probably had to earn that gold chain. You had to fucking hustle, Like he just married some lady and then took her money, uh, and then bought a promotion. I'm looking at a picture of him pose with a sword like he is my sword, and I'm like, has he ever had to swing the sword on anybody? Or is he just posted up like this is how rappers pose with guns and music videos. He does eventually swing his sword, not at this point. Not.

And at this point he's never done anything. He's wearing all the medals and he's he's forcing all of the men under his command to never show up outside of their rooms unless they're wearing a full dress uniform with a handsome walking cane. Okay, so he was swaggy, he was had the Swag Brigade. Yeah, he wanted, he wanted, and yeah, and that that frustrates the men around him. Yeah. So and like these guys don't want to be the Swag Battalion, their criminals like they want to they want

to get drunk and fight. Um, they don't want to wear walk around with canes. So in the winter of eighteen oh seven, France invades Portugal. In Spain, the British counter invade, and although Gregor and his unit were nearby, they didn't take any part in the fighting until like eighteen o nine, when they're sent to Portugal to fight

under the Duke of Wellington. After deploying to Portugal. The fifty seven fought heroically at the Battle of Albuera, which was this horribly bloody, grinding affair that killed like ten thousand people and was like a hugely famous battle of time. And it has now been forgotten by everybody but war nerds, because that's what happens when you sacrifice yourself in hugely famous battles, is everybody but nerds forgets you. Um, And I wish that that wasn't the case, because yeah, absolutely,

now we should remember all the battles. Obviously we're still in Afghanistan, like we should remember all the ship that's still going on. But it's more interesting to me sometimes the olden time battles because he's just gotta be in good shape. I gotta be out here stabbing you. That's a lot of work. And I have that multiple people, like I gotta be out here. How long are you?

How many hours are you outside stabbing? I know, everybody's gotta be out of breath, just like and they're all wearing like these thick cotton uniforms like now ship breeds right like right now we got breed material. They have to dress like they're about to go to a kaya West fans hat certain pounds, like yeah, it's it sucks, it sounds terrible. I have to take a break. Is there a point in the fight where we both just like hold on, listen, just take yo. Yeah, I mean

they're actually we're so time. Everybody stretched. We don't know we're gonna keep the battle going. We just saw me so like yeah. They So his unit fights in this very famous battle, um and they earned the nickname the die Hards because like they're they're such good of fighters. And Gregor would spend the rest of his life bragging about the fact that he served with the die Hards

and he fought in this battle, and he didn't. It's a total lie because when it happened, he was actually back in England, because months before the fighting happened, he got into like what was probably a fistfight with a superior officer and then got kicked out of his unit

and eventually the entire British Army um um. And we don't know exactly what happened, but one of his comrades did write that he was much addicted to the pleasures of the table gambling and was frequently intemperate, drunk to excess Um so he was probably got wasted and got into a dumb fight with somebody he shouldn't have been fucking with, and he got kicked out of the army. Wow, I love how classy it sounds back then like he

loved the table bowl, the table. Yeah. Now it's like, but you're sitting at a slot machine for sixteen hours. It's called the table. It's if you smoke a cigar and we're white gloves while you do it. It's classy and not. It's a very depressing problem. Oh goodness, this guy. So he just came to war for the turn up. He said, it's gonna be cute. The girls are gonna be a statue. I'm gonna give you fashion, I'm gonna give you decoration, decorative warrior. And then he gets kicked

out before the fighting starts. But that's perfect. Yeah. And the thing about the eighteen hundreds is like he just went on claiming, oh no, I served with this unit at that famous battle, like I'm one of them, like I'm and he had like the regimental badges and there's no internet, like nobody gets like nobody can check up on this ship. Um so he just it's the perfect situation for him. He's like, because of his comrades fought and died bravely and earned a name for themselves, he

gets to use that name. But he also got to be hanging out back in fucking Edinburgh sorry not Lyne Edinburgh at the time. Like it's great situation for It's like, how are we going to tweet that he got headed out the army before the fild, Like there's no way to do that? Yeah, exactly, yea heat it out the r I like. So his first biographer, who was a soldier who served with him, Colonel Rafter, And we'll talk about this guy a little bit later. Um, who hated him,

by the way, wrote that quote. McGregor now appeared to enjoy the free, his freedom with little foresight and less reflection. So he's very happy to be kicked out of the army. Um yeah, I will be Yeah, fuck it. I mean it seems like a bad thing to be in. And he got everything he needed. He got the drip and he got the rep and he had to go to war. That's the perfect recipe. It is perfect. And like it was a dumb Like there's been like three wars ever that like we're worth it to fight in, and like

the fucking Napoleonic Wars were not one of them. Um. So yeah, rafter goes on to write, quote, having honored the city of Edinburgh with his residence for some time, he there assumed the title of colonel. He was not actually a colonel. He's just one of these guys in the eight hundreds who's like, I'm gonna call myself a fucking colonel. Um. He decorated his heels with guilt spurs, that's like golden spurs, and his breast with the badge of a Portuguese Order of Knighthood, which he had not

earned either. His lady foreign contessa his footman were dressed in a fairy, whimsical livery, and the panels of his chariot were highly emblasmed and shown with all the blushing honolds honors of a coronet, which as they could. So he's he's just lying, and he's got the money to buy all of the fancy things to claim that he's

a colonel, and like his wife is royalty. And and again, the only way to know somebody was fancy back then was whether or not they could afford to pretend they had honors and nobody is able to check up on ship, so he's got the money. So it's true. It works

out great for him. Well, actually it doesn't. It doesn't work out great quite at this point because he's a Scotsman and all of the people around him or Scotsman and Scottish people don't give a shit about this because there's scott it right, Like, they don't like, they don't they like, oh, you're covered in golden ship, like we all spend all of our time getting into naked fist fight fist fights in the wood woods were fucking Scottish Like, They're like, yeah, your your medals are cute, but we

don't care. Yeah we don't care. Yeah, they do not. He will later figure out how to trick his native people, but at this point his native people are like, so what the fuck, Like, who cares if you're if you're a colonel and you married a rich lady like go go likes piss up a rope buddy, Um uh so yeah they Gregor decides to leave Scotland forever and he moves to the Isle of Wight with all of his fancy stuff because the Isle of Wight, as you might have guessed by the name was filled with a lot

of dumb, rich white people who through ostentatious parties, and all of these people believe his lies as long as he dresses well. So like this is the place for him. I'm glad he finally found his scammera paradise. He get his great gats beyond who's the great gass the military, and I love it. Yeah, yeah, he's doing it. He's doing it right. Um. As Rafter wrote, quote, he there represented himself as an heir to the to a Highland baronet and to a castle with an estate in the Highlands.

His gay disposition, handsel and figure and good address procured him ready admission to all circles, and the assemblies of the isle were considered devoid of their principal attraction unless graced by the presence of the lively Scotsman. So it becomes like the biggest name on the island. He's like, he's he's he does have that like thing. He would have been a good like reality star or something at

the time. He's good at self. Yeah, yeah, and everybody everybody on this island charismatic, specifically to rich people, like he's really good at impressing rich people. Um, right, and everyone's board, especially if you're rich, you actually have people to do the day to day ship that you had to do that Ben, if you don't have to plush your own hand cart and make your own damn food, then you probably need some entertainment. Yeah. Why would you

care if somebody's lying through their teeth at you? As long as they tell a good story. Like that's literally the only thing that matters. Because you're so bored you want to die all the time. Time. But you know who's not so bored, they want to die all the time. Lacy, the products and services that support this podcast we have returned. That was a little more energy than that deserved. I was trying to be like Gregor McGregor and like and do the hype you know. Yeah, yeah it works for me.

Thank you, Lacy, thank you, thank you for keeping my confidence high. As a confidence man, I um, maybe one day. So yeah, he dominates the social scene in the Isle of Wight. Um, but he gets bored because like he's he's one. Like it's kind of like he beat that level and he's the big fish and the alo whites kind of a small pond. So he decides he wants to go somewhere bigger and fancier and like take yeah, exactly.

Never satisfied, so he goes to London, um, which is the fanciest place in the world then and maybe now, I guess it's it's still pretty fancy, still pretty fancy, um. But you know, London is kind of like a different fucking ballpark than the Isle of White and he's gonna need more than just like fake credentials to make a mark there because there's a lot of colonels and fucking barons and ship like there's kings and ship it's fucking it's London. So thankfully for him, his dad had just

died um. And even though his dad wasn't the clan chieftain, Gregor was able to start lying and pretend that he'd inherited the position as the chief of Clan McGregor. So he starts calling himself Sir Gregor McGregor. And again, no Internet,

so nobody gets to check this ship. And for a while it worked, largely because Gregor burned through his wife's dowry at an extraordinary pace, bribing his way into high society and buying all the expensive uniforms and a kouchrama that he needed to look like the man he was pretending to beat all of this eight through you know, the money that he had. And then in eighteen eleven, tragedy struck. His wife Maria died. Now, this was not a tragedy because he cared anything about her. This was

a you know fucker. Um, this was a tragedy because it severs his ties with her rich family, and he was starting to run low on cash and he didn't make no babies with her. Come on, oh, scam a McGregor. You didn't make you about one seed with Honestly, you have a little connection. He's not taking a hit. I love how angry that you are with him that he did not pregnant impregnate his wife before she died tragically. Um, because it's bad, it's bad. Uh, it's bad craft. You

know you gotta make a baby right? Also, like if you're gonna run through your coins, like are you just looking for affirmation, sweetheart? Like you gotta be trying to have Like there has to be some kind of en goal. Are you trying to make more money? Are you gonna rope people into your new pyramid scheme? McGregor McGregor LLC co of Riches, Like, what's the end goal here? Yeah, that's the thing about at this point he doesn't really have an end goal. He's just kind of he just

kind of wants to feel fancy. Um. He doesn't seem to have a plan in this period that will come later. He grows. He this is a growth story, lazy um. But at this point, yeah, he's so. I'm actually gonna quote from it right up in the Rothchild archive about him. Quote. McGregor could not face the prospect of returning to his family farm in Scotland. His only real experience was military, and his interest was aroused by the colonial revolts against

Spanish rule in Latin America, particularly Venezuela. The Venezuelan revolutionary general Francisco de Miranda had been fedted in London during a recent visit, and McGregor had formed the idea that exotic adventures in the New World might earn him similar celebrity. He sold the small Scottish estate he had inherited and sailed for South America via Jamaica in the early eighteen twelve. Now, this guy, General Francisco de Miranda, is is a really

interesting dude. So like this period. We'll talk about this a little later, but like everybody's fucking the South. America is full of revolutions, and this guy, Francisco de Miranda is like a revolutionary, like a very successful general who's won a bunch of battles and like he just travels around Europe when he's not fighting and fox absolutely everybody. Um So, he rules. He's like, he's like he's like a cool figure, like he's the soldier of fortune, this

like fighter for liberty. And he's also just like he's like James Bond, just like sleeping with everybody in every city he can. Um So, he's like McGregor sees this guy and he's like, that's the fucking life I warrant um. Yeah, he goes to Jamaica. It's supposed to just be a stopover, but he falls in love with Jamaica as soon as he lands there, and he tries briefly to make a life. But for McGregor, making a life somewhere meant hanging out at rich people's parties and pretending to be a war hero.

And in those days, traveling dandies had to carry letters from other rich and famous people who knew the rich and famous people in the area they'd travel to and that was how you'd get introduced to high society. And he didn't have any of that, so nobody would let him into their parties. Dang, he didn't think he just makes some letters up. Yeah, that's what's surprising to me, because he's not above it. I guess he just didn't He wasn't confident that he could. Maybe he didn't know

who to fake the letter from. Right right, right right. You do need that information, you need to you need to have a name, and he probably didn't have that. And again he's he's he's a baby scammer at this point, you know, he's he's he's not good yet. So he was waiting outside the club and he couldn't get in. Yeah, he could not get in. Nobody's letting him through the rope.

So in spring of eighteen twelve, he continues on to Venezuela and he lands in Caracas two weeks after much of the city had been destroyed by an earthquake that killed like thirty people. Um horrible, horrible earthquake. So he introduces himself as Sir Gregor to anyone who'd listened, and he starts talking to representatives of the Republican Army uh and claiming that he's a colonel and a knight in the Portuguese or Order of Christ and all of his

old lives. Now at that point, Venezuela's in the middle of a revolution against Spanish authority. And this was part of a broad trend across South America, like all like all of these places in South America are erupting into like liberation struggles, um and as times of chaos and political change tend to do. This period opened up the door to Charlottean's and Conman. It's real easy to like work on a grift in a in a in a

situation like I mean, look at COVID. You know many COVID, Yes there all right, and we haven't even had our evolution yet, like like thirty days away or so. Literally it's like a few days away from the revolution, not far. Yeah, I need to get my revolution scams together. What am I going to be selling out here on the streets. I think Colonel Moseley has actually a nice ring to it.

Could be a colonel, yeah, I think so. Yeah, you just gotta pick a militia that's not actually going to fight to be a colonel of because you don't want to. You don't want to get tested on that ship. Right, No, I gotta go somewhere on people like Tooth, like like New Guinea, like very small. Yeah. So all these con men and stuff start popping up in Venezuela, and not just conmon but all of these Like it's just like there's a big vacuum of power and a bunch of

dudes who want power kind of flooded. Yeah. I'm gonna quote from a write up by the Bulletin of Latin American Research to kind of discuss this period. Quote. The end of Spanish rule in the Americas is generally seen by scholars as a period in which a power vacuum came to be filled by Cardillos. These were popular leaders,

strongmen competing on the basis of their charisma. There's strong social constituencies i e. Them in from their land economic basis and political projects, and the absence of a state monopoly of violence. Physical force was rarely irrelevant to explanations

of their rise to power on these criteria. Despite his foreignness and Scottish birth, but Gregor certainly had the capacity to become a successful cutty Low, even though the quintessential cutty Low was a local figure whose ability to function as a leader rested primarily on local support and resources. So this is like, these kinds of guys are are writing into this gap and gaining power for themselves, and he's got the potential to be one of them. Right.

He has the skills, um, which is that he's charismatic and good at getting people to to follow him. So yeah, and if people have no leadership, then that's when you pull up with the leadership when everything Yeah, hey, look I just happened to be here and you do now I'm a leader. Does he speaks Spanish? Are you all willing to die for me? Oh? Yeah? It's been taken over by Spade yet yeah no, no, no no, yeah,

they're they're fighting for freedom from Spain. But like so they're fighting a war like as He lands and Caracas has liberated, but like there's Spanish troops all over the place, like there's a and the war is not going very well. Um, and yeah he has to he learns at some point, you know, he started he grew up speaking Gaelic, I think so he had to learn English, like he's good at acquiring languages, as a lot of people tended to be in that era. So the Venezuelan Republicans were desperate

for men, and they were desperate particularly for seasoned military leaders. Um. And the British armies like the most powerful army in the world at the time. They're the guys who beat Napoleon. So like, if you come in saying like, oh, I I was a British military officer to like this group of people trying to raise an army from nothing, like they're gonna be like, oh, ship, can you can you help us out? Like we really we could use some

help here. So obviously he inflates his record. He lies and says that he's that he commanded the infamous fifty seven foot regiment the die Hards and turned them into the elite unit that held the Lion at the Battle of Albuera that he had not been at. But he yeah, I fought Napoleon. Yeah yeah. The Venezuelans had no way to know that he was lying because he was far away then, uh, and he owned a nice uniform, so they assumed he was telling the truth. Um, and he's

you know, a convincing guy. So Gregor also made a good call by going directly to the commander in chief of the nascent Venezuelan state, General Miranda. That guy was just talking about at this point, he's basically the dictator of Venezuela because like they're trying to win a war and they do this thing that you see a lot of republics do in times of strife, where they're like, here, have all the power for a limited time, if you can, like if you can win this thing for us and all.

But what's what's crazier is what's crazy isn't that like that happened and people usually wound up living under a dictator for the rest of the lives. What's crazy, Like sometimes those dictators actually did give back the power. It's the weird story. Yeah, yeah, it happened in Rome a couple of times. That's where you know Cincinnati, like the

city of Cincinnati. It's named after a Roman leader named Cincinnatis who was this He was like a military leader who became the dictator of Rome during like this horrible like war that like threatened the life of the republic and they made him a dictator for like a temporary period of time, and he won the war and then he like gave up everything, all of his power and went back to being a farmer. And he was he was a chill dude. Yeah. Um yeah, that's why Cincinnati

is called Cincinnati. Um. There there you go a little bit of extra history for you. So uh yeah, back to back to Gregor McGregor. So yeah, he goes straight to General Miranda, and David Sinclair's biographer notes that Miranda was like, yeah, the man that Gregor dreams of being. Um. But I also think that maybe because Gregor idolized this guy and had studied him so much he had he gained a really deep understanding of like what Miranda needed

and wanted. Because he basically turns himself into the person that this guy needs and becomes his right hand man. Um, because like the war is not going well, Miranda needs a guy that he can trust to like train a lot of his troops and like he needs like a because Miranda is an old guy too, he needs a strong right hand and Gregor kind of becomes that. He gets immediately made a colonel for real this time. So he's actually he faked his way into being a colonel.

So that's nice. Uh, And he gets a unit of cavalry um and he's sent straight into battle, this time near a town called mary Kay that was under deadly siege by the Spanish forces who were attempting to retake Venezuela for their king. For weeks, Venezuelan and Spanish soldiers clashed at various points along along front line. Gregor finally saw combat, and, as David Sinclair writes, he actually was

really good at fighting. Like he he does the thing finally. Yeah, he was a liar at first, but like when it comes down to actually going into battle, he's good at it. We love to see a good fake it till you make it story. Yeah, he faked his way into being a war hero until he made his way into being a war hero. I'm gonna quote from David Sinclair here. Colonel McGregor stirred Republican spirits when he led his cavalry into the route of a of a royal force near

Sarah Gordo between mary Kay and Valencia. But it was something of a peripheral action and could not be developed into a general offensive by Miranda's troops. So he earns a promotion through his heroics, but they don't really affect the battle, and the fact that he gets a lot of attention for being brave spurs him on to do another like super brave dangerous cavalry charged during another battle at a place called Los Guios, and this time it

gets most of his men killed and horribly maimed. Um too much your chip always yeah, yeah, but General McGregor survives and uh, his scheme works to the extent that his bravery again, like it impresses all of the other officers, who of course don't care that he got a bunch of guys killed. They care that, like he showed bravery and stuff, um, because that's the way war was at

that point. Um, So yeah, that's that's cool. And getting his you know, getting his men massacred convey the other European soldiers in the serving in the Venezuelan cause that Gregor was a real war hero. So they like they all believe him now because he he leads this incredibly bad idea. Well of course, then also he can tell the story because he's the one, you know, one of the few who lived. He can be like, yeah, yeah, it was crazy, it's not now it's not an error

in judgment. It's like, oh, the opposing side. But I'll tell you what, I would not be in Gregor's battalion if they're like, oh Gregor, I'm no, no, no, no no, because his men die for sure, they die and dye in I want a chance in life. No, my men absolutely weren't cursing my name as they bled to death on the sands. You can ask them, well, you can't because they're dead. But like I'll tell you, I was there.

They were happy about dying. They actually were like, this is great, thanks for getting us a chance to die. Greg It was so easy to be a military scammer back then. So another dude who was running around in the same circles of this period was fighting on the same side, was a guy named Simone Boudivar, who was at that time considered to be one of the brightest minds in the Venezuela military. And he was a colonel. Yeah, yeah,

Simone Boulevard, very famous guy. He went on to become the Liberator, a nickname he earned like he really really earned by freeing modern day Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Panama from Spanish rule. So like, yeah, the girls knew they were about to be free. Yeah yeah, so yeah I like that. Um. And he's a fascinating dude. And it is also like everyone who gets a bunch

of statues kind of a piece of ship too. Um. But for our purposes today, you just need to know that he was like a popular officer when Gregor started fucking his young cousin. Um. And I'm gonna quote from of course. Hell yeah, man, it goes okay, it actually goes pretty well for Gregor. Um. The scene that he was he seems to have actually been in love with this woman because they stayed together for like twenty something years until she dies. Why don't they just keep is

he killing them? They? I mean, you know she did have kids, and like that wasn't a good idea back then, but with what with the deaths, that's why birthdays are a thing now, because he was like, oh, your kid made it, your kid made it, and you made it. Yeah. I'm gonna quote from Colonel Rafter's biography here, and this is like after he starts fucking this girl. Um, I

think Josepha is her name. Yeah, the mother of this lady finding that reports president, prejudicial to her daughter's reputation had obtained circulation in consequence of McGregor's intimacy with her, appealed to General Miranda, who, acquainting McGregor with the circumstance, recommended him strongly to marry her, to which he answered, with all that apathy for which she is remarkable, with

all my heart, I have no objection. So he starts sucking this girl, but like not not in an official way, and like you're not supposed to do that at this point. And this girl's mom finds out and she's like, the hell do you think you're doing? And she goes to General Miranda because she's like, this is a high society woman that he's like fucking and he's not. He's not getting hitched to. And so Miranda basically sits him down and says like, hey, if you don't marry this girl,

bad things will happen to you. Because this is a dictatorship and I have that power and his responses, I have no objection to marrying her. So yeah, he doesn't even say that, he's just like I don't hate her, Yeah fine, yeah, yeah, no, ringer here, what do y'all want to do it whatever. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, this is this is basically a shotgun wedding um and it would it would be one of General Miranda's last orders because the war very quickly went to ship for the

Republican side. And to make a long story short, Miranda was again an old man and kind of losing it, and as his chances shout A soured, he retreated into fantasy.

And like he and he, he promotes McGregor to a general and they would spend all of their time and his like mansion in the hills away from the front line, have big parties and they're actually having like a giant fancy party on July twelve when the entire Venezuelan lion collapses under a renewed Spanish assault, and obviously the guy being the McGregor is he's very happy to be having a party rather than like fighting at the front line

when things are actually bad. What a party spoiler though, you know, someone coming in and be like, hey, hey, everybody died, everybody's dead. We don't really have an army anymore. It looks like we lost this one. Is that a coop for Champagne? I know I will thank you so the whole defeat happened in part because Simone Boulevard, who was not yet the Liberator, kind of abandoned his post. Because Boulevard is one of these guys was a real sense of his own destiny and he's like, oh, we're

gonna lose. I don't I don't want to be around for this ship. So he's not a loser. General Miranda returns to Caracas to try to organize a defense, and Boulevard gathers a bunch of his allies and comes back and arrests the general and hands him over to Spain, and as a result, Bolivar is able to kind of escape, and it's it's a very shady thing that happens, but it seems to be mostly his desire to save his own ass and like the fact that the war was

clearly lost. So they yeah, so Boulevard like runs the funk away to Jamaica basically uh. And Gregor McGregor does the same thing. While a lot of brave Republicans die fighting the Spanish. Gregor's like, oh no, no, no, no no, and he got I am not a causes guy. Yeah, and he he very pointedly gets on the boat with all of the Republican sides money, like all of their gold that they're taking away so that they can continue the revolution. Like he makes sure he's on the money.

But yeah, he's watching the money. That's what he's there to do. And they go back to sorry, the Jamaica, to curus ou Um. Yeah, you know, the Bahamas, Like that's that's that's that's that's where you go run to when you lose a war in South America. Then and now wind up in the Bahamas. When I lose my war in South America, I'm planning to go to a beautiful yeah now refugees, a strong yeah yeah, no, yeah, I was a freedom fighter. Yeah. So Bolivar winds up

there too. In the defeated revolutionaries immediately start planning their comeback. But like Gregor is not really interested in that. The reputation he had earned during the war, Like he kind of liked being a cardillo and he liked he liked he was a man people would follow. He had like a name in South America. Now he was he was kind of famous for being on the size of liberation, and he figures that kind of leaning into this is going to be his best chance to make a shipload

of money. So he travels to New Granada, which is a Spanish colony on the border Venezuela that was fighting like hell to not be a Spanish colony anymore. It had a leader who was a general named Narinho who had been given dictatorial power again and the hope that he would beat Spain. Same kind of deal, and and McGregor does the same thing. He like gets in good

with this guy. He gets given like an army by this guy, and high too like hired to train them basically, and he was not good at training armies um and they he tended to mainly focus on making them look fancy and march around a lot which they like gowns beautiful downs can fight without a gown. Where's you want to die in this war? So his subordinates complained that he was basically a little dictator himself. Uh, but before

you know that can come to a head. General Narinho loses a major battle and the Spanish army basically wins, and seeing the advancing Spanish forces, Gregor runs like funk again and he winds up retreating to the public to the Republic of Cartagena in a in modern Columbia UM. So we all know Cartagena uh for different things these days. At that point it was like a little independent republic. So this is a very complicated and messy period in

Latin American history. I'm the furthest thing in the world from an expert from it. There's all these different figures. Bol Far comes back and fights again and loses again and runs away again, and like all this ship's happening, Like it's just a fucking constantly revolution revolutions and rebellions and fight and fight happening. It sounds like, yeah, everything is just like it's very very confusing time to try

to understand. Gregor exhibited a great skill in latching himself to whatever soldiers and whatever soldiers were hanging around him to like whatever cause seemed like the best bet at the time, and he was not always good at judging that, which is why he wound up trapped in the city of Cartagena while a massive Spanish army blasted the walls

away with big guns. He yeah, he managed to survive the siege, just barely, and he characteristically got out because he volunteered to organize the retreat after helping to convince that's what I volunted there before. There in the room, they're like, Okay, who's gonna do the charge? Who? You know what, I got the retreat. I'm actually very good at organizing. I majored in retreated college. I can take

care of this. You guys die holding them off, which is what happens, like the bravest men die holding them off, and Gregor organizes the retreat. Uh. And of course he winds up taking another boat back to Jamaica, and this time he's welcomed by the island's British high society types

because now he's a famous freedom fighter. Because the British, they don't they like that all of these places are freeing themselves from Spain, because every country that frees itself from Spain is another place the British can set up shopping and sell stuff to right themselves. Yeah, but they're

kind of colonization. So the British thought that Spanish colonialism was barbarous because they murder all these people, they enslave all these people, as opposed to the British kind of colonization, where the countries are independent, we just bring in corporations that force people to labor forests and in conditions that

are basically slavery, right, Jeff bay selves murder and college. Yeah, Okay, it's cute over here like people that, but we at leastwork and we get to talk, yeah, and we get to talk a good game about supporting liberation in freedom right, um, and so like these high society types are all for the freedom of these nations from Spain. And McGregor is now a famous freedom fighter and he's the best kind of he's the best kind of Latin American freedom fighter.

A white guy, right, he's not Latin American. Yeah. So and also like honestly, like a lot of the Latin American freedom fighters who were natives, we were basically white. Like we're white guys because like people, so uh quote. McGregor was delighted to find himself welcomed as a hero among the British community of Jamaica, and enthralled many a dinner party there with heavily embellished accounts of his part

in the siege of Cartagena. Some of those listening received the impression that McGregor had taken personal charge of the defense of the city, with one of them recorded as leaping to his feet and proposing an enthusiastic toast to the Hannibal of modern Carthage. One of the names McGregor made was that he had lost two children during the Terrible Siege. This was almost certainly a lie, probably designed further to dramatize McGregor sacrifices in the car fake kid

death scamp. Hell, yeah he did. That's the best kind of death to fake. You get so much. I fake that. I faked my children's deaths all the time. But did he bring the kids that he had with the Spanish woman with him or is he just a debbie dad who was like, yeah, and then they killed my kids for sure? He never had kids. Oh I thought the homegrown got pregnant before she died. The second wife, Uh no, no, she's dead as hell. I don't think she had any kids.

The second wife didn't have kids either, Okay, no, no, no, the second wife no, sorry, the second wife is still alive, but they haven't had kids. Okay, he just made up some kids. He was like, yeah, I missed le Jr. M. McGregor, Gregor Gregor and us Stephanie. Those are my kids so weird. Yeah, yeah, my my child fake too for s own in my chad. Anyway, they're dead now, horrible, real, sad, real, sad? Can I have more wine? Yeah? Uh, that is my My advice to all of you is pretend that your children are

dead if you want to be famous. It helps you know what, won't fake the deaths of your children. Wait, anyway, here's ads. We're back, and Sophie's being mean to me because I don't understand pop culture. And you know that's the kind of bigger tree that I faced daily. So I mean, it's not my fault that you don't know. As my kids died in the siege of Cartagena. I'm so sorry for you. A lot kids have been dead

longer than he's been alive. By the time McGregor wound up back in Jamaica again, as I said, Boulivard had attempted deliberate Venezuela again and it hadn't worked out. Um, And this is like he's a boulevard is like a fucking committ a dude, Like he does believe in what he's doing. He's just you know, he's the kind of guy who's able to get it done, which is the kind of guy who's willing to like time for me to abandon this army. The same kind of work out.

You gotta know when to cut your losses, my losses, I mean people. Yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, that's what we're talking about. Like you gotta know when to hold them, when to walk away, and when to run from them and lave them to die at the hands of the Spanish army. That's what um. Yeah. So the two meet up again on the island uh, and this time Bolivar offers to make McGregor a general again. And it was eighteen sixteen by this point. Um. In short order, both

men managed to rally together another army. I don't know how they do it, but they're always able to keep making armies. And they invade Venezuela again, and this one goes better. At first, Bolivar's forces win a major victory, but then Spain counter attacks and a bunch of people die, and Bolivar finds himself retreating to a town called Sharoni, where his trust trustworthy friend, General Gregor McGregor was waiting

with a fresh force of men. By the time he got there, though, Gregor was long gone because as soon as he heard that Bolivar had law he retreated. Look that's said, and he's give Hi credit this. He's incredible at retreating UM and this is the moment. This is his real moment of heroism, like the one that we're getting. This is like the one legitimate moment of heroism that he really has. UM. Also, like Bolivar feels to me

just like McGregor. Word's like, okay, we usually third times the charm, but the third time we still didn't defeat the Spanish army. Like bro, let's just pack it up, okay, Like I'm not fighting an award for boulevard. Are you gonna die? The thing that differentiates them is that Bolivard really does believe in liberation, and that's why he keeps doing this right, like he's just willing to kind of like he's not. He believes so much in his destiny that he's not willing to like die because he he

has to make the cause happen. Gregor doesn't believe in anything um, but he's really good at retreating UM. So he's got this army which is mostly made up of freed slaves who didn't really know they had any option but to fight for a bunch of indigenous people. Um.

But to his credit, he didn't like abandon them. He he leads them on this retreat and it's like the most herobic moment in his life because it's it's a horrible like situation to be in, because like they're fleeing through these heavy like woodland areas and they're they're being pursued constantly by all of these Spanish armies and they keep getting into like these battles that they keep winning.

Like he's actually really good at this. He keeps getting attacked while he's fleeing and like beating these Spanish armies that are trying to capture him as he's trying to link up with his other allies further north. And like by day nine of this, their ammunitions almost spent and like their their clothing is in tatters and they're just they've just been like murdering their way through this this

incredibly rugged terrain. Um. It's like it's it's actually a really impressive military feat that he's able to keep this

army together and winning. But he owes a lot of it to his wife because like kind of when they're at the end of their rope and exhausted and ammunition, and out of ammunition, they wind up running into like get an their Spanish army, and they don't really like they don't have the ammo to fight them in the traditional way, and so his wife picks up a lance and leads the army on her horse into like this desperate suicidal charge against the Spanish lines, and they break

the Spanish army against all odds and win. It's like this this fucking wild thing that happens. UM, And so General McGregor and his victorious army limp into the city of Barcelona after thirty four days of constant fighting and fleeing, and it's like it's it's it's seen as like a miracle basically that they'd survived Um and this incredible feat and it makes him like a legendary figure within South America. UM, And it is an act of like really like it's sucking.

It was a crazy thing that he was able to like succeed at Um so simone Bolivar sin sem a letter hailing him as one of the great military geniuses of the era, and like he kind of deserved it at that point. Um And if he'd stayed with the Venezuelan cause, he would have had a guaranteed place of

honor and privilege when they eventually won their war. But he gets into another big fight with a guy in charge of him, and when that guy like won't take the advice that McGregor gives him, McGregor just abandons, like the Venezuelan army and leaves. He was like, Okay, enough liberation. Yeah, I got into an argument with a guy. Fuck it, Like, I don't believe in this anymore, so he he fucks off.

Bolivar like writes him a series of letters, desperate to try to get this guy to come back, but there was no getting McGregor back because he had fallen in love with a new dream, Lacey, the dream of every

red blooded man and woman invading and conquering Florida. So he travels to Haiti and he hand picks a group of mercenaries for this endeavor, and he finds like a hundred and five guys, but they all abandoned him as soon as it's time to leave for the United States, so he winds up sailing to Philadelphia with just his wife, and he immediately sets to work recruiting get another army to invade Florida, which at that point belonged to Spain.

Um yeah, and I'll so at that point it was a time in the world where you could just kind of like show up in an American city and been like, who has a gun and wants to do some war with me, Let's go to Florida, And like people would be, oh, yeah, I want to do that to Jethro about the war, let's go. Have you been to philadel It doesn't get nicer, Like we might as well go to war. So yeah, um he gets some yeses. And I'm gonna quote again

from the land that never was here. He claimed that he had received a commission from the government of the United States, together with a considerable sum of money, to take possession of Florida on behalf of the Republican movement to New Granada, with a tacit agreement of the Spanish government.

He had, he said, attended daily meetings in March eighteen seventeen with the American Secretary of State and the Spanish ambassador in Washington, and they had agreed that he should take a small force to occupy Amelia Island off the east coast of Florida, which he would subsequently hand over

to the Americans. Spain would not attempt any military interventions so long as McGregor was seen to be acting in the interests of New Granada and was willing to see it Amelia to the Americans, but could not do so directly for political reasons, mainly that any display of willingness to give up its American possessions would serve to spread and encourage revolution. Now this was all a lie, like Spain did not agree to give up any part of Florida.

Uh and the Secretary of State, who McGregor claims that he had worked with to set up this plan was not even in the United States at the time. He was in like France or something. But McGregor, nonetheless, somehow, somehow still walked away with a State Department mandate authorizing him to take control of Amelia Island and East and West Florida. Now, the paper was not signed by the Secretary of State, but it was signed by representatives of

several Latin American liberation movements. And like some random dude who worked in the Secretary in the Department of State or in the State Department, and as best I can tell, he basically convinced these South American liberation leaders who were in Washington, d c. To like support their cause, that

he was going to conquer Florida for them. And then he used their clout to score a meeting with some random State Department functionary who wrote down what he told him, and that gave McGregor the most important thing in the world in the eighteen hundreds, which was a fancy piece of paper with nice stamps on hit that he could use to convince dumb soldiers of fortune that he was legitimate. So like that's what he does. Like he needs the papers.

He gets the papers, and so he starts trawling around New York and South Carolina and Georgia, calling himself Brigadier General of all the forces both naval and military, destined to affect the independence of the Florida's Look at my papers. I kind of want to steal that one someday when I invade Florida. I mean, someone needs to invade Florida, so I can use a Colonel Lazy. It could be you, just you. You just show up tall, and it's my job to raise the army and never get close to Florida.

Someone else actually has to try invading it and stuff. I'm just here to raise a bunch of money and then take it and run. See, that's why I want to be I don't want to be the president doing the work of liberating Florida. No, No, nobody deliberate Florida. That's why it's still the way it is. So. Uh. He gathers an army of several hundred men, which is enough to cut Like a couple hundred guys, you could

conquer a Florida. Back in those days things were easier. Uh. To fund his journey, he did the only thing he knew how to do besides fight, and he hatched an elaborate scheme. I'm gonna quote here from Colonel Rafters book. The Americans had long been looking with eyes of desire on the fertile and extensive tracts of East Florida, and now gladly embraced the opportunity which seemed to offer itself of gratifying their long cherished wishes. McGregor saw and took

advantage of the public feeling. He issued and issued papers which he called scripts, which he engaged to convey to every person advancing one thousand dollars or to the holder of the script, which was transferable two thousand acres of land in Florida or to repay the sum advanced with interest. The world was is at all times the dupe of some hubble or another. And although it is scarcely credible, yet it is a certain fact that McGregor obtained by

this means a hundred sixty thousand dollars. So he's like, yeah, give me a thousand bucks and I'll give you a land in Florida. And people do it and he makes a lot of money. How you don't, Oh, I love it. That's what That's what all great con men do, though, is sell land they don't own. That's the great con our president kind of. Yeah, I mean it's still happening. You have to be careful if you're renting a house

or something because there's so many people out here. We're still renting homes to that they don't own too people. So I love it. Yeah, it is. He is doing an Airbnb, right, Like the Airbnb is just like a dressed up like they're selling Florida to Yeah. No, you got this lang out so you see right there? Yeah, have you have you ever been there? No, I'll sell it to you. No, it's nice. You don't love it, You're gonna you're gonna love it. Florida, great weather, no snakes.

So most con men would have just taken the money and run, but Gregor actually used it to equip an army and charter a boat, which he used to take sixty hand picked men to Amelia Island, which is that that point, just kind of a lawless island for haven

for pirates and prostitutes. He defeats the tiny Spanish garrison and then like conquers the island, and he delivers this baffling speech to his soldiers, who again are all like drunk mercenaries, promising, the children of South America will resound your names and their songs, your deeds will be handed down to succeeding generations, and will cover yourselves and your latest posterity with a never fading wreath of glory. So he really he's talking. He's talking this up like the

girls are gonna know you. Okay, everyone's gonna know your name. They're gonna singing songs about you. Tom, Tom oh Tom. He he fought real good. He's so good at fighting. Yeah. So McGregor calls for reinforcements, but rather than invade Florida is promised, he's set to work trying to turn Amelia Island into like an independent nation. And not because anyone had asked him to do us, but because he just kind of he was just kind of thought it was a neat So he like he builds a seal. He

like designs a seal for the Amelian government. He puts himself at its head. Uh, he like and he like I'm gonna quote here from from David Sinclair talking about like what he kind of gets up to in this period. The main purpose of his administration seems to have been to raise money for One of the first acts of Citizen McGregor, which is the title he gives himself, was to establish what he described as an admiralty court that would officially value the booty brought back to the island

by its resident privateers and pirates. For the service, the court would demand a fee of sixteen and a half percent of the gross value of the treasure. Whether any of the island's maritime entrepreneurs ever he took advantage of the offer is not recorded, but to encourage them further in their brutal trade, McGregor issued so called letters of mark, which were officially government licenses for buccaneers. So again he probably no one it. It's not anyone took like him

up on this. But he decides, like, I'm gonna start at government so that I can get pirates to pay me for being pirates, like what comes to interstate con Yeah, and he issues banknotes. He starts having money printed and he just signs it with his last name McGregor, which is a flex. I'll give him that it is. I

would like some McGregor's. Yeah. Yeah. So he spends the next few months just kind of drinking and fucking and partying, celebrating the fact that he's in charge of a country, and ignoring the fact that he had promised a lot of people he was going to conquer Florida. Um, yeah,

it's on the back burner. I'll ask for him. Spain realizes eventually that he's conquered their island and they don't like this, so they send an army to take it back, and the instant McGregor realizes that there's a Spanish army coming. He abandons all of his soldiers in country and he flees by boat with his wife, his script. That's his script, and ironically, the guys he leaves behind actually beat the

Spanish invasion. They beat two of them. Um, and then Mexico sends in troops and like takes over the island and it becomes a part of Mexico briefly. But then the United States invades and like kills all the Mexican soldiers and annexes Amelia from Mexico, and President Monroe justifies this by saying, like, well, hey, Mexico stole it from Spain, or Mexico stole it from these random mercenaries who stole

it from Spain, so like it's on the open market now. Yeah, we just came in and ticket, like what are you? What are you complaining about? Pirates can take it, but we can't. Fuck you. Yeah, we're America. Baby. The manifest my favorite scam manifest Destiny, which is like God told us to steal his land. So yeah, that's how it.

The United States gets its first piece of Florida. WoT fun had to involve a con man at some point, So on November nine, eighteen seventeen, Josepha McGregor, his wife gives birth to a son and they're still on board a boat at this point that they're using to flee to North America with all flee North America with all the money they'd grifted because he stilled like fifty grand from his army money. Uh. So gregor makes a medallion to commemorate his son's birth, which is the kind of

guy he is. He's like, he's he's he has a kid, and he's like, I gotta get an award for this ship. I gotta give myself an award for him. My wife who's having a baby in olden times on a boat. What did she do? What did she do? Tell me that. So this medallion he makes has an engraving of the flag of the Florida's and two phrases written in Latin on it Amelia I came, I saw I conquered, and liberty for the Florida's Under the leadership of McGregor, neither

of these things happened. Like you didn't want to fun like nothing, nothing, the baby, like okay, it's not about the baby. The baby is an excuse to have a medallion. The girls are gonna love this at the next party. Okay, Oh yeah. So McGregor was now a rich guy, but not as rich as he wanted to be. Fifty grand you could retire on in those fucking days, um, but he wanted, he wanted to be fuck you rich and

it was not quite that much. Yeah. So he regarded the con and then lost of a loss of Amelia Island as a big success because he'd made a bunch of money off of it, and it convinced him that being a freebooter, basically a pirate, you know, but on the national scale was kind of the way to go. Uh And I'm gonna quote now from a rite up in the Rothschild archive. He then oversaw two calamitous operations in New Granada during eighteen nineteen that each ended with

his abandoning British volunteer troops under his command. McGregor conferred and invented decorations and titles on his officers, fraudulently obtained and squandered money, and generally and generally behaved abominably. And during this period of time, I've been telling about this guy, Colonel Rafter, who wrote this biography of him. The reason Rafter is obsessed with McGregor is that his brother, who

is another Rafter, who was like an office. Was an officer in McGregor's army, and McGregor abandoned him and he was executed. The one thing you're gonna see of McGregor, it's the back of his head, okay, because the girls war better his face. Well, I got you all here. My job is done. I feel like he doesn't even announce when he's leaving. It's like the new Irish goodbye, Just turn around, looks starting the wars, half the battle. I figured y'all would do the rest. You go back

to have a meeting with him. They're like, no, his tent is gone. Like his tent is gone, so is all of our money. Who went out for battle? Actually he started backing. It was very bizarre. He took all of the gold and left us with the fake money with his name on it. Right, y'all trying to pay

for beers with McGregor. So McGregor arrives at the court of King George Frederick Augustus on the on the Mosquito Coast after he loses these these two wars that he's gotten involved with, and because of his like his fame in the area, he's able to convince the King of the Mosquito coast. Who's this this guy George Frederick to sign a document giving him in his airs, like a huge chunk of Mosquito territory in an area larger than Wales. It's said that he does this in exchange for rum

and jewelry. There's some debate um and it's so he gets this big he cons his way into like having a bunch of land, but it's useless land from a financial point of view, Like it's pretty, it's got a lot of game on it, it's able to support like an indigenous population, but like the soil is not great, it's a bad place to grow crops, and there's like it's in no way established or settled. He he has

this land that's not very useful. But what's more important than that is that he has this land, and he has a letter from this king telling him that he owns a bunch of land in Latin America. And this gives McGregor an idea because he's like, I've been trying. I've been putting all this effort into trying to conquer countries or conquered chunks of land and turn them into countries,

and like that's hard. What if I just pretend that I already have a country and then make people buy it, and then can vince people to buy it from me. So he he gives a name to this territory that he's he's kind of grifted, Poier, which he names after the inhabitants of the highlands of the area. And yeah, Poier,

nice name. And this is this is where the story of his great con begins, because McGregor didn't actually move to the land he'd acquired, nor did he like do anything with it, Like he's got this land, but he doesn't, he doesn't use it. Instead, he takes the letters saying it's his, and he sails back to Great Britain with a scheme in mind. And over the way on the like boat over to Great Britain, he starts calling himself the Kazik, which he claimed meant prince in in the

local language. So he starts claiming that this tract of land he's been given as like personal property is actually an independent country and he's been made royalty in this in this tribe, and so he's he's the Prince of Poier. And when he gets back to Great Britain, he's going to try to convince people to to buy into this scheme with him. Um, and that's what we're gonna talk about out in part two. Lazy Robbert, what would you

name your fake country? Oh, that's a great question. Oh gosh, it needs to be something like, uh, maybe like oh, I want to go with an L I don't know why. It's like leaves. Oh you went with a fancy name. Yeah, and go to La Bos. I don't think of something that sounds good like in a Drake song, like and popping bottles and La Bas. Yeah, l Bos. That's that's

my fake That's that does sound fancy. I was gonna call it fuck Valley and just like like, yeah, everybody gets laid in fun Valley, Like all these frat boys pay me a hundred bucks, you get to go to fuck Valley and then it's just a bunch of frat boys stuck in a valley and then they all get dehydrated. That fire festival, the fire festival is my plan. I was about to say that sounds like your plan is

the fire festival. That's exactly what it was. It's a great plan as long as you don't have the internet, so people find out it's a con and you can just take the money and run away to Norway or some ship. Right. I wish I could have run scams before there was Internet. I still think about old shadder hands and like checking people's money. Oh to see it was real? Oh yeah, Lacy Pluggables, Yeah sure, guys. As always, you can find me a d I D A l

A c I deva Lacey on all platforms. And if you like robbery and comedy, listen to my podcast Scam Goddess. Enjoin Lacey's Army Comication. Yes, people liberating Florida. Maybe tea next two days a good time? Look out? Look out for that on Twitter with you. We're just gonna show up and liberate Florida. Yeah yeah, you gotta live. I mean to be honest, could you some liberating these days?