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© University Alabama Press
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Description:
From the publishers:
On 18 June, 1815, Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo and, four days later, under great pressure, abdicated from the French throne. He was 45 years old, in good health and for the previous fifteen years had forged the destiny of Europe. What was left for him to do? "Perhaps to build a new empire in Mexico,in Peru or Brazil. The alternative was to put himself at the mercy of his most implacable enemy", as Winston Churchill put it in his monumental History of English Speaking Peoples. Napoleon himself revealed to his followers his desire to go into exile in the United States, "on the banks of the Mississippi», but the British navy ruined his plans.
Emilio Ocampo has worked in archives in Britain, France, Spain and America to give a completely new view of Napoleon's plans after the defeat at Waterloo. 'The emperor's last campaign' shows that the arrival of hundreds of Napoleonic veterans on the American continent was not only the result of political persecution but also part of a Bonaparte family secret plan to build a new empire in South America. This book reveals for the first time the influence which these projects had on the South American wars of independence and the French and British diplomatic intrigues designed to scupper these Bonapartist plans. Not only does the author open a new perspective on Napoleon's captivity on St Helena but he also forces the reader to re-assess chapters in the history of the independence of Argentina.
The English translation is now available, published in 2009.
Place and publisher: Editorial Claridad
Date of publication: 2007
Number of pages: 528
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