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20 Historic Events Even the Movies Won’t Touch

Khalid Elhassan July 28, 2019 23 min

4. King Bonaparte Ended up in New Jersey

After the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, king Bonaparte ended up in New Jersey. Not that Bonaparte: emperor Napoleon ended up giving himself up to the British, who eventually exiled him to the remote island of Saint Helena. However, fate was kinder to his older brother Joseph, whom Napoleon had made the first king of Naples, where he was popular, then king of Spain, where he was anything but. Following his younger brother’s final defeat, Joseph chartered an American ship, the Commerce, for an escape to the United States.

Fortunately for him, Joseph had looted the Spanish treasury before he had been forced from the throne, so he was able to lead a comfortable life in America. After a few years in New York City and Philadelphia, Joseph bought a large estate in Bordentown, New Jersey, named Point Breeze. There, he hosted many leading luminaries and intellectuals, such as Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and the Marquis de Lafayette. He also claimed to have run into the Jersey Devil – a mythical monster, said to inhabit the state’s Pine Barrens.

Also Read: The Legend of the Jersey Devil.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.