I was doing a little research for my present novel yesterday into Marshal Ney, just the usual stuff, and like all bad researchers I started with Wikipedia. I find it’s handy for getting an overview and then you can follow references and citations and links to verify facts and dig a little deeper. It was while reading that I stumbled across this gem:

One of the more colorful legends of Ney that grew up after his execution was that he had managed to escape to the United States. Proponents of this theory argue that Ney had Masonic  ties, including to the Duke of Wellington, who helped him fake his execution and flee abroad. According to this account, the soldiers in the firing squad put blood packets over his heart and then shot blanks at the Marshal. He was then smuggled to the United States and continued his life as a school teacher.

A man called Peter Stuart Ney arrived in the United States in 1816, and later taught school in North and South Carolina, including at Davidson College, where he designed the school seal still in use. He died in 1846, reportedly after uttering the final words, “Bessières is dead; the Old Guard is dead; now, please, let me die.” On his gravestone in Cleveland, North Carolina, at Third Creek Presbyterian Church on Third Creek Church Road, one will find the words “soldier of the French Revolution under Napoleon Bonaparte.”

Now, I’m not one of these people who goes around believing Elvis lives with JFK and two aliens in a rest home in area 51. (Princess Anastasia is the maid, I think.) Conspiracy theories have been around for many years and they’re generally so bizarre and stupid that they’re not worth a moment of your time. Let’s face it people only think Elvis lives because his fans had a hard time with the fact that their ‘king’ died on a toilet. This one, however, I rather enjoyed.

I don’t believe this to be true but then isn’t that the thing with theories? If you suspend your disbelief just slightly and open up your imagination a little then they’re not too much of a stretch. There is something wonderful about the idea that the man Buonoparte dubbed ‘the bravest of the brave’, the man who fought tooth and nail as the rearguard on the retreat from Moscow in 1812, could end his days teaching students in Carolina while vaguely thinking of past glory.

Of course the real evidence is that he was tried for treason and on December 7th 1815 he was to be found in the Luxembourg Garden, Paris, refusing to wear a blindfold, and uttering the words: “Soldiers, when I give the command to fire, fire straight at my heart. Wait for the order. It will be my last to you. I protest against my condemnation. I have fought a hundred battles for France, and not one against her … Soldiers, Fire!” And somehow, that seems like quite an exit in itself.