Diary Of a
Rich Madman: Jacques Lebaudy, Emperor Of the Sahara
In 1903s, the French millionaire Jacques Lebaudy renamed himself
Jacques the First and declared himself Emperor Of the Sahara. At the
age of forty, he was rich, by the standards of his day, after
inheriting money from his deceased father who had made his fortune
running a sugar factory in their home country. Lebaudy was a short
man with a taste for expensive odd clothes and, some would say, an
annoyingly high-pitched voice that resonated like nails on a
chalkboard. Apparently the age of forty was the big turning point in
his life when he decided to translate what he believed to be his
destiny into reality. But was he insane?
At first, no one seemed to think so. Lebaudy, using his vast
sums of wealth, bought a yacht for himself and two others to follow,
filled with 400 men, a battery of high powered guns, and the American
Civil War hero George Edouard Gouraud who would act as his
Governor-General during the venture. The yachts landed at Les
Minquies island off the coast of Morocco. Jacques Lebaudy had his men
carry a throne to his recently built pavilion and announced his
intention to claim the Sahara as part of the Empire of Patagonia for
the French colonial government. The French crown, however, refused to
accept him as Emperor. Lebaudy, nonetheless, continued to make plans
for his conquest, no doubt believing the colonialists would soon see
the error of their ways and come around to his point of view. While
Lebaudy sat on his throne, some of the local Arab population hatched
a plan to make money off the faux-dignitary; they kidnapped several
of his men and demanded a ransom. Lebaudy refused to pay them and
tried to coax his followers to ambush the kidnappers and bring the
men back. By this time, his subjects had started to think he was a
kook; many of them abandoned the Emperor. Some returned to France and
petitioned the authorities for help. Soon a fleet of French naval
vessels showed up and began bombarding the island shores with
artillery. The Arab kidnappers got scared and released the prisoners.
Jacques Lebaudy, Jacques the First, Emperor Of the Sahara had
become an embarrassment to the French government. They went to Les
Minquies, captured him, revoked his French citizenship, and deported
him. Lebaudy soon showed up in London, using his wealth to establish
residency in the plush Savoy Hotel.
Jacques Lebaudy had quite an interesting time at the Savoy. When
entering the dining room in the purple robes of an emperor, the hired
musicians would cease whatever piece they were playing and launch
into the national anthem of the Empire Of the Sahara which he had
commissioned a local composer to write in his honor. Lebaudy always
sat at his own private table with wife and daughter, the table being
draped with a royal purple tablecloth; a crown of chrysanthemum hung
from the ceiling overhead. Word got out that an emperor had arrived
in London and a cadre of journalists, photographers, celebrities, and
other schmoozers began to hang around. Several hundred visitors
stopped by; laborers, weapons dealers, merchants, farmers and others
all sought favor from Lebaudy, hoping to land a job. Some of them
were hired and immediately put on salary. Jacques the First spoke of
elaborate plans to cover the entire Sahara desert with his newly
designed flag as soon as he conquered the vast territory spreading
across the African continent. At dusk there was to be a church
ceremony and the greatest fireworks display the world had ever seen.
January 1, 1904 was set to be the date in which the new empire was to
be officially declared. That day came and went. Nothing happened. The
emperor’s throne remained empty on the island of Les Minquies,
awaiting the return of Jacques Lebaudy.
His family felt humiliated by his delusions of grandeur. They
quietly shipped him away to America to live in a Long Island mansion
where he would pace the halls and grounds in his uniform, covered in
thick rows of medals and military insignia.
Then something started to irritate the old nut. The age of
automobiles had arrived and a woman who lived nearby had taken to
cruising the roads at 15 or 20 miles per hour in her newly bough car.
The sound of the motor drove Lebaudy crazy and what could possibly
have been America’s first conflict over noise pollution resulted in
him paying his workers to put bales of hay and tree trunks across the
road to prevent any further traffic. The lady driver called the
sheriff who showed up on horseback. Then Jacques Lebaudy emerged,
himself on horseback and clad in full royal regalia, from the
surrounding forest. He claimed responsibility for the mess and the
sheriff commanded him to clear it up. Lebaudy refused and tore off
across a meadow on his horse. The sheriff summoned more police. After
seeing Lebaudy at a distance, they chased after him and a pursuit
involving pistol shots began. Jacques Lebaudy’s horse eventually
showed signs of exhaustion and fatigue then finally refused to run
any more. Lebaudy dismounted and surrendered. The police beat him up
and hauled him off to jail.
Jacques Lebaudy’s wife pleaded with the police to release him
on the ground of his eccentric and erratic behavior being symptoms of
mental illness. They agreed and took him to the nearby Knickerbocker
sanitarium. They put him in a special wing of the psychiatric ward
which was reserved for the highest political functionaries; it is
rumored that the Emperor Of the Sahara had an easy time making
friends with the King of China and the Queen of Africa.
But a good emperor can not be kept down for long. The
quick-witted Lebaudy one day pretended to be asleep; his guardians
stopped paying attention to him and he got up and jumped out the
window. He ran all the way home. Nobody pursed him and nothing else
was heard from him until one day the police were called Jacques
Lebaudy was found dead with several gunshot wounds. As the story
goes, upon his retirn hom, Lebaudy spent several weeks trying to
seduce his daughter. She continuously refused his advances until one
day he physically assaulted her and tried to rape her. His wife then
pulled out her gun and shot him dead.
So was Jacques Lebaudy, Emperor Of the Sahara insane? Probably
but then again, the French colonial era produced a lot of adventurers
who sought to conquer foreign lands, often with a head full of
bizarre fantasies about what life outside Europe was like.
Turn-of-the-century England also had its share of eccentrics and an
emperor living the Savoy Hotel probably attracted a great deal of
attention but in the end, he probably seemed like just one more weird
man in a society full of weird men. And America certainly attracted
its share of strange characters. Maybe Lebaudy was little more than a
trust-find baby who had lived a sheltered life in an aristocratic
chateau. Maybe he read too many books and never spent enough time
around other people. Maybe the other family members he knew were just
as eccentric as him. Maybe he had too much money and too little
common sense. Maybe, at the age of 40, Jacques Lebaudy started having
an unusually bizarre mid-life crisis. In any case, there were
certainly enough people who were blinded enough by his money to
overlook his oddness and believe in his grandiose fantasies. Maybe
they were the ones who were crazy.
Strauss, Erwin S. How to Start Your Own Country. Paladin
Press, 1999.
