How does an unpaid bill for some looted pastries escalate into an international naval blockade, a war between two nations, and the military burial of a former president’s amputated leg? It sounds like surrealist comedy, but it is rooted in the diplomatic records of the 1830s.

This episode unpacks the Pastry War of 1838 to 1839, revealing how seemingly absurd small-scale grievances were weaponized by a global empire to achieve massive economic and geopolitical goals.

• The pastry chef Remontel, whose roughly 1,000-peso bakery generated a 60,000-peso reparations claim to the French king
• How France, stuck behind the U.S. and U.K. on tariffs, bundled grievances into a 600,000-peso ultimatum
• The 26-ship French armada, the blockade of Veracruz, and the choke-point mechanics of a 19th-century blockade
• Santa Anna’s leg, shattered by grapeshot and buried with full military honors, fueling his political comeback
• The accidental naming of Flour Bluff, Texas, and how the unpaid debt justified France’s far bloodier 1861 invasion