Citation Needed - The Battle of the Golden Spurs

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

The Battle of the Golden Spurs (Flemish: Guldensporenslag; French: Bataille des éperons d'or) was a military confrontation between the royal army of France and rebellious forces of the County of Flanders on 11 July 1302 during the Franco-Flemish War (1297–1305). It took place near the town of Kortrijk (Courtrai) in modern-day Belgium and resulted in an unexpected victory for the Flemish. It is sometimes referred to as the Battle of Courtrai. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

Okay, but at the end does his brain go to hell? Is that what we're supposed to be seeing there? I don't know, man, maybe. I just don't understand why they can't make any good movies. Well, howdy there, gentlemen. Come on in and set a while. Nice, cowboy shenanigans love it. I will have one whiskey please sure things But that will be a penny nice. Here you go. Eli. What's what's up with the whole saloon? Shing. I don't know who Eli is, but I'm a larger bucks and bickspit and I prepared this here saloon for your episode about the Battle of the Golden Spurs. Mm. Dude, dude, this is just chew polished water. For a penny.

Yeah. Okay, that's fair. That's fair. Him again, him again. Alright, I'm up to it. I appreciate you going all out with the pre-episode shenanigans and everything, but the battle of the Golden Spurs isn't about cowboys. It's not. No. No, it's about the final stand of the Flemish infantry against a far more armed and trained French

Army. And Flemish people are from Belgium, modern-day Belgium. Okay. See? Uh... Sorry, sir. I'm going to have to take this. It's my drink. No, no, don't worry.

I replace it with these. What? No, okay, awesome, awesome. Yeah, that is the Belgian way. Love it. Wait, is... Is that shoe polish and cheese? You bet you're sworkin' whoselatees? Is that a real Belgian word? You bet your schwerking, whoselites?

Is that a real Belgian word? I don't know that it's not. Okay. Hello, and welcome to Citation Needed! Podcasts are we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet. That's how it works now. I'm Cecil, and I'll be tending bar tonight. And I'm joined by the regulars and lifers

in this little dive bar. First up, the guy that asks if mango nectar is held slightly above body temperature and the fellow that wants you to skip the carbonated water and takes his Coke straight, Eli and Noah. Hey, have syrup. Bring your own formula warmer to the table. Baby, you're not.

That's the law. You know what? Yep. As we learned, you know, honestly Cecil, i don't know if that was a cocaine reference or an intervenes so does syrup but i know allusions and i endorse that was ballad also joining us tonight the two guys that knife fight over who gets to drink the

splash mat at the end of my ship he's in time okay so i actually got a free night of drinks fruit that exact thing in real life. Oh, nice. It was, it was the splash mat and the squeeze of the bartenders towel into a glass. Oh, no. It was not good. God, that's so rough. How are you alive? Why are you alive? It's just like this sanitizer and beer. And Cecil, you know that if I don't knife fight, then all those knife fight dance lessons were for nothing. I don't.

They're not for nothing. They're great for your work. That's great for your work. I think you're something to do there with that. It's like tie belt. Hey, they're non patrons. You need to get topped off there. You want another one on the house, huh?

Tabs getting pretty big. Okay, anyway, I'm sure you're good for it. I'm sure you're good for it. If you'd like to learn how to leave a little extra tip, you can stick around to the end of the show. And with that other way, tell us Eli what person plays thing concept phenomenon or event we'll be talking about today. The battle of the Golden Spurs. Yeah. Oh, okay. All right. What? No, what was the battle of the Golden Spurs? It was the battle where everybody except the French learned that the era of the night was coming to a close. I'm pretty sure they figured that shit out midway through World War one, but this battle is the one in which the cremdella cremde

of Francis mounted nobility got their asses handed to him by a bunch of Flemish interior decorators with sticks. And I personally would like to thank you for this essay, which will inevitably bring back my French guy character, who my love and have missed. That was the whole point. All right. Okay, so before we get into the details here, I want to talk a little bit about the role of the Knights

in medieval society. Can nothing just begin? Does every story need to start a thousand years beforehand with a pre-eats starter of the... It has been too long since Cecil's last orgasm. Thank you. Thank you. No, thank you. So, thank you.

So since the time is Charlemagne nights were the dominant force on the European battlefield, up, but they were crazy expensive. Right. Like, I mean, obviously the armor and the weapons were really expensive, not to mention the big ass war horses, which a medieval knight generally needed a few of. But on top of that, you had the cost of maintaining all that stuff. Plus the entourage of armors and squires and shit that a knight needed to stay battered ready.

And to be proficient in all the techniques that a knight was supposed to know, their training had to start when they were still kids. Yeah, I mean, it takes forever to learn how to block your course exclusively using L-shaped. It's fucking it. It's, it's yeah, yeah, right. You got to think way ahead. Um, but so, so then the train so often, um, that they really couldn't be expected to

also work. Toughest guy in prison doesn't work either, but you sure the fuck has a lot of cigarettes. Well, you ask the other thing, right? Yeah, you, you also weren't allowed to expect to work. They has multiple horses each. Like they'd show up with more than one. And like, yeah, actually speaking, you would,

you would move from one to another occasionally. You've got a horse caddy who's like, I think the brown mare today, sir. Yeah. Exactly. All right. So the cost of training and maintaining nights was in a lot of ways, the justification for feudalism.

Right. So there are three tiered society was often shorthanded as those who rule, those who fight, and those who work. If the only way to keep up militarily was to have some people devote their entire lives and fortunes to being bad asses, obviously the people that protected should feed them. And while I doubt this was sufficient justification for the peasants, it is swaged to nobility's guilt just fine, so that's what got written down. Cool. Yeah, now we just use Atlas shrugged.

Cool. Lying comp. Ely, Ely, stop. Try to spoon feed me. What the fuck? Listen to the essay. So this is my job. Yeah.

Thank you for doing the edit. Now, the ruling class has no trouble making this feudal system work in the countryside. But once a town reaches a certain size, it becomes a bit of a problem, right? The fact that merchants and craftsmen can accumulate wealth without accumulating land kind of turns feudalism on its head by setting up a group that doesn't fit neatly into one of those aforementioned categories. It also starts chipping away at the whole blue blood concept by showing that filthy tradesmen

could get richer than the nobility through something as low-brow as business. Ew. So, and speaking of stuff that used to be important, but doesn't really exist anymore outside of people's imaginations, buying a house, or getting a job when you leave college. Hand jobs.

What? I was gonna say flanders. Did you say hand jobs? Yeah. It's go straight to eating ass now. What? I feel like you could still get the hand job. Right.

I was you. One at the top. Okay, that's the ass eating. So I know that technically, Flanders is still a place in what not, but it's not a country. It's the fucking Quebec of Belgium. Back in the day, it was a country sometimes, sort of.

And the battle we're going to talk about today takes place in one of those sort of phases called the battle we're going to talk about today takes place in one of those sort of phases called the Franco Flemish war. I thought Flemish was how you felt after you drank a big glass of milk. Is that right? Yeah. So the Franco Flemish war started to percolate when Philip the fourth or Philip the fair is crowned King of France in 1285. That's his complexion, by the way, not his ruling style.

Now at that time, Flanners was as the Wikipedia article describes it, a quote, semi independent polity notionally part of the Kingdom of France, end quote, designation that didn't make any more sense to fill up the fourth than it makes to me. So he decided to reassert control over the area. And this started with a bunch of overtures to the local nobility sort of alike you know i'll let you fuck away more peasants than the current guy type of thing but when that didn't work

uh... he used the tried and true method of guys in rose with weapons just stomping all over the uh... uh... hot as in standing right behind him at that negotiation to be like uh... jack uh... didn't think of a slid yourself across the table uh... uh... you got it boss out it's been like, Jack, do me a favor, so that you self across the table. You got it boss, our our sprinter.

So this is half. All right, so this French invasion starts in June of 1297, some of the Flemish nobles that opposed Philip and half acidly allied with the English, but they were having a bit of trouble in England with the Scottish at the time. As one month earlier, Mel Gibson slid that dude's throat that killed his wife. So the Flemish call a timeout

in the form of the truth of some Flemish words. Well done. There's timeouts. Like give it up. Yeah, well, but this armistice expired as in January of 1300, at which point the French just invade again. And within a few months, they're in complete control of flanners and they deposed in, in

some case, imprisoned to any nobles that resisted French annexation. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, the armistice had like a best if used by date on, yes, and it expired three years after the original invasion. I have olives in my Christmas gift basket and my refrigerator that have lasted longer than the Christmas. Right. Now, you have to imagine that for most of the people

living in flanners, this isn't gonna make a huge difference in their day-to-day lives. I mean, if you're a peasant farmer in a feudal society, you can have a better or worse landlord, but it's a prettiest-turned kind of competition, and most of the landlords weren't gonna change,, but the cities were different because different rulers had wildly different policies when it came to the autonomy of cities. Larger cities often would carve out exemptions and exceptions and shed over long periods

of time with their overlords and whenever the overlord would switch as often as not all that work would get wiped away. And it's the last time I take an over large shift from Doug. He never refills the catch-up bottles. That's it. All right. So this brings us to the city of Bruce, which had a population of around 40,000 at the time. Now, to a modern day listener, that's like slightly larger than Muscogee Oklahoma.

But at the time, that probably made it one of the 25 or 30 largest cities on the fucking planet. It was significantly bigger than London at the time. It was probably the busiest port in all of Europe. That minute was also home to some damn wealthy merchants and some damn powerful guilds, all of whom had a lot to lose with the French annexation of Flanders. This was made even more clear when the governor that Philip installed the Jacques de Chote to your own whatever the fuck French pronunciation. That's pretty amazing. I'm imposed.

How about you can you can pronounce an unpronounceable volcano in Iceland, but French is just a bridge to far. Well, you know, that's I looked that one up. I can't. So what Jacques de Chote on imposed heavy taxes and started extorting the nobles that had opposed French, French as a nation. You should have taken the deal when I was letting myself across the table. That's it.

That's it. That's it. Yeah. So, early in the pre-done hours of May 18th of 1302, the people of Bruce fight back. See, they may not have knights, but they do have a militia. Now, and that's actually pretty common at the time. the people of Bruce fight back. See, they may not have knights, but they do have a militia. Now, and that's actually pretty common at the time. Since so much wealth was concentrated

in such a small area in cities of that size, and the Flemish at the time had this weapon that they called the Goudindog. Basically, it's a club with a big metal spike on the end of it and a metal ring around the edge. And since Goudindog is Flemish for good day, it's exactly the appropriate weapon to use to bid out due to the French Sousers Phillips had garrisoned in Bruce.

Kill them with kindness. My giant good morning pipes called kindness guys. Right. It's right on the staff. Flanders watches out the window. Look out. He's got a board with a nail in it. Simpson's. Cut. Now, if there's anything that we learned studying many evil history, it's that dead French people are like potato chips. Once you get started, you just keep going. So once the garrison was

taken care of, the militia, and by now a bunch of Flemish writers that just wanted it in on the fun, went around town killing every French person they could find. The legend is that when they come across an unknown person, they would make them repeat the phrase shield and friend in Flemish, which was apparently like really tough for native French speakers to pull off without betraying their accent. People with, people with, people with, I have a lift. So this massacre would come to be known as bruge mans because it coincided with the late night monastic prayer of the same name.

It's estimated that around 2000 people died. What? This works all over though. You can make, you can try to make a German say squirrel, try to make a Southern or say wash or wash, make a New Yorker say garbage can and, you know, just tell. All right. So obviously this is a bit of an all inin moment for the people in Bruce and for merchants and gills all over Flanders.

Even in a time when you were apparently allowed to call a two-year time out in a war if you're allies chickened out, they had to expect the hardest possible response from Philip for this one. What's more, because this was directed by town militias and trade skills, the Flemish nobility thought it smelled a lot like a peasant uprising and they didn't want to support it. That meant that they'd get no help from the Flemish army, which, I mean, to be fair, just spent years getting it's ass handed to it by the French. So that probably didn't matter all that much.

Okay, wait a minute. The French were just beaten to death in the thousands by like an unruly mob armed with yoga bagabas sticks or whatever. What the fuck, weak ass weapons did the losing Flemish army bring to the fight? Were they using spitballs and swirlies? But there was one important noble family that was all in on this rebellion. Guy of Dampier was a Flemish count who had been among the leading voices of opposition to French rule.

He's actually the one who coaxed the English king into the mix before William Wallace drew his attention back to the home island. So when Philip took over, one of his first acts was to have this guy's ass in prison. So his two sons, John and Guy of Namor, not only supported the rebellion, they led the goddamn thing. Ultimately, all the major cities and flanders joined in the rebellion with the exception of Gent, and I know that sounds like it'd be like three or four towns, but it was actually quite a few, each contributing militiamen, money, or often both.

And before long, the rioters had swelled into a legitimate army. Okay. Well, we all close our eyes and fantasize about radical leftist rioters saying good morning to Mitch McConnell, we'll take you to the grave. We'll be right back. And I'm thinking of a zelk. This is where I would put zelk wine. Very good. Hi. Hello. Are you King Philip of France? That is me. Who wants to know? That would be me. I'm the head of the Flemish merchant guild.

And I'm sorry. You do not sound Flemish to me. Yeah. Well, not really sure what that accent is. I don't know. Fair enough. Anyways, what can I have you with? Yeah, figured you'd sound like more French. Like this? Oh, yes. Nellian. So now that you're in charge of the city,

I have just one six, six, six, sexual partners on average. Okay. Sound accurate. Yeah, so now that you're in charge of the city, we just wanted to go over some of the trade agreements. We made with the previous. Oh, yeah, for sure.

We were going over the. Let me ask you a question. How do you feel about? Rommage. Oh, yeah, like melted with some vegetables for dipping. That can be quite nice. Right. Next question. Yeah, Ami is surrounded.

What do you do? Well, I guess we've already surrendered. Menon! I'm afraid we cannot make a deal and we will have to stop back from square. Ah! As you say. Okay, well, uh, question for you. How far do you think I can shove my good morning up your ass? Let me see those contracts. I'm sure we can work something out. Yeah, great. I'd hear it. As a render! Okay. Well, we left off.

People were failing a two-question naturalization quiz. What happened next? They're tough in flander, right? Right? All right. So there are several reasons this battle has become legendary. And I'm going to shit all over most of them in the remainder of the session. But I want to start with the way it's normally portrayed as like nights versus shopkeepers.

So ultimately, the flamish are going to try up over a much better equipped and trained force, but the David and Goliath nature, but it's often exaggerated by trying to turn the Flemish force into a rag tag bunch of wool merchants that only had a montage of swerve of the training from the name pair. In reality, pretty much their whole army was made up of well-trained militiamen that drilled regularly. Wait, what is what is a militiamen do to train practice parallel parking outside of federal building? Is that a whole?

Yeah. Completely different thing. Okay. Yeah. All right. So another common misconception or I guess uncommon misconception because most people have no conceptions whatsoever of this battle. But in other words, the feminist victory is Mr. Strude.

I thought you said it knows. no conceptions whatsoever of this battle. But in other words, the Flemish victory is Mr. Strewd. I thought you said it notes. Oh, yes. I'm beating you to it, Tom. But a lot of people assume that the Flemish were outnumbered because this is a David and Goliath type story. As nearest historians can tell, that's not the case either. It looks like both armies were more or less equal in size and maybe the Flemish one was

a little big. Yeah. Both armies were more or less equal in size and maybe the Flemish one was a little bigger. Yeah, the Flemish army was a fine size. It was cold when they first counted. Right, exactly. So all that being said, it was still a battle that heavily favored the French on paper. The militias trained regularly, but the French had battle hardened troops that had been whipping Flemish asses all over the fucking countryside for years. And more importantly, they had knights.

I mean, it's not like the Flemish didn't have any knights at all. Some of the Flemish nobility took the side of the rioters, but they had like 50 full blown knights on the Flemish side. The French field did something like 2500. They were French knights, so the exchange rate had actually trapped. Okay, I feel like it's not that hard to beat up a knight, right? They're French nights so the exchange rate it actually tracks Okay, I feel like it's not that hard to beat up a night right like how hard you got a bunch of shit on It's like hoist graysie against art jimerson with the box It's fine. I don't mind

No, there's friends. It's fine. I don't mind. It's fine. You're a grapple with a mitt. Yeah. How's that gonna go? All right. So obviously I have to get specific about the arms and shit or Cecil will be very mad. So on the flammest side you got between eight and 10,000 men, a lightly armored and steel helmets and chainmail shirts if they're lucky. Sounds good. Fighting mostly with pikes and the aforementioned good and dogs. Now they did have about 900 archers with crossbows. So on the French side, you've got the aforementioned good and dogs. Now they did have about 900 archers with crossbows.

So on the French side, you've got the aforementioned 2500 nights supported by 5,500 infantry with about the same number of crossbowmen. Wow. All right, but what was the trigonometry situation? Okay. I'm guessing the Flemish cosecans were fucking sick. Okay.

Right. All the gather of the degrees added up to 360. I didn't check all the. Yeah, this is the fun thing we do. I'll show you. So trying to be one of these days. So according to the dominant military theories of the day, a knight is considered to have the same basic value as 10 infantrymen.

So while it's entirely possible that the Flemish army had a slight numeric advantage the way that the French were doing the math, they were up better than three to one. But the Flemish had this huge advantage of being on the defensive. So the French were marching on Bruge, but to get there they had to go through a town called Cortre. And at that moment, the Flemish forces were actually laying siege to a castle there, which housed the French garrison. So when they hear the French are coming, they dig in

and prepare to face off. The enemy approaches will never prepare for the battle in time. No, we're just like, just right there. Yeah, just like there you go. Now you're prepared because you turned around. Prepared. Yeah, okay, that was a lot easier than I thought. Oh, also get your board with the nail in it. They hate that. Sorry. That's not easy. That's not easy.

All right, so the French force is being led by a dude named Robert II, Count of R. Toil, and this guy was almost just the subject of the episode. He was a seasoned military leader and crusaderader and also a dude with a weird fascination with automatons. Like, like, he had a park filled with wind up mechanical monkeys and shit. You go back up in time. People just wore their browser history on their sleeve, man.

Right? Yeah. Right. He had a fucking pet wolf that he made like the peasants just put up with. He was like, tell this kids. He's weird. But, but despite the wind up monkeys, he had the reputation as a formidable commander up before this battle.

No, lesions. Look at me. If his army of robot monkeys isn't a part of this battle, I will be furious. All right. So it starts to get ready to be furious. I'm sorry. So it starts with a scouts come back and give them the landland. The Flemish army had dug in with the city's wall right behind them and a marshy swampy field in front. And that's actually super smart. They recognize that their big weaknesses, their lack of cavalry, they can counteract that to a significant degree by forcing the battle on a marshy ground where horses can't really charge.

In addition to the marshyness, the phlegm should dug a bunch of ditches and built long lines of tree branches and fell trees and shit like that, which would also slow down their charge. On the other hand, there's a big ass wall behind them so they have nowhere to go if the French do break their line. It just, it feels like you just go around, right? Take the rest of the city or just fucking wait there. I like, whatever you do, don't have your horses, you know, playing the floor is lava on tree tops. No. I don't know, no, it seems like nights are pretty badass, but not if they just, no, it seems like nights are pretty bad ass, but not if they just like tip over.

Yeah, I'm just picturing like a thousand Flemish soldiers equipped with goonies style slick shoes walking slowly back. Almost exactly what you should be picturing. All right, so the solution's pretty obvious, right? Roberts advisors tell him, hey, like we could just hang back and help the Flemish forces with arrows, they can't go anywhere, but that's boring.

Robert didn't want to deprive his noble men of their glory, God damn it. And shoot another guy's with arrows. That's not actione or exciting. So after the one getting hit by the arrow, which is I suspect you're not terribly bored. Well, I was too boring for Robert, God damn it. So after a brief exchange of missiles, despite the fact that it was literally impossible

given the train, Robert ordered his cavalry to charge. Going to turn out this was a terrible decision. And the first people to get any hint of that would be the French infantry that are standing on this marshy ground between the cavalry and the phoenix armor and can't get out of the way before being trampled to doubt in the initial charge. This guy ran over his own troops with a charge doomed to fail. I guess you could be a commander back then by putting your helmet on. Ice, let's forward.

I miss those Halcyon days, of high standards and representation to see. So, yeah, I believe these guys are in charge of distributing our vaccines. Right. No. So, despite the terrain, the French cavalry makes it across the windshield. Operation warp steed. All right. So, despite the terrain, the French cavalry makes it across the field pretty quickly,

but they can't build up the kind of momentum you need to really crash through the Flamish shield wall. The Flamish crossbowmen who had been pelting the knights all the way across, fell back and behind their pikemen. And at the point, the Wikipedia article literally points out that, quote, a great noise rose throughout the dramatic battle scene and, quote, And yes, there's a citation on that. In case you thought the two armies crashed into each other, discreetly.

Yes. Well, I mean, it also kind of implies that up until this point, it was pretty quiet and then it got suddenly that. Right, yes. So all of a sudden, all the French guys before just getting smushed by their own forces were like, why is Jacques? This is a friendly trample.

No need to be a very, very quiet. We're sneaking up on Flemish. Yeah. Okay. So the French army crashes into the line loudly, but the militiamen by and large don't much. The pipes that they're using have big spear points at the end, but they also have these curved blades that kind of act like a can opener

that you can use to pry open the armor as soon as the night is knocked off his steep. Ah, yes, defeated by Sir Octo of Good Gryps. That's exactly what I'm saying. So as soon as one guy can pry two plates apart, another guy will just start stabbing away. Oh, fuck, that's my cod pea. That's so bad. Well, that a better con-pease.

All right, so the French cavalry is decimated in this initial charge. And worse than the dudes that crashed imponently against the lunch, the few French cavalry that actually did break through, quickly fight themselves, surrounded, pulled off their horses, and beat to death with good days. Yeah, plus that French commander clearly got distracted by the big field of wind up monkeys set up Thank you, me. Thank you. Also just for the record beat to death with good days is at the very center of my 2021 vision Also, all right, so wind up monkeys in the big field. I don't know. I'm adding that to mind. Yeah. Oh, yeah, man All right, so the guy leading the Flemish army is a dude by the name of William of

Hewlett. And before the battle got underway, he dismounted and he took a spot with the pikeman right in the front lines and everything. And that sounds super brave. But pretty much exactly at the time that the bad guys got there, he had some kind of non-specific injury. Eddie. He's both first and has been taken back to the rear or checking the fuck out one way or the other Uh, one of his servants fearing that his absence would disheartening army put on his armor and charge back out under the field pretending to be him He's riding two other servants wearing the horse armor Well, but here's the thing though the servant got killed. So I can't imagine that that was a super

positive effect he had on the morale. They had to dress like the commander of the soldiers or the soldiers are going to freak out. The soldiers back there are like nervous dogs with separation anxiety. And the terrorists had to play the TV on low in the background and they couldn't calm down, you know. The whole Flemish uniform is just a bunch of dudes wearing thunder shorts and whining in the back of the mountain. All right. So regardless of the French nights, we're getting their asses kicked and many of them were

starting to retreat. Robert of our twosies, this and he decides that he's going to turn the tide of the battle by charging in himself along with his rear guard of 700 men and arms. And then he got himself killed. So that probably didn't know much either. One of the legends, by the way, of this battle is that he begged for his life after he was felled and all the flesh told just pretended they didn't speak French. But she and the friend mother, another version says that it was his beloved war horse

that he begged them to spare because I guess that makes them sound like less wimpy. Well, say she'll do that a list, then you can live. More importantly, if you're begging for the life of your horse, I'm going to assume you're fucking that horse. There's no way. So with Robert then, the route started, right? The French enacted a hasty retreat, but at this point, you have like, unhorsed, heavily armored nights tried to run across the muddy field. Needless to say, the Flemish

light infantry didn't have much trouble catching up with them. The French garrison that was still under siege in the city eventually charged out to try to turn the tide of battle themselves. But William of Ulym was smart enough to have left the contingent of the gate for just such an occasion. And they were cut down without any issue at all. But you like teenage flams or whatever they're called standing in the field like, what do you mean you never got night tipping before you just do it? It's awesome. Alright, so the Wikipedia article has this awesome quote from the annals of Gat that summarizes

the battle. And so by the disposition of God who orders all things, the art of war, the flower of knighthood, with horses and chargers of the fight as fell before weavers, fullers, and the common folk and foot soldiers of flanders, albeit strong, manly, well-loved, courageous, and under-expert leaders. The beauty and strength of that great French arey turned into a dung pit and the glory of the French made into dung and words Wow, it's a quote turn the French into English food. That's

I was thinking French food, but sure yeah I'm so in the wake of the battle flanners consolidated control over the country paving the way for the formation of both Belgium and the Netherlands as independent nations. The French lost between 1,500 and some 5 to 10 times the Flemish losses, including at least 75 important nobles. The Flemish army has said to have gone out over the battlefield afterwards and collected 500 pairs of golden spurs, which were then nailed to the wall of a nearby church, giving the battle its name, the Battle of the Golden Spurs. And while that number is almost certainly exaggerated, there's no doubt that a significant

number of actual golden spurs were captured. Yeah. And that church got a weird accidental message about including more horses in the Bible. Yeah. But what the battle is most remembered for is what it represented in terms of military tactics. It was the first real example of what's been called the infantry revolution, which effectively ended the era of the heavily armored knight. It meant that a comparatively inexpensive militia could defeat an insanely expensive army

with good training and decent tactics. That's all you needed. And if you want to know how well the friendships absorb that lesson, I should remind you that they would go on to lose the battle of Asian court and pretty much the exact same goddamn way. A hundred and thirteen years later. And if you had to summarize me learning one sentence, what would it be? It should surprise nobody that modern day France is surrounded by tiny little bullshit countries like Andora and Monaco. And I read it for the quiz i'm behind a marshy field with a wall behind me and everything

okay no so the monkey fucker and thank you question about that if you can't afford a robotic monkey theme park like that guy apparently had which of the following is the best way to meet local single monkeys in your area? A, Makakhtail bars. B, Kapucino bars. Oh, I'm sure you're all that,

you're all that tartis. I like that one a lot. C, bumble in the jungle. D, zoo, sk the jungle. Zoo, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU,

SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU,

SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU, SKZU It is a great or a grander amazing. All right, no, if I understand the lesson here,

it's that you can't always win by shitting money at a problem that a nimble mind would better solve. This is true except, a, most of the time, b, money really does fix a lot of problems, or c, no seriously, my bet is definitely on the month. I'm gonna go with D uh more than most of the time. All right Noah if I had to point to Brussels on a map where would I point?

Hey Germany. Be. Germany again, but like at the top. See, Sweden. Back to Germany, just in case it was a trick question. Okay, wait, there is a zero percent chance that you would point to different places if I said Germany, Northern Germany or Sweden. So I'm going to go with secret answer E, just way vaguely towards Europe. That is correct. No, correct, no correct. It's not correct at all.

I know where Germany is. It's one of those other ones. I don't say it. It's something as close as Germany for the correct even at A. I don't think you'd get right to Germany it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it.

I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it.

I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I don't say it. I'm Cecil, thank you for hanging out with today.

We'll be back next week and by then, Tom will be an expert on something else. Between now and then you can listen to any other podcast and it's probably one of ours. And if you'd like to keep this show going, you can make a per episode of The Nation at patreon.com slashitationpot or leave a sub five star of you wherever you can't. If you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect to SunSolcialMedia or check the show notes, be sure to check out citationpod.com. Mmm. Mmm. No one. Give me another one. This is really good. Come in right up.

Hey, how much shoe polish and cheese can he drink anyway? I mean, it seems like a lot, right? It does seem that way. It seems like a lute, right? It does seem that way, yeah.