Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 285 - The American Invasion of Quebec

Episode Date: November 12, 2023

Before Benedict Arnold became the world's most famous traitor, he tried to invade Canada, it went about as well as you'd expect. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: https://www.americanacorner.com/blog/quebec-assault https://www.americanacorner.com/blog/1775-invasion-quebec https://www.historynet.com/invasion-of-canada-during-the-american-revolutionary-war/ https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/arnolds-flawed-invasion-of-quebec/

Hey, everybody. Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, but I guess you probably already knew that. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com slash lionsledbydonkeys. Just $5 per month gets you every regular episode early, access to our community discord, a digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, as well as its audiobook read by me, and over five years of bonus content. By supporting the show, you support us and allow us to keep our show as it has always been ad-free. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast i'm joe and with me as always these days is tom in the podcast basement the key i feel the walls of the cube closing in joe that's good you and me

both um yes if you're listening to this i don't know if this is a bonus or a free episode but you can slowly feel the walls of a seasonal depression closing in on the two of us um the sun is actually out for the first time since i've moved to the netherlands today i have spotted a blue sky um for i've been here about a week now which is nice and uh if i am remembering correctly my apartment is about the same size as the recording studio so i definitely feel the force closing in on me i mean like it was unseasonably warm yesterday it was 24 degrees in october which is strange but uh yeah like i don't know i always feel strange this time of year and it's not necessarily like seasonal defect effective disorder because i know that's a real thing that like medically people people suffer with but I don't know it's like the change of seasons

always fuck with me because from March September I'm having a great time. It's getting warmer the summer is great and I everyone knows Nate has ADHD which Nate gets to take medication for. I can't because i have other medical conditions which prevent me from taking it so i'm like absolutely brute forcing life all the time just raw dogging life oh a hundred percent like i have i have like so many things that's the least fun way you can do that like i have so many little things that i have to do to

like just keep my life on track like i have a little like pocketbook that i carry with me everywhere that i like if i need to do something i just write down in it and like i have like all the stuff i need to do for work for the entire week written down usually on a monday as stuff comes up i add it into it and it like helps keep my life on track but like i don't know it's just like this time of year the way i kind of think about it is like you know for six to seven months of the year like everything is running smoothly it's watching you know a beautiful ballet where all the dancers are pirouetting in synchronicity with the rhythms of life and like now it's just like what if you

rip two beyblades into a walk no no it's just like aggressive clanking together and they'll they they will have some you know circular motion you've been saying too much you've referenced beyblades hey i used to watch beyblade as a kid but like yeah no it fucking sucks honestly like it is yeah like it's kind of trying to hold on to my sanity in these trying times of changing climates um so yeah we are now this is announcing our pivot to uh being a branded men's mental health podcast i mean i do think that's there's something healthy about this because before um a couple i don't know how many episodes this was ago someone thought said it was very eye opening hearing to him and talk about like body dysmorphia effectively oh yeah um which like

oh i could talk more about that as well if you want 35 years of time to talk about that um and you know yeah like some i don't know i guess people like it as a certain kind of way. Currently, my life is like I've cartwheeled directly headfirst into a wall. So yeah, it sucks, man. Life sucks sometimes. And you have to find ways to try to deal with it. And one of the ways I make sure I deal with it is by making the simple things like taking care of myself. I go to the gym. I make sure I work from home. And a lot of things that come with depression

is people stop showering. People stop taking care of themselves. They stop eating. And I make sure I do that every single day. So if you're listening, wash your ass. It makes you feel better. Take that as general advice listening wash your ass um it makes you feel better take the take that as a as general advice to wash your ass we are a pro ass washing podcast i would highly recommend a bidet if you can fit one um i can't fit one because my toilet is all weird but uh yeah

bidets are beneficial i can say my apartment currently has what i call the toilet dungeon maybe it's a dutch thing i don't know i'm not a huge fan of the of the toilet uh like solitary confinement cell um i don't fit it when the door closes my knees touch the door like i mean it's not it's not as bad as the video you sent me one night when you were out in yerevan with when you were like really drunk and you went into the toilet and just like the bottom of the door had been broken off that's right baby uh like that is one thing i can say about touring around the caucuses you'll see some deeply cursed toilets uh but yeah like the like at this time of year because like by the time this comes out like you know if you're living in the northern

hemisphere it will be like dark by like five o'clock and it is tough because like I personally find it like hard you know get up it's dark when I go to work it's dark when I get home or it's even dark like

getting dark when I'm like leaving work i go to work it's dark when i get home or it's even dark like getting dark when i'm like leaving work to go home and i kind of like i don't know i i do my best to when i get home particularly at like this time of year not to just like sit down and like look at my phone for half an hour as soon as i get in like i try like last night that's like the worst thing you can do from personal experience is like fall into a black hole of like being like your eyes locked to a device, even though, as I've said before on this show, history continues to happen. Like, you gotta, you gotta live, even if you don't particularly want to at any given time like yeah like my my thing and i kind of look at it in terms of like productivity and a lot of people think of productivity in terms of like work and like doing stuff that like is good for your job or whatever but i like to think of it is like it's just like doing stuff

like that you just need to do in life so like my thing that i've been trying to do recently is as soon as i get home i like i think it was like okay here's like five things that i need to do that i can get done in like 20 minutes so like last night i had made some like food the other day that i'd made some lovely slow cooked ragu in my new le crusier pot and i'd frozen it so I like took it out of the freezer like got it to defrost there were some plates in the sink that I need to clean clean those sorted out you know laundry that I needed to do and put on a wash and then like went into the sitting room and like just like cleared off the coffee table and like I had all that done in like 20 minutes and you know it made me you know made the evening so much better and also

on saturday i i made a mental health gundam go on i was gonna i was gonna try to segue this back into this show but you've said the words mental health gundam and i am concerned and interested so as i suppose as like most of the listeners know me and joe have embarked on a new series on the patreon watching g gundam and i always wanted to make gunpla it seems fun like one of my friends does it and i got him one for his birthday and i was like you know what i can't do the gundam show and not have at least one gunpla so i bought one um and spent two and a half hours on saturday building it i don't have the most dexterous hands so i was there like trying not to break it and usually when i'm do stuff like that i'd like listen to a podcast or put on music or whatever

but this time i just like had no music on it was just like you know nice and quiet nice meditative assembling this little plastic man i've never done anything like that and i have a feeling whenever we do our first live show someone's gonna chuck a gundam figurine at my head and it will be warranted uh please don't do that that could be very damaging depending on what scale it is the front of my head is ugly enough and the back of my head has enough concussions i don't need help in either one um joe don't talk about yourself like that has been the lion's lead by donkey's self-care corner uh now let's talk about uh some guys who invaded another country as a form of self-care okay get your blokes together invade the nearest country

um yeah you know to be fair you know prince harry who is the king of checking in on your blokes he also helped invade another country so you know it's true um now go check in on your blokes in afghan last week uh tom we talked about the time the Fenians invaded Canada from the United States. Yeah. What if I told you that the United States also invaded Canada? Well, more than once, but specifically during the American Revolution, because, you know, attempting to free yourself from the British Empire. See, that's amateur hour.

While fighting in your own backyard, what if you also invaded Quebec? That's what we're going to talk about today. Oh, God. This is, like, honestly, you know, great energy off this already. Specifically invading the Quebecois is great because, like, I am very... Anyone who listens to this show,

I am very interested in, like, separatist movements, stuff like that. And I have to say, the Quebecois are, like, the funniest separatist movement ever. Like, oh, we are being oppressed by English nouns. I will say this is the only time we're going to talk about the Quebecois without talking about some kind of plastic explosive. explosive um the quebecois had to fight back the uh the american revolutionary force because of le wokeism le racism um man nate must be uh very unhappy he's gonna miss this episode um now this this episode of the american revolution tends to kind of get deleted because it is by far the most failed operation of the entire revolution, in my opinion. It also involves Benedict Arnold in a way where he isn't a traitor,

where he was a very capable and very well-accomplished military commander before he turned on the revolution. So we tend to not look at a miserable failure combined with a guy we have been taught since. The term Benedict Arnold literally means traitor in the United States. History is complicated. C'est n'est pas un traitor. Yeah.

Now, before we get there, we do have to do a kind of a quick abridged version of how exactly Quebec, which everybody knows is full of the French, ended up as a British colony in the first place. It was first founded by the French in the 1500s and named New France.

Real colonization attempts didn't really begin for quite some time, not counting for a few thousand fur traders who showed up around the saint lawrence river area yeah new france doesn't really have a ring to it hence why it's not included in the day might be giant song istanbul now it's constantin that is also why new york is no longer new amsterdam finally a music reference that you got oh no i just got that reference because uh every dutch person likes to remind me of that uh by the yes it used to be called new amsterdam we had to give

it up because they wouldn't import blue polish by the 1700s maybe around 20 000 people of french origin had popped into the area to smoke cigarettes ride ride unicycles, all while carrying a single bag of groceries, from which just the top of a baguette peeks out the top. French holdings and colonial administration continued to expand in Quebec until the Seven Years' War, or as commonly known as North America by its theater name, the French and Indian War. And I should say theater as in theater of war, not like a theater production. No, I would watch that nobody tell Lin-Manuel Miranda about this singing and dancing around as someone rips his

fucking scalp off and he's just doing that like weird pouty face that he does though it should be pointed out not only has this podcast just developed a musical significantly better than hamilton that uh but also compared to british holdings in canada uh were much much more like developed and larger the brits the brits and the french have very we've talked about this before on the show the br Brits and the French have very different ideas on what colonization actually means.

You're telling me. That's right. I got to get Patrice Lumumba on the phone. He cannot be reached for comment. We will forward his emails to the UN. What's that? They're saying they're deeply concerned. Interesting looking into this. New france as it was known was size-wise larger than the entire american 13 colonies but it had

only one-tenth of the population and acted more as a like a source of cheap labor and resources more than a purposeful attempt at mass settlement um a lot of this is very easily explained by like how the americas were that the 13 colonies were colonized you know um puritans dumping uh prisoners they're dumping irish people they're dumping everybody there the french didn't really do the same thing in new france like yeah sure if you want to go there and trade pelts or whatever knock yourself out pierre well that's what i was going to say is that like the settlement of french canada is much more markedly known for like the settlement of you know trading outposts and obviously as well because like like canada and like the

territories in canada for like a good part of the year we're a lot more inhospitable than just like you know continental u.s thankfully that's changed um you want to buy some beaver pelt some guy comes in with frostbite on his eyeballs opens up a trench coat and just full of beaver pelts like would, would you like some skins? And also, fucking kill me. Hockey hasn't even been invented yet. This place is worthless. Isolated and largely unable to be resupplied due to the dominance of the Royal Navy, the British began to chip away at New France.

Eventually, in 1759, the colonial capital of Quebec fell to the British, and by the end of the war and the Treaty of Paris signed in 1759, the colonial capital of Quebec fell to the British, and by the end of the war and the Treaty of Paris, signed in 1763, they ceded control of New France over to the British. Mr. President, Quebec has fallen. And nothing of value was lost. That's going to be the next sequel to Olympus Has Fallen. I believe there already was a sequel. Yeah, I know. It's likeus has fallen believe there already was a sequel yeah i know it's like it's like london

has fallen but like i want to see channing tatum and jamie foxx in like you know 19th century you know beaver pelts absolutely smelling rancid wasn't olympus has fallen that was the one of gerard butler because there was two movies about the white house that came out like back to back and one involved north koreans and I think that was the one Gerard Butler because that man cannot actually make quality movies anymore or or ever imagine him with

Gerard Butler as in like remember Gamer remember that movie Gamer oh yes I do remember it what it's like what's that fucking book called with Ready Player One what it's like uh uh what's that fucking book called um with ready player it's ready player one with brain damage and ready player one already sucks i mean that's a that's also

isn't it orson scott card who wrote that who was unfortunately really homophobic orson scott card orson scott card uh wrote ender's game uh which is a good book written by a terrible man. I mean, look, I love Philip K. Dick, and I can say the exact same. It's like, what if you gave an extremely schizophrenic man access to McCarthyism? So where do we pick up after that?

During the American Revolution in 1775. This is all very recent history. Quebec had just fallen. You can't say Quebec has fallen. I know. It wasn't even the script. You wedged that into my brain. So the American Revolution is kind of stuck at a standstill. We talked before about the Battle of Lexington and Concord. So go check that out for more of a background on this era. After that, the revolution was kind of treading water. The British army in the 13 colonies was largely trapped in Boston, a fate worse than death, surrounded by colonial militias and what is known as the Siege of Boston.

Then Benedict Arnold led an attack on Fort Ticonderoga in New York, knowing it was lightly defended and with a decent weapon supply that the colonials would need. Arnold believed that not only would the fort be incredibly important to colonial defenses, but believed rightly so that the colonial forces needed to keep doing things like this, striking lightly defended British outposts, before they could be reinforced from the rest of the empire he was joined in this belief by a fellow revolutionary leader ethan allen now allen and his entire backstory deserves a bit of a mention and we did talk about this a little bit during our fenian episode he found what was known as the green mountain boys uh which sounds like it could be a million different things but it was actually a militia group in Vermont

it honestly just sounds like a kind of direct to consumer like new wave soap company that I get advertised on Instagram subscription soap company yeah like oh you want some like what do you want to wash your balls

with like black tar soap that's like modeled after like some handbook in the 1800s? Oh, God. The protocols of the elders of soap. The protocols of the elders of ball washing. So he founded this militia group in Vermont, but it wasn't founded explicitly to fight the British, like pretty much most militias in the colonial forces, but rather to fight land speculators from New York and New Hampshire who were, you know,

buying up land in Vermont. Now, most of these people were British, but not all of them. So it was more of just like, fuck the land speculators, which I think we could all respect. Yeah.

And without going in too much, Allen and the rest of his vermonters which i i'm going to assume that's what people from vermont are called alan the green boys they weren't even huge fans of this whole united states project because a few years after the events of this episode in 1777 vermont would straight up declare independence from everybody they also outlawed slavery. And this isn't like one of those weird republics that existed for a few months during the Russian Revolution. The Vermont Republic existed for 14 years.

And they had official relations with the United States before becoming a state in 1791. 1791. But see, this is from everything I've heard about Vermont, it seems like Vermont is the real version of what people think Oregon is like, because obviously Oregon was founded as a white nationalist state

and like, Vermont is like nah, we're doing our own thing, we're abolishing slavery, whereas like, you know, Oregon was like what if we could have white people with dreads and racism i those two things are intrinsically connected scar intensifies in the background racism horn now anyway alan and arnold looked around and thought you know it was really undefended? Quebec. The idea was not only would

this be one hell of a stab at the British, but the French Canadians, or Quebecois, because Canada wasn't really a thing yet, would almost certainly join their American revolutionary brothers from across the border to shrug off the British yoke. And this wasn't a new idea. A year before in 1774, the First Continental Congress invited a delegation from Quebec to join them to plot revolution. The French Canadians pretty much just ignored this. Like, this is

too weird. Though this didn't slow down the belief within Americans that, like, the American founding fathers specifically, that they want in on this revolution, despite the fact they just told us to go fuck ourselves i got a chance like this is the kind of guy that like tries to buy a girl a drink at a bar or something and she's like oh i i actually have a boyfriend who's like i have

is he here and just go i have one too um yeah i like that the quebecois have like gotten in on the ground floor of like diasporic ethno-nationalism like only to be rivaled by armenians in la like 200 years later unfortunately you are correct yeah see when are the quebecois gonna produce something as good a system of a down uh they still haven't i guess poutine perhaps but that doesn't sing and if your poutine sings um it's spent too too much time around like three mile island or whatever surge putain god but just surge tanking covered in gravy i mean like listen you know an armenian quebecois person is like a very strange energy. I actually know what. Hi, if you're listening. No more.

So when Benedict Arnold began to lobby hard for an invasion toward Quebec, Congress agreed. However, they didn't want to give command of the invasion to Arnold, not because Arnold wasn't a good commander, but because one through line in Benedict Arnold's history. commander, but because one through line in Benedict Arnold's history, and one of the reasons why he turned against the United States, was he never got respect for his achievements and was constantly passed up for promotion in positions. And that exact same thing happened to him here. Instead, Congress picked Richard Montgomery, who was actually Arnold's second in command to lead this operation rather than Arnold himself. Montgomery would also be joined by a name, a guy named Philip Schuyler or Schuyler, whatever this, I don't care. He dies. off Arnold who refused to take this snub to his honor lying down. And instead, he simply got on a horse and went over to Boston to appeal to George Washington directly and demand that he

be given a command, any command, during the invasion of Quebec. Washington was impressed with how angry Arnold was, taking that as belief in this mission rather than like a snub to his personal honor and military expertise so washington gave him a command of a second supporting invasion of quebec the two were hypothetically supposed to support one another now arnold is in charge of one washington was worried that the original invasion led by montgomery might fail and considered arnold's command something of a fail safe like well if we if 50% of the time, we still got this other group there. The Americans thought that the British only had about 100 men in Quebec, supported by about 1,000 or so French and non-French Canadian militia, as many British assets had been taken

from Canada and sent to support boston so washington figured they only needed enough men to confront you know one british force which would be small and that would open the door for a much larger invasion and most likely again according to the americans a quebec revolution that would be their friend i just I want to talk about something a bit off topic, but I found out relatively recently that George Washington didn't have wooden teeth. Instead, they were made of ivory

and slave teeth. You sure did. And I cannot think of anything more disturbing than walking around with someone else. Not just someone else's teeth in your mouth, but someone else that you just someone else's teeth in your mouth but like someone else

that you own as properties we're not here to kink shame tom that's not even a kink that's just wrong i'm getting out the spray bottle arnold's force would consist of about 1100 mid and at least on a map take what should have been a very easy river borne route through Maine down several different rivers and including one ominously named the Dead River before landing in Quebec. All this was to be

done via flat bottom boat known as a bateau. I'm gonna assume that nobody and nobody's corpse ends up in the Dead river oh there's a lot of corpses everywhere by the end of this yeah this is just like beavers going to work moving around limbs to damn the river they're damming the river with bodies like smacking it down the tail and doing like the flintstones quip of like wolves it's a tough job but somebody's gotta do it

the flintstones quip of like wolves it's a tough job but somebody's gotta do it we got it we got a corpse dam i don't think we've ever had one of those before add it to the list i have new corpse infrastructure unlocked it's like in starfield we're building our base i wonder if you could make like like electro fucking hydroelectric power using like the body dam. Well, unlike Starfield, this is actually fun. Now, for people not aware, the unforgiving wilderness of Canada, even today, is pretty goddamn rough. And it's the 1700s. The vast majority of this is untouched and unpopulated wilderness cut only by raging rapids, waterfalls steep ridges there's not even roads and

if that is news to you listening guess who else it was news to the american invasion force this is why you know cartography and doing reconnaissance are important you know maybe put a guy on you know ben mcdonald he's really good at riding around on his horse. Maybe send him over the border real quickly just to, you know, spend a couple of days, you know, asking. Aren't, like, the Iroquois in this area as well? Well, I mean, the U.S. and a lot of indigenous people are not

very close at this point in time. I was going to say, you know, the fact that it's called you know the french indian war i don't think uh the native america or well i suppose indigit would you call them native american if they're in canada but they call them first nations yeah okay the first nations people would be too happy to help you when you have allied with you know the french the french and indian war is definitely a convoluted mess that we will cover at some point um when i require to melt my brain a little bit more but they did have maps what they didn't have was good maps i mean this is a what was it the fucking battle of saipan where they just had like terrible

tourist maps that was the uh the invasion of grenada yeah they they only had tourist maps to be fair they so i also only had a week to plan that the the the revolutionaries do not have that excuse um now i mean when are the marines when are the marines going to show up crashing helicopters into quebec they're going to need a time machine just so they can make it rain blackhawks um now they had maps they weren't good maps but they also didn't do was attempt to scout the river routes at all or even talk to semi-friendly french fur trappers who would have told them like do not go that way that's a fucking awful idea yeah so you need to pick up some side quests from people like in red dead first so you can explore the area and get some familiarity exactly

i need to unlock the map by walking a bit further um yes exactly they they at least knew this thing would have to be done before winter because they were smart enough no we do not want to get caught in canada fighting a war in the middle of winter and washington ordered arnold to get to work and scrape together an army because remember america doesn't really have one of those yet he compiled one out of volunteers from throughout the colonies they had no uniform to speak of, instead simply wore whatever they had. This is mostly buckskins, furs, and moccasins, which again are not things you necessarily want

to get caught in cold weather with. Oh, they did stitch the words liberty or death across their hats, which is metal, and also very ironic for an invasion of another country. Then, of course, came Montgomery's army. It was also slapped together in much the same way. And speaking of Arnold, he is known for being able to lead his men on a march very quickly, whereas Montgomery was known for being overcautious, taking too much time.

And he did exactly that. He sat around until August. His second sholer was attempting to meet local indigenous people trying to win allies over to help with the invasion and he was failing at this yeah the cost of diplomacy is waiting until winter yeah now um schuyler's gone and they had previously agreed and it was generally known that no invasion force could be launched without both of them being there to authorize it and Montgomery

had no orders to advance from Washington nor Congress so he simply did anyway he didn't inform anybody about it he simply took his 1,200 soldiers out of Fort Ticonderoga and fucked off without even telling his second command

that he was doing so. What, uh, what rocking songs are they singing at this time? You know, all those, like, jaunty jingles that you sang running around Kandahar? I mean, this is the 1700s, so I assume most of them, I don't know, what rhymes with cholera? Or they just, like, contain slurs that are so archaic, it's like looking at a madness room.

Now, this group sailed down towards Fort St. John, where they met up with a Canadian militia who joined the Americans. And now, there weren't really that many fractures within Quebec, and these guys, this Canadian militia, there were Canadians, of course, but they were led by an American named James Livingston. And most of his volunteers are

also American. This isn't like a Canadian Liberation Army or something. The Democratic People's Liberation Army of Canada or whatever. The DPRC. When they arrived at Fort St. John's and Scheuler met back up with them, Scheuler immediately came down with a case of smallpox

and had to leave though this will not be the last time someone gets smallpox during this episode I promise though that didn't slow down the mission the Americans put the fort under siege and cut it off of course this only happened because the British pissed off

their indigenous allies for refusing to support them in battle and then their indigenous allies abandoned them during the open skirmish. Yeah, what did they expect? I don't know. Honestly, the local native allies were skirmishing with American forces in the bush or whatever, and were expecting the Brits to to come and support them or at least give them artillery fire. And they did neither of those things. So, um, afterwards the natives were like,

man, y'all, you can go fuck yourself. And they disappeared into the woods and left the British on their own. Now, this turned out to be a pretty bad place to conduct a siege because it was in the middle of a fucking swamp. And,

uh, when the Americans attempted to dig in, their trenches were immediately flooded with stagnant swamp water up to their waists um if you've been listening to the show long enough you know exactly where this ends up is a trench full it's so many things uh if for people who maybe didn't grow up around ponds or swamps or anything don't just go stand in them it's not a good thing to do especially when health care exists that exists involves like just making you bleed out the bad blood yeah it's not called standing water for

you know like an inviting reason it's not waiting in line for something yeah it's not a full it's not a functional name it's not called standing water because you're meant to go stand in it it's like how would you like to have three toes on each foot have you ever thought about shitting out of your own mouth like that episode of south park now then because of montgomery planned this entire invasion to be supplied via new york which wasn't exactly easy with the zero logistical network the colonial forces had at the time, food and ammo immediately began to run out as disease, you know, because the swamp started sweeping through his ranks.

Nearly a thousand men had to be sent back to the colonies after being crippled with one disease after another and hundreds died. The only thing that stopped the invasion from failing right there and then was constant reinforcements and I assume men who did not ask that many questions. The northern version of like

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn floating down the river on a raft and there's just like cholera ridden bodies floating past. The British inside the fort even had larger guns for around a month, forcing the Americans busy shitting themselves of malaria

and smallpox in a swamp trench to just sit there under constant shell fire and unable to actually return fire. Finally, larger guns showed up a month later, which allowed the Americans to actually shoot back, and then the fort fell in November. Eventually, ignoring orders orders Montgomery would go on and attack Montreal and take it um this was actually pretty painless uh there the British didn't have that many people in Canada at the time and there wasn't you know and I maybe there was a decent garrison force they saw these fucking swamp zombies shitting their brains out and coughing up blood and they're like maybe it's best we let them in yeah here comes yankee doodle swamp thing just like covered in like goo they're trying to play the flute but there's just every time they blow blood comes shooting out of every hole in the pipe oh god just imagine the smell oh it's awful it's awful even for the 1700s though he wouldn't stay in montreal

for long a lot of montgomery's army simply vanished overnight because this is something that happened a lot during the american revolution people were all volunteers and they signed very short-term contracts normally only for a couple months at a time so by the time they actually took montreal like most of his forces had their contracts run out and they had just been shitting their brains out standing up to their waist in a swamp water so they weren't look that's not good for retention so people just like you know i am going home fuck this yeah you need some sort of incentivization scheme, some retention bonus, maybe some benefits. Yeah, you gotta

stand in swamp water, but we give you clean socks at the end. What if we gave you a slightly used pair of moccasins from a guy who died of smallpox? They are totally smallpox free. Don't worry, we pissed on on them we believe that's medicine

if you if you sign on for another contract you'll get an ipod classic and a beaver pelt hat i'm taking you know the u.s army during the surge tactic would you like a tote bag that says colonial army on it now this this left only you get it you get a tote bag that says Colonial Army on it? Now, this left only... You get a six-month subscription to Sweetgreen. So all of these contracts running out left only 500 men in his army. So he left 200 in Montreal and took 300 with him and sailed to Quebec in order to support Arnold's future attack. Which brings us to our main character of the episode,

Benedict Arnold. Benedict Arnold's advance had turned into something out of Fitzcarraldo. For people, does that mean fucking Werner Herzog? I'm going to say, you see the problem with invading Canada is that it is this quite Herculean task, you know,

this Sisyphean, you see you cross the border and you are met with beavers building dams out of corpses. You do not expect yourself to be a body in that dam. A somewhat peculiar piece of history holding back the tides of progress. Fuck you! Herzog is like my favorite director as soon as you said Fitzcarraldo I was like I have to leave it in. The reason why I say Fitzcarraldo

is because his first boat trip went well it covered 50 miles to his shipyard where they transferred from the regular boats into the flat bottom ones which would, it's better for going over the local rivers they're shallower so you need the flat bottom boat whatever which would, it's better for going over the local rivers. They're shallower,

so you need the flat bottom boat, whatever. However, this is where they discover the goddamn Taconic Falls, which were 200 feet high, and obviously, they can't just go up them with a boat. So Arnold had his men pull the boats out of the river

and carry them on their backs up the cliff face on either side of the river and carry them on their backs up the cliff face on either side of the falls. Jesus Christ. Each boat weighed over 400 pounds. And remember, they also had supplies. They had to drag 65 tons of supplies up this cliff with them.

And there was no relief after this. They're forced to sail through the nearby rapids of the Five Mile Falls, which flooded the boats and sank several of them, killed a lot of people. And now it's late September. Not exactly a great time to get soaked in Canadian river water. So exhausted, freezing cold and wet, they hit the next goddamn waterfall and under a constant cold downpour of rain and once again have to drag the fucking boats up the cliff of the waterfall. And this just

keeps happening. Each time they finish hauling the boats up another waterfall, a day or three or so would pass and they'd have to do it again. Up another waterfall. Once again, I was correct in my Herzog impression. This is a

Sisyphean task look if you're in this operation and you're a lucky person you're dead already we must imagine Benedict Arnold happy each time the boats would become more and more damaged because they're wooden boats built

in the 1700s they're not made to be drug up the side of fucking cliffs by tired and cold and diseased soldiers bouncing them off of rocks all day yeah and not to mention carrying all these supplies up these cliffs it's not like waterproofing exists so they get wet they'd get dropped into the river whole boxes of food and ammo and gunpowder arnold was soon surrounded by starving and cold men and discovered that it had taken him two times as much time

to cover a quarter of the journey that he had allotted for the entire thing. Also, everybody had dysentery. Ugh. Like, I've never had dysentery. It's not fine. I've had diarrhea, and that was bad enough.

Look, for you to officially be a full-fledged member of the Lions of By Donkeys cast, you gotta get dysentery. I mean, like, there's definitely times in my early 20s where I was probably very close to it. And so, rapidly losing supplies, Arnold had to cut everybody's rations in half. Men were reduced to making what I think might be the worst soup I've ever read of in the history of the show, which I should point out is impressive at this point.

Yeah, I am not looking forward to this. So they boiled rawhide and candles in a pot together and ate it. It's just Homer Simpson from the fucking Hot Chili episode of The Simpsons

when he was swallowing candle wax. But they made a soup of it. Did they see Johnny Cash as a fox? I don't think so, unfortunately. I mean, they would have eaten the fox because, oh yeah, they did eat the unit's mascot, which was a dog. So they

probably would have eaten the turtle and the fox from the simpsons episode that's sad but like i'm just thinking about the logistics of this so you're boiling rawhide so you're not only getting like blood and collagen out of the connective tissue of the hide but the thing with candle wax is as soon as it cools it hardens gotta eat fast is this camp just like an impromptu like Bath and Body Works are just shitting out candles

they're shitting and it's taking the perfect form of their assholes that coils on the ground good news boys light it I mean it's ingenious it's an unlimited supply of illumination at night. We have solved world hunger. You could just shit and eat candles

back and forth forever. This show does not support corpophilia. We are king shaming. And there came the first wave of smallpox as well. This will not be the only wave of smallpox. This is only the first wave of smallpox as well. This will not be the only wave of smallpox. This is only the first wave of smallpox? Yep. Oh, and they're not to the war zone yet. They're just in the woods.

Man, being alive before, like, I don't know, 1950 seems pretty miserable. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I definitely would have died when I was, like, ten. I would just have been left into the wilderness by my father or something. I don't want a third one.

10? You're being pretty ambitious there, Bull. Well, he gave me 10 years to see if I'd become anything. Yeah, we know how that ended. Yeah, yeah. Still waiting. You can't be 35 and leave me in the wilderness at that point you have to chain me to something um now since they're literally in the middle of nowhere hundreds of miles from anything considered civilization

men considered too sick to go on we're just left on the side of the road to shit themselves to death in the forest. You're just like a fur trapper going along on your horse and you just hear, coming from the ditch and it's just a dude who's like moving a couple of inches at a time as he's like explosively combusting out his butt cheeks.

Nothing but water and he shits some candles. Some people say the Chinese invented rocketry, but in reality it was someone with dysentery so explosive they ended up 30,000 feet in the stratosphere. A French fur trapper thinks he's on the trail of something and he's like, no, it is shit again.

I smell the smell of an ass. In an effort to stop the mass of dying, Arnold sent several hundred men back so he wouldn't have to try to feed them. Everything had become covered in snow since September, and

Arnold's force is only now getting to the Chaudhary River, which is where Quebec is situated here. When you think about it, the history of military warfare, the biggest kind of cause of death is not, like, actually fighting. It's just

a sore tummy. It's a sore tummy. Military history is best summed up by my tummy hurts. No, in reality, the biggest killer is water. Either you don't have enough of it, and you're in the desert like some stupid Romans

out of Carhae, or you are like, there's too much water. There's never a good balance of how much water there should be. Oi, lads, we found some water. There's a corpse floating in it. Drink around it. It's fine. Wait there, there is a fly in my soup. The fly is like a crouton.

You eat it. It adds extra texture. That's right. To your candle and rawhide soup. Send my compliments to the chef. However, in order to get there, in order to get to Quebec, they have to go through what is known as the height of land,

which is covered in swamps, ponds, and more cliff faces. The tired, starving, and freezing half-dead soldiers would have to drag what remained of their boats through all of this. By this point, Arnold's army looked more like ghosts than men, and were dropping dead as soon as someone finished counting off how many of them were left, though there's only

about 700 of them. Then three boats' worth of supplies sank as soon as they loaded it up you'd see that and be like all right jimmy's dead time to eat his boots boiling bitches up if i would have been standing there assuming i survived all this which i almost certainly wouldn't and i watched those three boats worth of supplies simply sink i'm like well boys it's been good i'm going to put this musket in my mouth fuck all of this yeah this see this is the gambit i play because i like buying vintage clothes and it's like you look at something and it's in

condition and you just have to think to yourself for a second depending on how old it is like what's the likelihood someone died in this 90 especially like especially because there's a huge market for now for like old vietnam like you know military surplus and i'm like i wonder i hope this is surplus because somebody's uncle definitely died in the jungle in this i got this sweet hugo uh hugo boss suit from like 1943 and there's a whole bunch of bullets holes in it, but it's pretty nice. Yeah, you know, like you can I'm kidding. That is a joke. I don't

own a Nazi suit. You can get the couples matching Hugo Boss suit and Coco Chanel dress. You know, that is one brand that shouldn't have survived what their founder did. I'm just gonna say Chanel should be fired at the sun. and you know the slave labor um now they made their way to their first french canadian settlement after all of this they finally made it to the first one um which did greet them

with food and water but they kind of believed that they're like ah they do support us but it was out of pity like they're these these people all looked dead on their feet so like we should probably feed them and i mean like you know i i know a lot of people overstate like how miserable and i i i do it too it's for comedic effect but like people overstate how miserable being alive was at any point in history but like these guys were really miserable yeah imagine how bad someone has to look for someone who's very clearly an invasion force to look so miserable that the the local town was like we should probably give them some bread or something um we really don't want them to die in our backyard

that'd really bring down the property value yeah like then we have to get rid of the bodies you have to boil the boots so you can eat them you know like you're like trepanning their skulls so you can like drain out any blood make like black pudding or something you know

it really like you know in invading force, starving and dying, in terms of a logistic victory, it's good, but from just a day-to-day life admin thing, it's kind of a pain in the ass. Also, remember, this force sees themselves as liberators, so they shamble into

town looking like thralls from Warhammer 40k like, we're here to liberate you! Like, just covered in blood and smallpox, like don't liberate us please go away yeah this is why you need the body beavers you know you kill like let them die chuck them in a river hopefully that's like downstream from where you live don't don't ever piss upstream from where you're camping that is a bad idea but do you need help with your large quantity of bodies call the body beavers and they'll come on down and handle it uh that's that's my that's my next shark tank bitch yeah and then there's like you know the

beaver who's like the union rep who has to come and negotiate rates for the beavers and stuff you know like yeah we'll get rid of the bodies but you got to give us like this many twigs and like the hardest part about my shark tank pitch is having to get about 60 bodies onto the stage um oh it's not it's not unionizing the beavers at all that'll be easy mark cuban is uh many people don't know this mark cuban he doesn't like it when you stack up large amounts of dead bodies on his show. Oh, I thought you were about to say he hates beavers or something. Yeah, probably. He seems like a hateful guy.

He's a beaver racist. Beaverous. Now, Arnold kept sending messages back to George Washington and telling him, everything is going great, nothing to worry about. I have rations for another month and will soon be at the walls of Quebec. In reality, he only had around 650 people left. Virtually all of them were deathly ill with something, and he was completely out of food. The ragged remains of Arnold's army, still wearing the clothes that they had been wearing when they had set off,

since reduced to tatters, emerged at the St. Lawrence River after 45 days. It was supposed to take 20. Ugh, miserable. Now everyone, Arnold included, knew that this army couldn't effectively attack anything, let alone a fortified city such as Quebec. However, this wasn't going to stop them from trying. Small problem, though.

Most of the American boats were completely fucked by this point, and the British commander, Sir Guy Carlton, had ordered all of the boats on the south side of the Lawrence River to be burned so Arnold couldn't use them. So with his men pretty much dead on his feet, Arnold now had to order them to start cutting down trees and building

boats again, and also digging out canoes. None of these things are easy to do, even in the best of times. Arnold planned to use these to cross the mile-wide river, land at Wolf's Cove, and march to what are known as the Plains of Abraham, where he hoped that the British would join him in open battle. Because famously, this is how the British took Quebec, is that the French defenders met them in open battle rather than pull them into a siege. This is known as something very stupid, and it wouldn't happen. It's the hold me back bro tactic.

At 9pm on November 13th, around 550 of our... Benedict Arnold is just like shirtless, drunk, screaming at Quebec while two soldiers all about fight me, bitch. Come on. Fuck you. You are. Come on. Say that to my face.

Say that to my face. General Arnold, the only thing holding you back is your own body lace at this point. He's so malnourished. His boots are just holding him to the ground. At 9 p.m. on November 13th, around 550 Arnold's men, only some of whom even had muskets anymore, no cannons and only five rounds of

ammunition apiece, crossed the river. You must be really hungry if you're nibbling at your musket. They gave it to the beavers for food. Yeah, that's how they got the beavers to clear off the dead bodies. They broke off the stalks of their muskets. It's like a

painting of native people meeting the pilgrims for the first time, but it's a starved and dying soldier arming a beaver with a rifle. Like, please. Please. This is all I have. They're creating

the United Red Army of Beavers. The beavers are reading Lennon. As the army marched across the plains, Arnold ordered his band to strike up a cheerful song, confuse the people inside the city of Quebec, poke their heads out to see what the fuck was going on out there, only to see a couple zombie men mostly frozen wearing rags on their backs and you know pants loads of shit their skin melting from smallpox and they're just singing certified freak seven days a week everybody just wet ass pussy make the quebecois weak a whole bunch of dudes singing WAP as their skin sloughs off from smallpox and lice.

While they're playing like a military, like, 16th note peel. Arnold was hoping this band's sick beats would cause the people of Quebec to rise up against the British, but, you know, it's not a fantasy story, so that didn't work. Seeing that this didn't work, he ordered his men to retreat nearby

and wait for montgomery to show up and he finally did in december 2nd luckily he also brought clothes ammo guns and food all of which were badly needed he just looks like damn dude you look like shit what happened that smell it's it's it's everything it's all of us i mean that's that was probably a good game to play at that time like what's that smell just like any any point, it's like, hmm, what's that smell? It's, uh, I spy with my little eye, but everything you point out is red and full of pus. I mean, the only thing you couldn't spot with your little eye

was people's toes, because they'd all fallen off. Or also given to the beavers. Montgomery also took overall command, which I assume at this point Arnold was pretty happy to give up. Their combined forces had about 1,200 men, Montgomery also took overall command, which I assume at this point Arnold was pretty happy to give up. Their combined forces had about 1,200 men, half of whom were the starved remnants of Arnold's force, and 200 of which were Livingston's Canadian volunteers. They laid a half-assed siege to Quebec, hoping that Quebec would eventually run out of food, but they didn't actually close off the city. Carlton had also been intercepting messages between the two commanders for days now and knew not only exactly

where they were, but how many men they had. Carlton knew that they had about the same amount of men as the Americans, but they were rested, warm, fed, behind walls, and not riddled with shitting-ass smallpox disease. Carlton correctly decided that meeting the men in an open field would be dumb as shit,

and they stayed behind the walls of the city. And then the winter... He's just like, he's sending them like call-out videos like, Pull up, bitch! It's nice and warm in here, you fucking idiots! Ain't no fucking slack in my Mac. As the winter got worse and worse, it became clear to Montgomery that Quebec was not going to run out of food before he did,

so he sent a messenger into the city to demand their surrender. As an extra, like, salt in the wound of which many of them had at this point, Carlton refused to even meet with them or read the letter because they were rebels and he didn't talk to rebels. They didn't even get left on read.

They got left on delivered. He literally crumpled up the letter unwritten and chucked it into a fireplace. He just threw it back and said, get left on read they got left on delivered he literally crumpled up the letter unwritten and chucked it into a fireplace he just threw it back and then like eat this you losers you guys should probably eat this paper it looks like you need it the americans sat back and tried to shell the city but the cannons that montgomery had brought with him were too small to do any damage so he kept trying to negotiate but each time carlton promptly told him to go fuck himself i'm just laughing about the idea of a cannonball

just, like, being propelled with such little force that it just, like, bounces off the wall. Yeah, it's gunpowder-propelled doink. Like... This is what they get when they buy their cannons off Wile E. Coyote. Wish.com-ass artillery. Meep meep. Montgomery and

Arnold were sure that an all-out assault on the city probably wouldn't work, but they were running out of options. Like before, their soldiers' contracts were running out, as was their food. So they decided to go for the assault anyway, postponing their attack on the next blinding snowstorm, which they would then use as cover. Which seems very clever until you realize that they would also be blinded by said snowstorm, and they also wouldn't be able to see anything.

And at the last second, since nobody had been planning any of this, soldiers had to slap together scaling ladders that could cover the city's walls, while others armed themselves with hand-to-hand weapons like hatchets. They already had on hand for carting wood, but they also carved out spears out of nearby tree branches. Is this when the beavers show up like the eagles in Lord of the Rings? Guys, you're carving those all wrong. This is how we fight the British. So at 2 a.m., as a blizzard swirled around Quebec, the attack was ordered with Montgomery's forces

heading to the western part of the city and Arnold to the north. Any kind of surprise was immediately ruined, however, because again, Americans couldn't see see it's a blinding snowstorm so they carry lanterns with them through the early morning to light their way which of course could immediately be seen by the british defenders because nobody apparently understood how light worked yet see this is the tactical importance of them eating the wax suit open their mouth and light comes out don't worry comrades i've lit my tongue i have become candle lighter of the night montgomery we've invented the worst fucking superhero on earth but but at the same time he's melting down like a candle montgomery advanced without any kind of resistance into the outskirts of the city finding the first barriers completely abandoned probably because the snow

storm and he marched directly into a narrow pass that was overlooked by a large house. It was only then that he noticed the house had gun holes knocked out of the walls, making it kind of a blockhouse type situation. But he didn't see anything else because of the snowstorm. He ordered his men to charge through the blinding snowstorm toward the house, only realizing that once he had only gotten about 50 feet away, the Brits had put an entire goddamn cannon in the house, pointed directly at him, and had loaded said cannon with grapeshot.

Oh, Jesus. It tore through the ranks at point-blank range, killing Montgomery instantly and turning most of his men into a kind of human gravy that they would then use for poutine any survivors turn and retreated back through the snowstorm leaving all the dead and dying behind meanwhile arnold led his men through the gates without resistance and into the surrounding city itself once again this was another trap and they were luring them in as soon as arnold's men made

it inside they're flanked on walls by either side of them, all of which were lined with British soldiers and Canadian militiamen, who promptly began raining musket balls down onto them. Arnold, seeing that they were well and truly fucked, figured the only way through this was to assault through the ambush, which is true, that is what you're supposed to do,

just charge through. However, this led to them sprinting nearly a half mile under gunfire and then he didn't break through the ambush he ran directly into a barricade which is lined with cannons and more soldiers who began to again blast him into pieces arnold was shot in the leg which shattered his entire bone in the process Somehow, he got back to his feet to attempt to lead his men forward before his leg just crumpled into dust

and he collapsed into a pile of agony and bone shards and was eventually carried from the battlefield against his will. He got Andreas Bauder. In his place, his second in command, a subordinate named Morgan, attempted to carry on the charge.

Morgan and the Americans stormed the barricade, but it didn't matter. They were surrounded on three sides and were so badly pinned down they couldn't even retreat. Sixty of them died. Another 425 suddenly said, Fuck the revolution and surrendered. Yeah, like, you know,

they made the tactical error. They should have trained the beavers like the Umahajideen. They're definitely missing, like, you know, they made the tactical error. They should have trained the beavers like the Mujahideen. They're definitely missing, like, the local levies in the situation of, like, comrade beavers. Would you also like to throw off the British yoke? I mean, the idea of the beaver Mujahideen implies the existence of beaver Osama bin Laden. Hmm. Look, I don't know enough beavers to know this isn't true.

Yeah. They train the beavers and then the beavers eventually turn against them in like 30 years. That's how it always works is that it was the French Canadian CIA that did all of this. And then we have Vermont 9-11. They blow up the Ben and Jerry's factory. Somehow. Oh no. Another Ben and Jerry's factory. Somehow

Oh no, another log has hit the factory. Somehow all of this wasn't enough to convince Arnold to give it up. Recovering from his broken leg and gunshot wound he insisted they have a siege on Quebec continue. This is despite the fact that, you know, the American

commander left back in Montreal telling him I can't send you anything else. Montgomery is fucking dead. The men are refusing to sign new contracts, including an entire regiment from New York who promptly bailed on him. And other people who are still on their contract said, I'm not waiting for the end of my contract, chucked their muskets into the snow and decided to walk home arnold still held on hope that carlton would come out of the city and try to finish him off thinking that now surely carlton will think he could beat him in open battle which he certainly could have but

carlton wasn't going to do any of that he sat in quebec letting rampant disease and winter storms tear what was left of the invasion force apart. Yeah, he was cozy. He was sitting by the fire. He was dressed like the sleepy time tea bear. You know, he was just chilling. Then Carlton deployed an ace up his sleeve. A sentence which has never

once left my mouth in the history of the show. Prostitute born biological warfare. What? Okay, hear me out here smallpox had a vaccine in those days which would make the person who got the vaccine immune to smallpox however they could still spread it oh okay so it was i think the term is like a non-mutagenic carrier something like that yeah so he gathered all of Quebec's sex workers inoculated them against smallpox and then unleashed

them upon the American force telling them to make them like their johns or whatever unknowingly spreading the disease they had no idea what they were doing you know in a way like good that he inoculated

the sex workers. I'm not sure how I feel about weaponized sex workers, but... Weaponized fucking prostitute biological warfare. Outstanding. Pussy's how good it kills you.

They Quebec while pussy got me acting unwise. So soon, just an uncontrolled wave of smallpox and STDs spread through the American ranks to the few men who didn't already have one or both of those things. Who didn't already have one or both of those things. Like, you know, I feel like a very mild breeze might have just like wiped all these guys out. They're alive in spite of everything. Like if you, you know, if you're suffering that much and like a woman comes and says, I want to sleep with you.

I think you would probably take that. I don't even know how sex is even possible at this point like these guys are all spending their free time vomiting and shitting out the insides of their body and soon like yeah i guess they have some like fucking shillings in their pocket or whatever if they haven't already boiled and eaten them like we're eating shillings tonight boys yeah i just lost several fingers to frostbite but i could go for some sex like no man like i'm just gonna curl up by this tree and fucking die um yeah i feel bad i feel bad for the sex workers here because like they were the ones who had to set have sex with these like disgusting dying men they could have just went up

and coughed on them. They could have just hit them with a rock at this point. Just do the alleged Genghis Khan thing of, like, load up bodies with smallpox and just fire them at them. They could have just walked up to the American soldiers at this point and, like, smushed

their head in. They're all half dead anyway just beat them with a whole bunch of roofing hammers or something I don't deploy the roofing hammers hey when look you know when you've got a hammer every problem looks like a nail

or in this case a very soft squishy skull still Arnold refused to budge holding on to his dream for months before finally starting a slow retreat in October of 1776, a full year after the start of the venture. In the end, hundreds of Americans were dead in the freezing cold. Thousands more got smallpox, dysentery, and an entire rainbow's worth of VD. And in those days, smallpox was fatal in about 60% of cases, so this would have killed around 3,000 of the 10,000-strong force total that was eventually

sent into Canada over the course of the entire length of the operation. The invasion barely lost anybody in combat, but instead got its ass royally handed to them by Canada, the environment, and sex workers, which admittedly is just fucking incredible. And when I say Canada, I don't mean as a state or a colony. I just mean the landmass of Canada.

Canada is just cold Australia. I'll take that. This is finally when Carlton screwed up, pretty much just sitting back and allowing the Americans to get away when he could have very easily come out of Fortress Quebec and crush them entirely and retaken Fort Ticonderoga.

This resulted in being passed up for promotion and eventually resigning as the governor of Quebec. Though after all of this, Americans didn't give up their French-Canadian dreams. On multiple occasions, people brought up the topic of another invasion, though this time around Washington was very much against it. And during the Paris Peace Talks, which eventually ended the war and created the United States, Americans demanded all of Quebec to be part of the newly independent nation.

As funny as that outcome could have been, this is actually how the US ended up with the Northwest Territory, or the Greater Midwest Area today. Even with this, Americans didn't drop the issue, and anybody who ever listened to our very first series ever in the War of 1812 we invaded canada again and it failed again you know if you are listening at home and you want to take away like one thing from this show not just this episode but this show in general do your diplomacy and planning in the winter and never try to invade anywhere after August. Just don't invade during winter. Unless it's a tropical island,

that's fine, I suppose. Yeah, unless you're fighting loads of emus. Well, that didn't work out either. Yeah, nah. That is the American Revolutionary Invasion of Quebec. And Tom, we do a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion.

If you'd like to ask a question from the Legion, run to the show on Patreon, on Discord, attach it to a malnourished man from Vermont, and march him into Quebec in the middle of winter, and Tom and I will answer it on the show. And today's question comes from the Discord. What location, bar, gym, anything, I'm assuming this is unimportant things, not like government institutions, would you want removed from the world entirely for the greater good? Ooh.

Any CrossFit gym or any Pure gym here in the UK? I don't know what Pure gym is. Pure gym's kind of like Planet Fitness, but worse. How could could it be worse than planet fitness planet fitness at least gives you pizza like all like for me all the equipment is terrible they treat all of their staff terribly all their personal trainers are like they are like massively underpaid like other than that i can't really think of anything that i would like like wipe from existence i am filled with the beauty i'm filled with the joy of the beautiful tapestry of man so you know i i don't hate many things tapping into your deeper herzog here

i've kind of already named the thing that i would i i just fucking hate nightclubs man i i've made my case i feel like I feel like I've made my case like I just don't enjoy them like these are innocuous things that we hate that we want eliminated I want to eliminate those um yeah like for me like in general I kind of as I have gotten older I've tried to institute in my life the thing of well it may not be for me but i'm sure some people like it that's how i feel about everything like bars gyms whatever like do your thing whatever makes you happy just don't include me in it leave me alone yeah tom thank you so much for joining me here for the second week in a row on the Hate or Invade Canada-a-thon.

There will not be a third week. Maybe we'll revisit that when we revisit the War of 1812. Hopefully no world events happen in the intervening time. Unfortunately, history just keeps happening. Tom, where can people find your other show? Beneath the Skins, the show about the history of everything told through the history of tattoos uh we actually have an episode with joe that should be out by the time this is out on our take on the mutiny on the bounty and the history of the pitcairn islands so uh check us out for that um other than that we do cool history stuff we talk about how tattooing has

been connected to the world um soon we will have someone on to talk about some as yet unreleased research that is going to change how we see otzi's tattoos otzi the ice man r, RIP King, gone too soon. Hope you enjoyed that bed of ice. Yeah, friend of the show, Aaron Dieter-Wolfe, has some really new and interesting research on Otzi that we're going to be talking about soon. So, yeah, check it out. Little known fact, he was

edible. Now, this is the only show that I do, but if you like it, consider supporting us on Patreon. Make everything we do here possible. We're running a massively expanded charity program for refugees in Armenia at the moment. You get bonus content. You get Discord access. You get every episode we do early, books, audiobooks. And leave us a review on wherever it is that you listen to podcasts. And perhaps if you enjoy books buy one of my books, there's a lot of them and I have more coming out soon

also if you enjoyed the Stalingrad series there should be Stalingrad t-shirts for the Stalingrad street fighting club available on the store get that and have a very strange shirt that nobody will ask you about unless they do

in which case you know they probably listen to the show. And until next time, invade Canada in the winter. Fuck it. You're built different. Give it a shot.