Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 296- The Battle Of The Three Kings

Episode Date: January 28, 2024

Once upon a time the King of Portugal started a war that went so badly it collapsed his dynasty and killed three different kings all at once. BUY JOE'S BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-War-Military-Sci-Fi-Undying-ebook/dp/B0CQ6BH6BD/ref=sr_1_1?crid=26EUS2ZHZB3Z9&keywords=joe+kassabian&qid=1706440190&sprefix=joe+kassabian%2Caps%2C211&sr=8-1 SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys SOURCES: https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2021/08/343746/why-the-battle-of-the-three-kings-lives-on-in-moroccan-memory https://www.historynet.com/three-dead-kings-war-in-morocco/#:~:text=By%20midafternoon%20on%20Aug,and%20North%20Africa%20for%20decades. https://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/Medieval/BattleOfTheThreeKings

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, but I guess you probably already knew that. What if there was a war raging for a million years, but it was kept a secret? It's a question that Sarkis never considered. He was born as an upper-middle class man living in Prime City during the so-called millennia of peace. As far as he knew, or as far as anybody knew, humanity has no army, no weapons, and no wars. The people of Earth had been expanding into the stars as long as anyone remembered,

free of conflict, while the Techno King and his royal cabal enriched themselves in the backs of their labor. It was as it always had been. Then, Sarkis died. Unbeknownst to him, an app he used every single day of his life hijacks his consciousness and uploads it into a synthetic engine of war known as a sleeve. Along with countless others, he's been conscripted into the Undying Legion, charged with fighting a secret, unending war in the name of humanity. Their minds stolen, uploaded into war machines. They fight a secret war name of humanity. Their minds stolen, uploaded into war machines. They fight a secret war to preserve humanity. My new book, The Invisible War, comes out February 20th via Atheon Books and is now available for pre-order on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

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 audio book 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, the only podcast to listen about idiots in history dying horribly. I'm Joe, and with me as always is tom in the content caves of london at least my coffee doesn't have snot in it yeah right before we hit the record button i

sneezed directly into my own coffee um which is fine i don't have you ever i drink a lot of fucking coffee i'm sure you know that we've We've hung out enough for you to see me mainline coffee directly into my body. It's 2 p.m. here. I have been up since like 9, and I have been drinking cup after cup of coffee. I don't need this one. At this point, it's just habit.

It's also very cold, so i don't really want to drink anything other than hot coffee at the moment i'm not a tea guy i can't get into tea so it's either coffee or water why don't you just get like decaf coffee i'm gonna choose to believe you didn't just suggest that oh shut up i decaf coffee is for pussies i't care. Sometimes I want a coffee and I don't want the caffeine. That would be like smoking a cigarette without nicotine in it. What's the point? I mean, yeah, but like sometimes coffee is just nice to drink. Fair, but none of the coffee.

You've drank my coffee. It's not good. Yeah, true. You drink it for the caffeine. It's not like I have expensive coffee. I don't even know where to find good coffee here. Like I go to a grocery store and it's like, you have the instant coffee

and you have like these brands that are just like coffee. What is spelled really weird because it's in Dutch? Yeah, it's just coffee with a K or whatever. Or like, I mean, I'm not like, I don't think brand name makes good coffee or anything. Obviously not like Starbucks coffee. I'll just taste like burnt asshole to me. Starbucks sucks so much. Dunkin Donuts coffee is significantly better.

And yeah, Tim Hortons coffee is better than that. But can't get that here uh i mean there is dunkin donuts in in the city center where i'm not riding on a tram for 20 minutes get a cup of dunkin donuts coffee i'm not insane dunkin donuts but at the same time i'm not going to buy like a two kilo sack of coffee that's just called coffee fine ground. Like what kind of coffee is it? Fuck you. It's coffee.

Just get, why don't you just do the simple thing, buy a cheap grinder on like online and then just like grind your own beans and just get a French press. It just eliminates so much of the hassle. That is my plan. However, It just eliminates so much of the hassle. That is my plan.

However, I am still attempting to get everything I need for my kitchen as I have just moved. And every time I find something, like I buy something like, fuck, I need like three more things. So at this point, I have just stopped looking because moving is so expensive and annoying. I just like, you know, you'd be really nice right now a coffee grinder shut the fuck up joe and enjoy your goddamn instant coffee how about that why don't you just be a real man and just like put the beans in your mouth and chew them exactly uh you you chew them and then you just pack them into your lip like it's chewing tobacco yeah just like it's dip but like actually nicotinated or caffeinated dip is a great idea it has to exist i'm looking this up i'm looking this up i i know pouches that are coffee that

you put in your lip do exist i know those exist i've seen them before but i don't know if you can get a caffeinated plus with nicotine pouch i feel like that breaks some kind of law like like a four loco for your lip um yeah you can uh caffeine pouches and dip from grinds yeah see those are the ones that I've seen. I'm 99% sure those are just coffee. Oh, gee. 50 milligrams. What? Like, so I'm kind of slightly obsessed with the idea of snooze because, like, snooze has become, like, a really popular thing over here. And, like, it's just, like, the kind of Scandinavian, like, pre-packed.

It's not, like, actual tobacco. It's, like, nicotine salts or some shit like this and like any i see loads of videos of people trying them for the first time and i was like oh my god it's like being on drugs and i'm like i smoke so much i probably will put it in my mouth and be like i don't feel anything catch me if you are a patron you're hearing this before the live show catch me on stage you know with 12 dip pouches like in my mouth i uh i'm going to invent the same thing but just for meth um it's gonna rot a hole directly through your lip in uh in record time chewable meth i mean to be fair we've been informed that

uh while we are allowed pyrotechnics for the stage, for the live show, we're not allowed to smoke on stage, and I don't know if we're allowed to vape, so it'll be the only show that will be sponsored by Nicorette Patches. That's gonna kill all three of us. And since this episode is

actually coming out after the live show, if we have died, remember us. So, Tom, on this show, we really like to talk about monarchs, royals, all manner of inbred, warmongering, crown-wearing dipshits getting murdered, don't we? Yeah, hang them all. No gods, no masters. There is no authority but you. But me specifically. No, you the listener. You listening to

this, don't listen to any sense of authority other than yourself. I choose to believe the first thing you said. This is how I start my cult. I can finally retire in my compound in the Dutch wilds. It'll be the only sexless cult ever.

Yeah, pretty much. Now, what if I told you about a battle where three of these crown-wearing dipshits all died at once? Oh, fuck yeah, this is so cool. So, before we start, are we talking Habbsburgs or before same general era okay so there there's a high likelihood that all three of these people are also cousins no no no okay well we'll get to that point okay one of them is european one of them is european okay so this story all starts with the expanding portuguese empire setting its sights on Morocco with them getting a foothold in 1415, slowly expanding from there

over the course of the 1400s under King Alfonso V, who was given the nickname The African. Now, this is really, really common. It's a common nickname type of system, like Scipio Africanus in Romeome it was not his last name uh

it'd be funny if it was you know this type of thing happens uh he was nicknamed the african for his conquest in africa i will always think that's funny though um also also i think you know the portuguese don't get enough shit for the colonialism that they did, you know. Everyone is like, you know, Britain, Belgium, you know, the kind of the big hitters. Portugal were all so terrible. Portugal and Spain generally, like, when everybody is talking about, like, horrific, violent imperialism, they're just, like like sitting on the sidelines like man i really hope nobody brings us up which is astounding to me um and i think that um i think

it really does come down to like what is generally considered like west western centricism or or like western centric thought when you think of the more immediate, more modern era type things, when you think about, say, for example, American imperialism or British imperialism, things of that nature, they jump out in people's minds maybe because they learn about them in school, but almost always because it happened more recently.

Because there were still countries getting independence from the UK into the 70s like 1960s and 70s i mean but also same for fucking portugal and spain but yeah portugal was literally fighting a bush war in africa until the soldiers rebelled against the military dictatorship and ended it. We're talking about the difference between bread and butter and cheese colonialism and small plates colonialism. Tapas colonialism. Would you like your colonialism to be delivered to you in a series of varying small plates? And I also think a lot of it has to do with

people, there's specific countries in the world that people are comfortable hating, which and I'm not saying they're wrong for hating certain countries and their histories, but it is considered much more okay and acceptable to hate British

history because more people celebrate Independence day from the british empire than fucking anywhere else that are yeah and you know not to mention all of the crimes um but it's not considered this like of course everybody like hates spain and portugal for their fascist and military dictatorships which also happened very recently but they don't realize how much horrific amount of damage they caused throughout the world and i don't know why that is maybe because they speak a slightly different language than english so it's harder for people to read up on it where you can just crack open pretty much any book and read like ah we've opened the the categories of horrific british crimes yeah but it's like i think it's also like the way

that most people also maybe not won't think of like belgium because like uh the iberian uh colonial powers and like people like belgium like a lot of their power was centered in africa so like that story is like a little bit more forgotten when you look at someone somewhere like Britain, where their empire was so pervasive across the world, but also affected like a lot of countries like the US and Canada. So we have English language sources of that. Whereas like you think of like Portugal, a lot of it is in, you know, Central and South America. Well, it's Brazil and Africa and africa and spain is like like you said so far back that people don't think about it either yeah i mean and likewise in comparison like the dutch um like there's there's people that live here that don't really understand the the

colonial ghosts of like the dutch empire through the voc like i literally heard um a dutch guy the other day when he's like you know we have so many indonesian and surinamese restaurants in the netherlands because you know they moved here for economic opportunities i was like oh that's it no no other reason yeah that okay cool i can't think of anything else that ever happened um and let. And if you look into those kind of things, it's very easy to miss it. And specifically in the case of Belgium, King Leopold II is legitimately one of the worst people to ever live, but it's Belgium.

Nobody thinks of Belgium as an imperial power. And Belgium themselves did a lot of heavy lifting separating themselves from the what the king did because like oh it was his own personal property okay what about belgian congo that existed after the free state and that like all of the the fucking blood money and extraction of resources that occurred in uh like belgian congo and the the congolese free state built half of brussels um but yeah no no need to talk about that yeah brussels is just now no known for a chocolate and pita foils don't forget uh like diamonds in antwerp i guess that's all i got. Anyway. Though, I guess this goes back even further than this in the context of this episode when the Caliphate took over the Iberian Peninsula and succeeding dynasties of invaders from Northern Africa, see Lisbon.

But we're not going to go back that far. that far. Anyway, the Portuguese conquest of Morocco continued until around the 1500s, the mid-1500s, when the Moroccans would begin a slow but steady reconquest. This brings us to one of the main characters for this episode, Don Sebastian,

or King Sebastian I of Portugal, a man who had risen to the throne at the ripe age of three. Oh, God. Yeah. Now, at the point that he became boy king the moroccan reconquest had been going on for around 10 years sebastian was in short a very strange kid and man even for his era he was raised as an orphan because his dad died 18 days before he was born his mom johanna of spain

popped him out and then fucked off to madrid where she'd serve as regent for her father emperor charles v and later for her brother king philip ii other than the day of his birth she would never see him again holy shit yeah literally just like boop okay bye um and like even even in the weirdest history of like royals where you know there's no real parenting going on that's done by like the assistants or whatever that is really weird yeah i mean maybe his dad would have raised him a little bit if he hadn't died but like who Yeah, he weighs he he was raised effectively by the royal palace and educated by Jesuit priests. Oh, God, that's a that's a red flag right there.

It's not good. The priest educated him mostly on how he should just continue to expand Portugal and also hate Muslims. And one of those things actually qualifies him to be possibly the future prime minister of the Netherlands. But in the essence of being a king, there's a lot of things missing here. And when you think about how do you think a Jesuit priest in this era is educating a kid who was king who was king crusades right just going to connect everything to the crusades and that's exactly what they did they like you know your whole goal

should one day to launch a crusade and complete the portuguese conquest of all of northern africa so that's what he grew up believing and he also violently hated women and i'm not even talking about like the baseline for the era of man that he was i'm saying he hated women so fucking much even for a man back then that nobody would marry their daughter to him even for political power. Jesus Christ. He was the king of Portugal. All I got to say is mommy issues. Like, I don't know how fucked up an individual has to be for someone like, you know, it would be really nice for our daughter to get us like political connections as queen of Portugal

or whatever. But like, guy's a dick. We're not going to do that to our kid. I mean, at this point of history, that is what noble daughters exist to do. And even then people like, nah, I'd rather marry off to some Duke or whatever. Yeah. Like we'll settle for a lower connection. Sebastian pretty much left the whole running an empire thing to anyone else but him,

because the only thing that he wanted to do was fight a war against North African Muslims. So he spent his time riding around with knights in Morocco, trying to start shit, launching raids, and things of that nature. And to his credit, I guess I could say, as long as he was planting a sword squarely into someone's chest, that was something he was good at. He wasn't good at literally anything else. But now, mind you, remember, just the act of killing people,

not like any other aspect of war, just the murder part. Yeah, it's like reverse gooning. I mean, what is a suit of armor other than a knight's goon cave yes exactly i feel like i'm gonna regret telling you what a goon cave is no one regrets that more than me however the chance to actually conquer morocco never really came up because despite portugal being you know a globe-spanning, they weren't really known for their land conquest. They weren't really known for like, oh no, the Portuguese army has appeared on the horizon. They were a naval power and a trade power. That was it. However, a chance finally

came to Sebastian in 1576. While the Moroccans hated the Portuguese, they were hardly a cohesive, unified force. They had political intrigue of their own. Civil war broke out in Morocco when Muley Abdelhamid, who was the Sultan Muley Muhammad's uncle, returned from exile in Algeria and overthrew his nephew. So Muhammad, now deposed, fled north and begged for the Portuguese to kind of forget about all that war thing and throw their weight behind his claim to the throne. And if they did, he would give them massive tracts of land and promise that any claims to Portuguese-held Africa would cease immediately. And he would kind of promise to just become a proxy and a puppet to the Portuguese. Which, of course, is exactly fine.

It's perfectly great for Sebastian. And he immediately agreed to this without consulting literally anyone. When his uncle, the king of Spain, was told about his plans to invade Morocco to support Muhammad's claims to the throne, this was read out to him by the Spanish ambassador in Lisbon. The king of Spain told his nephew like, yeah, don't do that. Morocco is not worth the trouble. Also, like you've never done this before. Yeah, kind of know what's in your wheelhouse.

And the ambassador knew this, the king of Portugal well enough that when he told the king, nothing can be done. The boy is pouting. Yeah, nothing can be done. Just let him go kill some people, you know, let him engage in his special interest. He's having a little hissy fit because he can't conquer northern Africa. fit because he can't conquer northern africa now the king of spain decided to not really give a shit because he came to the conclusion no matter what way this mission goes it could only benefit spain he said quote well if he succeeds we'll have a fine nephew and if he fails we'll have a fine kingdom and this is because he had no claims to the throne like he uh the the king sebastian don

sebastian had no heirs okay so so if he failed like the king of spain's like i'll put another like i'll take the throne over yeah i'll just put someone or i'll sit there myself i don't know fucking let him do it exactly so any way this shook out it's like all coming up spain baby yeah you know it's all coming up spaniards bro it's gonna be tapas all night however the spanish king warned him hey if you're not if you're if you're just gonna do this anyway despite what i tell you at least don't campaign into the middle of Morocco. It's desert. Don't do a war there. A recurring theme on this show is

don't try and launch a war in a desert because there's one essential resource armies need and it's water and what do deserts not have any of? See, maybe for us, Tom, us mere mortals, we're not the pure, triumphant crusaders of the Portuguese Empire.

Because Sebastian would ignore this bit of advice. All the soldiers are surviving on little custard pies, you know. The Portuguese king immediately ran into problems coming up with this invasion force because like i pointed out portugal was not a traditional land power and he didn't have a large army just laying around to deploy and he didn't have the money to build one either so he began to tax the living shit out of everything in portugal including the church which is you know popular when the church is the main power broker however that was still not enough money now at this point he had literally like ringed out his economy for anything he could tax food prices shot up housing shot up like land taxes shot up

he literally fucked every single aspect of portuguese society attempting to build this army he's just like shaking the cushions on the sofa to try and get some coins out. But the cushion is just all of Lisbon. The couch of Lisbon. And that still wasn't enough. So he sent Portuguese diplomats to like throughout all of the powers of Europe to look for lines of credit so he could take out loans. And they did, but that still wasn't enough. So then the king of Spain decided, you have fuck it. I'll throw, I'll give you a couple thousand men and some food and ammo and

whatnot, like logistical support. Let's see how this works out. So now he is a thoroughly fucked his economy and ran up massive amounts of debt both in money to all of Europe but also to Spain for everything else it's like when you you know you borrow like 20 quid from your big brother and then like

two days later your like head is on the ground and he's giving you like a noogie where's my money where's my money also a question if any what is is on the ground and he's giving you like a noogie he's like where's my money where's my money where's my money also a question what is like if any what is like Portugal's colonial holdings like at this time

they have a fair amount of tracts of land in Africa they still have Goa in India a few other things they this is effectively the furtivest that would ever spread okay okay yeah for reasons that will become clear at the end of this episode Portuguese is effectively the furtivest that would ever spread. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah.

For reasons that will become clear at the end of this episode, Portuguese expansion stops. You could say we are at the zenith of the Portuguese empire. That's right. And anytime you're at the zenith of imperial splendor, there's always one guy involved, that's a british dude um and he's easily the strangest guy of this entire saga his name is thomas stukelly have you ever heard of this guy before stukelly was an english mercenary and possibly an illegitimate son to king henry the eighth um and that meant that his family was actually quite rich uh but

stew kelly was also a pirate and a criminal um as well as being a mercenary and you know in this era those three things tend to go together yeah and he had been running from the law both in in england and various other places and running two different wars fighting in them but also he's he's not great with money he effectively bankrupted his own family burning through their money through europe he's he's an english man on a 20 year long stag do but instead of getting drunk and falling into the canals at amsterdam or doing sex tourism in spain he's just doing wars he's doing like gap year shit but instead of texting his dad when he's like broke in bali he's like uh i got into this war uh i don't have enough money to finish it yeah pretty much um and he had several warrants for his arrests uh for piracy

specifically and he was arrested on them from time to time. And he was always acquitted. And I think it's because it wasn't for a lack of evidence. There's plenty of that. It was because of his connections and because it was kind of common knowledge he was almost certainly the son of King Henry VIII. He kind of ruled, is what I'm saying.

Is this a dude rock moment? I mean, I wouldn't go so far as saying dude's rock because he is effectively a British freebooter. He may have also traded slaves. Oh, okay. Sorry, sorry. And he ruled to the extent that he was so openly committing crimes

against pretty much every country in Europe and just kept getting away with them. After Queen Elizabeth I came to power, Stuchelli teamed up with Spain to continue being a royal pay in the ass for England. So he was contracted by both the King of Spain and the Pope to slap together an invasion force to wait for this. Drumroll please. Invade Ireland. Oh for fuck's sake. Like you know us Catholics we stick together. Man what?

I was going to say this guy is doing like Ezra Miller shit all over Europe. He's becoming a cryptid. Yeah like the way ezra miller like they were like running around kidnapping people armed to the teeth this guy is just doing that yeah when ezra miller was doing their thing whatever string of crimes i get i feel comfortable calling it while they were in hawaii i was also in hawai Hawaii and so was friend of the show Sarah, who they have also co-hosted and they had their own show

back in the day. And we used to jokingly text one another like, hey, I made it home. Ezra Miller didn't get me. Okay, why did they want to invade Ireland? Oh, to piss off England, of course. They were going to bring weapons ammunition supplies and lead a large scale

rebellion against the English and he brought along a few hundred Italian mercenaries for good measure because what if Ireland was invaded by the Italians bro the food would have been so much better like we could have had tapas we could have had iberico ham

we could have had likeas we could have had iberico ham we could have had like nice olive oil good wine it's 10 000 different kinds of spaghetti yeah man that's wearing a scarf in the summer being angry that you called it spaghetti yeah and it also we wouldn't have had you know like four and a half million people die you know there's also that. Now, this plan didn't work, obviously, as Tom's existence could tell you. But when this plan got off the ground and his weapons in mid were loaded into boats in Italy to head towards Spain, because they were supposed to meet up in Spain and then go to Ireland and invade from there, all hell immediately broke loose. See, Stichelli may have been a prolific pirate, sea-going rascal, if you will. He wasn't very good at it.

Look, I appreciate the effort. The boats that he chartered to get to Spain barely even floated, and many of them were missing sails. He couldn't afford the sales he was on a payment plan he had paid off the actual hull and you know the sales are meant to come next month he was on a deadline he didn't want to disappoint anyone so now he was like you know what i'm just

gonna do it now sales were the the means of travel because these were sailboats tom i mean like surely you could have got some paddles or something and like road that is what they ended up having to do but so this journey should have taken two weeks and it was provisioned for two weeks it took two months so they ran out of food and water several of his men had to be thrown overboard for mutiny and, you know, dying of disease. But somehow he was able to avoid being murdered by his own very angry Italian mercenaries and then landed in Spain and took on supplies. Don Sebastian, our main character, heard about this very well-known English dude showing up on his party boats and said, hey, you know, if you take all this shit to Lisbon, we'll pay you more. All he hears is... As it's just like slowly floating into the bay playing like the

worst British club music on earth but everybody is dying from scurvy all the 1500s Italian sailors are still wearing skin tight Armani jeans all the jeans are white the tightest shirts you've ever

seen and they're all slightly shiny how did you keep being The tightest shirts you've ever seen. And they're all slightly shiny. How did you keep being so shiny while at sea? You see, I just apply olive oil to my skin constantly around the clock. Hey, it's me, you know. I'm the Italian guy. The olive oil, it is very good for your skin.

It is not, however, how you say good uh to eat because we have no food yeah when you are at sea it is terrible because there is no hope no women to harass that's how mermaids were invented this is a whole bit there's a whole bunch of like italian sailors dying from scurvy and having delusions sexually harassing a manatee now stukelli immediately agreed he's a fucking mercenary to pirate. He doesn't give a shit about invading Ireland. He's just like, yeah, chase the bag, baby, you know? No, he agreed. He did not, however,

consult literally anybody else, including the King of Spain, the Pope, nor any of his other mercenaries. Who was the Pope at this time as well? I have no idea. No, it was Gregory VIII. Oh my God, this guy has such an incredible name.

Ugo Bonkambgi. Is that a name? That's the noise a Batman villain makes when he gets punched in the face. Ugo Bonkampagni. So Stu Kelly agreed to all of this because he's a mercenary and a pirate. He doesn't give a shit about

invading Ireland but he agreed to Don Sebastian's terms without consulting or telling anybody including the king of Spain and the Pope the two people who were actually paying him but also the Italian mercenaries

yeah like you know Pope Gregory XIII at the time was also Italian. So it's like, you're pissing off two groups of Italians at once. One is probably the most powerful person in Europe. Now, the good news is, is like the King of Spain and the Pope were both like, well, we're not fucking with the British or the English, but we are. He is going to go kill Muslims, so we're not fucking with the british or the english but we are we're he's gonna go kill muslims so we're cool with that right and they were they were just like okay fine just let him go they even let him keep the money that they originally paid him but again the italians in the boats actually doing the fighting we're not consulted yeah so in the

end after taxing his empire to death getting aid from spain and kidnapping some italians via their Yeah. 1800s pretty out of date you know there's the pike and shot era of warfare where you know you'd have pikes but they'd be supported with arquebuses muskets things of that nature nah man he just has a whole bunch of like hungry dudes with pikes and for pikes to be used effectively they require a fair amount of training in both drill and marching things because it's a large body of spears the only thing that makes them valuable is is a lot of train that makes them a cohesive whole one solid unit sebastian looked at that timetable and said nah fuck that get in the boat also aren't pikes mainly most effective against cavalry they certainly certainly help. Yeah, like, very famously were used in

1798 in Ireland. Very effective against cavalry. Also, side note, Pope Gregory XIII responsible for the Gregorian calendar. Cool. Thanks, Pope Greg. Yeah, thanks, Greg.

So with that, a fleet of 500 ships set off from Lisbon on June 24th, my birthday. And you know, one of the things I've always wanted for my birthday was just a pile of corpses. So I guess I finally got it several hundred years before I was born. And they landed on Morocco's Atlantic coast on July 14th. Upon landing, the various flaws of this army became immediately apparent. Now, we've talked about crusader slash chivalric armies before, Tom.

Yeah. What is one thing they always have in common? Their shit? Yeah. And for one specific reason is there's no chain of command.

Yeah, that's not really... Especially when you have a big boatload of mercenaries as well. In a group of people from literally all over Europe, there's no chain of command just bam don sebastian sitting on top of all of us and then just nothing below him and no orders were passed down to anyone everyone just kind of assumed the next guy would know what to do

and this was made worse by again chival. The command ideas of this idealized version of crusader-esque military glory. Leading from the front as a knight and everyone else would follow me. Oh, God. Anyone who was like, hey, maybe you should have a second command, Don Sebastian. Maybe we should split these guys up into bodies of troops with independent commanders. Whoever suggested that would immediately get shouted down by a storm of insults by the king and all the sycophant nobility with him. Like, how dare you insult my honor by saying I need to pass orders to a secondary commander that sounds like some dumb shit i'm just gonna run directly at them and all of you keep up don't you dare tell my troops

not to stare directly at the sun every day you all know that the sun sharpens your eyesight i will not hear any of this and if you stare directly into the sun it makes the heat not affect you so badly yeah it actually you don't need to drink water if you stare into the sun for long enough because like superman you can be powered by uv rays i feel like if you frame this the right way, you could pair this with that weird woo-woo grounding shit where people are like, oh man, I just stand barefoot on the grass and it imbues me with energy.

Or the dudes who sun their butthole. But you're not supposed to do that? No. Oh. Well, good thing I live in the Netherlands. I'm dying from the lack of butthole sun. You're going to die of butthole melanoma. Mr. Kasabian, we regret

to inform you've had to remove your asshole due to all the cancerous cells. They're just like, I don't know, you'd now have to shit out your penis. It's just evolution. It's efficient. It's one hole for everything. That's right.

Humans were not meant to have this many holes. As God intended. Yeah, if you're not, it's 2024. If you're not shitting out of your dick, you need to get on it. Yeah. Sun your butthole until you get melanoma. Get your butthole removed. Shit out your dick.

It's 2024, people. Get on it. Well, this episode's going well we're probably like what halfway through the script now this is also around when everybody was just like you know trying to talk to the soldier next to him and realizing nobody spoke the same language mark it on your bingo cards people same shit happens all the time can't speak to the person beside you no water no chain of command a dickhead leading you yep not enough sun on your butthole not enough sun on your butthole the army was made up of germans walloonians the flemish spaniards portuguese the italians

a couple of brits washed up in here very few people were able to speak to one another, mostly the nobility because they had a common language amongst them and also education most other people just didn't, so they had to play an army wide game of telephone through the

handful of people that could speak two or maybe three of the languages within its ranks translate it to another guy who could speak a couple of other ones, and hope nothing was lost in the translation. Yeah, it's an incredible amuse-bouche of Europeans. It's the worst kind of amuse-bouche. So without any orders or anything to do, the men just kind of camped on the beach while the king held a war council. Sebastian decided to ignore all the previous warnings from the Spanish king about invading into the country inland,

deciding that was exactly what he was going to do, while Stu Kelly, a roundabout piece of shit and criminal, but hardened war veteran, pointed out that was a really bad idea. He was like, we didn't bring any water look this guy might have lost every battle he fought but at least he fought

in a few of them and he survived them so like if anybody knows how to get out of a battlefield alive maybe not victorious maybe not victorious but alive it would be the random British pirate mercenary yeah he's stupid like a fox exactly uh and

everybody just shouted him down called him a coward he's like oh you can't you need fucking water you ain't got any bottles of water how else am I and Jeremy goes like oh what is with this English man we do not have any bottles of water. I returned all mine to the recycling machine

to get my 50 cents back. What is with this Englishman? He just keeps trying to give over water to his strangely large dog. He's like, I do not need water. I have my wine. The army left camp on July 29th, accompanied by thousands of camp followers.

Now, we've talked about camp followers before countless times on the show. These are the people that make armies move. Cobblers, grocers, foragers, whatever. But there was more camp followers than there were soldiers. And these included, like, they just randomly were collecting slaves as they went. They picked up, like, a small army of sex workers and priests. I assume they lived together. What army doesn't need a cohort of sex workers and priests?

And that dimension, like, the soldiers just brought their wives and kids with them, too. It's like a package holiday to one of those like you know center parks or like butlins yeah it's uh all inclusive but like instead of getting like a shitty t-shirt and a lanyard to go with like your endless drink menu they give you a pike and dysentery i mean like look if there were real crusaders they would have picked up about 20 wives along the way and left the original one at home and that was was probably their intention, to be completely honest. Because of the complete lack of command and control, nobody seemed to pay any attention to

provisioning the army. From the second they stepped out of camp, they were short of food and water. Because unless you, you individually, you Tom, random Italian Tom mercenary. It's-a me, Italian Tom. It's-a me, Tommaso. Hey, it's-a me, Tommaso. Hey, it's me, Tommaso Tomato.

I cook the pasta, I drink the wine, I go to Morocco to fight. You get some bad news. No pasta, no wine, no olive oil. Fuck. Because unless individual soldiers, or if you were a noble, like your attendants or whatever, thought to pack the food and water that you would need there was none there was no central provisioning of any kind

you're just there getting ready to go off for this war and you're like packing everything's like okay i got my suit of armor got my sword helmet family's coming with me okay how many pairs of underpants do i need okay so if i work this out, this is probably going to take about 30 days to complete. If I shit myself every day, I will just need one, because I'll just take them off, wash them in whatever, if I have water, I'll just wash them.

It's hot, so they'll just dry. I just need one. And look, if I keep shitting in them, then it will eventually crust and form like an extra layer of armor around my dick and balls that's how kevlar was invented see i i would outfit my army so they didn't wear pants or underwear just dick and balls flapping the wind that way they everybody's have diarrhea as we've often said you cannot go camping with thousands of your of

your homies in the woods or the desert without shitting fiery liquid endlessly until you die so if you're not wearing pants or armor it's just a free flow just let it go i mean it's better for hygiene yeah this is why you know uh the romans never really conquered scotland because the pigs were running around with their dicks flapping in the wind, covered in war paint. And Julius Caesar got there and he's like, do you know what? Let's just build a wall here. You know, when people back then did that, it was considered counterinsurgency,

insurgency, liberation movements. When I do it now, I'm just considered a public nuisance. Why can't I wear war paint and run around nude? I know, what the fuck? The woke left have gone too far. The woke left have made me wear pants. Now, they have no food and water,

and from the second they stepped out of camp, people were immediately hungry, thirsty. It was bad. Their stomach hurt. God inflicted his toughest warriors with the hardest tummy ache now there may have not been wagon space for you know food or water because there'll be planet there were there was however a thousand wagons loaded to the gills with furniture ceremonial vestments and silver place settings for dinner for the food that they didn't have you see

and silver plate settings for dinner. For the food that they didn't have, you see. It's just like they're scraping the plate. It's like, hmm, this is so nice. Just piling up sand on top of it. Delicious. There's one guy trying to eat the silver plate. Now, at this point, Malay Muhammad,

the proxy king that they were going to foist upon the throne joined the army with about another 6,000 men during their march, which is going painfully slow due to all of the problems we were... Oh, and they kept getting lost. Like, soldiers are already dropping out from the heat stroke and thirst.

You're moving towards the equator. You're staring at the sun every day. Just just literally like if you can't orientate yourself to go south it like just by looking at the sun and you're in the in an army at this point in time you should not be there yeah i mean at any point that like hey there's a thousand wagons good thing i can go get some like shitty bread and stale water from it like oh nope this one's just full of fancy underwear for the king or whatever you know it's like people who spend all their money on like stupid shit and then realize oh i haven't bought any food this month we call that hood rich rich i remember growing up uh my neighbor uh another you know fine white trash family like

my own had a uh a very expensive very expensive car um but the the power in their houses are always off was it a lexus uh i think it was an audi which oh gee an audi at that time as well in the u.s fuck and i'm pretty sure i mean i'm sure it was like a lease like it wasn't like an you didn't have like a bad loan on it or anything he's probably paying a horrific lease rate on it and you know i went to school with um one of the kids in the house and it was their brother's car their brother was like dad was in prison or or whatever i don't remember but like yeah um my my brother spends all the money on uh on the on the payments for the car and everything and washing it two times a day what yeah um and that's where i that's where i i heard him tell me the term.

Like, yeah, we're fucking hood rich. And I was like, what the fuck does hood rich mean? And he's like, we have a really nice car, but I didn't eat breakfast this morning. That's some Louis XVI expenditure. Yeah, I mean, the man had his priorities. They were just stupid. Just because you have your priorities doesn't mean your priorities are correct. Yeah, that's true.

So, you know, nobody can talk to one another. There's no food or water outside of the nobles, and they're moving so slowly that Moroccan forces under Abdel Malik watch the army the entire time as they advance towards the scene of the battle Kisar al-Kabir. By August 3rd, the army had been marching for three days

and stopped for another war council. Muhammad said that he had spies within Abdul Malik's camp and they were telling him he was desperately ill, verging on death. So Muhammad said, let's just wait. He'll die. And then, you know, if the army still fights, they won't have a leader. But most likely they'll just surrender to me, because now I'm king.

Stu Kelly, being the underhanded dipshit survivor that he is, is like, that sounds like a great idea. I'm getting strong Karhe vibes off this. Now, Don Sebastian was just like, that sounds like some pussy shit.

We have to charge directly, blindly towards the enemy, even bothering this guy anything ahead of time because my honor demands it. I mean, that's pretty much what his battle plan was. And Stu Kelly and Muhammad were looking at one another like, I think this guy might be stupid. Yeah, sounds like it. They were both shouted down for being cowards they were ignored and the king plotted his tactic the next day which is literally what I just said

an open full charge by first light picking the area of advance not for any kind of tactical importance but because quote a beautiful cavalry charge and high feats of arms could be seen from there.

For fuck's sake. These people are so stupid. And then, as they marched into the scene of battle, now, large baggage trains and camp followers are things that followed armies for a very, very long time in history. However, you leave them behind before battle starts. Yeah, you don't really need a carpenter or a priest during battle.

This isn't like D&D. The Warhammer 40k formation of sex workers. Yeah, like they're doing like Baldur's Gate 3 shit on the battlefield. Just a priest casting healing spells, throwing holy water bombs. Sebastian decided not to do this. He brought his entire personal baggage train as well as the entire gaggle of camp followers along with him

for the advance, which required the entire peasant section of the army to be forwarded up in a circle around his gilded wagons to act as an escort. But there were so many wagons that it actually stretched his army thin

trying to protect them all. Because there's a thousand fucking wagons. Do you know what's a really good both offensive and defensive formation? A good square or a triangle. Do you know what's not a good offensive or defensive formation? A very thin circle. Especially you know what's not a good offensive or defensive formation? A very thin circle. Especially around something that's not important like my wagon's

full of sick plates. Maybe like if it was ammo, sure. But even then, you're supposed to set up a system to get the ammo from the baggage train to the front, not just bring the baggage train with you. So it could say, be attacked directly, perhaps.

Now, somewhat hilariously at this point, Stu Kelly realized that I have gotten myself into a problem. My Italians fucking hate me. I have kidnapped them and thrown them into Morocco. And now all they do is get drunk and try to fight one another while also calling me swear words and making Italian hand gestures. So some things never change. Yeah. And they were unhappy.

And he was mostly worried at the first sign of battle they would do what most Italian armies do, switch sides. So he broke them up into small groups and spread them throughout Spanishanish units to like break up their cohesive anger he's doing like you know 1500s english racism was like oh you can't tell the italians and the spaniards apart i mean he was right in that like i'd be fucking pissed too there's no reason to believe his italians were gonna be like yeah i i know we were promised like glory and riches to invade Ireland and what not

and you know now we're in the fucking desert and we're all very thirsty and sunburned and we're very unhappy like I'm going to kill you the first chance I get there's also the small problem that the European soldiers the vast majority

of the soldiers involved were exhausted they were wearing metal scale and plate armor in the burning north african sun all while barely getting any water combine that with having to march three days over broken mountainous terrain in order to get to the battlefield they were dropping like flies from heat stroke and exhaustion many soldiers were throwing away their armor, supplies, and even their weapons just so they would be able to have the energy to keep walking. I guess they forgot where they're walking to. They might need those weapons. Then their artillery wagon train began to break down. They had been built for the roads of Europe. As much as roads existed in Europe at the time,

they're at least smooth going. Not the mountains of Morocco. Their crews tried to repair them, but alas they didn't have the supplies to do that because again, nobody thought to bring them. Yeah. Not good. So they just abandoned like 99%

of their artillery. Their wheels busted like, ah, fuck it. We don't need it i'm gonna ask now before the battle starts i feel like this is not going to be a crucial and catastrophic mistake it's hard to rank on where this one falls in the litany of mistakes of this campaign before the battle has even started yeah i would go on to say right now the worst thing they did was invade morocco with no water. Yeah, it's like you're just looking around the campus like, look, I don't want to point any fingers, but it seems like we've made a series of mistakes along the way.

And what I really need right now is for some people to take accountability for where those mistakes were made. So what we're going to do is we're all going to sit in a circle and we're all going to talk about what we did over the past couple of weeks. And we're going to try and really hash this out of how we got into this situation where we have no artillery. Portuguese struggle session. Yeah, we've no artillery.

All the soldiers surrounding these gilded, you know, carts that are, you know, transporting silverware. I'm not blaming anyone and i'm not naming names but if anyone has made a mistake i would appreciate if you owned up to it see i disagree they need to go the full japanese red army round to start beating each other upside the head of pipes see this is you know i was trying to be diplomatic here so on august 4th sebastian get the battle he was looking for. But before we get there, let's talk about Abdelmalek's army.

While the Europeans thought the Moroccans were, this might surprise you, backward savages. I know, so much for European progressivism, am I right? Yeah, shocker. They had actually developed themselves into a more advanced force than the Portuguese army had. Abdelmalek had spent years with the Ottoman Empire and worked with their military, and

through them, he was like, you know what's really good? Professional soldiers. So he established a system of recruitment, training, and retention of soldiers who'd get paid a decent salary for their service, as well as benefits at the end of their term. This corps of well-trained, well-supplied, well-led, and well-organized

soldiers would then be supported by a tribal levy system in times of emergency. The corps of this force would look and act pretty much the same as a European army, musket-armed line infantry supported by cannons of cavalry watching their flanks. They had developed a solid chain of command and a rock-solid logistical system made up of thousands upon thousands of draft animals that would ferry all of the supplies they would need right to their feet.

And by the day of the battle, Abdul-Malik had recovered from his sickness and was able to retake command of his army. Ooh, here we go. Abd al-Malik and Sebastian's forces met at Al-Khazr in the open, their formations lining up against one another. Pretty much immediately, the Europeans ran into problems. Arrayed in a line formation slugging out with cannons and muskets, they quickly came to

the realization that the Moroccans were better at this than they were. And also, they were came to the realization that the Moroccans were better at this than they were. And also they were staring directly into the sun. This is why they were so well trained at staring into the sun. I'm telling you, I said it earlier on, I didn't know this was coming up. You stare into the sun it makes you better at battle.

One of the key parts of the Moroccan army's basic training was just making people stand out in the desert and stare at the sun for six hours a day. Many people don't know this. Yes, yes. Many people don't know this. So the sun is in their eyes. They barely have any artillery.

And because the sun's in their eyes, they can't even see the enemy, really. Like the full array of where they're standing. There's also the small problem at this point that this is when Sebastian discovered he had no artillery, not a second before. Oh, fuck. So he was like,

he was sitting around his like other nobles. He's like, why aren't our cannons firing? And someone had to be like, well, Don Sebastian, we don't fucking have any anymore. They all broke down.

He's like, all right, great. Oh shit. So he sent in his pikemen and human wave attacks which would be common i mean now at the time muskets or arquebuses of the day would take so long to reload that it left a gap for the pikemen to run into battle and stab open gaps in the enemy line that is pike and shot warfare right and through this the two sides became locked in mortal hand-to-hand combat as you know their musketeers

tried to rapidly reload so they could shoot some spanish guy at close range and that is when the nobles saw a horrific flaw in sebastian's deployment Because of where he had placed the pikemen in regards to their formation of their entire army, like where the pikemen fell, ordering them into battle had opened a gigantic, yawning gap in their own line, exposing the center, which is where all of the wagons and camp followers were.

I thought this is the point where, you know, Qui-Gon Jinn and Raiden, like, fly in and start having mortal combat. That's right. Scorpion is going to impale someone. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. For people who need to imagine something ahead, think of this,

think of the Portuguese formation as a giant box. Okay. Right? He had taken one whole side of it and just torn it away. Rotate a box-shaped army formation in your head. Now imagine taking one side away and keep rotating it. And then never bothering to fill in the gaps. And, you know, there's no way to recall forces once you've sent them into battle.

There's no chain of command. Nobody speaks the same fucking language. So the only thing anybody could hope for was their largely untrained pikemen and their mercenary allies would be able to punch through the enemy center and win the battle fast enough. So maybe the Moroccans didn't realize that they had fucked themselves. And at first, they actually were doing that. The forward units of the European army had gotten close to Abdelmalek's command center. They had fought through a huge mass of Moroccan soldiers to the point that Abdelmalek's personal command tent had come under musket fire. But then they ground down to nothing.

They'd become overextended. They were tired and they were bogged down in an ocean of corpses on either side. Now they were tired, you know, killing people in masses of thousands is a pretty exhausting effort to do, but now they were overstretched and outnumbered as Abdul Malik sent in his reserves to plug the holes in his line, reserves that the Europeans didn't know they had because they had their sun in the eyes and couldn't see them. And also because Don Sebastian never thought it was that important to scout ahead. Another problem was that European units saw this happening but couldn't communicate with one another. Different units, different leaders, whatever, would be like, oh dear god, they're coming for our flanks.

Like, organize a formation. They just couldn't fucking organize or talk to one another. So they just watched in slow motion as the Moroccans like peeled around them to start killing them all without working together. I mean, there was a small groups of like based on nationality were clumped together and fighting really, really well. But as an organized whole, the army was fucked. Yeah, Jesus, this is not going well. Then Abdel-Malik sent in his cavalry. Hundreds of horsemen stormed in and smashed against the extended European line, rolling their flanks up as pikemen tried uselessly to try to, like, wheel around and stab at them.

But they have no organization to do so. Like, one guy off the pike is meaningless, and a hundred dudes off the pike standing in a line. But even then the European line held, fighting forward to the point that Abdul Malik only had one last thing he could do in order to finally break them. Giving a rousing speech.

Oh, fuck off. We're not having speech in drama class in the middle of a battle. He told his men, we must fight. We must continue to fight because God is watching. He unsheathed his sword, climbed off of his horse, and then keeled over dead. It turns out he wasn't fully recovered from being sick after all. recovered from being sick after all now acting quickly his aides pulled his body back into his command tent so nobody knew that he was dead of like we we can't let word get around those

motherfuckers dead everybody will drop their swords and run right imagine making such a good speech it kills you yeah that's it the ultimate mic drop moment is dying on stage. Yeah. Now this seemed to work outside of the immediate, uh, like AIDS and assistance and whatnot that saw him this like panic of, of the King being dead, didn't trickle through the lines and they killed their way forward as

European forces slowly wore themselves down further and further. Sebastian, if he was a military leader not a self-imagined crusading hero, may have tried to save his command from destruction and his army by ordering them back and maybe reform or just pull full out withdraw. But he didn't. He abandoned any kind of command responsibility he had altogether, charging forward with all of his closest advisors directly into the already lost battle as absolutely everything broke down into murderous chaos.

How's Stokely going on? He was singled out by his Italian mercenaries, drug down to the ground, and beaten to death. Do you know what? Look, fitting end. Now, while Stu Kelly was dying, to death. Do you know what? Look. Fitting end. Now, while Stu Kelly was dying,

Abdul Malik keeled over from sickness, Sebastian was hacking and slashing his way forward and by all accounts, like I said,

he's a good soldier. He's very capable of murdering people. Yeah, he loves murdering. Like, this is his thing. There I go

killing again. It's his favorite thing to do. His horse is shot out from under him. He keeps fighting on foot. Then he vanishes. Nobody is sure how he dies, but he is murdered at some point in this battle. As the Moroccan cavalry was able to charge forward without anything to stop them, they poured themselves into what was left of the European line. Conscripts, priests, sex workers, cobblers, tailors all found themselves getting butchered as they tried to run, fight, or surrender in small groups.

was left to fight on their own or in small national fractured groups. Some men jabbed spears into the ground, creating a small circle of protection away from the Moroccan cavalry, and then would jump out and drag the Moroccan cavalrymen from their saddles when they got too close and stabbing them to death on the ground. Who said pikes weren't effective? Also, I should point out here, they were unable to tell which Morococcan cavalry they were murdering because remember muhammad is also on their side with his own moroccan kit they just see a brown guy they're going to try to murder him yeah um and then the ones that weren't

doing that were dropping dead from heat stroke because the fighting had gone on for hours at this point one man said quote surrounded from all sides without powder or ammunition from which to fight the powder lacking from having been burnt through the battle by their own soldiers. If there had been any to this fire, it would have been used against their own number with the intent of stealing the wagons. And the multitude of cruel fugitives fled the enemy with such haste that they fell over one another and overwhelmed by the enemy cavalry. It was piteous to see so many suffocate to the extent that the troops were in heaps, piled as sheaves of wheat at the harvest, one on top of the other. Muhammad had managed to survive at least so far. He had broken from the field running with a few survivors on a horseback when it became clear that the battle

was lost. Then, while running, he tread across a river, fell off his horse, and was swept away, dying. Why, like, why is everyone dying in the most embarrassing ways in this battle? And thus, the last king of the Battle of the Three Kings was dead. Oh, God. And also, one bonus pirate pirate this is so funny like honestly like once it like this is very much a classic case of there were so many points where

they could have stopped and realized this is a bad idea and i just i'm wondering about the kind of confusion that existed at the end of the battle no one left in command all the kings are dead it's like i guess i guess we just go home boys yeah morocco will just figure itself out after this yeah in the end at least 10 000 europeans were dead and several thousand captured and put in chains anybody worth the shit and mostly nobles were ransomed back to europe, and anybody else would be sold into slavery. What was more important in the casualties on the field was the loss of the nobles to Portugal. Sebastian had no wife, because he was an asshole, and thus had no heir. Then his uncle, Henry I, took over, but he was a cardinal of the Catholic Church, so he also had no heirs and died two years after that. This ended the family's

dynasty, which had been in power for hundreds of years. He had bankrupted his empire to fund his venture, and now he had killed the only army the empire had, ending the age of Portuguese expansion, his family line, and then gripping the country with a secession crisis that would end with the Spanish king unifying the Iberian peninsula in a personal union under Spanish domination. You know, sometimes you fuck up and then sometimes you fuck up on this

level. It's literally a historical fuck up that could still be felt in politics. On the end, a funny note, the death of Sebastian, his body mangled and hardly able to be recognized afterwards, led to something called Sebastianism.

Oh god, what's this now? He wasn't actually dead, and he would one day return to reclaim the throne of the dying Portuguese Empire, restoring them to greatness. This also eventually took on a weird quasi-religious tone as people claimed that this was foretold in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelations.

This led to a ton of people over the years claiming that they were him. In one case, it was a random Italian guy who couldn't even speak Portuguese. Which, king shit. I mean, like, if you can make that hustle work, good for you. Yeah, I mean, like, get it where you can. This idiot idea survived on the fringes for hundreds of years after his death. But it turned out, Sebastian was in fact very, very dead. The end.

A fitting end to an absolute freak. I mean, like, you gotta give credit where credit's due. If you're going to fail, fail so hard that nobody can ever forget your failure. Yep. That's honestly just breathtakingly stupid. In a battle with three kings, zero came out victorious. That's the kind of battle I can support. Yeah, that's a turn up for the books for me.

Now, Tom, we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us a question from the Legion, you can write into the show on Patreon, send us a DM on Discord, or attach it to an Italian Invade Morocco with it, and we will answer it on the show. Today's

question from the Legion is what is your favorite fast food restaurant? Oh, I love fast food. I'm assuming this means like a chain, not like a donor stand or something. Because it's also fast food. Yeah, like I have it

in kind of like orders. So it's like Five Guys is not the same as McDonald's. It's like Can we consider it fast food if it doesn't have a drive-thru window? Does doesn't have a drive-thru window? Does Five Guys have a drive-thru window? Most places don't have drive-thru in Europe. Oh, I'm aware of that.

I'm aware of that. I don't know. We'll let people vote on that one. Like, Five Guys I am very partial to Taco Bell. I will say that. It absolutely destroys my stomach, but I will still eat I will still eat like 20 quid of Taco Bell when I'm drunk and just be enamored with.

Ooh, like a good Chinese as well. Nice beef chow mein. Can we consider that fast food? Well, it is. Like fast food is more so like takeaway. So it's like stuff you can order. Like, yes, there are restaurants like stuff you can order like yes there are restaurants that like you can order from but like your average like high street chinese is fast food

okay i can accept that the listeners might not be so forgiving because technically anything can be take out these days yeah i know but like we're we're i'm coming at it from a different cultural lens. Okay, fast food. The incorrect one. Ah, fuck off. What's yours? I have to agree on the Taco Bell front. Because when I step through the threshold of a fast food establishment, I know what I'm doing to myself. There's no need to turn down a Taco Bell menu because it's going to fuck up my insides.

I know it's going to fuck up my insides. All fast food will fuck up my insides. You should see what KFC does to me. Oh, I love KFC. KFC in the UK slaps. KFC pretty much anywhere outside the US is better than the American one I've discovered. I would put Taco Bell number one for the pinnacle of shitty drunk food

that is guaranteed to make your hangover worse. Because if your hangover wasn't bad enough, you now have diarrhea. Number two, KFC. Are you boneless or bone in? Boneless. I need to shovel food into my face

and I don't need to be slowed down by bones. With or without gravy? With. And, you know, if I was going to pick a more regional fast food place, it would have to be Bush's Chicken, which is like just KFC

but much better, but I don't know where those exist outside. I've only ever been to one in Kentucky.ucky uh oddly enough i know um and then third i'm gonna have to go with what a burger fair yeah all of them bad like i would never pick those as a meal like do you know what is a fast food that i would pick as a meal and i do eat it regularly enough because i really enjoy it is dominoes and i know that's probably sounds disgusting to u.s listeners but dominoes in the uk and in ireland and in general in europe is decent and the thing is is that it's always consistent it's always the same quality i will meet your disgusting choice of chain pizza with my own

papa john's i know it's disgusting i know it's horrible however that's what i'm looking for we're like what you know event you know occasionally you want to order something like horrible and greasy that's gonna like it's gonna fuck you up but you just want it yeah papa john's is my go-to chain pizza restaurant for that. And I recently ordered some in the Netherlands, and it was so bad. It wasn't even enjoyable bad. It was just disgusting, and I didn't even finish it. Yeah.

When we go to Ireland again, so there is a fast food chain in Ireland called Supermax. It's like chicken pizza, but it Supermax. It's like chicken pizza but it is incredible. Like it's so good. But now they have done like done the whole combination Taco Bell and Pizza Hut thing. Ah yes. The yum

brands building. With almost every Supermax in Ireland there is also a Papa John's. See I could get a Papa John's Papa John's sucks I know it's not good but nothing we listed is good

I would argue Domino's is good and Five Guys is good maybe where you live I don't know maybe where you live anyway that is our show Tom plug your other show. Beneath Skin, show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing.

If you love horrible or in my opinion, cool 90s tribal stuff, we did an episode about that. As the time of recording, it's out for free. Check that out if you want to get a big tribal sleeve

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