Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 305 - The Boxer Rebellion Part 5: Legation Garden Party

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

The conclusion to the boxer rebellion series! Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Buy joe's new sci fi series: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVL5M34N?binding=kindle_edition&searchxofy=true&ref_=dbs_s_aps_series_rwt_tkin&qid=1711954537&sr=8-1

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Alliance Led by Dunkies 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 Sarkeys 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 to preserve humanity. My new book, The Invisible War, is now available wherever it is that you consume books. If you have Kindle Unlimited, you can get it for free with your subscription that you already have, or order a paperback from whatever local bookstore you use. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com slash lines led by donkeys. 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 back to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I am Joe and locked in a remote Chinese village, terrified of period blood, but completely dripped out in red banners with a pitchfork is Tom. Joe, I cannot wait to be free from this series. Can you imagine if someone just like decides to listen to part five of the Box Rebellion series

and that's the intro that they hear? Like that's it I I tried to give this podcast to listen five seconds in he's saying his co-host is terrified of period blood I'm done I'm out. This is the first episode of lions anyone listens to. Yeah you just start at part five and work your way back we call it chaos listening. Yeah if you are listening to this as it releases on the free feed, do not talk to me online I will be on annual leave and not looking at my phone at him all of your all of your

Menstrual Wing Chung takes I Will I will be in the gym I might be on holiday, I don't know I haven't planned anything yet I might be on holiday, I don't know, I haven't planned anything yet, but I will definitively not be online. I will not be on vacation because I rarely take those. Oh, but something I did do is I recently finished, have you ever played any of the Yakuza games? Now they're called Like a Dragon. No. games now they're called like a dragon no I just finished the newest one called infinite wealth and it is it is just a joy it is so much fun like I I rarely

have time to play video games anymore until this year where I told myself I was going to stop writing outside of the podcast so like I actually have time to do something other than type all day and I got a steam deck and I sat down and infinite wealth came out when we were in London and I downloaded on a shitty hotel Wi-Fi that I had to pay for because that hotel sucked. And I've been playing it virtually nonstop ever since. When you were booking that hotel, I asked, where do you want to stay? And your answer was anywhere. And you picked the cheapest option.

No, that is not what happened. I said, Tom, I would like it to be near the venue. And you're like, oh, this hotel is there. I won't say what this name is because I feel like I would get sued in the UK for it. And it was very close to the venue. It was like 20 feet away. However, the second I stepped foot through the door and took a shower because I had to fly from Georgia, which is not the easiest flight path I've been, I don't know what it is.

Maybe I'm just weird, but if I'm even in a plane for 30 minutes, I feel like I have to take a shower as soon as I get out. It's that recirculated air. Yeah, I felt disgusting. So I want to take a shower. Shower immediately flooded. I take short showers. No matter how old I get, I still take military three to five minute showers tops.

I can't break myself. What else do you do in there? Okay. You're doing the pits and balls only treatment. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, shower floods like, god damn it. So mopping up all this water. Man, all this. I had to lay over in Poland. I'm like, this Polish airport food is tearing up my insides. Got to take a shit. Bro shit broke the toilet and then I'm just like alright I'm this place is in fucking shambles already. I will like Yakuza infinite wealth or like a dragon infinite wealth is out today. I notice

I'm gonna log into my steam deck and and download it had to pay for the fucking Wi-Fi I'm just like I have been in this country for 30 minutes and I already want to go back to Georgia. Welcome to the land of UK budget accommodation. Yeah, yeah. I got to say I didn't expect it. And a couple of things, I went down to, because they had like a breakfast, right? And I was like, oh yeah, I need to go up to the desk like, I would like to, you know, pay. I need to get one, one breakfast. They're like, just one.

It's like, yes. You know, you have to pay for it, right? Like, well, you made me pay for my wifi. I assumed the breakfast is not free. Oh yeah. A friend of mine was on a work trip and I met up with him on Friday and like, he got like a per diem super fancy hotel and then he showed me the breakfast and it's just

like a very lonely sausage, egg and hash brown in a cardboard box. Man, the breakfast at this hotel was, I've had better airplane food. It was on par with, I mean, I would say like a convenience store, but that's not true either. Like you can go to any, like Gregg's is a convenience store to me or Spar and get better food than this. And it costs like 12 pounds. So I go to the counter and you know, it's like 12 pounds.

And I'm not exactly sure how much in dollars or euros or drum or lorry that is because my brain is completely liquid at this point from travel and you know I'm like that sounds fine for a decent breakfast, right? And I go over there and it is like the just add water scrambled eggs it is Like some various kind of sausage that looks like it was cooked with a Bic lighter. And bread? No ability to toast, said bread.

Just bread. You're doing heroin tactics, you're having on a spoon. And I was like, you know what? Fuck you, you got me. And after that, because there's a grocery store right next door, and I ate out of that grocery store pretty much the rest of the time, because we were only going from the hotel to the studio,

from the studio to the venue, and back to the hotel. We didn't have any free time, really. So I was just eating out of the local fucking grocery store, which I don't even remember what it was called, to the point that one of the people there asked if I had a kitchen. I'm only here for two days. Like, how, like, what the fuck? what it was called to the point that one of the people at their asked if I had a kitchen. I'm only here for two days. Like how, like how, what the fuck? I feel so judged right now. I feel, I feel attacked.

You're returning to your traditional diet of just eating bread. Yeah. Just, just bread, energy drinks and, uh, sparkling water and vapes. Yeah, I did. I did go through a lot of vapes. Now, Tom, we have a podcast to do today. Do we? I mean, possibly, because we don't have to. No. It's just a bait and switch.

We're actually just abandoning the series. Yeah, leave you hanging. We are on part five, the conclusion to our series on the Boxer Rebellion. And when we left you last time, the Eight Nation Alliance had defeated the combination of the Chinese Imperial Army and the Boxer Force on their way toward Peking to relieve the international legations, which are kind of sort of under a very informal, a bit lazy of a siege. The Chinese forces had been deploying delaying tactics, hitting the allies at range, and

then withdrawing when things got too hot. Their withdrawal after the Battle of Baikang was actually perfect, it was textbook. The army was showing after decades of reform, it was finally coming together and building the capacity to resist western aggression. And that could have been true going forward, but instead the army just fucking vanished? I know this is going to be the worst episode of this series and I, at every point when you end a sentence, I'm like, when is it going to happen? When is the thing going to happen? The worst or the best.

Yeah. Depending on what your, uh, your opinion on the, on the Qing dynasty is. Get some Qing heads out there. Where my Qing heads at? Get some real Emperor, Empress Dowager stands out there. We're getting Empress Dowager, like TikTok fan edits on our like. How to be a thing. It's, I know it's a thing. I know it's weird. Uh, or like someone's to be really mad that we said that like, eunuchs are covered in piss all the time. Like, I don't know. So it's like,

actually I, I am a eunuch in the Ching imperial court and I'll have you know, I am never eunuch in the Qing imperial court and I'll have you know I am never covered in piss. Fuck, it does exist, I just looked it up on TikTok. God damn it! I knew it. I knew it. I knew it.

I think we've explained at length at this point that the imperial army was still very much run by a collection of warlords in the form of court-appointed governors and generals. Each one of them had their own garrison and there was no real overarching command or command structure. Effectively, the Empress would call her bannermen and the governors and the generals and their armies would ride in. Despite the army facing three defeats in a row,

the only real costly one was the one at Tietzin. It was holding together as well as any army could be expected after such a defeat. Its supply lines were largely intact and working fine. Soldiers may have run from battle once things got too hot, but it's not like they were deserting. They were staying in their units. They still vastly outnumbered their enemies and were bolstered by the fact that, remember, they're fighting on home turf. You know, that's the best case scenario when it comes to morale and rallying around the flag and so, you know, so to speak. However, what was falling apart was the Imperial Court. There's a

shock. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't really a recapper. I mean, this series started off with like a self-coup within the palace. Yeah. And just so many eunuchs arresting people. Oh no, it's the Piss and Jasmine Brigade. It's, you know, a cab, but for eunuch cops. You don't want to piss off the Piss Police. Governors who originally backed the war against the Westners and to side with the Boxers saw the allied army marching towards Peking and, you know, began to panic. Others who were kind of forced into supporting the war through political maneuvering or threats or, you know, having no real way out saw this as the perfect opportunity to be like,

now's my chance to get the fuck out of here. I mean, they could withdraw their support, pull their men back home, knowing the Empress had enough problems that they could pretty much do whatever they wanted without any fear of reprisal. Oh no, here it comes. For example, one governor who solidly supported the Empress but had watched the army withdraw, defeated from the battlefield each time and knowing the allies were closing in on Peking, decided, well, I've seen enough of this mortal plane and he ate poison and died. He took the Hong Christ route. He, you know.

That's unfair. Hong Christ did not eat poison on purpose. That we're aware of. That we're aware of. That we're aware of. Eating so much chlorophyll, you turn into Shrek. What are you doing in my palace? That's actually what happened is Hong Christ didn't die. He ascended. He shed off his mortal form as a human being and became a Scottish ogre living in a swamp. That is

the true level of enlightenment. I feel like we could definitely make some kind of six degrees of separation from Hong Christ to Mike Myers. Maybe Mike Myers was doing a, he's like a court jester doing an impression because but then He busted out the love guru role and was immediately fucking exiled I mean like listen there is kind of shades of fat bastard from Austin Powers in Shrek That mean he only can do like the one Scottish accent that period of like the 2000s when everyone was just like, get in my belly. Just cultural wasteland.

That and wazoo. True the pinnacle of calm. It's really the pinnacle of Western culture is fat bastard. Like Homer wrote the Odyssey and then 2000 years later we got fat bastard. What if the Odyssey was written by Homer Simpson? What if the Odyssey was written by Homer Simpson? What if the Odyssey was written by Mike Myers? It would just be various different offensive accents. Like I don't even know how you do like a Greek accent to the point it's offensive but you'd find a way. No you just say gyros or just kebabs. Eila. You're not wrong. Look, it's a flatbread wrapped around meat as someone

who had a very nice kebab last night. Not a huge one. And I'm about to have a kebab for lunch. Look, my personal favorite kind of person is the food nationalist, which like because like, you know, I spent a lot of time in the caucuses and they all kind of got that flavor. It's like, actually, we invented this like you go to fucking any civilization earth and they put meat in bread. It's fine. Just just it just get over it. Yeah, it was really funny because last weekend I was doing a shoot for Glue Factory and arrived early, set up all the cameras.

I was like, I should go get lunch. And there's a place nearby that does chicken fillet rolls like nowhere in London does chicken fillet rolls. So I was like, OK, because I had them on the way to work, I call in there and they weren't open yet, but went and there was like a queue of like 30 people. And I'd say a good third of people queuing up, didn't know what they were queuing up for. So it was like people getting like spice bags, curry chips,

and like chicken fillet rolls. And then just like, there's a woman in front of me. And like, I couldn't figure out if her boyfriend was Irish or they just like had queued up for it. Just saw a line and stood in it. Like there is like a 1992 Moscow. Like we got to the front of the queue and she just turns to the woman working the cash year. I was like, so what is this? I'm like, it's like, why would you queue up for 20 minutes and not know what you're queuing up for? Are you that bored?

I want to know about that person's life. I saw a line and I thought it just must be good. I don't know. Anyway the Chinese. Spice bags, Irish, Chinese fusion. Ireland doesn't really have a food culture or traditionally, so we can't really be food nationalist apart from like spice bags and chicken fillet rolls. Speaking of not having a food culture, I live in the Netherlands. No Dutch person's ever going to get into a fucking argument about like, you know, we eat raw herring on bread

with onions better than anybody else. Yes, it's this traditional Dutch snack. It's an onion on a stick. Probably. It's like a lollipop, but less decadent, because we are the weirdest Protestants. Just Dutch children walking around with an onion on a stick. Papa, Papa, can I have my onion on a stick? And they're like unwrapping the skin. They're taking the skin off like it's a chopper chop. Ugh, god, everybody just like crying uncontrollably as they bite into onions.

It is just like my father used to make. Yeah, the chopper chop is too indulgent. It does not go without Dutch Protestantism. You need to shop for it even when you get a treat. And as we learned from Ord Wingate, Ords off disease. Yeah, listen, you know, that's why the Dutch are so tall. All those raw onions and raw fish.

Now, after that guy killed himself, there's another governor called Wan Shikai. He was actually the governor for the province where the boxers originated from, and he fucking was not a big fan. But you know as the Empress put out you know more requests for more reinforcements he's like, nah, nah I'm going home and just abandoned the war effort. Even the Empress seemed to see the writing on the wall. She appointed an envoy to begin ceasefire negotiations fully knowing what that would mean in the context of China's future. Though her army and the Boxers melted away from fighting

the Allies as the Allies continued their advance towards Peking. However, they continued attacking delegations within the city, still without success, and that unspoken ceasefire that we talked about in the last episode was well and truly over, but for the same reason, they still never took over the legations, because they just never launched an all-out attack against it. There's like, it's like an action film, where one guy fighting the hero at a time, and you never win. It's like, you know, five of you could beat Jackie Chan's ass if you tried. I guess it'd be really easy to beat

Jackie Chan's ass now. He's like 70. Yeah, yeah. He's not running through plate glass anymore. I mean, you might need some assistance. Gosh, it's me, Dutch Jackie

Chan. What's your what's your job on the movie set? Oh, I throw Mr. Chan through the window. Most people think, you know, it's like a system of like pulleys or he's jumping. No, in reality, I like pick him up and throw him through the window. Dedication to the craft, which is actually how I'm going to enter the next

live show is you and Nate are going to have to throw me through plate glass. Not that sugar glass bullshit. I want that accidental real glass that happened. There's a there's a paper view from WWF and like the early 2000s Where Kurt Angle through Vince McMahon's son Shane through a plate glass window? Not knowing it was real because it was supposed to be fake And so the Kurt Angle grabs him and does a belly-to- to belly suit because Kurt Angle is a legitimate gold medal winning Olympic wrestler. He can belly to belly suplex a motherfucker into space.

Incredible weight Olympic weightlifter as well. Really? Yeah. Yeah, if you've ever seen videos of him doing like clean jerker snatches, very very good. Not surprising. And he belly to belly suplex Shane McMahon into this plate glass window and it doesn't fucking break because it's real but Shane McMahon is now upside down and thrown through the air so he lands on the unprotected concrete directly on his head You just hear the squids slow squeak as they slow down As they like slide down the window remember this is the WWF in the early 2000s Maybe late 90s by my I don't remember exactly. So they're like, we've already committed to the bit, he's gotta go through the window.

So Kurt Angle picks him up and does it again. I think he has to suplex him three times to get him to go through the window. And at this point Shane McManus is bleeding profusely and knocked unconscious. Next live show baby! Yeah, you're pulling out like fluorescent tubes because the pace gun didn't work well enough as a deterrent. Oh god, fuck, I'm not doing fluorescent tubes. I've seen this go wrong in so many different ways.

There's just a layer of tacks in front of us. I have watched way too many deathmatch wrestling clips gone wrong where people just like you know dick fart puncher accidentally botches a tube glass move gets impaled and dies on the helicopter on the way to the hospital no good and that guy got paid in hot dogs so it's really not worth it hey got the hot dogs so you know all of this kind of makes sense right the government is weak and when all of this kind of makes sense, right? The government is weak. And when all of this started and getting punched in the teeth repeatedly, generally doesn't

make one stronger in the long run, right? Imperial infighting was always going to rear its head in one way or another. And now governors were fucking off and leaving the government to die, probably hoping they could saddle up to whatever new government or new empress or new emperor rose to the surface at the behest of their almost certainly new colonial overlords, right? But the Boktors began to vanish too. And this is something of a mystery to history. Nobody knows why. It's period blood magic, it was that time of the month.

I have my own explanation. As the Allies advanced towards Peking, every village and town they came to, all of which would have been controlled by the Boxers, was empty. The hit and run attacks stopped seemingly overnight. Everything and everybody was gone. Now, generally speaking, Western historians always chalk this up to, well, the boxers simply lost in the field.

They were crushed in combat and were unable to recover, but they didn't. They never suffered a serious catastrophic defeat. Sure, Ketsen was bad for them, but they lost a few thousand men. But what is that when you have hundreds of thousands? And not to mention, remember, they've been absorbing heavy casualties since the very beginning, ever since they ran into a machine gun for the first time. None of this would have been new to them. A much more likely

explanation is something that is painfully simple and has nothing to do with battlefield success of the Allies or battlefield failure of the Empress. Of all of the things that created the Boxers, the motivation from crippling drought to the dual power structures of the Chinese Christian power that was developed from the missionaries and everything within the village and the towns. Well, those were both gone. The drought was over. It was raining and people were already back in the fields tending to what remained of

their crops. As for the Chinese Christians, well, the Boxer's campaign against them in the north was unfortunately wildly successful. Chinese Christian village life had been wiped out and driven towards places like Tiet-Sin and Peking. And if you were a true believer in what the Boxers taught, i.e. driving the Christians away would bring the rain back, well, it worked. There was no need to continue. Will Barron And it's also like, it's really interesting considering that like the, like when you think

about the boxers as this kind of like decentralized autonomous groups where they like, there was no like hierarchy or command structure. It's just like, okay, it's rain now. I need to go. I've got beans to plant. I guess it worked. Yeah. We burned enough churches and now the sky gods happy. You know, it's, it's what, it's what all the black metal bands in Norway were trying to do. Yeah, like, you know, we kill all the Christians and it will... Well, like, it rains a lot in Norway as well, so...

See, Mayhem was just trying to get it to rain again to tend to their crop of, I don't know, dead crows or whatever. Oh, do you know, like, much stuff about Mayhem? I know way too much about Mayhem. Yeah, like the fact that, dead the singer of mayhem would like huff a rotting crow before going on stage. Yeah, because he wanted to sing with a lung of a lungful air of death. The band sucks. I disagree mayhem were good.

Now, it's important to remember the boxers, like you said, were not a classical rebellion or even a revolution. These were not the Taipings. Despite all of the bad things about the Taipings, say what you will, but they had a political ideology. There was no hierarchy, no command. There is no state building going on. It was, in effect, a leaderless movement that had been co-opted by the Imperial government to be free military labor. So nobody was in any position to enforce any kind of discipline to keep the individual boxers in place. So it is supposed, and it's my prevalent theory, I guess, the one I believe in the

most, after killing enough people to make it rain, they just went home. Stig Brodersen Mm-hmm. And it's also in the aftermath, how do you dish out any sort of punitive justice for what happened? Because there's no hierarchy, no one's keeping track of who's involved. Adam Backer Yeah. And the rank and file, they're mostly illiterate. There's no record keeping going on. I always compare it to the Taipings because we just did a series about them. And a lot of the Imperial military leadership also fought the Taiping. So there's definitely a crossover. They kept studious fucking notes

because they were trying to build a kingdom with a political ideology. It was truly a revolution. They were trying to destroy the original system and replace it with their own, admittedly, completely batshit insane one. Whereas the Boxers, it was like an internal rebellion. So far as they were not trying to replace the government, they supported the Qing. That was literally one of their mottos, support the Qing, destroy the foreigners. So then, and it was very regionally based, it was not nationwide, and in their region they're like, well, all the Christians are in Peking now, I guess it's time to tend the fields again.

That was fun. Either go back to your farm or are we just going to go siege Peking? Right. And then remember, like, the Boxers were in Peking, but at the same time it was just like, well, the only thing that really remains is these refugees in the legation quarter, they'll probably leave. I'm going home. Fuck it. It's not like I'm getting paid for this shit. Yeah, I got beans to plant. Yeah, I gotta go get my bean on.

The bean rules everything. All hail the bean. Bean, bean, bean, y'all. Legume- based politics. Getting bean-pilled. However, just because the way to Peking was wide open did not mean the Allies were going to have an easy time, because their expedition was fucking imploding. Any and all collaboration between the countries shattered. Everyone was simply doing whatever they wanted without telling anyone else anymore. Like, for instance, the Japanese decided, I'm going to go attack that town. They didn't tell anybody yet. They just left everybody behind. The Russians would do the same thing. But then when they returned, they got shot by the French on accident,

which happened frequently because that's what happens when thousands of random armed men are maraudering through the countryside. People who can't really speak to each other once again. In middle school level French at best, yeah. Each country also had their own way of doing things and just gave up trying to make it work with anyone else. For example, it was well over 100 degrees every day. It's fucking hot.

It's what, like 40 degrees Celsius or something? The Japanese knew this and they're like, okay, well, we'll begin marching before the sun comes up. They dodge the heat of the day, at least the worst heat. And because the, at best, the most organization that they still had in place was marching in a column, one nation after the other. And since Japan decided, we'll go first, they march first. Meaning the Russians were to come after them. However, they were so disorganized and badly led, they could never wake up and set off on time.

I assume because their command structure is made up of Georgians and Armenians. Now this set everyone else back in the column because remember they have to wait for the Russians to start before they can go and that forced the Americans who were after them to march in the middle of the heat and the French to be at the worst possible time at the peak heat of the day. And then the Brits to simply march at night. Hey, listen, as the saying goes, so never sets on the British Empire because God doesn't trust an English man in the dark. The sun doesn't set on the British Empire because we have to march in the fucking dark because the Russians can't wake up on time. Oh, bliet!

You want me to wake up before 12? You do not understand. We simply stay up drinking until 4am. And then we do not get out of bed until 11. However, I must have coffee until 2. I realised by the end of that impression I was kind of going Russian Larry David. The end result of this was a lot of French soldiers just passing out from heatstroke, but also this mess of a column was stretched out, like the front part of it, the Japanese

and the Brits in the back, were a full day march away from one another because of how badly everything was stretched out. Smendley Butler said that this resulted in so many heat casualties that the roadside was just littered with the dead and the dying. Hundreds dropped out from every country, just left on the side of the road. And the heat was so bad and the soldiers, unilaterally, no matter what nation you're in, were so badly unprepared for it that their uniforms were literally just rotting off of their backs from the heat and the moisture and the dirt and the sand. Butler said that his uniform top, his tunic just fell off and the soles of his boots melted from the heat.

Jesus Christ. Which I've actually had that happen to me before. I was walking when I was in Afghanistan. We don't often do foot patrols on roads for obvious reasons, but we had to cross a road to get to a different part. It was a blacktop road in August in Kandahar. It is hot. I was standing on the blacktop road pulling security for everybody else crossing the road,

only for me to realize my boots had melted to the blacktop. When I went to step off, it was like I was stepping in a boot-wide piece of gum. It was disgusting. Your shoes were gooning. Somebody come help me, I got my goonin' shoes on. By August 13th, the Allied force had limped its way to the last village before the capital, Peking.

The idea was, as always, to sit down and as a group, begin to plan out their assault on the city after a few days rest so they could scrape up all their heat casualties and bring them into camp. Soldiers could rest, drink water, not drop dead. They knew this was a problem. But then the Russians, in the middle of the night, without telling anyone, decided to show initiative for the first time in national history. They ordered their men to attack Peking, trying to get the jump on their rivals. Around 1am, the Japanese heard firing in the direction of the city and saw the Russians were gone from the camp. And they were like, fuck, we have to chase after them, but sent word to the

Brits. And only the Brits, who then sent word to the Americans. And the Americans thought, oh, fuck, we should tell the French. They're literally the last ones to know that the battle for Peking is starting. So all of these countries just simply fling themselves at the walls of Peking without any plan whatsoever. Now, despite all of this confusion, right for someone to take advantage of to score defensive victory, the Chinese were completely unprepared. Remember the governors had been pulling their forces away from Peking or refusing to send them in the first place. The boxers are

gone. So despite Peking being very easily defendable with 60 foot walls and machine guns and cannons and all these things, there is barely any Chinese soldiers inside to defend it and remember they're also watching the legation So their their forces are already split amongst the massive stretches of this Defensible wall on top of a siege already going on inside the city I feel like this is the part where it starts to get a lot worse. Oh boy does it. So the Chinese Imperial Army within Peking was effectively a skeleton crew, which is not what you want when you're defending your imperial capital.

But where they did defend, and I don't mean to make this sound like the army just rolled over and gave them Peking, they didn't. Where they did defend, they fought bitterly. Where the Russians and the Japanese attacked, for instance, they slaughtered their attackers. Witnesses say piles of Russian and Japanese dead soldiers lie in front of their positions, so high that Chinese soldiers had to run out and kick the piles over to clear out the path for their machine guns. However, there wasn't enough men to go around, so by the time the rest of the Allies figured out the battle was going on and attacked the city somewhere else, the

paths were wide open or there's only a handful of Chinese defenders facing them at all. Even though they made easy progress into the city, it didn't mean they, let's say, knew where the fuck they were going. They're just like wandering around, it's like, we go left, remember, no plans, nobody has a map. Nobody has any kind of like, okay, we're going to breach a city, we're going to attack the Forbidden City, remember the Imperial compound within Peking, or we're immediately going to go to the Legation, which of course is what everybody's thinking, but important note here, nobody knows where the Legation is!

There's no scouting, nothing. You think that someone would have thought of this? You think that at minimum the Russians would, if they decided to attack first. Stig Brodersen Yeah, like surely one of them would have some infosec from some diplomat saying the legation is just in this general direction. Will Barron Ah, but remember they've had zero contact legation for weeks. Stig Brodersen But like even before then? Will Barron contact the legation for weeks. But like even before then, like some map somewhere in one of these countries' embassies or

like you know, Port Arthur is nearby for the Russians, the Japanese are nearby, the Philippines are nearby for the Americans, they all have diplomats and forces inside the legation, at no point was it like, maybe we should have a map of Peking in a drawer somewhere. The Brits have been flooding this country with opium for a long time. There is surely some British nonce opium dealer who knows where the legation is. I don't know, man. Someone ripped the gills on opiates.

Isn't exactly the guy I want writing my map. No, but he's not, he's, he's cell, he's flooding the legation with opium. Yeah, that's true. That's true. This makes no sense. This is so frustrating. And remember, it's like a fucking ghost town too.

So even if they came across like a Chinese Christian who they're all hiding inside the legation, they couldn't just like ask him for directions because they're all gone. The city is nothing but corpses, burnt out foreign buildings, and nothing. He's just like playing Gears of War. But all of the weird subterranean aliens are just like the Europeans in the Legation.

Yeah, one of the French is the stand-in for General Rom. So they got lost. They got got just they didn't just get a little lost, they got lost for hours and remember nobody in this like collection of Americans, Europeans, Russians and nobody speaks Chinese so like the few street signs that are there they can't read. Everything is choked with smoke from burning buildings, from combat, there's dead bodies everywhere, and so they're just meandering the street like the world's worst Google Street View car, trying to find the legation. And they finally do.

And if anybody's keeping track at home, since this entire thing is nothing but an imperial cock measuring contest, hence why the Russians attacked first with no plan. The Americans were the first ones to find the legation, however, the Brits immediately saw that they found it and sprinted to get through the gates first. So they could be the first ones through the gates, make it inside and be like, don't worry, we're here. Fuuuck. it inside and be like, don't worry, we're here. Fuck. What is really funny of the situation is, okay, so the legation's been under siege

for weeks at this point, weeks and weeks. They've sent letters, remember, to the Navy in Tiet-Sin, hey, if you don't make it now, you know, in two weeks we're gonna be fucking dead, all these other things. There's been fake news stories published in the British press about how they have already been wiped out. Now. No, I do not look like that fucking smile on your face. What is funny here is these soldiers think they're coming in to rescue people who are starving, eating their shoes, they're on the verge of dying, they're

desperate. When they made their way into the Legation, they found well-fed, well-groomed people who had clean clothes, they'd been bathing every day, they'd been still living their aristocratic, privileged lifestyle within the walls of the Legation with a small army of servants and all of that. And they recoiled in horror at the sight of the rescuers. Yeah, because they've been marching for weeks. Their clothes are rotting on them. Their like shoes are falling apart. You get like a naked, smidly butler with his feet poking through the bottom of his shoes like a Hannaannah barbera cartoon

dick flopping out the bolt action rifle covered in blood for no discernible reason it's not his blood it's just how smedley butler rolls yeah and uh yeah like they show up dying on their feet from disease and heat stroke they're dirty they're thirsty they're hungry brutally sunburnt one the diplomat said they looked like a quote, disreputable gang of ruffians. And then meanwhile, the soldiers like, we went through all of that, and it looks like we interrupted a fucking garden party.

Oh no. I would, I don't know how this didn't devolve in some kind of mass shooting. Yeah, just going postal. All of the allies like, look, we've had our differences, but I feel like if we kill everybody and just say the boxers did it, we'll be fine. Yeah, no, no, the diplomats aren't communicating with anyone on the outside anyway, so. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's like across the board. Every soldier from every country is like, you said you were in a life or death siege. What the fuck? So what did it do next, Joe? Meanwhile, the empress and the entire Chinese imperial court had fled Peking, hiding in a nearby mountain town. Her envoy kept trying to talk to the allies about a ceasefire, or at least talk them out

of occupying the entire capital, specifically the Forbidden City, but everybody was ignoring him. The allies were still scouring the city, fighting pockets of Imperial army resistance all the way toward the gate of the Forbidden City itself. Though, I should point out here that the soldiers still had no fucking idea where they were or where they were going or even what the Forbidden City was. Oh for god's sake. Though their officers did manage to get them under control enough to stop them from entering the Forbidden City, just long enough so a representative and a detachment of soldiers from each member of

the alliance could enter the gates of the Forbidden City together. And on August 16th, they entered, finding it completely abandoned other than for a handful of Unix. I assume they were the least popular Unix, like you have to stay behind. Ha ha ha ha! You smelled the least like piss, so you're not coming with us? Fucking losers! You're not good at subterfuge, youuge, you don't really get any good gossip, quite frankly you're not that good at your job. Ginn's not even that soft, you even fucking moisturize bitch.

The fighting was effectively over, the city was split amongst the groups of allies for occupation, and that's when the war crime started. Oh no. Soldiers stole anything and everything, from food to clothing to artifacts. The looting of the Forbidden City was immediate and unending. Officers and men, and even members of the legation, looted anything they could find within from silks to gold Though when you read different accounts from the different nations each of them tried to make sure to sound shocked by the looting of their allies Specifically in the case of all the Westerners They are like the Russians and the Japanese are beastly barbarians in their head

But they were doing everybody's doing this fucking everybody's doing this one journalist said quote Everybody who leaves P King has a box of loot though. They say they didn't steal it. They bought it from someone who did I mean like you know as far as other case boxes of loot were literally sent back to the UK labeled loot They should have put it in a bag with a big dollar sign on it. Exactly. Fucking Hamburgler shit. Look at, you know, as far as war crimes go, I feel like this is going to be the least worst thing that's about to happen.

You've never been more right about anything you've said on this show. Somehow you somehow you've managed to condense the entirety of Nanking into the next 20 minutes. OK, it's not that bad. I'll say it's adjacent. All of this was even openly reported in the press with British and American journalists pointing out that for a race of people, that being white Christians who claimed superiority over the Chinese, they should at least have enough shame to blush over the fact of what they were doing. Meanwhile, a Japanese journalist discovered that his soldiers had looted so much gold

and silver from Peking it could only be measured in the metric ton. Jesus Christ. The Russians, the Japanese, and the Americans did this straight up like fat loot sack with a dollar sign on it out the door while the British looted and held open air auctions outside the gates of the Forbidden City for men to barter with one another over different pieces of loot that they had stolen. Anyone who stood in the way of this mass looting, or honestly even those who didn't, were gunned down or stabbed in the process.

Anyone who thought, was even remotely suspected of being a boxer was killed. And remember, that could be any adult man or woman or also child. They didn't care. They were bayoneting them all just the same. It is often written that the Japanese and the Russians were by far the worst, but in my opinion that's a useless metric when every single allied power, every group of soldiers murdered, raped and looted with total impunity. The ceremonial moat that surrounded the Imperial Palace became so choked and bloated with rotting corpses within hours of the occupation started, one journalist said that you could walk across

it. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhuhhhhhuhhhhhuh uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhuh uhhhhhhhhhhhhhuh uhhhhhhhhhuh uhhhhhhhhhuh uhhhhhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh administration based occupation started with the American setting theirs up first with the taking the strange basis of the northern that being a union occupation of the Confederate South After the American Civil War that was like what they base her which admittedly is Surprisingly good because remember they just subjugated the Philippines and a lot of bad shits happening there Yeah they just subjugated the Philippines and a lot of bad shit's happening there. Yeah, yeah, the Americans are kind of getting a bit of a leg up in these new era of modern war crimes. Like that meant that theirs was better than most, you know, by the measure of their peers, and that is not saying anything good. I don't mean to make this sound like a good thing. Their tactics had a lot to do with simple practicality. The occupation, not the war crimes, those were for funsies. Nobody wanted to occupy

Peking forever, well, other than the Russians. The Americans and others knew the fastest way out of this was setting up a local government as close as the one that had previously existed so they could leave. And the Americans worked with the local Chinese to make this happen. And even with all of the problems that come in with something like this, people preferred it to the rest of the Allied occupation zone, to the point it created a fucking housing shortage within the American zone. Then in 1901, when the Americans are planning on leaving, a petition from their zone went around the local Chinese, asking them to stay because the people that live there were worried that,

you know, you're just going to turn us over to the fucking Imperial government or the other foreigners who are nuts. Like, it's not to say that they're great or even good, but they were the least shittiest option available, which says a lot. I feel like we need to talk about the other occupying forces now. Oh boy, will we. I mean, okay, the less said about the Japanese occupation, the better, because we all know exactly what happened. Yeah, Japan, historically big fans of the Chinese.

And the Russians acted pretty much the same, but we've talked about them so much at this point nobody's shocked by that. However, the Germans arrived. Remember von Waldersie, the agreed upon German commander, had not been there this entire time. But he finally showed up, and he decided to make up for the fact he missed the entire war. He turned the German part of occupied Peking into a ghost town through murder, theft, and

just outright iron-fisted tyrannical oppressive policies because he believed, and this is a quote, quote, Asians only learn through force and its ruthless application. Germany in the 20th century everybody. I mean this is a hair's breadth in the future from the Namibian genocide and about 10 years from them helping commit the Armenian genocide. They're well practiced and they're prepared. Yep, yep.

Germany is good at making sausages and genocide. In the off times, their patrols actually ran into a small group of boxers, which still did exist. Not all the boxers went home. They would butcher them and burn whatever village they happened to be in to the ground. If they found a boxer in your village or got in contact or combat with boxers from your village, they'd kill the whole village. They'd erase it from the

earth. In the case of the city of Piao Teng Foo, where the Germans insisted there was a large boxer force, which there was not, they became so angry that there were no boxers there, that they simply began shooting everybody that they saw, blowing up temples, and even executed the town's local administration, leaving their bodies in the middle of the city center for everybody to see. And just because he was there didn't mean the imperial arguments between the allies stopped. Just because the war was over, imperial fuckfuck games did not cease. Each nation was still trying to snatch up land and resources, knowing they would get to keep them when this entire thing finally came to its official end.

The Brits took railways, the Russians took fucking Manchuria, and on several occasions two powers had the same designs over the same thing. Specifically, Japan and Russia both wanted Manchuria, and it was a small miracle they didn't immediately start a war against one another while still part of the alliance. As the Allies wanted to negotiate an end to the war, they came to a small problem. There was no Chinese government to talk to. Remember, they had run into the mountains and their envoy had vanished once the city had turned into a blood orgy. They thought they could just talk to local governors, but came to the conclusion that since they weren't recognized as a government by anybody,

Chinese or other governors alike, any agreement with them would almost certainly be ignored and would start another war. Because remember, the Allies want peace on their terms, but more specifically, pacification. It's bad for business. Don't fuck with the bag. That's all they want. And I don't mean that as like a simplistic good term. They don't care how this ends as long as the fighting stops so they can continue making money off exploiting China.

That's all they've ever wanted. So despite hating the Empress and not trusting her one bit, the Allies came to realize they're going to have to deal with her anyway. She's where the power is. Yep. Within the Imperial Court they were having the same questions. They didn't want to return to Peking, knowing if they did, they would just be kidnapped by the Allies and forced to sign whatever they wanted.

But the court also knew the Empress, despite there being dozens of plots against her at this point, and nobody really liking her after her dumbass choices ended with them siding with the Boxers and losing the fucking capital. She was the only person with any legitimacy that could hold the country together, but most importantly to them, save the dynasty and preserve their power as it currently stood. Finally, the court agreed to negotiate, sending an envoy back to Peking to sign whatever poison pill the Allies would give them in order to save themselves, their dynasty, their grip on power, and give them back their capital. This resulted in the Boxer Protocols of 1901, and it was brutal. The Chinese were forced to pay nearly $1 billion in gold and silver to be split amongst the Allies on a sliding scale,

like publishing royalties, but for imperialism. They were also forced to purge the court of anybody who supported the Boxers, which of course did not include the Empress herself because they needed her. Some were sent to exile and others were forced to commit suicide. The forts like the one at Taku were to be destroyed and foreign troops were to be allowed to occupy parts of various cities, railway stations, ports, telegraph relay lines, any part of important infrastructure that they would need to continue exploiting them. Delegation quarter was now made sovereign territory, and the delegations within were allowed to make it as defensible as they wanted and staff it with as many troops as they saw

fit. Monuments were forced to be built to remember the ministers from Japan and Germany that had been killed, as well as cemeteries for all the fallen soldiers. Remember, the statue to the German minister is probably the most biting because that man murdered a child in his embassy. Yep. These statues and monuments would be framed with official apologies from the Imperial Court for their deaths in Chinese so people could read them. Really laying the shame on thick. And then to make sure this never happened again, all arms and imports and manufacture within China was banned for a period of two years,

but to be expanded pretty much endlessly as the allies saw fit. And with that, the agreement was signed, and the Chinese envoy who signed it immediately keeled over and died. He took the easy way out. They say it was from acute liver failure. All the drinking that required him to make it through the negotiations

caught up after he signed his name. He's like, fuck this, I'm done, plop. Yep, yep. The Chinese government returned to Peking with all of the blueprints of their own failure and eventual collapse signed in ink. The dynasty would never recover. Their Boxer Rebellion and yet another defeat was just too much to recover from. The straw that broke the Imperial camel's back. Anti-monarchy factions became more popular. After all, they had no shortage of examples to point to, showing people how badly the imperial court had failed the country and its people time and time again. Of course, these groups also leaned on the

age-old trope that the imperial government weren't Chinese, but Manchu. They're barbarians and clearly hated the Han people, so they must be overthrown. Now, if all of this wasn't bad enough, there was another massive famine that struck China in 1906, just five years after the Boxer Rebellion and the humiliation of the capital's occupation. Tens of millions died with virtually no relief from the imperial government. China became wracked with rebellions from anti-monarchists to monarchists who hated the empress to full-wong Hong-Christ number two in the form of heavenly kingdom of the great Ming who wanted to establish a theocratic constitutional monarchy with

quote Taiping characteristics. All of this was made worse when the Empress Dowager finally died in 1908. But before she went, she installed a man named Pu Yi as the last emperor of China at only two years old. The already weak government that was routinely tearing itself apart with backstabbing and politicking had lost the one person that could kind of sort of hold it all together with a bit of duct tape, hope, and a lot of weird sex acts. Hu Yi in his short term on the throne would become a petulant little shit who because of his divinity and his position could not be told what to do or disciplined in any meaningful way.

He was breastfed until he was 8 years old and spent his free time shooting eunuchs with an air rifle or beating them out of boredom. He'd also go on to become the future emperor of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, fall there, get captured by the Chinese Communist Party, re-educated, and he wrote a whole book. Yeah, he is one hell of an arc. The Imperial Government tried to fight the ongoing rebellions while also giving them token reforms like regional elections, but nothing worked. Eventually, several of these groups merged to form the Revolutionary Alliance and launched what would become known as the Wu-Chang Uprising,

leading directly to the fall of the Imperial government after 2,000 years of Imperial governance, founding the Republic of China in 1912. The Revolutionary Alliance would eventually form into the Kuomintang or the KMT, and their horribly botched rule would directly lead to the formation of Mao Zedong's Communist revolutionaries and the Chinese Civil War that eventually bring them to power. It's no surprise that Mao would frame the Box Rebellion much like he did with the Taipings as a proto-communist revolution of the people, ignoring the fact that the Boxers were completely and totally loyal to the imperial

throne, hated any kind of change, specifically the tools of the Industrial Revolution, the concepts of modernity as a whole. They rebelled because an authoritarian government making rapid industrial changes had stripped them of their dignity, their ability to self-actualize, and finally, their very lives in mismanagement and cruelty. The Boxers were a desperate, rapid, and violent outburst of the people to defend themselves, even if they didn't have an overall goal or even an ideology to replace the government at the time. There's a reason why so many different people with a brain from across all kinds of political spectrums at the time understood and sympathized

with the plight of the Chinese people and that of the boxers. People from Mark Twain to Leo Tolstoy to Vladimir Lenin all wrote in support of them, blaming the Chinese government and the encroaching foreign powers for pushing them to that point. Though I guess in closing, it's a little ironic as members of the Red Guard were called new boxers, and the surviving veterans of the Boxer Rebellion were dragged out to validate them. Though I agree with the idea of the parallels between the Boxers and what happened during the eventual Cultural Revolution in China. A weak and chaotic government refusing to address the needs of its

people and said turn them against scapegoats in order to protect themselves. And that is the story of the Boxer Rebellion. Oh, I'm finally free. Um, fuck,, how many people died in total? STIG See, that's another interesting thing, okay? Much like in the Taiping Rebellion, Taiping Revolution, whatever it is you want to call it, there's so many deaths. But how many were directly as a result of combat was not that many. But I mean, that's also par for the course in military history. It's generally thought that around when 100,000 people died

as a direct result of the conflict. However, that number is very fluid. I've seen up to a half million to several million when you count in for the drought that helped lead to the rebellion. Numbers for massacres are just not accurate. This has also happened in a small region as well. So, I mean, this isn't a North China-wide incident situation type thing. This is not at the scale of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Very regional.

But I've seen anywhere from 100,000 to a million as a direct and indirect result of the Boxer Rebellion. So it's hard to tell. It's very hard to tell. Tom, how do you feel after five weeks of boxers being all up in your shit? Honestly, I just want to do a fun question from the Legion. I got a fun question for the Legion. So we do a thing on the show called Question for the Legion.

If you would like to ask us a question from the Legion, you can donate to the show on Patreon. You can ask us on our Discord. You can ask us on Patreon. You can attach the message to a ship, invade China with it, and Tom will find your note as the local Irish executioner that works for Hong Christ, and we will read it on the air. Today's question comes from the Patreon, which is, replace all of the actors in a movie

minus one with muppets. With muppets. Yep. Ooh, I have lots of answers. You go with yours first. OK, there's a lot. There's a lot of answers that could be. Some of them are just inappropriate, so I don't say them.

Come and see. Replace everybody other than the child with a Muppet. My one of my answers, which a lot of people, it's quite popular, is the Knives Out series, but replace everyone but Benoit Blanc with Muppets. Oh, yeah. That would work. My other one, and I've never seen anyone talk about this, Michael Mann's Heat. Replace everyone except Al Pacino with Muppets.

I was going to say, if you're going to leave anybody but Al Pacino still a human, you fucked up. I hit you with the Uno reverse card. Same thing, but you only can replace one character with a Muppet. Oh. Um, uh, Apocalypse Now, but,

um, uh, Michael Sheen's character is a Muppet. Or no, Colonel Kurtz is a muppet. Just out of the shadow, Gonzo appears. Telling you about the darkness of men's souls. Or alternatively, full metal jacket, put private pile as a muppet.

Full metal jacket, but the drill sergeant's a muppet. Yep, even better. Instead, having a tiny muppet, or actually a muppet the same size as Arleigh Mermy going around screaming most obscene slurs and curse words in people's faces, I really like the idea of Apocalypse now with the Muppet Colonel Kurtz because that means we get like I don't know very fat gonzo like like, I don't know, very fat gonzo, like waxing philosophic in the shadows. Then Martin Cheen has to murder him with a machete.

But I'm thinking to like, the whole thing, like replace everyone bar one actor with muppets and it works in so many Al Pacino movies. Like Godfather Part 2, replace everyone with Al Pacino with Scarface, Al Pacino and Muppets. Getting murdered by an army of Muppets? Say hello to my little friend as he's machine gunning Muppets as they pour in the door. You replace Robert De Niro in Heed with Kermit? Robert De Niro talking about Miss Piggy's. She got a great ass. Oh, true.

As true lies. But you replace the the woman with only the woman with Miss Piggy. Could do that. Or great movie, a movie that I think replace everyone with Muppets and make it a Muppet movie. Strictly Ballroom. Never seen it. Incredible. Baz like Baz Luhrmann is obviously an author. I'm trying to think what a...

Oh, fucking Cannibal Holocaust, but everybody's a Muppet. Jesus Christ, Joe. Here's an idea. It's not necessarily a movie. True Detective Season One, you replace Woody Harrelson with a muppet. Oh, gee, gee, or rust. Oh no, you have to do it because you could do the Kermit voices like fucking him talking to Roscoe. You look like you're a awfully quite sad. Would you like to help me find this mystical murder? Time is a flat circle. Oh, yeah, you keep saying that.

Uh, that's certainly- would you like another Lone Star tall boy? You see Kermit, time is a flat circle. We failed to catch the yellow king and he has come back. Russ, what the fuck are you talking about? Stop saying weird shit. talking about? Stop saying weird shit. Tom, thank you so much for joining me on five weeks of the Boxer Rebellion. You have another podcast. Plug your other podcasts. Beneath Skin, the show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing.

We have done some cool episodes lately. If you want to hear about copyright and the law and tattooing and how Kat Von D came up with the smartest argument to not get sued, check it out. Or we have some cool stuff coming up like the history of tattoo conventions. Ah, yes. Kat Von D, the woman I only know because of the learning channel. Was it TLC or is it Annie? Either way though, this this channel's gonna be fired into the fucking sun. I thought you were gonna say because she married a neo-Nazi. That came later, yeah. This is the only podcast that I do, but if you like it, consider supporting us on Patreon.

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But they're also available on paperback wherever it is you find your books until next time God don't do any of this shit piss yourself and wear Jasmine