Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 338 - The First Boer War: Part 3

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

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Hey everybody, our merch store is restocked. So if you missed any of the live shows, specific merch, at wherever date that we went to and you couldn't make it to, it's all on our merch store, LLBDMerch.com. So get your orders in while they last. We only have certain sizes and certain numbers and whichever one it happens to be. So if you want something, get your order in. Once again, that is LLBDMerch.com and the link will also Up By Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me is Tom and Nate. We've been transported to South Africa in the late 1800s, chasing a job offer from a mysterious man none of us have ever heard of before, but we're pretty sure his last

name is De Beers? He's been sliding into our LinkedIn DMs, leaving strangely horny messages about our brainpans, and insisting that we have the noses of highly intelligent creatures. Not human, he assures us, but still good enough. We decide that he must be trustworthy and are never heard from again. Our skulls are later discovered after a lengthy testimony at something called a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Fellas, are you doing? I've killed us again. I was just thinking that like if you were an 1800 late 1800s person in, you know, call Western Europe, Britain, Ireland, that if

someone was like, Hey man, I got a job with you. You really got to get with De Beers. You'll be like, hell yeah. I'm going to get with De Beers. I'm going to put down 12 pints to him tonight. Just watch me. I'm spending two months of my salary on a De Beers. Yeah. It's like that joke getting waterboard at Guantanamo Bay sounds great if you don't know any of those things mean. Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. Oh man. I over the weekend I went to a tattoo convention. It was fun to like not work at one for once. And then on Sunday I was just like chilling and was like, Oh, what am I going to watch? And I ended up watching half of the first season of criminal minds. And let me tell

you that show is so unintentionally funny. It's like fucking hilarious. My mom loves that show. Cynthia really loves police procedural. She makes the joke that she calls them opposition research because a lot of them are basically like how Republicans view the world. And you can get a lot about the sort of American white Republican psyche from watching police procedurals. And she used to watch Criminal Minds and all I can recall of it is Unsub and the dark net. There's always the dark net. And also as well, you get the representation of the three different types of autism. You've

two white women, one Latina woman and Shamar Moore. Was it CSI or was it criminal minds? The one where like the tech person who's always on let me search the dark net is like a goth who sleeps in a coffin or Oh, that no, that's NCI. NCI. Yes. Yeah. I thought that was criminal minds, but yeah, I know who you're talking about and how. It's just really funny because the dark... I've been on the dark net. I used to buy weed on the dark net and it's just basically using the internet in 1996.

That's what it always looked like to me. I was never smart enough to pull it off. Every website sucks. It's slow as hell. Everything is like web 1.0. 99% of things are scams. And it's just like search results are either useless and nothing comes up all the time or the worst shit you've ever seen.

So yeah, it's just to put it into perspective, I remember trying to find like, because there was a name of an exchange where you could buy drugs and I was just trying to buy weed and it's Silk Road or something. That's the only one that I know about. Empire market, I think. And it was like, when you look, when I would search empire market, but like I would argue that half of the, uh, search results in the various dark net search engines were for like what you would describe as, um, illegal photography, put it that way. And they were not subtle about what they were advertising and just sort of like, Oh, fuck me. Really? Like I'm in a bad place for drugs. Like I don't want any of this shit.

Empire marketplace sounds like the type of business venture that will be founded by 50 cent in 2006. Apparently it got compromised because the dude who ran it, the German guy went on vacation and like a punch of like, I don't know if it was returned parcels or some kind of thing got fucked up, whatever it was, like a ton of this parcels got left in the hallway of his apartment building and his neighbors complained. Just a cache of drugs and CP sitting in his apartment hallway. Like, Oh, it's fine. We live in Germany. Yeah, exactly. The thing I would say to bear in mind about this is that actually you wouldn't

find any of the CP shit on there because there's a code of the dark net drug markets, which is like, we don't sell that and we don't sell fentanyl. I assumed it was like child porn, fentanyl and guns because that's what brings the FBI around. Brings the cops. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Typically. Yeah. I mean, like, but definitely when you look on these places, like trying to buy hash or whatever, they'd also be like, oh yeah, I have a card reader that I've hacked with a fake bias update. I'm selling all of the people's scanned cards.

They've bought shit from my physical store. You can steal their... So anytime that someone like the other day when someone tried to run 9,000 euros of purchases on my business card at a Louis Vuitton store in Italy, I probably bought a coffee when we were on tour and some dickhead had like the hacked version of like a, you know, a fucking payment terminal. And that is what, you know, Joe was just trying to buy more pairs of white jeans. Now, speaking of watching awful slop, I watched some awful slop over the weekend.

And it was love is blind Habibi. Oh, yes! Which is the horrible Netflix romance reality show Love is Blind, but only for content creators and DJs in Dubai. Oh, yeah. It is fucking awful. Yeah. This is like the evil version of The Three of Us would be on that show. It was so bad. Everyone's like, so what's your job? I work in marketing. I work in real

estate. I'm a DJ who also has a land portfolio. This is exactly what I thought it was going to be. There are times in history when all of the circumstances converge to create the perfect environment to be practicing some vocation. Like I guess if you were like a marble carver, then perhaps you could look at the peak of the Roman Empire. If you're a gay dude, New York in the seventies. If you're a Renaissance painter, Florence in the early 1500s. And if you're- A drug dealer on the internet before the feds came around. Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, yeah. If you're a cafe in San Francisco, if you're Dread Pirate Roberts in like 2013, and if you're a fucking idiot, Dubai now. It is the apex. It is, I don't want, it's like, I'd probably get arrested for calling it the Mecca of dumb

guys by the Emirati authorities because they probably have a goon squad here in Geneva. Similarly, yeah. I mean, one time we went to the, we took a walk to go up to the Villa Diodati up in Colony, which is where George Gordon Byron was so fucking annoying that Mary Shelley said, I can't stand this piece of shit and went into her bedroom in the house and then wrote Frankenstein. It didn't quite happen that fast, but that is the origin story of Frankenstein. And while we were walking, we walked past the consulate in North Korea and it was behind a very high fence and the house was very far offset from the fence. And I was like, can

you imagine the shit that goes on? Can you imagine how much Hennessy and how many body parts are involved in that house? How much meth gets trafficked out of there? I mean, like, yeah, there's a, a policy where, uh, I don't know if they still do it, but due to lack of funds, uh, the North Korean like ministry of foreign affairs, whatever it is they call it, makes every embassy be self-sufficient. So every embassy has to do Juche. And it turns out they just do it through counterfeiting and drug dealing. And basically using diplomatic bags to bring cigarettes in and sell them.

Which like, you know what? Fuck North Korea, but I respect the hustle. I hate when I go to buy my bag of weed or Coke or meth and it just has like a little picture of Kim Il Sung on it. Yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to get high. I don't want to read about King Song Il-Liam. Yeah. Yeah. The North Korean dealers are just doing what like coffee shops do in Amsterdam. And there's like, it's all about branding. We're spreading Juche through the meth. So like the meth comes in a little bag

that has Kim Il Sung's face on it. Man, I did a massive amount of meth the other day. The only thing I wanted to do is just bomb America for some reason. And kidnap Japanese directors. I tilled a massive amount of land for some reason. Yeah, like saying we're gone off that Mount Peck to Kim Il Sung Juche Percocet sounds like a line from Dracula. Okay, okay, okay. North Korea packing them suddenly five four.

As you can tell, we're talking about the Boer war part three today. It's dumping rain here in Geneva and I had to get my very cranky toddler daughter to child care involving taking the tram. And so like a little 10-minute warm-up about yeah smoke of that Kim song ill pack Yeah, I'm gone off that in John landing like I just Before we can actually become a serious history podcast again I just we just kind of needed to divide a little the people's choice the best history podcast you come to us to hear about North Korean meth. That Pyongyang purple haze. I hate us sometimes. So we're at the Boer War part three gentlemen and when we left you last time the rebellion had swept through the Transvaal colony

catching the Brits sleeping. The untrained, unpaid and unorganized Boers had begun besieging several of their garrisons at once and defeated the Natal field force in open battle, leaving hundreds of British soldiers dead in exchange for only a few Boers. General Sir George Pomeroy Colley had been hoping to smash the rebellion before the British reinforcements arrived. And that obviously did not happen after he sent his men into a buzz saw at Lang's neck. Can I just say that that name sounds like the veterinary office record for the most annoying people on the planet's dog.

It's like a corgi or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of those collies is like there's a hyphen in between it because they're telling you what kind of dog it is. Or it's just like a guy who owns a vegan restaurant in shortage who absolutely abuses his workers. I mean, okay, we're all missing the obvious thing there. This could also be a Dubai tech guy whose parents have a mysterious real estate portfolio that is for some reason, they like kept secret along with the royal family for reasons that like his funny uncle has something to do with. And he is a hundred percent in everyone's girlfriend's message requests on Instagram. Not even in the like the first page, but in the hidden page.

It's fine. He just thinks they're interesting. His uncle's CV involved seven or eight years working for British Petroleum. His name is Gaz Baz and he's an Emirati citizen for some reason. He walks around in the full garb. He's a general in the Emirati military. Now that he's sat at his base at Mount Prospect as the British reinforcements from India arrive, thousands of men as well as several batteries of cannons, including repurposed nine pounders from the HMS Dido, a name that is unimportant but I really wanted to say here because I'm

a huge fan of this ship's collaboration with Eminem. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Dido is a figure from mythology and being dweebs would love to name their ships after that. Here comes Nate ruining my fun. Yeah, it is. Well, you also Dido saying Stan with Eminem. So maybe the ship itself, maybe it was the anthropomorphic ship from that episode of South Park with Russell Crowe. It was actually the Dido anthropomorphic ship and it's saying Stan. We need to get Dido on dissected so they can ask her in a very, very, very nerdy voice.

So the song white flag, was that about this ship? It was about the British surrendering that during the first Boer war turns out she's a huge fan of the show I totally forgot good that's a great reference I totally forgot about white flag I will go down with the ship etc yeah I only remembered her for Stan I'm gonna be straight up with everybody has a very very strong stance on the first Boer war I was gonna say when that song starts playing on the, on the 18 eighties, gramophone intercom of your ship, you're like, fuck really?

I didn't sign up for this. Don't ask her which side of the Boer war she falls on. As Kali sat and waited for him to get to his position, he realized, fuck, my supplies aren't showing up. That is because like we talked about and ended the last episode, he wanted them to attack him at Mount Prospect, his reinforced base. Of course, the Boers were not going to do this. They aimed for his supply train.

The Boers stationed small groups of horsemen around the New Castle Road, the only road that led to Mount Prospect, and raided anything that came their way. However, somehow Kali, despite having his teeth kicked in by the Boers in a stand-up fight, still refused to respect their fighting abilities. Most importantly to Kali, the Boers, you see, they lacked willpower for a long, drawn-out fight, which is strange because that's exactly what had happened and he lost. I just found out that Dido's parents are Irish, but she has like insane full name that feels

like she is the descendant of the Irish guys who've shown up in the first board war of Dido, Florian, Claude, De Bonneville, O'Malley's Armstrong. Cool. I feel like that's like unack like an acknowledged Bob Geldof daughter name. It's just why my daughter's got a first name and a middle name and that's it.

You see, in some cultures, the longer the name, the more powerful the person is like saying a magical and can pay it in cantation. Yeah. And then there was that song we learned in primary school about actually I'm not going to sing the song because it sounds like it's going to sound like I'm saying a dirty word in the process

Oh god, Sam McCam, a wacky Brown member that song. Do you remember that's no. Oh, well, then I won't sing it Fuck it, but the basically kid with the parents loved him so much They gave him a million names or whatever and then like when he fell in the well, no one could say his name correctly So we drowned that's like you just have a normal name Yeah, cuz if you say his name all the way he'll'll float. Exactly. Yeah, they all float down there Nate. Oh Stephen King's involved great. So the Boer war So when he discovered that his suppliers are being cut he ordered 393 men and four cannons to clear the roads and they were out the camps gate by 830 on 1 February morning in

1881 all seems normal the decent response to having your supply lines rated, but Colley thought this was going to be such an easy job. He expected his men to be back by dinner. So you know what happens next, right? Yeah. Famously, whenever you say, Oh, we'll be back by dinner or what? X times like not everyone's either going to die or be crawling back six months later. The Georgian Edwardian Victorian whatever era of the British military is famous for being correct when they say it'll be done by X time.

I know what you guys are thinking. You guys are thinking back by Christmas. That means the war is going to last, you know, until a couple of generations are dead. But when you say back by dinner, that means you don't bring any food or water. Mm-hmm. They hit the N'Gogo River, only a few miles from camp, and Kali ordered some cannons and men to be dropped off in order to cover their crossing. Ahead of them, he sent some cavalry to act as scouts. They rode to the heights of a nearby plateau, and before long got their skulls immediately vented by some Boer snipers. Kali immediately ordered the rest of his column to get to the top of the heights and

support the cavalry, who the survivors were now pinned down. Then a hundred Boers came into view, charging ahead on horseback towards the British right flank, which was now wide open. These guys were under the command of a man named Nicholas Smitt, and Smitt is an interesting case. Now, before when we started this series, there was this core of Transvaal Bowers who never once wanted to be part of the British. They left the colony, they became bower trekkers, rather go live off of like blood and misery on the frontier than live in the colony. Smitt's the opposite of that. He attempted to live in the British colonial world at Durban for years But he found that the British were just too fucking insufferable and he hated them

So he packed up and moved out to the frontier to Transvaal way long time after everybody else did like he he gave it the old college try so to speak is like I Fucking hate the Brits halfway through this sentence Joe both me and Nate looked directly into the camera and leaned into the mic. I know nothing about this. You know, it's funny because on one hand, there are a lot of positive things that have happened because of my decision to move to the United Kingdom and subsequently move on. But then also the other day I was pushing my daughter down the street in her stroller and someone

walks by and was talking to their kid with like a very, very strong regional English accent. And I was like, don't talk that way around my daughter. I don't want to hear that. I have to give her a bath now. I was thinking on this battlefield, just imagine the meeting of accents between like 1880s Boer and like some British soldier from like the black country. I do have to point out that most of the Boers at this point speak no English

Yeah, they speak Dutch and some of them have adopted Afrikaans Yeah, it's basically like Captain Jack Sparrow attacking Aruba is the way that it winds up sounding between the two of them like uncontacted tribe of Dutch people on Aruba Like uncontacted tribe of Dutch people on Aruba A lot of people don't know that's what Kokomo is actually about. I thought Kokomo is about Indiana. I'm sitting in Indiana Yeah, that's what I thought because everybody really misses Kokomo Indiana. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's weird. I feel like for all of the hatred of Ohio, which is deserved Indiana is ranks lower in the idea of like I can't wait to go to X

Destination like Indiana is like they've had to add it in the bottom of the list as like a courtesy But it's below the fires of Mount Doom like genuinely Ring into the depths of Mount Carmel, Indiana. This is how you know, this sobriety ruined Brian Wilson He got really sobered and started enjoying Indiana. They should have taken him off the meds. He wasn't cooking anymore. To be fair, maybe that's why he moved to Indiana, was to cook, Beth. I don't think that he moved to Indiana.

I don't even know of Kokomo. I think they just picked the name because it sounded nice. It sounds tropical. That's why everybody thought it was tropical. Yeah. The problem is that it's not even a particularly nice part of Indiana. I can't even remember exactly where it is, but it's, I believe Kokomo is in the general somewhere, the arc between Terre Haute and South Bend, Fort Wayne, thereabouts. Just like-

Also, Brian Wilson wasn't in the Beach Boys when they wrote Kokomo. Oh, good point. Maybe that explains it. Yeah, exactly. Someone listening was getting driven insane by the fact that you two didn't know that. I knew it instinctually, but I had to look at it. I kind of thought after I said it like it's possible he wasn't because it's such a style change for them. But I don't know. Also, Brian Wilson famously hates Indiana. I don't know

if that's fucking true. Brian Wilson famously hates a lot of things. Brian Wilson hates getting out of bed. I can support him in that. There's nothing to do with Lions Led by Donkeys thematically, but we could talk. How would Brian Wilson assault a fortified position? He would wait them out, eating 14 steak dinners a day until somehow they starved. You'd wait them out for decades in a sandbox, the piano in it. Yeah, exactly. He would compose the most inscrutable pocket symphony with just like modal changes you could never conceive of. And the Boers like who have only

ever encountered music in terms of like what you might describe as, uh, 1880s. Animal noises? Oh! Joe made a music joke! I was going to say 1880s Johnny Rebel but Don't take this from me. I got one. They had to put a pin in it uncritical support for Unmedicated Brian Wilson wrote some bangers. He probably was insufferable to be around. Oh completely mashing up the Beach Boys in the first Boer war I Feel like a rifle line would do a pretty good job of mashing them up. Yeah, fair enough now Anyway, Smith really hated the British went off and moved to the trans vol and became an insurgent as one does

Now he was in command of between 300 and 500 volunteers We aren't entirely sure 500 being the high end Probably somewhere in the middle now. Collie had the Bowers, he thought, right where he wanted them. They were in the open, they're running towards him. He had cannons lined up to support him. The Brits, Colley specifically in this context, thought the Bowers didn't have the spine, the military discipline, the testicular fortitude to face down a cannon line. He thought he had just won the battle and

ordered his cannons to open fire. I mean look man here's the thing, criticize him for so many things but like you can't doubt their fortitude at this point given what they've accomplished. Like they just defeated him. Yeah I don't respect them in terms of like any of the things they stand for, who they are, their culture, whatever but like I at least want to assess them correctly from a military perspective And if you say Nate your job is to engage with an element of the Amish ein satzgruppen I'm going to at least acknowledge it for what it is the Amish Waffen Amish the Waffen esh esh

Now that's unfair that would exist in a couple decades. Christ. The Boers didn't break or run. Instead, they came up with a revolutionary tactic known as seeking cover. They simply jumped off their horses. Now their horses rode forward directly into the cannon fire being obliterated into confetti. Which I'm sure broke Paul Kruger's heart. But they dove into like this tall frontier grass, it's like chest, head high, and then they just began low-crawling through it, so the gunners couldn't exactly target that. And they took over like Gears of War 1. This is the part, like apparently British artillery gunners work under the same idea of like a stealth video game

from the mid 2000s where the guy just saw you, but you ducked behind the grass, so now you're invisible again. Yeah, they just have like the exclamation point like, brrp. Yeah, you gotta cut in the fucking metal gear, like, oh, was that noise? Yeah, but it's just one of those things where it's like,

you have an area effect weapon. Like, it doesn't matter if they're hiding in the grass, like, you it's just one of those things where it's like you have an area effect weapon. Yeah, it doesn't matter if they're hiding in the grass. Like, you know, just plow that shit. This is the point of military tactics where someone discovers rapidly that their concealment is not cover. I've been in that situation before and it sucks ass. It's like, oh, this doesn't stop bullets. Oh no, operating on Assassin's Creed logic is like, if I crouch

down in this grass, a white circle appears around me and I am not visible. Yeah. They, this is right after they tried the tactic of sneaking up behind the British by jumping off a 16 story building and landing in a perfectly tactically placed bale of hay. Yeah. Got to love the tactical bale of hay. And then they started low crawling through the grass, getting closer and closer to the Brits who were now just flinging artillery wildly into the distance. On the other side of the grass was broken ground, you know, this is frontiers, it's harsh country, there's boulders, there's cracks in the ground everywhere. And they just low crawl themselves close enough to where they could start picking off British

artillery crewmen. First they snipe their horses though because like if my horses are dead so are yours, but they didn't shoot them in the head. They shot them like in the ass which caused the horses to panic, turn, and then plow through their own crewmen and wounded that were laying around, trampling gun crews, and then escaping into the distance. Then they started shooting more artillery crewmen. Kali responded to this by just sending infantry men over to the guns to replace the artillery crewmen that had been shot, meaning he was just feeding more and more men into a farmer shooting gallery, all while the cannons became less and less effective

because the infantry did not know how to use them. Shooting a horse in the ass. This sounds like a joke, but is actually a very classic military tactic and was at times used against the Mongols because it's like we literally cannot hit them off the horses. The only thing we can do is aim arrows at the horse's ass and get them to book the rider. Yeah, the tactical cheek clapping. I mean, I will say I didn't expect them to so quickly get revenge for the surprise nighttime circus from episode two, where the night raid caused the cattle trains to stampede in a

circle and the guys in the middle were just shooting cannon at the moon. They got to suppress the moon. Suppressive fire on celestial bodies. Fire for effect. Oh my God. The moon Turk is protecting the British. He looks down lovingly at what he perceives to be the future Western front of the Ottoman Empire. This is also kind of like unintentional.

Like there's a certain comic element to this where it feels like, I mean, these are obvious decisions being made for tactical reasons or for like, you know, achieving a certain effect that you've just described. But like it does genuinely seem like at times hearing this in summary, almost like Easter eggs in a video game, or like if you shoot the horse in the ass, something funny happens. Like, but imagine like an entire narrative of a war that seems to be following this over. Like, well, we can't engage with these guys when they're in their defensive perimeter,

but what if we spook their cows so they just run in circles nonstop? Like it's Hideo Kojima shit. It really is. Yeah. People didn't know about that Easter egg in Majora's Mask. If you shot the moon with a cannon, weird things would happen. If you shot the moon with a cannon weird things would happen if you shot the moon with a cannon horses start exploding this implies the existence of Boer Ganondorf that's just Paul Krueger Paul Krueger is a giant remember

someone he's a huge guy that someone described as like gigantically disgusting so you could imagine he's, effectively looks like an orichai who is so simple that when he gets mad, he has to go pet horses to calm down, but has memorized the Bible and he's a militant Amish psycho. I mean, you would imagine that when something bad happens to you and he laughs, it's like the game over screen in Zelda 2 return of Link where basically the screen is red and black with the silhouette of a horrible pig man and it says game over return of Ganon equals Imagine what has to be done to make Paul Krueger laugh a horse has to do something sprightly, but also religiously appropriate

So it certainly can't do dressage because he is against dancing That horse is a sinner. He was going to say that it's committing the double sin of teaching a horse to be gay. Paul Kruger sitting there watching the fucking dressage at the Olympics, screaming at his TV. You're kind of missing the forest from the trees on this because if you show a TV to Paul Kruger, this is a bowler from the 1880s. Like like he's gonna take out his elephant gun and shoot it God just imagining the sermon like you the fallen creature that is a man with your learning and your Unwillingness to adhere to the to the word of God have not only misused the teachings

of the Bible in learning to read, but have taught a horse to become gay. Okay. Now my brain is polluted and I'm just imagining Paul Kruger and an Alex Jones voice. They turned the freaking horses gay. They turned the horses gay. They made them dance. The British have made the horses gay. I mean, look, I'm going to be real with you. All the encounters I have with people's stereotypes about the Brits around the world, that one feels like it could actually be an 1880s stereotype. That the Brits are so aggressive in their desire to nance horses that they've actually trained a

class of horse nances that they're horses who then abuse other horses, genuinely. I hate this whole sentence. There's literally like, I read, what is it? Robert Hughes, the art critics, autobiography. And he said that when he was in Spain in like the seventies or the sixties, he went to a burlesque show and there was this one, like a bunch of one act plays. And one of them was a guy in a Tweed suit called Il Inglés, or El Inglés. And while he was giving this thing, he couldn't understand the Spanish jokes. Everyone was laughing and he asked his friend, what does this guy say? That's so funny. The guy's like, oh, he's just doing a British accent in Spanish and talking about

how he loves fucking horses all day. And apparently that is the stereotype. Outstanding. See, we weren't being offensive. We were just being historically accurate. I'm not making it up. Their reputation of being perverts. Oh no. This means that there was like a barren Lord hands? But also this implies that they knew that they were signing themselves up to a blood vendetta with the British when shooting those horses in the ass, because it's kind of like the sacred band. You've just shot those artilleryman's lovers. They have to avenge them.

Like to be fair, Britain is the country where I would fully believe they would have a horse in the House of Lords. Not as like some symbolic thing, but as an actual member. I'll have you know that horse has a very impressive, uh, like landlord portfolio and works for Black Rock for some reason. Your landlord's a horse and you're getting evicted and the horse just kicks you in the head. It's kind of useful, isn't it? The purpose of the House of Lords is to basically first

stall any positive social change. And you've installed a horse in the House of Lords, all he can ever do is go, yay, and vote against whatever it is. We're trying to make child slavery 1% less fatal. Weirdly, the child slavery thing is what the horse is going to learn how to say yes. I would welcome Lord Hans into the House of Lords, but I would like to ask him to rescind his comments about Muslims. Oh God. I call upon him to go further in a trot, perhaps even a gallop.

And if a gallop is too gauche, maybe a canter. I think we've lost the path here, boys. I think we've finally gone too far. We've gone into the high grass. Lord hands. First Lord of Seattle, second baron of Enumclaw. Now Kali realised something important here. The Boers have shot so many of their horses he couldn't withdraw without leaving his artillery behind. So after burning through a couple

messengers who got kneecapped along the way trying to deliver it back to the camp, one finally got through and got word that he needed reinforcements. This entirely saved Collie's life, asterisk on that one for now, and also his column because Smitt saw that he had the British trapped and ordered another detachment of Boers to advance behind the British gun line, hoping to trap them. But since they were so close to Camp Prospect that his force ran into the British reinforcements, forcing them to break off their tempted encirclement. Let me ask a quick question in a serious sense, Joe. Since you're the one who's read through

the source material in detail, in an actual head-on engagement call it, without these sorts of... The Brits seem to love in this retelling to ignore the possibility that terrain might be used to the advantage... It might be a force multiplier or combat multiplier, you know what I mean? Perhaps. Yeah. But in an actual engagement, in terms of their ability to call it achieve fire superiority, to use the right term, it sounds like the Brits are at an advantage. It's just that they choose to ignore the existence of every possible advantage the Boers might avail themselves

of and then keep getting surprised over and over again. Is that fair? Or do you feel like the Boers at this point are actually like... In a head-on engagement, militarily could actually hold their own against these British? It depends on the situation. I think in a situation like this one, where they have the Boers on the attack in an open field and they have artillery superiority, Colley is defeating himself. There's no situation where a well-supported force of the Brits should have lost this battle or even fought it to a standstill but He's falling into that always their thing in this imperial era and not only in the imperial era But like we see it in modern day as well where a force loses due to you know

failure of imagination or not respecting their enemy and militarily like respecting someone militarily does not mean respecting them. It means respecting their capabilities and they're falling into that hole where like, of course we can do this. We're the British military. That's interesting to me is that like, I realize a human mind has not yet comprehended the concept of a sandbag yet,. But the idea of having an artillery position completely out in the open without any kind of cover, in the modern day, even in a very,

very hasty emplacement, you still make a fighting position for an artillery. It's a bit of an anachronism with modern rifles at this point. Yeah. But it's still happening. Because at the end of the day, think of an artillery cannon, think of a howitzer, a smoothbore gun, any of these things that are being used at the time. It's basically a gunpowder catapult. And everyone's got to wind the big funny wheels back and do all the things to load it and fire it. You don't just get inside the Evangelion of the howitzer in 1880 and pull a trigger and fire it. So you got to do stuff. You could be running around, moving around, clearing dunes, doing all this, pulling the lanyard or lighting the fuse,

however they did it. You know what I mean? If that's all out in the open and you're silhouetted and you're probably in a position where you want to observe your targets to some extent because you're not anywhere near as accurate or long range. Underwearing a massive red coat. Yes. The best way I could describe it is that you've turned yourself into like a training level for Virtua Cop. Yeah, it's unbelievable. The outline is glowing around you saying defeat this objective. Yeah, exactly. It's like, you know, we've slid you on rails into this position and now you need to shoot these dumbasses. For starters, Kali is a fucking idiot. Like we talked about when we introduced him, he's an administrative officer. He's not a battlefield officer. He has a force that's kind of slapped together. He has artillery

support. I think if just spitballing, if he had even the smallest amount of respect for the Bowers, this let's just say this time around after he got his ass kicked the first time and deployed his forces correctly, supported them correctly, had reserves like any officer would on any operation, he wins. But instead he still thinks of them as like brain dead farmers rather than the guys who literally just bounced his head like a fucking basketball like a couple days beforehand. And like that should have been enough to be like, oh fuck, I need to reevaluate how I'm thinking about all this, but him, his subordinates, even the British government in London is like, we should just be able to like put our thumbs down on top of these,

you know, psycho Amish and that's the end of it. We don't need to fight this like it's the war that it is. So that is why they continuously find themselves in these positions. It's like not even a weird form of racism that you'd expect as you know when you say the British fighting a colonial war in Africa, like the image that would jump to your mind, but it is that we are the British. This is 1880s British Imperial military. Nobody can stop us. We destroy everybody. And then you just have a mostly illiterate dude with a hunting rifle shooting down the crack troops that you've brought from India. Well, yeah, but what it feels like is it in so many ways, it's kind of form over function

here in the sense that there's all of the kind of decorative and formalized elements of sort of modern military stuff. But at the end of the day, you achieve fire superiority by shooting more than the guy who's shooting at you and making him put his head down and so on and so forth. And it feels like just because... To mix metaphors here a little bit, just because you have bought a brand new car with all of the brand new things that make a car function, you cannot drive it through floodwaters above the fucking... The top of the hood and not have it flood the engine. Yes, cars are way better and more reliable now than they used to be, but they still...

Even if you get a fucking SUV with an off-roading thing with a snorkel, if you drive under the in water so high, the snorkel is under the water, it's going to flood the engine. Maybe that sounds stupid, but it just feels like there is a way for you to lose despite your notional and actual superiority in these things. Yeah, you can always snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Yeah. It's called just endlessly walking into these stupid situations where it's like you committed the real life version of Civilization II where if your tank is weak enough, a spearman can

kill it. Now, here's where we get to another stark differences between these two militaries. Smitt believed that he still had the British dead to rights, even with the reinforcements. He thought if he kept the pressure up, he would still be able to complete his encirclement and therefore destroy Collie's force. But then his men looked at him like, nah, we're good. Let's go home. And then they went home.

Smitt was furious, but he had no choice but to listen to them. So that was the end of the attack. Yeah, it's like the pirate code and the right to parlay, except it's like the supremacy of the bri. The men have already gathered meat and coals. I have no choice but to break off the attack. Exactly. You know, we were we were going to press the enemy and to see, you know, achieve the decisive point of this operation. But the bri has supremacy. What are you going

to do? And like, Smith was trying to convince him like, no guys, we can end this right here, but he, he had taken so many hours trying to explain them why his plan would work that the, the British that were trapped there simply pulled back to their camp at Prospect and Smith's like, all right boys, briar it is, you know, tax over. Briar it up. Got to get the sausages on. The British left behind, they're dead and they're badly, badly wounded to the point

they couldn't be moved. So Smith and the Bowers themselves pulled back the next morning and did the same thing, leaving behind their dead and their wounded. But then the next morning a strange meeting occurred where Boer teams and British teams all went back down to the battlefield to collect their dead. The two sides simply nodded at one another and left each other alone as they went to work. On a few occasions they found a British dead body or the Brits found a Boer dead body. They just carried it over and dropped it in front of the next guys's like, hey, you lost one. And then they buried them.

In the end of this British fuck up, 64 more men were dead and 77 were wounded as well as half of their horses. Something I'm sure again broke Paul Kruger's heart. The Boers lost eight dead and another 10 wounded. I need to point out here that this would be the most costly battle for the Boers of the entire war. Jesus. So the Boers lost in modern US doctrine a squad. Not even a whole squad dead. A squad, basically nearly a squad dead and like a detachment plus in total casualties. And by contrast, the British lost an entire company.

Again, yes. Another company, I should point out because they just lost with the tape before. Now, I should point out here, as is the case in a rebellion, word of the bow or victory traveled quickly, making more men say, maybe it is time I take my hunting rifle and go join the commando. So the ranks swell with more men. But remember, all these guys are paying their own way to fight. Their own guns, their own ammo, their own horses, their own food, all of that. But now, it was a popular groundswell amongst Boers not only in Transvaal, but the colony, the orange free state, people who either can't

fight or maybe they're old, they're sick, whatever, they donate their weapons, they donate food, they donate their horses, they donate ammo to support the effort. This meant that soon, Boers who couldn't go and fight simply because they were too broke. Because remember, the Transvaal was desperately poor due to mismanagement and various other things. Now those guys who are like, I would go fight, but I don't even have a gun. Or I would go fight, but I don't have two fucking coins to rub together to

buy me enough bread to make it through the next day. Now they can. Well, yeah, I feel like when you inflict nearly 10 to one casualty ratio on your opponent and you are the underdog, and you rely on popular support, you've basically invented principles of Maoism, but for the murder Amish the Maoist murder Amish the all Amal Krieg This sounds like the worst deadliest warrior mashup ever of like who will win the Shining Path versus the Boers The Maoist Amish are doing fan-shin and like stealing each other's buckles. Yeah, I want to hear all about the Shindara Luminoso.

The Shining Path. Meanwhile, since Kali had taken command of the Natal Field Force in the space of ten days, he had hemorrhaged a quarter of his men. But don't worry, he didn't actually see anything that had happened as a defeat. Rather he called them victories because he killed Boers as well. I need to point out here he killed about 11 Boers so far give or take. This led one of his lieutenants to joke quote one or two more victories like this and we shan't have an army left at all. Yeah you're basically like wow I won I inflicted the real life version of the

Vietnam kill count on myself. Slap a medal on there. You know what? You did great. Though the reinforcements from India finally arrived at the camp at Prospect and these were the first men in Kali's army to not be wearing bright red jackets. Instead, they were wearing khaki. So, revolutionary, no longer with the glowing square of doom around them on the battlefield. Congratulations, you finally passed out of tutorial mode in Virtua Cop 2. Now it's time to play the real game. Yeah, they turned it off of story mode into medium. But remember, not everybody has these khaki uniforms. So so it's kind of like it mismatched. And Kali now had 800 more men, more cannons, and gatling guns. Kali

also had to know that his career, and probably his life as he knew it, were hanging in the balance for him to succeed this time around, and he planned for the next battle. Meanwhile, in the Transvaal government, they were much more grounded than you'd think a group of revolutionaries riding a wave of victories would be. Kruger and the others knew that their victories that they had scored so far were the only thing propping their movement up. However, they also knew that the full might of the British Empire was getting to Transvaal, and once it got boots on the ground and organized, they would be crushed and all of them would be executed.

So the government of Transvaal sent a peace offer with a few stipulations to the British Colonial Secretary, Lord Kimberley. The stipulations were that the Brits were to annul their annexation of the Transvaal and the Boers would plead their legal case for independence in front of, I swear to God, the British Royal Commission of Inquiry. This has to be the most chill peace offer ever given by anybody. They're like, no, just un-annex us and we will plead our case for independence to you, in court." They promised to accept whatever

the outcome of the inquiry was and in the meantime until that outcome was decided on, they should all agree to an armistice. The British government agreed. It's extremely weird olive branch from the murder Amish. Right. I mean, they understood their reality very well. You also think that the recruiting potential and the morale boost aside, they must have known that having done so well and having inflicted such pitched casualties against the British, that the Brits do have guys with guns and cannons and so forth all over the world on a long enough timeline. You have won, but you have also enraged or at least gotten the attention of a far superior force.

And like, you know, the dispatches between the members of government who are also not only like, you have the triumvirate of the government, but they're also leading commandos in the field is like, they're as shocked as everyone else. They're killing so many British and they're worried that, you know, if we embarrass the British too badly, the government will not rest until they're destroyed. Yeah. So they're like, fuck, we are suffering from success. You know?

They have rapidly moved into political DJ Khaled. Yeah. Once again, explained it in the terms of the only thing I can comprehend the world with. It's like when you have just conquered one of your enemy cities in Civilization 6 and then you immediately make a peace offering like, hey, let me keep Birmingham. I've made it Muslim. Side note, I used to do this when Tommy Robinson was on Twitter. I would play Civilization and I would turn all the English cities, I'd play as the English and make sure all the

cities were Muslim and be like Preston Muslim and be like, what's happening? Tommy, can you help us? Now what's interesting here is this order for the armistice was sent to Kali because he's the commander in the field. It's his job to arrange it. He has to give out orders to the various garrisons, he needs to pass the order that the British government had accepted the Bower plan. He has to do all of this on the ground in Transvaal. But he's fucking furious. He was reportedly screaming stomping around like an infant throwing throwing shit around his tent, because he

knew if the war came to an end, he would have no chance to redeem himself, and he was done for. He had lost every battle he fought, and single-handedly led the British Empire to the point they might have to give up control of a massively important colony. He would be the face of the Empire losing to a bunch of people they saw as little more than backward farmers. They would require a scapegoat when all this was over and he knew god damn well it's gonna be him and I have to say here I'm not a huge fan of scapegoating but if anybody's ever

deserved it it might be him. It's like NATO having done so poorly, they have to surrender to like Neo-Druids who took over Stonehenge. Hey, we've talked about combat druids before. They're not to be underestimated. They might blame you once they've settled the peace deal with the druids. Yeah, it would be like if the Pennsylvania National Guard got their teeth kicked in by the Amish country and suddenly we had a Statelet in the US of ran by the Amish like someone's getting strung up for this going into the UN Stonehenge

negotiations with your orb That's a crucial mistake that you're mixing up druids and wizards Last good imagery of what druids were versus wizards. We all know wizards are oh you're you're going to tell me about that? I mean, let me tell you, let me tell you about some pagan Druids. I want to hear all about tactical war Druids. I want to hear all about, but you and I both know Tom that like the same weird his like late 1800s, horny historiography that has affected so many things about like the crusades or like the wars of Religion. The same exact thing happened with those Victorians sexing up the Druids and now everybody just thinks of like they have no concept of what it actually was. I feel like the main difference here is wizards ponder orbs,

Druids ponder trees. Can we agree on that? All right moving on. Yeah. Druids have to memorize oral literature in order to know all the Druidry rules and laws. Whereas wizards can alakazam some shit into existence. They can just say the right couple of words and then everything gets done for them. Wizards are lazy. Yeah. It's cheap. The Druids are holding court with deer. Wizards are kind of in sales, whereas the Druids fuck. What we're basically implying is it like druids are nerds Do you think the druids ever get in deer fights with the D?

You know deers fight by just like pawing forward with their hooves Is that how druids fist fight now? Do they do they do like deer MMA to know druids are basically using their power over nature and their knowledge of the world to like Basically do bum fights with woodland creatures. They're like making the deer fight. Just punching a stone in the face. Deploy the war stones. Listen here, you sneaky little furry bitch. Here to settle it. Finally, I would say that wizards are canonically lazy in this regard because of how easy magic makes things worse. So druids are nerds and wizards are stoners.

And this absolutely makes sense when you think about like, who's going to have posters of druids on their wall versus wizards. People who are going to turn on the black light and smoke that Mount Peck to Kush. They're going to have the handshake agreement over this is who would have druids and wizards. And that is a 1980s hair bands, pouring van spray painted on the side. I was gonna say whichever roadie Stevie Nicks is dating this week would have that inside his van Absolutely Soon Cali decided to do his best Richard Nixon impression and destroyed the peace process for political gain I'm not talking I'm not making peace with these these Dutch settlers Haldeman. What do you think these god damn Boers? settlers. Haldeman, what do you think? These goddamn Boers. Now, since he was the face of the British to the Boers in the area, it was up to him to literally hand deliver the British offer

of acceptance. So, traveling under a white flag, he delivered the letter to Smitt, who was the closest commando leader in his area. He said that the Boers only had 48 hours to accept the deal or the war would continue. This was not part of the British government's deal and he had pulled it out of his ass for a very good reason because Smith helpfully pointed out to Colley that his government was well over 200 miles away and it would take eight days to ride it over to them and eight days to ride back through agreement or disagreement. Colley knew this. He was doing it to buy himself more time.

Another part of the order he had gotten from the government was that he was allowed to commit actions in the defense of the British army or the Natal colony, but to not go on the offensive into Transvaal. Since the beginning of the war, we talked about this. The Boers had camped out on a place called Majuba Hill, to the rear of the Boer-held Heights at Lang's Neck. Both were technically over the border in the Natal colony. One of Kali's scouts told him that the Boers moved their men from that hill every night,

leaving it wide open. So he believed if he snuck a detachment of his men up on top of Majuba Hill to overlook the Boer position and laying his neck, he would outflank it, force the Boers to withdraw without firing a shot. You can assume where that is going, that it would give him a little victory before everything was over that he at least drove them out of the Natal, right? And it didn't count as an offensive because it was not in Transvaal. He also knew he could not tell anyone else what he was planning, even his own staff, because they would rat him the fuck out to the government. So he ordered 595 men to be issued rations for three days as well as digging equipment, all loaded into a pack that weighed

over 60 pounds. These men were not from one unit, rather a few companies from four different units slapped into one, none of whom have ever worked together before or were familiar. None of them had even fought in Africa before. So whatever. Then he left behind all of his artillery, Gatling guns included, because he thought they would slow him down. See, I was going to say, well, this time he's got Gatling guns, which when I thought of, hey, you're getting, you know, the haunted grass is sniping your horse's hindquarters, maybe having a gatling gun to sweep it would be great. Or if you're purposely going into the high ground to overlook a bar position, what is

better than having artillery and failing that gatling guns? You know that Colley knew the word for enfilade, but he only knew it to mean the big long buffet cabinet because he was fancy and not Enfilade-ing prior. Nobody knew other than Collie where they were going or what their plan was. Even though by this point most of Collie's subordinate officers hated him. One joke that he shouldn't even be put in charge of a guard shift. They didn't ask any questions when they set out. So on February 26th at around 10pm they left camp under strict orders of silence, though soon the men were whispering to one another and pretty much everyone assumed Kali, being

an idiot that they all knew him to be, was marching directly into another Boer trap. At one point Kali halted and ordered two companies to stay behind and guard their line of withdrawal and line of communication back to the prospect camp. But, I mean, this tactically is a good idea, but there's a small problem here. Nobody had any idea where everyone was going, or what they were doing, or how long they were going to be gone. So in essence, they didn't know what line of withdrawal or communication to keep open. They didn't know where everybody else was going! This is surely going to go very, very well.

Here's the secret, gentlemen. The enemy can't guess what you're doing if your own men also can't guess what you're doing. Yeah, stupid like a fox. That's right. At another point, the hill became so steep they had to leave behind all of their horses. So everyone was struggling their way up with what Kali thought looked like a hill on a map. I mean, it was called Majuba Hill, but it was actually a fucking sheer cliff face.

Oh, so you're, you are creating Anzio from first principles. I was going to make that joke earlier, but it's like it becomes more and more relevant I'm actually more surprised here that Kali didn't like forces soldiers to Fitzcarraldo a couple horses Yeah, this is all the makings of the story that Mel Gibson will make into a fascist movie where gay people are to blame for Some reason yeah all while their heavy packs made their lives a living hell because most soldiers back then did not march with heavy packs. They marched quite light. So now they have 60 some odd pounds strapped to their ass and now they're climbing a fucking mountain. It wasn't until 530 a.m. Remember they left at 10 that their entire force was on Majuba Hill. Now

just be the most the world's most annoying Ranger graduate. Be like, Oh, not so commando now are you light infantry? Hmm. All right. Got it. The hill perfectly overlooked the Boer positions, but now he's remember he sent multiple companies away, leaving him with only 405 men, but that's okay. Kali believed that their very existence there on that Hill would convince the Boers to leave without a fight. That was his battle plan. His battle plan was there will not be a battle, which is not how any battle plan should ever be. At worst or at best, whichever, always prepare for at least someone to get shot.

You're in a war. I think that if you paint a picture of a fox on the hen house, the fox will know that you know he exists. And then he's like, maybe I shouldn't go in there no problems yep he was so convinced of this he did not even order his men to dig in instead he told them to rest remember their packs are full of digging equipment someone's to be a recycle in this phase. Can it be recycled in life? I hope you believe in reincarnation. Motherfucker Collie's roster number is going to be like the special hex code for has failed

every phase multiple times. Collie's just actually doing the most elaborate attempt to break the cycle of some Sarah. Honestly, at this point, the only thing about Collie that makes any sense is if he was some kind of Boer double agent. Now, for the Boers, the first person to notice the Brits were perched above them on Majuba Hill was Hendrina Yobert, the wife of the commander Pete Yobert, who was living with

his army at the Neck, and she ran and told her husband. Like, he's like, what the fuck do you mean the British are looming over us? He went outside and saw a bunch of Scottish dudes and kilts shit talking them from on high. Hehehehe. I'm gonna get you, Springfield! They're like daring him to come up the hill. They turn the horses gay, they put the men in dresses.

Pfft. These people, they're the absolute sinners. They have to be wiped off the face of the planet, which is flat. The only time you could describe the British Empire as woe. Yo Bear quickly passed orders to break camp because he assumed that the Brits were about to start making it rain unholy hellfire with artillery, and he knew they were fucked. So they're like, we need to get the fuck out. We need to get out of the neck.

Kali was about to win. Of course, they didn't know Kali didn't bring any artillery, but then as they're packing up camp, Yobare realizes something. We're not being blown up. Nobody's shelling us. Something is off. So he sends some scouts forward to see

what's going on up on top of the hill. The Brits seeing the scouts open fire but miss. This caused Collie to run forward screaming at his soldiers to stop shooting because he would provoke the Boers into attacking them, which might be the dumbest thing he's done so far. Because remember he still has the high ground, at this point he doesn't have artillery but he can at least just start pumping rifle rounds into them. But he stops them from shooting. I mean, you took a hill directly in front of them that overlooks them in the middle of a war, in the middle of the night,

then trash talk them, and then some of your soldiers took hot shots in their direction. Things are as provoked as they're ever going to be. This is going to sound really fucked up. The thought crossed my mind about like, this is like somebody who's a flasher or some kind of like pervert. And then they accidentally get taken up on their offer when they're like insanely provocatively sexual towards someone. And then their response is actually I have erectile dysfunction and anxiety. I can't operate under this kind of pressure. You hate to see a flasher who doesn't like have, you know,

the long-term planning of like what happens if they actually do want to touch it. Just have Viagra in your lip like a fucking thing of soos. Somebody actually accepts you're like, shit, I didn't secure my lines of communication. I must withdraw, but I did bring artillery support for some reason. No, the Viagra is like a cyanide tooth. Bust open a molar and a Viagra tab comes out.

A fake tooth, yeah, in the event of an emergency. You'll bear quickly hell to war council and everybody agreed that the Brits had to be attacked and driven from their positions on the hill and asked for volunteers to go and do it because remember, under their chain of command, they actually can't order the commandos to do anything it's like who wants to go do violence and because it's the boars they had no shortage of volunteers 80 men grabbed their gear and prepared for an attack while a hundred more rode around to cut off his path of retreat. Then once it was clear the Brits weren't going to attack the deck nor hit it with artillery, Yobert took more men from other positions and had them join in as well. Within an hour of the Boers discovering them,

hundreds of men were now assaulting up the hill directly towards the Brits. Also, funny story here, remember how I talked about a sheer cliff face? That was only on the side where the Brits had climbed it. It was more of a gentle grade on the side where the Boers were attacking from. I bet all those Scottish soldiers just really regretted saying your da sells evil. Like aw man I really shouldn't provoke these guys. They're covering themselves in blood, fisting goat stomachs to cure wounds. And that other guy is punching a horse.

They're just doing the thing that boxers do where you like soak your hands in petrol to like harden the skin. They're just like leaving the hands inside the go. The Boers are doing like the Muay Thai thing of kicking trees, the toughen their shins up, but they're just doing it with their face. You're just being ran up by like, poor Mike Hager, about to beat the shit out of you. I mean, it really is. It's like, you basically go through all the steps. It's like, I'm going to kick this hornet's nest.

And then after I've done it, be like, Hey guys, by the way, what's a hornet? Oh no, the hornets. I've seen multiple TikTok videos of people like attempting to take care of hornets nests on their like the sides of their houses, like homemade remedies and they do not work and they're promptly attacked by hornets. It's like that, but Scottish guys and South Africans. Honestly, like videos of people being stung by loads of bees are really fucking funny. They're great. They're great.

There's something in the comedic ether about it, you know, whereas- But that's enough about the film, my girl. You could get really hurt talking about it and say like, the fragility of man in compared to this small animal causes such miniscule pain. But if there's enough of them, you are in agony. What if every hornet was a jacked Dutch farmer? You're basically Narrating it like you're off recon or verner Herzog which oh insane Now that guy would have no issues killing Klaus Kinsey. I will say

Now the bowers sharpshooters began picking off the British soldiers because they had to stick their heads over the hill to shoot down at them, and they immediately just start blowing these dudes' skulls apart. This is made worse by the fact that, remember, the Brits have no defenses. They're just kind of standing in the open. This leaves the Brits to back away from the edge of the hill because they keep getting their shit fucked up, and they're just blindly firing down at the attackers who then resort to

sniping their hands and guns when they come over the top an hour into the fighting Kali who was seen for some reason Walking around in tennis shoes with his pants tucked into his socks He's pioneering the shortage fit 140 years early. He's pioneering the like guy who owns a like pizza shop on Broadway. Mark and put talks like, whoa, whoa, my G you want the American slash. You want the shortage slash what you want my man. But he's like a hundred percent white. Oh dear. There seems to be a bunch of dead Scottish men around me. Hmm. Oh no. We've killed the Highlanders. I kind of wonder what the fit looked like with 18 eighties tennis shoes. I mean, it's the best fit on the Hill.

I'll say that much. I mean, the Bowers are dressed like, uh, you know, murderous bad people and like burlap sacks. I hate it when we get sent on a battalion minus sized mission behind enemy lines. And then right at the critical juncture of the battle, our commander decides he wants to rebrand as a fit influencer. He's a, he's a, he's a menswear guy now. He wears nothing but like cost clothing, but doesn't play tennis. He is literally quoting Gunner saying, drip too hard, fuck around, you might drown off this wave.

So while all this is going on, he's walking around in the weirdest drip a British commander has had since like Ord Windgate walked around without pants for fear of shitting himself. He sends messages back to the base at Prospect for reinforcements. But at this point, everyone is remarking that he's weirdly calm. He's not seeing that there's a problem Going on he doesn't see that he has clearly got his dick caught in a beehive He casually speaks to officers about maybe ordering them in to start digging in a time that is far since past He should have done that hours ago, and it's way too late now He should have done that hours ago, and it's way too late now.

Then, while walking beside his friend, another officer who's in the Royal Navy, and having just like a polite jape, a Boer sharpshooter blew the man's jaw off. Jesus. The bullet entered his mouth, obliterated his face and exited the back of his skull, showering Kali in his face and exited the back of his skull, showering Kali in his brains. Shooting someone in the mouth is such an intensely disrespectful way to kill someone. You know the bow or sharp shooter is like, wait for the stupid fucker to say something. Don't shoot him in the forehead, shoot him in his stupid fucking mouth. And then he just annihilates him.

He says, me like you also targets the horse's ass. It's the slow-mo from like Sniper Elite. Showering Kali in his friend's gray matter. This left him, let's say, stressed out. He began to panic. Yeah, I mean like being covered in human gravy would do that to you. But mind you, he's already been surrounded by a ton of his dead soldiers. They're getting hot shot at left, right center.

But seeing his pal get connected to God's Wi-Fi made him start realizing perhaps things are getting very, very real. Perhaps these Givenchy gloves with the price tag attached aren't going to save me. He had gotten himself into another shit storm and absolutely did not want to let anyone else know how bad it was for fear it would hurt him even more. There's a weird divorce that happens in his brain and we don't know exactly what it is for reasons that we'll soon get to, but it's clear that he is panicking, he's taking casualties and he is fucking surrounded.

But he begins to send messages back to the camp at Prospect telling them, everything's fine, we aren't taking casualties, and the Bowers are breaking. At another point he sends a message back saying the Bowers were withdrawing, none of which was ever true. Ian Hamilton, Collie's second command, was trying to control everything, running around ordering men to displace, ordering them to reinforce other areas that were breaking, running reports to Collie telling him where the enemy was, where they were attacking, how big the numbers were, all while the Bowers' numbers continued to grow as the fight went

on as more and more commandos respond to Yobare's calls for more volunteers. At one point he runs over to Kali to tell him there's over 500 men attacking us only to find Kali was taking a nap. Kali's aide, a guy named Colonel Stewart, helpfully told Hamilton, don't wake him, he is always in a bad mood when woken up early from one of his naps. He's the military prowess of a toddler. Gets stressed out, gets a little tired, needs to take a nap. Honey, I shrunk the kid, or rather, I shrunk him and reformed him as a Victorian-era general and sent him to be in charge of a mission

behind enemy lines. Honey, I shrank my battalion. This is just, this is kind of giving more credibility to your theory that he was a secret bower agent. That's a conspiracy theory I'm starting about all of this is that this Irish dude who worked for the British Imperial Project was actually a double agent for like the Dutch reform church. The more and more you describe this, it just feels like, God, I hate this reference, but like, it just feels like a I hate this reference but like it just feels like a carry-on film at this point but the carry-on film with like saw levels of violence all around him yeah how the fuck did he fall asleep

with the sounds of like gunshots and dying soldiers maybe that's how he could only fall asleep he is a British colonial administrator after all he needs that grace at like you know that white noise of human misery to either sleep or nut. Can you still hear them, Collie? The screams of the Scottish. Dismant. The Brits had no idea because of the effectiveness of Boer's Suppressive Fire, but two commandos had begun sneaking up the hill behind them the entire time, using natural cover and what we know today as bounding Overwatch. That being one group fires on an enemy, suppressing or killing them, while the other rushes forward only to exchange roles as the elements continue forward.

This is just like such an inversion of expectations that you have the Boers and all the sort of formation of them and how this came to be a thing versus the British army at the peak of the British empire. And it's like, one of them is basically inventing modern IMT and the other one is just like, what if you go into combat with a beach ball? And it's like, it's not the ones you think it's going to be. It's important to remember through all of this that these are not new tactics to the British. The Boers learned how to fight because they were fighting Africans. They picked up all of these tactics fighting Zulus and others. These were tactics that they were using, which meant the British

had also fought them previously. These were not new or revolutionary to anybody involved, but the Brits, again, didn't think they were a threat. Maybe like, Collie was actually doing like weird inverted, like Irish nationalism, like decolonial or anti-colonial violence. Like I need to kill as many British soldiers as possible. He's a triple agent. Yeah. He was working for the British. He was a double agent for the Dutch reformed church and he was working for the proto IRA.

church and he was working for the proto IRA. To the British these two commandos suddenly appeared out of nowhere directly in front of their lines giving them a point-blank volley of fire and the Scottish broke. They dropped or ran for it leaving the northwest side of the hill completely under Boer control. The Brits saw this happening but still did not see the Boers. They thought that the Scots had broke from something else, so Collie or someone else acting in his stead sent reserves to plug the gap left open by the Scots. These reserves ran directly into this chaos, literally running head first into the retreating Scots who then grabbed them and told them run the fuck away, follow us. And now soon the reserves were fleeing along with the Scots. So Collie has managed to basically like humiliate the British Empire and also get a ton of Scottish

Unionists killed. So we can say that no Celtic hooligan has ever been more successful than him. This is the standard that they all aspire to. Brits turned to attack the Boers on top of the hill, which caused them to take their eyes off of the approaches, which were still under Boer attack. Soon the Boers had climbed the western portion of the hill as well, with multiple commandos now pouring fire onto the British in like a semi-circle of doom at only 50 meters. Hamilton ordered the soldiers to fix bayonets because this is somehow their only advantage,

because the Boers did not carry bayonets. If they closed the gap in a hand-to-hand fight, they would have an advantage. But then, Holley stopped him from ordering the charge. Instead, the Brits simply remained at the center of the hill, being shot to shit. Roos, one of the Boer Commando leaders, saw this and screamed out, quote, Come on, you chaps, the English are flying, and ordered his own charge. Remember, though, they didn't have bayonets. They're just making bayonets out of like obsidian and stuff like that. Just full on. They probably like rip out their own femur and sharpen it or something else from War

Magna 40k. Like what? I'm just so perplexed. Instead of ordering a bayonet charge, they order a slow advance with one group once again, covering the other in close quarters fire and maneuver, getting closer and closer to the point they were nearly shooting the British at point blank range. According to the Boer Wars, the British and the Afrikaners, all hell broke loose. The British soldiers facing down the Boers broke and ran, but there was nowhere to go. The Boers had cut off their plan of escape.

So they simply began throwing themselves off of the mountain, bouncing off the rocks and shattering themselves rather than wait to get shot by some Dutch farmers. And then of course the boars simply walked over to the edge of the cliff and started shooting at them as they bounce downhill It is that clip of you know Homer falling down the cliff this is just Absolutely mind-blowing here. Like I don't know man I don't even make like a funny joke because I'm just sort of like how how like you said like it sounds almost like it's just Like it's deliberate. It's

so it's incompetent. Never, never attribute anything to malice that is much more easily attributed to incompetence. I agree with you, but it's just more along the lines of while I truthfully, I accept that hearing these details, you're like, I feel as though you could be forgiven in believing something else because it just seems so incongruous. It just seems so like, wait, what? I mean, it even seems that if in this situation, if Collie was not in command and said it was Hamilton, his second in command, things would have been different. If Collie had told Hamilton what his plan was, things would have been different. Maybe. I try not to be an alt-history guy, but it's hard to imagine that if certain

things would have been done, say, if Collie briefed his officers on what they were doing, if they would have dug in at the top of the hill, if they would have brought fucking artillery, many things would have been different at the Battle of Majuba Hill but instead you get dudes throwing themselves down a cliff and hoping they bounce to the left in a zigzag motion so they don't also get shot Hamilton in the middle of all of this because they're still soldiers fighting in the middle of all of this tried to rally some sort of defense but got his fucking arm shattered by a bullet. Holly ran forward to rally his men who would rather throw themselves off a cliff than follow

him in a battle, but he didn't make it very far. He caught around directly between the eyes while he was mid-motivational speech, finally killing him. I mean, it's a very fucking apt way for him to go out. One clump of Scots on the west side of the hill stood together and fought as long as they could, but with everything else going on around them, their officer told them, get the fuck out, run for it. And virtually everyone other than their commander, an officer named McDonald and a sergeant named Giles were wounded.

They told their men they would stay behind and cover them and they made a break for it. And they did exactly that. Firing at the bowers until they were out of ammo and then trying to kick, punch and bite them when they got close. They were certain they were going to be killed but the bowers decided against it because they're like, man these guys have really earned living. Like this is the one thing we as psycho fucking murder Amish respect is the willingness to bite a man to death. They can live.

They're employing tactics only seen since outside of fucking Rangers versus Celtic. Yeah, I was thinking too, it was just sort of like they get them surrounded. They're like, this is the one question that determines whether you live or die. Is a horse allowed to dance? Robert Leonard And they also took a lot of prisoners. And this is where something interesting happens. They don't kill them, even though some parts of the Bowers absolutely are just like, fuck it, execute them. Maybe if we start killing their prisoners, they'll stop coming back. And this is a feature of the battle. For example, Bowers stormed a British field hospital, and a few, the younger Bowers,

were ready to commence the war-criminin'. But they were talked out of it by older Bowers. This happened on top of the hill as well with the Scots. The older Bowers were like, wait a minute boys, no, these ones, you don't kill prisoners, stuff like that. Though in some situations, the younger Boers are so bloodthirsty, the older Boers had to cut a deal with them. You can't kill the POWs. You can just beat the shit out of them. Does that make you feel better? Like, you have yourselves a deal, and they'd beat the shit out of them and then leave them alive. As the firing stopped on Majuba Hill, it was clear that the British force had been utterly destroyed. Out of the 405 men sent up to the hill, 85 were dead, 111 were wounded, and 35 were taken

prisoner. 60% of the Natal Field Force had been destroyed. The commander, Kali, was dead, as was the son of a government minister, Captain Cornwallis Maude. You want to guess how many men the Boers lost? Ummm… twenty? One guy died.

I was going to say one. Yeah. Like this- They had like a dozen wounded, but one guy died. And he seemed to have been killed pretty much at the start of all of it. This paints a picture of immediate collapse and chaos amongst the British, where not even one side of the hill could accidentally, fatally wound more than one guy. It was, I mean, Collie's telling them not to fire, and then as the battle starts, they're not prepared for it. Immediate collapse and confusion on all sides. So this is sometimes painted in a British way to try to make these things sound better rather than the humiliating defeat that it was. It was like, it was a last heroic stand.

It's kind of like when you look at Custer's last stand, they really want you to believe it was a heroic circle the wagons back to back, let's fight this out situation that lasted for very long time when in reality it was over in 30 minutes. Rapidly, you know? When word of the disaster at Majuba Hill got back to the British government, then led by Prime Minister William Gladstone, they were in shock, speechless. They had no idea why it even happened. They were supposed to be in a fucking armistice

Why are all the Boars dancing and singing a song called run off the plug twice? Wait, they would not be dancing. They'd be standing The defeat was easily the most embarrassing the Brits had suffered in Africa up until that point because like yeah, he sent a wanna was Humiliating but then there was work's drift immediately after that. There was some kind of feel-good story of heroism at the end. There was a victory at the end of all of that, but not here. They had gotten the shit kicked out of them, and that was it. They had lost. And there's also the abject confusion in London, like why the fuck did this battle even take place? And now there's this politically shameful look of having offered the bowers an armistice and then their commander in the field attack them. A move that only works if you win the fucking battle. And then

there was another problem. Now they're coming to the negotiation tables as losers. Yeah, this is basically like Washington crossing the Delaware, but the boats all sink. They're like, Hey guys. So anyway, nothing's changed, right? The Boar's haters became their waiters at the negotiating table. Of success. Yes. Everybody in the British government is absolutely horrified that any of this took place. What the fuck was Kali thinkingically and politically in every way.

Now this brings us to a crossroads. Barring a massive empire wide commitment to the war that would be bloody, lengthy, but most importantly to the British government, fucking expensive, this was over. The thing was politically untenable and at the time the British, if they would dump the blood and the treasure needed to put them down, that would also be politically untenable. But that didn't mean that Queen blood and the treasure needed to put them down, that would also be politically untenable. But that didn't mean that Queen Victoria and the Tory opposition in parliament did not immediately demand that the British avenge Majuba and restore its authority, but Gladstone thought better of it.

He believed that sending the full might of the British military against the Boers would cause other issues. For instance, a general uprising in South Africa, having already been bolstered by the British getting absolutely wrecked by the Transvaal Boers. Because remember, the Brits are only fighting Transvaal. The Orange Free States, the Colony Boers, the Natal Boers, all these people, Africans, they're staying out of it. They had gotten their ass kicked by one of many factions, and they were worried if they poured in all of these resources, it would be a massive situation of the greater unifying theory of fuck that guy. Mm-hmm.

Meanwhile, the British passed orders to Collie's replacement, Sir Evelyn Wood, to actually make the original armistice happen, and he did on March 6th. this happen, and he did on March 6th. Soon, Boers were walking over to the British garrisons that had been under siege this entire time and giving them a letter from the government telling them that the war was in effect over. Meanwhile, a three-man British delegation landed in Praetoria and was negotiating with Kruger and the other leaders of the movement. Gladstone's offer was simple. All British soldiers will leave Transvaal. Transvaal will become independent, there will be no inquiry on the matter, and it will be allowed to rule itself. However, the British will still control its foreign policy and anything to do with its South African neighbors.

The message was very clear. We are the lords of South Africa. You're paying rent. Kruger fucking hated this deal. So did all of the other Transvaal leaders, but they took it. Like before, they do any large-scale war against the British would end in the Boers getting crushed, and this is as good as it was going to get. This war was a tiny one, with the majority of its battles all occurring

within 50 miles of one another. He knew the Boers lacked the ability to fight the Empire as a whole, and as much as Gladstone and others were worried about some greater South African uprising, Kruger and the Transvaal leadership absolutely were not thinking of that as a possibility at all. So on August 3rd, 1881, the two sides signed the Praetoria Conventions and made it official. Though eventually a few years later, in 1884, this would be amended with the London Convention, which gave the Transvaal more independent rights when it came to dealing with its Boer neighbor, the Orange Free State. But in reality, all this did was kick the can down the road. The British still wanted

to dominate South Africa, with or without the approval of the Boers or any Africans. That had not changed. But at the time, the war was just not worth it to them. Transvaal itself was not worth the hassle. That would change a few years after the London Convention, in 1886, when a bunch of Boers in Transvaal discovered one of the world's largest gold deposits, a short distance from Praetoria, well within their borders at Vietvaterstrand, creating a massive gold rush. This was something that Transvaal desperately needed due to still being very very bankrupt and very very impoverished. Something that the whole War of Independence thing really did not help.

Unfortunately, the Sun massive gold rush made it one hell of a target for the British Empire that was still waiting just over the border. This sowed the seeds for the coming of a much larger, much more destructive war. The Second Boer War. The end! Hooray! The long term effects of this war will lead to men wearing short khaki shorts a couple of hundred miles to the north in about 70 years. Oh, I mean, that's still kind of going on independent from all this at the time. The Antfellas is the first Boer war. Does everybody feel good? I mean, this is a nice uplifting series in comparison to our last one. Look, I I mean I am sometimes stunned into silence by things being horrible

But I'm rarely stunned into silence by things being completely insanely incompetent It's kind of shocking like even in the realm of incompetence. We often cover on this show. Yeah, this one is impressive Mm-hmm. I will say that looking up on about the Battle of Majuba Hill, there's like an old engraving from British newspapers depicting General Colley right before his death. And from what I can tell, it does seem as though they've tried to tactfully make it seem as though he was wearing your regular regulation putties. But when you look close, you're like, oh no, no, those are slippers with socks. Those are trainers. I like to believe that the 1880s version of like tactical crocs

Absolutely, man, it's tactical plimsolls or whatever the fuck Fellas that is a series But we do a thing on the show called questions from the Legion if you'd like to ask us a question Support us on patreon you can send us some message through our patreon DMS through our discord community Which you'll also have access to there's a whole channel for this thing. And today's question is, what game have you played as a kid that you still enjoy or at least replay from time to time? Mine is really easy. It's Final Fantasy VII. I'm replaying it as we speak for a different show. We're going to do a two-part, I I think episode series in the future over on the the worst of all possible world so I'm getting to play through it

all on this switch remake just finished disc one still great it is a very very funny because the things that hit when you're a kid like of course Aerith dying and it's like one of the most biggest gut punches in video game history if you're an RPG nerd. And then literally the next thing you do after that is go snowboarding. Yeah. Clouds over it. He processes grief quickly.

I also feel as though that's something that we acknowledged at the time, but really, really can examine with the perspective of a modern day is how racist Barrett's dialogue is. Oh, massively. So much. I mean, it's so much worse than I even remember. And I remember being stunned by it when I was 13. And like, this is this is bad, right? Like, this is because, yeah, I play that way. There's a lot wrong with the game.

I mean, there's nothing more on brand than our Japanese RPG treating the only black character in the entire game. And one of the few in the entire Final Fantasy series, the way they treat it. Well, yeah. And it was kind of seen as a landmark thing when the game was announced, but was being previewed, but hadn't come out yet. And then once you actually played the game, you're like, wait, did you guys just make him Mr. T? Yes. Mr. T with a Gatling gun hand, which no one ever remarks upon.

No, he does have a Gatling gun hand. That is true. But Hideo Kojima was paying attention. And there's also, I'll say one more thing about Final Fantasy VII. I'll move on. It is very, very funny that like, ah, yeah, you know, you're fighting these, it's effectively a giant allegory for climate change, but like, you know, you're fighting these other worldly beings, there's magic and blah, blah, blah. And then like at one point cloud can get a weapon. That's literally just a bat with a nail in it Yeah, it's fucking rules Yeah

this mega corporate conspiracy that in a lot of ways kind of like Tangentially predict so many things that are actually real and then also a huge element of the first discs story is getting cloud made Up in drag enough to pass so that he can seduce this guy who's a huge pervert and then can threaten to cut his dick off. All three of you threatened to cut his dick off. For video games, I don't really play that much, I would say. And weirdly, I've talked a lot about Civilization games, but I feel like the user experience on 2 is so clunky now that I wouldn't enjoy it. The one game that I have replayed since the start of this decade and have replayed to the end is Final Fantasy Tactics. I love that game.

It's very hard. Easily the hardest Final Fantasy ever made. It's very hard. Well, it's specifically hard because there's a couple of levels where if you don't... Or battles where if you don't know the kind of hack around it in the sense of what you need to do in advance for it, there is no way to win. There just is no way to win. Yeah. The Vigraph part. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Vigraph where it's you one on one before the rest of the battle

starts, you have to have changed Ramza to be a squire and he has to use Yell on himself and constantly run away from Vigraph and do Yell and it increases your speed. So it increases your turn time and just do that over and over and over again until you get like six turns to every one. And you can just fucking constantly attack Vigff and heal yourself if you need to before he can do his like, leave you with one hit point attack. I was certainly one of countless youths that got us soft-blocked there. Dude, it's so fucking bad. It took me months, like months. And then I read like an AOL

forum fact that explained it. It's an insanely hard game. I also really like the weirdly... It's clunky clunky and just badly done. But I find the translation of the original is actually more compelling, whereas the modern one, they've hobbited it up, like, tokened it up. And it's just annoying fantasy shit. And it just seems clunky. So I actually played it on a... My brother got me as a birthday gift, like Raspberry Pie emulator, a little console. And so I played like a ROM rip of the original game and it's awesome. I love it. Isometric battle game, stupid as hell. Love it. So yeah, that's my one.

You'd like triangle strategy if you have a switch or anything. I don't, but who knows? Maybe I can find another way to be even less productive in the future. That's what I'm here for, baby. Oh, like mine, um, from my childhood, not many, most of them are just kind of like ones that I played from like the 2010s onwards. Like the classic one is Call of Duty four. Just like I play that through that. It's just very funny because I got these games from my childhood that I was playing in college, like,

and like modern warfare two AKA joke Joe Kisabian simulator. Tom's going on about all these old school ass vintage games came out, you know, when I was a tiny little kid and it's like a Xeno gears or something like that. It's like MGS2. But no, the ones that I actually replay like really regularly are obviously like the dark souls games like dark souls one and three. Dark Souls two is my favorite, but it's like, it's such a time sync and it is infuriating. Like recently I played through Dark Souls one. It's a pre patch version of it. So it's it's what was playing Dark Souls one, like the day it came out without any of the fixes. It's so broken and it's so fun.

That's how I played cyberpunk and I liked it still. Everybody was like, this is horrible. I'm like, nah, it's fine. There's like people racing down the highway at 110 miles an hour in a T-pose. It's great. I play through Bloodborne a lot, probably at least once a year. Cause I remember playing it when it came out in 2014 and like sitting in my college bedrooms, chain smoking cigarettes, playing bloodborne. I'm replaying through MGS five again, one of like arguably the best games of the 2010s. And like, yeah, it's just, it's just great. Um, yeah, if you want to, uh, waste 30 to 40 hours of your life play through Dark Souls one every year.

And that is a podcast gentlemen, but you have other podcasts. Plug those other podcasts. I am the co-host and editor of Trashfuture, a podcast about the tech industry and why it's bad. Also, What a Hell Way to Dad, a podcast about don't join the military and being a parent. And Kill James Bond, a very, very, very, very funny film podcast that I strongly recommend. The neat skin show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing and glue factory, a comedy podcast from some of the friends over on track future. That's no theme, just riffs that me and Nate will have been on an episode of by the time this comes out.

That is true. That is true. I stopped in because a bunch of the regular hosts couldn't be there and it was the episode with Jeremy Vine, the BBC 2 radio DJ. It was actually a lot of fun. Ends on a smash cut. That's incredibly funny. That's probably one of the funnier jokes that I think I've ever been party to. So... And this is the only podcast that I host. Thank you so much for listening to it. If you like what we do here, consider supporting us on Patreon. $5 a month gets you years and years and years of bonus content every episode. Early Discord access, eBooks, audiobooks, first dibs on merch and live show tickets. And we have merch on the store now. And it will get you a horse that we have smuggled from Paul Krueger.

Your experience may vary. Anyway, support us on Patreon and leave us a review on wherever it is you listen to podcasts. It helps us immensely, especially when it comes to securing live show venues for the future. Everybody, thank you so much for listening again and until next time. If you're going to die, die dripped out. There you go. Dance with the gay horse.

There you go. Dance with the gay horse. Dancers with gay horses.