Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 349 - The Battle of the Kalka River ft. Milo Edwards

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/lionsledbydonkeys Joe and Tom are joined by Trashfuture's Milo Edwards to talk about the time a bunch of guys named Mstislav got destroyed by the Mongols. Sources: Leo De Hertog. Genghis Khan: Conqueror of the World. Richard Gabriel. Subotai The Valiant: Genghis Khan's Greatest General. The Chronicle of Novgorod. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://faculty.washington.edu/dwaugh/rus/texts/MF1914.pdf Victor Kamenir. Russian Disaster at the Kalkha River. Military Heritage. Vol 20, no. 6 Robert Rossabi. All the Khan's Horses.

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and the link will also and By Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me is Tom and Milo Edwards, one of the hosts of Trash Future and the Glue Factory. Hello, hello, hello. We're simple Armenian villagers, circa the 1200s, on our land on the Georgia-Armenia border. It's not much, just a few acres where we grow a small crop of catalytic converters and copper wire to sell at our local market. We woke up at the break of our workday, 1pm, and put on our homespun Adidas clothing. But once we've gone outside we realize something is afoot, and it isn't just our sick ass Samba OGs we purchase from the next village over.

Rather, it's strange men on horseback storming through the valley. Our churches burn, our government officials are slaughtered, and we decide that's probably a good start. We meet the men and decide to trade with them. However, as we're cutting a deal, I notice Tom has put one of their horses up on blocks and is carrying away a sack full of horseshoes. The riders notice this at the same time I do, and they promptly put us to the sword. How you doing, fellas?

That might be the most racist intro I've ever put against my own people. And it was only after I said it I realized I am in fact wearing Kadita's track pants. Well the thing you said about the catalytic converters really reminded me, instant Proustian reverie to a story. One of my absolute best friends is Lithuanian. And a couple of years ago he got intrigued by this story he was reading on a newswire about how the US Department of Justice had indicted this massive catalytic converter theft ring in the US. And they'd named like the ringleaders of this gang that had been stealing like it was like something like six million dollars worth of catalytic converters all over the US. And the first guy had a name where he was like, that guy is fucking Lithuanian.

I know that that's a Lithuanian name. And so he immediately just instinctively went and think about it, he just goes on Facebook and types in this guy's name, finds his profile, clicks on his profile picture, and his profile picture is him and his wife standing in the back of like an articulated truck, like a semi truck, in front of a gargantuan pile of catalytic concerns.

It's like, bit of an open and shut case for the FBI that one, I reckon. I love the idea of like in the, on the hills of the Caucasus, you're just like growing copper wire and collecting it like shearing sheep. You're just shearing the copper bush. That's actually kind of funny. I've never had my catalytic converter stolen in my life but my stepfather has. Twice. He still lives in Michigan. But I learned because the catalytic converter joke started a long time ago, because I think I made a joke about Armenians constantly getting their catalytic converter stolen by other Armenians.

But I have been enlightened. Only one catalytic converter thief in Armenia. Everyone else is just trying to get their catalytic converter back. But it's not that people are getting their catalytic converters stolen. It's that they're selling them. Yeah. They're are getting their catalytic converters stolen, it's that they're selling them. They're getting cars with catalytic converters on them and then just cutting them out themselves and selling them and then just like riding dirty as fuck because the catalytic converter is worth a lot of money.

Then again, it's like maybe in Armenia, it's not like the one catalytic converter thief. It's like a rite of passage for like Armenian men's like a bar mitzvah. You turn 13 and you just have to steal someone else's catalytic converter for your car. The Armenian go gay. It's less like a bar mitzvah for an Armenian boy and more like a bris for a car ceremonially removing the catalytic converter. Like we don't believe in that in this country. Like it's just Western Europe is intactivist. It's really hard because the fundamentalist Christian Armenians of the apostolic church have to do it with their teeth. Yeah, you're just wrapping your lips around the fucking exhaust pipe while you're cutting it out. All right.

As our listeners could tell, we have a guest today, Milo Edwards, As our listeners could could tell we have a guest today Milo Edwards host the podcast whose shirt I am currently wearing because they mailed me one Which podcast is the t-shirt it is trash future very nice. It's the shirt is what if the robot was just a guy Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah a great one classic. I absolutely love it I this is actually the second one I have or I've attempted to get because I ordered one and the Royal Mail here in the Netherlands, PostNL, mysteriously said they delivered it and it just went somewhere else. So I had to get two of the shirts in order to get one.

There's a Dutch postman somewhere walking around in a trash future t-shirt that he's lifted. Once again, just adding it to the litany of thievery by PostNL against this podcast. It's happened so many times, I just assumed that the guy was really mad they saw it came from trash future and it wasn't the one making fun of Honk Ball Hoop de Classe. It's a great sport, why would it gotta diminish? Would you know this, the Dutch Honk Ball League messaged us. They're like, we've heard you've written a shang about Honkball League messaged us?

Like we've heard you've written a shang about Honkball We'd love to use it as the official song of the league and then they and I had to reply and be like just checking Have you listened to the song and they were like no where can we find a link and we're like we'll send you a link You may reconsider the using it as a song of the league They still offered us tickets to a Honkball game. Yeah, it's kind of a crime I still haven't gone. I don't even think the Hague has a team. We do have a really bad football team that people are very violent about. Okay. But I don't know about honkball. You should have a honkball team made up entirely of people who are in jail for war crimes. Kind of like that whole nine yards movie. Oh, the longest yard. The longest yard.

Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Yeah. But it's like fucking Slobodan Milosevic. Adam Sandler's just playing some Serbian war criminal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Whoever loses has to drink the poison at their next fucking court appearance. Yeah. Yeah. All of their chances just like RIP Slobodan Prahliac, you know, taken too soon, men's mental health, et cetera. Giving a better help subscription to all the guys in the war and criminal prison. You need that. You need that.

You know, they're directionless. They used to be in command of a Serbian army division and now they're just twiddling their thumbs. I can't think of a better group of people deserving of having to use better help. Yeah. Charles Taylor practicing mindfulness in a cell in England. Yeah, don't worry. I was about to say, most of those guys end up at the UK, weirdly enough. We're just the holding area here.

I cycle past it whenever I go to the gym. But Milo, we brought you here today because we are talking a little bit about Slavic history. And while you might not be Slavic yourself. I'm a student of Slav vibes. Not in like a 19th century way. Yeah. You're a major in Slavology. You're a stand-up comedian in Russia. You live in Russia for a long time and you happen to work at the same studio as Tom so we've kidnapped you and put you in the basement. Well the most Russian way to get me on a podcast. Black bagging me. It's a very slippery staircase. You can't get back up it. You're lucky if you end up

in podcasts run by the host. Some podcasts are run by the guests. Those are the most violent ones. You do have like such a, and through working with you on glue factory, you just have such a incredible understanding of Russian and general Slavic vibes. It's great. Like something can come up and you'll just pull something out of nowhere. It's like, Oh, this reminds me of this thing. It's that kind of thing where I feel like actually if you're not from a place it's easier to understand its vibe. Sometimes there's like a medium, like I speak Russian well enough and spent enough time there that I have a sort of, I have an objectivity about what their vibes truly are. That if you're're if you're too deep in it you would lack.

Yeah. Mm hmm. And we're also talking about the Mongols today if you picked it up from our delightful cold opening and more specifically when the Russians emerged from their bog of herring and mayo based salads to fight them for the first time. Did they ever really emerge from the bog of herring and mayo based salads? You know what sucks is I make a joke about that. I'm making a joke about Shuba and it's actually quite delicious.

I don't know if you like it. Oh no, there's something deeply cursed about silly old Kapodshuba. Although I can see why, because you're from Michigan and that is the kind of shit that American chain restaurants be serving. When you go to America and they're like, do you want a salad? And it's just like some shredded vegetables with like a gallon of mayonnaise on top of it. You are spiritual Russians in that way. I think that's why I fit so well into when I moved to Armenia,

because like Armenia has adopted a lot of that cuisine due to the Soviet times. And I adopted it because I immigrated there. So like through the weird tertiary of colonialism from both sides, like the salads delightful. This is a traditional dish from my homeland. It's called a sizzler. I will admit it might be the most vile salad to describe to someone using words. Yeah. Yeah. That's not that there's nothing good in said old Kapotsobe. It's not a yeah. No, it's just like as you go further east, the salads just get weirder and weirder and feature more and more ingredients like once

Are you hit China and they start getting good again? Yeah, and less mayo less mayo. I assume then no mayo Oh, they're not a mayo culture in the zero sum zone between Poland and like the far western reaches of China between Poland and like the far western reaches of China. There's a meridian that goes around kind of like China where you go from the weird sauce part of the world and you cross over into the weird meat part of the world. Because like Russia, lots of weird sauce, weird recipe. China you cross over and it's like weird, you know, you start getting into like your chicken feet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true. Yeah, the weird meat mer start getting into like your chicken feet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. Oh, the weird meat, Brady.

And I like it. Yeah. Anyway, before we get into the like the first Eastern Slavic statelet, the Kievan Rus here and where they fight the Mongols, I have to head off, which something that let's call a a lively debate, if you will, about the Kievan Rus. Let's talk about that. For starters, the name Rus does not mean Russia Instead it probably comes from Old Norse meaning Minhu-ro or ro could also come from the early Proto-finish word for Sweden Interestingly enough, which is root C

And it was adopted by the the Varangians who immigrated there and became princes and nobles and all of that And they probably use that to refer to the area of their control. Some of the earliest writing, some of the earliest histories of the Rus kind of confirm this as much as the text from several hundred years later could. But one thing that's generally agreed upon is despite widespread Scandinavian settlement and rule, these Vikings or Scandinavians quickly married into the local population of Slavs adopted local customs, local names and local languages, but only a couple of generations. Uh, as Logan Donald puts in his book, the Vikings in history in 1839,

the Rus were Swedes by 1043, the Rus were Slavs. We taught Swedish guy to drink drive and do homemade bungee jump. I'm imagining the insane comments that this is gonna elicit when this episode gets posted on YouTube. Don't worry about it. It's best we just breeze right past that. Some guy driving a lada just on rims and turning to a Swedish guy and going, how does this make you feel white boy?

This has been changed and turned into a national origin story for several modern states, as well as the means to erase the history of others. And despite the fact the concept of nation state or modern norms on race or nationality simply did not exist yet at the time of the Rus'. For this episode, just know when we say Rus', we don't mean Russia, Ukraine or Belarus or any other country that charts its origin story to the Rus', because it didn't exist yet. They didn't even speak Russian. Just leave it alone. When we say Rus', we refer of course to the great state of Albania.

Yes, exactly. Any disputed territory is inherently Albanian. Let's see, what we need to do is just like, we need to get rid of this Schengen zone, all conceptions of European identity and create like a pan Eurasian zone called Adidasistan where it's like all united under one petrochemical tracksuit. Yeah. Ruled with an iron fist by a triumvirate of Dua Lipa, Rita Ora and the other one. Avomax. Yeah. Yeah. Ruled with an iron fist by a triumvirate of Dua Lipa, Rita Ora, and the other one. Ava Max. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, she's the lepidus of the group. Really. We get rid of the family guy color chart and instead of phrenology, we bring out a ruler

and just measure how close your eyebrows get together. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There is no eagle on the bumper of this car, my friend. Why? After shaving off my beard, I do just look like someone's Georgian uncle. So I'm getting there. I'm getting shorter and fatter by the day. Getting shorter. I'm doing special exercises at the gym to make myself shorter. I'm just like standing in like a reverse rack, just really heavy weights on me that I hold up and I'm shortening my spine. Yeah. I've got four more sets of the ejector seat to do before. Where do you think all of the extra bones go come from for the guys who get the leg lengthening surgery? They're taking it from me.

No, yeah. Yeah. The bone harvester of Yaravan is definitely the title of a ship book you'd buy in an airport. Oh, yeah. Now for the background of the coming battle of the Kalka River, we actually have to go a bit further away to the Mongols and the biblical levels of destruction they visited upon the Khwarezmian Empire. If someone knows absolutely anything about the Mongols, this is probably the story that

they know, because it's kind of gone down in infamy. The Mongols sent an emissary to the Shah of the empire, Allah al-Din Muhammad, hoping to open trade relations with them. The Shah didn't trust the Mongols, owing to the stories he had heard about them and you know doing Mongol things. And the Shah's uncle promptly slaughtered the emissaries. Chinggis Khan, not wanting to think that the Shah would actually be so stupid as to do this on purpose, sends another group of emissaries asking if the last batch of slaughter was a bit of a misunderstanding, let's say, since his uncle had done it and not the Shah. The Shah had those envoys killed as well. In response, Chinggis invades with an army of hundreds of thousands sacking, looting and butchering his way across

Central Asia. The campaign lasts a couple of years, and by the time they're done, the Shah was dead and so was his entire empire. Shows the dangers of uncleocracy. Yeah, you can't trust your funny uncle at the dinner table. You can't leave your uncle in charge. They should be like grilling. It's the unfortunate thing of like when you reach a certain age and you're not allowed to achieve self actualisation by going Unc mode. Yeah.

This is why I'm happy my uncles all just worked in car factories. Not a lot of emissaries to kill, you know? They've sent an emissary from General Motors. Chevy is trying to make peace with Ford. We beat them to death with pipes on the shop room floor. Henry Ford just slitting their throats on the factory floor. I think Henry Ford would probably try to measure their skulls. Yeah, well, it's much easier to do once you've cut their head off.

That always brings me back to like this memory I have growing up in Michigan where we used to have to go to the Henry Ford Museum in school and they never talked about how much of a fucked up person Henry Ford actually was about like how insanely anti-semitic was. Yeah. And now if you go to the Henry Ford museums website, there's just a tab that says Henry Ford and anti-semitism. It's like, cool. Unfortunately we've had to add that tab. Just being the web developer responsible for adding that tab and it's like, okay, I just have to make sure this works and the infrastructure is not going to fall apart. Okay. The anti-Semitism

tab is up now. We just have to acknowledge it. But now Changas had already sent his warlords into central Asia. And by the time the word of the Shah's death got to them, two of the warlords, Jebe and Cebutai were kind of like, we're already out here. Can we just raid into the caucuses too? Jinka says, sure, why not? And so 20,000 Mongols carry their attack into the kingdoms of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, a region that would thankfully only know peace from this point forward. Yeah. Tactically, they did a morning raid and arrived before 1pm. So everyone is still

in bed. They slept through the attack. They just woke up with all these horses around. The fun part of that sentence that I just said is by saying that the Mongols attacked the kingdoms of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. There's people from all three of those countries currently who will get really mad that I acknowledge all three of their existence. Lasers targeted to annoy everyone. I mean those Mongols would have been pretty upset when they got up the next morning and discovered that their horses were all missing

their catalytic. This is the thing that we've come up with this on this show is that what is the equivalent of putting a horse up on blocks and of stealing their tires is just stealing the horseshoes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Putting it up on very thin blocks. Yeah. Yeah. You could just hack all four of its legs off, but that, you know, it kind of defeats the purpose, you know? Might as well just steal the whole thing. That's kind of what a French thief would do. Oh, délicieux.

It's just a thief running away gnawing on a giant leg. Great, a lot of meat on that. The area quickly fell. Mongol armies looted it blind and did the things that Mongols are famous for, and once again Jebe and Sebutai looked towards the next target, which was, of course, into the Caucasus Mountains. And to cross those they need a guide, so they blackmailed the city of Durbenton, which is today Dagestan, threatening them with a good old fashioned version of Mongol ultraviolence, unless they gave them a few guides so they could get their armies through the mountains.

Of course the city agreed, but the Mongols then murdered one of the guides to teach a lesson to the other guys That to try any like funny shit, you know I thought they were gonna be like guide us through the mountains or we'll give you an even more fucked up haircut They certainly didn't challenge him to a wrestling match. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, that was that one down one tool We've talked a bit before about the history of the caucuses on this show. It's something of a trend for obvious reasons. But the North and the South caucuses are to make a very, very, very long story short, very different. The South caucuses, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan had in essence formed the same kind of feudal states that other

countries around them had, which is unsurprising because they had already been invaded and conquered by those people multiple times and then took those influences and turned it into how they govern themselves. You know, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and others come to mind. However, the Northern Caucasus, those are a different fucking beast. The Caucasus tribes of the North, despite the fact they had been conquered by multiple people, were in such like a remote, hard to get to area that no matter who conquered them, they never really forced anything onto them too much. Tribal politics kind of remained unchanged and tribal war and backstabbing kind

of went back and forth constantly. backstabbing kind of went back and forth constantly. So when the Mongols appeared on the other side of the mountains, the tribes that lived there came to two conclusions very quickly. What the fuck are those people? And we should probably kill them immediately. Yeah. And unite together to do so, which might be the most caucuses thing ever, which is shake hands to kill the outsiders. This led to an alliance of Alans, Circassians, Khazars, and Bulgars all coming together who normally would spend their time killing one another to join forces with a dominant group of people known as the Cumans who were normally busy killing everyone else.

They're the dominant group of the area, the most powerful, and were ruled by their leader as a Khan named Khotun. Khotun managed to convince everyone to team up and to drive the Mongols from the mountains, only for Jebe to eventually send an emissary to Khotun telling them, hey we're both Turkic, we should be friends, abandon all these Caucasians, we'll kill them together and then we'll share the loot. And we can join together in one giant Voltron in the shape of a Unibrow. I mean, the Cumans immediately were like, that sounds like a good idea.

Ditching all their fellow Caucasian friends and joining together with their fellow Turkic people to- Never trust the Mongols. Also a second most Caucasus thing ever is, I'm gonna fuck over everyone else so I can secure the bag. Mongol me once, shame on you. Mongol me twice, shame on Mongol. The Cumans do get mongled twice, I do feel comfortable saying. So yeah, the Cumans join up with the Mongols, crush everyone else, and then the Mongols immediately turn around

and start killing the Cumans. The Cumans then decide, oh fuck, we have to run, and they run towards the Kievan Rus, and this is where things start to get a little tricky. You get mongled twice in this life, once on the way up. This is all a plot organised by Big Paprika. I hate to get mongled from both sides. I hate that. Absolutely hate that. For starters, the people in the government of the Rus had no idea who or what a Mongol was, but they did know who Cubans were. The Cubans had raided Rus territory quite frequently, but they were often sometimes

enlisted to be allies to various princes within the Rus to be used as mercenaries, to use against political opponents, and also sometimes other groups of Cubans or Caucasians. And since the Rus was a grand principality with an ever-shifting backstabbing gang of princes all vying for power, it did technically have a Grand Prince and sometimes that Grand Prince ruled with an iron fist. This is not one of those times. This kind of shit happened quite often. And alliances and treaties with the Cumans were just as common as wars with them were, and even if the people of the Rus were, let's say, for their era, quite a bit racist towards the Cumans,

they still did deals with them. Russians have always been suspicious of anyone who uses spices. Eating things with flavour, and flavour is not dill. Kill them. The Cuban people, bad. Dill people, good. Dill and mayo Mayo Mayo is a spice Does it taste slightly herby and sour good Mayo sometimes too hot? Have to add water it does remind me of when we did an episode on Victor boot

And when he was spending quite a few years in federal prison in the US and one of the things that he said in the interview That he missed the first thing he said it was a deal. Yep I mean sad that you can't get that in the US prison system, it is pretty cheap. I'm sure Victor Booth was able to get dill in Sierra Leone and massive swaths of West Africa. He had them flown in for sure. Here comes my dill plane. The fucking dill plane that's slightly falling apart and there's dill flying out the back

constantly. Yeah, the stench given off by the dill plane as it's coming into land like clearing out the villages. Yeah, Interpol should have employed their biggest nosed officer to find him. Yeah, unfortunately he was Armenian and he was asleep until 2pm. For example, intermarriage between people of the Rus and Cumans was common, but only one way, which meant pretty Cuman women married noble Rus men. Yeah, they were getting Cuminal, right?

Yeah, they're getting Cumans. But Rus noble women, or Rus women at all, were not allowed to marry into the Cuman. For example, because of this, Cotin himself was brother-in-law to Prince Mstislav of the Principality of Galicia, Volnina. However, Mstislav of Galicia was known to be, in short, a fucking dick. He hated Cumans, even though he was related to one and fucking one, but it was a woman and in that area that just didn't matter. But who doesn't hate their wife?

Am I right guys? I should know. Impossible to make agreement with them. They are traitors and I should know. He was also kind of known for being in an era of shitty Rusyn politicians, a good one, and most of his politics pretty much rests on we should kill every Cuban we can't fuck Hmm interesting. I got no respect in my own heart Miss the slob danger field off. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Koten thought, you know brother-in-law or not

He wouldn't help him due to his deep hatred for his people So instead he went to give which was ruled by Grand Prince, Mr. Slav the third. Yes, there's another Mr. Slav. There were so many Mrs. Loves of the story. Like every Mr. Slav is my father. Call me Bogdan. This is love is my father. My cousin is also Mrs. Love. This is my brother and sister. Mr. Slav is my father, but you can still call me Mr. Slav because this is also my name. It is a mystery why so many of us are called Mr. Slav. Or as we say in Kievan Rus, it is Mr. Slav.

So I had to stop naming people in this story because every other guy was named Mr. Slav. It must have been so complicated being any sort of, I suppose, like diplomatic envoy or emissary arriving to this city is like, I'm, I need to speak to Mrs. Slav and they're like, well, which one? Mr. Slav here, the entire noble court turns their head. But also the amount of names that end in Slav is so funny. It's like if every other German guy was called like fucking Johanna Kraut or something, you're just like, why?

Why does the ethnicity need to be at the end of every name? In the Kiev, you lose. We only have three names we can choose from. All of them, Slav. Mr. Slav one, Mr. Slav two and Mr. Slav three. It makes keeping track of beef so much easier. It's like, I hate Mrs.av 1, 2, 3, 12. I am Mislav 14, I'm okay.

It also makes sense because they all do hate one another. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mislav 9 is okay, we get on. He is fine. The other nine, they're pain in my assholes. But Mislav of Galicia and Grand Prince Misl Love, not big fans of one another, and Mrs. Love the third, the Grand Prince, is kind of the opposite of Mrs. Love of Galicia.

Despite being the Grand Prince, the other guy is almost as powerful as him, mostly due to the fact that people actually respected him and he was known for his battlefield successes. While Mrs. Love the third was mostly just known for being really, really old. He was like 70. His nickname was Mr. Slav the Old. Fucking hell, how old are Mr. Slav I and II?

70 would still make you the oldest guy in Russia to be fair. You're making the wrong distinction, they weren't numbered numerically in sequence, so it's like Mr. Slav I isn't necessarily older than Mr. Slav 2, it's just like, I don't know, eh... Vibes. Yeah, all vibes. You have to roll for initiative on your Mr. Slavs. You have to roll a 20 sided die to come up with how you name your Mr. Slav. I mean, it's just the same naming convention as just like random villages in Russia.

Yeah, that is very true. Yeah. Something called like depleted uranium of course. Or a burned out village 17. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well that's a closed city. You have to get promoted to go work there. Khotun thought if he showed up in Kiev and showed total deference to the Grand Prince and told him the coming of the Mongols that the Grand Prince would jump on the chance to lead his army into battle against them to secure power and glory

for himself. Get one over on Mislav of Gleysiya. It also helped that his lands were the closest one to any coming Mongol attack, so he thought that he might be bought in. The nobles in Kiev hated the idea and they thought that the Grand Prince had simply been bribed because Cotin had brought with him like a dozen chests full of gold which yes he was bribed it's something called the tradition. Bribing a member of the Kievan Rus with like three carts of gold and 17 jars of mayonnaise. Yeah yeah yeah yeah somehow there's like 14, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and cumin a G wagon yeah it's actually a wagon pulled by a very nice German horse it is one horsepower the hardest part is getting the rims on the side of the horse the horse does not like it however the Grand Prince also explained

that like if they don't ally with the Cumans well then the Cumans might go ally with the Mongols and then they'll both be against us. Well that's the thing, as Khotan heard this, he was like, I'm not going to tell him that he's wrong. We already tried that once. Yeah, it didn't go well. So the Grand Prince had out summons all the lesser princes of the Rus to come to Kiev and they'll have a war council to hash it. Dear Mr. Slavs, please come to palace. Address have a war council to do a special loves. Please come to palace

addresses one Mr. Slav road. It must've been so hard being like non-binary Mrs. Love at this time. Mr. Mr. Slav X. No, it's because like you were referring to Mrs. Slavs as like they and then there's just one Mrs. Slav who's like, are you referring to me or all of us? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's tough. Yeah. It you come with Mr. Slavy, you know, like cacti, but this is like in my family where there's seven people called Tom in my family. So two of my cousins, Mr. Tom, so Mr. Stops love two of my cousins who are both a year younger than me. Bear in mind, a lot of this is just on my mother's side are both called Tom and both their fathers are called Tom. So at like Christmas when everyone's like together, when we would

be like in my grandparents, I was like drinking in the sitting room and someone would come in and say, it's like, Oh, Tom, and like five of us would turn around. Yeah. Perfect. You see, this is why, uh, all of us in the Cassabian side of the family, uh, just die off really early that way. I'm the only one left at the table problem solved yeah you only have to remember names for 35 years and then they're dead tops yeah 35 oh must be elderly cassavian cassavian of the old I'm 36 I'm officially Joseph Slav the old yeah yeah yeah yeah now after the grand prince sent out all these summons the other princes mostly just ghosted him After the Grand Prince sent out all these summons, the other princes mostly just ghosted him, but some did show up, the most important of which were all named Mr. Slav.

What was Mr. Slav the Mute? Due to the fact that he had once been able to speak, but during a battle with the Cumans, he had been stabbed directly in the mouth with a spear, and all he could do was some kind of weird guttural groaning noise. A likely story. Are all the Mr. Slavs here? They're all like, here, here, here. As long as it's like, oh, Mr. Slav the mute, of course.

Good point, Mr. Slav the mute. You'll never forget Mr. Slav the mute. Yeah, he could speak in like kind of like a weird halting speech pattern that he had an assistant that could apparently quote unquote understand him and then translate it for all of the other Mr. Slavs. Mr. Slav the mute says he learned special skill when he get his injury. Why don't we suck all of the Mongols off? A strange idea from Mr. Slav the music will put it on the ideas board in maybe pile in the Kievan Rus we call the ideas board the Mr. Slav board for sure they

missed this love Mr. Slav yeah we're like why does it should have just called them the Kievan Mr. Slavs because there's so many of them. This is just like the Turkmenistan dictator who renamed bread like after his own mother. But it's all just guys they Mstislav pointing at things saying, mine, mine. And then you hear one go, oh, ah yes, Mstislav the mute also agrees. He rules with iron fist over the region of Walla. But Mstislav of Galicia, the Prince of Galicia, the second strongest of all of Mr. Slavs, also shows up. Have you ever seen the Jet Li film The One?

Yep. Where he has to go through the different dimensions and kill all the other versions of himself to become stronger? That's how Mr. Slavs worked. Yep. What if everything everywhere all at once was good? That movie was good, I liked it. Mr. Slav everything everywhere all at once was good? We was good. I liked it.

Mr. Slav's everywhere. It was okay. I didn't hate it, but I didn't understand why everyone was raving about it. If it was a guy called Mr. Slav and it was all in Russian, then it'd be so much easier for you. Guy called Mr. Slav is the rarest album of from the Trab Called Quest. The thing is Russian, everything everywhere all at once wouldn't work because all the alternate realities would be too Similar is like yes in this day after you're also alcohol But you are gay

So you kill yourself in this other universe you are unhappily married unhappily married unhappily married killed in sauna with crossbow Unhappily married killed in sauna with crossbow. I'm happy mad again Drinking problem is in all yeah This turned into a three-day long argument where one faction led by the Grand Prince Mislav of Galicia at a guy named Daniel Romanovic We finally have a second name Okay, like a time traveler from the future who's trying to blend in Love I'm Dan. I'm Dan. Hi guys. I'm Dan I'm Dan from finance. Yeah

I do the accounts for the Kievan Rus guys. There's some abnormalities here We're spending a lot of money on speech therapy for a guy whose name is just put down as a noise put down as a noise. Oh, that's him. I see a lot of problems like a reconciling all these receipts. Surely these are not all for Mrs. Love. Yeah. Second thing is they're spending a lot of money on cumin. Is Mrs. Love here? Could you raise your, Oh fuck, I'll be in my office. There's just like one filing cabinet that just has like a through what fucking whatever letters before M and then just take up the rest of the room. But Dan's ideas guys, I have an idea. What if we came up with a third day? Oh, for the first time this episode, the Russia door in my mind

has opened and I've remembered something, which is I know a family in Moscow and the dad was called Pavel. And he decided they had five sons and he named every single son officially on their passport Pavel Pavelovich because he thought that if he did this, the Russian government would think he only had one son and only one of them would get called up to the army. And he was fucking right. Oh, that's incredible. They didn't even call up the oldest one.

They like called up one of the middle ones. A random Pavel. But they all have like actual names. So like the old one is actually called Pavel, but then the rest of them all have like different names that they use. But on their passport, they're all Pavel Pavlovich. And then one of them decided to change his name, but he changed it to Ivan I knew I'm the beach

This is just like the George Foreman way of naming kids. Yep. I'm so proud of it I'll put my name on it the boxer George Foreman all of his kids are named George if they're a boy and Georgina if they're a Girl, but he has like a football team's worth of kids So every George is like George like first second third fourth fifth and every George G does the same But you know description dodging which I am a fan of a while ago I can't remember who this was I was talking to someone and I was talking about George Foreman fighting Muhammad Ali and they were like what the grills guy

I'm like, yeah, he was a boxer and they're like no no George Foreman invented the grill Invent the grill he branded though. Heman invented the grill. I'm like first of all he didn't invent the grill. He branded the grill He perfected the grill. Yeah, I wish he invented the bling grill Yeah, and the reason why they put his name on the grill was because he was a famous boxer and they're like no I'm pretty sure he's the grill guy and I'm like, but he's both the grill guy Also a famous boxer everything everywhere grilling at once That's right. He was just a really good grill salesman who decided to pivot the normal pipeline of pitchman

to heavyweight champion. Yeah, George Foreman and Paul Wall, the two greatest grill salesmen ever. Exactly. Call up the Foreman store, tell them make me a grill. That first camp I named the Grand Prince, Mr. Slav Gleysia and Dan were all pro-war while everyone else was against, arguing that they should just sit out this whole war thing and let all of these people from the steppe slaughter one another, also known as Russia. Finally, the pro-war camp won out, only leading to another argument of who would be in command

of a united Rus army. Which Mr. Slav will be in charge? Who is commanding the Mr. Slavs? Yeah, well we all agree it should be Mr. Slav, but unfortunately there is still disagreement about which one. It was between the Grand Prince Mr. Slav and Mr. Slav of Galatia. The Grand Prince thought of course it should be him because he's the Grand Prince Mstislav and Mstislav of Galicia. The Grand Prince thought of course it should be him, because he's the Grand Prince. While everyone else, literally everyone else, thought it should be Mstislav of Galicia due

to the fact that he was actually a good military commander. Then enter name number three, Vladimir. Oh hello. He believed that, listen, what if we just split it split it one command one half the other command the other and they decided? Fine because that's how army should be run. Yeah, absolutely This guy has crazy name We should listen to him who is going to lead the army of mrs. Love one and who is going to lead army of mrs. Love to? Mrs. Love perfect. We've nailed it in both cases. That is the answer

Imagine the confusion you go to file your paperwork afterward to your commander. Who's this to? to missus love perfect we've nailed it in both cases that is the answer imagine the confusion you go to file your paperwork afterward to your commander who's this to commander missus love uh-huh prince missus love this isn't helping the mist is love should be commended to a bravery another mr. slav should be executed for cowardice fight over who is who inside you are to missus loves me that's right. One of them is commanding Mrslav army one and the other one. Now the Grand Prince would command the forces of Kiev and Chernigov and Smolensk and Mrslav of Gleysk would command his own forces of

Gleysk and Lutsk. Though people still were not happy with this because the people that got stuck under the Grand Prince's command repeatedly pointed out that he's old as shit. Like he is kind of dementia addled at this point, but he remains in. Can't even remember his own name, but he can guess. And with that, the Rus began to prepare for war in March of 1223 with the goal of going on the march immediately after Easter. Men of the various armies were sent to meet up at the Nyepa River, and while all of that was happening the Mongols had already made their move. They sent a group of 6 envoys to the Grand Prince's camp, and the envoys asked the men of the Rus to stay out of their war with the Cumans, and instead offered the Rus an

alliance with the Mongols to turn against the Cumans. Where have I heard this before? Yeah. Hmm. The Grand Prince probably already forgot about that, but he did order the envoys to be executed. Okay, yeah. Another classic move. Yeah. Yeah, just hitting all the Mongol greatest hits. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This exchange actually boosted the mood of the Rus and the Rus' men. They had never seen a Mongol before until they met the envoys, and the envoys were shorter than they were, they were very thin, apparently they were dressed badly, and according to eyewitnesses they're all bowlegged. Yeah, this envoy has no drip. He could never be Mr. Sloan. I mean being bowlegged is probably a boon for riding a horse. I mean one leads to the other, I assume, right? Like he lives on a horse, his body's going to be a bit fucked up. Your whole body become bow, you bow leg, you bow arms for drawing bow. This man with the fucked up legs cannot contend with us.

So the Grand Prince thought these strange people were nothing to worry about, which might be the greatest military intelligence failure in human history. Yeah, Mislav the envoy acceptor is just like watching this short Mongol man walk up to greatest military intelligence failure in human history. The Mongols sent another envoy, again assuming the execution of the last ones was some kind of miscommunication, and this time they were once again rejected, but not killed. Oh, OK. I was going to say, you really don't want to be one of the Mongol envoys, do you? When they're just like, oh, do you mind just popping over to speak to these guys? They just killed the guy we sent last time. You'd be like, can we do we have to go? Could we maybe send a letter? Can we just like, yeah, like just like nail a letter to a horse and

just send it in that direction? Yeah, that's an option. Oh, yeah. We'll name the horse Mart Luther and call it a day Yeah Yeah The day after those envoys made it back to the Mongol camp the cumin soldiers riding at the outskirts of the Rus forests is something That amounted to you know pickets or maybe scouts ran into Mongols It was a little more than a band of scouts Now the Rusmen were unwilling to let the cumin fight them alone and therefore steal all their glory and shit So they quickly built a bridge over the river using long boats and charged directly at the Mongols where they were met with the Mongols famed hit and run attacks. And we've talked a bit about this before the show before so I won't like dive too deep

on it, but it's when a light cavalry force gets attacked, they just pull out far enough way where you can't hit them, shoot you full of arrows and just keep doing that as you charge at them until they eventually can surround you. It's a classic enveloping tactic that the Mongols absolutely whipped people's asses with. And the Mongols kept doing that to the Rus, multiple times, leading to the army to pull further and further away from the river, only for Mstislav of Galicia to finally see that oh no, my Mstislavs are being fooled and ordered his men to come

back. Though that night things get a lot worse for the Rus. They had divided their command, like we talked about as a compromise, but now neither prince would even acknowledge the other's command authority over their own groups of Mstislavs. So another compromise was struck. Mstislav of Galicia would command the front of the army or the vanguard, and the Grand Prince would command everything behind it. This caused another argument, because this might surprise you that everybody was worried about their honor and shit, and they thought being at the vanguard was the most important part of being in the army. So all the princes that now fell under the Grand Prince in the middle were very pissed that

the other Mr. Slavs were at the front. I hate being a real mistislav. It is only good to be front mistislav. If we get together and all hold hands, we'll turn into one big mistislav. Yeah, that's right. An amalgamation of mistislavs. Like, you know, just putting your hands in the air and gathering the mistislav spirit bomb to throw at the Mongols. With that argument done, the Rus army marched on, chasing after the Mongols for a week. Every time they thought they were getting closer and finding the main Mongol army, the Mongols would simply disappear, reappear again on the horizon, pulling the Rus men further and further along. The Mongols made sure that they were always in sight of the Rus army,

but never within reach. Each day the Rus army was pulled further and further into the steppe to the point that their army was stretched out over 15 miles. Just staring at the horizon screaming, what are you doing steppe bro? Oh god. Again this led to more bitching and complaining amongst the princes. Mislav of Galicia insisted his men could march faster, mostly because he committed mostly cavalry and he would be able to catch the Mongols if they went faster. Meanwhile the Grand Prince insisted they need to slow down because all of this running after

the Mongols is turning into a death march for the infantry. It's now May, the May's son is beating down on the steppe. All of these soldiers are kitted out in full armour and are trying to keep up with Midden Horsback. Joe, I'm gonna do a quick check in because I feel like this is going in a direction that listeners to the show might be familiar in. How much water and food do these people have? Okay, I will say enough for now. Okay.

And this went on for days. Min did begin dropping from the heat, but it had nothing to do with a lack of water. Simply marching in 40 degree heat and metal armor is going to drop a lot of people. And other people looked around and said, fuck this, ditch their armor and weapons and deserted into the steppe. And then finally the Rus army hit the Kalka river on May 30th. Even now the two princes could not agree on where to camp their armies. So they gave each other the middle finger and camped separately.

Mislav of Galicia camped on the east side of the Kalka River, and the Grand Prince Mislavs put his stakes down about a half mile away on top of a nearby hill. Then at the next war council, it almost evolved into a fucking fist fight, arguing about marching speed, marching orders, who gets supplies first, until Mislav of Galicia simply stormed out, back to his camp. Then that night, Cuban scouts came back to his camp and told him, we found the Mongols. Mislav of Galicia figured, if he brought the stooge to the other Mislav princes, shit would just go sideways again, and it wasn't really worth all of the arguing it would bring.

Also he wanted to steal all the glory. I mean these are people who are doing chivalry and all that dumb honor and glory bullshit. I have to talk to my fellow mistislavs. The council of mistislavs. You gotta check in with your mistislavs you know, mistislavs mental health is very important. His mistislav health. Yeah that's right. So he ordered his own forces to get ready to move with strict orders to stay quiet and not use their normal Trumpets that they would use for communication so as not to alert the other mr. Slots Today we're using stealth so we won't be playing the trumpet while we go. I know it's very funny

Sometimes the fat soldier we get our tuba, but today there will be no such privilege We have come up with a new communication tactic we call it hardboss. However Prince Vladimir of Smolensk saw that his camp was getting ready and not wanting to be left out passed orders to his own forces to get ready to follow after him but also not while alerting anybody else but again other princes began to see that these armies were getting ready namely Prince Mislav of Chernigov saw everybody was getting ready. And then he started to go and warn the Grand Prince Mstislav. It's a chain of Mstislavs here until he gets to the Grand Prince,

who refuses to allow any of his men under his command to march and instead to abandon the other Mstislavs. So Mstislav of Galcia and Vladimir of Smolensk run off towards the Mongols. The Cumans and the Rusmen ran into this camp that the Cumans originally found easily. They thought that this one camp was the Mongols main camp, but it wasn't. It was a decoy and the whole thing was a trap. They discover this because the Cumans ride up a nearby hill and discover the entire Mongol army.

I can't imagine like how, how they could have not like, who could have seen this coming? Like, oh, they're just happened to stay within eyesight for days at a time. And it's like, oh, are they leading us towards their army? No. What do you think Mrs. Love the mute? Couldn't happen to me. I'm built different. Isn't that right? Mrs. Love the mute. Yeah. Mr. Slavs and you reminds everyone that there is one tactic they haven't tried. Yes. Yes. Mr. Slavs the mute. The cumin were immediately torn apart by arrows and then ran for their lives as the Mongol army charged at them. As the Cuman fled, they ran smack dab into the Rusmen who were rushing to keep up with

them at the top of the hill. This created something of a panicked traffic jam of men and horses, all while the Mongols advanced. The human and horse traffic jam was so severe that all order and discipline was lost amongst the ranks of infantry and cavalry. They got cut off, they were trying to fight against one another to go one way or the other, and this is how the Mongols found them. Like this goes all the way back to their camp to affect a pile up in every which direction before the Mongols even get there. So by the time the Mongols actually ride down on top of

their army, they're all already like stuck in a clod of humanity and horses. God, I hate to be stuck in a clod of people and horses. All the Mongols have to do is just kind of ride down it and kill them. They barely even fight back. They're playing Wacka Mrs. Love. Yeah, exactly. The men fighting out in the middle of this gathering, this clod, don't even know what's happening. They don't know which way to go. All they see is horse ass or human face everywhere as they just get fed into a horse shaped wood chipper. Mongol horsemen just ride up and down the confused mass, showering them

with arrows. There's no orders, no attempt to form any kind of line of formation, and everything fails. Eventually the Cumans give up and just stampede through their own allies to escape. They trample their own people, they trample Rus' infantry, and everybody has enough arrows stuck in them to kill God at this point, and everybody breaks. They run over each other, trying to get towards the Kalka River, back towards camp. Word of this gets to the Grand Prince, who's still sitting up on his hill, and decides once again, I'm not leaving it.

And in fact, I forbid every other Mislislav from leaving this hill. But Prince Mislislav of Chernihiv says fuck that and orders his men to advance across the river, thinking that there was something left there for his army to save. Chernihiv's men see their fleeing comrades just stampeding towards them, and rather than allow them by, they close a shield wall in front of them, cutting off their route of escape between the river and the charging Mongols. So the Mongols again storm through the fleeing mass of humanity, slaughtering them as they get closer to the Chernihiv shield wall.

This drives the men trapped in the middle against the shield wall even harder until the shield wall breaks, allowing the Mongols to just ride through all of them. Don't fire until you see the whites of their Mrs. Slav. Yeah, that's right. And Prince Mrs. Slav of Chernigov, and most of his family is killed in the fighting right there. Yeah, all of his brother, Mr. Slav. His father, Mr. Slav.

His son, Mr. Slav. His mother, Mrs. Slav. Yeah. Mrs. Slav. Mrs.... Is there a Mrs. Slav? Yeah, there we go. Though the Mongols are eventually driven back, a bit temporarily, by a flanking cavalry of one of the Mrs. Slavs, but at this point Mrs. Slav of Galicia begs the Grand Prince for

help, telling him like, hey, if you don't come off your hill, we're gonna kinda be fucked out here. Mrs. Slav, the Grand Prince, refuses. So Mrs. Slav of Galicia sounds the general retreat, admitting defeat that this is all fucked and they abandon the campaign, marching back towards the Dnieper River where they hope to get back on some boats and go home. The one fat guy with the trumpet was really excited. He was like, I get to use it today now.

Finally. Mrs. Slav the Fat, get your trumpet missus love the wide posting wide missus loves on main mr slob the jazz who upjorking their missus love the trumpet guy mr slob davis yeah i was more of a fan of his earlier work yeah yeah yeah kind of missus love work. Kind of Mrs. Love. But now with Galicia's men pulling out, it left the Kalka river wide open, and the Mongols cross it. Jebe and Cebutai split their forces, with one chasing after the retreating force and the other making for the Grand Prince forces on the hill. The Rusmen who were now in retreat were in bad shape. Many of them had thrown away everything they were carrying

other than the clothes on their back, but I do mean their armor and weapons as well. So they're just fleeing completely unarmed. They throw their supplies. They're trudging through the steps, dying of wounds. And because they've abandoned all of their supplies, they have no food or water. Many people are also starting to pass out from thirst. The Mongols catch up with them and it's just mostly a slaughter. There's no fight here. They're just slaughtering unarmed men on the steppe. However, at one point, the Mstislavs have a form of camp with a perimeter around it with all of the princes involved. And they realized they have no hope of outrunning the Mongols because they're trying to keep the retreating force together. So the Prince decide, what if we just ditched all the infantry and left them to die?

It would take the Mongols time to kill them all and we could use that time to get away. All the Mstislavs agree to it. The only person who doesn't is not a Mstislav, but it's Prince Dmitri of Chernihiv. He refuses to abandon his men. You don't get to vote. Your name not Mstislav. Yeah, this is a democracy of Mr. Slavs. You're a Dmitri. You are outnumbered.

Eight Mr. Slavs to zero Mr. Slavs. I mean, Mr. Slav the mute disagreed, but no one could really understand them. He abstained. Thank you, Mr. Slav. So Prince Dmitri decides to stay with the infantry and the next morning when all of the Mr. Slavs start running, they're shocked to look over and see the infantry and the next morning when all of the Mstislav start running They're shocked to look over and see the infantry had been running all night Oh shit they had the same idea as us

But Prince Dimitri ends up staying behind anyway with a couple of the infantrymen who don't desert and they're all just absolutely Butchered within hours. Mmm. Just a couple of guys. I'm going to stay behind with these two guys. Mr. Slav and Mr. Slav. Yeah, these are some really tough Mr. Slavs. I like our chances. The Mongols, they have zero Mr. Slavs. Could you believe it?

We outnumbered them like a hundred thousand Mr. Slavs to zero Mr. Slav. Meanwhile, the Grand Prince is still on his hill, proving to be easily the hardest fight the Mongols were going to have against the Rus so far. Not only was the hill defensible, but they also blocked all of the approaches with interlinking wagons, I assume that is our G-wagons in this context? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Full of Maho and Adidas tracksuits. They have turned this car into disgusting salad.

It is fine if you do not have bitches in your ear telling you it is disgusting. As the Mongols tried to attack they found themselves getting filled full of arrows and stabbed by rows of infantry. The Mongols were so frustrated that they offered the Grand Prince free safe passage if his men dropped their weapons and banners and simply went home. Well, you can always trust the Mongols. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. The Mongols are like, why don't you just open up all these defensive barriers

and put all your weapons down and then we won't kill you. Most like a pyramid scheme, you could be called Mrs. Love Khan. Yeah, exactly. The used car dealer Mongols slaps the top of the hill like it fits so many dead Slavs in this thing. The Grand Prince of course refused. Now not because he didn't think he could trust the Mongols, but rather he believed it would be political suicide to return home after surrendering, which is also probably true. What would all the other Mr. Slavs say? Yeah, he would lose in the council of mistislavs. They would replace him with different mistislavs.

The only person on his side would be the Demetri, and he's dead. But the hill did have one weakness, and it was coming to bite the Grand Prince right in the ass. Or right in the mistislav. Remember I said that the camp was about a half mile from the river? Yep. Well, he had no source of water. And since he was surrounded by Mongols now, he couldn't exactly send dudes out to get water.

So after about three days, the army ran out of water and another Mongol envoy arrived. This envoy was a Brodniki or this was a term used for serfs who ran away from serfdom out onto the steps. So the guy was effectively the same cultural type of person as everybody up on the hill. And he went up there arms out wide like, look, I'm one of you and the Mongols treat me great. If you simply put down your weapons, our Mongol friends will let you go. You can crush them. They give me as much mayonnaise as I want. The Mongols even have their own token. Mrs. Love You can be our mr. Slav brother the Mongols having a DEI initiative

They need representation of mr. Slavs within the golden or I mean it would been an MEI. It's a mr. Slav inclusion Yeah, mr. Slav equity Yeah We believe that people from the LGBTQX community are just as good at slaughtering fleeing men. No, it's LGBTQM. As we all know, everybody from the Kievan Rus identifies as Mr. Slaav. There are three genders, man, woman and Mr. Slaav. That's what the M in MX stands for.

That's right, yeah. I think we're just accidentally getting closer and closer to what the Kievan Rus actually believe. Now the Grand Prince maybe didn't believe this runaway surf, but he did see no other way out, and he agreed to lead his men down from the hill. The Grand Prince and his two sons-in-law were immediately captured as they walked by the Mongols, and then the Mongols rode down everybody else who was completely unarmed and slaughtered them. This is when Jebe and Cebutai, we aren't sure which, informed the Grand Prince and his sons-in-law

the punishment for killing a Mongol envoy, which was death. However, according to Mongol law, they could not shed the blood of a prince unless it was in battle. So the three men were instead wrapped in carpets, placed under the floorboards of a Mongol tent, and slowly crushed to death by hundreds of feet as the Mongols held a sick rager on top of them. I thought as punishment they were gonna be like, you will be stripped of your title of Mrs. Love, you will now be called Kevin.

We don't know how many people from the ruse died during this campaign, we don't actually even know how many took part. The numbers are anywhere from 10 to 80,000, so it's a big range of possibilities there. But it's generally agreed that most of the people that marched out to that battle from the Rus were named Mstislav. And about 90% of those Mstislavs never went back home. Or 90% of those Mstislavs never returned to Mstislav. Over a dozen princes, including the Grand Prince, were dead, leading to a new storm of infighting as the surviving Mstislavs and all of their family fought over who would take over.

I mean like to be fair, it's like if you are Mrs. Slav and your husband dies at war, you can just replace him pretty easily with someone with the exact same name. There's always another Mr. Slav. Get a new one. Yeah, you don't even need to get remarried. The documentation is still there. He just get a Dear John letter on campaign says like, Mrs. Slav. Dear Mr. Slav, yeah.

I'm leaving you for Mrs. Love. I fucking hate Mr. Slav. If one of you had left me for Mr. Slav, at least he's a nice guy. This probably would have been like the death knell of the Kievan Rus in general, but if you remember all the way back when we started, this wasn't some kind of greater Mongol advance into the area. It was a raid. It was the longest cavalry raid in recorded history, covering

5,000 miles in three years. So it wasn't like they were trying to conquer Kiev, but they would eventually come back about 10 years later and finish the job conquering and holding the Rus for the Mongols for over the next 200 years. The end. I can't stop thinking about the idea of the Mrs. Slav who Mrs. Slav who sent Mrs. Slav the Dear John letter and Mrs. Slav the first ones and her kid saying to the new stepdad Mrs. Slavs like

I'm not going to call you Mrs. Slav. I'm never going to call you Mr. Slav. You're not my Mr. Slav. Milo, Tom, we do a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion. Milo, you've never been on the show before. So a question from the Legion is Patreon supporters can ask us light questions that we answer at the end of an episode. And if you are wondering how you can ask those questions, well, become a Patreon supporter and ask us on Patreon or in the Discord, you'll also have access to. And today's question is-

From Mr. Slav. Today's question from the Mr. Slavs. What is a vague or obscure hobby you find interesting but you know you'll never invest the time or resources into pursuing? Oh. I mean this is easy for me. It's to be anything to do with tabletop games. I was going to say it's definitely gonna be Warhammer for you. I can't do it, man.

Like if I get sucked into something like that, I'm fucked. I know better. It's all over. Your virginity is going to grow back. Yeah, that that too. My money will be gone. Yeah. And I suck at painting. I couldn't I couldn't pull this off. I am shit at crafts. I would feel the most fucked up looking Warhammer army on earth. None of them would even be

painted. This is the gray Legion. Fuck you. The space, Mr. Slavs. If you have extra money and do enjoy spending on Warhammer and Warhammer adjacent products, you can probably buy it a lions head by donkey, Doug the donkey miniature that you can probably buy it a Lines Out by Donkey Doug the Donkey miniature that you can paint yourself and use it in your Warhammer tabletop game. I feel like it might be a violation of the rules, but you can make it work. Ah, who cares? It's not like games workshop or extremely rules based and like hate when people use non games workshop models in their shop. I feel like they're going to sue us just for talking about our own thing in the same breath as Warhammer 40k.

Games Workshop represents a not insignificant percentage of the overall British economy. Oh I know yeah. It's like 1% of the entire British economy Joe. That is astounding. I think I've heard've heard that that's how fucked our economy is I know I've heard that before and it never stops blowing my mind yeah what about you guys what is some vague obscure hobby oh I think I well for me I mean maybe I will get around seeing this one day I'd love to like restore classic cars oh that's very on-brand yeah he's laying me tinker around with like 80s Porsches. Oh yeah, baby. Unfortunately, I have no car repair skills.

See, that's how I feel. My other answers would be motorcycle restoration, but I have no mechanical skills whatsoever. Yeah. No. That was not your department on the tank. No, if I tried to restore a motorcycle and ride it, I would just be, it would be an elaborate suicide because that thing would kill me.

It's just like one of those cartoons where you're like driving along and just all the parts are falling off until it's just the seat and the handlebars. Yeah. I mean, you were in this studio with me as we were putting it together. I am not a handy person. Yeah. Yeah. Not.

He has gone to be with Mr. Slav now. Yeah. The great Mr. Slav of the sky. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The great Mr. Slava the sky. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think for me, I have talked about this briefly on the show before, but like when you are a man approaching or in your thirties and into music, you have to make a choice of being into Steely Dan or the Grateful Dead. I'm already, I've managed to dodge both of those.

Yeah. You've picked the secret third option, which is being into cars. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I, I'm much more into the Grateful Dead than Steely Dan and I like collecting records and the prospect of collecting Grateful Dead records scares me because as someone who has a very addictive personality, I would be so broke. Yeah. Well don't get addicted to Mr. Slavs. Yeah. The Grateful Mr. Slavs. Yeah. The grateful Mr. Slavs. Much easier to collect though. You just go to Kiev and well, you can't go to Kiev right now, but sure. You can't go to Kiev like 800 years ago. Yeah. I feel like

that the era of Mr. Slavs is officially over. We need to bring it back. Like you need to get a, well, someone's trying to bring it back. No, you get posh, um, East London yummy mummies to start naming their sons. Mrs. Love. Mr. Slav, stop it. It's got to go to waitress. Mrs. Love. No, we're not opening a small plate restaurant for you. Mr. Slav finish your acai bowl right now. Mommy has hot yoga. The Mongols have taught me hot yoga. Going off the joke that I'm 99% sure I've heard from the trash future. Wouldn't that mean they named their dog Mrs. Slav and their daughter something else?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the well, hang on this. The dog would have to have a normal girl's name. Oh, the girl would have to have a weird fucked up. OK, so the girls, the dog's name is like Sophie and the girl's name is Mrs. Slav. Yeah, that's right. Yes, correct. You've now constructed a proper English posh family. Yeah muffedy Slav

No, her friends all call her like slavie or something. Oh, yeah, no, no, it's like my name is mr Slav, but my friends call me binky. Yeah Somehow. Yeah, well binty fellas. I think that is an episode of this podcast, but you host other podcasts. You could plug those other podcasts. Oh, hell yeah. I'm on Trashfuture, if you like funny stuff about politics. Depending on what genre of lines led by donkey listeners, are you here for the political stuff? In which case, Trashfuture. Are you here for the history stuff? In which case, Masters of Out Domain, the podcast where we talk about classic stuff. Which is, features Patrick Wyman late of this Paris. Ah yes.

If you want more Wyman in your life, yeah, we did, at the moment we're doing the Netflix show Chaos, which is very weird, but yeah, we've had a lot of fun. We've done both Gladiator movies, you know, we do classical world shit. And of course there's Glue Factory, which Tom produces, where we just talk absolute shit. I do have a question. If we were a fan of Patrick Wyman, could you be a wine mom? Ooh, the Wy Moms. There we go. There's a branding opportunity. And there are a lot of moms who hold a candle for Patrick Wyman, I think.

Look, we all hold a candle for Patrick Wyman, it's fine. We do, he's a big guy. See all the fellas who love him are wide moms, because we love his mass. I used to know this girl, was my ex-girlfriend's friend, she had this boyfriend who was a Fijian rugby player. That's that's a big fella. Oh, really big fella. And I met him for the first time and then before I met him, I was with a couple of the girls and they were like, Oh, it's so annoying because like all of our boyfriends always love him because of how massive he is. And I was like, yeah, that does sound like men to be fair. Yeah.

And then he walked into the room and I was like, that guy's huge. They were like, for fuck's sake, man. It's the supremacy of being a big dude. Yeah. But he was, he was like so affable in that way that truly huge guys, cause they've never been threatened in their life. They've never experienced aggression. Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty great. Honestly, being gigantic Heisenbergs. Oh yeah. Making a guy that size laugh. So you were treated as like a friendly golem. Yeah. Yeah. He was a real shit. Yeah.

I host beneath skin show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing and I am the producer of glue factory. As I always say, a show about nothing but riffs like that. You need a master's degree of knowledge to understand. Yeah. It's in debt. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot going on. As Olga said on a recent episode, it's like you'll start a riff and then the riff will be explained by something that's even more inexplicable than what you're trying to explain. Yes. Yes. Don't worry. Everything can be completely and utterly described if you just embrace the Mrs. Love. Yeah. Yeah. This is the only show that I host. So support us on Patreon.

You get a bunch of bonus stuff, years and years and years of it. Side series, including video series, ebooks, audiobooks, every episode early, Discord access, first dibs on merch and live show tickets and one Mr. Slav in an unopened package. One secret Mr. Slav. Milo, thanks a lot for coming on. It's been a long time coming. Thanks for having me.

Anytime. Anytime. Tom, you're always here, so I'm not thanking you. That's fine. And everybody, thank you for listening. Until next time, Mr. Slav. Mr. Slav all the way down. Mr. Slav. Check in on your Mr. Slavs.