Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 411 - The Battle of Rocroi

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: http://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys PREORDER JOE'S BOOK https://www.amazon.com/Highlands-Burn-Foundling-Brigade-Saga-ebook/dp/B0GSG5CNXX/ref=sr_1_1?crid=QWHSPAADI07D&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.uLEY0I7D6t0IC9GWsF7SH1FKEgKqsqTLmV4PQ_lLi-wVUCYgTqIv0BWd9_-x3VzP.xn7v2CqU5MjngXmmSbYvVGsY_fxkvgsz-LA2tkhHHTs&dib_tag=se&keywords=joseph+kassabian&qid=1774247705&s=digital-text&sprefix=%2Cdigital-text%2C176&sr=1-1 SEE US LIVE MAY 29TH IN LONDON: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-in-london-29th-may-tickets-1985443952308 CANT MAKE THE SHOW? WE'RE STREAMING IT! GET YOUR LIVESTREAM TICKETS HERE: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/livestream-lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-in-london-29th-may-2026-tickets-1985444086710 GET SECOND HOME'S DEBUT ALBUM https://secondhomes.bandcamp.com/album/find-a-way-to-hate-it The Spanish see the crowning of a French child king as an opportunity to invade. They deploy the Army of Flanders. Once mighty, but now reduced to being commanded by idiots and one man who was so old and sick that he had to be dragged around the battlefield in a chair. SOURCES: Ribas, Alberto Raúl Esteban. The Battle of Rocroi 1643: Clash of Seventeenth Century Superpowers. Sanchez, Juan. "Paul Bernard de Fontaine (1576 – 1643), señor de Fougerolles, Conde del S.R.I." Stephane Thion. Rocroi 1643: The Victory of Youth. Welsh, William. Spanish Disaster at Rocroi. Late Winter 2012. Vol 13, No. 4 Jeremy Black, European Warfare, 1494-1660

Hey everyone, Joe here. Me, Tom, and Nate are all going to be live May 29th in London at the Rich Mix. So get your tickets and come down and see us. It's going to be a great show. We're going to have some new merch, some shirts, some pins, maybe some book stuff because it coincides the launch of my book, The Highlands Burn. And if you can't make it, that's okay. We're going to be live streaming it. Check out our show notes. Make sure you click on the right link for live show and live stream tickets, whichever one you need, and get your tickets now. The Highlands Burn. My debut fantasy novel releases May 29th and is now available for digital pre-order. You can find the link in the show notes wherever it is you're listening to this. Just like this show, this book is a

completely independent production. To the crack of rifles and the acrid stench of sports, sorcery, a sudden invasion sweeps through the highlands of the Confederation, and Syatt's peaceful village life breaks with the dawn. A sole survivor amid the smoking ruins of all that he held dear, Sia must make a choice. Is pursuing revenge against the mercenaries that took everything from him worth becoming one himself? As escape pushes him to the gruff embrace of the foundling brigade, he must learn to tread a path between his need to understand why his people were targeted for destruction and the new responsibilities of his soldiers life. Even as each new encounter with the horrors of battle force him to confront the terrible

cost of his oath. Before long, the shifting fog of war casts old certainties into a haze of doubt, while the stuff of legend seems as clear as day, and Syatt finds himself drawn into a much larger conflict that he could possibly imagine. Hello and welcome to the Lions Ed by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me is Nate. Tom has once again been kidnapped by unknown assailants. It may come as a surprise to you to learn that ever since 1960,

every dwelling in the Cancelain of Geneva has to have a nuclear bomb shelter. The good thing about those bomb shelters is that once you're in them, it's pretty hard to make noise and have people hear from the outside. Anyway, that's completely unrelated to Tom's disappearance. Or possibly he's some kind of Irish werewolf. It is possible. I lured him down here with promises of Rushi. I was like, Tom, there's a new way to eat a potato. And then when he got down here, actually, I did some casco of a Monteado. I won't say the thing. One time I tried, I was on a podcast with November and I was talking about the cask of Montiato was a joke. And I said, getting bricked up in the basement. November's like, yeah, I know what that's all about. And I was like, fuck, shit. Should have thought better. Or as I brought up before, this is like when I was a child. But now instead of my mom and dad having custody of. me, it's you and Tom, so I just get you to bounce back and forth

on a weekly basis. It's happening all over again. Passing messages between your two parents. That's unfair. I don't think either of you guys are addicted to heroin. Oh, give it some time, dude. Come on. That's sure your album did just come out. Yeah, I just put out a record

with my bandmate, Safene. I'm in a band called Second Homes. We have an album called Find a Way to Hate It. It's available on Bandcamp. It's pre-order. It'll be out May 5th. and you can get it in links in the show notes. That's how we do plugs. Instead of doing it up front where you're like, oh, shit, I'm going to skip this fucking thing.

These motherfuckers aren't going to let me hear ads. It'll never happen, even if it's ads for their stuff. I'm like, no, we're just going to introduce it into conversation. It's called a complex ad ambush. Exactly. Getting put into an L-shaped ambush with second Holmes album on one side and dead ahead on the trail is my book, The Highlands Bird coming up age 29.

If you get into an L-shaped ambush, you've got to be really careful because if you use anything like smoke or thermite, you might set stuff on fire. And if you set a grassy plane on fire, you might be in a situation in which the highlands burn. You're so much better at this than I have. You were an officer after all. Well, I mean, yeah, if only I could, uh, I always think about it like, yeah, it was pretty good at power points, pretty good organizing shit. It was pretty good at writing briefs. I really, really wish I had had enough time to go to jump master school because it was very, very embarrassing to not being able to like know that you basically always.

having to be like basically a trainee when it came to like getting my rig inspected before I jumped. Like I couldn't JMPI people, which means I couldn't be the departure airfield commander, which means I couldn't do fucking anything because, uh, but I did go to fancy helicopter school known as Pathfinder school. So we all love getting our rigs inspected by our homies. I mean, listen, uh, if you aren't JMPIing the homies, then you are, you're missing out. You know what I mean? Imagine the dumbest people you went to high school with, aka me and Joe. they join the army and they go to airborne school, aka me and Joe,

and they have to basically not kill themselves falling out of a plane. And so in order to do that, you train them how to do this, rig up their parachute, but someone who knows how to not die in a parachute has to inspect the rigging. He's also the dumbest guy who you went to high school. He's dumb as fuck,

but he's basically been forced to memorize 19 different index cards worth of like a speech called pre-jump. There's actually a formal name for it. I can't remember what it's called. Anyway, and memorize like all 18,000 deficiencies. that you can possibly find in the, whatever the hardest they're using.

It was a TA 50 when I was in. No, that's, that's, T50 is your gear. Fuck, what is T12? T10, T11. I can't remember anything. T1,000. Guy from the future,

he's a cop. He's going to kill you. He's liquid metal. Yeah, I try to jump from the plane holding a liquid cop and he just shop. Exactly. We thought you were a dog. Speaking of getting your rigs inspected by homies,

today we are talking about the 30 years war and the battle of Roquois. Have you ever heard of that, Nate? No, I haven't, but the 30 Years War is always fun. It involves, not to spoil anything, but the legendary military formation was a turthio, getting shot at point-blank range by cannons. Okay. All right, I'm in. That's the fun part of it. But first 30 years of context. The 30-year's war sparked by a mixture of the Protestant Reformation, the resulting chaos of the

decline of the Holy Roman Empire, and of course, good old, Ingression inbreeding, gripped Europe and spawned dozens of other conflicts like barnacles on a ship or the way that major cities slowly over time developed new police departments. Today in the saga of the 30 years war, we're going to be talking about the Battle of Roquois, something that is much more important than another battle of a larger war. Rather, one of those moments in time where fundamentally things changed in the way that humans would kill each other. for generations to come. What's interesting is I looked it up, Brett, if you said the name, and of course,

because I'm in a private browsing tab for the recording setup we have here, Google being fucking geniuses is like, well, you might be an IP address in the French-speaking spart of Switzerland, but you're still in Switzerland, so you're going to speak German. So no matter what,

I always get German results. And when I googled Battle of Roquois in English, I got Schlacht by Roquois in German, which means the slaughter at Roquois. So that gives me a little indication of where things are going. Same in Dutch. The English article is just battle and it's battalion de Roque in French.

So, but yeah, a good old schlacht. Yeah. All my homies enjoy schlacht. In Dutch, it's schlach. In English, it looks like it says slag. Oh, yeah, yeah, because there are those weird kind of, yeah, sort of parallels in between Dutch and German that always throw me off too, where it's like, that looks fucked up, but then when you actually hear it pronounce, like, oh, it's pretty close to German.

I love this slag by Roqua. Yeah. I absolutely love hearing about the command form of a verb that's pronounced like a racial slur. I love jays where there shouldn't be. I love... Giving more jays I need to pronounce as wise. Give them to me. Yep.

I love a battle that's also a slag somehow. Love to have a slag. I feel like that means something that I don't know. What's slag? Like in British English, it's kind of like a term like a pejorative for a for a for a perceived as promiscuous or just... Oh, Jesus. I had no idea.

But the thing about it is the slag is definitely, like, he uses a term to mean like slut. But also to slag someone off in English, in British English is like to insult someone. See, I learned something new every day. I didn't mean that in the insulting term. I was just making fun of the Dutch language. So I don't know if you were familiar with the actor, kind of ish comedian Danny Dyer, is a British guy, very, like, cockney, the Southeast England kind of dude. Can't say that I am.

He's had some viral moments in the UK because, for one, he, I think on Pierce Morgan's show, referred to David Cameron as a twat. He once tweeted, I want to say it was after the 10th anniversary of 9-11, can't believe it's been 10 years since the slags crashed into them towers, still dust my nut into this day. Incredible. So this is not an exhaustive history of the 30 years war. This is something of a primer so we can understand better how thousands of French and Spanish dudes ended up shooting and stabbing each other on a field.

a given day. Despite the 30 years war having a lot to do with religion, that was not everything. Some beefs, and honestly, most of them, religion was never actually that important. It was always secondary to politics, the church itself, which of course only used religious belief and the power that came with it as another means for political power. The two main powers we're talking about today, Spain and France, are famously both Catholic, which you would think would be important in the early 17th century, but it really wasn't. They're both Catholic, but they also hate each other and have competing royal dynasties and whatnot.

They share a border. They're not Protestant. They can pat themselves on the back for that, I guess. But that doesn't mean they're going to like each other. Yeah. They actually dislike each other quite a bit, even to the day, which is... It's a thing. It's a thing, which is odd, because I guess Americans, we have this tendency to perceive a kind

of like universality to Southern European culture, which, I mean, France definitely counts in some part. The Spanish think French people are rude and cheap. Are they wrong? They're not wrong at all. Having just been in France and being like, wow, this place is so much less expensive than Switzerland and also so much more racist. I definitely understand. So shouts out of Spanish people. They put solar power on everything. Food is fly as hell. They eat dinner late, which I respect. They think black pepper too spicy. I actually think they're cool as hell. The two countries have been going at it forever at this point with Spain generally coming out on top. Spain controlled most of Italy, the Spanish Netherlands, which, despite its name, contained pieces of the modern-day Netherlands,

France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. Spain also held chunks of the Upper Rhine, and through it all, effectively contained any dream of French expansion in Europe. France is obviously pretty pissed about this, and the beef between the Habsburgs and the bourbons rapidly became much more important than the crushing of the Protestants. For some background, the Protestants of the Spanish Netherlands had been rebelling against their Catholic overlords for about 80 years, until 1609 when the 12 years truce was signed, and the Dutch Republic was kind of sort of formally recognized by Spain through the context

of that treaty. To Spain, this is about as embarrassing it could possibly get. Not only had they gone bankrupt fighting the uppity swamp Germans, but it was a huge blow to their prestige, because despite its tiny size, the Spanish Netherlands, much like its brother to the north, the United Province of the seven Netherlands, it was worth a lot when it came to trade, right? Like, this is not something you want to lose. Well, I mean, it's part of the kind of Hanseatic network ports on the Baltic and the North Sea. And then you have the Ryan as well, which is this huge waterway for trade at the time. You didn't have container ships back then. Ryan is still really important for trade. It was even more important back then. But this truth was always temporary.

It was not a peace deal. Even though attempts were made to iron out a final piece over the next 12 years, Spain was not having any of that shit. Their intention was always to go back to war. So pretty much, as soon as the 12-year truce ran its course, in 1621, the game was back on and the Spanish were on the attack the next year. And since the 30 years war had kicked off in 1618, that meant France saw an opening. Not open war against Spain, not yet anyway, but rather they began dumping gold and weapons into the United Provinces, the Dutch Republic, and Sweden, an ally of the other two, in order to fund the war against Spain. Obviously, the goal here is pretty clear.

The same game that anyone else has ever had who does a proxy war. Obtain your imperial goals while making someone else die for them. And it seemed like it might work, at least on the ground, in the Netherlands. That was until Cardinal Infante Ferdinand, Cardinal Baby, the brother of Spain's Philip IV led his army of Flanders until the Battle of Nordlingen and smashed the Swedish army in 1634 and before

long he was marching into Brussels Now the army of Flanders was one of the strongest armies in Europe at the time had one hell of a reputation and that's who we're mostly going to be talking about for the rest of the episode when it comes to Spain

This immediately drew the French into open conflict against Spain because it became clear that the Protestant work ethic was no match for getting shot in the face. Amazing how that happens. Hate it. This in turn led to the French invasion of the Spanish Netherlands, which failed, the Spanish invasion of France, which also eventually failed. There's also a strange tension between the Dutch in the Spanish Netherlands, but also in the United Province, which I'm trying really hard not to call the UP for simplicity saying, because that just makes it Michigan.

It sure would, wouldn't it? What happens is the Dutch really don't want people to know they're openly allying with one of the strongest Catholic nations in the world. The French don't really care that people know about them fucking around with Protestants, because on a long enough timeline, France will probably crush them too. But by 1638, they had taken more territories like Alsace and Lorraine, a region that will never become a tension point ever again, from the other Catholics. As the Spanish army of Flanders got ground down and Ferdinand shoulder the majority of the blame for its setbacks, this led to him having what most people agree was a nervous breakdown.

Rumors began to fly in the Spanish court that he was actually some kind of double-age. like he was going to marry into the bourbon royal family through the French king's niece and then take the Spanish Netherlands for himself as a French proxy. This wasn't true, at least as far as anybody can tell, but Spain was looking weak as their armies were getting stretched thin. They were losing. Portugal revolted as did others, leading to their attention to be pulled away from the Dutch front,

putting more pressure on Cardinal Baby Ferdinand, administratively and militarily, until he finally drops dead from a stomach ulcer in 1641 at the age of 31. Aha. He literally got driven into his death by stress. I mean, whom among us hasn't felt as though that was the route they were on? He was 31. While I was on holiday recently, I reread one of my favorite books, which is a nonfiction

biography of Artur Rambo by a British academic. like a kind of a more like popular historian named Graham Rob. It's just extremely funny. Like, because Rimbaud was a completely ridiculous figure in so many ways. And he died at 37 from, I guess it was bone cancer. Well, a bad amputation of bone cancer. But like, you realize that like people dying in their early 30s from whatever, from egg, from the itch.

I have died from egg. Paul Verlaine died at 51. His son also died at 51. Like, that was doing pretty. pretty well in the timeline, you know, back in those days. And that was the late, 819th century, early 20th century. That means I got like three months left. I am fully corpse mode at this point. I've been revivified. I've been hit with, you're out of Phoenix Downs. There is no bringing me back at this point. Like, this is my last, my last go-around,

because I'm going to be 42 at the end of this year. So, yeah, looking back and I'm like, you know, I bet the air was clean as hell in the countryside, but you also just like, if a mosquito bit you, you would immediately die. Yeah. chicken looks at you rug, you start shitting blood. Yeah, exactly. You go to a restaurant and you're like, oh, five, I get to have a delicious European meal and like, you just immediately get cholera and die. Like, it's a bit of a minefield. I don't think people realize how, how short the human lifespan was back then due to stuff that we probably could have fixed at the time, but we're like,

nah, just pooping that fucking water and drinking, who cares? Shit your water. All your friends are doing it. I mean, they are. Yeah. Fernand was widely considered the best and brightest commander. in the Spanish Empire, in the main engine behind their strongest army, the army of Flanders. And this is the Spanish Empire we're talking about. There's a lot of feckless idiots that have floated up into command positions. Like in all empires or the concept of empires on a long enough timeline, the army turns into a dumping ground for the fail sons of noble and rich blood. Thankfully, this isn't happen anymore. No, never. But the army of the Flanders wasn't exactly like that.

Ferdinand had promoted men based on merit, which was strange for the day, which of course created a cadre of very capable men who were more loyal to him than anything else. This was something the incoming commander of the Army of Flanders, Francisco DiMayo, a Portuguese general and longtime diplomat, just seemingly did not understand. See, he was more worried about winning the loyalty of Ferdinand's family and advisors than running the army. and the way he went about doing it was kind of shooting himself in the foot. Instead of leaving the army of Flanners running as it always had,

and the process which had turned it into a Spanish steamroller, he began giving out military appointments to Fernand's advisors elsewhere in the Spanish Empire, which were higher in social standing, but displaced them from the army's command structure, and then in turn replacing them with people that he liked. Understood. Just tends to go well. I always love to have, you know, like every good business, which like an army is kind of like a business, right? But like with command structures, loyalties and promotions and demotions, I love to have a 100% turnover rate overnight.

That means it's being run great. Going super fucking well. Yeah, exactly. Despite this, when he brought his army into combat in May the year after taking command, he did completely crush the French army, killing thousands of French soldiers. But then he kind of botches his chance to reinvade France, knowing the French army had more in reserves, the court was better positioned, and he didn't want to overstretch himself. But things were about to change in France.

Namely, Cardinal Richelieu, the chief advisor to the French king in everything, and pretty much the one man keeping the French kingdom together dies. His death was pretty awful, a combination of tuberculosis, malaria and fistulas, which made infected pus, bubble out of his asshole constantly. Oh. Now, it should be noted, this might be one of those horrible deaths that is sometimes written in

history as a kind of like religious punishment to men who are unpopular. Sure. But it does seem he at least had the first two. So he still went out real, real bad. Jeez. Yeah, that sounds unpleasant. I'm not going to lie. I love to have the eternal shart.

That definitely sounds like the death that one of his haters and he had many would have wished upon him. Exactly. And a lot of times when dudes like that are written in history, it always involves like their dick and balls swelling up and bleeding and their buttholes falling out. Yeah. You get the 16th century or 17th century equivalent of the opening skit of the Wu-Tang Song Method Man where they just talk about various ways they could torture you. And one of them is also your asshole clothes and keep feeding you. feeding you and feeding you. Like that, but it happened to you in real life in your Cardinal Richelieu.

Yeah, inflated Cardinal Richelieu. He got fucking Augustus Gloop. I sentenced you to Augustus Gloop. He did get the cutting edge of medical care at the time. Or what? Tobacco and bleeding. You're bleeding mostly. And it turned out this did not work.

They used to use tobacco smoke as medicine, but it involved ripping huge hits off of however one smoked tobacco back then and then blowing it on the wound. that might actually do some things because obviously like nicotine is like a vaso-constrictor, but I don't think that if you have tuberculosis, it's a great idea. Tuberculosis, malaria and a pussy butthole. Which part are you blowing the smoke into it? Yeah, shotgunning hits of the tobacco onto, I don't want to go any further because one of those routes brings you to madness.

Normally you have to pay for that route. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's people with like very, very, very successful kink careers doing that, I guess. I like to do Rishulu play Yeah, exactly well you have to dress up in red and fucking smite your enemy's ambitions and then you get the butthole tobacco smoke

The hardest part is contracting malaria Rishulu is known to be one of the biggest powers behind the French throne and the Bourbon dynasty itself He was also the beating heart of all of France's military operations Like everything ran through him

So with his death Mayo began planning an invixtive invasion of northeastern France. His army was a combined force of 27,000 French, Germans, and Walloons. The funniest group ever. Walloons are culturally French, southern French people from what's now Belgium. I know that it's not explicitly tied to just French stuff, but when you think of like Charleroi and stuff like Southern Belgium, that's Wallonia versus Northern Belgium is Flanders. Depending on who you ask, it could be the Greater Netherlands. According to a political party here in the country whose leader counts David Ike as one of his biggest inspirations.

I am intrigued by the idea of doing Dutch irredentism. They do exist. Actually, we deserve to have Indonesia back. I haven't seen anybody say that, but I have heard not a ton of people, but like say that their weird uncle or grandfather says like, oh, we must retake Antwerp. Because it's basically like the German iridensists are like we're going to have all of East Prussia back somehow. I mean, they were doing that as like political slogans into like well into the 70s. I'd eventually like people, everyone who could remember, you know, sort of greater Prussia

die. And they're like, yeah, okay, that's fucking obviously Poland and Russia at this point. Speaking of weird Germans. So obviously Kaiser Wilhelm, the, the Kaiser who led Germany during World War I and was defeated, went into exile here in the Netherlands in the town of Dorn. and he died there. His house, House Dorn is still there, his mausolema, all that shit. I learned, like, last week that every June on the date of his death,

weird German monarchists from the Reichsberger movement all gather there. So I know what I'm doing in June, Nate. I got to go see these freaks. Get a field recorder and go talk to them. Yeah, I'm going to go see these freaks, man. I have to.

I mean, I was thinking about this. Yeah, like, yeah, what would be Dutch uridentism? What would be the funniest Dutch uridentism thing? And it's like, to me, I think, reclaiming New York. Reclaiming New York. We also deserve a floating platform like trade pontoon off the coast of Nagasaki. They log for the pontoon.

Yeah, exactly. They go make Dutch sealand off the coast of Japan and, you know, set it up as a sovereign state. Yeah, for my understanding of Dutch people, they mostly just do that, but in parts of Thailand and tell their wives they're on a business trip. But anyway, anyway. So this combined army was soon marching through the Ardala. Dens and outside the French castle town of Roquois, getting there in May 12th, 1643. D'Amayo was operating with some very wrong intelligence that said the castle had fallen into disrepair. It was barely staffed and hardly defended. So it was a bit of a surprise to him

with his forces walked up only to get the piss shot out of them. It was perfectly well-maintained and adequately garrisoned. So rather than walking right in, the Spanish got bogged down to a siege they had not planned for at all. France responds, throwing together an army under the command of Louis II, Prince of Condi, cousin of the king. Louis was something of the cardinal's hand-picked successor to himself as commander of the army. Louis was a normal man for his day and position. Since he was fourth in line for the throne, he was never going to become king.

So he was groomed to serve the king rather than be served, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, I understand. And because of his standing, he fell in love with a woman who was not of like the right pedigree. So he wasn't allowed to marry her. Rather, he was forced to marry a 13 year old because she came from a powerful family. Louis vocally objected to this marriage. And that obviously this doesn't work. It's the 1600s.

So he got out of this marriage the only way he knew how. He accused her of cheating so he could lock her in a castle and ditch her. Louis's a piece of shit. Isn't history fun? Yeah, well, yeah. Who would have thought that the man forth in line for the French throne was a real asshole? Yeah, I would never have imagined this. There's definitely no instances of call it abuse and excess when you have an absolute monarchy.

And not to mention, he's only like 20, 19 or 20 when he does this. He's 21 when he's in command. So you can imagine he's an absolute freak. I really hate it when, you know, people are going through their sort of dirtbag toxic male phase when they're fourth in line for the French throne in the 1600s makes things worse. Yeah, nowadays, this guy just hangs out a cafe and pretends he's a writer. Back then, he had to command an army and lock his 13-year-old childwife in a castle. So now at 21 years old, he is in command, though he had a lot of the dead Cardinals generals along with him to act as his aid. So, like, he is traveling with a group of dudes who really do know what they're doing.

the same day he got word that Roquois had been besiege. He also got word that the very, very gay king of France, Louis the 13th, had died. It turns out that smoke enemas and milk are not good treatments for tuberculosis. I wasn't wrong about the smoke animals, wasn't it? No, no, no. But also milk. Why? Why does one think, oh, well, the smoke makes you cough and that's bad with tuberculosis, but the smoke's good for you, so we're going to, we're going to Australian butt chug the smoke. Yeah, yeah. You know, they believed in humors and spirits and whatever the fuck back then. Yeah, like, got to get the ghosts of that butt. Like the coughing from tobacco smoke, if I was to put myself in their shoes, at least make sense. Because like, they probably understood coughing as expelling something. I assume the milk is the same.

but I don't think putting unpasturized milk directly into your lower intestines. Your lower intestines is going to solve anything other than living. I don't know. RFK Jr. might soon roll this out as some form of health care. So who knows? He in turn left the throat to his four-year-old son. Louis the 14th, better known as the Sun King. He would become one of the longest reigning monarchs in the world by the time he died.

But for now, he was a child. He's four years old. And his mother would rule as regent. And you can probably imagine, to a lot of people, this was seen as a massive weakness. Yeah, it's kind of an opportunity, isn't it? When the system is such that you're like, well, the actual ruler is four years old. And he's more interested in 1600s Paw Patrol. So we have to have his mother in charge.

And we hate women. And women have no rights. La Pa chandarmes. Yeah. La Chendarmerie de Pot. There is actually I think it's Paw Patui in French. Because Paw Patrol

is actually popular here, which is annoying. Sometimes you go buy diapers for my kid and there's like fucking the only ones are like Paw Patrol theme. I'm like, no, I don't want, I guess you're getting shit and piss on the copaganda so great, but it's just kind of annoying. Like, I don't like that. But yeah, I want to say it's

Papa Tui, but I have to look it up because I try to like intentionally. I like our version better. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's great. Paw Patrol localization team call us. This left Louis II in an interesting position. First, his father, in the same letter that informed him of the king's death, demanded that he take his army and ride to Paris to make sure that the boy king would be able

to take the throne without anyone trying to coo him and his mom. But Louis, with the support of his generals, decided that this was too dangerous. To him, the most destabilizing force in France was, wouldn't you have guessed it, the invading Spaniards? And the best way to secure the reign of the boy king was the secure of Brants itself. But they couldn't necessarily agree on how to do it. And obviously the context here is he just ignores this letter. He goes to war in Raqua.

But he and his generals cannot necessarily agree on how to do it. Louis generals want the army to ignore Raqua and the Spanish fighting there and instead simply march north and gun for the Spanish supply lines. Once those are severed, circle back around, and fight the army of Flanders. Louis has a different idea. Ignored everything else, marched directly for Roquois, and lift the siege. But there's a reason why Roquois was a castle worthy of defending in the first place. And it was not just for some walls.

And it actually didn't even matter that the Spanish were not inside the walls at all. It was high on a plateau, with four miles of open space all around it. Beyond that, there was thick forests and marshland, and the only way around all of these natural obstacles was a single narrow clearing. So Raqua was perfect for defenders in almost every way. If you controlled the castle, sit behind the walls, you could do so. If you were, say, like DeMeo's army and did not control the castle, the area around it was a manicured killing field. You could ambush any attacker in that clearing or the marshes or the forests. And no matter of, And no matter what way you sliced it, this was a defender's position.

There was no reason for the Spanish not to have supreme confidence in their military because of their infantry. These were the infamous pike and shot formations known as the Turthio. The Turthio were a revolution in the world of infantry warfare on par with the phalanx and existed to meld early flintlock firearms into battle formations in an era before they could really hang on their own. So you can take a Turthio, rotate it in your mind, so you can think of it. It was a square of pikemen supported on all sides by flintlock gunners, a raid in a square, numbering a few hundred men. Obviously, the square formation protects it from cavalry charges. The pikes defend the gunners for many melee forces, and the gunners can shred melee forces and gunners.

It is the epitome of pike and shot warfare. An army of these in the thousands would march keeping their square formations, supporting one another, creating a buzzsaw of murder. That sounds cool. But if you're the person experiencing, you're probably like, this actually sucks really bad. I'm actually not a huge fan of being shot and stabbed by the turfyus.

Yeah, I kind of feel as though this is a suboptimal outcome, I say as I get a bunch of like linear and round holes made in me. Yeah, you get punched and stadd full of speed hold simultaneously. Yeah, it's not fun. I never wanted to be a human tic-tac toe board and yet it happened to me. Remember how I said that Raqua was perfect for a defender? Well, DeMeo had no intention of fighting while using any of those advantages.

The reason for that is de Mayo and the Spanish had not prepared for the possibility of a relief force at all. Now, normally, when you're doing a siege, you also dig in. You don't just sit outside the walls, right? You not only dig in protections to protect yourself from the people inside the castle, but your back and your supply line. Or, in the words of the Wu-Tang Clan, protect your neck. This one does, yes. Somehow the Wu-Tang Clan has come up twice today. Yeah, and also, like, the Wu-Tang Clan loves to invoke imagery of people with what effectively look like, you sort of kung fu weapons that look like pikes. So in your mind, you can do a little bit of fusion here between, yeah, weird hook, halberd. The Wu-Turthio clan. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, I do think that

if one were to go into combat against, you know, famous nine-member rap group from Staten Island, you could expect to be both shot and stabbed. So I feel as though like there is maybe a layer of interpretation here that is applicable. That's right. That is our, that is our pitchfork review of of the turf views. Well, I mean, I don't want to be because here's the thing, right? There's definitely a subgenre of white dude who claims to be into rap music, but only kind of geeks out about Wu-Tang stuff. And it's like, I'm just smart and Screlly. Well, yeah, there's a whole genre of fucking guys who like work in finance or New York who are into that shit. And I would be honest with you, like the Wu-Tang is good, but Wu-Tang also put a lot of bad stuff too. So like, if

that's your only entry into rap music, then you're just like, come on, come on. You just doing fucking action figure collecting. But anyway, obviously the goal for all of this is to protect yourself both from in front and behind, right? Simple. DeMeo didn't do any of that. Instead, he wanted to march out into the opening and wait for Louis II to fight him in an open battle because DeMeo believed that preparing an ambush was dishonorable. DeMeo inventing Portuguese, Spanish imperial Bushido on the battlefield. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things that aren't sporting, but I feel like once you get into

the realm of, you know, this kind of combat, I mean, not. that it was ever particularly chivalrous to begin with. But, you know, when you have guns, you don't have to be a better swordsman. Yeah, that's the whole point. The whole point is pointed and pull trigger and hole appears. One click and you're done. That's kind of the point. Yeah.

And so the honorable approach here doesn't really make much sense because it's like, oh, it's dishonorable for you to surprise me when you, you know, point, click, hole appears. It's real big moments for like dudes who have been caught in ambushes to say, like, Everyone's like, oh, yeah, it's so dishonorable. Like, look, I've been ambushed. You know what? I'd much rather be on the other side of it. Well, yeah, exactly.

People who keep getting run for their shoes being like muggings are actually a sign of weakness. Like, yeah, how dare you mug me for my shoes? This is a slight against my honor. Exactly. It's just your shoes. You're just mad that you got your shoes taken. And it's understandable. I wouldn't want to go barefoot.

Yeah. Barefoot might be legal, but it's disgusting. Say what you will. My kicks have never been stolen. stolen by a samurai. No. I've never been robbed for my shoes. I've never been robbed all the times in my life that I've had guns pointed at me.

It was either because I was in combat or because somebody was drunk and crazy, but they never wanted anything I had. Maybe it's because I dressed so goddamn Normcore that no one's going to come up on me and be like, I bet this guy has stuff I can take. I mean, anybody who knows me, anybody who's just see me at live shows. Like, Nate, you see how I dress. Like, I've been robbed from my shoes. It's not because they were nice shoes.

I'm pretty sure I just caught someone who was, you know, bored, miss someone with some good shoes or whatever because they stole my shitty fucking Chuck Taylor's, but, you know, obviously he needed them more than I did. I mean, I've been that stuff stolen from me like that. Don't get me wrong, but, uh, yeah, I feel like in a way, when I look back on the various ways in which I was a victim of aggression growing up, I kind of would be like, well, I had something to steal that at at least made, made sense, but no, I grew up in Indiana. Someone called me the F-sler and threw a car hub cap at because I was wearing a bike helmet. So, I mean, like, it's just a very, very different world. Calling someone a slur and throwing a hubcap at their head is just the Indiana

version of disc golf. Yeah, it's just like, you know, salutations, fellow traveler. Fucking Christ. Just how I know that you're here, you know, just in case, yeah, I know that were I on a bicycle and you armed with a hubcap, you would also honor me in the same way. You would make sure. I'm starting a new version of the deadliest warrior, but only the Midwest. It's like racist homophobe with a hubcat versus made on a bicycle. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I'm gonna run all the computer simulations a thousand times. Who would win? Two rude homophobic 13 year olds, one of whom is riding on the pegs of the other 13 year olds trick bike or Midwest guy who's gotten so many DUIs

he has to write a bike everywhere. I don't have a license anymore. Hell yes. DiMeo is worried that the French might use the surroundings for an ambush.

So he orders all of their supplies and cannons to be left behind so they weren't in the harm's way. Though when he was told like, hey, we probably won our cannons, he did change his order. He moves his cannons up. He also gives orders to his general, Johann Beck. He was stationed a daze right away on the Mews River, guarding their supply line back into the Netherlands to begin riding to the battlefield. Then DiMaio ordered a team of scouts to go into the narrow clearing with orders to

pass word when the French were approaching. These scouts, however, were dressed in, let's say, the worst scout uniform you could possibly imagine. Bright red, making them very easy for the French to see. They're quickly wrecked by a group of

French cavalry. The Spanish then just stand and watch as the French pour through the clearing and take up battle formations on the opposite side of them in the opening. They literally do nothing as 10,000 Frenchmen

march into the world's largest fatal funnel. They don't issue attack. They don't open fire with cannons. They do nothing. Because remember, that would be dishonorable, Nate. And you don't want to dishonor your 21-year-old French opponent who's locked a 13-year-old

at a castle. Yeah, exactly. It's like, you know what? He's probably really, really busy thinking of new ways he can gaslight his prison child bride. So it would be dishonorable to throw him for a loop by exploiting the strain feature. It is very funny. Like, this is the world's most natural choke point.

This is just like the place where you get enfilating fire and kill thousands of dudes at. And they're like, yeah, but that would be gross. Yeah, that'd be wrong. That wouldn't be cool. That would what's what would be called in my 1600s military manual, a tactical party foul. Well, also, it's just like, oh, yeah, that wouldn't be cool. That wouldn't be appropriate. What is appropriate is blowing literal smoke up people's asses.

But this, killing the enemy on the battlefield. No. No. Oh, come on. Let me know when they're done clearing the fatal funnel. I'll be in my tent butt chugging unpasturized milk. Listen, I'm not going to blow smoke up your ass and it's like 1600s military. You're like, what?

Do you want me to die of tuberculosis then? However, one group of French horsemen did try to charge towards Roquois in a very ill-advised attempt to open a supply line to the men inside. And this charge, to my surprise, I'm sure, to a longtime listener's surprise, was called off by Louis, who saw it out of the corner of his eye. He runs over there. He tells them cut that shit out and get back in formation. And they do.

Which is pretty remarkable because whenever we talk about something like this happening, some random officer ordering a charge, it's always the small domino that eventually leads to thousands of dudes charging without orders to their death. But he regains control of his men. All right. A little tactical discipline. Okay.

It's one of those strange moments of this show where like something good happens and we're like, oh, wow. Yeah, like, you know, your 21-year-old problematic boyfriend who is, you know, a patron of the gaslight and milk butt-chugging company. And yet, I mean, so far, is managing this formation. Yeah. Yeah. Louis II was not the only one dealing with subordinates or kind of doing whatever they wanted, though. For DiMaio, that man was Fernandez de La Cava, the 22-year-old Duke of Elbequerque, which really just makes me think this is what happens of just.

Jesse Pinkman was a noble. Yeah, I mean, I know Albuquerque is a place in Spain as well, hence the name of the city of New Mexico. But it's not the one that matters to me, Nate. No, of course not. What matters is Albuquerque New Mexico. I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico for three years as a kid. I've been to Albuquerque many times. What a fucking hole. It sucks. Santa Fe is at least, okay. Hey, God, Albuquerque sucks. Sorry, if you live in Albuquerque and you like it. Albuquerque, Barneo County in general. Albuquerqueans, Albuquerqueites. I don't know what to know what they call. It's like Duke City is what they call themselves. I don't know like what the, I guess even that, the Duke City is like, oh, so you're Dukeies? Then I don't know what they call

themselves. What is the Albuquerque Damonym? Help us out, friends. We will never use Wikipedia. I, I had a strange incident when I drove through Albuquerque, uh, because I used to make this. Yeah, you were like, I should have turned left here. Some rabbit punched out of the ground. Stole my wife. Every time I jammed a gun it in, some of I went around the circumference to the earth and came back, I pointed in my face. I was driving up towards Oregon for wildfire seasons when I worked for the Bureau of Land Management, cut through Albuquerque only once. And I was really hungry and I stopped. Pick the first shitty diner I could find. And I went in and it was like an event for a local like two nursing homes to meet up in a neutral area. And like it was like senior singles night for the

nursing home crowd. It was the strangest thing of ever accidentally. And mind you, good for them. No shit on these senior citizens. But I'd been driving for 16 hours and was very hungry and sleep deprived. It's a weird thing to walk into. First, it sounded like you were, you were like, oh, they're having a gang truce between the two nursing homes. Very Albuquerque situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Instead, I just got the weirdest sexual old guy attention in the world. It's all much old dude trying to get laid. Good for them. Again, no shit on them. It's just the weird thing to walk in on. Yeah. I actually was driving to Santa Fe because I tried driving across the entire of the United States to get from Alaska to Georgia. Not,

not the Republic of Georgia. That would be even funnier. Love to drive from Indiana to DeBlesi. Yeah, exactly. You know what? I fucking do chase Willie Mammis the same distance. I'll do it. I don't know how I'm going to manage the Alaska to Siberia part, but I'll try. I drove from Anchorage down the Alaskanda Highway and then all the way down the west coast. Then I'll cross desert southwest up to fucking Indiana, see my parents. down to Georgia. And when I was cutting through, I will make this story short. I cut through to get from the highway goes towards Las Cruces and I wanted to get Santa Fe. So I took the cut through. I actually went up stopping and Hatch, not knowing anything about Hatch because I was 11 when we left

New Mexico. Hatch is like the most famous place for New Mexico green chilies. It's like the only thing I know about New Mexican food. It was August. And I recognized the smell when I got in because they have these drums that you turn with a gas burner to roast the chilies. And I was like, oh, fuck, it's green chili season. And it was like six. $60 bucks for like 25 pounds of chilies or something. It was a huge. So I was like, fuck it. I had my cooler at that point was basically almost empty. I just put the chilies in the cooler and came to my friend's place in Santa Fe with like, like I was Marco Polo with fucking all these treasures because I'd gotten red wine in British Columbia and I'd gotten fucking chilies and hatch.

Dude, I bagged them and froze them. Last lasted for like a year. Oh, God, if you have a chance to go to New Mexico, Albuquerque sucks, but hash chilies are insane. Anyway, we're, we're We're approaching lunchtime as we're recording. We're going to go back to the 1600s. We're going back to Rukwa, but we just had to talk for a second because a guy's last name was the Duke of Albuquerque or whatever. This message brought to you by the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce. The Duke of Albuquerque was a bit of a notorious asshole. He would argue with everyone and everyone over everything. He would ignore orders if he didn't agree with them. He would go off and do his own thing, regardless of someone's more important rank or social standing. Nobody believed he was qualified

fight for his role, but his family was one of the most important ones in Spain. Therefore, he gets a command. And weirdly, despite the Spanish cavalry forces being split in half on the flanks, one on the right, one on the left, he was in command of both of them, even though he could only be in communication with the one that he happened to be standing in. Because he wouldn't appoint a subordinate to take command of the one he wasn't with, because that's the kind of guy he was. There you have it. I cannot split the command of my horsies. There, They're all mine. This is actually a huge sin in the church of Eastern Horsodoxy.

Your horses must always be overseen by an officer. Yeah, exactly. You know what? There's hierarchy in the church. Yeah. Idol hooves are the devil's playground. Maybe this is the schism, right? Like, they're Catholic.

So they're not followers of Eastern Horsodoxy. Right. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is a Catholic horsodoxy situation. I don't know, the Western Horsodoxy. Western Horsodoxy? Yeah, sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It took literally all day for the French army to file in and get in formation, only just finishing by the time the sun began to go down. So this meant that it was too late to fight. Obviously, fighting at night, not a great idea in the 1600s. Arguably not a great idea now either, but way worse back then. The French army was not like the turthios of the Spanish. Rather, they looked a lot more like what you would consider.

a modern line formation that you'd see further into the 17th century. Lines of muskets, firing in staggered follies. The tactic was hardly new by this point, but they'd been refined, the weapons were a little better.

They also had men carrying hand-to-hand weapons like pikes and swords, but they were held in reserve rather than being integrated into the musketeer units. Like the Spanish, they had anchored their flanks with cavalry, and the French cavalry was considered

some of the best in the world. They too brought cannons with them and stationed them in front of their army. Huh? Both sides did this. This was normal for the time. Cannons were not great. Firing them over your soldiers

was considered a bit of a dicey proposition. Right. I can see that. Yeah. So putting them directly in the front, you might get captured. Who cares? Yeah, I mean,

I guess that makes sense. Unpredictable objects, but there's also the part of me that's like, But they aren't exactly famous for being easy to move quickly. No, you would just leave them behind and your cannoneers would run. Because if you won the battle, you would take your cannons back. Because you can back.

Yeah. So, so, okay. I see. All right. The Spanish terthios were arrayed in the open field and fell under the command of the Count Fontaine, Paulo Bernard. Bernard was interesting. He had started life as a commoner.

He rose through the ranks based on his ability of stacking bodies and commanding others to do the same. and he was eventually ennobled over the years, but this was a long time ago. His glory years were way behind him. In the 1600s, commanding in the field, this man was pushing 70 years old. That's like two and some change normal lifespans in this era, I think.

Yeah. And those are 70 hard fucking years too. Yeah, no shit too, man. At every corner you have a little sniffle and they're trying to blow tobacco smoke and milk up your ass at the same time. That's not even counting all the campaigns. he's been on. Oh, yeah.

All the time. I mean, think about it. It's like the, you know, bullets, swords, cannibals, disease, malaria, cholera, typhoid, diarrhea, constantly, like, all of the things that would cause. Like, just, just think about the number of orthopedic injuries that we still manage in our lifetime. Right, right. The relatively small amount of time that we spent in the mills here compared to these guys.

And think about, like, back then, they're like, oh, your ankle is sideways now pray about it. Have you tried walking on it anyway or else? We're going to shotgun some tobacco on it. it, see what have. We're going to take a huge hit off this pipe and blow the heath and smoke, and it's going to make your ankle grow back normal. Hey, if you smoke the right thing out of a pipe, you don't even think about your ankle anymore. That's very true. Yeah, yeah. There's definitely ways to they already have the Duke of Albuquerque. He's invented the world's first meth. You know he has.

Well, I was thinking about tobacco back then being such a comprised item is the thing, like, you know, periodically banned and then unbanned and people loved smoking it. But like, it was very much a new thing in Western Europe. Like, you imagine the tobacco coming from New World colonies. and I think at that point they had also planned it. They started planting it in Turkey, but I can't remember in the Ottoman Empire. Imagine getting that stuff in Europe. It's going to be massively adulterated with whatever

because they're going to be cutting it like they cut street drugs now. So these dudes were actually smoking proto K2. Hell yeah. They went down to the Spanish gas station to buy their K2 just like I did. Got, you know, El Sadas del Diablo, but it was handwritten in Gothic script with like printing press stuff on it, you know. And I like to think that in an apocalyptic situation, right? Society collapses. We're reduced.

Lost knowledge situation. And fast forward, we're blowing vape smoke on each other to cure each other of cholera. The world collapsed, but there was one shipping container in Europe full of nothing but lost Mary's. And so, like, whoever controls that shipping

container controls the economy of post-apocalypse Europe. Whenever the boils start growing, you just rubbed Zin packets on it. Like, this should work. Yeah, you know what? I mean, like, hey, we're returning to our roots. Weird poultices. Tobacco. heals you somehow.

Yeah. Does that mean that also like down the line, then we're going to revert to an older form of military combat where it's like extremely unsporting to kill the enemy, but then not really any penalties when someone disagrees with you. It's like, actually, I feel like killing these people. Yeah. I imagine the sword guys will survive and they'll just recreate like bullshit internet samurai culture, but out of like Canton.

I also love the idea that like due to make novelty swords as blacksmiths, you know, like the guy who sells the full-size buster sword. from his blacksmith shop in Indiana. And it costs like $13,000. Like someone's bought that, which means like in the future sword combat of like, you know, Kevin Koster's the postman, but real. Like someone's going to be like,

there was once a great warrior who wielded this. Exactly. And they're not going to be like, actually it's from a video game. And people are annoying enough they would be willing to buy a $13,000. And famously he actually got it from his friend. He did get it from Zach.

Yeah. He was a member of all cap soldier. So there's something we've kind of accidentally stumbled upon here. about Bernard as well, and that is that he is terminally ill. We don't know with what, life, I assume. He is deathly ill to the point that he cannot really walk around on his own. He's being carried around in a sedan chair because he is just so emaciated and frail. But DeMaio kept him in command because he knew that despite the fact that he had one foot in the grave already, or I suppose one foot being carried into the grave already,

he was still better in his current condition than anyone else if they tried to replace him, which is just an indictment of the Spanish military, honestly. Yeah, no kidding. I mean, the other day I had a kind of misspoke and I mixed metaphors by mistake. And I was talking about having a bunch of things going on at once. And what I wanted to say was I either wanted to say I have my feet in a bunch of doors or I have my finger in a bunch of pies, but I said, I've had my feet in a bunch of pies. And I was like, well, that's fucked up.

But this guy might actually have been in that situation because carried around, in a chair. It probably has to be handed his food and fed this way. He may very well, they might have been like, you know what? The best way to treat whatever he's got medicinally in the 1600s is put your feet in some pies. Yeah, but they'd be like savory pies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I would think that would be less harmful than some of the other stuff that they tried. They're like, what if we take out your blood, but we put really bad stuff in to replace your blood, that's going to be good somehow. We're going to replace your blood with unbasterized milk. It's all we have. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

this cow's got to be milked. It's got to go somewhere. So it's going up your ass. That sounds like the most fucked up threat at like a reform school in America where they make you milk cows. This is like scared, straight shit in the fucking 80s. It's eventually going to be investigated. People are going to go to prison for abuse.

They're like, yeah, we're going to reform juvenile delinquents by making the milk cows. People are like, well, the fucking milk's got to go somewhere. But that's also 17th century medicine. That being said, he was as petty of a bitch as everybody else at the situation. Respectable. He hated the Duke of Albuquerque, Jesse Pinkman.

Yeah. For being a little shit. The Duke had tried to replace the old count, constantly mocking him for being a cripple. As a way to get back at the Duke, the Count refused the station more musketeers near the Duke's cavalry to make up for his weakness. And this infighting to spite what another trickled all the way down. Alvaro Mayo's younger brother, who was a naval officer with no experience to speak of fighting on the ground, was given command of the Spanish artillery, which does make sense in context he would know artillery. But because of his position as the brother of the commander, he could force the count to do whatever he wanted.

So out of nowhere, he demanded the count said 500 musketeers into the forest to set up an ambush for the French. Now the count said this was a very bad idea because by his opinion, the French were probably already in the forest and therefore would not be ambushing anybody. He would just be wasting 500 musketeers. The brother of the commander said, fuck you, do it anyway. So he does. The count sends the musketeers into the forest. And on May 19th at around 3 a.m., they get slaughtered. As one does, it's like, there's the three musketeers.

You're like, cool, I want to be one of them. And then there's the 500 musketeers like you didn't want to be one of them. If the three musketeers are cool, the 500 musketeers must be even cooler. They're like 230 times more badass. Yeah. We're looking to optimize our musketeer situation. They've definitely downwardly optimized the musketeer situation in this one. The French cavalry storms right through them.

And then afterwards the French guns begin bombarding the Spanish. The Spanish attempt to respond. So there's a bit of a cannon duel. going on because it's still too dark to send in the armies, but not quite light enough where they could really aim their cannons very well. So it's just kind of slinging balls blindly in the darkness as one does. As one does. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I always think about this too. The Calv, you know, musketeers have guns. Presumably you're like, oh, you can shoot dudes off horses. The problem is the horses move fast. Yeah, I hope you don't miss once. And when you fire, then you're like, you basically

have to just like, kind of like stand there and just jog in place for 60 seconds. Like it's a really, really fucking shitty mobile game. If video games have taught me anything is when the horse comes at you, you just have to jump up and down really rapidly. Yeah, I'm just thinking about just like your early, like Atari games.

You're firing at the horse, but it's just like a square of like four pixels going to tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick across the screen. The horse quickly dodges out of the way, like, fuck, shit, hacks. Louis's plan was always going to be a cavalry attack at the Spanish flanks,

just as soon as the sun came up, just enough, so they might be able to see where they're going. But he pulled a church, a bit too soon. He sends in his cavalry and due to a reoccurring character on this show as of late

the fucking swamps the horses quickly slow down. The horses slop into the marshlands their line gets broken up for people who don't understand why this would be a bad thing. Obviously this is melee combat.

You want your cavalry force to hit all at once. You do this by making sure they march together. They charge together. If the horses are slopping ankle deep through a swamp that breaks up the formation

so any attack they launch is going to be a bit fucked right? The Spanish are able to force them back with their own cavalry under the command of Ernst Groff von Eisenberg so we not only have a Duke of Albuquerque we have an

Eisenberg well there you have it yeah I mean add an H in there will be good to go I mean I was thinking first I was like you called Duke of Albuquerque Jesse Pinkman I was So, well, shouldn't he be Walter? Like, no, well, it's the Duke.

He's not the king, you know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. We had to bring in a weird German cavalry commander to be Eisenberg in the situation. Does the Duke of Albuquerque wear, like, fucked up fake babe late 2000s close to? He has to. You must. Because back then, the royalty dress ridiculous.

You know what I mean? So, like, that's just how Albuquerque royalty dressed today. This victory causes a cheer to go up through the Spanish line. The Turthios slowly begin to advance. The French guns fall silent as the cannon crews. do what they do, they ditch them and run behind the main army, leaving the cannons to be captured by the Spanish. The battle is going terribly right from the start. Baron Claude Cyrro then grabs the French reserve cavalry, launches a counterattack on Eisenberg, who at this point was

just rolling right up the French left flank, though he was getting shot to pieces by French musketeers hiding in the woods. This is not a very smooth advance, but he was winning at the time. Meanwhile, Jean de Gasson, commander of the French cavalry of the right flank, launches his own attack directly into the Duke of Albuquerque. I assume at this point the Duke of Albuquerque points it goes, yeah, horses, bitch. Yep, I don't know. One does, and he's like, you two are going to wish you had turned left at me.

Seeing the Spanish right flank begin to crumble a little bit, Liu orders more reserves into that fray, shattering them. The Duke spent the rest of this battle trying to rally what was the last. left of his cavalry and largely failing, when one of the turthios was sent in to support the duke, it too ran away. So there's a constant trickle of Spaniards running away from the battle already. Louis sees an opening, and this is what the Battle of Roquois is almost entirely known for is what he does next. Rather than send his cavalry into the front of the Spanish turthios, he orders them to ride around the Spanish rear. Because he knows Johann Beck,

and the Spanish reserve cavalry is coming in from the Mews, so he wants to completely cut off the Spaniards before he arrives. At this point, the only force on the Spanish flanks anchoring the Turthios at all was Eisenberg and his men, but now with Louis looping all the way around the Spaniards. Eisenberg is now under attack from every direction. Eisenberg breaks entirely, with his men fleeing into the swamp. Eisenberg himself is able to save his own life, but he is wounded horrifically. He manages to recover somehow, but he has to retire from fighting, which has to just make

a German guy serving the Spanish throat in the 1600s. Very sad. And a French dude did it to him too. Yeah. Insults injury, literally. Now with the Spanish cavalry crushed and Louis riding around them, the Turthio formations that made up the entire center of the Spanish army were surrounded. De Mayo at this point, aband. command. He goes to hide inside of a Turthio formation made up of Italians, proclaiming to them

when he walks inside, quote, I wish to die with the Italian gentleman, which is a very motivating thing to hear from your commander. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Sort of like, I can imagine that formation thinking, we weren't necessarily planning on all dying, sir. Yeah, well, I don't want to die with you, you asshole. Yeah, jerkass, fucking prick. The French infantry now go into combat, closing in on the Spanish formations in a piecemeal fashion. There were eight turthios, all made up of a few hundred men apiece. And the French understood, like they've been fighting the Spanish long enough, they kind of knew how to fight them somewhat.

And the idea was to not assault them all at once, like you would have a front-on-front battle, but rather to take on the turthios as if they were a fortification, one at a time. French infantry would wheeling close two or three times, dumping volleys of gunfire into them and you would expect that the turthios would break under this, but they didn't. This goes into the strength of the army of Flanders and their training, but it's kind of like when we've talked about the square infantry formation in the past, the men manning that square will hold on to it because they know it's their only hope of survival is holding that formation.

Like the second they break, they know they're dead. Yeah, basically everyone's dead. So they hold on. And in fact, some of these turthios are able to withdraw from the battlefield. and fight their way out of the encirclement in an orridly fashion, which is how DiMeo actually manages does their survive all of this?

That's, yeah, well, there you go, jerk. You were like, oh, I'm going to die with you. It's like, well, if they do their jobs, the whole point is you kind of don't. Yeah. You do some turtle shit and get out. The Italians, like, no, we're tactically turtling our way to the north. You can come with us if you want to.

Yeah, exactly. We're pulling our weird head and neck inside the shell. We're doing the funny little, like, squat, crab walk. We're getting out. Yeah, the Spaniards actually invented tactical crab corps. Oh, no. The Count of Fontaine hiding instead of his Turthio, demanded his men stand and fight on,

assuming that Johann Beck's reinforcements were still coming, or that fighting on would give them a better chance at attempting a fighting withdrawal themselves. And it's not like he didn't have a chance here. He still had his men, largely together. There was an 8,000 man turfio at this point. the French had not been able to break it even though they do outnumber them.

The French are attacking the Turthio from all sides and each time they're thrown back. So it's not too weird for him to believe that everything is going to work out fine here. By the very nature of the Turthia formation, you're probably going to be surrounded. Despite holding the French off, someone managed to shoot the Count

from his command chair in the middle of it and he falls off the sedan and dies. I see. The Count died waiting for. for Johann Beck to arrive, so you're probably wondering, well, where in the fuck is he? Well, he had actually shown up a couple hours ago. So, Johann Beck and his reinforcements run into all the Spanish soldiers who had already fled from the battle.

They tell the general, the battle is lost and run rather than, you know, go see what's going on. So, the general looks down at the soldiers, figures they're pretty trustworthy, and leaves, without ever even looking at the battlefield. Okay. Okay. We can always ascribe a lot to things were different back then, but this is one of those like,

wait, are you serious? I think he was just looking for an out at that point. Yeah, yeah, I think that's clear, yeah. But still, just like, I've never had an officer believe me,

an enlisted man, so thoroughly before. Very rarely had somebody who outranked me that much believe me, even when I was like a captain. Yeah, this is the equivalent of me, like, let's say, private,

running through the woods directly into the joint chiefs and being like, we got to get the fuck out of this place. Yeah, we got to get the hell out of this place. Yeah, right. Shit. Sounds good, buddy.

But yeah, it's like four star, three star, two star, there's like random corporals like, this shit sucks, sir. He's like, wow, I guess it does. The corporal has a very important point. Let's all go to the bar. Yeah, let us withdraw from the battlefield

immediately. The Spanish had beholding the French off way longer than anybody thought they would. I mean, the battle's been going on. for about six and a half or seven hours at this point. Finally, Louis orders his cannons which had been recaptured. Those cannons had been reinforced by the Spanish cannons that they had captured in the same way

to be moved forward to face the Turthio. They were then loaded up with grape shot or ye old shotgun. Yeah, small pellets and mass. Yeah. Hundreds of them per shot, possibly thousands. Wealed up to a point-blank range of the Turthio and then just open for, fire. And there's dozens of cannons. It's ending badly. I mean,

you want to be like, okay, this is where you cue the price is right, losing horns. But I mean, like, it's also grimmer than that. It's a good day to be in the third rank of Spanish infantry. I'll say that. Yeah. Like, damn, Carlos, I'm going to suck to be in the first rank. I'll tell you that. How's that turtle

holding up? It's bad. Louis only orders the firing to stop to offer the Spanish terms of surrender. But there's no unifying commander inside the Turthio anymore. There's surviving officers get together, talk amongst themselves, and then decline. So Louis orders the cannons to open fire again, but after 30 minutes, the Spanish were like, you know what, you're right. It's probably quitting time. It's time to hit the old dusty trail. Let's make a deal

here, if you wouldn't mind, I say, it's just like, yeah, it was like, uh, doing the tactical equivalent pulsing the blender for another 30 minutes. That the French slap chop. We're making a human smoothie here. We've done a perfect encirclement. We're about to fair do austerization. Just fucking got that austere blender going, just awful. I see you've shot our Terminaliel

commander off of his chair. It's probably time to pack it up, boys. Yeah, in retrospect, that wasn't really good idea, was it? Yeah, really shouldn't have been doing the picking the wedding thing of picking him up and holding him over our shoulder in the middle of a firefight.

We're going to be led to victory by the weird guru guy from Akura who gets carried around on the fucking palate. They agreed to surrender. A French delegation rides forward. However, not everybody within the turfy, because there's thousands of dudes in there, know what's going on. And there's so much gun smoke in the air, they can't see that the French delegation is

riding towards them carrying flags of surrender. Uh-oh. So having no idea why there's suddenly Frenchmen riding towards them, one of whom is Louis, the Spaniards. once again open fire. Louis somehow manages to not catch a musket ball directly in the face. He runs back to his line.

The French said run back to their guns and begin slapping the top of the blender for a few more minutes. The Spanish square begins to crumble. The cavalry is sent in and this just turns into a slaughter. So basically bad fire discipline and bad distribution of information

if we want to be annoying about it. It leads to them basically shooting at the we are about to accept your surrender party. Yeah. They're like, you know, in retrospect, these guys, maybe we just need to go full puree on that ass. And it's time to turn this from chunk to puree.

Yeah, exactly. I thought I liked a chunky sauce. It turns out I like it to be perfectly blended soup. It's that middle ground between making mashed potatoes and making a mashed potato puree, you know? And Louis, to his credit, was like, okay, this battle's over. He tries to get his men to stop. But, uh, nope.

They're just like, no, no, no, no, no, no. it's spachota. It's full on murder boner moment. It's one of those moments we've talked about it before that when you have thousands of dudes in a field killing each other, there's going to become a moment where you lose control of them, either in victory or defeat, you know? Although it took until the 1950s to invent the immersion blender,

the concept of the immersion blender has always existed in the French mind. Yeah, it just required gunpowder and a cannon. People don't know this, but one of the French mother sauces in traditional French cuisine, does require you to puree thousands of Spaniards with cannonballs. It's just not used very often. It's like Ordolan. You're supposed to eat it in shame.

Yeah, exactly. You wear a napkin over your face to hide your shame from God. As you slurped it up off the grass. Mmm, delicious. That sounds great. By the time it was all over, the Spanish had lost 8,000 men killed. Wow.

Almost an equal number captured. But most of these guys would be ransomed back, as was custom of the time. and their invasion of France was over. People often like to frame the Battle of Roquois as the turning point of the French Empire. That isn't entirely true. They still had some legs under them.

I'd argue the death of Ferdinand really set them back that they wouldn't recover from. Louis, despite becoming a war hero and become known as the Great Condi and winning several victories was not exactly able to capitalize off of this. He wasn't able to carry the fight into Flanders or even into Spain.

but he did bolster France. He secured the kingdom, and he showed the Spanish and anyone else watching that the kingdom of France was stable, despite the fact a four-year-old was technically in charge of it. Can you imagine having to explain this battle to the four-year-old? You have to take like two wooden soldiers to start smacking them against each other?

Yeah, it's like, you know, you go to the toy kitchen and get out the toy mortar and pestle and be like, so imagine these are people. You know that bernet sauce that you had for dinner? It's kind of like that, but it speaks Spanish. I'm just imagining having a four-year-old, but the four-year-old is king, but he still wants to, you know, have applesauce pouches, but they have to do sos bernets in applesauce pouches for him.

It's been really annoying. It's 17th century, like, rich people food those. It's got to have, like, gold flakes in it. Applesausauce pouches full of some unknown rue to make a soup. Instead of grinding pepper, you just blow tobacco smoke onto it over and over there. The army of Flanders was considered the juggernaut of its day, this battle proved that it and its turthios were very beatable, and the standard of warfare was changing, even if it was slowly. It also proved that while Spain still really wanted to be the

world-eating empire that people remembered them as, their cracks were showing, and their dominance of Europe was coming to an end. The end. Such is life, I suppose. Another thing where I'm like, wow, I'm glad I wasn't there. I am glad that I wasn't at the origin point of the sort of epigenetic memory of the blender. Yeah, I don't think we've ever talked about an episode. We're like, yeah, this would be cool to be there. Yeah, that's not really our thing is it. No, not really.

That's for other podcasts to do. Nate, we do a thing on this podcast called Questions from the Legion. All right. If you'd like to ask us a question, you can support this show on Patreon. Using the Patreon messaging function, you can send us a message or use the Discord, which you'll also have access to via Patreon. on. Today's question is, tell me a funny delivery story, either food or mail. I have one. I've told the story before after I moved to the Netherlands where the Dutch Post Post-NL was just throwing my packages

on the balcony and saying they delivered them, but not telling me they are on the balcony. That went out for weeks. I've already told that story before. But my second or third day in the country, I didn't have groceries yet because I was staying at a shitty Airbnb and all this other stuff. so I ordered food, right, from a nearby place. Delivery guy shows up. He's hitting the button. He's hitting the button to the wrong apartment, first of all. Yep.

So I am not hearing it. He begins setting me incredibly hateful messages through the delivery app. And I don't notice them because I'm listening for the doorbell. Finally, I look down like, oh, he's at the door. I go down to the door. I open the door. He launches into the most racist tirade.

I have ever had directed at me about immigrants to the next. Netherlands. And mind you, this man was not Dutch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and I was just kind of like astounded. And I was like, bro, you were hitting the wrong button. It's like, no, it says right here. It's this address. I'm like, it literally does not. And I showed him on mine and I compared them. Like, you were hitting the wrong button. And he defaults to screaming at me about immigrants again. And it was just a great welcoming banner to moving. here. But it was very funny. It must be like in any of the immigrants who go to the United States

only to have another immigrant tell them they did it wrong. It was one hell of a moment. My partner and I were in Marseille with our daughter during the holidays and something that doesn't really happen here, or at least not to the same extent, certainly not in Geneva, that was happening to my partner, which is every time we went into a store, she was basically getting racially profiled by the security guards who were also black. And it's like, this happened like basically getting shadowed in, you know, everything from like relay in the train station to like, you know, mono pre, uh, Aldi, stuff like that. And it was just weird, I guess, because it's a thing that we haven't really experienced. Uh, I mean, I've, I've gotten so many

goddamn random shoplifting checks in Swiss grocery stores. I don't know why I'm always the person who fucking triggers it, but doesn't really happen to the same. extent. You know why. They don't trust gingers. Well, it's like at the checkout, sometimes they want to look in my bag, but most time it's an automatic thing. Like the key, like self-checkout just pings me. Yeah, that's how it works here. They get alert. It's like how X amount of however many people have to be checked. At little in, uh, in Marseille and also at Monopree, um, we, you can't leave if you do self-checkout until you basically like, you have to scan like a security door or you have to show your receipt to a person and they check it.

Yeah. Like, that doesn't, that's not how it is in Switzerland. Like, every now I get you randomly checked, but most of the time, the door opens for you because, like, there's an infrared thing. Delivery story. I have so many annoying, long ones that are funny in some ways about Royal Mail because it's a nightmare and how I learned that they have the, if a parcel is undeliverable, the black side.

It goes to a black site in Belfast, which means they basically have to transport it on a boat across the Irish Sea, so you can't get it unless you live in Northern Ireland. But I'll give you a funny one. I don't know if you recall. all. Maybe you saw it because it just briefly got shared on Twitter about two years ago. But there was a TikTok where a guy was interviewing people and he was interviewing this like South Asian but very south London dude who's like, you know, wearing a neck gator and like, you know, off his scooter, but he's just like hanging out like and he's a delivery guy. And it's sort of asking about stuff.

And the guy was like, you know, I can't remember what it was his thing about like what prompted this. But the guy was like, you know, I just love chicks so much, you know, it's like, the more you love God, the more you love chicks. You know, it's just like, he's just, you got to give your faith to a lot. It's like, you know, it's just, but yeah, man, the more you love God, it's just, I just love chicks, man. And he's just going to love chicks more, you know, the stronger your faith is. And everyone was just like, what the fuck is this man saying? Um, anyway, I ordered, uh, delivery once I went I was back getting rid, like the last bits of clearing out that, our old home before we could be done with the UK. And that guy was my delivery driver.

Nice. And he shows up. And I'd give, I always tip, because British people typically don't. And like, I just try to make sure that I tip people. And so I think I gave him like four or five pounds. And he shows up and he goes, cheers, bro, tips is bumming. And then I was like, bombing. Like, great. And then I was like, oh, yeah, cheers me. And then I was like, that guy.

You're the famous deliveroo, man. The more you love God, the stronger your faith in God, the more you love chicks, that's you. And I was just like, what the fuck? I didn't, I mean, because when I saw the video, it kind of looked like Walworth Road, like that area of near the river, South London. But that also could be anywhere in London because, frankly, like, it kind of blends together unless you use you a big landmark. But yeah, that was

my fun delivery story. The other ones are mostly just having to call Royal Mail's business customer service and get condescended to by people with Northern accents. It's like, you know, calling is like the fucking Hobbiton Shire. And they talk to you like, you're a fucking idiot because you're a foreigner. But I don't have any other good ones. Normally they're pretty chill here. I do have one of my local mailmen who brings candy every time he delivers packages to me, which I never eat. I'm not taking candy from the strange mailman. man. And another situation where I live in the ground floor and there is an elevator in my building, but the delivery people obviously don't like to use it or they, most likely they just have so

many packages. Yeah. And so little time that that added five seconds is really going to fuck them is almost certainly what it is. And I don't blame them for it. Like, so they default to just hitting my button because they know that I'm home. Because like I work from home. And I get my entire building's mail. And then I wait until 5 p.m. when I know everybody's off work. And then I deliver it to all of my neighbors. Oh, look at you. You're integrating. They're all like, why is this guy I'm assuming is Turkish at my door? But Nate, I do believe that is a podcast episode. Yeah. Again, if you liked this show, consider supporting us on Patreon. And if you really like this show, we're doing a live show on May 29th in London. The tickets

are in the show notes. If you can't make it, you don't live in the UK or you don't feel like jumping on a train, we're live streaming it. Yes, there's video on demand if you can't watch it

during the show itself. There's also tickets for that in the show notes. And if you really like me for some reason, my book, The Highlands Burn, is available for pre-order.

It comes out May 29th. Nate, plug your stuff. Shout out to my friends. No gods, no mayors. They're doing basically three performances over two days in London at Big Belly Comedy, April 20, I believe 24th and 5th. I will put a link in the show notes for that. That's available. I also am the co-host and producer of Trash Future. What a hell

of a way to dad. Again, Kill James Bond. These are all fun shows that have free and bonus content. I'm also one half of the band second homes and our debut album, Find a Way to Hate It, is available for pre-sale right now on Band Camp and will be released in full on the 5th of May. So check that out. We will put some links and you can listen if you want to hear. Instead of singing to annoy Joe, I'm singing to annoy you and the world. That's right. That's called A Glow Up. Everybody, thank you so much for listening.

Leave us to review on wherever you listen to podcast. Tell your friends. We're an independent show. We have no marketing. So let everybody know about that weird shit you're listening to at work or on the bus or whatever. And until next time, blend those Spaniards. Yeah. You want the blender to go.

Instead of... Buh.