Episode 437 - The Anglo-Manipur War
00:00 Hey everyone, it's Joe. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon. Just $5 a month gets you access to our entire bonus episode catalog, as well as every regular episode, one full week early. Access to all of our side series that are currently ongoing and our back catalog of those as well. Gets you e-books, audio books, first dibs on live show tickets and merchandise when they're available, and also gets you access to our Discord, which has turned into a lovely little community. So go to patreon.com slash lions led by donkeys
00:33 and join the Legion of the Old Crow today. Hello and welcome to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, the only military history podcast in the entire known world. I'm Joe. With me is Nate. Tom has yet to be released by the denim samurai. He keeps getting released and getting recaptured. It's a Princess Peach situation.
01:13 Nate, how you doing? I'm doing pretty well. When I think of the denim samurai, I always think of the denim samurai would be wearing jinko jeans and the embroidered illustration on the jinkos would be a picture of the denim samurai himself, much like Bernie Mac with jeans with his own face embroidered onto them. Now, of all the bad things I can say about Bernie Mac and he deserved, that's not one of them. That kind of rules. I mean, I have one of the dumbest, most niche jokes that I ever attempted to workshop for a podcast related to a Bernie Mac bit. And it's just, if you get all of the references, it'll just be marginally funny. But maybe you'll like it. You've seen the series Chernobyl, right? Yeah, of course.
01:52 You've seen, I think it was the original Kings of Comedy. Very long time ago. Bernie Mac has the bit about pull my shit out, the whole room get dark. Yeah. Yeah. And I one time was like, yeah, you know, I'm on a different energy for me. It's like, pull my shit out the whole room, go, vnumanya, vniemanya. Yep.
02:08 I got a laugh out of you. There you go. You know, you only have to have 18 different layers explained for you. And then I was like, wow, that's really how jokes are supposed to work, right? Jokes are the funniest when you explain them. Yeah, that's what I find. I'm not a comedian. I'm not Bernie Mac, nor do I have jeans with my own face on them yet.
02:24 But what I did have to do this morning was break into my own studio. Not the door. That would have been weird because you could probably break into this place with a solid shove. There's a fence that surrounds it and it has like a motorized gate. And the gate keeps breaking. It normally gets fixed in the same day. It has something to do with fuses. And I don't have control of the fuse box.
02:45 It's the adjoining building on the same property. So normally, I could just go through the front door of this place, which I also have a key to and go out the back door and tell the landlord like, hey, you need to fix the fuse again. But for whatever reason, the adjoining building is closed today. So I had to scale a wrought iron spiked fence from like some time. And it looks like the 1800s, but probably isn't. I don't know, though.
03:11 That studio is basically in an old character. marriage house. So maybe it is. It could be. So I had to make a choice today. Am I going to podcast or am I going to stab myself, but I'd have to go get a tetanus shot and successfully scaled defense. And thankfully, Dutch people don't like call the police when they see someone doing anything that could be a crimes. I feel like those sirens would motivate you to get over that wall. Right. I get over it in record time doing my own like NFL combine to get into the studio, especially because it adjoins a medical clinic. You'd think that someone would see me possibly breaking into a medical
03:44 clinic that they might think I'm trying to steal drugs, which has happened here before. And instead, at like rush hour in the morning when everybody on their way to work, like, nah, he's probably meant to climb that fence. Yeah, he's probably meant to climb that fence. Never mind those tactical jinkos and the Avenge sevenfold
04:00 t-shirt he's wearing. Oh, God. You know, I got myself in trouble with this at the live show, too. I'd actually have never listened to Avenge Sevenfold. I don't know what they're like. I know who they are, but I don't think of a intentionally listen to them. I've never intentionally listened to them. I've had them foisted upon me. Much like I made the joke about Jack Tashara, and that like he and his, his E-girlfriend would be trying to troll the feds and telling them like, oh, you can figure out
04:22 the story of why I did this if you watch this masterpiece anime called Boku No Pico, because that was the joke people used to make an internet. I knew it was something fucked up about it. I didn't know it was really fucked up. I just remember everyone would be like, oh, it's so obviously like a Rickroll style thing. I'm like trying to troll people into watching something that's going to disturb them. Yeah. Similarly, I would know if Avenge 7fold has like some horrible fucked up backstory, you know, like a, like, or sad backstory, like a Wayne Static died from drugs kind of thing.
04:48 If I remember correctly, one member of their band died, but I know Avenge 7fold as being the annoying, like shitty butt rock band that all of my coworkers listened to when I was in the army. Like, it's a very enlisted, coded band. That makes sense. Maybe that's why I just have heard of it kind of ambiently in the air. But yeah, after the. After the live show, Tom explained to me what that anime was.
05:10 And I was like, oh, man. This is what happens when you make jokes by basically picking up on references without actually knowing what you're talking about, is you make a joke that is it's thematically apposite, I suppose, but it's not saying what you actually want it to say. So my apologies, please don't go watch that show. Long story short, it's fucked up in exactly the kind of what you would expect. If I'm saying, this is an anime from Japan and it's really fucked up,
05:36 your imagination will fill in exactly what I'm saying, didn't know, and I'm sorry. So you know what I'm going to do? I'm only going to stay on topic from now on. That's the Nate promise moving forward. That anime gets the Nate stamp of approval. Oh, no, no. Speaking of anime, possibly, hold that thought for questions from the Legion.
05:54 Not that specific one. Yeah, I'm okay with not talking about it at all. But yeah, I just, this is one of those problems as being somebody who I know a little bit of an anime. My brother, like, downloaded shit. off fucking, like, Usenet. You had to, like, assemble the videos, multiple files. Oh, yeah, I had to do that, too.
06:11 To watch anime, to watch, like, Evangelion in the early 2000s. And so, but I wasn't really into it. And so I just didn't really pay much attention. It was either that or buy them, but I had no money. So, yeah, of course, I'm pirated that shit. I just recall that if you could buy them back in those days off, like, online stores, it was really expensive. And so I just knew about it, but I just remember people making specific jokes where it was,
06:31 like, you know, in the same way of getting people to open goatsie or whatever. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. I told the story at the live show that I got banned from the adult swim forums for jump-scaring people with a lemon party. I got banned from the something alpha forms for posting Goatsey in the general bullshit forum. And I didn't understand why. And then it was like, oh, the other rules say you can't post. Like, you know, you have to post only work-safe images in these threads unless it's like specifically targeted, you know, saying that it cannot be work-safe.
06:56 And a dude pulling his ass open really wide. It's definitely not work-safe. So that depends on the job. That is true. That is true. There are probably some jobs for whom it's part of the training curriculum, actually. I mean, I've certainly had jobs as long as I didn't open that on my official work computer, I'd be fine. Looking at you, Army and Fire Department.
07:13 But, Nate, actually, speaking of something that might be tangentially related to Goatsy. Oh. Today we're talking about the Anglo-Manapur War. Because people often like to think that throughout the histories of a growing empire, it kind of looks like a strategy game. Invading armies come in. The map gets painted. The people inside neatly fall within these new borders. of whatever imperial power showed up on their front door.
07:40 And in reality, imperialism rarely looks that way. Instead, as longtime listeners of the show probably already learned from other past episodes, empires are more like scavengers. It's more like death by a thousand cuts. They might fight wars of conquest, but they're just as likely to pick apart a larger body piece by piece, conquering large populations of people one chunk at a time, turning people against one another, leveraging old grievances, slowly wrapping them up in treaties and stripping away previously existing independence for temporary gains against hated
08:18 rivals. And before too long, eventually, and sometimes without even the knowledge of the colonized people, they find themselves under a foreign flag without any real means to fight back. And that last part is kind of what today's episodes about. Now, obviously, the history The history of British colonization of the Indian subcontinent is a massive topic that we are not going to cover all today. Otherwise, I would have to put chains on Nate's door and we're not leaving this room for weeks. It would be somewhat frustrated, but I think I would be basically getting the toddler death penalty from my daughter for not being allowed to come out of the room and pay attention to her for weeks on end. I think that would be the harshest punishment. Yeah, and the toddlers yearned for the knowledge of the British colonization of the Indian subcontinent.
09:06 I think that any time that you ask a reasonable question and it gets responded to with an emphatic, loud, no, but also with a smile because they're just fucking with you, then they are actually embodying the spirit of the British management of their empire and specifically their colonization of India. I'm sort of like, can we have normal human rights? No. Do you want this or that? No. Why? No. No.
09:30 Since we clearly cannot make the longest contextual episode in podcasting history just to get to the late 8.000. 1800s in Northeastern India, you're just going to have to bear with me on this one. The Manipur Kingdom was formed over the course of several hundred years in northeastern India on the infall river, smack dab on the border with what would eventually end up being several different Burmese empires. And if this sounds bad and eventually would be, throughout Manipur's history and until the late 100s, Manipur is actually punching far above its weight class here. They invade and beat the hell out of the Burmese on multiple different occasions. But the 100 or so years of what could be considered Manipur a championship run would come to an end
10:10 thanks to what eventually kneecaps every power eventually. Slow degradation through infighting over the throne. It all started largely thanks to the same man who led Manipur during its golden age, King Garib Nawaz. He's considered the father of the kingdom who had once been in the Burmese in battle by disguising an invading army as a wedding party. Literal king shit. Yeah. Well, I'm going to be honest with you. I follow an account on Instagram. It's nothing but huge deck-based sound systems in basically very, very far east India right on the border with Bangladesh. So, long story short, these are for religious ceremonies and also for wedding parties.
10:54 And it basically looks like the Duf Warrior from Mad Max Fury Road. Yeah, shit rules. We're talking like the size of a major stage on like a festival stage, like rock show. huge, but they're all handmade speakers. So if that's a modern wedding party, I could see how you could possibly disguise an invading army as a wedding party, be like, we are just really, really, really, really into this wedding. And we're really into the celebration. I feel like an Armenian invasion could be disguised as a full normal Armenian wedding party. Because they're anywhere from like three to 500 people. These aren't actually cannonballs. They're just really, really big Golobjuman.
11:32 They're actually delicious. Arguably, the big. biggest weakness was that he had eight different wives and a ton of kids, which of course means there's a ton of young boys who at least had some claim to the throne as well as a woman who wanted to see their son get there. So when he eventually died, as was the case with most kingdoms, the throne was meant to pass whose oldest son first. This is not what happened. Instead, the king named his third son, Chitsai, his heir, due to the fact that his mother, was the chosen queen rather than the sidepiece who had his technically oldest son. She made him promise that even though other kids had been born to other women that were older,
12:18 it was her son that would be named king. Gereb Nawaz agreed and eventually abdicated in favor of Chitsai before his death in 1784, though his father would remain an incredibly important figure in the functioning of the kingdom afterwards. Unfortunately, he also did something that would fundamental, weak in his kingdom. Changed his religion from the native indigenous religion to Hinduism. He underlined this by burning all of the sacred texts of the old faith, which did not make him very popular with the more rural hill tribe people who were not so keen on conversion. The usual suspects converted, i.e. the rich and important families close to the throne, who converted,
12:57 you know, for power. But the rural hill tribes began to refuse to pay taxes, refused to supply meant to the king's army and just generally began to get upset. Really bad moves here. Grieb Nawaz's oldest son and the man who thought he was going to be king until he suddenly wasn't, Shay Sai was furious about being passed up. And it was something everyone, including the new king, was pretty well aware of. So out of jealousy, paranoia, a combination of the two, Chitzai exiled his brother and father from Manipur's capital infall within the year, and out of the kingdom entirely by 1750. As you can imagine, this made Chitzai pretty unpopular amongst the noble classes who were still very loyal to his father.
13:43 So before long, allegedly, Noaz, Shaii, and a group of nobles, now based out of Burma, planned to stage a coup and reenter the country. This may or may not have even happened, and it could have just been a product of Chitzai's paranoia. In order to preempt this real or imagined plot, he had his father and older brother, brother murdered by a group of mid, led by his own son. When word of his involvement of the murder of his own father spread, Chitsai himself was kicked out of the throne by his younger brother Barat Sai, who was in turn kicked from power by his nephews, Moramba and Bagachandra, who would then take turns in a kind of power sharing agreement due to illness with one of them.
14:25 Chitsai, always the shitsir, went into exile in neighboring Kachar and began to appeal to the British there to support him in retaking his throne. As you can imagine, everything I just said does not generally lead to a strong, unified, and prosperous kingdom. Well, no, you've got what sounds like a significant number of pretenders to the throne in fighting, so on and so forth, murder, exile, you're kind of scheming vizier, general ambiance. And then they're like, hey, foreign power that really wants to control the entirety of this region and is already here doing that mostly. You want to come help us? Yeah, you never want to end up being the guy standing at the pile of dead bodies with scheming nephews and everybody being mad at you and the British at the
15:11 front door. You want one or the other, not both. Instead, I'm imagining how this could have gone. If they had had cognitive behavioral therapy at this time, then maybe we could have like there could have been, maybe there could have been some grievance settling. Some advanced mediation practice could take place here. You know, maybe this could actually be a kingdom of the contented nephews. Imagine. I'm the local Manipuri royal mental health advisor and nobody is listening to me. I'm very, very frustrated that people aren't doing mindfulness. I mean, actually, they're probably doing mindfulness of a sort given religious practice in Hinduism, but you know, it's not the right.
15:43 It's mindfulness to be more of a hater. It's helping you fucking, it's sharpen your hater blade, you know. In fact, you'll be able to wield multiple blades of being a hater at the same time. There was a guy once who was a trade unionist in Britain who said, like, I get up really early in the morning because I used to get up an hour earlier every day just so I could hate Thatcher for one more hour per day and then now Thatcher's dead, but I still have to get up early because I'm just used to it. It's like that. But for being a hater about the other nephews who think that they should be king. Yeah, for any people out there scheming to create their own dynastic lineage in a local
16:13 kingdom, a good way to not do that is have a full football team of people that can claim the throne. Keep it to like one to three tops. I think that it's one thing if you're just like, no, I just, I just want to have a big family. That's one thing. But you got to set up a sort of order succession, you know what I mean? A succession of command, if you will. It's got to be, I actually personally think that there should have been some sort of test of skills to allow all of the nephews to compete. I know they're not nephews.
16:41 They're actually sons. They're half-brothers, so on and so forth. But I like thinking of them as nephews instead. It can't just be a show of strength. It's got to be something else. It's got to be a... Kabati. Have them play Kabati and the winner becomes king.
16:53 And it has to be a competition of bards. They have to, they have to, they have to come. compose songs and verse. It's probably better. Yeah. Yeah. You want the guy who could spit the best bars to become king. I think that the person who could make up the funniest skid on the spot is probably
17:07 the best observer of the situation. Oh, no. You want like whose line is it anyway, but the guy who wins is king of the country? Yeah. I mean, hailing proudly from a country that loves to make a game show host president, I think that there is a way in which like it's already been reified into the political order. So maybe they could do it better than us.
17:25 introducing whose king is it anyway. Now, worse still, while Manipur is in freefall, the Burmese were on their way up. After getting their teeth kicked in by Manipur a few times, the Burmese had spent the years afterwards becoming probably the best connected independent state in the region via their port in Rangoon. They're like, we've got the strongest tea on earth and we are drinking so goddamn much of it. We have impossible energy levels. Our bowels are really highly functioning.
17:52 I'm so regular. You can't even comprehend. Just you wait. Despite interference from the British East India Company, France was shipping them modern weapons like muskets and cannons, and before long, Burma invaded and conquered Manipur entirely, beginning what would become known as the Seven Years of Devastation, which brought all of the things a name like that entails. Yeah, I was going to say, you typically don't call it the seven years of devastation when it's
18:17 like, things were chill. Yeah. In general stuff stayed the way you liked it. You know, it was comfortable and relaxing. We all learned a lot about ourselves. In our regional dialect, devastation actually means golden age? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's devastation of bad things.
18:33 Yeah, exactly. Then Bagachandra joins Chitzai and Kachar and also begins to appeal to the British for help. So now the British governor there has two different guys appealing to the throne in a place that's been conquered by the Burmese. It got to the point that the British had a meeting, deciding which one of these guys to support and decided that, you know, Chitzai killed his own. Dad, he doesn't really seem like a reliable guy to do business with. Maybe we should throw our way behind this Bagya Chandra guy and with any future plans that we might have. At this point, the Burmese were the most powerful nation in the region. That isn't the British East India Company. And they continued to march and invade Assam, with forward elements of the Burmese military crossing into
19:17 Kachar, which was a British protectorate. This is an era of British governance in India through the East India Company, with the power stemming from what was known as the Bengal presidency, with its capital in Calcutta. The British responded by sending soldiers to the protectorate, but with the Burmese seeing war with the British as a chance to expand their power in the region, and the British seeing it exactly the same way, as well as a way to counter French influence in South Asia, nobody was going to back down from what was about to blow up into the first Anglo-Burmese war in 1824. Now, the war itself is incredible. interesting, it becomes the most costly war that the British had fought in British India. It leads
19:59 to the slippage of East India Company power and control and even includes a British amphibious landing in Rangoon. I absolutely plan on covering it in a series at some point in the future. The Manipuri government in exile, I guess we could call it, quickly throws their lot in with the British, promising help throughout the war if the British would free their kingdom from the Burmese. and of course give them piles upon piles of guns in which to do it. Chitzai, in his anger about being overthrown and then told to fuck off by the British, joins the side of the Burmese. Manipuri volunteers become what is known as the Manipuri levy, commanded by Bagheacandra's son,
20:39 Prince Gambier Singh, and seconded, of course, by British officers who also lead all of the training. By 1826, Manipur is freed, Gambier Singh is named King, and then things get a little complicated. Manaport isn't folded into the so-called princely states. The proxies that the East India company had popped up in India. Instead, it's given total independence. At least, that is what their treaty said at the end of the war. More on that in a second. But the British did leave Maniport independent for a reason. The Burmese weren't completely defeated yet, though their power as an empire had been checked, and they were now in the era of terminal decline. There was a possibility of a future invasion and war against the Burmese, or at the very least, some kind of
21:28 border conflict. So the British left the Manipur Kingdom in place as a buffer zone. Like if a war happens, we can fight it in Manipur, and it doesn't hurt anything we've invested in. Because of this relation, weapons and officers continue to flow into Manipur to turn the levy into a standing army that could serve the British goals of checking the Burmese should they show up in town. Even if the Manipuri didn't really seem to know or understand that. Or at best, they just decided not to acknowledge it. With this new power, thousands of trained soldiers and modern weapons, they were able to expand their own borders and oppress the populations that maybe weren't a huge fan of Gambier Singh. Within a few years, the kingdom was more stable than it had been for years before the Burmese invasion.
22:14 By 1835, a deal with the Brits and the Manipuri was made that granted Manipur more lands, but now a British political agency had to be opened in the kingdom. Think of that as kind of like an embassy that the British would open in a country that they do not actually consider a country. It's all in good fun. They can pretend as needed. Yeah, like if they gave you an actual ambassador, that means they respect your independence. They need to deal with you in somewhat equal footing. When you get given a political agent, it's like, nah, that guy's there to fuck with you. He's here just to make sure that they know what's going on so they can continue.
22:50 to direct it towards what's going to serve them best. Exactly. Yeah. The main goal of the agent in charge was to make sure the Manipuri didn't kick off a full-scale wall with the Burmese, keep an eye on anything that could challenge British influence in the kingdom, most importantly, the French, and leverage the Manipuri army into assisting with several British campaigns in the region to put down their own opponents. The political agents would also heavily influence the line of secession, though that was not
23:17 an official part of the treaty, as you can imagine. It's more of an implication kind of situation. Over time, the British would fight more wars against the Burmese, and eventually in 1885, the British would annex Upper Burma, meaning Manipur, was no longer needed as a buffer state between the British and a possible Burmese empire. As a result, the weapons, the trade, and everything else coming from the British, immediately dried up. Whoops. And that's the point, right? Then you strangle them off until they're hopeless and they have to ask you for more help. We're like, well, yeah, we'll give you more help, but we're going to need you to sign this. You got britted.
23:53 Yep. And like in all cases that are very, very similar to this one, the Manipuri were not left with much of a choice. It's either get destroyed by the Burmese, because the seven years of devastation is very brutal, or work with the British and hope for the best. You know, it's not necessarily a unified theory of fuck that guy over there moment. It's more of a going back years and years in the past of our episodes. It's more of a prelines and dick situation. Yeah, I mean, it's like, you are, you, you have officially played yourself and they've just kind of rendered that official, rendered that, you know, certified.
24:33 You are now in a situation where you can either be a vassal with almost no autonomy or agency or worse. And that is possibly coming. At this point, the kingdom is run by three brothers. The king was Surichandra, the heir to the throne was Kula Chandra, and the commander of the military was Chandra Kurdi. Though his name is also sometimes written as Tikan Drajeet, most of the time that I saw was written as Chandra Kurdy, so I'm going to go at that.
25:02 Amongst the British, they liked Chandra Kurdi the most. He had helped with several campaigns in the years before. He was close friends with the British agent in Imphal, the capital, a guy named Frank Grimwood, which is just the most villainous name he could have in the situation. Yeah, come on, man. It's like Frank Grimwood,
25:20 uh, yeah, this is either Weinsberg, Ohio, you know, Sirwood Anderson, fucking like everyone living a grim ass life or this guy is a villain. Yep. And Chandra Curti had probably benefited the most from their relationship with the royal court
25:35 because his political power is, of course, based a little bit on blood, but mostly because he commanded an army of several thousand. people. Once the British withdrew their pipeline of support, Chandra Kirti got pissed, but this was hardly the only reason he was getting sick of the British and his brother, Surah Chandra, as king. Surah Chandra was weak and really had no respect from anyone, including the British. The British, writing at the time, called him, quote, fat and ugly with a face
26:03 scarred by smallpox. Not to put too fine a point on it or anything. There had been multiple rebellions against him as well, which required more and more British involvement in the kingdom in order to put them down. Chandra Curti got pissed every single time this happened, because obviously if you gave the British an inch, they were never going to give it back. It's not even a if you give them an inch they'll take a mile situation. It's like if you let them in, they're never leaving, but you have to invite them in this case like a vampire, which Frank Grimwood, solid vampire name. This also brings us back to the original treaty that granted Manipur independence. To the British, the treaty very clearly made Manipur a particular.
26:42 The thing is, the treaty did not expressly say that. So the Manipuri ruling class believe they were still an independent nation. As the kingdom grew weaker under Surah Chandra, the British made more demands. Explicitly demands of changing internal government policy. Now, you never have to hand it to the British, but some of these stages are good, like abolishing slavery and trying to get rid of the caste system. Yeah, yeah. But they also wanted to change trade reform. They wanted the government to pay the British for their protection, like help pay for the garrisons. They wanted to have a say in who was going to become king next, things like that. The British political office in infall also continued to grow, which in turn brought in more people, and then the office
27:30 demanded the rights to more land. This is what was known as the residency system. Effectively, it's the same rules as that an embassy follows today, i.e., everything within the embassy walls is the sovereign territory of whoever's embassy it is, right? Anybody who's ever had a deal with an embassy knows how this works or happens to live in a city where there's a lot of embassies. However, the British residency or embassy in this case grew to massive proportions. So they're just swallowing up the capital city and then once they put down the wall like, oh, well, this is technically Britain now.
28:05 Yeah, that comes as a bit of a slight of hand feeling like, oh, I thought we were a sovereign nation and nope. Like this studio is down the street for the British embassy here in Dada. And it's like if suddenly I shoot up to work tomorrow, like, sorry, mate, can't come to work. this is British territory now. Yeah. Yeah.
28:22 I mean, it's interesting because I live in a city with a lot of consulates because this isn't the capital. And it's like, it's a lot less officialized, but it's still, you know, one of the consulates is for the North Korean government, actually. Yeah, we have one of those as well. That's a great big palatial estate with walls and such. And I'm like, I can only imagine how much cigarette and alcohol smuggling is going on in there. And stuff that would probably make for the topic of a lion series, the one we don't laugh at.
28:49 We have a North Korean embassy in town or a consulate. I'm not sure which one. And it's actually kind of shitty. It's kind of funny in retrospect. Switzerland doesn't officially have a capital. But like insofar as you need to have a capital and have embassies and shit, they're all in burn. Because that's just, yeah, technically speaking, that's where the head of the government is. But like, yeah, there are tons of consulates here, though, as well.
29:08 And or, yeah. some sort of mission, whatever. And so, yeah, I don't know if that counts as sovereign territory, but it's not 1830s and, you know, the sort of borderlands between the British Empire and India and Burma. So, yeah. Yeah, embassies tend to function less like an ooze these days. Not everywhere, but most of the time. It's like the creep in Starcraft. It's like, you know, the embassy is basically where the Zerg spawn at. Yeah. Yeah. Chandra Curti saw all this for what it was. This is a destruction of the kingdom's freedom, its sovereignty, and its right to rule itself. Whereas it seems, Surichandra didn't really care as long as he remained on the throne.
29:48 Finally, in 1890, Chandra Kordi launched a coup, confronted Sir Chandra and told him to abdicate or die, and then place Kola Chandra on the throne. So respect to him for keeping the line of secession. He did not mean to become king. Surah Chandra then decided, you know what, you got a good point and he abdicated and ran over to the British residency and asked the British for help to reclaim his throne. This put the British in an interesting place because they liked Surah Chandra, but mostly just because he was pliable. He lacked the power needed to hold his position. He lacked the power needed for any kind of stability, which even imperial powers do enjoy. They figured if they just forced him onto the throne, this shit would just happen again. Like someone else would come by and kick
30:35 this weak fucker off the chair. But they also didn't want to leave Chandra Curti in a position of power because it might give other people the idea that the Brits would be cool with coups and their protectorates, which of course they were, but only if they planned them. Yeah, only if they were the ones making them happen. Yeah. Yeah, you are not allowed to do that. Only were allowed to do that. So they agreed to recognize Kola Chandra as king, noting that Surichandra had legally abdicated and Kola Chandra was the recognized heir. So like, Well, if we squint really hard, this is technically legal. I'm just going to say it out loud.
31:10 You really don't want to be in a situation where the English, or the Brits, but the English in particular, we're like, if you squint really hard, this is technically legal. Yeah, I agree. And the British didn't really know a lot about Kola Chandra, other than he was apparently really good at polo and he was jacked. I mean, I feel like that's enough to advance in the British officer class. Yeah, I mean, being good on a horse, you know, looking like you're on the 18. late 1800s version of trend.
31:37 Like, yeah, it's king material. Why not? Why not? You look, you're eagle. You can ride a horse around and hit a ball with a mallet. You know, you can play horse croquet. Really, really good. It'd be more impressive if he was good at water polo, in my opinion.
31:49 Yeah, I mean, water polo requires basically every muscle in your body because it's so against nature. So it's just one of those things where, I don't know. I can't imagine that those guys were, you know, now it is very funny to imagine just how sunburned British officers in India. would get if water polo was a thing nonstop. There's the nephew challenge. Like 10 v. 10 water polo.
32:10 You're right. Yeah. You're right. And I mean, you know, chances are good if they're all from this region that like they're not going to, they're not going to get skin cancer immediately. And, you know, maybe they'll have adapted to it. So yeah, you figure out who is best at the sport of fighting others while fighting water and its desire to drown you. Yep. And do it in a river.
32:32 That'd be fun. Oh, yeah. I mean, in a way, that I can also help you with the nephew problem because you just subsequently have fewer and fewer nephews each time you have a competition. Exactly. You got to stack the nephew deck. However, they agreed to recognize him as king under the condition that Chandra Curti be stripped of his status as commander of the military and set into exile. Calcutta then dispatched James Wallace Quinton, the chief commissioner of Assam, along with 300 Gurkha soldiers, as a guard to go to infall and deliver the decision to Frank Grimman. whose job would be to give the news to the new king. Grimwood invited the king and Chandra Curti to a formal meeting,
33:10 which would actually be a trap. Grimwood and Quentin both agreed that Chandra Curdie would probably not accept exile without a fight. So their plan was to invite him to the residency hall, post Gurkhas at every exit, and then arrest him. However, there are like three different languages that play here and nobody speaks L3. So it took time for the British to translate things into Manipuri, into English and Nepali. By the time the two brothers showed up to the residency,
33:37 the trap hadn't been set yet due to translation problems, so they were told to wait outside. But several Manipuri workers inside of the residency got a glimpse of the armed soldiers waiting in very strategic places, kind of assumed something was up, and they ran to tell Chandra Kurdi. He made an excuse that he was simply too sick to stand out and wait in the heat of the day, so he went back to his palace.
34:02 I love that idea. Like, hey, sorry, we're kind of running behind on the dress rehearsal to kill you. We left our interpreter at home. Yeah, yeah, sorry. There's just a whole lot of stuff that's just kind of not clicking right now. Everyone's got to kind of go through their emotions on exactly where they're going to stand when we kill you when you walk in the room. And PowerPoint hasn't been invented yet to help out. They don't have a sync matrix.
34:25 They don't have Excel. When the British summoned the brothers again, only the king showed up. The Brits sent more messengers to Chandra Curti, who asked to be excused because he still wasn't feeling well. The British agreed, rescheduled the meeting until 8 a.m. the next morning, saying at that point they assumed he would probably be feeling better, and also attendance was now mandatory. This also didn't work. And Grimwood, a guy who has known Chandra Curti for years, knew the guy was not only faking it, but certainly was not going to respond well by being told by the British that you have to show up and talk to us. us. This is like the world's most tactical application of having a tummy ache. I faked being sick multiple times to get out of shit, especially school when I was younger. I have never been this
35:10 dedicated. And I never had like the violence of the state being brought against me for it. It's mandatory you show up. You know, we've got a no skipping policy. You need to come here so we can kill you. Yeah. You are a guilty of truancy of your own ambush. Yeah, I mean, quite frankly, like the idea of the state wants to kill you for being true. It's like, sorry, Kamala Harris didn't win the presence. That didn't happen. So Grimwood, who knows exactly how this guy works
35:38 and thinks, decides that he's just going to go and talk to him in person two days later. Grimwood sees something going on at the palace. Manipuri soldiers had gathered in the thousands and it moved into palace grounds. Guns, ammo, and supplies had been gathered, and grimwood knows this only would have happened if Chandra
35:54 Curti had ordered it to. Chondra Curdie then fully leans in to being sick because when he goes to meet Grimwood, he's brought down in a stretcher. He's not sick. He's completely faking it. Gabe, totally on point here. I respect it. Not only does he have thousands of soldiers very clearly proving his point. He's like, I'm going to hit him with the I'm too weak to walk thing. And Chandra Curti is a bit older, but he's not like a frail guy by any stretch of the imagination. Grimwood tells him, look, man, I know this isn't what you had planned, but just surrender. the exile will only last like two or three years
36:31 so the British could prove a point then you can come back home and your brother can promote you again in fact the exile can be in Calcutta will pay your rent at a different palace the whole time and then we can all just pretend you didn't muster your whole army
36:48 to stand on the other side of this palace we're willing to forget all of this happened Chandra Curti tells Grimwood to fuck off I think I would have taken the deal I 100% would have taken the deal. I mean, you know, hindsight, 20 and 20 and all, but that's a pretty sweet deal. I mean, I'm just, to me, it's like, we're paying you to fuck off and we're going to pay your rent in a palace where you can, you know, explore your passions to your heart's content. Even just, hey, we're going to pay your rent.
37:14 Well, you can fuck off. That sounds wonderful, quite frankly. Yeah, doesn't it? Yeah. The classic, I'll give you 20 bucks to fuck off. And he's like, no. Yeah, but we're going to give you three years of your rent paid living in a palace just to be like, and then you can basically come back and do what you want to do when you're done. You just get a three-year sabbatical.
37:27 all expenses paid. Yeah, it's just a holiday. Luxury. Yeah. That's the thing. You know, it's like the Simpsons where you could buy a house like this and have two cars on a blue collar salary back then when they made the cartoon. Yeah, in the 1830s, this is just, this is just normal.
37:40 They would just offer you a three-year sabbatical all expenses paid in a palace in Calcutta. Now people are like, you know, they watch Fight Club and they're like, man, man, why is he so angry his apartment rules? Imagine if you were fight club was set in the 1830s in Manipur. I am Jack's 99th nephew. I've read a few things by Manipuri. historians. Of course, you could check out everything in the sources and the show notes as always. And the generally agreed upon stance here is that he was bluffing. He didn't want to fight,
38:08 but he also assumed that the Brits didn't want to fight either and thought that if he was just kind of an obstinate dickhead, they would back down. This is an example, though, of where you really do need to have some degree of subject matter expertise with your enemy, because if there is any one thing that you need to know about the British, it's that when push comes to shove, they are, in fact, willing to die on what appears like the stupidest and most counterproductive hill possible. They will do it. They will actually do it. He should have known that. He should have known that. He had this much familiarity with Grimwood, with all of the British agents, etc. You've got to at some point pick up on their personality. Like, guy who will go full sovereign
38:51 citizen because he refuses to like fix a crack tile on his front entryway. Like that's them. That's how they are. Fast forward six years and he shoots himself in a motel room as the ATF closes it. It's interesting as well because, and we're not saying that in case anybody is getting this twisted in some way saying that, uh, you know, the British were in the right here. Obviously, they are not. No, of course not.
39:13 Why the fuck are you in India, Brits? Out. Go. But he won effectively. He put his brother on the throne. he got rid of the brother he didn't like and now he could just go away for three to five years whatever than come back.
39:26 Instead, he's hoping to double down and also keep his sweet palace, which we'll talk about the palace in a little bit as well. But Grimwood goes back to Quentin and explains that Chandra Curti will come around eventually. He just needs a cool off and understand that they have no intention
39:41 of kicking his brother off the throne and all will be cool in a little while. Which makes sense. Grimwood knows him. Chandra Curdy does have a bit of reputation for being a hot head. Says that he'll chill, just give him some time, however much time he needs, and he'll come out. Quentin, on the other hand, who doesn't understand any of the players on the ground in Manipur at all, says no.
40:04 After King Colah Chandra refuses to officially demand his brother's appearance, fearing that if he did, it would look weak. Quentin ordered that Chandra Curti be brought in by force. In total, British authorities in Manipur had only 400 soldiers. 300 that Quint had brought with him and the hundred that were already at the residency as guards. And they're all under the command of a guy named Lieutenant Colonel Charles McDowell Skeen. Skeen understood that they are terribly outnumbered, but he was kind of betting in the same kind of way that Chandra Curry was. He assumed that if he showed up and was an obstinate dickhead, the Manipuri would back down. He also assumed that the British trained Manipari soldiers wouldn't
40:50 fight them. And even if they did, it had been decades since they'd been supplied any weapons or modern training. They're armed with a collection of old muskets, very old brass cannons, and of course, traditional weapons like swords and spears. But my personal favorite was the Arambi. This was a feathered dart, normally dipped in poison, either from a snake or a mixture of toxic plants and then chucked at a target by a traditional manipari horseman. Muffer got poison darts. They've got dart throwers. Yeah.
41:24 Poison darts. You guys are in a climate where if an ant bite you, your arm falls off and these guys have trained dart throwers on horseback. Yeah. And if one gets you, you're going to die. There's no anti-venom to the shit. Facing them would be the standard Gurkha unit of the day. The Gurkha soldier's fighting ability is something that is legendary and admittedly that is for a
41:45 good reason. A lot of this is because, quite simply, thousands of young Nepalese men train their entire young lives just to go through a selection process that is more rigid, brutal, and unforgiving than even most modern-day special forces go through. By this point, the selection process of Gurkhas joining the British East India Company and then, of course, the British Indian Company and even up until modern day, the British Army, had been going on for the better part of a century. So this is a tradition through and through. Your average Gurkha soldier in a line unit is not average. And we're not saying that creating an imperial feedback loop of militarism in exchange for a life of a benefits
42:26 package is a good thing. We're just explaining what they are for the context of this episode. Have you ever been to Nepal? I have not. No. I have to visit a friend of mine who's Nepali, who was a Gurkha. I believe NCO and actually became an officer in the Nepali army. And I'll give you an anecdote about his life.
42:42 He, Nepal is an incredibly beautiful country. It's also very, very, very mountainous. I mean, it's where Mount Everest is. It's in the Himalayas. It's very rugged. It's very, very poor. He told me when he was a kid, his cousin in another village had a Nintendo and a TV and he had had Contra.
42:57 So he'd go over to his house after school every day that he could. And it was something like four or five kilometers over rugged terrain each way to play Contra and then come back every night and then do everything he'd do for stores and then go to school. He didn't know about the Konami Code. He actually knew how to beat Contra without losing. losing a single guy. That's somehow even more impressive.
43:15 You only have three lives. He said he played Contra so much that he literally would dream about Contra, and he'd have dreams about the Contra music, and he'd sing, sing the contra, like, hum the songs while walking the distance. That was when he was a kid before he joined the Army. And this is in, he's my age. This was in the 80s and, you know, late 80s and early 90s. Imagine in the 1830s when it was far more rugged than these guys were in a far more,
43:37 in a military system that is far less adapted to the idea that you should. shouldn't kill trainees. That's what you're dealing with. I'm just saying. And we are aware of how horribly unfair modern Gurkhas are treated, especially within their benefit system. Yes. Not saying that it's good. I'm just saying that like if you're going to be in a situation where you were up against a military force that is trained like this, you should at least be aware of what constitutes the training and what these people's lives are like, what their prospects, like, what's normal to them. Yes. Because like, that's a particularly exceptional situation. They're the very dead. definition of hard motherfucker.
44:14 Yes. Also, Nepalis are like the nicest people in the world, so it's just very funny. Because it's just like, we found the nicest people on Earth and we have created like ultra killers. Yeah. It's just through weird military eugenics, we believe that these are warlike people. Now, on top of being very well trained, they're also very well armed. They had breach loading single shot martini Henry rifles that could be rapidly reloaded and fired.
44:38 We've talked about these before in depth during our episodes on the Zulu War. It does have some pretty serious problems, which is why it was not around in the battlefield in the world's armies for very long. Mechanically, it was a fragile weapon, but the real problem came from its ammunition. Its early cartridges were made out of very thin, cheaply pressed brass that could expand
44:59 with the force of firing and jam the rifle if they were firing too quickly, which, you know, happens during a firefight. You tend to want to fire quickly. Yeah. I'm going to give you this repeating rifle. Just don't repeat it too. quickly. Motherfucker, I thought that's what it's for. Be reasonable, but how often you
45:16 repeat it. Repeat with caution. Repeat with prudence. Sometimes the brass would become so fragile that the cartridge would just be torn in half when a soldier tried to extract it to reload. Residual black powder could easily build up and ruin the chamber. A lot of this was fixed with later changes in ammunition, but the gun was still terribly unreliable just from the ground up. The Gurkhas also had modern cannons, like the seven-pounder mountain gun, something that could easily outclass anything the Manipuri had. That being said, the numbers in this case are against the Brits, no matter what kind of weapons they had, unless, you know, you open some kind of time portal and dump close air support into their laps. This was not a fight anybody was looking forward to.
45:56 That's why Skeen and Quentin assumed that the show of force that they were planning would be enough to convince Chandra Curti to back down. Rather than a full-on assault on the palace, which I should point out was not just a palace. It had been built to act as a fort with a moat, strong walls and battlements. It was constructed with the idea in mind that one day it might be used against the Burmese in a future invasion. This is not like a sick mansion. This is a fort.
46:23 So on March 23rd, 1891, about 150 Gurkhas marched up to the gates of Chandra Kurti's palace, demanding his surrender. Quinn, assuming that everything was going according to his very stupid plan, was quite shocked to watch as thousands of Manipuri soldiers stationed in and around the palace opened fire on him with muskets, cannons, and poisoned fucking darts. More soldiers are quickly rushed in to support them, and the Gurkhas do eventually fight their way into the palace somehow, because these are hard fucking dudes. Yeah, geez.
46:54 They're outnumbered somewhere like 20 to 1, and it doesn't really seem to matter. A British lieutenant named Lionel Brackenbury is killed via dart to the chest. Oh, Lionel Brackenbury. Yep, yep. The death of any good lieutenant, killed by point. always in dart in India. RIP Lieutenant Brackenbury. You got hit by a dart.
47:14 You said you loved playing darts. Well, God has a sense of humor, I suppose. Once inside of the palace, the Gurkhas realized that, oh God, we're kind of fucked, but also, Chandra Curti isn't even here anymore.
47:28 They, like, kicked open the door to his bedroom, but he was gone. You hate it when a guy can pop smoke out of a fortress, and then you're stuck fighting in a fortress. Fighting into and then out of the same fortress. It's like the frustration you feel when you go into a really crowded parking lot or a parking garage and there's actually no spots, then you have to extricate yourself. But there's poison darts. Yeah, the guy that takes your ticket and insists you still have to pay on the way out, even though you're in there for 20 seconds, is now throwing darts at you.
47:54 Exactly. Yeah. In fact, yeah, it's almost like a labyrinth of darts and old muskets and princeling who isn't there anymore. It's pretty frustrating. You know what the man of pari are missing? The Ryukyu and snake guys. That is true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they have a different version of, they have those guys, but those guys have to basically, like, procure venom from snakes to make the darts.
48:16 So they've really just done, like, an assembly line process. Snake assembly line? They did some business process development and decided that the snake venom was actually like a bottleneck they could resolve by harvesting the venom instead. So they added an additional step to, because it was the venom they wanted not the snakes. Because some of those snakes might be nice and not want to bite people. That would be kind of frustrating if the snake, if you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you had a gentle soul snake in the basket, and it just wanted to be someone's friend.
48:41 You just tries to nuzzle the target. That's not what we want. No, exactly. It's, uh, look, we're not trying to do a cozy found father drama here, Snake. We want you to kill him.
48:50 I like the idea of like, you know how there's the United Auto Workers, which of course, my family were all members because they're factory workers. But you work in the Snake Venom factory for the dark guys. So you have like the United Venom Workers Union of Manipore. You punch in, you bring your metal lunchbox to work every day. You harvest snake venom. You go home. You do shift work. Sometimes you get overtime. You make friends with the kindhearted snakes that don't want to bite people. Yeah, exactly. You know what? But it's okay. They can go off to the snake reserve. I like the, you somehow find yourself unintentionally breeding docile snakes because you have to weed out the friendly. You have to read out the gentle soul snakes and then on a long enough timeline. They establish like a parallel society of snakes. You have to create a breed of snake that enjoys being milked. but also like snakes produce venom through glands that then they're able to secrete it through
49:42 their fangs. And so it's like, you're basically snakes who enjoy going to the dentist. Yeah, exactly. Um, they, they have to enjoy it more than I do. Yeah, you have to have a freak snakes, basically. Bring the most freakish snakes you've ever seen. We're breeding the freakyest snakes you can possibly imagine. Not in that way. Maybe one particular factor worker met his wife at work. We don't know. Maybe. I just love the idea. It's like, we need snakes with an oral fixation, but not like that. The Manipari soldiers are quickly joined by armed civilians, and they begin advancing throughout the capital of Imphal.
50:14 The British forces are forced to retreat all the way back behind the walls of the residency, turning the whole mess into a siege. Quentin finally realized that he might be kind of fucked when Manipari soldiers start cutting telegraph wires, isolating the Brits for many help. By 8 p.m. on the 24th, with the residency under siege for hours at this point, Quentin sent a man under a white flag. ask for a meeting in order to bring the fighting to an end. What happens next is kind of lost to history, and of course, both the British and Indian history say something different about what
50:46 happened. The only thing anyone agrees upon is that Chandra Curti agreed to have a meeting. According to the British, it was a trap from the very beginning. And Quentin, Grimwood, and two other British officers are lured out from the residency and murdered immediately. In the Manipuri telling of this meeting, it was in good faith. And it just went back. And when the British were walking back to the residency, a mob of armed civilians ambushed them. Grimwood was speared to death on the spot, while Skeen, Quentin, and the other two were arrested, charged with attacking the palace, found guilty, and beheaded. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but since the Manipuri histories also agree that they
51:30 arrested, tried, and executed these men, it does seem that they're both kind of true. either way. Here's the thing. Big L on the part of the Brits, but also just knowing what we know about the way these things go, you have now kind of kicked the world's
51:46 most annoying beehive. Yeah. Yeah. This isn't a good thing to do if you intend on surviving the outcome. Yeah, see, because the snake process development could have told you a lot of lessons about short-term thinking. Yeah, you have to be nice to the British
52:02 and over time, breed them to have an oral fixation so you could extract their venom I mean it's entirely possible you could actually you could create a race of nice Brits yeah I don't know man
52:16 but in this case this is short short termism is really kind of run rampant here because by killing all of them you have now you have basically summoned a kind of like apocalyptic god known as Pith Helmet and like it's just going to happen the way I have figured this out
52:32 is Quentin and Chandra Curdy are very, very similar in personality. And that is, they're both assholes. And when two assholes slam into one another, one of them needs to back down, but neither of them did. Like, if Chandra Kurti accepts the exile, this doesn't happen. If Quinton accepts what Grimwood was telling him, this doesn't happen. There is a million ways out for both of them, but both Quentin and Chandra Kurti could only choose violence. Yeah, I'm just going to leave that one for the ages with a metaphor and the phrasing he chose there, but the listener knows my eyes did light up.
53:09 Yeah, when two assholes slam into one another, it's called a kiss. I was going to say something more along the lines of it. It's a very strange plot twist in the last act of Darren Aronovsky's Requiem for a dream, but that's just me. Also true. Also true. Either way, a pile of British officers are dead and a short time later, Manipuri forces start shooting at the residency again.
53:29 The people inside the residency, military and civilian alike, have no idea that the men who left for negotiations are dead. But after a few hours, it's quite clear that they're probably not coming back. Trapped and understanding they're completely on their own, Captain John Cowley decides to order a breakout in the middle of the night towards Kachar. And this somehow works. The best thing that anybody can kind of come up with is that the Manipuri let them leave because they recognize that massacring everyone inside was bad PR. But that also seems off-brand for everything else that's happened so far. And Captain Cowley saves everyone inside, including Grimwood's wife or now widow, I suppose, Ethel.
54:09 Because of course, her name is Ethel. It's the 1800s. My name's Ethel. I'm in a palace. I was kind of counting on a friendly, peace-loving breeding program to make this not happen. It has happened. Snakes are not going to save me. They're too nice. They're too nice. They're actually too nice. They've lost their ability to stand up to bullies.
54:28 there's a very good chance that they'd be found out or overcome on their march with the incredibly rough countryside. But as they got lost and turned around the forest, they ran into a relief force that had been sent from Kachar, who almost certainly saved all of their lives. While this was going on, Manipuri forces broke into the residency, burned everything to the ground, and Chandra Kurdi, Kola Chandra, and their other brothers and military officers, let a victory parade through the city, burning anything British they could find in celebration. The British commander in Tammu, Colonel Charles James William Grant, because he has to have a minimum of four names, got worried of what was happening.
55:06 Not knowing Quentin Grimwood and the others were dead and that the residency staff had already fled, launched a rescue mission with a massive army of 85 men on March 31st. This does kind of work somehow, if there was anybody left to save. Grant March for the town of Thubal, which was then defended by 800 Manipuri soldiers. This battle does not turn out the way you think it does, given the numbers involved. And unlike the fighting at the palace, it would force the Manipuri to confront the British in a mostly open field and without prepared defenses. Grant writes about the battle saying, quote, We opened volleys by section and then advance one section firing a volley while the other
55:44 rushed forward 30 paces, threw themselves on the ground and fired a volley, which the other section did likewise. So from his accounts, this all happens very quickly. They rapidly advance over the open ground with the repeating rifles, which the Manipuri have no answer for. In the Manipuri telling of the battle, it seemed like Grant's quick advance and attack caught them pretty much by surprise. So, caught on the back foot by organized volleys of breech-loading rifles,
56:09 Grant drove them from the town. But as soon as that happened, thousands of Manipuri soldiers joined in, quickly to try to launch a counterattack. But unbeknownst to these guys, the British and Manipuri alike, actually, Chandra Kordy and Kola Chandra had both fled the capital, fearing that it was only a matter of time before the British showed back up and killed them in revenge. So almost as soon as the Anglo-Manapuri War began, the kingdom of Manipur was totally without its senior leadership, forcing other military leaders just cobble things together as they went.
56:42 They had, in a way, conducted a self-decapitation strike. Hey, everybody always says, you know, you win the battle and lose the war, but what if you win the battle and flee the war altogether? Yeah, I mean, don't interrupt your enemy when they're making a mistake, I suppose. But definitely interrupt yourself if you're making a mistake. Yeah, it's for the best. You should probably do that. Soon, Grant is trapped at the town, finding himself fighting a reinforced Manipuri army of around possibly 2,000 men, including cannons, leading to something of a 10-day-long stalemate. The two sides exchange fire, but the Manipuri being much stronger, don't advance. They sent a messenger across demanding that, grant surrender, to which he said, I refuse until all Europeans held an infall are released,
57:29 at which point, he is informed that they're all dead. So technically, there were no Europeans in the capital anymore. You don't have any hostages to worry about. It's been slurred out for you. Yeah, I know you're here for the hostages, but would it change your mind if I told you that I killed them? They're busy with the war and all. Yeah. The British were already at work putting together a massive punitive army, drawing forces from Kachar, Kohima, and Naga, eventually launching a three-pronged attack, with each prong amounting to at least 1,200 men on April 20th. This was simply too much for Manipur to handle. Each axis of the British advance really only ran into token resistance. Devoid of central leadership, the Manipuri army really couldn't organize itself in a coherent way. Instead,
58:12 they were completely dependent on individual leaders trying to slap together whatever they could to stand in the way of a British army if they happened to find one. The final battle, and maybe the most remembered one in Manipuri history from the war, took place at Cam Jong Hill, where around 500 soldiers tried to stop an entire brigade of the British. Despite being outnumbered, outgun, and facing arguably the strongest army that they had ever seen, these guys withstood British artillery and rifle volleys and forced them to advance up the hill and fight over it at bayonet point. Manning the hill, along with the soldiers, were a lot of the last remaining senior military officers in the kingdom,
58:48 like Major Braja Bossai, who got shot in the leg and was captured by the British. The Brits demanded that he surrendered the rest of his men and then enter British serviced and within their proxy Manipur kingdom. Braja Bassai refused and was executed on the spot. Over 100 Manipuri died fighting on the hill that day before the British could finally claim victory. And the three British columns united together to march on Imphal and found it completely and totally undefended and pretty much deserted. They flew the Union flag over the palace,
59:22 the Manipuri Army was completely disarmed, and the search for the brothers began. It didn't take long to find Colichandra, who was deposed and then sent to the British penal colony in the South Andaman Islands, where he would remain until his death. He was replaced by the six-year-old Churichandra, who was a complete and total puppet of the British,
59:42 which I suppose is easy to do with you're six years old, right? Yeah, I mean, I suppose, I think being made king when you're six is sort of like, this is really cool. Now, what does a king do? It's like, happily, there are these dudes who keep getting sunburned who can tell you exactly what you're supposed to do, apparently. Yeah, well, just play with these blocks, kid. Don't worry about it. We got this. Yeah, you could ask your dad, but we put him on these islands in the Bay of Bengal. Don't worry about him. Don't worry about him or what goes on on those islands. Chandra Curti escaped the British for 16 days, and he was found disguised as a laborer
01:00:12 and trying to get the hell out of the kingdom. He and several other men who were charged with the murder of the British officials, found guilty, and executed. He and the other Manipuri leaders are celebrated as freedom fighters in Manipur to this very day. As for the kingdom, well, it was dead, swallowed by the same imperial system that had eaten its neighbors. It had become another princely state, controlled almost entirely by the British political agents. In closing, the captain that led the breakout from the residency and saved all the soldiers and civilians inside, was charged with gross neglect of duty in the face of the enemy
01:00:46 because he left without orders. He ordered a breakout without orders from his superior to do it. He was like, there were no other superiors. Lieutenant your orders were to die. Do you not understand this? He counted with, well, my superior got murdered, which technically makes me my superior.
01:01:02 That's how chain of command works. Like doing breaker Morant because he didn't get enough civilians killed? And he was saved thanks to Ethel Grimwood. Because after she survived, the event, events at the residency, she became something of a minor celebrity back in Britain. And it's kind of hard to celebrate the only woman in the residency if you convict the guy who saved her. So, charges were dropped. The end. Wild. All right. Well, you know what? Hauntology, we could have
01:01:30 seen a future where they have a selective breeding program for docile, nice brits. Yeah, I don't know what kind of venom you harvest from them. I assume it's just Pilsner. No, I was thinking something. It's like, What can you get from them? I don't know. Like, advice for tabletop gaming? I mean, I suppose that's a resource that can be extracted when we're at the other. I'm pressing this Britishman's teeth down to the cup and little miniatures are coming out. How do you think Games Workshop got created?
01:01:55 Anyway, this was fun, Joe. But, yeah, there are a lot of things in here. I just simply wasn't expecting. A horseman with darts with snake poison. Even without the industrial capacity we've joked about, just in general having that as like, oh, yeah, here's a unit class you've got specific. to manip for. Shit rules.
01:02:12 Dart horsemen. Yeah. I'd like to believe that there is, you know, inter-service rivalry between the dark guys who had snake venom and the dark guys who had toxic plants. My poison's better. No, my poison's better. Yeah, I actually just harvest something from nature. It does it?
01:02:26 You guys have to jack off snakes's teeth. Yeah. You have to orally jack off snakes. It's suss, bro. Oh, what? You want to touch a snake in its mouth all intimately? I just have plants that I caress. I'm a plant petter.
01:02:40 Yeah. That's what herbalists were traditionally called. Nate, we do a thing in the show questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us a question, support the show on Patreon. You heard the ad coming into the episode, unless you probably skipped it.
01:02:51 Just $5 a month gets you tons and tons of bonus content. It gets you every regular episode early, gets you bonus episodes every Wednesday, and it gets you our weekly lines up by a robot's episode every Friday with me and Tom, gets you Discord access, first dibs on live show tickets and merch, ebooks, audiobooks,
01:03:09 audiobooks, a possibly domesticated snake. Support the show, you'll find out. And you can ask us a question from the Legion in the Discord, which you'll have access to, or on Patreon. Today's question is, you are mandated to cosplay as a character from an anime or a video game. Who are you cosplaying as? I told you we'd come back to this. Oh, right. Oh, wow.
01:03:30 Hmm. Mine's easy, I suppose, going off of the general comments of my appearance. I'm going with guts. I might have to bulk up a bit. I feel like I'm depressed enough. I could handle it. That's a good one. I think, I don't have as much of depth and breadth on anime as you do, as I alluded to earlier
01:03:55 where I thought I was making a joke at the live show and I was making a completely different joke. I would say in terms of my physical appearance, my general demeanor, maybe this is a little bit aspirational. I think I am Sid from Final Fantasy 7. Sid, the guy who screams at people and says, sit your ass in your chair and drink your goddamn tea. Yeah, you could do that. He has a mustache too, so. Does he? I think he does. I could have sworn he does. If he doesn't, then I'm one of, I'm one of the evil brothers in Final Fantasy tactics, like a Dice Dark or... That's a very mustache heavy Final Fantasy. It fits the vibe, though. Yeah, I don't know.
01:04:31 Like, those are kind of like relatively minor characters, all things considered. Those are the best ones to cosplay. I was like, who are you? Like, oh, I'm the shopkeeper from Final Fantasy five. Yeah, I'm the passed out guy in the bar where you're at the tavern where you go to recruit people. My fallback would be, uh, we're watching it over on lines led by robots. I would be major Armstrong. He is bald. I'm getting there. So like, and he does have a mustache, which I don't have. So I would require some, some changes of my parts, probably blasting some trend as well. Uh, but I feel like I could pull it off. Maybe a better one would be, what if we pick characters for each other?
01:05:05 I pick one for you and you pick a you like based on, we know each other. Who would I assign you to be? And see, I wasn't going to think guts. I think, um, uh, I have a window into your emotional life. So I think you were the titular character in Vampire Hunter D. You're 10,000 years old. You try to do the best thing you can, but ultimately you just exist alone and you're really, really tall.
01:05:26 Is that too mean? I wasn't trying to be mean. I just, I haven't seen a lot of anime. So I'm trying to think, well, I feel like, Final Fantasy Tactics, is good for you. It's just that everybody in Final Fantasy Tactics is basically 19 years old except for like the minor characters
01:05:38 and door villains. You know, everything. Well, the point of these things, yeah, is it's always supposed to appeal to kids and like adolescents and stuff. But Rams of Bealv is an annoying little brat. Delete it annoying in a different way. I'm gonna go with,
01:05:50 you know, you have a mustache, right? You have, you could wear a wig because it requires long hair. Going with Masterasia from G Gundam. You could do Master Asia. But I only know G Gundam
01:06:00 from editing the episodes you guys did about it. It's for the best, man. Don't watch it. I know about the horse Gundam being piloted by a horse that's terrified and in pain.
01:06:12 It's a fucking awful show. It sounded fucking terrible. You guys sounded like you were really suffering. That's why we are only watching things we truly enjoy. I guess I could be Gendo Ikari is Shinji's dad.
01:06:25 Yeah, Gendo Akari. I'd really have to like see how you feel vibe-wise when you're sitting at a desk with your head. gently concealed behind your, your interwoven fingers to hit that vibe. But I feel like we could do it.
01:06:39 I feel like every time that I tell you to do something involving a technical process for like setting up equipment, but I have to do it on a remote call, then I am basically telling you to get in the robot Joe. Yeah, that's exactly. Yeah, you're right. You could play Gendo Ocari for sure. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So that's our question from Legion. Uh, feel
01:06:55 free to fill the comments with your opinions on who we could play based on if you have or have not seen us. Use your imagination. Be nice. Somebody once told me that from the life show last October that I looked like I could be related to Ron Swanson and I wanted to kill myself. So don't, don't say those kinds of cosplay. That's not terrible. It could be worse. Someone once sold me I had a face that looked like a foot. It stuck with me for like 10 years now. I'm sorry. You don't have a face that looks like a foot. Not at all. They're not
01:07:19 entirely wrong. You know, I don't say that. I actually think, uh, I think that if you were made into an anthropomorphic animal, you would be an, oh no, let's not go there. You'd be an incredibly jacked turtle. An incredibly Jack Turtle. Like a ninja turtle. Like a ninja turtle. But I feel like... I do love pizza. Yeah.
01:07:38 I would just something along the lines of if you bulked up to be guts, unless you use this special neck machine, your neck is long enough as is that if you didn't bulk up there as well, you would then have the affect of a gigantic Jack Turtle, but then your neck was kind of like long and not necessarily. Because the thing with guts is that like his neck starts at like the furthest extent of his earlobes. It just goes straight down. He just has traps, which I do not have.
01:08:01 have. Yeah, you know, I feel like I fit the general vibe of a Ninja Turtle. I like pizza. I'm friends with a lot of people that, you know, like hockey. Unresolved parental trauma. Yeah, I was also raised by a sewer rat. So, Nate, thank you so much for joining me here today. You are involved in other shows. Plug those shows. Yeah, so I'm in a band called Second Homes and our debut album is called Find a Way to Hate it. It's available on streaming everywhere. And if you want to actually buy it on band camp, you can do that. And we should be hopefully soon being able to announce that physical media, is going to be available for sale. I'm also the producer and co-hosts of Trash Shooter,
01:08:35 a podcast about the tech industry being dumb and the United Kingdom being not much better. And I'm the producer of Kill James Bond, a feminist film podcast that is very funny. So check all those out. They're all available with free content and bonus content on Patreon. So that sounds interesting to you. Please check it out.
01:08:48 This is my show. You've already listened to it. So thanks for that. Leave us to review and wherever it is you listen to podcasts. It helps us immensely, especially when it comes to planning live shows in the future. Check out our Patreon. And until next time,
01:09:00 Be nice to your factory snakes. Yeah, exactly. They actually want to please you. They're docile.
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