Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - *PREVIEW* The Battle of Shipka Pass

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

This is a preview, for the entire episode support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/109234313

Hey everyone, what you're about to listen to is a preview of a bonus episode that is available on our Patreon. If you like this clip, you can grab the whole episode, as well as years of other bonus content, at www.patreon.com slash lions led by donkeys. I feel like if young Bosnia had known they called it squirty cream, they wouldn't have ever... they would have found a common enemy. Yeah, yeah. Like, look, we understand that you stand against the Ottoman Empire, but we can't we can't ally with the squirty cream people Yeah, they would basically they would have they would have this like the the the Ottoman Bosnia Balkan handshake Just take over Britain and make them normal. I mean everybody knows Britain is canonically part of Albania The British the British rock up to Sarajevo and they're like, look, look, we can't work with you people. Get the fuck back in your saloons and drive your ass out of here.

Get the fuck out. Can't do it. But Brits don't want to admit it, but they have way more in common with Russians than they think in the sense of bland sauces basically a substitute for any kind of real culinary tradition and then also they really love doing economic restructuring on themselves like fossil fuels gas exporters Really really enjoy having an overseas presence in the strangest places Checkered checkered history with with some some some occupations of territories. Yeah, you know suspicious whenever you run into one of their nationals in Thailand

Yeah, you know suspicious whenever you run into one of their nationals in Thailand But for different reasons for different reasons like for Brits There's the joke and for Russians. It's like it's money laundering and finance crimes are like some kind of rogue extraction Industry like them are probably doing some weird Bitcoin operation in your Avon as we speak Now oh on as we speak. On June 15th, the Russians successfully crossed the Danube River, planning on advancing through the Bulgarian portion of the Balkan Mountains, with the plan of eventually marching rapidly towards the Ottoman capital of Constantinople. Obviously, these two places are not close together, but that was their plan.

However, the Russian army was under the command of a guy named Grand Duke Nikolai, who was the Tsar's brother. Nikolai was, let's say, not qualified for this position. He just... Damn, I hate a Russian Imperial nepo baby. You really think that they could embrace meritocracy at the Russian Empire, you know? It's never a good sign if you happen to be a Russian conscript, first of all, and second of all, if you're in the army led by anybody with the title of Prince or Grand Duke or any part of the aristocracy at all. Patriarch. Yeah, just all sorts of wild. Yeah, at least the Patriarch's army, you'd be riding into battle on like in

Bugatti's that were stolen from the Thai things or something. Like, don't get a fucking walk, it's fine. Everybody just dripped the fuck out. No guns, they've been sold. Yeah, on one hand your grandma is bathing with cold water for two years, on the other hand, I would say you have never seen as fly of an icon on wood as this. You thought- Jesus is one giant spinner on the Orthodox

cross. I was going to say, it's like religious devotion has allowed us to create an icon that is effectively the same as Paul Wall's grill. Look, we cannot confirm or deny that the patriarch of the Russian church at this point had a grill or not. We don't know that, but I feel comfortable assuming. I personally just like the idea of, you know, like someone goes back in time to hunt T-Rex's, like the Ray Bradbury story and steps off the path and crushes a single mosquito when we come back

and the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church is Paul Wall. Oh, MTV would have been a lot more entertaining or horrible. It's hard to tell. No, Grand Duke Nikolai, he decided he didn't want to march directly to the empire. He wanted a big battle to kind of fluff his record somewhat. So he pulled his army away from the road to Constantinople and began moving inland. Then Major General Joseph Gorko, great name. Look, the jokes write themselves sometimes.

Sometimes there's just names that hit perfectly, Gorko. Yeah, sorry, we bought the Kroger brand, Sebastian Gorka. the Kroger brand Sebastian Gorka. Prince Nikolai! Join me! Join me in the Balkan mountains! Famously a guy who called me the R word on Twitter and blocked me. When I found out that he was in the British equivalent of Army Reserve, but was an intelligence lieutenant and then posits himself as Mr. Human Special Operator, it's just like, you

were in the unit they made Dad's Army about. It puts things in perspective. Yeah. He was also in a weird Hungarian fascist organization. I'm pretty sure that the guy who did the video about like, what is the charge for eating a meal, a succulent Chinese meal, was also Hungarian. Are you touching my penis?

Get your hand off my penis. I'm pretty sure that guy was also Hungarian. And so in a way, like a sort of Anglophone Hungarian just creates a vibe where you invent a voice for yourself and like how it manifests is very different. You're either that guy who's arrested for constantly running out on checks in restaurants or you're Sebastian Gorka or you're Joseph Gorka, the Albertsons store brand, the Meyer store brand version of Sebastian Gorka.

You're doing a different voice. You're doing, for some reason, he can't do the sort of imperious British aristocratic voice so instead he just talks like a Dutch guy. Lishen up, you fucking prick. Imperious British aristocratic voice. So instead he just talks like a Dutch guy Listen listen up you fucking prick sure Major General Gorka was dispatched by the Russian army to make up for the the Grand Dukes fuckery And he quickly advanced into the mountains ignoring Nikolai who was telling him no come over here Like nah, I'm I'm actually gonna follow my orders because I'm not a Grand Duke or a prince,

and if I fuck up, I'm gonna swing from a rope. Now, there was one man on Gorko's staff, Prince Dmitri Surtalev, who previously worked as a military attache to the Ottomans, and reported to him that I'd completely know this area, and there's a pass that will cut through the mountains, they'll take them safely away from Ottoman lines and through the Konkhoi pass so it would get him around any Ottoman formations so he his soldiers and members of the Bulgarian Legion went on ahead the pass happened to be a

little more than a goat trail which was not exactly what you need to move a large army of thousands of men through an area, as well as wagons, artillery, things like that. Like guys, foot soldiers, infantrymen, et cetera, can single file it. Guys on horses, slightly more complicated. Wagon trains and howitzers and cannons and such, a bit more of a challenge on a goat trail.

And through them, I'm just thinking back to like hiking trails in Alaska where it's like, oh, it's just like a foot and a half of flattened out trail between two scree fields. And it's like, imagine doing that with a wagon train. Like now you just, it would be like, it would be the you have died screen from Oregon trail. Like you don't want that. Like Gorko rubbing his temples like, man, thanks a lot, Demetri. You really fucked me on this one, buddy. Yeah, exactly. God.

You know what? I left independent city all full of hope and somehow I managed to die before I reached the Klamath River. Real 90s kids. Klamath, sorry. Real 90s kids will know this. Your teacher was tired of you and just put you in the computer lab and said play Oregon Trail. Hello my public education system. Yeah, butthole has drowned.

It was deathly steep on one side and practically straight up on the other. Russian engineers were tasked to work around the clock to try to improve it, but only for it to still be too dangerous for horses to use. So they had to leave all their horses behind and soon Min became the pack animals, dragging all the wagons and all the cannons down the suicide trail. There's an exit to which it's like, I realized this is the role of military engineers in particular at this time, but can you imagine it's sort of like what you think you're going to be doing, like building fortifications or designing plans to like

sap and destroy military fortifications. And instead you just become the DOT for an advancing army. It's like, build us a highway. It's like, sir, it's basically like defying gravity already. It can't really be a road. We left all of our magicians back in Garrison. No, build I-5 on this goddamn mountain. Do it. Yeah. That's like, I should have stayed back as a shit shoveler or something.

And yeah, I mean, but at the end of the day, it's like, what you'll find in these stories that it always seems to be like a lot of heroism and daring do that just isn't really necessary. It all seems to stem from like a guy being like, oh, I totally know this area. And it's like, it turns out that he basically went on the 19th century version of an Ayahuasca camping trip there, but doesn't actually know it. I mean, it goes back to our episode on the raid on Dieppe, where a lot of the British officers planned their invasion ideas around from what they remember going on holiday to Dieppe. Which is arguably even dumber because this guy's at least a military attache to the Ottomans

in this general region. He wasn't just like, I don't know, on holiday. But yeah, Company A's assembly areas, the big ferris wheel, Company B's assembly areas, the changing rooms where the creepy guy hangs out, Company C, get ice cream.