Short History Of... - The Real Peaky Blinders

Episode Date: September 25, 2022

Between the 1890s and 1910s, the British city of Birmingham was in the grip of a gang: the Peaky Blinders. Their crimes – from stone-throwing and petty assault to murder – were unpredictable and senseless, and the police seemed powerless to stop it. So what’s the true story behind the legend that inspired the hit TV series? Were they really champions of the working class, their activities underpinned by codes of loyalty and morality? Or was theirs simply a reign of terror, marked by dishonour and violence? This is a Short History of The Real Peaky Blinders. Written by Luke Kuhns. With thanks to Professor Carl Chinn, social historian and author of Peaky Blinders: The Real Story For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is just after 9pm on Saturday the 22nd of March 1890 in the city of Birmingham, England. Factory worker George Eastwood is heading to the Rainbow Pub. Above him, the Victorian city skyline is a jumble of workhouses and warehouses pressed between factories that spew thick black smoke all day long. He passes under a pair of viaducts as cargo trains rattle overhead. Then, spotting the warm amber glow of the establishment, he makes his way inside. The landlord is doing a roaring trade. Eastwood orders a ginger beer and sits at the bar alone. Three men burst into the pub.

They're raucous, rowdy, and the atmosphere changes immediately as the other customers avoid eye contact with them. They're well known as gangsters, led by Thomas Mucklow, a mean-faced man in a bowler hat and wide-legged trousers. Mucklow orders pints of beer. As he waits, he catches sight of Eastwood's non-alcoholic drink and derides him for it. Eastwood tells him to mind his own business. It's a misstep that will cost him dearly. Mucklow is a violent man with a short fuse, and he doesn't like being told what to do. The gangster shoves Eastwood

and challenges him to settle it outside. But Eastwood's not a fighter, and he's not stupid. He declines, and after a tense moment, Mucklow sneers, takes his pint, and turns his back. A short while later, the pub breathes a sigh of relief as the men leave. Eastwood waits a safe interval, and then, after finishing his ginger beer, he sets off for home. and then, after finishing his ginger beer, he sets off for home. He's barely turned the corner before someone shouts out from the darkness.

A familiar voice. Then another. Eastwood doesn't even wait for the three men to emerge from the shadows. He just runs. Mucklow and his thugs catch up and grab him. They knock him to the ground, kicking him over and over, giving him no chance to get up One of the gangsters slips off his thick leather belt and wraps it tightly around his hand, leaving the metal buckle dangling The others step back as he swings it down over Eastwood's skull Eventually, there's a pause in the assault. Though he's dazed and bloodied, Eastwood seizes his opportunity and makes a break for it.

He runs hard, pushing through the pain. The place is a warren, but he recalls a shortcut. He makes a series of turns, scales a wall, and soon he's found shelter in a friend's house. He collapses in the front room. A bloody mess. Mucklow and his men know the streets just as well as he does. Outside the house, they shout threats, promising to finish what they started. But after an hour, they give up and go home.

With the coast clear, Eastwood's friend rushes him to hospital. He's covered in wounds with inch-long lacerations on his head. He even has to be tripanned, which involves removing part of his skull. He'll spend 24 days in a critical condition. The next day, the incident is reported in the local paper. Though crimes like this have been happening all over Birmingham, it's the first time the men responsible are identified as the Peaky Blinders. Between the 1890s and 1910s, the gang known as the Peaky Blinders had the British city of Birmingham gripped with fear.

Their crimes, from stone-throwing and petty assault to murder, were unpredictable and senseless. And in the face of their gang violence, the police seemed powerless. In the hit TV show of the same name, the gang are depicted as sympathetic rogues who bucked the system and lived by a strong sense of honor. They are dapper 1920s bootleggers, rigging horse races and making backdoor deals while paying the corrupt police to turn a blind eye. So what's the true story behind the legend? Were they really champions of the working class? How accurate is their image as a sophisticated mafia-like organization underpinned by codes of loyalty and morality? Or was there simply a reign of terror marked by dishonor and violence?

I'm John Hopkins, and this is a short history of the Peaky Blinders. By the 1890s, Birmingham has undergone an incredible recent transformation. After a clearance of its worst slums in the 1870s, a grand new thoroughfare, Corporation Street, has become a hotspot for trendy shopping. New parks and social spaces are created in what has become a major industrial hub. are created in what has become a major industrial hub. Thanks to this boom, in 1889, Birmingham is granted city status. But despite the cosmetic changes, the conditions faced by the working class are still relentlessly tough.

Professor Carl Chin is a social historian of Birmingham and the author of Peaky Blinders, The Real Story. Birmingham in the 1890s was one of the great industrial cities of England. We made buttons, we made pens, we sold them across the world. We made railway carriages, we made guns, we made jewellery. So whilst Birmingham was the best governed city in the world, whilst it was the city of a thousand trades, it was also a city of poverty and hardship. Almost half the population of Birmingham, which was then about 478,000, almost half of that number lived in badly built, in sanitary back-to-backs, where they had to share the minimum of facilities, an outside tap, outdoor toilets

shared by two or three families and much more besides. So poverty was rife. The poverty-stricken families create a dilemma for the elite of Birmingham. The Victorian middle and upper classes have a sometimes ghoulish fascination with the lives of the poor. In up-and-coming Birmingham, the class divides are only deepening, and attempts to impose order on the often chaotic, poorer neighbourhoods of the city have limited impact. Birmingham was a mostly Church of England working class city dominated from the 1870s by a non-conformist elite. They disapproved of people, young men, getting together on a Sunday, the Lord's Day, to gamble and play roughly.

Now, we've got to understand the demographics. 1860s and 70s, the population is mostly under 30 and they only have one day a week off. That's a Sunday. Many of them don't go to church. They gather on waste ground. They would have one lad on the back of another and fight another lad on the back of another. 1860s and early 1870s, there were still some middle-class people living in town. And when they go to church and leave in church on Sunday, they've seen these use. They put pressure on the new police force, which hitherto had been loath to act against working-class street culture, particularly the street culture of the poor. They put pressure on the police to act. And what we see in the late 1860s is that pressure of trying to put down the Pitchford Toss site, called a crusade in the Birmingham newspapers, leads to a violent reaction by the young men who begin to gather in gangs to fight the police and to fight each other.

The clash over control and freedom between the wealthy and the working classes sparks a rise in gang violence. For years now, Birmingham has been beset by gangs of young men who gather on wasteland and street corners. The newspapers call these disparate groups the sloggers, from the boxing term for a hard, heavy punch. Slogging itself is the bizarre activity described by one local paper as gangs

throwing large stones at each other as fast as they can. When this gets boring, sometimes the stones are directed at unsuspecting passers-by, who will possibly also find themselves robbed and assaulted. Many of these sloggers were hard-working blokes. They were labourers in factories. Others were petty criminals. But what they all liked was to fight. The only thing they have are their fists, their boots,

and their fighting ability. And so we have what we would now call, I suppose, toxic masculinity. I'm tougher than you are. And so the slogging gangs were feared because they not only baited the police, the term that they used to attack the police, and battled each other, and this is very important, they not only did that, they bullied the hardworking, decent, respectable poor amongst whom they lived. From 1890, a new term for the gangs and the backstreet thugs of Birmingham comes into use. Peaky Blinders.

Now this term is interchangeable because the vast majority of Peaky Blinders were sloggers. Following the attack on George Eastwood on the night of the 22nd of March 1890, local newspaper, the St. James's Gazette, reports how his attackers waylaid their inoffensive, teetotal victim and beat him almost senseless under the viaduct. It's just another in a long stream of stories whipping up the already palpable fear among the law-abiding citizens of the city. But what sets it apart is its use of the term Peaky Blinders, the first time the label has appeared in print.

It indicates the name must already be in use on the streets, but where does it come from? According to some, it's rooted in the particular weaponry used by the gang. The theory goes that they have disposable safety razors sewn into the peaks of their baggy flat caps, known as newsboy caps. When the need presents itself, the wearer can snatch the cap from their head and slash their enemy across the eyes, blinding them. Problem is with that, the bridge of the nose is in the way. The story I'd heard as an older Brummie was that they slashed the peak of the cap across the forehead, hence causing blood to go into their eyes.

It's a myth. I interviewed in the 1980s many people who were born in the 1890s who remembered the real Peaky Blinders and the gangs of that period, who described to me exactly why they would kill Peaky Blinders. They pulled the peak of the cap over one eye. That was why they were Peaky Blinders. The peak blinded the one eye. The term Peaky Blinder is a fashion statement. How are you going to slash somebody with a flat cap, which is soft? I've got to take it off my head. That means I raise my arm. If I'm right-handed, I raise my

right arm, which means I'm opening up my whole body to the enemy to attack me. So it never happened. It's a great story. And it's a name that's infused with fear, gangsterism and violence, but it's a name that's infused with fear, gangsterism and violence, but it's a fashion, nothing more. It's certainly true that these caps, waistcoats and watch chains are all part of a sartorial style of the period. But where the gang members of the TV show pride themselves in their sharp outfits, the reality of the average Peaky Blinder is somewhat less dapper. The majority of real-life gang members are involved in petty theft and have to fight

for every penny. But just like the more law-abiding members of the working class, their income is swallowed by food, fuel, and rent. Fashion is much further down the list of priorities. rent. Fashion is much further down the list of priorities. While the top gangsters might lead the way in slick suits, the clothes of the ordinary Peaky Blinders are more likely bought second or third hand, if not from central Birmingham's rag market. The glamorization of the gangs doesn't stop at the clothes they wear. Another mythic idea of the Peaky Blinders is that they are like something out of The Godfather, an organised crime family running the whole city. Once again, this owes more to fiction than fact.

The real Peaky Blinders were not organised criminals. They were backstreet thugs. Some of them engaged in pettyugs. Some of them engaged in petty theft. Some of them engaged in petty protection. They'd go into the local pub, seven or eight of them, mob-handed and demand free drinks. If not, they'd smash the pub up. Or if one of them was fined, say, 40 shillings, two pound for an assault, which is sometimes that's all they were fined, they would go round the local shopkeepers to collect the money. This was petty protectionism.

When we look at the series Peaky Blinders, we must understand that it is drama. It's not reality. The author, Stephen Knight, has done a really superb job in putting together this captivating, pulsating drama and throwing into the mix real names, Peaky Blinders, Darby Sabini, Alfie Solomon, Billy Kimber, who were real gangsters and real places like the Garrison Pub. But the reality was very different. The Peaky Blinders were not one gang in 1920s small Heath Birmingham. The term Peaky Blinders referred to the numerous men who belong to

numerous backstreet slogging gangs all over Old Birmingham. But the Peaky Blinders aren't all simply unskilled street ruffians, and many of them have stable jobs. Upon Thomas Mucklow's arrest for viciously attacking George Eastwood, he is described by the lead investigator as a hard-working man. So why are working-class men, some with regular work like Mucklow, turning to violent crimes? Brutality, it seems, is their way of demonstrating strength and commanding respect. The period of the Peaky Blinders and the Sluggers before them was a hard period of living for working class people in general. They had no gardens. The street and the wasteland was their playground. There's lots of young men because of the birth rate was high and you've got a growing population.

The work that they do in factories or on the building or wherever it's physical, and physical strength is prized. It's prized not only because you need to be strong to survive, but also because it was seen as manly. And in a society that is so riven with class bias, where the poor are looked down on simply because they're poor and are blamed for their poverty by the ignorance of the elite. What can a young man say I'm best at? Fighting. It's still there today, whereas you have to show off. I have nothing, but I have these. I have my fists. I have my feet. I have my ability to beat anybody. I'm harder than you. So it's a class thing. It's a social problem. It's a male thing.

The admirable image popularized on the small screen makes for compelling drama, but it's far from the truth. Rather, the gang is an unpredictable threat to public safety, and no one is safe from their attacks, not even the authorities who are meant to control them. The Peaky Blinders hated the police. My great-grandfather, Edward, attacked the police. He got done for assault. On one occasion, he hit a man over the head with a shovel, and then when that didn't work, he picked up a meat cleaver and he chopped the man's head. Fortunately, it didn't kill him. So he only got sent down for three years. It's October 1895 on Pershaw Street in Birmingham. Two policemen, Constables Bennett and Telfer,

round the corner on foot, truncheons drawn, their long, double-breasted uniform coats buttoned against the cold. A couple of youths stand in the street, agitated, waiting for them. They wave the officers urgently towards the stag and pheasant pub, from which the sounds of an escalating disturbance can be heard. The policemen know all too well what's awaiting them. The peaky blinders have peppered the headlines all year. Stories of elderly shopkeepers threatened at knife point in petty disputes over change, or street assaults with koshes or fire irons.

But though neither officer would admit it, what worries them most is the gang's well-known hatred of the police. As soon as the constables are inside, they can see they're going to struggle. There are maybe thirty hooligans in here. Several are reaching over the bar, trying to help themselves to free drinks. Others are fighting the locals, smashing glasses and throwing fists. Bennett and Telfer blow their whistles

before striding in to break up the brawling. But their arrival sends the peaky blinders into a frenzy. Constable Bennett makes for one thug who's assaulting a terrified local and attempts to apprehend him. This is Charles Warner, a 20-year-old goldbeater. Like so many of the gang, he's a young man with a job, not a street urchin who must resort to crime to survive.

Constable Bennett struggles to subdue Warner and shouts for Telfer's help, but he's dealing with his own problems further inside the pub. As Bennett pins Warner against a brick wall, he's suddenly kicked in the stomach by another young gang member. Horrified, Bennett sees them start to remove their belts. He knows only too well what's coming. Constable Telfer rushes to Bennett's aid, but the mob is too much for them. The Peaky Blinders strike both officers with their belts, beating them across their bodies and heads. class of Birmingham, the elite, who are trying to stop pitch and toss, gambling, trying to stop rough sports, and interfering with the street, the gatherings of young men, their

authority, their hating. And so when the police are pressurised into acting against the street life of poorer men, they become targets for the aggression of young men. Warner and other gang members involved in the attack on Bennett and Telfer are eventually arrested, but their prison sentences don't send out much of a warning. Warner is given just six months, little more than a slap on the wrist. These short sentences aren't long enough

for any kind of rehabilitation for the gang members, and once they're released, they return to their violent ways. The police face an uphill struggle against the Peaky Blinders. In many streets and neighbourhoods, it's the criminals who are in charge, not the authorities. One of the other factors that we need to look at with why young men were fighting so much is that they adhered to the street. The street belonged to them. They grew up in a street. There was movement around, but it tended to be in the same little neighborhood, people moving about. They had kin in the same street. And so the street becomes like a living entity. But it's the street and the people

become one of the same thing. So this idea of loyalty to the street because they belong to the street and the street belong to them is another factor that we must look at. The main streets of Birmingham are being held hostage by the Peaky Blinders. For these civilians living alongside the gangs, there is a constant fear of assault or worse. Few enjoy protection from their violent neighbours, and even speaking out against them could be fatal. There's not enough police in Birmingham.

It's badly on demand. And if you come forward as a witness, you're taking your life in your hands. For example, in 1875, a policeman was killed. A young woman gave evidence against the man who was convicted and hanged for his murder, a man called Corcoran. She was attacked and knifed by the mother and sister of Corcoran. This is happening continually. So poorer people lose confidence in the police. So poorer people lose confidence in the police.

They don't report attacks because nothing's going to get done. And the police are scared. The out-of-control violence of the Peaky Blinders is enthusiastically followed by the burgeoning newspaper industry. With an increasingly literate middle-class population, the media enjoys a surge in demand, and the grisly stories of the gangs' exploits only drives sales upwards. The middle classes revel in this window into what they see as the underworld. The late 19th century is interested in that popular newspapers emerge.

There's a growing demand for them from an increasingly literate population, and they're quite cheap to buy. There's morning newspapers on a national scale, but there's a large number of local newspapers. And those newspapers, locally and nationally, that cater mostly for a middle-class audience, are keen to find out about the lives of the poor in the dark slums. They see pollution. They see young men gathered together. They see

women out on the street. So they're fearful of poor neighbourhoods and they send what become known as social explorers into the poorer neighbourhoods. And reporting on crime, particularly gangs, is something that grabs the attention of middle-class readers. But for those that are victims of the gangs, which is overwhelmingly other poor people, they wanted the gangs put down. Decrying the peaky blinders standing on street corners to assault passers-by, the newspapers echo the concerns of their readers and demand more action from the magistrates. For all the sensationalism and macabre interest, the fear of the Peaky Blinders grows with good reason. If something isn't done soon, it feels like Birmingham will be overrun by thugs.

If something isn't done soon, it feels like Birmingham will be overrun by thugs. By 1900, the newspapers are reporting an epidemic of brutality in the city. Locals speak of a state of terror and lawlessness. The police, meanwhile, lack the resources to combat the problem. In search of a solution, the Birmingham Police Force appoint a new Chief Constable. Irishman Charles Horton Rafter is a man renowned for his experience in bringing peace to troubled neighbourhoods. And he has a plan to push back against the hooligans of Birmingham. Rafter realised that he needed to begin a rapid recruitment campaign of young, fit men. They had to be five foot nine and a half, later five foot ten.

Most of the peaky blinders were like my great-grandfather, Edward Derrick, five foot four, five five. Few were tall, but most were small. They had to be fit. And Rafter asked three things of his recruits. Can you read? Can you write? And can you fight? things of his recruits. Can you read? Can you write? And can you fight? And they had to fight.

It was a battle on the streets. Now, what Rafter does very quickly, he brings in these new recruits. It's going to take three or four years. But by then, he can start sending men out in twos, not ones. And these policemen make a massive impact. But reform takes time, and it's not quick enough to save everyone. PC Charles Gunther, for example, is patrolling alone on a warm summer night on the 2nd of July

1901. Gunther checks his pocket watch under a hissing street gas lamp. It's just after midnight and he is patrolling his beat. It's been a quiet evening until now. Coming up on Staniforth Street, Gunther approaches three young men who appear to be roughly in their twenties. They are peaky blinders and they are drunkenly singing, disturbing the neighborhood. Gunter puffs out his chest and tells them in no uncertain terms to stop being a nuisance and move along. It appears to do the job, but just then the constable is called to a domestic dispute a few streets away.

When he has settled things there, Gunter steps out of the unhappy couple's house to find the Peaky Blinders waiting for him. And this time they're holding bricks. Leading the pack are the three men he encountered a short while before. The hair stands up on the back of Gunther's neck. It's the middle of the night and he is seriously outnumbered. He knows he might not make it out of this one. The Peaky Blinders rush him and throw him face down on the cold pavement. The onslaught begins immediately.

Gunther struggles with all his might to get up, get away, but despite his fitness, he's no match for seven men with bricks. The assault breaks his body, and it's not until he's beaten unconscious that his assailants flee the scene. It will take a few months, but P.C. Gunther will die from his injuries. The three culprits who led the murderous attack are arrested and found guilty of manslaughter. It's an opportunity to implement the other element of Rafter's war on the gang, stricter sentencing.

Each criminal is dealt a hefty 15-year prison sentence. The presiding judge demands that it be a warning to others in their communities who resort to similar violence. The law is finally fighting back. When we look at the sentences passed on sloggers and peaky blinders in the 1870s, 1890s, we can be really shocked at the leniency, simply because you could get fined £2, 40 shillings. If you couldn't pay the £2, then you could get sent down for a month or whatever it might be, but only a short period of time. But what we start to see in the early 20th century is much longer sentences. Rafter says to the magistrates, six months minimum for an assault on the police. If it's a serious assault and some of them are brutal attacks,

they're going down for a long time, years now instead of months. That has an effect not only on the Peaky Blinders, but on the confidence of poorer people in coming forward, knowing that somebody who does commit a violent crime like that will not be around to intimidate them, because they're going down for a long time. But though assaults on police continue to skyrocket, with a total of 487 in 1905 alone, the tide is finally turning. After 15 years of the Peaky Blinders' chokehold on the city,

people who once feared standing up to the thugs are slowly growing more confident, and many begin to push back. On a crisp afternoon in March, on Park Road in Hockley, just outside the city centre, the sky is a mean swirl of smog. It's the combination of factory pollution and the coal fires that warm the population of almost half a million people. and the coal fires that warm the population of almost half a million people. A peaky blinder named James Brough, who works as a polisher, is sitting on the side of the road, drunk. Spotting him on his beat, Constable James Smith comes over and attempts to arrest him. Brough resists, swift despite his intoxication. Laying rapid blows, he knocks P.C. Smith to the ground.

Pedestrians watch in horror as the two men struggle in the dirty road. It's a story seen over and over. And when two more gang members arrive and start to drag the constable towards a dark alleyway, Smith starts to panic. If they get him down there, chances are that he will not come out alive. Then suddenly, he's aware of more men joining the struggle. Smith fears the worst, before realizing that far from joining in with a barrage of kicks and punches, these newcomers are pulling the Peaky Blinders away. Putting themselves between the bloodied officer and the gangsters, the local men stand firm. One, a man named Tiller, subdues Brough until more police arrive. Constable Smith is bloodied and unconscious, his clothes almost torn off in the assault. But thanks to these local men who've had enough of the violence on their streets, Brough is arrested. It's very important to realise

the involvement of working class people in ending the reign of the Peaky Blinders. But, and this is a quote from the newspaper report, they would have succeeded but for the prompt assistance rendered by several bystanders who clung tenaciously to the prisoners and rolled over the ground with them. In particular, a Mr. Tiller displayed conspicuous courage, and it was mainly through his instrumentality that the prisoners were handcuffed after an hour's struggling. Now, that wouldn't have happened a few years before. And I feel very strongly about this point because I don't see in any other books about criminality and gangs any acknowledgement given of the importance of poorer people, working class people, standing up against the gangsters like Mr. Tiller did. Now, in 1906, the shift is more obvious.

Change is clearly happening in the city. As the police force expands and becomes stronger, attempts are made to better engage with the Peaky Blinders. Some gangsters are even making efforts to reform. A man called Henry Lightfoot had numerous convictions for fighting, attacking the police, and also petty theft. The lenient sentences of the 1870s, 80s and 90s failed to dissuade serial criminals to stop their criminality.

So you have people like Lightfoot, people like my great-grandfather Derrick, who get numerous convictions for drunkenness, assault, attacking the police and petty theft. But what we start to see from the early 20th century is that people like that move away from the crimes. Lightfoot, his last arrest was, I think, 1906, stealing 12 scrubbing brushes. Big criminal. But in court, the local police said he's making a real effort to change his life. There are hints here and there, like with the policeman talking about Lightfoot,

of some policemen trying to engage positively with Peaky Blinders. More robust policing and positive community engagement do their bit but there is another reason for the improving situation the peaky blinders are getting older and many of the youth are choosing not to follow in their footsteps the recent rise of sports and youth clubs across birmingham is having a positive influence on the city's next generation. These men are getting older and what's happening is that as they're ageing, the next cohort is not coming in. Why? Because there are organic changes on the ground. Good-hearted clergymen and women are setting up what we might now call youth clubs, attached to churches and chapels. And very often there's a football club associated with it, a football team.

Some teams turn into major clubs that we have today, Aston Villa and Birmingham City in Birmingham, for example. Some of the vicars and some of the clergymen also set up rudimentary boxing clubs. So we've got sports now becoming not only spectator sports, but participation sports. But then just as the gangs are disappearing, a new form of leisure entrances young boys and girls, teenage boys and girls,

what my generation would call the pictures, what younger people call the cinema. It's a relatively inexpensive pastime, meaning young people can visit the cinema several times a week, keeping them off the streets. While the gangs are not wholly eradicated, their menace is severely curtailed. But when war breaks out in 1914, everything changes. Young men in their thousands are uprooted from the villages, towns, and cities of England to fight on the battlefields of Europe.

Several hundred thousand of them never return. What little remains of the Peaky Blinders gives way to other gangs, the Birmingham Boys and others. The Peaky Blinders rapidly descend into obscurity and myth. Their on-screen comeback in the 21st century unexpectedly rockets them back into pop culture relevance. Now they are cast as likable rogues with strong moral centers. Today, they inspire everything from clothing and haircuts to escape rooms and cocktail bars. But the real Peaky Blinders are far from their glamorised and mythologised counterparts. The Peaky Blinders had become a distant memory by the 1940s and 50s.

And by the time of my youth of the 60s and 70s, they were a myth. And they've been mythologized. The danger is that by mythologizing gangsters as men who are kind to children, thoughtful towards older people, respectful to women and who help their own communities, the danger is that we adopt that myth. But the Mafia, the Andragata, the Camorra, the Yakuza, the Triads, the drug gangs, all of them, they prey upon their own. They take money from their own. and turn people like the Dons, Don Corleone, Thomas Shelby, into anti-heroes who are standing up for the poor against the establishment. No, they're not. Next time on Short History Of,

we'll bring you a short history of the Mongol Empire. What he does is he sends his armies in to pillage and raid. It does not appear that he's looking to conquer it. He does lay siege to a couple cities, but the Mongols are not very good at sieges. They don't have siege weapons. They basically can only try to surround it, starve it. At one point, they dam a river, the Yellow River, to then flood it.

But they're not very good at building the dam. So they don't have engineers who really know what they're doing on a large scale. And they do flood the city, but at the same time, they flood their own camp and almost drown themselves. But this is apparently sufficient to cause the king of Shisha to say, these guys are crazy. Let's negotiate and make a deal. That's next time on Short History.