Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 211 - The War of the Triple Alliance Part 2: Man Vs Cactus

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

Part 2/5. The Paraguayan Army fights a battle against a field of cacti and hardly wins. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Produced by Nate Bethea and Sarah Sahim Sources: Leuchars, Chris. To the Bitter End: Paraguay and the War of the Triple Alliance Kolinski, Charles. Independence or Death: The story of the Paraguayan War Whigham, Thomas L. The Road to Armageddon: Paraguay versus the Triple Alliance, 1866–70.

and welcome to another lovely episode of the lines up by donkeys podcast i'm joe and with me is liam hello Liam. Hi Joe. And I'm keeping my promise from part one of our episode on the Triple Alliance and I have your intro music. Thank you. Yes. Much like elementary school on this production of of this podcast once we figure out what makes someone mad we'll continuously bring it up yeah yeah we sure will this is why nick always brings up the fact that once upon a time i said chappy was an all right movie chappy was an all right

movie that was like fucking four years ago and people still won't let me forget about it. I thought it was fine. What's wrong with Chappie? I mean, now there's actually quite a bit wrong with it. I learned pretty recently that Diannever, the really bad South African rappers whose music sounds like two fax machines fucking, apparently ran some kind of sex cult. Or allegedly ran some kind of sex cult oh or allegedly ran some kind of sex cult so you know to be fair they were the worst part of that movie i didn't know about the sex cult stuff yeah who would have thought the luminaries behind i think you freaky would have been up to some weird shit um yeah, it's not good.

I feel like I need a shower. I do need a shower. Like, uh, we were recording about an hour earlier than we normally do. And, uh, just to get in the mood for today's episode, I was working out. So I finished working out immediately came into, uh, I'll call it my studio. It's not too far. Uh, and I am still like, kind of like very like very swampy um and that is apt for what we're gonna talk about today i'm method acting for a podcast for you liam i hope you're happy yeah

dude i'm pointy oh that's gross isn't it we don't you don't like that i'm not a big fan of the beat of pointy liam i'm i'm in the Flaccid Liam fan club. The what? The Flaccid Liam fan club. Oh, dude. Listen. I don't... You know what? No. I'm not going to talk about my penis on there. I'd rather not. No.

It's fine. It gets the job done. It's like one of those spare tires that's good for 50 miles an hour for 50 miles. No, it's like one of those spare tires that's good for 50 miles an hour for 50 miles. No, it's like a donut. Yeah. Alright. Alright. Glad we talked

about that. That's not even the weirdest thing we've said on the show. Top 10, maybe? I don't know. The list is long at this point. We've talked about places we've pooped in. I mean, I wrote a book about that, mostly. Yeah, I know, but yeah but we also see if you're my penis is also in that book i don't know i have no shame this is the place where shame has come to die and is buried in an unmarked grave now when we left you last week uh there was a very dumb man by the name of solano lopez president of

paraguay uh who kind of Mr. Magood his way into putting multiple different countries on the path to war where nobody would turn around. Whoa! God, half my population's dead. Oh, I can't believe this. Look at what you've done as I shoot myself in the leg.

That's definitely not what I expected to happen. Now, a general mobilization had been ordered, and if this seems like kind of an inappropriate time for, say, a giant party, you would not be Solano Lopez because it was his birthday, and he would be

goddamned if he wasn't going to fucking celebrate it. Dude, it's never a bad time for a party. Honestly, more makes it sexier. So you can have an Army Bros and a GI Hoes party. No? Okay. That would probably be a theme party for, I don't know, the 1990s in Penn State.

Yeah, it's... Listen, I... Yeah. Now, Lopez's government spent lavishly on a massive birthday party for himself, and he decided that this was so important for the people of Paraguay that this was going to be a nationwide party. This was mostly in the capital, and everybody was invited to it. This included free drinks, food, and dancing.

People get off work for this? No, probably not. Okay, because it's not a it's not a part of that i mean it's probably uh you know you're expected to show up but also work 16 hours in the fucking dick sucking factory before you show up it's tough yeah solano lopez not a fair man now so many people turned out for this because remember they kind of had no choice that he decided that this would be mandatory in a lot of rural areas where people needed to farm and stuff like that. Lopez really loved himself some Lopez.

I don't know if anybody loved Lopez more than Lopez loved Lopez, to be completely honest. Like any good dictator, really. I, too, enjoy Kanye West. Solano Lopez, the Kanye West of Paraguay. I don't know. I haven't heard any of his music. I'm looking forward to Solano Lopez's Donda 2.

Kanye West could rule a country, but Solano Lopez could not have written late registration. I will say, Kanye West could run a country as well as Solano Lopez. However, Solano Lopez could not spit bars like Kanye. No. Now, because he threw a giant party

with, remember, included free food and drinks in a country that was largely quite impoverished outside of the capital and so many people showed up for it, he was convinced that the people loved him and they must be enthusiastic about his foreign policy in regards to starting wars

with everybody he could reach out and poke with a stick. Oh, this feels like a mistake. They're smiling and waving at me. Yeah, it's like a guy who's convinced that the waitress at Applebee's is hitting on him because she smiles when she takes his order because she has to. Solano Lopez has been gotten kicked out of a bar for insisting the waitress was flirting with him. Solano Lopez has insisted that the stripper is his life mate. I say fucking Solandro Lopez has been gotten kicked out of a bar for insisting the waitress was flirting with him. Solano Lopez has insisted that the stripper is his life mate. Can I say fucking Solandro Lopez, guys? Solandro Lopez.

Solano Lopez. Whatever. Sorry, Paraguayans. Wasn't me. Sorry. Then since Lopez liked this so much, this party was, like I said, it spread throughout the country into the rural areas.

Now, he wasn't going to go out to these areas. He was solidly a, I'm going to keep my ass in the Capitol kind of guy. Sure. Now, people were directed to sing their praises to a portrait of Lopez. Oh, come on, dude. Effectively, like idol worship. There's no other way to kind of compare that to. Yeah, it's personality cult shit which of course everybody

is required to have a portrait of him in their house obviously this would be a painting at this point probably but yeah it's like people's republic of Paraguay shit as much as this was a circle jerk for Lopez's fragile ego it was also for the

international audience namely for Argentina and Brazil. The idea was to show them, this is how popular I am. This is what I'm going to bring to this fight. And Lopez believed that how the nation and the state itself was celestially tied to him. So look at all these people cheering for me. You're fucked. Right? Now, if you're thinking that

this is this sounds ridiculous who would care you're right they all thought this is hilarious like the argentine press joked that the paraguayan people had become infected with what was known as saint vidas dance which is a burn i had to actually look up um saint vidas dance was a name for a neurological disorder that caused rapid and gun-controlled jerking motions in people that looked like they were dancing until they finally dropped ahead oh like look at these people they have a fucking brain disorder and while they were all shit-talking lopez brazil invaded uruguay which if you remember from the last episode uh solano lopez insisted would be an act of war.

Brazilian ships shelled Montevideo, while on land, Brazilian troops advanced towards the towns of Salto and Paisandu. There were rumors, ones with a whole lot of truth behind them, that Argentina was helping them quite a lot during this effort. They weren't really trying to hide it. They were hiding it about as well as like nato is hiding giving ukraine anti-tank missiles like look this shit says made in argentina on it if i say one more praise be this fake javelin meme jesus christ by october uruguay's blanco government was in dire straits while Lopez was suddenly reminded that, oh, right, I threatened both of these countries at the war if they did this. Fuck.

Whoa. Like, remember, his whole plan was to scare them, like a general mobilization showing off his military, doing all these parties, showing all the support he had. Nobody would possibly pick a fight with me. Oh, God, they did it. Fuck. Should I follow through? Oh would possibly pick a fight with me. Oh god, they did it. Fuck, I actually should I follow through? Oh, they picked a fight with you. Oh no. It's like, you know, brinksmanship when you

accidentally shit-talk your way into a war. Like, Solano Lopez did not actually win a war. Even in Solano Lopez's mind, which was mostly full of holes, swiss cheese he never believed that he could actually win a war against brazil and argentina he believed that like at best he might be able to like punch it out um and uh didn't come to a settlement ride him down yeah okay like the people would fight a couple battles on the frontiers because remember Brazil is fucking huge

if your strategy is to lead with a war of attrition no no not quite like they were kind of like how most wars were in the 1800s you're gonna line some tarts up and fancy clothes shoot at each other for a bit then have a like sit down and send like a treaty okay like it was

gonna last a month people he might be able to take a village and loot it you know whatever but he wasn't expecting to like actually have to do it right now it was pretty clear that this was not lopez's goal uh however he like i said had mr magood his way into a war which is a very stupid thing to do when you are so small i cannot stress enough how small Paraguay is compared to starting a fight with Brazil and Argentina. It's tough in these streets, you know. And it's going to get worse because I said the thing.

Now, the reason why that it was never really his plan, and this is me kind of pulling my own analysis of this. The reason why he never really had a plan to go to war or never planned for this war to become real is that he had no idea how to actually... Even though he did have the best army corps between the three countries, he had no idea or plan how to transport this army and get it to fight. or plan how to transport this army and get it to fight.

So for the entire month of October, he just kind of sat there hoping that this whole thing would either blow over or roads would magically appear. Like he had no plan to actually fight a war. As they do. It's like if to scare someone in Europe, we mustered an army in Nebraska and had no Navy. Like, yeah. However, scare someone in Europe, we mustered an army in Nebraska and had no navy. Hell yeah, it's his way.

However, there were more threats than just the one to Uruguay. Lopez was sure that Brazil wouldn't attack because it would mean war with Paraguay, like we said in the last episode. But now that they did, this told him that Brazil clearly did not fear him at all. I don't know why it took this

much for him to figure this out. And he got it in his head that once they were done conquering Uruguay, which would not take long, they would just keep marching into Paraguay. He said, quote, if we don't have a war with Brazil now, we will have one at a less convenient time for ourselves. It's always a less convenient time for you, my guy. I'm going to go on a limb here and say there's never a convenient time for a war. I don't know, deep analysis here, but it's kind of a bad idea. Now, they'd already come close to war with one another in 1855 and acting in concert with Argentina, a country that, despite all of its own problems, which we talked about

quite a bit last episode, they still saw themselves as the rightful claimant for the entire former viceroyalty country. So that includes Paraguay and Uruguay and parts of Brazil, for that matter. This told Lopez that unless he acted, Paraguay would be wiped out. This is mostly an invention in his own mind. There's no evidence that this was their plan um though it should be pointed out like i said brazil didn't want this war either brazil's military was not exactly a juggernaut as we will talk about uh argentina has plenty of their own problems they're barely a functioning

country at this point and they're they wouldn't be quite unified for quite a few more years. Nobody was about to do a fucking continent-wide imperialism here. Nobody was prepared for it. So I guess if you're looking at it through Lopez's very clouded vision, you could see that now is my time to strike because they're all... Brazil is quite literally that saying, you kick in the door and the whole rotten structure comes down because that literally does happen after the war uh where brazil's uh empire falls and uh like it turns into a non-imperial dictatorship i guess you could call it like there's not a lot holding these places up and solano lopez that's kind of

in comparison to those two he is the most stable country somehow. That's tough, dude. Yeah, it's rough. So he believed that maybe this would work. And Brazil was kind of more comfortable resolving their border disputes with force, because look what they're doing in Uruguay. Though Solano Lope has also

agreed with that statement, saying that he preferred war to diplomacy because it was faster. That would not be the case. That's a lot of bravado for a guy who's about to get his teeth kicked in and his dick ripped up through his throat. Let's just say that this war is not any faster than any diplomacy I've ever heard of. It goes on for like a decade. It goes on for a real long time.

Not quite a decade, but a real long time not quite a decade but a very long time in essence Solano Lopez found himself shadowboxing with himself in losing that is a tough spot to be I've been there drunk in a McDonald's at 2.15am Solano Lopez doing

foreign policy drunk in a Burger King parking lot at 2am now while this is happening a Brazilian ship arrived at the Asuncion policy drunk in a Burger King parking lot at 2 a.m. Now, while this was happening, a Brazilian ship arrived at the Asuncion port. It was passing through as they normally did, and they were taking on supplies to complete their journey. On board was the new Brazilian governor of

Mato Grosso, a colonel named Cornelio de Campos. Now, this was nothing out of the ordinary. Asuncion is very much on the way. And Lopez called a meeting of his advisors, including the Uruguayan diplomat named Sagatume.

During this meeting, most of Lopez's advisors pointed out quite honestly, like, you should really not fuck with the Brazilian government that's coming through. That's kind of what's known as a party foul in the name of like diplomatic and government actions right it would be like if you were at war with a country and like a diplomat showed up and you just shot him like not supposed to do that not supposed to do that um it's like you know whatever we're doing with brazil uh you

should probably let the governor go on however However, Sagatume, who remember is Uruguayan and is currently being invaded, really, really wanted Paraguayan help. Mostly because it had been promised to them already and he had not made good with that promise. And he knew how to play Lopez and told them that they should kidnap the governor

and join the Blanco war against Brazil. Remember, the Blancos is the faction that control the government in this in the colorados being supported by argentina and brazil this is supported by a paraguayan navy captain who remember were entirely a riverine force and he mostly agreed because it was a nice ship and he wanted to steal it yeah all right yeah which sure i mean sometimes you gotta do grand theft ship or boat. I don't know.

River boat? Whatever. Jose Burgess, who was the Paraguayan Minister of Foreign Affairs, pointed out that if they started kidnapping government officials, the international community would not like Paraguay very much. And that ended up being 100% true. Well, no, it's not the move I'd lead with. Remember, Lolo Lopez is also deeply racist so

a lot of foreign affairs people ministers already don't like him right and if they went into a meeting with him it's like if i piss him off enough this motherfucker's gonna kidnap me like they're just not gonna do business with them right so of course kidnapping the governor is exactly what he did oh hell yeah yeah yeah always go for the worst plan he does that pretty consistently i have to say uh very rarely do you see a military and government leader so like routinely roll fucking snake eyes with all of his ideas now the ship was seized and the governor was arrested, though I don't know if this is the right term, arrested, because he was not committing any crimes. He was kidnapped. Let's go with kidnapped.

And on the 13th of November, Lopez officially declared war on Brazil. Now, the Brazilian minister in Paraguay, Viana de Lima, quickly had a meeting with Lopez telling him, look, man, we don't have to do this. Give us the fucking governor back and we'll forget about the declaration of war. Be cool, bro.

This dude is some girl outside a bar being like, this isn't like you. Stop. He's not worth it. He's not worth it, bro. Let him walk away. He's not worth it he's not worth it bro let him walk away he's not worth it flashing back to 22 outside the fucking horse in north philly and like i'm not saying brazil's the

good guy nobody here's a good guy nobody in the story is a good person they simply don't want a war so vienna dalima is like look man just give us our boy back and we'll be fine. Lopez blew him off, telling him that through this war, Paraguay would get the international attention that he thought they deserved and the respect. Of course, by Paraguay in the situation, he means him. He wants to be taken seriously. Remember, he wants to be fucking Napoleon. Unfortunately, the Napoleon he met was Napoleon III. So, like, same end story here.

You love Napoleon III, right? That's your favorite Napoleon? Napoleon III, famously C-tier Napoleon, yeah. I think you like him. They both have the same life story, other than Solano Lopez never gets around to declaring himself emperor. other than Solano Lopez never gets around to declaring himself emperor. He believed that he's going to go and punch the Brazilian emperor in the face and suddenly everybody in the world is going to recognize how great Solano Lopez is. He believed that he was the smartest person in every room he was ever in,

and that includes other heads of state, or in this case, foreign ministers and the like. That includes other heads of state or, in this case, foreign ministers and the like. And for some reason, Solano Lopez is kind of like a Bond villain in that he took this time to tell Vienna de Lima, who, remember, is the Brazilian minister, a government minister, his entire war plan unprompted. No, Mr. Ambassador, I expect you to die. I've been I've been working at this laser uh that he had no plan to invade brazil after like that would be very dumb any soldiers dispatched to brazil would have to travel literally hundreds or thousands of miles probably dying of disease along the entire which spoiler alert this happens a lot. He pointed out that Brazil would have to instead send their soldiers

to prosecute this war, which would then force them to walk hundreds or thousands of miles and die of disease. And then when they got to Paraguay, they would find his soldiers well-rested and dug in, ready to defend. This was a flex, mind you. He was telling this to Vianna de Lima.

And Vianna de Lima's like, this guy's fucking stupid. You was telling this to Vienna DeLima and Vienna DeLima's like this guy's fucking stupid you never want someone to just be like this guy's a fucking moron like you can just imagine the look of absolute like astonishment on this guy's faces is hearing the president of a country tell him all of this

and remember his entire plan was Brazil's gonna come over here. We're going to punch him a couple of times. The war will end in a couple of months and they would go to the table, hash out their differences, which, of course, would somehow question mark, question mark. Step four, Paraguay is in an advantageous position. Brode out. Yeah.

Now, the American minister, a guy named Charles Ames Washburn, who was also in on this meeting, said that this was the dumbest thing that he had ever heard in his life. That's not a direct quote, but he thought this was an absolutely stupid plan. My dearest Florence. Dear Solano Lopez. This is the dumbest shit I have ever heard in my entire life. Please stop this dumb shit forthwith i want to go home he told lopez that this might not be the greatest idea you've ever had and his opinion was immediately discarded uh washburn also pointed out that he should treat the captive governor well if he's

going to commit to this route because nobody would look good if you kidnapped a governor and then they died so like make sure you treat him well mostly because you know he was effectively a political prisoner he committed no crime lopez and said sent him to the country's interior where he promptly died of malaria party fell uh and to be fair that's what he did with the most prisoners. Like he sent them to the interior of the country where he knew it was not a good place to be and they would mostly die. Now, finding himself in a war of his own creation, Lopez still had no idea how he was going to fight it. For instance, he had promised the Blancos and Uruguay help, but he had never decided to sit down and figure out exactly how he was going to do that. For instance, he could not march there. Argentina was in the way.

Borders are not his friend in this capacity, and you know, flight hadn't been invented yet. Nothing's his friend in this capacity, man. Yeah, and remember, Argentina and Paraguay not friends. Brazil's border with Paraguay was so far north that any overland march would have been ridiculous.

Put a pin on that for later. And going by river would be impossible, as Argentina would very clearly oppose that because they would see where the fuck they're going. But it didn't matter anyway, because the very, very small riverine Paraguayan Navy didn't have enough boats to transport their army anyway. Right. Not enough. Like they had some, but not enough if they were going to make an impact. So he decided to attack Mato Grasso.

Mato Grasso is in Brazil. It had no military importance. It was largely uninhabited frontier with a couple of villages, which was, to be fair, most of Brazil at this time. Brazil was huge and was very sparsely populated, which was one of the reasons why their militaries didn't have a lot of problems. It was the only mostly inhabited part of Brazil within the reach of Lopez's forces.

And remember, he still thought of himself as paraguayan napoleon he ordered the attack and little did he know that he would be paraguayan napoleon however he'd be paraguayan napoleon circa 1812 in russia because this march was a very bad idea um he he kind of nailed that one despite the fact that lopez saw himself a military genius, he paid absolutely no attention to his military as a whole. Despite the fact that that very, very small professional corps, which was very well trained and led, that wouldn't be enough. Remember, he had a general mobilization. Those professionally trained soldiers have now been diluted with a massive influx of draftees with none of that professionalism or training. Right.

Because like a lot of people, he keeps the army very, very small. That small professional corps because keeping a large standing army costs a lot of money. I have that. Even back then. So he simply didn't. When he called for a general mobilization, he was looking for quantity over quality

and boy, holy shit, did he get it. Paraguay had a lot of faults. We have talked about them at length so far. But one that it didn't was a effective centralization of the government. In comparison to even Brazil and Argentina, Paraguay knocked that one out of the park. They had conscription offices and military officers to lead these things. So they were able to drag together 70,000 men. Wow. Holy shit, dude.

Now, unfortunately, that is the last compliment I get to pay them. Oh. No attention was paid in arming these men effectively. Instead, they were simply given smooth-bore muskets that were close to 100 years old in some cases. Remember, this is Civil

War, almost Civil War era. Rifled muskets are standard. some of these smoothbore muskets are about 100 years old, sometimes newer, but all of them shitty. Remember, when something is that old, it's just not going to work. Or if it does work, it's going to work half as effective as it used to when it was new.

Training for these new conscripts boiled down to throwing them all into a military camp at sierra leone not that one that's sierra leone that would be a bit of a fucking hike uh for a few days diamonds are forever by katya west just starts things are very confusing here now liam you've been a co-host on this show for quite a long time now. What happens when you pack tens of thousands of men in a camp together and say the 1800s? Syphilis, disease, famine, war, bloodshed, war, all sorts of unspeakable sexual assaults. Now, Sierra Leone kind of accidentally turned into a death camp.

Yeah, yeah, that's not, I'm not shocked by that. Disease of all stripes swept through the ranks, killing thousands of men before they could even go out to fight. The conservative number here is 6,000. It's probably much higher. Furthermore, none of the leadership had any military experience. Paraguay hadn't fought any wars, really.

And there had never been any large scale training exercises. So you have, say, company, brigade, battalion, whatever, commanders who have no idea how to lead a force that size. Commanded by a man who has no idea how to lead a force that size commanded by a man who has no idea how to be a commander in chief like selena lopez like there's a reason why the president as commander

in chief in the united states is kind of a ceremonial position because it's not expected that the president knows how to run a military selena lopez is like nah that's all me baby i even for his good soldiers remember that professional corps they hadn't done it either the name of the game here was discipline like all militaries back then you were considered a good military if you were disciplined you didn't necessarily have to be skilled you simply listen to orders then i know people are saying that's what most people want their militaries but there's layers to that. That's not that actually that important.

What about small unit leadership? That's the only skill that they had is like, they would literally just get decimated and the Paraguayan soldiers would look at you like, well, nobody told us the retreat yet. That will happen continuously. And if most of the military commanders in charge of these units, you remember,

I have no idea what they're doing, had been promoted out of loyalty to Lopez. And remember, since college was previously banned, none of them had a higher education. Some of them were even rumored to be illiterate. I don't know how true that is. It was in the main source that I used for this. It said some of the lower ranking officers were functionally illiterate. Honestly, that wouldn't surprise me, but, you know, whatever. The military leaders who did seem to think for themselves weren't so hot about this plan. Obviously, like, why the fuck are we marching into Brazil?

This sounds stupid. And everybody was quite unsure as to what the actual goal was. Like, what mission would we accomplish by marching in to Mato Grosso and taking it over? That's like a mosquito attacking a cow. Brazil's not even

going to fucking notice. Let's say we do storm in and take Mato Grosso, then what? It was like what one of his officers was trying to get out of him and Lopez is just like, we'll win. Question mark, question mark, question mark. They negotiate with us and we come out with the advantageous position. Lopez did not plan beyond that.

As you remember, his original plan was to sit in Paraguay. Right. He already ditched that plan. However, that didn't really matter. And on December 14th, the expeditionary force of around 8,000 men set off. Half was to travel by river and take the Brazilian river fort at Coimbra, while another under the command of Lopez's brother-in-law, Vincente Barrios, was going to march overland and assault nearby enemy towns. And that was under the command of Isidro Resquin. When Barrios' men anchored and planned to assault the river fort, they found the only way to attack it which was from the south

was uh overgrown with cacti oh like a lot which of course was probably planted there on purpose by the defenders because it's you deny enemy territory by doing that right barrios decided well we'll give him a gentleman's agreement here simply surrender the fort and we don't have to do this they were promptly told to fuck off by the fort's commander and Paraguayan ships began shelling it for most of the day. Now, I do need to point out here that Paraguay had

no ships built for war. These were all converted ships. So they're effectively civilian boats with cannons strapped on it. That'll become important later. And then after shelling it, the infantry was set in. Now, the infantry was forced to sprint through fields of cacti

to get to the walls of the fort to fight. Only then did they realize that, you know, there's a key part of assaulting a fort, you know, a high structure in your infantry. What's that, Joe? Ladders.

You know what they did? They forgot to bring ladders yeah imagine like you're one of these guys you're assuming your commander is figuring all these details out right you're one of these guys who's ordered to sprint through this goddamn field of cacti only to get connected to god's wi-fi because he forgot the ladders at the fucking wall. All of your buddies getting shot full of needles from the cactus. Miserable, man. So they had to turn around and run back through the field

of cacti, solidly defeated by themselves. The Brazilian defenders do, of course, get an assist, but they weren't the most important factor. The Paraguayan soldiers defeated themselves. Rather than, I don't know, trying to build some some ladders or something or maybe i don't know going turn around going to the local

ace hardware like hey let me get some ladders uh the next day they attacked again still without ladders now this again required them to charge to the field of cacti before making it to the walls where they got the bright idea to climb on top of each other's shoulders, forming human fucking pyramids to get over the side like a Cirque du Soleil at a military academy. Now, once they got to the top, which probably surprised the Brazilians,

they're like, look at these fucking guys. Look at these guys. Let me throw some burning hot pitch on you. Just a whole bunch of Paraguayans. Like their clothes torn to shit from the cactus. And like, Oh, all right,

boys. Just like we trained. Just like they drew it up. As soon as the Paraguayans got to the top, the Brazilians point blank their asses with cannon fire. 200 men were killed and they were forced to retreat once again. All of those years practicing my

sick militarized parkour for nothing. Oh, not at the Cirque du Soleil Military Academy. So they tried again the next day, probably getting ready to roll out some new French clown college skills or something, only to

discover that in the middle of the night, the Brazilians had just left the fort. That's lame. So they had won despite all of their best efforts to lose and in the dumbest way possible. Meeting the first triumphant victory of the war for Paraguay and one

of their only ones that they would ever have was won by default. Outstanding, boys. Well done. The rest of the trip up the river was largely uneventful in regards to actual warfare, but that didn't stop the Paraguayan soldiers from looting and killing their way across

the riverbanks. And this is something that will become quite common here. All of the warfare is based on looting. That was quite common in the 1800 of the warfare is based on looting. That was quite common in the 1800s, even 1900s, 2000s, depending on who's fighting the war. They had no logistic system on either side

and they all just completely depended on just stripping the earth clean to feed and even pay their militaries for the large part. The soldiers were paid very little with the point of, well, they're going to steal enough shit to put their kids through college or whatever anyway, so we don't

really need to pay them. Oh, okay. All right. Now, for the proof that the Paraguayan military here was largely a bigger threat to themselves and their own country than the enemy, we have to talk about a particular steamship, the Yopora. While stopping to reload its powder supplies,

its captain was warned multiple times to stop doing that. This region of the world is quite hot and humid, and it made gunpowder incredibly unstable during that time of the day, and they should wait until nighttime to move it. The captain, pissed that anybody would dare tell him what to do, went into the ship's magazine to do it himself. He promptly blew him and his boat up, killing 23 people.

Good job, asshole. Well done. Meanwhile, Resquin's overland mission was going much better, mostly because the population of the area they was marching through just ran away when they heard an enemy army was coming. Nobody really opposed them. They looted their way across a swath of Brazil

with only a minor firefight occurring with some territorial defense forces and some old guys that had guns. There was no real battles. Now, this was made easier for the Paraguayans as the Brazilian commander died of cholera before the battle even began. They love doing it, man.

They love dying of cholera. It's a lot of people's favorite thing to do in this era. It's like, you know what I'm going to do today? I'm going to get cholera it's a lot of people's favorite thing to do in this era it's like you know what i'm gonna do today i'm gonna get cholera and fucking die you know like baseball is the pastime of the united states um the pastime of war is is cholera yeah uh they left around a thousand men to garrison the area which was quite large and then resquin returned to paraguay a conquering hero a month later bringing with him all of the shit that he had stolen, which was a lot, like a ton of livestock. Because they were going to eat.

Their whole plan was, we're feeding our country based on loot, which is not a great economy. It's sustainable. Yeah. If this sounds like anything remotely sounding like a victory, it shouldn't. Though Lopez championed it

and was gifted a necklace of ears by one of his officers. Yeah. Brazil knew that they were coming and decided the damage of defending this swath of frontier was not really worth it. They were just going to let him march through it. Who cares? It was all tactically and strategically pointless. So they withdrew their garrison of the area and just kind of sent it to Uruguay instead, which is kind of funny because while the Paraguayan forces were busy sanding their skin off on the cacti needles and forming human ladders, the Brazilian army had began besieging Montevideo by land, which remember their whole point was to stop that from happening. Oh no, I can't believe this hasn't worked out.

And once again, Lopez had no idea what he was going to do. His victory was pointless no matter what way he spun it. And yeah, one of his plans on evading Mato Grosso and in Brazil in general was that Brazil would have to pull its soldiers out of Uruguay to respond to this. And they just were like, yeah,

whatever. We don't actually care about that part of Brazil anyway. Bye. Like just kept invading. He's like, huh? All right. Um,

shit. I'm out of ideas. And, uh, he came to the conclusion if he was going to help Uruguay, he would actually have to get into the country what a concept right crazy but remember he couldn't there was an argentina sized obstacle in the way so on january 14th he sent a letter to the argentine government

asking for formal permission to move his soldiers across their territory. A move that many people recognize as being one from the, like the total war games. Yeah. They get mad at you when you do that. Yeah. Even with an agreement, like you and when you, it's funny because when you're playing and like the AI asked you for the

allowance, you're always like, fuck no, that happened. See, it's a lot of Lopez. If you only played more empire total war, you'd know better.

Yeah. Dickhead. On top of that lopez had a delegation i meet there who's the president who hated lopez for a loan like look man we know we we really don't like each other and i might have just invaded your ally um and i'm actively working against literally every piece of your foreign policy but uh you lend me 10 bucks yeah come on it turned out uh lopez didn't quite understand how expensive war was because he never actually had a fight one before and two days later he moved an army into a region right on the argentinian border uh which both him and argentina claimed which to be fair argentina claimed most of paragay. So that's kind of hard not to do. Now, this is very clearly a threat.

I mean, it could be seen as a threat. I would certainly see it as a threat. I think Lopez, it is a threat. And Lopez is just kind of assuming that Argentina would let them through, which is very stupid. Oh, OK. All right. Let the man talk, I guess. Oh, okay.

All right. Let the man talk, I guess. Concertively, this meant that he was willing to simply send his army across the border with or without permission. I mean, if you're Argentina, it says he's going to fucking invade us, right? Of course, that's what that looks like. To the surprise of, I assume, only Lopez, Argentina refused to allow his army to cross and certainly to not give him a loan. Mitterre pointed out that in a letter that Argentina was strictly neutral in this conflict, despite not actually being neutral. I mean, militarily, they were.

However, they were supplying Brazil and the Colorados. They certainly weren't invading people yet. At this point, Mitter and the Brazilian emperor actually had an agreement on the books that if Paraguay attempted to cross Argentina for any reason, they would both join in on a war to curb stomp them together. Now, this seemed like an obvious agreement that would exist. Anybody who had been paying attention to the situation, Lopez, for instance, would probably be like, you know, these guys are working very closely together. I bet they probably have some kind of secret alliance. Do you want to form a secret alliance? I used to say that all the

time in Magic the Gathering. And Lopez, however, not a smart man. He wasn't paying attention. He was a total dumbass. He had no idea about any of this, which speaks for his kind of ignorance on foreign affairs, but also it's the completely non-existent intelligence network. Like anybody within, if he had anybody within either government, they would have known this. In fact, he thought he had an anti-Brazil agent within the walls of Buenos Aires, former president Jose de Arqueza.

Buenos Aires. Former President Jose de Arrequeza. Now, he told Lopez that the government didn't consider an army crossing an act of war, assuming they didn't fuck anything up along the way. Like, don't mess up my stuff and we're cool. Right. Now, it turned out this guy was not necessarily a double

agent, but he was certainly working on his own angle. He was fucking with Lopez. He was a staunch anti-Meter guy. He was very much a confederalist. He did not like Meter's centralization of government. He was plotting to turn several provinces of

Argentina against the central government again, which he hated. It was in his best interest if Lopez started a war so he can then rally the provinces to his cause and then overthrow Mitterre. Lopez knew this. Everyone knew this.

Even Mitterre knew this. Went for it anyway, baby. Yeah, D'Arcueso was not keeping this a fucking secret from anybody. This seemed to be Mitterre's entire plan. For instance, he didn't get mad or push back. There's a rather large Paraguayan army sitting on his borders. This led Lopez into believing, he didn't get mad or push back. There's a rather large Paraguayan army sitting on his borders.

This led Lopez into believing that he wouldn't or maybe even couldn't do anything about it should he decide to cross. The reason for that was because Mitter wasn't sure if Argentina went into war, like active war rather than just

supporting one, if it would hold together. He thought if like called the provinces to send conscripts or send their men, that everybody would just start shooting at one another again, which it was possible because they remember they were doing that for most of the last episode. Right. And mostly because of guys like Dierk Wisse.

He's like, well, if this shit pops off, he's going to turn everybody against me. I need to get Dierk Wisse on my side. So after a bit of negotiations between Perot and anti-Confederation forces, Dierquiza pointed out to Mitterre that, look, man, I actually don't trust Lopez even more than I don't trust the government in Buenos Aires. So he promised him that should anything happen, I'll make sure the provinces stay loyal to the government, at least for now. Now, at this point, Dierakweza attempted to talk Lopez out of ordering his army to march across Argentina because it no longer suited his political goals. Right.

If he wasn't going to turn everybody against Buenos Aires, he had no point to go Lopez into war. It only hurt him. against Buenos Aires, he had no point to go Lopez into war. It only hurt him. But Lopez famously is not a guy to be talked out of anything, nor to really plan far ahead. He's not a guy to doubt himself ever. And if someone doubts his plan, he only digs his heels in more. So in the coming situation, not only were the Argentines caught lacking, so was every member of the Paraguayan government not named Solano Lopez. Solano Lopez, again, through huge celebrations throughout the country, publishing anti-Argentine propaganda in all the newspapers. And then without warning, he demanded Congress, which still existed, by the way, he just largely

ignored them most of the time, to war on Argentina now he had not actually consulted with anybody within the government about this so this dude's just cut loose all right yeah Congress is like wait you want us to do fucking what we just got here man we just invaded Brazil what are you doing but

you know it didn't matter it's not like if he voted if they voted no that one they would probably disappear pretty quickly but It's not like if they voted no, they would probably disappear pretty quickly. But it's not like he would listen. So they threw up their hands and voted declare war on Argentina on March 1865. Now, the declaration of war famously didn't even mention the one legit reason he had for declaring war. Mostly, that Argentina was an open support of Brazil's war in Uruguay, which is one of the things from the last episode is why

he threatened to go to war against them. Or, they continued Argentine claims over Paraguay. Instead, he mentioned other things, namely, that the Argentine press was mean to him. He got trolled into fighting a war. Not that I like this is

not his fault. It is. But he got so mad at the Argentine press. He actually said that was one of his reasons for going to war. On my Donald Trump shit. Like he had been so mad

at the press. They had been roasting him nonstop for years because he was a fucking idiot. He was a clown. And everyone made fun of him outside of Paraguay, where if you made fun of him, it had dire consequences. Now, before anybody jumps up my ass and says I'm making this up, there was literally no reason to go to war against Argentina. Hell, there wasn't a reason to go to war against Brazil. Why? Well, several weeks before any of this, and I left this out until now for a reason, on February 1865, which was, remember, several months before the declaration of war on Argentina in March of that same year, Montevideo fell. Uruguay fell. The Blanco government was no more. His whole purpose of fighting this war was over brazil

put their man uh who's in charge of the colorado movement uh named flores in the president's office meaning that uh it's done it's over no reason for any of this anymore right so yeah he just moved the goalposts because he really wanted to do some more war amongst us there's no reason anyway after congress agreed to Lopez's war, it promoted him to marshal, a rank that had not previously existed, gave him a golden sword. Not made out of ears this time, I hope.

I assume it's like gold-plated. A gold sword would be very limp. Not a very firm metal. No, no. And gave him a raise to $60,000 a year, which adjusted for inflation is a lot. Yeah. He then formed the national order of merit,

which as you can guess was based on the French Legion of honor because again, Napoleon, and then he passed a law that insulting this order of merit or dishonoring it in any way was a crime punishable by death. Oh, okay. On April 13th, the Paraguayans launched a river-borne steamer boat assault

on the town of Corrientes, which sounds kind of radical, honestly. Yeah, I like that. Now, five ships appeared, which was curious to the Argentine Navy station there, but not too weird, as the rivers were virtually

the only mode of transportation within Paraguay, in or out, really. Also, as you might have noticed as to why the Argentine Navy was like, oh, this is normal, Argentina had no idea they were currently at war.

You'd be pissed, right? Just waking up from a night out and just all of a sudden you gotta, I don't know, go to the fucking, go to the fucking turrets. Lopez had declared war on March 18th, but he had not bothered to send his declaration of war until March 29th. Oh, Jesus, dude.

Because it was 1865, this took until May 3rd until the letter got to Buenos Aires. So the Argentine Navy is like, those guys look kind of mad. Why do you think they're coming over here? Why are you dickheads shooting at us? The Paraguayan ships crashed directly into the Argentine ships, shooting at them at point-blank range.

The sailors, having no idea what was happening, just ran for it. Some jumped into the river and swam ashore. And then the Paraguayans stole their ships, flowed them back to their base as the newest members of their navy. And then shortly afterwards, they invaded the town and took it over without a fight.

Again, because nobody had any idea what was going on. Who's rivering now? At one point, they declared Corrientes to be a puppet government. They tried to install a local administration and stuff. This is so cute. It's like your baby brother

realizing he has fists for the first time. Now, this surprise attack horrified the Argentine public. Huge protests took to the streets, demanding revenge. Despite the fact that the Argentine press had been shooting on Lopez in Paraguay for years, even the president of Argentina was shocked at the response to the

attack. He kind of figured Lopez was full of shit and would see any war as anybody else would as pointless since Uruguay had fallen. In another dumb cell phone, Lopez, on the part of Lopez, he hadn't even waited for a large shipment of weapons which he had bought to prosecute a future war, which he needed. There's like modern weapons and stuff on there to hopefully make his military not use

shit from the Revolutionary War era. But he hadn't waited for that shipment to arrive before starting his operations. So when the boat floated by Argentina en route towards him, it was seized. If he didn't need weapons enough, the Brazilian Navy then set up blockade. And because of

their position, they could effectively shut off Paraguay from any outside ship. So, yeah, immediately put a noose around the entire country and this blockade would survive the entire war to insanely devastating effects, which we will talk about later.

Then, if a mostly total blockade was not bad enough, the governments of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, which remember, has the Colorados in charge now, got together to sign the Treaty of the Triple Alliance. Uh-oh. Bwah, bwah, bwah, bwah, bwah, bwah.

This now meant that Paraguay was going to be forced to fight a war against three countries all at once even worse than that the main clause of that treaty was not that they would force the paraguayan armies back across their borders or whatever their goal was to remove lopez from power that was their only goal i mean they had their own independent goals as well but the alliance accepted that the shit's gonna keep up as long as solano lopez is in charge we're gonna do regime change homie it's over the other like parts of the uh the alliance were effectively parting paraguay out to the victors like a shitty stolen car. And Argentina pretty much planned to erase Paraguay from the map.

Now, at this stage, Paraguay did have one actual advantage. They had already mobilized their armies and they were ready to go. A lot of it was already in the field in comparison to Argentina and Brazil, who had yet to actually go on a full war footing because this Uruguay shit for Brazil was kind of a sideshow. And also because of their methods of decentralized or ineffectual government, or if you're Brazil, how big it is,

would take them time to get their shit together. So Paraguay was the most military effective one at the start by default. Right. Even though Paraguay was somehow the least experienced army, having fought virtually nobody during their entire existence,

they had their shit together the most. Argentina's army was battle hardened, but unorganized. And not to mention that battle hardenedness that experience largely came from shooting at each other during civil wars, which isn't great for cohesiveness.

And life in the Argentinian military was also grim. Pay was non-existent in some, like it was inconsistent to non-existent depending on where you were and what time you're in. Indesertion was so commonplace that in some units,

conscripts are often kept in chains until it's like, okay, we're going gonna form up to march into active combat at which point it would be unchained yeah as for brazil their army had all of the signs of a dying empire pinched for money upkeep and training dwindled down to nothing and discipline suffered to the point that if there was a garrison nearby where you lived there's a good chance they would soon be robbing you. Brazil's borders were so vast and impossible to defend that the army had no real organizational structure, garrison structure. They seemed to be just plopped down at random and small outposts

across its frontier. So getting them from there to mass them is going to be very time consuming and ineffectual. Many men were plopped on these frontier outposts alone with no officers. A lot of units had no idea who their commanding officer even was. On the outbreak of war, Brazil attempted to dump money into its defense budget, but you can't exactly fix generations-old problems

overnight with money, no matter how much money you have. Oh, that attitude. You need more gumption. Intangibles. I'm running out of fucking draft buzzwords. Pour yourself up by your bootstraps. Oh no, he's 5'11".

Evidence to this fact is that it took four months for them to mobilize their army. As for Uruguay, they really didn't have anything that could be considered a standing army. They only could muster around 2,000 men when they were asked to to and many of them were

mercenaries or bandits and criminals freed with the express purpose of fighting and not to mention they had just gone through some shit you know so it's like they don't really have a lot of reserves to dip into right though there are some weaknesses that every army had

some of them were so obvious it's kind of hilarious they would still have them in 1865. For instance, no army in this war had a general staff. No? No central organizational process at all. There was no organizational structure to support multiple armies in the field at once or even process for military tactics to develop. They're all based on dictatorship of the local commander. Outside of

one or two rich guys here or there, not a single one of their generals had professional military education or training. In Brazil at the time, rank in the military wasn't even considered an important thing in regards to the military. It was an important part of social standing and was purchased from the local gentry, not the military commanding troops. Wasn't even one of their concerns that would rapidly change. Sure. Paraguay by and far was the best trained line troops of the war. Having been drilled by Europeans who were pretty all right at this war thing

by now, after all the wars of the coalition, at least in this era. However, it was a very small core, as we said, and the vast reserves they had called up had pretty much vastly outnumbered them and drowned them out. That was far and away different than their command structure, however. Paraguay was worse off somehow than any of them. If you remember up until recently, higher education was banned. Even more than that,

Francia, the last president before Solano Lopez, had banned anyone from being promoted beyond the rank of captain within the military because he was worried that they would challenge him if they had a higher rank. So that means when the war started, Solano Lopez

had just rapidly started promoting generals and colonels and shit to try to make up for that. He had promoted some in that meantime in between Francia and now, but like a couple of colonels, but some of these guys even know how to read a map, let alone know the basics of a command

structure. That's tough. Lopez, who remember the Supreme Commander and newly minted Marshall, Golden Sword and all, pretty much came up with his military tactics based on reading history books. Okay. I guess that's not all things considered a terrible

place to start. I would call it a supplemental thing. If you have the military education to see the flaws in a lot of these ideas and then adapt them to the modern war that you find yourself in. Yeah, I wouldn't be doing that. I would be just reading The Art of War.

Just be like, alright, let's do that. Flipping open The Art of War. Ah, Sun Tzu says we shouldn't attack until we outnumber our enemy. Yeah, no shit. It's some big brain history shit. A lot of history nerds, myself included sometimes, though I do have military education, nothing I would consider highly professional, look at military plans and immediately find holes in them.

Hindsight's 20-20, as always. But there's more to it, especially when you're commanding 70,000 people. But when you're a supreme commander in a massive asshole like Selena Lopez who's going to tell you no another thing everybody had in common was weapons all of the powers they had bought weapons from were European but Europe not seeing them as all that

important nor allies that could ever impact them in any way kind of use them as dumping grounds for all the shit so old they deemed it worthless to even keep in their reserves the US actually kind of did this after World War II in the same region of the world, which is why the football war was

fought with World War II era surplus shit. This ended with every country having a wide array of different muskets, cannons, and whatever else. This is a logistical nightmare because none of them use the same kind of ammo, the same size of ball or powder or whatever,

or any of them had interchangeable parts. Even dumber than that, that was the logistical nightmare of supplying all these different weapons on top of it. Say you have a musket from 100 years ago. Your boy over here got a rifle somehow. Oh, this guy has a slightly newer musket.

So, okay, you're a line officer and the enemy's coming towards you and you're gonna order your soldiers to fire the problem is if you don't have a standard firearm you have no idea how many guns in that line can actually shoot that far right here's a role

in the dialogue hopefully fucking 20 guys in my company have a weapon from the century you know speaking of logistics that's tough dude I'm gonna have to pose a logistics meme again with don't make me tap the fucking sign nobody in any of these countries

had built anything resembling any infrastructure outside of their main capital cities that meant there are no roads to haul supplies artillery men anything that you need for war towards the frontier where you're gonna fight capital cities. That meant there are no roads to haul supplies, artillery, men, anything that you need for war towards the frontier where you're going to fight the war. They would have to be dragged through

muddy tracks, overgrown jungle, bush, whatever you have. Terrain so harsh with weather so terrible that pack animals would drop fucking dead from exhaustion to the point that a lot of these countries literally burnt through their pack animal populations and men turned into pack animals,

pulling shit along in human chains, which would also then kill them. Well done. And since we're on the topic of logistics, let's talk about allied forces. Now, they were, by design, going to work together, the Uruguayans, Brazilians, and Argentines. They were all supposed to work together as an allied military.

That meant that they were going to have to build military camps that previously never existed in order to absorb tens of thousands of volunteers and conscripts that were throwing in there for their 15 minutes of training or whatever. One camp on the south of Concordia on the Uruguay River once again turned into an accidental death camp. Now, this one honestly puts the Paraguayan one to shame. Now, men from the north of Brazil were the first to show up, followed by thousands

more from elsewhere. As listeners of the show are aware, and as we've already pointed out, going camping with several thousand of your bros in the 1800s, bad idea. Disease swept through. Congratulations. You have syphilis. Yeah. I mean, if they got syphilis, they were doing something else.

But, you know, whatever. Get yours, bro. Not a single one of the three allied nations thought about stocking this camp with any medical supplies or even doctors. They would come later. They just hadn't gotten there yet. Also, it was midwinter in a region

where, and remember, nobody supplies their men with anything other than several decades old musket. So between shooting themselves to death and hypothermia, thousands of men died. Oh, and also the flash floods swept men away in their sleep. Also the flash

floods. The lightning strikes and if men went out from camp, even a little bit, bam, wild animals. The Brazilians actually had to cut the length of their training short because so many men were dying in the camp. There were they simply wouldn't have an army left by the end

of it. Nobody is sure how many people fucking died in this camp there were they simply wouldn't have an army left by the end of it nobody is sure how many people fucking died in this camp thousands thousands of people died Jesus and the length of the training was that nearly enough how to teach anybody how to be an infantry men nor long enough to teach new officers how to lead them so

people just winged it another thing they winged and the thing that you should never wing, is your food supply. Oh, oh dear. I'm tapping the logistics sign again. You know what's funny is I was never a logistics guy when I was in the army and it was only through this show I've realized how

important they are. So, yeah, I used to make fun of them too. It's fine. Now, despite Brazil technically being an empire, these are not exactly armies that knew how to fight away from home. Force projection is certainly different than self-defense. That meant they didn't have a quartermaster or supply system and slap one together while they were in the camp. Something you should never do. And admittedly, to some levels of success,

Brazil did the best, which is not saying much. They did their best. And byly, to some levels of success, Brazil did the best, which is not saying much. They did their best. And by that, I meant they were able to find one cow per 60 men, along with rice and flour. Now, the Argentines were able to get about half of that, which is not enough. And the Uruguayans were forced to beg the other two for shit they didn't want because their government didn't care at all or didn't have the capacity to care either or. Sometimes the Uruguayans went days without food and they would go throughout the majority of the war without even having boots. So that's cool. God damn, dude, that sucks ass.

Now, Argentina attempted to fix this with a good old fashioned contractor system. The government would pay someone in the private sector to deliver goods to its army. This led to probably the most institutionalized black market on the continent. Everything got stolen before it even got close to its destination, and it was stolen by camp followers. Camp followers being tailors, cobblers, sex workers, the normal people that followed armies back in the day. These convoys of supplies would be robbed blind. Sometimes they would simply be sold off by the contractors for more money. And then those camp followers would, in turn, sell those to the military, despite the fact they were supposed to be given to them and were already paid for.

That meant that when they were sold back to the soldiers and officers, they cost three times the amount of money than they originally did. Not a hustle, man. Every man needs a hustle. In the end, I mean, not to mention the pay system was completely fucked. A lot of these soldiers had no money because they were not receiving their pay that they were supposed to be getting. This meant that unless you had a gregarious officer or something to buy food for their soldiers, which many did not, the vast majority of the allied army was malnourished

and on the brink of death, even if they weren't sick, which they probably were. And as the allies were busy shitting, starving, and dying, Lopez finally decided to act. He ordered his favorite general, Antonio Escagariba, to invade the Brazilian province of Rio Grande do Sul. And that is where we'll pick up next time. Now, if you think

that I have said a lot about failed logistics and people dying of disease, we haven't even scratched the fucking surface. Jesus. That's the Lions Led by donkeys guarantee it always gets worse how you feeling at the end of part two what a bunch of assholes man just just total fucking incompetence on all sides which is exactly what i'm used to and expect at this goddamn point yeah i mean that's kind of our trend right is i mean that's why we are named the way we are named. However, it's like, I don't know if I've ever read about a war with more institutional incompetence on literally every side of it.

The Brazilian side will fix themselves much later on. And we'll talk about that, I believe, in part four. So obviously, it's a long time away. And we also get into World War I-style trench warfare at one point. Oh, wow. Suicide bombing canoes. Stay tuned, folks. It gets weird.

It gets real weird. Anyway, Liam, here's the area where you get to plug your shows. Yeah, listen to 10,000 Losses. Listen to Well, There's Your Problem. And everybody, thank you for listening to the show. Thank you for supporting the show. And if you don't, if you like what we do here and you think it's worth your money, throw us a dollar.

You get some bonus stuff. And if you don't have money, that's cool too. Leaving a review is free and it helps us because of algorithms and such. I don't really know why, but it does. And if you enjoy books, perhaps buy one of my books. Buy his books. People have called them books. Buy one of my books.

Buy his books. People have called them books. And until next time, wear boots if you're going to march to the jungle. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Kill your commander if you have to.

Bleep that one out.