Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 260 - The Battle of Crecy

Episode Date: May 14, 2023

A blind man tries to charge a line of English longbowmen. It ends exactly like you think it does. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: https://www.historyextra.com/period/plantagenet/what-happened-battle-crecy-edward-iii-hundred-years-war-victory-why/ Andrew Ayton. The Battle of Crécy, 1346 Andrew Ayton. The Battle of Crécy: Context and Significance https://www.historytoday.com/archive/edward-iii-and-battle-cr%C3%A9cy https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/death-by-longbow/ https://www.wired.com/2009/08/0826crecy-cannon/

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now back to the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Lions Led by Donkeys show. I don't know why I keep saying welcome back like this is a series or something. Our series is over. This is a regular episode. I'm Joe and with me in the content mine is Tom. Hello, Tom. How are you? I'm good.

I don't like how you shamed me earlier on for using a hack squat machine. I feel very strongly about the existence of a hack squat machine. I don't like to consider myself a workout elitist by any stretch of the imagination, but unless you have some kind of injury that precludes you from using a regular squat rack, a hack squat is a war crime. You're a barbell supremacist.

That's right, yeah, yeah. I'm fine with dumbbells, kettlebells, all those things, but a hack squat against the wall irredeemable it is like a completely different movement in my mind because like the reason why is i've started using a gym that's close to the studio because despite the fact that my regular gym is like there's a olympiclifter from my area, like a medalist. So the gym, despite the fact it's a community gym, is like insanely decked out. Like it has like all really good bumper plates and it has, you know, I think two power racks, but like 15 barbells and like loads of machines and stuff.

But it crucially does not have a hack squat machine. I walked in this morning, I was like hitting legs and I was like, you know what?cially does not have a hack squat machine i walked in this morning i was like hitting legs and i was like you know what i've never tried a hack squat machine i'm gonna try it and holy shit does it humble you i have nothing but complaints about the gym i go to i will not say what it is i live in a small city um but i will say it is a chain from the United States. And there's something about gym culture here. That isn't quite the same, where is, you know,

it's not much of a thing. So the gyms that exist here are all incredibly overpriced for what they are like overpriced to the extent that they would be expensive in the United States. for what they are like overpriced to the extent that they would be expensive in the united states um and the people that go to them don't work out really they're there to take like instagram pictures which like okay i don't care man do whatever makes you feel happy just get the fuck out of my way like i go to a gym where there is one squat rack and one bench press which is again should be illegal however if you're standing in front of said one bench press or one squat rack

and you're taking a fucking tiktok video or whatever it should be legal to throw a medicine ball against the back of your head see i i disagree from someone who like learns quite a lot about fitness from tiktok because i follow some like people who actually know what they're talking about. And yeah, these are not those people, I promise. OK, OK. So like, yeah, I mean, like, I think there is a certain form of etiquette. Like if you are using the one squat rack, if you're doing like powerlifting, go to a powerlifting gym or like just buy a barbell and do it at home. I agree. I completely agree. powerlifting go to a powerlifting gym or like just buy a barbell and do it at home i agree i

completely agree uh i know like people have been listening to the show for a long time know uh that i i'm very into fitness um i don't exactly powerlift anymore i'm almost 35 my body is not the healthiest due to prior jobs and stuff like that your knees are absolute chalk yeah absolutely so like i'm mostly just there for general fitness i'm not trying to bend any due to prior jobs and stuff like that. Your knees are absolute chalk. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm mostly just there for general fitness. I'm not trying to bend any barbells anymore or anything crazy like that. But there is a certain amount of gym etiquette that you should observe

that shouldn't scare anybody away from a gym. I encourage people to go for whatever fitness goals they want just to be generally healthier. go for whatever fitness goals they want just to be generally healthier. But if you, say, are walking around... This happened to me today, actually. If you're walking around a gym, have some knowledge of where your body is. Don't walk right next to someone that is, say, squatting and hit the barbell while it's on their back because you can badly injure that person. And I'm really happy I was warming up. Otherwise, a barbell has 200 kilos on it or something, and it sways the wrong way. My knee is going to explode like a bomb.

So please don't do that. And person who did that today i hope you don't do that again i was worried there am i gonna have to bleep something out but like i think yeah like general gym etiquette i think if you are like powerlifters you know you need to take your blankie out you need to go for a nap nap for like six minutes in between your set of three reps like look i understand one of my good friends is a powerlifter i understand it if you can go to a powerlifting gym go do that if you're going to do it in a commercial gym try and go when it's not as busy or alternatively like if you are taking up that much time learn how to work set work in sets with like other people's like okay i'm going to be lifting 200 kilos you're going

to be doing 100 let me take these plates off you work out while i'm and then we just work back and forth you know you work in the sets but like my thing and this is you know we open this show quite a lot with us complaining about stuff and this is hey we have like dad chat talking about weather with nate and now we have like our weekly gym report with tom and joe i mean like we like gym goals i'm trying to cut 10 kilos in the next 12 weeks i might die um that that is with the without the aid of performance enhancing drugs um but uh my biggest pet peeve is because my main gym and i feel like it is a privilege to be able to have two gyms. I count the second one as a business expense.

Thank you, UK tax laws. But my biggest pet peeve, because my main one is a community gym, is you have groups of five 16-year-old teenage boys coming in and using the one bench or the one squat rack and it takes them like 15 minutes for all five of them to do a working set and i'm like jesus christ hurry up please because they'll like do a set and they'll talk for like three minutes next one like literally you can do that and i've seen like guys who like go to the gym and women who go to the gym be able to do that with a group of people and go bang bang bang bang because a working set will take you like 30 seconds to complete yeah if you're doing like a rep range of like six to ten but taking 15 minutes for five people to do one set each is just and

you're wasting your own time as well and obviously they're young they'll learn they're you know inexperienced and i take try and take every opportunity i can if like someone's working out beside me and like i look i think they're about to hurt themselves there's a huge difference between like if someone's working out beside you and you're giving them unsolicited advice but like if there's someone nobody likes that guy yeah yeah you're like gonna completely shear your shoulder off like fuck me don't especially if you're a guy giving unsolicited advice to a woman um yeah like i i i'd like to think that we have cultivated an audience or nobody is like a turbo douche um but nobody wants to hear your advice man like yeah i'm like it was so funny because i was in the

gym yesterday and i was doing back and shoulders it was back and shoulders a weird i've i've the weirdest split but i was doing like a rear del flies on a pec deck and there was a lady who like let me on to it she was doing like chest flies and i did two sets and i was like so in the zone i was looking for straightforward and i looked around and i saw she was standing there was like oh shit she was wanting to get back on so i was like fuck i apologized to her and was like sorry didn't realize i've one set left i'm gonna bash it out and she was like no no it's fine i've never done that exercise before and i was watching you do it i was like oh okay so she sat back down uh i was like oh do you want me to give you some advice if you've never done it she was like yeah sure and i told her like you know just to see up

like a little bit so your arms are kind of more straightforward slash a little bit down so the most optimal uh all the optimal bros are going to get my ass over this and i was like focus on you know imagine you're like stretching a band out rather than like you're using your back so you're activating your rear delts and it was like just super chill i think that's that is the only way to give someone advice unless it's like a 18 year old like kid and he's like doing the wildest shit and you're just like you're gonna hurt yourself and you're not gonna grow any muscle doing that so like you know yeah i have a benefit of well tom you've met me you're looking at me in a camera right now i do not look like the

friendliest person on earth i'm aware of this i have resting armenian face i i truly do um and especially like i have my headphones in and i'm not paying attention so i look even more like not a person that you want to talk to which is nice in a lot of ways uh i strangers rarely talk to me um but uh yeah nobody ever asked me for advice either um and now that we have pissed off every single person who's ever bought a gymshark shirt we uh we we can talk about one of the famous most famous infamous even dumb charges of military history at the battle of creasy and this has the added benefit of we're talking a lot of french words in today's episode and nate is not fucking here to correct me suck it uh so everybody wait wait wait you know people have been complaining that there's no

drops anymore uh and a lot of and people don people don't know behind the scenes of how this works. We never talk about it. I actually don't run the recorder anymore. Because when I do on my side, there's always some kind of delay. Time zones or whatever. Internet in Armenia is actually quite good. I have no idea why. But whenever I run the recorder to someone especially someone in the uk there's

always a fucking delay uh so i so i have ceded control of the soundboard to tom or nate or anyone else you know um do you know what you know what we are we are so everybody loves talking about guys getting murdered with swords bows and arrows right uh without the advent of guns it leaves a lot of room open for history to be full of characters some of the weirdest guys humanity has ever birthed out of our collective womb i'm i'm not proud about writing that line because there's more dumb ways to die. There's incredibly dumb ways to lead thousands of men to their death.

And it's intensely personal, but also weirdly impersonal at the same time, which is why we're talking about the Battle of Creasy. And you said you've never heard of this battle before? No. So it is a small part of a much longer, dumber war called the Hundred Years War, which started for a few reasons. And we're not talking about the entire Hundred Years War here.

This is a single episode, not an entire podcast. This is a single episode, not an entire podcast. And since the Norman conquest of 1066, English monarchs had held titles and lands within France, the possession of which made them vassals of the kings of France as well. It answers the question, what if a British guy was French? I think I've met a few of those here recently. The weird expat community birds the worst people on earth you get a collection of like dutch english french people and they're all just you want to run them

down with a car if you do not like it there is the door you know sometimes you want to run someone down with a car and other times you want to run them down and do a burnout on their face um that that is the collection of expats i've come to know, with the exception of, like, we had one, I guess you'd call him an expat, on our bonus series, History of Armenia. He's a very good friend of mine. He is one of the good ones. Now, following a series of disagreements between Philip VI of France and Edward III of England and of france and edward the third of england on may 24th 1337 philip's great council in paris agreed that the lands held by edward in france should be taken physically back into philip's

hands and french the frenchman be put in control of them as edward was in breach of his obligations as a vassal. This is like, when I tweeted before we did the Trouble series, it's like, European history is pretty much like hundreds of guys that are one missed handshake away from being beheaded or hung, drawn, and quartered. Yeah, pretty much. And especially in situations like this,

it's that, but they're also all related. I mean, that is also european politics and now one of them is uh posting about anime on twitter yeah um like like we've said multiple times most of european history is inbred people beefing over turf who's got the most sloped chin speaking of which congratulations uk on your new king. Old sausage fingers. You keep talking shit about King Charles, you're going to catch these inflated hands. Looks like motherfucking balloon animals.

I mean, like, if he was any younger, he would have been great at white-collar boxing, because he'd have to wear, like, 18 18-ounce gloves because his hands are so big. It's like Mickey Mouse gloves, but it's just his skin. It's fine. It's not ableist if he's a king. Now, Charles IV of France died of an heir

in 1328, leaving two claimants to the throne. Edward, son of Charles' sister Isabella, and Philip of Valois, a nephew. At this time, when there were situations like this, the barons of France would come together and pretty much elect the person they'd want to take over by swearing allegiance to them. Yeah, it wasn't like, we must gather the council and elect a king, like the terrible ending of Game of Thrones. And they chose Philip as Edward wasn't French

and they didn't want a foreign king reigning over them. Wonder what that feels like. Would have no idea. Anyway, let's thumb through our collective history here. Now, there was an old law at the time that said women could not inherit property and they figured that since charles was going to take the throne through isabella that this also included the throne so charles would not qualify uh or sorry edward would not qualify because he would be getting the throne through a woman who did not have claimants to

property right um so terrible yeah they're they're just stretching here because that kind of shit happened all the time i'm shaking my head so everyone knows i disagree with this the first stages of the war around eight years were intermittent pointless inexpensive at one point in the middle of it the pope ordered the king of france to go under crusade against the turks uh like this kind of and i should destroy the mischievous cyrus and yeah the lustful turk uh like and i should be because someone's like actually it wasn't a hundred years straight and it was more than a hundred years yeah we know there's breaks truces pieces stuff

like that all which broke down constantly it was it's generally called 100 years war because war just kept getting fought over the same dumb bullshit over the course of 100 plus years it was not 100 years straight so during the war union rep is there like tracking workable hours you know you have you know 14th century shocks you know collecting everyone's paperwork it's like okay you did like three years and then there was two years okay we can get you some furlough pay for those two years you know we need we need to see everyone's forms yeah exactly you gotta you gotta go to your war cba and see how everything pans out war osha oh god i mean to be fair if anybody needs osha it's any situation where like 10 000

dudes are gonna go camp in the woods um that just sounds like a fun time yeah anyway i don't know why i'm shitting out of my eyes that's just loads of that's literally just that's just gonna be when we reach the next the eventual patreon goal of we have to go lock ourselves in an albanian bunker for 24 hours and record as many podcasts as possible that's just like the lighthouse but for podcasts taking peyote buttons and just talking about french dudes um and you know during one of these breaks that's when the pope's like hey you guys need to stop killing each other and go over there and kill the turks um and that will become important later it doesn't happen but you know and you know edward would eventually be going to be crowned edward the

third king of england because every royal and noble is horribly inbred with one another like we've talked about and as philip took the french throne he continuously supported the scots against the english for their independence which obviously pissed off the english more and more eventually the boy king of scotland david ran to france when the english finally won for good as payback robert of artois a french noble see i pronounced it right nate uh a french noble who committed murder to try to secure a lordship now near calais was allowed to run to england for protection despite philip once there robert told king edward that you know you should just claim the french throne uh fuck it like easy as that like why not and he did uh he began replacing any French-leaning nobles in the English continental holdings with English loyalists. Everyone knew the war would focus around the Gascony region, which I'm sure I pronounced incorrectly. And this became guaranteed in 1337, because when the war started, Edward announced that the continental lands are now French again. And so, of course, the French are going to target these continental lands first.

Right. And an English army led by the Duke of Lancaster drove away the first French attempts to secure these regions. In June of 1338, French privateers burned Portsmouth to the ground. And between 1338 and 1340, they continued to attack England from the Thames to Cornwall. I'm just thinking about French sharp, you know? You know, as someone who's more interested of the Napoleonic conflicts from the French side, for obvious reasons, anybody who's listened to this show, I really wish there was a French sharp because it's like a lot more interesting to me.

There's a drop just marked sharp drops two i have to click it everyone bear with me three two one it's it's the weird moaning and whipping. Oh, God. Yeah, Francis also has control over the soundboard, and he puts so many sound clips on there that it is... I feel like Charlie Kelly pointing to the string map on the wall trying to find anything. So part of me is glad that I don't control it anymore.

Well, see, this is the thing. Someone has gotten rid of loads of the drops so we just have like one two three four five six you only have seven drops one of them is the air horn russian hard bass homies dbz and of course the goal was almost certainly to force the English to divert attention away from their continental holdings to defend England with all these privateer attacks. And then Philip remembered, hey, I got this whole ass fleet together for this crusade that the Pope wanted, but I had never sent them anywhere. So I should send that shit to Flanders and threatened the English supply and communications towards Europe. Soon, the English had no choice but to take out this French fleet, making their move on June 23rd. The French Navy was much larger and more powerful, but much dumber. They were incredibly badly deployed. Rather than sailing out in open water where they could use their numerical superiority to their strength,

they actually decided to fight in a close quarters battle in this inlet area. So they couldn't deploy fully. Because, I mean, naval battles back then were still mostly like crash into one another and use infantry, but on a boat. The oceans are not yet battlefields and you know and also to keep a cohesion of force it was very common for the ships to chain themselves together uh so you know they wouldn't float away uh because you know ships aren't great back then all right uh and the french in particular had their ships chained together four at a time. This is going to be bad.

This is like when you bring little kids on a school tour and their mittens are tied to their jackets and there's a string holding kids together. Or you occasionally see a kid being walked by a leash. Oh god. kid being walked by a leash oh god um but like so essentially like what weapons were on these ships like in terms of like other than just crashing into each other and weapons bows arrows pikes swords stuff like that like we'll talk about some early cannons a little bit later but they're not on boats yet okay so it's dudes just like you know english longbow men but one massive masturbation arm yeah like you know exactly okay okay and the english had their ships chained together in pairs one infantry one archer ship

this ended up being much better and we did talk about this a little bit before during a long time ago during our battle of ashen core uh But like Tom, you already talked about the English did have the best archers of the day and the best bows in the English longbowmen. The English longbowmen had a test of at least 100 pounds and could fire arrows hard enough to punch through just about any armor available at the time range depending. And the men firing them were very, very good because they've been training from a very young age and how to use them. Firing them so often that when an archer's like skeleton from back then is found, their forearm is deformed from holding the bow in place. Like imagine being like 14th century Frenchman on a boat and just getting your dick and balls just completely eviscerated by an english longbowman's arrow i just picture them this massive cartoonish arm and a baby arm um it's like that dude you know um i can't remember what his name is someone if you do know tweet up or tweet at me when you you mean like the arm wrestler yeah the

dude like i because i was in a barman i think yeah talking to someone about this dude and like pulled a picture up of him and they were like which arm is meant to be the bigger one and then i showed like i found another picture of him with his hands open and one hand is like twice the size of the other one yeah yeah that that man could like skin the bark off of a tree if he wanted to with his giant cartoonish paw becoming popeye in real life yeah exactly but only half of popeye um and instead of spinach it's just fucking dianable. Yeah, but like bringing a full circle, it's also like the dudes who, you know, sick, you know, chest and back

and arms, they have little tiny legs. Oh yeah, yeah. They look like tops that will just fall over. You know, British archers at this time, they just need to hit leg day, need to do their squats, need to do their lunges. I'll settle for the other arm day yeah um uh and

now the bunch together frenchmen on their ships which attempted to charge at the english were made incredibly easy targets for the longbows and when it came apparent that oh man we have truly fucked this up the french could not escape due to being chained together to three other ships. They were not very agile and this led the fleet to panic. They broke into a full route which was a very, very slow one. Got caught in a traffic jam of 213 ships

all of which are smashing into each other like bumper boats, all running for their lives while being wasted by English arrows. In the end of the day only about 20 french ships made it out leaving behind hundreds of sunken or captured ships and tens of thousands of casualties now most of these were not casualties to the english arrows a lot of them were but seeing that like oh fuck we we can't get away they dove into the ocean most of these guys could not

swim so they sank like like a like like a sack of bricks and died the english lost in comparison about 600 dudes um like since you're way more knowledgeable about this stuff than me did the french military just suck up until napoleon i mean i wouldn't say they sucked um you know it's something of yeah something that's entered the popular narrative but based mostly on world war ii and i suppose into china as well but like they were comparatively as good as the english in most wars um but okay i will say that their fuck-ups stick out in history because they're always cartoonish in capacity um which is another thing we'll be talking about here in the battle of creasy it's like they are kind of shining examples of how fucking stupid you can be

is it the same situation as to when you think of other you know pop history famous battles or wars like situations in world war ii like the battle of kursk like oh man how could the germans be this stupid like well they really weren't until they were you know i mean yeah if you look at the totality of history, the French military was one of the strongest in the world until they weren't. And when they fuck up, like here on the boats or here at the Battle of Crecy, it stands out.

Or Agincourt, as we've talked about before. And this battle was such a colossal dick up that nobody had the guts to tell the french king what happened so they left that job to the court jester yes yes just the 14th century french version of me wearing a jester's hat and having bells on his shoes and saying oh we've lost hundreds of ships and loads of people drowned. Do you want to see me pull a chicken out of my shoe? Just some like poor fuck named like Pierre or whatever

dressed as a sad clown dancing up to the king like, thousands are dead. Like French Krusty the the clown delivering the bad news and sancho mel is just there as well yeah uh and the flemish also joined english's the english cause in the war though they had to do it in the weirdest way possible due to church law as everybody involved is still cath Catholic for the most part. They could not openly oppose Philip as he was King of France, right? And they would find themselves possibly excommunicated by the Catholic

church if they did so. So despite the fact that they really didn't like him, they had to wait for Edward to declare himself King of France. Like, well, he says he's King of France too. So, you know, we edward to declare himself king of france like well he says he's king of france too so you know we're gonna support the king of france this other king of france which you know this is all is called the the pope loophole the the pope hole as opposed to the other kind of pope hole um now with support and naval supremacy, Edward prepared to invade France. A joint Flemish-English force, which is generally just called every Spanish bar on earth now, would invade from Flanders towards Paris, while a large army under Prince John would attack other holdings.

However, bad weather forced his ships off course after three days of travel. Now, a few advisors point out, why doesn't the king simply land in Normandy and attack there as most French troops had already been diverted to face Prince John? The king decided this is good enough and landed with his army of 15,000 with his son as well, Edward the Black Prince, Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall. Now, there was the Earl of Chester as well, which is just a lovely title to have, heir to the English throne. Now, the Black Prince was only 15 years old at the time and still managed to have the sickest fucking nickname ever. Now, he had this nickname just because he wore black armor, nickname ever now he had this nickname just because he wore black armor and he would go on to be an absolute psychopath as any 15 year old prince is uh but his his nickname sounds like a

goddamn final fantasy villain you just don't get nicknames for soldiers like that anymore i was gonna say that's that's like a witcher ass name you know yeah like you would get a quest like slay the black prince or whatever now like soldiers nicknames nowadays are fucking lame like oh that's frank the baby dick or whatever i don't know just like this dude rocking up in skyrim skyrim belongs to the nords now they landed near lavasse and the english army launched what was effectively a terror campaign. They specifically targeted civilian populations, looting, raping, and murdering, and burning their way across the countryside,

as most armies did in the day. Though this one was so bad, it was notable in history, which is never a good sign. Yeah, if you feel the need to mention it, it's probably not good. Yeah, and the Black Prince seemed pretty enthusiastic about this part of the campaign.

Now, you know, it's the 1300s, so it took time for the word of this invasion to get back to the French king. And when it finally did, he ordered all of his nobles and people who just so happened to hate the English to show up and help him. He was joined...

There's just one messenger, like, galloping along, but has to take a break every two hours to have a little bit of wine, a little bit of cheese, you know, on the side of the road. Yeah, French labor law stipulates he only can work 15 minutes at a time.

Now, he was joined by John of Luxembourg, king of Bohemia, who was known as John the Blind. And in case this nickname did not clue you in, he was blind. Sick as hell. Is he doing cool kung fu like the dude in John Wick 4, or is it a case of he's just blind? He was. So he went blind about 10 years before

from something. It's the 1300s. He shit too hard and popped blood vessels and went blind. I don't know. But before then, he was known pretty famously as a great tournament knight.

But now he's fucking blind. That day has passed. If only Mr. Beast had existed at this time he could have cured his blindness doing the 1300s equivalent of YouTuber face I mean like isn't just the Pope the 1400s equivalent of Mr. Beast

I hate that so much thank you then famously Philip went to Saint Denis and retrieved the Oriflamme which was a legendary battle flag that was claimed to be from the times of Charlemagne

and it was only supposed to be taken out when France is facing a dire emergency like this is like a rallying cry like we got our fancy bit of cloth it's truly going down did he run into like you know Arthur Morgan and Javier Escuela while he was in Saint-Denis?

I like that the king went on the 1300s equivalent of a fetch quest. Edward's army made its way towards Paris, trying to find his way across the River Seine. Though Edward's target wasn't actually Paris, it was Flanders, and in hopes of joining with the rest of his army. But he wanted to trick the French king into thinking that the capital was in his crosshairs, and it kind of worked. However, this turned into something, because obviously the French

caught on like, oh, he is not actually going towards Paris. And this turned into something of a race across the north with each army, the English and the French, smashing into one another in small battles. Edward continuously trying to find a place to cross the river while the French kept frantically destroying bridges in front of him. Talk about burning bridges. It's like, I don't know, like I'm going to move on because I forgot where I was going.

I'm just going to move on because I forgot where I was going. I was going to say like, this is just like, you know, when you have a family gathering and there's that always that one cousin that you want to avoid, but like keeps following you around the room, trying to talk to you. And you're just like,

okay, I'm going to go outside for a cigarette. I'm going to go, you know, to the bathroom. I'm going to go get a beer. And just, they always are following you.

Yeah. That is my relationship with the English. And it works as well. Cause these dudes are probably cousins as well. Oh, absolutely. Yep. And eventually around the Psalm,

both a place where nothing bad had ever happened again, both Philip and Edward came to the same conclusion. Edward was trapped. Every bridge was either destroyed or heavily garrisoned by French Knights. And he had no way across without much hope. Edward gathered all of the French prisoners that he had so far captured and told them, hey, if someone could tell me where to cross this motherfucking river, I will free you. One peasant who he had captured told him about a crossing near Blanche Tonche.

Blanche Tonche. Blanche Tonche. We go across the river of Blanche Tange. Nate is so fucking mad right now. I can feel it all the way from Geneva. Look, it's not my fault your language was invented by fucking clowns, alright? But it would

only work when the tide was out. Of course, when the English showed up, the tide was in. And by the time the tide had gone back out, the French were waiting for them on the other side. Then another problem came to the attention of Edward. King Philip, around 40,000 men, were rapidly

closing in on him from behind, which is only suitable if he earned that kind of thing. They had no choice but to cross the river anyway, even with the garrison staring at them on the other side. How wide is the psalm again? I'm an idiot.

Just how wide is the psalm? I mean, it's wide and deep enough that even on horseback, you can't really cross it when it's, you know. To be fair, I'm willing to bet he kicked a couple peasants across just to test it out and watch them get ripped away by the curse. Like, oh, never mind. I mean, if we can drown enough people in the river, we can create

like a bridge out of bodies. Pretty sure that will never happen again at the psalm. Famously, dead body infrastructure. Not a reoccurring thing on this show. That World War Z. famously dead body infrastructure not a reoccurring thing on this show not world war z edward ordered his forces to break through the french on the other side once the tide relented beginning his attack with longbow men leading some uh hot longbow on crossbow action as the

french were favors of crossbows which they they did. Crossbows were easier. They didn't take as long to train people on point and click. They take longer to reload because you have to crank them back. But they're much easier to train someone on than a longbow. It's archery on easy mode.

Yeah, pretty much. But there's a lot of problems with them namely the long bows were all around better they shot further they're much more accurate because these guys have been training on them for fucking ever so pretty much every time they clash during this series the long bowmen are absolutely going to ether the crossbowmen and that's as well also as well that crossbowbow bolts are shorter, so would have less momentum going through the air

and less penetration power. Yeah, from my understanding, crossbows were much better closer up, whereas, not to mention, they're also slower. The longbowmen could fire as quickly as they could pick up an arrow and reload,

which they did. The longbow's fire rate was much higher than the crossbowmen eventually chasing them off which opened the french infantry and cavalry up for an attack which broke the french um though by the time the english had fought through the french forces behind them had already caught up and destroyed their entire supply train uh which is bad. You don't want your supplies to get, you know, ha-ha-ha'd by a whole bunch of angry Frenchmen.

Wagon manifests. Don't fucking tempt me, bro. Don't fucking tempt me. We have like 25 minutes left in this episode and Joe's going to spend 15 minutes reading out wagon manifests of what they lost,

how much cheese they lost, how much wine they lost how much wine they lost look nick had to suffer through the most extensive wagon manifest lane series so far and i promise it'll get worse in the future um not only so now with the british only a half day or sorry the english they weren't british yet uh only a half day in front of the massive French army on their heels, Edward's forces gathered in the forest outside of Creasy, a small village of unimportance described by one source as, quote, home to a few dusty peasants.

Dusty-ass peasants, you know, for fuck's sake. Just like walking around, you know, like the kid from Pean peanuts with the cloud of dust always gathered around him stink lines hovering overhead other horrible things people use to describe peasants if you were a french peasant and you heard like an english person speaking it will be like the adults that's still just whatever i hear whenever a french person speaks to me to include my grandfather now uh knowing that the french were not far behind the english formed their battle lines on top of a 200 foot hill that rapidly became steeper as it went like it started

very gentle and then would get much steeper suddenly towards the top. I know for some people that just sounds like I'm describing the concept of a hill, but this is a little different. Getting hill-pilled. Yeah, this is very, very gradual, and then just an absolute steep jump in grade, which was where the English were stationed on top of that. Furthermore, because of the thick forests and hills on either side of them, the French, which were an overwhelmingly mounted

force, would have to completely avoid them. And this also funneled them to a very narrow area because they couldn't go through the woods. And so they outnumber them by so much, but now those numbers cannot be deployed in a broad front. They'd kind of have to be funneled through this very narrow area, like that episode of The Simpsons where Mr. Burns, the door stops Mr. Burns from catching all the diseases because they can't all fit through, but with French people. As for those numbers

they're kind of all over the place you know this 1300 sources are all over uh when it comes to uh how big the armies were the english forces are generally considered to be around 7 000 at the low end 15 000 in the high end however because they originally deployed somewhere around 15 000 men you could assume they'd taken quite a few casualties from the campaign, from battle, but mostly because it's the 1300s and disease is endemic through every fucking army. A lot of these guys are just dropping dead

from shitting ass shatter brain disease or whatever the fuck else people in the 1300s die from. The wind blows, everybody gets cholera and bleeds out of their eyes. Shattering your pelvis because you've had your first solid shit. Yeah, exactly. And so it's fair to assume that a few thousand English guys

and Flemish guys died along the way. You know, from a terminal case of upset tummy. Now, the English forces are split under three commands, which were called battles at the time. One was under the Black Prince on the right, which is considered a true

place of honor in the armies of the day, though the king knew his son was, you know, a teenager and would need actual commanders with real experience to lead his forces for him, and then his son get all the credit. Yeah, it's been your large son to work day. Yeah.

These were Tomas de Beauchamp, the Earl of Warwick, and Godfrey the Hardcore, who is... I love it. Who is known as the Lame due to him being born with one leg much smaller than the other. Yeah, he couldn't be that hardcore.

His two-step is just not great because he can't be picking up change with one leg shorter than the other. He, he couldn't be that hardcore. His two-step is just not great, because, you know, like, he can't be picking up change with one leg shorter than the other. He's just got one step, yeah. Everywhere he goes, he's stutter-stepping motherfuckers. Now, this force was the largest with 800 men-at-arms and around 2,000

longbowmen. The earls of Northampton and Arundel commanded the second battle on the left with a force a little bit smaller than the right, much like Godfrey the Hardcore's legs. And while King Edward commanded the reserve, which was on the highest point of the hill, giving him the ability to see his entire force. And there's actually a lot of people say this is the earliest documented example of a battlefield commander being able to see the entire battlefield, which is just incredible to think about. It's just like playing an RTS. Yeah, yeah.

It's like me playing Total War, except he wins. He commanded about 500 men-at-arms and 1,200 archers. The formation the king chose was standard form at the time, men-at-arms at the center, with archers at the flanks in a staggered

formation that allowed all of his men to fire without break and also without the very real fear at the time of accidentally shooting one of their own guys in the back of the fucking head again just like me playing a total war game the main difference is I don't care I'll fire artillery directly

at the back of my own men's head fuck them I don't need. I'll fire artillery directly at the back of my own men's head. Fuck them. I don't need them. They're digital specs on my screen. Like General Joe. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, that's not much different than any king has ever thought about their soldiers in human history.

Behind the men-at-arms were some Welsh infantry, and at the very back on the hill were bombards or incredibly unsafe, damn near suicidal primitive cannons making them, allegedly, the first cannons deployed in a battle. Now these were things hell yeah hold the drop because

I fell into a bit of a hole here and not the good kind. They probably weren't the first cannons to be deployed in battle. However, there is some arguments of when the first cannons were used, depending a lot on what you consider a cannon. What is known is that gunpowder weapons of this period were very, very rare, at least in Europe, and the first kind of handguns used in Europe were in 1284, not even 100 years before this battle. Though, gunpowder weapons had been used in China as far back as the 10th century. These were normally very small and could hardly be considered what any of us would call cannons, but those would appear in China in the 12th century.

There's also evidence that the French could have used a cannon against the English seven years before this at the Battle of Cambrai. And according to Arab historian Ahmad Khalassan, the Mamluks deployed the quote unquote first cannon history against the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalat in 1260, which have predated the first European handgun, let alone cannon. first european handgun let alone cannon though for some reason edward is normally given credit for deploying the first cannon for like white guy reasons at creasy generally that's how history works especially military history where they just credit western europeans for doing everything first and better and it gets very annoying but he deployed anywhere between five and 22 of them, and we're going to talk more about these cannons in a little bit, because they were mostly useless. The English were formed up and ready for battle,

assuming it was coming any minute, but then it just did not. The king rode back and forth, railing his men with speeches before finally concluding that the French weren't fucking coming and ordered his men to chill out, sit down and have a lunch break. Yes, we love lunch. I'm taking away the hip hop. Like I'm getting snack peeled.

I'm getting lunch based. You know, we love to see it however i just love that you don't address that at all the french were still marching though philip gave no battle orders as they went despite knowing roughly where the english were sitting the french army was so large had gotten stretched out over the course of several miles. When scouts reported exactly where the English were, pointing out

that they weren't running, they were going to stand and fight, King Philip tried to chase down the head of his army to order them to stop, let's all come back together and deploy in an organized fashion. They just kind of ignored his orders for dumb chivalric reasons because

they were worried that those behind them would they're just ordering us to come back together and steal our glory uh because the glory comes from being at the head of the army right the vanguard this is going to become very stupid uh because what happens next is like something out of a bad sketch comedy, but one with a low budget. The vanguard of the French army ran into the English positions and seeing that they were still really fucking far away from everybody else and without any kind of battle orders, no organization, no tactics, no nothing, they fell back. Meanwhile, the rest of the French army had no idea what was going on because they were so far away, stretched out over possibly 10 miles. Jesus Christ!

Yeah. So when the vanguard fell back, the others thought a pitched battle must have happened up ahead of them. And the vanguard was being routed. They were running away. They had been defeated. Confused and thinking the English were upon them, the French soldiers pulled out their swords and screamed, vanguard was being like was being routed they were running away they had been defeated confused and thinking the english were upon them the french soldiers pulled out their swords and screamed

to the death and sprinted forward thinking there was a battle happening in front of them but there wasn't there's nothing happening in front of them they're just like oh fuck just we're just running at down an field. There's nothing here. And they finally stopped because they were hit by a flash thunderstorm and a downpour of rain. Even God was like, don't be this dumb. Yeah, the gods also hate the French.

So they just kind of had to hang out until it passed. Most of the time through history, people don't like to hang out until it passed. Uh, you know, most of the time through history, people don't like to fight in rainstorms. It's not good for them. Um, but rain has a tricky thing. You see it, it tends to say,

turn a hill into a pile of sloppy mud. So when the storm passes, the sun comes back out. The sun happens to be directly in the face of the advancing French. Command of the advance fell upon the French Earl of Alençon, who sent his crossbowmen forward to soften up the English front line. A lot of problems here. And the best of times, longbowmen outranged crossbowmen.

Now, these crossbowmen, who have been marching about 20 miles a day without breaking and carrying their crossbows which cause it which weighed about 20 pounds or more uh were now ordered to go up this hill they told them that like look like the the commander of the crossbow men who was not a nobleman of any kind uh because crossbow men were thought of to be like lower on the totem pole or whatever. Like, look man, we're fucking exhausted. We're soaking wet. That hill is sloppy shit. We can't go on.

And so the Earl ignored them, told them to go anyway. You really don't want to be a combat fluffer in an uphill battle. Yeah, you don't want to be a peasant in a king's army and be like, man, I'm kind of fucking tired right now. My intestines

just louse you with parasites. My stomach hurts, my feet are sore. Can I just sit down for half an hour? These rags I have tied over my feet really aren't keeping the water out. Could you at least give me some Gore-Tex

or something? So, the crossbowmen are forced to storm up the hill anyway. And, of course, the longbowmen immediately begin raining fucking hell on them. The crossbowmen could barely even fire because they're too busy just trying to walk up this shitty, sloppy, muddy hill. And then, the English open fire with their cannons. Now, the crossbowmen were hit with about 12,000 to 20,000 arrows per minute. So they quickly

ditched their crossbows and ran for their lives. And as for the cannons, they didn't really do anything. They fired stones that had been roughly sanded into a round-ish shape and were very, very inaccurate. And of course, since this is the age

of knights, people were not exactly sure what the fuck they were doing with gunpowder, so cange-loaded cans would just explode and turn the gunners into a human soup. Like, at this stage, you know, cannons are in their, like, such primitive forms.

They probably would have been better just rolling big stones down the hill and letting them probably soldiers i mean worst case scenario they at least can't blow themselves up with them but the sights and the sounds of random explosions to a random commoner in the 1300s probably seemed like the most terrifying thing they'd have ever witnessed yeah so the the terror aspect almost certainly had some morale impact yeah but the crossbowman retreat the earl gets pissed seeing the crossbowman run jumps on his horse and orders a full vanguard charge up the hill directly through the fucking crossbowman ordering his mounted knights to slaughter them as they go

this is like the most lethal version of you know that cheese run thing that happens you know where you chase the cheese down the hill they should do that but fill the cheese with gunpowder and have a longbowman shoot you while you run after it i i believe in historical accuracy this is just like the the coolest version of a Tough Mudder or, you know, those Spartan runs. Tough Mudder brought to you by Timothy McVeigh. Soon, a pileup of dead men and horses clogged the single row that the French would use to advance.

And finally, the King of France arrives on the battlefield and he too flew into a rage not because one of his commanders had just ordered a charge through his own men but because king edward was flying his new flag up on the hill which had the fleur de lis on it the symbol of france so he took this as a personal slight and ordered a full assault up the hill still without forming any real plan other than go up the fucking hill once again when corpse infrastructure shows up maybe rethink your plans it's not normally a good sign if you're on the receiving end of the corpse infrastructure yeah now this is where king john the blind resurfaces he asks where's the fighting and one of his knights

replied quote it is in this way all the crossbowmen have been defeated and the king has commanded his men to kill them and there is such confusion from their stumbling and falling amongst the horses that the road is blocked king john like we said had been something of a famous tournament night back in the day you know know, like the weird night MMA. That's the thing now that I'm a huge fan of because how stupid it is. Think of Heath Ledger in a night's tale, but not being able to see. I'm not hot.

He may have been, we don't know. And to be fair, either did he, because he's fucking blind. Now remember, he had been blind for about 10 years. His peak fighting days were far beyond him

however he told the knights around him that he wanted to go and fight he looked around i assume seeing nothing and loudly declared quote then my lords you're my vassals my friends and my companions i pray you take me somewhere so i could strike a blow they had to physically tie the blind king's horse to their own the horse i should point out was not blind and was probably saying the whole time in horse language please don't i'd rather like to survive this battle this is getting getting your drunk friend into an uber at the end of the night it's like it's this way it's this way and they like literally are so blind drunk they're like walking away from the car it's more like you have a group of friends and they're

all fucking stupid and they're all drunk and one of them is like i am the most sober i will drive us and then you and then you promptly drive off a fucking bridge um because they tie the horse the king's horse to their own and then run up the hill they're all promptly murdered and like uh they don't find their bodies for a while and there's a lot of like heroic tales because of course blind the blind king of bohemia is often lauded as a hero that he breached the line and you know got his his licks in before he got connected to god's wi-fi but the better chance is he just died uselessly and immediately and the episode has fittingly gone down in history as the blind charge at creasy so yeah oh like i don't like in the entirety of this thing and the battle isn't even done

like oh it's barely even begun yeah like no one has made a good decision in the entirety of this episode the only intelligent decision that the french king makes is one that is made for him at the very end um he keeps ordering charges up the hill and the french just keep at it their army was so spread out that when elements showed up to the bottom of the hill that the last group had already been sent up and died or retreated. So they just like entered the Congo line of doom heading straight up the hill as they showed up wave after wave all day as the sun was setting on the growing pile of dead Frenchmen that now clogged their approach. on the growing pile of dead Frenchmen that now clogged their approach. Philip, the king, joined in and at least a few of the charges

and had his horse shot out from under him by an arrow at least twice. How does it happen twice? Does he have two different horses? Oh yeah, they just keep replacing them, yeah. Oh, just fuck the French. Oh my God. Finally, one French charge broke through the French. Oh my God. Finally, one French charge

broke through the arrows. So this is because the longbowmen had simply run out. They could fire six to ten arrows per minute and so many Frenchmen had come after them they'd burn through all their arrows. And like we already said their supply train had been

taken out by the French so they had no resupply system in place. So they had once out of arrows they picked up their shit and ran back behind the minute arms as a wave of frenchmen struggled up the hill however but by the time they finally got there they were so fucking tired that the for the minute arms just like let me do you a favor and just end this now and like they have no they have no energy by the time they're there and just get slaughtered. Then the longbowmen come back out and start picking through this massive pile of corpses

that's all around them, plucking out all these arrows and reloading themselves. We love people who recycle, reduce, reuse, recycle. Yeah, we respect our DIY defenders. Yeah, the French should have hit the Stair master for a couple of months and sometimes the french charges were just so badly disorganized that they would run up the hill and have no idea where the english line was so they'd like like pockets of frenchmen would just be wandering around and like english men at arms would just wander back up to them and be like hello mate and fucking stab them like they were just like what there there would be patrols of

english going out through the woods and like murdering these lost clusters of frenchmen and another point the french ran directly into the black prince's position where king edward could see from where he was sitting he asked one of his aides like hey is my son dead and he was told no but he would really like the king to send in his reserves because you know he's finally catching a big a pretty big charge of frenchmen yeah uh the king refused because he thought his son needed to quote earn his spurs and let him like get bloodied in battle to earn the respect of the other

nobles and stuff earn a name for himself despite the fact he already has a sick fucking nickname so he just let him fight on his own great dad solid for anyone listening at home my head has been in my hands probably about 50 times in the past 10 minutes yeah that tends

to happen when you know the battle kind of begins with one side charging into themselves and that's like before anything else has even happened now the sun has finally set but the french kept charging up the hill which is unique you know night battles are not common back then, but King Philip like just literally would not give up. They may have charged anywhere from 15 to 20 times in total. And King Philip asked one of his aides, what should I do? Cause he's like literally beside himself,

like confuses why this isn't working and the the aid rightfully pointed out we should fucking retreat or withdraw you know it's a you know they don't have to worry about the english chasing them they don't have the numbers to do so but like we should leave this is not working instead of doing that the king began crying and didn't give any orders i mean look you know sometimes you need to let your emotions flow you can't hold it in sometimes you need to you know really feel how you feel and i think in that moment i think he was justified self-care is important yeah yes yes even not even on the field of battle and in the absence of any orders, the French looked around like, well, I guess we'll just keep going up the hill.

Okay, Kate Bush. Now, at one point, the Earl of Alençon Alençon almost died. So, you know, which is the king's brother. So the king jumped on another horse,

ran out to help him and then another horse got shot up from under him and he almost died look man once you achieve the hat trick of dead horses you call it a day i'm not saying there's a fan of horses you know fool me once shame on me fool me twice shame on you fool me three times i think it's you're just being stupid fool me three times the horses are going on strike what if it's a secret third thing these are french horses after all they're going to be striking riding in paris and we fully support local horse union 63 or whatever yeah the horses are the only you know combatants on the french side that i actually feel sorry for yeah pretty much finally the french king called off the attack,

but only because one of Philip's commanders effectively forced him to leave. He grabbed another horse, plopped the king onto it like a giant baby, and shoved it in the opposite direction, saying, Sire, it's time to go away. You have lost this time, but you may win another time and if you stay longer you will lose everything and you know the king finally called it a day now here's where the interesting part is when it was all said and done the french nobility were annihilated um you can hit you can hit the hip-hop siren now wait

hell yeah Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hell yeah. Low country. We stand a dead pile of nobles on this show. Among the dead were, of course, one king, John of Bohemia, nine princes, ten counts, a duke, an archbishop, and a bishop. Thousands of minor nobles died as well this is kind of by the english by the heraldry on their coats and when they picked across the battlefield at the end like oh there's a fancy jacket that guy must be fucking important look now here's the other interesting thing these back then the only casualties that were thought to be important to count in a battle were nobles, knights, shit like that. So nobody's actually entirely sure how many Frenchmen died.

Because if you were a regular like levy peasant guy who was given a sword, a baguette and kicked in the direction of the English, nobody recorded that you died. You were not thought important enough to tally your dead body. So, they were left completely uncounted. According to the book Infantry Warfare in the Early 14th Century, a riveting read if you can't tell by the title, around

16,000 French soldiers died in total, but was probably much higher, close to 30.esus as for the english they did a roll call at the end of the battle 40 men were missing johnny 40 here robert here 40 4-0 were missing from the roll call like that is that is like the ultimate L plus ratio, plus you lost the battle, plus you're French. Oh, two English knights are also captured, and as was custom of the day,

they are ransomed back for a princely sum. Do you know how much? I assume, I don't know, 20 bucks and a DoorDash credit. Like a half-smoked pack of cigs. I will give you... I have this shitty sack of shag weed that I bought from some guy in a sock. All stems.

Yeah. Now, this destroyed the French ability to make war and eventually led to the fall of Calais and the English dominance over northern France for the next 200 years. So this has all been pretty depressing, especially if you're a fan of horses or French people. So we figure we should lighten this up a bit. In order to do all of this, we have to go back to the Black Prince and his life. According to the paper, The Illness of Edward the Black Prince, he

suffered from dysentery for a decade, and quote, his dysentery had become so violent on occasion, it caused him to faint from weakness and his household believed

he had died. So he shit himself into unconsciousness for a decade before finally dying. The end. Imagine getting owned so hard that you shit yourself to death over the course of 10 years. Like, you know how in like Victorianorian era films like to show like people becoming so shocked that they faint yeah this is just him but every time he's just filling his fucking pants and collapsing and i mean most of this time he's bedridden as well yeah so he he's just sitting in one of those ornately decorated four poster beds with a small army of servants around him just ethering his own pants

uh until he finally dies um i do you know the only person i feel sorry for in this entire story is one the horses and two the poor french apothecary who had to come up with like oinkments and ointments and unguents and creams to stop this like decade long sting ring knowing medicine at the time it was a lot of leeches involved both inside and outside of him um and he and he died miserably

which is also how I assume how King Charles will die um now Tom we do a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion. Yes, I'm familiar with it. And if you would like to ask us a question from the Legion, you can donate to the show. Or join us on our Discord where we occasionally ask people for questions or message us on the Patreon. And we will pick out the ones we feel that are most fitting for the end of the show.

And now this one is interesting and could go a lot of places. What is the podcast project that you are most proud of that you've worked on? Yours could be a lot of things. I work on this show and this show alone. Either my own show or the troubled series like the troubled series took me months to do um i'm working on another one um actually that might be out by the

time this episode comes out no no this one's coming out soon okay um yeah like the troubled series i spent months on i actually talked about it on twitter um spent months working on it and like writing it rewriting it and then like my own show because like i spent like two years kicking the idea around in my head and like spent so long researching it and figuring out okay how do i make this and make it interesting enough that people will listen to it and like it is where it is now so yeah like um yeah I I'm gonna guess yours is gonna be Kursk so I have several actually because this show has been around it'll be five years soon I believe it's five years this month and people who've been listening since the beginning of sure there's not many of them since back then we had like you know two listeners one of whom was nate because he had to produce it um you know we have gone we've gone a long way and especially i have like i think i've said before on the show when the show started i had not yet finished grad school

um i maybe i didn't take my research as seriously because I was just having fun. I mean, I still have fun. I had a day job. So I couldn't dedicate as much time to research as much as I wanted. But I think the episode where I truly cracked, like this is how this show should be going forward

and this is where we continue to get better is the Soviet-Afghan war series. And then, because I'm still very, very proud of that. Of course, there's things I could have done better, which I think I do much better now. I could have edited myself a lot more rather than going on for, I believe, eight and a half, almost nine hours over the course of seven episodes, give or take. My research was, I'm still proud of it. I still stand by it. And then going forward from that, I think another,

because there's a lot of serious things we talk about where there truly is no room for bullshitting. And for a long time, I was very afraid of broaching those topics for that reason. Our vibe of the show is making history entertaining and approachable for people who are not historians. So there's a lot of things. And we do that by lighting the mood where we can and making jokes about the Black Prince shitting himself in unconsciousness. So I was kind of gun-shy

about talking about a lot of much more serious topics. i think i finally figured out how to do that the best way possible during our khmer rouge series and you know from there not only was it well received it literally got me into grad school for genocide studies which is baffling to me um like they wanted to like they complimented me on it on my on my entry and stuff and you know going even forward it's so hard you got a master's yeah i mean you're not even lying it is one of the things that like because after i got my bachelor's i didn't think about going to school anymore outside of the cost and the time and things like that i i wonder like what was the point and it really did teach me more um how to research and write better of course and then even going beyond going beyond that, I'm very proud of the

Kursk series. I think the Kursk series taught me how to take this massive thing that's a part of a much bigger thing and make it digestible. So I'm very proud of those things for very different reasons. And I could talk more about the other series we've worked on, but hopefully I can continue building off of that because it's been five years. I have no intention of stopping, of course. So hopefully the only way forward is by getting better in the future. Tom, thank you so much for joining me at the Battle of Creasy. Use this area to plug your shows.

Yeah, so listen to Beneath the Skin. It's a show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing and we've been on like a really cool run of episodes recently um if you're not like super into tattooing still listen to it because we mainly talk about history and use tattooing as a vehicle to talk about you know other parts of history um literally today we are recording an episode with the publishers of the russian prison tattoo encyclopedia books about their new book that's coming out we're going to talk about you know the cultural history of the carceral system in russia and crime in russia and

how it came to be represented in this like visual language through tattooing and we got to do like i got to put out an absolute mount rushmore episode for the show we have an interview with ed hardy that came out last week um it's on our patreon and yeah like listen listen to more lines it's the only other show that i am on regularly um there is 33rd county on hell of a way. Listen to that would mean shocks, but yeah, listen to this show. Listen to beneath skin. Yeah. Thanks man. And if you like what we do here and you think it's worth your money,

you, we have a patron as well. You can support us for as little as a dollar. You can get discord access, early episodes, all of our regular episodes like this one early before anybody else. I get five years of bonus content, get to paywall other series that we do,

uh, stickers books. I'm doing an audio book that's being published only through Patreon. So like, yeah, support the show, do it that way. Uh,

and it, it goes a long way. And if you don't feel like doing that, that's fine. It's your money. Do with it as you please, but leave us a review and wherever the hell it is that you like doing that, that's fine. It's your money. Do with it as you please. But leave us a review.

And wherever the hell it is that you listen to a podcast, it does us a lot of good. And until next time, don't shit yourself for 10 years and die.