Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 303 - The Boxer Rebellion Part 3: Old Betsy

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

Part 3/5 SUPPORT THE SHOW AND GET THE REST OF THE SERIES RIGHT NOW: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys BUY JOE'S BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-War-Military-Sci-Fi-Undying-ebook/dp/B0CQ6BH6BD/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3K76S781H082F&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.XHKGWIOva407zn4HjcxVoDwpnrg_teWOwoT_cwv4MFhELwL-P_oC8zl_Tn7SdmE1hqhUiaxIM18D5M9PRpYDktSOd6zkDyGguWFvbaV8Mwn6hHhTfF2w2nBkSMqIZyMmunRrnoLp1hr5HopuXq0OYr1iHAgz9JEoxGKuWIJWNqFmbYFMvKLhHsBpVVbNo9vPPZMn_2BYVOwcUjL9zaORsskz4Q3k5x06kkbFQG5Ct0A.kvo5nqES86hdehPE6YBIEFnCDNpPIYxdJ0Nq9a-xWkE&dib_tag=se&keywords=joe+kassabian&qid=1710749293&sprefix=%2Caps%2C146&sr=8-1 The Eight Nation Alliance hits some speed bumps as the various sides seem to want to fight each other as much as they do the Boxers.

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lines Led by Donkeys podcast, but I guess you probably already knew that. What if there was a war raging for a million years, but it was kept a secret? It's a question that Sarkis never considered. He was born as an upper-middle class man living in Prime City during the so-called millennia of peace. As far as he knew, or as far as anybody knew, humanity has no army, no weapons, and no wars. The people of Earth had been expanding into the stars as long as anyone remembered,

free of conflict, while the Techno King and his royal cabal enriched themselves in the backs of their labor. It was as it always had been. Then, Sarkis died. Unbeknownst to him, an app he used every single day of his life hijacks his consciousness and uploads it into a synthetic engine of war known as a sleeve. Along with countless others, he's been conscripted into the Undying Legion, charged with fighting a secret, unending war in the name of humanity. Their minds stolen, uploaded into war machines. They fight a secret war to preserve humanity. My new book, The Invisible War, is now available wherever it is that you consume books. If you have Kindle Unlimited, you can get it for free with your subscription that you already have, or order a paperback from whatever local bookstore you use. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com slash linesledbydonkeys. Just $5 per month gets you every regular episode early,

access to our community discord, a digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, as well as its audio book read by me, and over five years of bonus content. By supporting the show, you support us and allow us to keep our show as it has always been ad-free. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I am Joe, and with me plumbing the depths of the content cave in London is Tom. What's up, buddy? I'm so excited to talk about guys in China. Oh, we're going to talk about many different kinds of guy today.

All of them bad. Is there any other type of guy we talk about on this show? Rarely. I'm going to say, I'm going to say like a tops 5%. I mean, like they're either like freaks like himmler or they're like people like adrian dewey or two is just like oh what if the terminator was like belgium yeah and like even the the guys we talk about who are cool kind of suck with the exception of very few of them um you know the word that uh that we we often see is eccentric uh which yeah which is a nice broad painting that's like oh look look

they did these really cool things but also oh god don't look here you know yeah don't look put in a don't put in their name and then parentheses anti-semitism after anyone we talk about yeah or it's like ord wingate who is like kind of cool and then i was like oh what's this he started a death squad multiple death squads like oh god damn it you're almost cool uh instead you are you are a monster if you take anything if you take anything away from this show it should that it is that we should abolish private education kind of yeah i mean that's that's one of a bowl it's certainly a bullet point i feel comfortable saying yeah it's in the long list of things we're abolitionists about and then there's you know the the monsters who are comically hilariously interesting and

then as you plumb further it's just like i can't laugh at this anymore like bokasa or you know baron sternberg who is legitimately one of the worst people we've ever done a series about uh listen like obviously for any for you listening at home me and joe talk a lot about like what series we're going to cover and everything and the other long series we're doing this year there's going to be no laughs so I'm going to Yucks are strictly prohibited Yeah so I'm going to enjoy talking about weird guys who are doing period blood

Wing Chun today So when we left you last time we're here on the Boxer Rebellion Part 3 so you know if you're just tuning in now maybe go back and listen to Part 1 and 2 or don don't. If you want to just start smack dab at 55% into a series, be my guest. king now of course beijing reinforced less than 500 soldiers and began digging in as the boxers tightened their grip on the chinese capital city and then the german minister to china

grabbed a suspected boxer child off of the street and executed him hey listen it's probably the maybe the least worst thing an ambassador has ever done to a small child especially a german one in imperial china there's no i'm not looking into that any further we don't need to in fact yeah oh it's like you know it's always a kid it's very funny uh like in in a small place like you know georgia or or say armenia where you just will meet ambassadors in the strangest places because it's a small country all the embassies are in one small place and it's just like the ambassador of

Norway played bar trivia with a couple friends of mine in Yerevan it's just like you got the ying and the yang of the ambassadors like what would be the funniest place to be sent as an ambassador to i think one of those places it's like you know a sovereign nation but only for like tax purposes like you've you've

struggled your whole way up like say the american department of state to get an ambassadorial role and like you're going to luxembourg or San Marino or something. It's like, all right, I guess. I was going to say, you get sent to Transnistria. I feel like the only ambassador there is Russian. It's like, I am the American ambassador to Abkhazia. It's like being a pretender to the throne or that that crazy homeless guy i believe in san francisco to declare himself the

emperor of the united states i'm just gonna drive across the border into abkhazia from tablisi almost certainly be detained um and then just like no no you don't understand i'm the american ambassador uh it's abkhazia you have to let me in yeah like i think like this period as well is like this is the real peak of being an ambassador because like there's really no like international law and every ambassador is just like a weird freak like people probably think of like oh you know the 1950s or 60s no no that's baby shit send me back to this time definitely definitely during like the imperial period where like communications between the uh the embassy or

the the state ministers like that what they called ambassadors back then were not uh instantaneous back to their home country so it gave them much more leeway to just be deeply weird freaks and do whatever they wanted and and speaking of weird freaks word quickly spread about what the german minister had done you know executing a child in the german embassy uh and like when i say child like um nobody's sure how old this guy was but it's generally thought like everybody that says that he looked like a teenager. So child, you know? Um, yeah, he's the,

he's the nepot. He's the nepo baby of like some weird German Baron. I mean, he literally was a German nobility. Uh, and like the, the German noble who like executed this, uh,

this kid, no other ministers liked him. Like we talked about before, like everybody thought he was kind of brash and an asshole who brushed off everybody else's concern about, you know, again shooting a man in the basement

of his embassy. Hey, the Germans are still sending former nobility to be, you know, political actors on the global stage. Looking at you, Ursula von der Leyen. You can't be called von der Leyen anymore. They got rid of hereditary titles.

Famously, a woman who cares deeply about the people of the caucuses. I can tell you from that, from experience. What's that? I'm getting an email. She's deeply concerned. Yeah, she is very concerned about sending, you know, cool GoPro drones to the caucuses. Yeah, specifically to one concerned about sending, you know, cool GoPro drones to the Caucasus.

Yeah, specifically to one country in the Caucasus. She just wants to create a content economy in the Caucasus of really cool GoPro footage of drone races. I'm going to do a YouTuber face as like this, like, a Zeri drone zooms in on my position to drop a fucking like i don't know an eu manufactured missile on my face mr b's doing a collab with the eu we gave a hundred drones to azerbaijan oh i i'm i'm having a horrible idea here a zary Oh, God. That probably exists. Listen. If it exists, he's in a political prison in Baku. I was going to say he's probably going to be the next prime minister. Oh, no.

That is hereditary in that country, unofficially, much like North Korea. Now, so word quickly spreads out about this extrajudicial killing in the basement of the German embassy. And soon thousands of boxers, as well as many elements of the Chinese Imperial Army, were riding through the city. At this point, any Chinese person still found within the walls and not on the boxer's side was seen as a convert, as an enemy. And was, you know, along with anybody who looked vaguely foreign um and not only people but buildings churches temples houses and shops that were ran by converts or owned by foreigners were torched and anybody who fell into the hands of the boxers were cut to pieces real slow like yeah it's not a good way to go yeah this sort of thing like is just the wet dream of like

neo-pagan teenagers in like scandinavia in the 90s yeah thankfully they just are weird losers in dark clubs varg vickerness is like a huge fan of the boxer rebellion god he probably is he's on tiktok now which is really weird this is the least surprising thing i've heard all day like far we love our so we love our social media platforms that allow neo-nazi murderers to have free reign like literally like a man who went to prison for murder and is an avowed and very public neo-nazi for the past 30 years is just like showing you how to play boredom riffs on fucking TikTok teaching you how to do neo-nazi guitar riffs on TikTok yeah I mean he's one of a thousand

doing that he just happens to be the only I assume convicted neo-nazi murderer who killed his own bandmate yeah hey listen in the same vein of fascist musicians R.I.P. Toby Keith yeah Chris Christopherson

still alive baby oh that article was so funny of like oh it was like it was like Toby Keith told Christopherson like yeah he told him like none of that leftist shit

and then he was like oh you know Toby Keith, uh, is like what Waylon Jennings said about, uh, uh, pantyhose did the finger fucking. People within the protected, uh,

legation quarter watched as thousands of torch bearing boxers marched into the city in the middle of the night chanting kill, kill, which, you know, good for optics. If you're the boxers, which the city in the middle of the night chanting kill kill which you know good for optics if you're the boxers which like to be fair remember they're entertainers they're presenters they got their you know choreographed fighting uh like shows they have their uh you know their rituals and stuff so they know the value of a good look which i can respect about them yeah it's a you know it's strong consistent messaging you know they have a message it's nice and condensed i remember when i was a teenager i saw when i was like 12 in my very small hometown in this like shitty theater i went and saw a troop of shaolin monks. Hell yeah. They did like, you know,

martial arts displays and stuff on stage. It was so cool. And I'm just like, I know these guys aren't, you know, Shaolin monks, but I'm just imagining them like doing elaborate martial arts displays in the public squares. But they do it in like Dublin.

Trying to recruit Irish members of the boxers, which I'm almost certain exists. Just like the Taiiping Heavenly Kingdom, there's two Irish guys. It's pretty cool. Yeah, it's just like the fucking, the way Falun Gong people are always in the square in Amsterdam.

Yeah, they are. I just like the idea of you touring a boxer village. All the Christian places are burnt down foreigners are all gone and then there's an irish pub in the middle of all of it probably like look you know i put on the red i put on the red sash they're they're cool with me hey it's red it's not orange that's all i'm gonna say um yeah like irish pubs uh pop up everywhere because like irish pubs i think the number is like on average between like 12 and 17 percent more revenue so it's like hence why there's an irish

pub in yerevan uh there's one in tbilisi as well i believe yerevan is too now uh which is interesting yeah we're multiplying we're like algae the irish mold green mold baby now as the legation members The Irish mold. Green mold, baby. Now, as the legation members looked on in horror, individuals decided, as a group, they weren't going to do anything. But individuals ran out to save people who were trying to run from the boxers, to include a group of American Marines who left their position and decided they're going to do some freelance work. They saw boxers pushing converts into a church, and then they were trying to set it on fire. So the Marines ran out and fought them off and saved 300 people from being burned to death. And then they had to run from the church

back into the legation court in a running gun and sword battle with boxers, which is the most Marine thing they could possibly do. And after this happened, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of refugees are getting into the legation quarter because they won't be murdered immediately, at least. And when French and Russian soldiers ran out to do the same thing, they were too late. And this is the scene that they saw. Quote, women and children hacked to pieces.

Men trussed up like fowls with noses and ears cut off and eyes gouged out. Many were found roasted alive and so massacred and cut up to be unrecognizable. The stench of human blood in the hot June air was almost intolerable. And the sights more than we could bear. and the hot June air was almost intolerable, and the sights more than we could bear. Men, women, and children lay indiscriminately heaped together, some hacked to pieces, others with their throat cut from ear to ear,

some were still moving. And this is where all the jokes stop. Oh yeah, from part three on out, let's call it real boxery. And part five is like ah yes europeans are involved at the austrian mission which was still within the quarter boxers charged with their defenses and the austrian soldiers let loose with their brand new maxim machine guns and this is where you assume like boxes are going to be laid to the waist like you know a scythe through wheat right yeah machine guns versus swords they hit nothing the soldiers

were not trained at all on how to actually use the machine gun now like what we see machine guns now is you know free wielding belt fed weapons that you just aim as you go right maximum machine guns in the day and many would would even through World War I, they have an aiming device called a T&E, where you have to raise and lower it in order to hit things, and you have to be able to aim and know how to aim with your assistant gunner and your gun crew. The Austrians didn't know how to do that, and they aimed way too high,

which resulted in them blowing apart telegraph wires. Like, you have a massive group of people rushing towards you and you can't even hit that? Yeah, you'd assume that you just, hey, you see that screaming guy with a spear? Just aim over there. And, you know, recon by fire, you know, aim it in because it's a machine gun.

You can just hold down the trigger. But thankfully, I guess for the Austrians, the rattle of machine gun fire going right over the head of the boxers was enough to send them running. However, it did have a secondary effect. Remember, the boxers believe that they're impervious to gunfire. So, you know, when someone rips off a burst from a machine gun and none of them drop dead they're

like holy shit it worked divine they got plot armor yeah they get divine plot armor from their boxer gods yeah now outside of all that the boxers were yet to really truly assault the quarter instead they busied themselves with burning foreign establishments and Christians. Though that didn't stop Kettler, the German minister, from riding around the burning city on horseback with a pistol in each hand, gunning down any Chinese people he saw. He assumed if he saw a Chinese person, they were a boxer. And remember, there's thousands of people trying to get into the legation for protection. And other ministers were like, what the fuck are you doing? Cut it out.

And that's a stupid fucking thing to do. Not only could the boxers and or the Imperial Chinese Army kill you with an errant gunshot, but you're shooting innocent people. But he ignored them. but like you're shooting innocent people but he ignored them like he's just like nah this is this is the most fun a german man's gonna have in at least 10 years my head is in my hands why just why now while the capital city burned and thousands maybe tens of thousands of boxers ran wild in the street the imperial government was paralyzed with infighting, indecision, and arguing, and not to mention good old-fashioned factionalism. The Empress Dowager was not really on the side of the boxers anymore.

Shit had simply gotten too real. But other parts of her government were still totally on board. And still others used this opening, this chaos, as an opportunity to power play and try to get the old emperor back on the throne while she maneuvered to pick some dumb fuck man to sit on the throne that would serve her purposes. Finally, she was about to issue an imperial decree to order all governors to dispatch their armies towards Peking to put the boxers down, only for the foreign delegation to demand that the Chinese government surrender the forts at Tiet-Sin, the Taku forts, which we will talk about further in a bit, and allow the free unlimited passage of military power from Europe and Russia and Japan into Peking, which

would reinforce the delegations, the legation quarter, and crushed the boxers. And to her, this was asking for an invasion because it kind of was. And the Chinese government took this as a declaration of war. She then told all members of the delegations within the legation quarter, all nations, period, that they must leave Peking within 24 hours. This split the delegation because remember, within 24 hours. This split the delegation because remember, they have zero outside communications at all at this point for a week. They had no idea what was going outside of their quarter, if reinforcements were coming or anything else. Several ministers point out, rightfully, if we leave the legation quarter, the boxers are going to fucking kill us. And the Chinese government almost certainly let it happen. Others said if they didn't leave, the Chinese government and

the boxers would definitely attack the quarter, overwhelm their defenses, and also murder them. The military representatives helpfully pointed out that, look, we have a much better chance holding here and defending you than if we leave the legation quarter. We can defend you for a certain amount of time here, but if we just walk out in a parade through Peking, we're fucking dead within an hour. And the soldiers within the legation did their best to better their shitty situation into something, well not less shitty. Yeah, not good. Less shitty. And one of those things they did was slap together a Canada of spare parts. Remember when we talked about

that the Russians showed up and they were supposed to bring the artillery, but they had forgotten it. They forgot it, but they did bring the ammunition. So they found an old Chinese Imperial gun barrel. It was like a bronze gun barrel the Italians had some busted up wagon wheels with them

they're like okay let's put it on top of them and they put that together with a discarded roof beam and then discovered that the Russian ammunition that they had brought worked within this old gun barrel and they also could hand make like, you know,

flechette canister rounds with debris and bits of metal. That would work. And they dubbed this the International Gun or Old Betsy. I like, I don't know if this is going to happen,

but this feels like a very easy way to blow at least 15 to 20 soldiers to pieces it actually worked oh fuck yeah it actually worked it wasn't a great cannon but it was better than the one the singular one that they had

so they doubled the amount of cannons by you know inventing a suicide blaster you know some orc shit for more hammer 40k they're giving it up to morgue you know they're gonna they're gonna argue over how exactly much daca they need there's just germans being birthed out of mushrooms and the like the russian gun crews despite being so stupid they forgot their own cannons

were actually quite talented as were the, which actually required them to work together, which will really not happen again, but we'll get there. Meanwhile, the ministers decided to buy time. They sent word to the imperial Chinese government that they would agree to leave, but they would need more than 24 hours. They believed they could kick the can down the road, maybe some reinforcements will get there or something. Then the imperial government simply never answered. So von Kettler, the German minister, got sick of waiting, called his sedan chair over for them to bring them down to the amen, the imperial government office set up to deal with foreigners. He's like, carry me over there. I will sit down in front of them and I will refuse to leave until they answer the delegation's letter.

This would require him to leave the protected quarter. And everyone in the delegation was like, you probably shouldn't do that. That's stupid. The city is burning around us. People are being hacked down in the street. maybe don't go out there in your fancy rich guy chair and he again ignored them as soon as he was out of eyeshot of the quarter a chinese army officer flanked by several soldiers and boxers walked over to the sedan chair that was being carried through the street and shot kettler dead yeah like i can't imagine, like, the thinking behind this that, like, this is not gonna, like, they are gonna be totally fine as we carry this dignitary through what is essentially enemy lines. And, yeah, this is, like, it doesn't really make sense. I feel like he had that mindset where they wouldn't dream of hurting

me because the amount of damage it would bring them it didn't matter and nobody's really sure if he was targeted because of who he was and the reputation that he had or simply because he was a foreigner being carried out of the quarter and they were killing foreigners

but in the end it didn't really matter if he was targeted for being the minister or not I mean what matters he was targeted for being the minister or not. I mean, what matters, he was murdered. And with that, any further talk of the delegation leaving the protected quarter was dropped. It was clear that they were not only at war with the boxers, but unofficially the Chinese government. After the 24-hour period lapsed, the siege of the legation quarter would officially begin. As for the reinforcements that the legation was waiting for, but also had no idea if they were coming or not, they actually were on their way, and they would take their form in what would become known as the Seymour Expedition.

Vice Admiral Edward Seymour had received all of those panicked telegrams coming from the delegation since the end of May. Seymour was in command of the British Navy's Chinese detachment and quickly liaison with the other ally nations' navies who were all off of Tiet-sen, and they decided they would need to try to slap as many men together as possible and try to get them to Peking as soon as possible. Kind of surprisingly, they were all doing this without any real authority from their host nations or where they were from. Specifically, Seymour didn't ask London, hey, can I do this? He had sent a request over wire after getting the distress messages from Peking, but decided he wasn't going to wait for a response, knowing that if he did,

the people in Peking might be fucked. He managed to scrape together a force of around 2,000 men from eight different countries, though they were not all soldiers or marines. Some were, but the nations also emptied their ship of anyone deemed unimportant for the fleet to sit in Tiet Tsen. They gave them a gun and told them to give them the landing boats that were heading towards Tiet-sen in general. They also brought nothing heavier than machine guns. There's no artillery, nothing. And Seymour rightfully gets a lot of shit for his expeditions, but in his mind, this was not a military campaign. This was not a military mission. It was something more akin to a humanitarian relief mission. You wouldn't need cannons and artillery trains and things of that nature. However, that also meant he didn't worry

too much about virtually any military detail involved in this entire episode. Seymour had no idea that the boxers had already busied themselves destroying the rail connection between themselves and Peking. He had no idea what was going on. He did no reconnaissance whatsoever. So he stormed the Tietzen rail yard and demanded to be allowed to use all of their train cars they had available to transport his men. And when he was told no by the imperial Chinese train guy, he took them at gunpoint, which is actually not his idea.

It was the idea of the American commander, Civil War veteran Bowman McCalla, because they don't name people like they used to. Yeah, that's really surprising that the American is like, nah, give me the trains or I'll fucking brain you. Yeah, he's like, wait, I have in this holster on my hip the master key to your train yard and then they just get on the trains and they move maybe like 10 kilometers down you know down the line it's like oh there's no train anymore there's no lines hold that thought

oh for fuck's sake now mccollough and seymour actually became two quick fast friends uh because who brings friends together? What brings two people together faster than a good old-fashioned train robbery? Now, I should point out here that Seymour knew at least 20% of what was going on in Peking. He knew about the boxers, but he had no idea about the Chinese government and what they were doing, specifically that they were working with the boxers. He didn't wait for approval from the Chinese government to begin his journey. Because

remember in our last episode, the Chinese government only allowed as many soldiers as had gotten to the legation period. 2,000 people were not going to be allowed to just march through their land and enter Peking. And he was never going to get that approval anyway, so he didn't bother. And the same could be said, this utter state of confusion of the total picture of the situation could be said for Chinese military commanders. Regional Chinese military commanders are getting so many different orders, they weren't sure which ones to follow. For example, when Seymour's train approached a bridge, there was a nearby camp of 4,000 Chinese soldiers, a force strong enough to wipe out his expedition. But their commander had

been getting one message one day telling them, fight the boxers, and another telling him to stop the foreigners from getting to Peking, back and forth, back and forth. So when the train pulled up, he wasn't sure which he was supposed to do. And much more likely, he was beyond the point of giving a fuck. So he just let them go right on by. And this is about as smooth as the journey would go because at the halfway point between the cities, Seymour ran into the damage that the boxers had done to the train tracks. He had to stop the train near Liangfang Station and ordered laborers that he brought with him to get out and fix it. Then hundreds of boxers appeared.

According to the soldiers, the boxers jumped up and down, dropped to the ground and faked their deaths, only to leap back up to their feet, swung their weapons around and danced and chanted as they advanced towards them. They are armed with spears, swords, and two, these, these giant two manned muskets called the Jingals that were supposed to be Matt. Like they were made to be mounted on walls and fired in like point defense, but they were carrying them with them over their shoulders and firing them as they went. That, that fucking rules. Like they took the concept of a tandem bike and applied it to weaponry fuck yeah and imagine getting hit by the musket ball that comes out of that thing you're just ethered from the waist up yeah you're getting napoleon napoleon's horse yeah exactly it's getting field

dressed by a cannonball and they the boxers attacked the allied lines for the next five days as the soldiers ran off the train to try to form battle lines and laborers attempted to fix the tracks in front of them, Seymour was discovering more and more problems. The boxers had destroyed all the station's water tanks, meaning there was no water for their train engines, a big problem in the 1900s when shit ran on steam and coal. in the 1900s when shit ran on steam and coal. The boxers would charge allied lines, but right before they made contact, they would drop and start going through their ritual breathing exercises, which was supposed to make them immune to bullets, which of course gave the soldiers enough time to quickly prove how wrong that belief was. Though this didn't mean the soldiers were holding them off no problem. The boxers were charging at them piece by piece in different locations around the railway. And the way to think about this is they were probing for a weakness. But there's only 2,000 or so soldiers on that railway.

And this train stretched back miles because it's so many different train cars enough to carry 2,000 people. So in some places in the line, the boxers didn't charge but would launch sneak attacks in the middle of the night. One of these sneak attacks caught five Italian soldiers off guard while they were playing cards. Everybody discovered their fate the next morning when they found bits and pieces of them strewn about the grass.

Jesus Christ. Then if that wasn't bad enough, the train lost contact with Tiet-Sin because the boxers closed the line behind them and started ripping up train tracks, ripping up telegraph wires, cutting off this train-borne mission. And a scouting mission showed that boxers had done irreversible damage to the train line, both in front of them and behind them. both in front of them and behind them. Seymour and McCullough quickly came to the conclusion they needed to withdraw on foot and get back to Tiet-Sin because if they stayed, they were going to be completely cut off, surrounded, and wiped out. And this is only underlined when 5,000 soldiers of the Gansu Braves showed up and began assaulting the train station,

working with the boxers. Soon the expedition began their withdrawal, leaving their trains and anything they couldn't carry directly on their person behind, marching along a nearby river so they couldn't be surrounded as boxers and imperial troops began to lay dozens of ambushes for them during the day and launched their, at this point, patented night raids. Asymmetrical warfare against a group that know the lay of the land very hard yeah it's not gonna work the the boxers no longer only had swords and spears either they had been given or stolen a decent amount of guns from either stolen from european stores or simply

given to them from the chinese imperial government. They weren't exactly well trained in them, but they knew how a gun functioned. They would pop out, fire a few volleys and run before the soldiers could react. And then when they did this so much, and the soldiers were reacting to immediately just hitting the ground and then trying to form a skirmish line, which would then slow down the full body of men, they learned they could simply jump out, chuck a bunch a bunch of like lit firecrackers out and the popping noise would cause them to react to gunfire and they would haul ass so they're just constantly harassing them around the clock they're doing psychological warfare shit yeah pretty much it was also june and they're marching

through what was part of the Gobi Desert. Yep. So before long, men begin to run out of water, and they resort to drinking out of the heavily polluted river they're marching next to. That shit was so nasty that someone called it, quote, brown water at best. This is only made worse by the fact that none of the soldiers were dressed correctly for the weather. worse by the fact that none of the soldiers were dressed correctly for the weather. The Germans for example, wearing a thick wool uniform that was issued out to soldiers and sailors

bound for North Sea duty. Yeah. Swamp ass yet again. Yep. Swamp ass and drinking swamp ass water out of the river. Swamp inside and out. It swamps all the way down. And remember like wearing this shitty ass wool uniform is to make you sweat more, is to make you hotter. You drink more all the way down. And remember, wearing this shitty-ass wool uniform is going to make you sweat more.

It's going to make you hotter. You drink more of the nasty-ass swamp water. So nearly everyone is sick before they even cover a small percentage of the 30 miles it would take them to get back to Tietzen. Between the constant attacks from both the boxers and the violent bouts of diarrhea, and attacks from both the boxers and violent bouts of diarrhea, the soldiers only made it eight miles back towards Tiet-Sin by the time the siege began back at Peking. As they advanced, things only got worse as boxers had occupied every village and town on their way back to Tiet-Sin, meaning if they wanted to keep advancing, half dead, thirsty, and shit and dust encrusted, they would have to assault through

these reinforced villages and towns before they can move forward. This would only slow them down more, not only from attacks, but also from the resulting wounded, which would slow them down, which Seymour was now carrying around hundreds of. And that is when they accidentally stumbled

upon a fucking fortress. Remember, there's no recon done. No reconnaissance whatsoever. Seymour really doesn't have a map. And he was assuming that he's going to do this entire expedition comfortably on a train. Like, dude, at least send someone forward to do some recon. It's like, okay, we have to fucking march all this fucking way. You, you can run fast you go ahead

and tell us if there's you know a fortress you have the least amount of diarrhea you're now our scout yeah you're not gonna leave a snail trail of your insides as you go yeah you're not doing like a real tactical tactical shit because it's like oh you just follow the smell and find the spy so as they marched they ran directly into the giant Siku arsenal it's reinforced walls and battlements just kind of

snuck up on them and it turned out this worked both ways they had also snuck up on the defenders and the arsenal because when they showed up outside the gates, neither side knew who the other was. When the Imperial soldiers asked who they were, Seymour, through a translator, answered, quote, we're friendly. The Imperial Army then opened fire on them. Despite momentary chaos of suddenly being shot at by a fortress, the arsenal actually fell with only an hour because it turned out that they were only half staffed and the Chinese soldiers inside

of it were just as surprised as everybody else and not really up for a real fight. Most of them simply ran, abandoning the arsenal to the allied expedition. Now Seymour's exhausted, starving, thirsty, thirsty sick and wounded soldiers took the fort and you know they were shocked to find it was well stocked with everything that they needed food water medical supplies all that accidentally stumbling onto this fort and having it open fire on them saved the expedition it's like you know when you're playing a game you know like a boss battle is gonna happen because you just randomly walk into a room it's like oh there's so much ammo and health packs in here yeah when you're playing an rpg and you're wandering through

a place like why does this room have a save point seymour's standing in the middle of the gobi desert as a giant blue question mark is floating off in the distance. He's like, oh no. Oh fuck. It's not the kind of save point that refreshes our health and MP. Now the fort also had artillery, millions of rounds of rifle ammunition, brand new machine

guns, everything that they would need, which was good because as soon as they staffed the fort and took it over, another Chinese army showed up and assaulted them, quickly finding themselves getting shot to pieces and blown up with their own weapons. Though the army reeled back, it was reinforced by thousands of boxers and they launched attacks all throughout the next day. The boxers made it up over the walls, leading to brutal hand-to-hand combat

in one situation where a boxer made his way all the way to the artillery line, only to get blown to mist at point-blank range as he attacked the cannoneers. Just like the cannon goes off, the boxer vanishes, and the only thing left is a sword and a pool of blood.

Yeah, he's just like T-posing and the sword is floating in the air. Despite casualties mounting, the expedition held the fortress, but now had so many wounded, they had a different problem. Carrying them all back to Tiet Sin would be impossible. So, they decided not to.

And they settled in for a siege as the Chinese army and their boxer friends surrounded the arsenal. But they wouldn't wait for help for too long. Unbeknownst to Seymour, another expedition from Port Arthur had ventured out, made up of thousands of Cossacks under Russian command. And I assume Seymour and everybody else around is like, man, I'm really glad I'm not Jewish right now because those are Cossacks. Jesus Christ. around is like man i'm really glad i'm not jewish right now because those are cossacks jesus christ they broke through the encirclement and relieved seymour and his men to bring with them food and most importantly cigarettes one british soldier joked that he was happiest of all to see cigarettes because he had been reduced to smoking tea leaves in his pipe. Hey, listen, you know, morale is very important,

and key to that ever-changing forms is tobacco. You know, he used to be, oh, I need, you know, some tobacco for my corncob pipe. Now it's like, oh my God, we just got a new shipment of, like, Lost Mary vapes. A Cossack rides up, climbs down, opens his furs and just shows like i have lost mary i have elf bar i have these weird off-brand russian shits that will make your teeth fall out and they're all just varying flavors of kefir

the kefir vape is a terrifying idea it's my dairy-based vape also i should point out that a british soldier sitting in china smoking fat bowls of tea leaves is a man so british he's rapidly transforming into just a union jack the only thing missing is a small baggie of cocaine he shares with his friends. Now, we talked briefly before about the Taku forts. They stick out from Tietzen into the ocean and were pretty much at war without a formal declaration, despite their nobody really knowing why everybody was at war. It was accepted.

The Taku forts in Tiet-Sin presented a problem for the allies. The fleet outside was their only lifeline for the foreign forces within the city of Tiet-Sin, but also Peking. If the Chinese wanted to shut down the bay with the forts and stop any resupply coming ashore, that would be obviously bad. Things only got worse

when the Chinese began reinforcing the forts with both regulars and boxers. So the commanders of the different fleets got together and decided that they would have to be taken, which is really interesting. There was no formal chain of command or structure between the various different allied countries. It was a democracy of admirals. Okay. Which normally when those words leave my mouth,

it's leading to a military coup, but not in this case. Now, one admiral, Seymour's second command, James Bruce of the Royal Navy, kind of rose to the top of being the ad hoc unofficial commander of the Allied fleet. And this was mostly just due to politics of who was like the other countries would be less against listening to. For the first time in history, all these countries, I guess the British are the best bet. Yeah. Yeah. He decided that he would have to take the forts and move what ground forces they had inland to completely take the city of Tiet-Sin. Though I should stop and point out here that Tiet-Sin is kind of split. You have the foreign settlement at Tiet-Sin, which is exactly what it sounds like on

the tin, right? And the main city of Tietzen, because the combination of imperial decrees and just good old-fashioned European racism meant that the two cities were separate and largely segregated. And at this point, the democracy of admirals was concerned with securing the foreign settlement at Tietzen. And everyone agreed that this is a good idea. We need to do this. But also, we should tell and warn the Chinese, this is what we plan on doing if you don't surrender without a fight first.

And every commander, Bruce included, was kind of shocked that everything was working so well at this point between themselves, other than the American commander, a guy named Louis Kempf. Now, this is because he seemed to be the only admiral or a naval officer that had standing orders from his nation to not explicitly go to war without the Chinese doing something first, like whatever was considered an open act of war. But what would count as that was left in the air for him to judge. And Kempf was erring on the side of caution. He didn't want to get in trouble and definitely didn't want to get involved in this bullshit since to him, no act of war had happened yet. Remember, they don't know what's happening with

Seymour and they don't know what's happening in Peking. So it kind of made sense for him to be like, why am I assaulting this fort? So he struck a middle ground with the rest of the naval commanders. He refused to take part in the direct fort assault, but would station one of his boats close to the rest of the fleet with orders that if they were fired upon, it'd be considered an act of war, which is almost certain to happen because where the ship would be. So the Allies sent their ultimatum to the Chinese government, which they rejected by way of opening fire on the Allied fleet before the ultimatum time had expired, which, yeah, that'll do it. Though I should point out here again, in all fairness, that the Chinese claim that they were shot at first, which is also likely.

We don't know. But we should also point out here, again, that the Allies had a plan to invade a Chinese city, and the Chinese would obviously resist such an action. Either way, they were going to shoot at each other. And someone fired, and the Allies put their plan into effect. Though just because the Allies had a plan into effect. Though just because the Allies had a plan did not mean it was a good plan. And in this situation, there wasn't a lot of good option. The Allies would bombard the forts by sea while slowly floating in their invasion force via small rowboats, which would, you know, of course, be in direct gun sights of the Chinese

forts, both machine guns and cannons kind of like d-day on a budget yeah yeah it's like tommy wiseau fucking d-day you're just like up on the walls like uh loads of boats coming in should we shoot them to be fair i would watch saving private ryan directed by tommy wiseau that ass. Now, it was pretty known that these landing forces weren't going to have a great time. And that's why each man in the landing party

was offered an additional and optional ration of coca leaves to boost their courage. Yeah! We're getting fucking ripped to the gills on coca leaves. Yeah.

Now, some of you maybe don't know, that is the base plant where cocaineca leaves. Yeah. Now, some of you maybe don't know, that is the base plant where cocaine comes from. Also other things, but namely cocaine. So yeah, an invasion force of Brits, Russians, Japanese, Austrians, and Italians all chewing mouthfuls of coca as they floated ashore. I mean, very accurate to all those nations today. Yeah.

And what's kind of interesting here is I was going to make a joke about ye old cocaine, but cocaine had already existed for like 40 years at this point. So when the landing force hit the beach, they found where they landed was kind of a death trap. It was totally smooth, completely flat

and open and offered no cover whatsoever. Also, they learned upon hitting the beach that the Allied fleet bombardment had done virtually no cover whatsoever. Also, they learned upon hitting the beach that the Allied fleet bombardment had done virtually no damage whatsoever to the Chinese forts. So the landing party were forced to retreat back to the beach until the fleet could hit the forts again. Then it got dark, meaning nobody could see anything and of course aim their cannons for a good bombardment. And they missed one russian ship the gilliac came up with a brilliant solution to this obvious problem they turned a spotlight on

so they could aim better this led every single chinese gun in the forest to target them immediately because they're lit up like a fucking christmas tree and the Gilead was promptly sunk. Like, how do you not think that I'm gonna turn on my giant tactical flashlight I'm gonna be completely invisible to my enemy. Like... This is a brilliant plan

I do not know why our allies did not think this. Their simple European and Japanese brains cannot possibly think of big spotlight everyone is complaining about my armor having a big cross hairs on it I just think you know it encourages good morale

and marksmanship in my soldiers we will show them the superior illumination of Russian Empire oh god my insides. They're trying to light it and to just find out that the soldiers are after drinking all the kerosene. They probably did. Yeah.

Then the American ship was put in the front in order to spark an act of war so the Americans could get involved. Did get hit. And its captain decided, I don't want anything to do with this clusterfuck, and simply pulled his ship away without opening fire. This went on until about 4.30 a.m. when first light peaked out, allowing the fleet to get closer and hit the forts again. And this time, it worked. Captain Hattori, the Japanese detachment commander on the shore,

decided the only answer to this chaos, this absolute clusterfuckery of a landing party, is a bayonet charge. He and his men ran forward, him leading from the front, sword drawn and screaming, leaving the rest of the landing party behind.

Captain Hattori was immediately shot dead. I was about to say, this dude definitely just immediately got eviscerated this is the type of thing from a Monty Python sketch or like is something that is so ridiculous there's no way they actually did that this sort of shit would spark

forum wars on weird history forums well Hattori did die but his bayonet charge did succeed it took over the uh the the chinese positions in front of them and this led to a weird competition between the brits and the japanese of who could take more of the taku forts than the other and watching the japanese run forward spurred the british detachment to the same, letting headlong into cannon to machine

gun fire just to make sure they could keep up with their international rivals when it came to the sport of kicking the Chinese in the teeth. And Chinese resistance faded pretty quickly after this. And this is still argued to this day, but according to several eyewitnesses, not the British, but the Japanese, the Russians, and others, the Japanese were the first to tear down a Chinese flag and raise their own, with the Brits rushing to keep up with them

and rising one only a few minutes later. But the day goes to the rising sun, unfortunately. Yes, unfortunately. I mean, there's no good guys in this landing force at all. There's no good guys in this story at at all there's no good guys in this

story at all that's fair that's true everyone's bad i'm suddenly becoming a a an empress dowager defender you're gonna put it in you're gonna put in your twitter bio dowager hive rise oh god that's gonna that that's a that's a different group of people that are weird that I'm unfamiliar with, I'm sure. Where's my Dow heads up? Elsewhere down the nearby river, the Russians and the Brits launched an attack of the Chinese fleet of four German-built torpedo boats. Because if they left them, obviously, they would have a pretty big advantage over the fleet pulled into the shallow waters of the Taku Bay. Now, the Chinese sailors aboard the ships were competent. They were German trained. They were almost certainly the most competent assets of the entire Chinese Navy in this area.

However, they didn't seem to know that there was a war or even a battle going on, or maybe they simply wanted no part of it. Because even after getting a shot across the bow, so to speak, they didn't react and just gave up their ships without a fight. Like, you can have them. We're good. We don't want none of this. Yeah, yeah. Now, up until here, the Imperial Court of China was very busy with one thing, bickering with one another over what they were going to do next, and also paralyzing any decision-making process that they would have. They were still split about helping the boxers or fighting them, and especially about fighting another war against

the Europeans and the Japanese. Remember how many they had already fought, losing every single one of them, proceeding, losing more territory, giving more concessions. It led them directly to where they were sitting right now. So they were like, do we really want to do this again? And not to mention a lot of Chinese regional military commanders and politicians were actively fighting one another and stealing one another's shit. But the battle at the Taku forts changed that. And this is when the Empress Dowager gave her order for the foreign delegations at Peking to leave the city. That is when that finally happened. So this seemed to be the final step where one side

refused to fully commit to the situation that they had gotten themselves into. Yeah. Someone finally blinked. Yeah, the saber rattling finally turned real when a whole bunch of random naval commanders decided to invade Tietzen. Everybody gangsta till the Cossacks show up.

After the bombing of the forts, the boxers within the city did, well, boxer stuff. And this is specifically within the Chinese city of Tietzen. They began burning and killing anything that wasn't directly tied to the Chinese government. This led to the creation of the so-called Tietzen volunteers within the foreign settlement, a mix of Europeans and Chinese Christians who, together with a few European sailors and soldiers stationed within the foreign settlement, tried to defend their settlement from the encroaching Chinese

army and boxers. As the chaos within the Chinese city of Tientsin began to bleed over, they knew, like, oh God, that's going to happen here. Now, thankfully for them, the boxers busy themselves with the normal killing and burning of Chinese converts within that walled city rather than fully attacking the foreign settlement. So it gave them time. Even with that though, there was only around 2,000 or so volunteers with a couple dozen soldiers mixed in with a mix match of guns, some field cannons, a couple machine guns. And right outside, there was at least 15,000 soldiers from the Chinese Imperial Army, supported by an unknown number of thousands of boxers. And then they're under the command of Nei Xincheng, a veteran of the Taiping Rebellion and considered one of the

best generals in the entire Imperial Army. In short, odds were not good. And the collection of allies within the foreign settlement agreed to fall under the command of a Russian colonel, other than the British who refused to listen to them and would simply work on their own. Small but weird side note here, unimportant to the rest of our story, but Herbert Hoover, the future US president, and his wife were caught in the middle of all this because he had taken a job with

a British engineering firm which put him firmly in the foreign settlement of Tietzen at the time. What? Surprise! This is just like, you know, the reverse of like British guys working for American companies and somehow happening

to be in Darfur when all that stuff that happened happened yeesh the allies and civilians alike quickly began digging in and reinforcing their small walled settlement as boxers were distracted torching the Chinese side of things while on the hunt for Christians the first large scale attack by the army and the boxers were distracted, torching the Chinese side of things while on the hunt for

Christians. The first large-scale attack by the army and the boxers was against the settlement's railway station, which was held by Russian soldiers. The Russians, unlike anyone else, had not built any defenses at all. Instead, they chose to simply fight out in a fighting line in the open like it was the Civil War in the United States or like the Napoleonic Wars nearly a hundred years before. This is described by a British officer as quote exceedingly stupid. Yeah fucking sounds like it to be honest. We have no need to take cover from Chinese guns we can simply take cover behind Serge gay who's standing in front of me. Playing your Yu-Gi-Oh card in defense is gay.

I only play my cards in attack mode, face up. Fuck you. You have activated my trap card, Yu-Gi-Boy. You've activated my trap card, which requires me to shoot three of my conscripts for some reason i'm just now imagine russian maximilian pegasus he's he's still an oligarch there's an unexplainable amount of money i don't know it's just yeah fucking evgeny progosion you see you seem to enjoy my egg salad, Yugi boy. Well, get on my personal plane for our trip.

Thousands of Chinese soldiers and boxers charged towards the Russians, who nearly broke, and since the location of the railway station was isolated across a small river from the rest of the Allies, they were nearly impossible to reinforce. That was until some British soldiers, working with some Chinese volunteers, quickly constructed a makeshift bridge out of tied-together boats so they could run across the river and help them.

They're doing Assassin's Creed Black Flag shit. Rapidly building Fortnite bridges through the sky in order to get to the Russians. The boxers are just like, no, we agreed to play no build mode. This is cheating. God damn it. The British keep bunny hopping across their new bridge. This is bullshit.

There's just some like 12 year old soldier who's doing like trick shots and building. And it's like, wow, that bridge went up in four seconds. What the fuck is going on and you just see peter griffin flying through the sky some chinese soldiers like man we gotta retreat some 12 some 12 year old named like limp and chattington just 360 360 no scoped our commander they're just there's just some fucking cossack guy dressed up like Goku running towards them menacingly now when an attack hit the sector

being defended by Germans their officer constantly wired to the rest of the defenders that they needed reinforcements or they'd be overrun immediately however when the Japanese the Brits, whoever ran over to help them

they found that they were barely being attacked at all this happened so many times that the Germans were eventually given the boy who cried wolf treatment and people simply stopped answering their pleas for help. The attack was held off and the settlement fell into a rotation of digging in and keeping watch. The civilians would work in hospitals, dig fighting positions, and cook, while the soldiers, sailors, and armed volunteers would keep watch and wait for the next attack.

There's even little cleaning details to sweep up all the spent shell casings, which is honestly quite delightful. That's the job I would sign up for. Like, man, they're going to be gunning for you guys in the trenches. I'm over here with my broom. Y'all are fucking stupid. Though I don't mean to frame this as everybody within this settlement suddenly bonded together by the rigors of conflict or any of that hollywood bullshit the europeans and the japanese fucking

hated the chinese civilians of which there were thousands of they didn't trust them whatsoever despite the fact they were much more liable to be murdered on the spot by boxers than the foreigners were. Chinese civilians seen walking around without a European escort were liable to be shot on site for spying without any evidence. Some Europeans tried to push back on this, but the overwhelming opinion was they were not to be trusted and it was better to shoot them than to be sorry for it. In reality, the Chinese within the walls of the settlement lived like slaves at the mercy of jumpy, paranoid European and Japanese soldiers, all while Chinese shells rained down on them from all around, around the clock, to the extent that it caused several people to drop dead from heart attacks from the shock of it all.

And this bombardment probably would have wiped the allies off the map if it wasn't for one small thing. The Chinese had fucked it up. Between the manufacturer and supply of someone within the Chinese logistical network badly botched their job. Either they didn't build the artillery shells correctly or they didn't store them right because the vast majority of the shells being fired at the Tiet-Sin foreign settlement just didn't explode. So the Allies sat there as these things just plopped down from the sky, virtually harmless unless they were hit directly. And the Chinese gun crew's skill was actually excellent. And it was noted by the Europeans that they were too good to the point that rumors began to spread that the Chinese had captured

Russian gun crews and forced them at gunpoint to man their artillery. But they were just well trained and they would have wiped out the foreign settlement if they didn't just happen to be firing blanks, which happens to the best of us. The defenders were holding the army and the boxers off, and while their food and water supplies were pretty much endless, their ammo was not, and they're rapidly running low. The Russian colonel in charge said that they'd almost certainly be overwhelmed if the army and the boxers attacked them simultaneously from all fronts, certainly be overwhelmed if the army and the boxers attacked them simultaneously from all fronts because they did have them surrounded but for some reason they just never did on june 17th they'd lost all contact with the captured taku forts and the fleets that held them and could get no support

whatsoever but that would soon change one british kid who's intermittently said is either between 14 and 17 years old. And a few Cossacks decided, fuck it, and rode out in the middle of the night trying to make for the forts, which despite not being far away, were very well behind enemy lines now. They made it through and got word to the Allied forces what was going on there. And they had found out that the Allied forces within the Taku area had not moved because they legitimately had no idea what was going on in the settlement. Newly reinforced with hundreds of British soldiers coming from Hong Kong, American sailors, Marines, and soldiers from the Philippines, and a huge number of Russians from Port Arthur, the strange commander democracy of the Taku forts

ordered 2,000 men to go and relieve the settlement on June 23rd. Among them was one U.S. Marine, Smedley Butler, who most listeners probably know from exactly one thing he said that one time, and he would eventually go on to be awarded not one, but fucking two medals of honor, only one of 19 people to ever be dripped out in such a way smedley butler american military cryptid kind of honestly like he up until this war and into world war one of course like he pops up in every conflict you know with the american

banana wars in central and lat America and the Philippines war. He just pops up to do some shit that should only happen in video games. Yeah. Yeah. This force walked into the settlement virtually unopposed as the boxers and the Imperial Chinese Army watched on. Three days later, all this is going on. The remains of Seymour's expedition and their Cossack saviors marched into all of this. They believe they were retreating towards Tietzend,

like, oh, thank God, we're back. And as they get there, like, everything's on fire. It's constantly being hit with, like, dud artillery rounds. There's dead bodies everywhere. And it's like, fuck! At first I thought I was back, but I And it's like, fuck. At first I thought I was back, but I realize it's now over. Yeah.

Now with around 6,000 soldiers all packed in and still being shelled, the Allies knew they would have to assault the walled Chinese part of Tiet-Sin to break the siege. No small tasks, as the high walls were thick, well defended by thousands of Chinese soldiers, armed with machine guns, cannons, and led by the best commander, the Imperial Chinese Army. What would happen next,

would become the most important battle, of the Boxer Rebellion. And that is where we'll pick up, next time on part four. Woo! Oh, it's gonna get so fucking miserable joe we have yet to breach the topic how do you feel three parts into the rebellion any anything like surprise you you didn't see coming this is this is kind of it's a little bit like you know a marvel crossover movie

like herbert hoover's showed up smedley butler's there like there's loads of Cossacks. It's like, you know, when's Black Panther going to show up? Oh, Wakanda is not involved in this conflict. They were neutral on the subject. Yeah, fair, fair. I mean, they had a lot of British imperialism to fight elsewhere at the time. I have to say, like researching this, I was really surprised. So, so far, I should say, because this will not be the case in parts four and five. So far, the kind of seamless teamwork that the allied countries had with one another

was astounding, especially because remember what era we're talking about. All of these countries had fought one another within living memory. Some of them only a few years before the Japanese and the Russians would be killing each other in a few years time on top of all of the other Imperial bickering they have with one another. Like France and Germany are on the same side, despite the, the,

the Franco Prussian war literally just happening. Like it's, it's kind of astounding. And I promise you it will not work this well the next two parts. Fuck. It all goes to complete shit. Hate when that happens. Tom, thank you so much for joining me here, three parts deep into the Boxer Rebellion.

You have another podcast. Plug that podcast. Listen to Beneath Skin, the show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing. I don't know what episodes we'll be putting out when this episode comes out, but if you

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Suitcase, the piss is just gonna spill right out. This is for people smarter than me to figure out. A fluid scientist, urologist, get on the case. Yeah.

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