Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 6 - The Second French Intervention in Mexico

Episode Date: August 14, 2018

On this episode we talk about the Second French Intervention in Mexico. France makes an attempt at regime change in Mexico. Hilarity ensues. Rate and review us for the glory of Emperor Max! Follow the podcast on Twitter. Follow Joe on twitter Follow Nick on twitter

Tiens, voilà du boudin, voilà du boudin, voilà du boudin Pour les Alsaciens, y est-ci, c'est l'Edoard Pour les Belges, y en a plus, pour les Belges, y en a plus Ce sont des tireurs au cul Pour les Belges, y en a plus, pour les Belges, y en a plus Ce sont des tireurs au cul Sont des titouris, nous sommes des Asgardais Il n'est pas ordinaire And welcome to another episode of the Lines Led by Donkeys podcast.

I'm Joe, and that is Nick. That is me, Nick. The co-host. That's right. Wearing an eyepatch. Yeah, because we're going down south shit gets weird let's do this you know mexican pirate i'll take anybody's booty how are you doing with your awful awful army schedule terrible i fucking hate it but i make the best of it sham be best exactly um i actually just had to brave the horrible fucking traffic the sea tech airport

um and it's terrible it's so they made an airport its own city it's not seattle it's not tacoma it's sea tech um but they managed to encompass all the horrible parts of both places and just stuff it full of lost travelers and meth heads well it's like lax if you've ever been like flown into lax yeah and i've smelled it too yeah it's fucking terrible yeah like it's literally its own city it is fucking huge huge but we could bitch about travel all fucking day long because we both do it entirely too much um but a lot of people got this right old fucking way on twitter when i put the hint up and i guess that's my own fault because i made it kind of obvious we were talking about the second french intervention in mexico

and that is why we are celebrating by drinking wine straight from the bottle and i'm still wearing my capi blanc because now i have an excuse to do it. And there's no Frencher wine than Two Buck Chuck. So here we are. It's not bad, too, for two bucks. No, Two Buck Chuck, man, it's pretty good. Yeah, it is. You just have to swallow your pride and go to Trader Joe's to buy it because it's the only place that sells it.

I don't step foot in Trader Joe's. I normally don't either, but I have my needs. All right. So we picked this one, one because it's kind of fucking hilarious, and also nobody knows about it. Like, a lot of people have heard about, like, individual events that happened during the war or during the intervention, as the French call it, but nobody actually knows exactly what it is,

or they just don't fucking care because we're i'm assuming a primarily american podcast and most people's knowledge of the history or any reality of what happens below our southern borders it's pretty fucking shallow it is yeah i mean nick's mexican doesn't even speak spanish so that's right i should which is why my family is probably ashamed. I am ashamed of my family. Not like that, but close enough because literally most of my siblings know Spanish but me. But you never learned it. I tried. I got a C in Spanish probably because my teacher felt sorry for me. You know, and that's funny because on both sides of this fence we fail because um I've talked about it before and it's why I bought the kepi is

uh my grandpa was a was a legionnaire and was uh French by spilt blood as their laws go and spoke very fluent French and um well he spoke as fluent French as you can as any fucking hoodlum Armenian immigrant could with a Legionnaire education and I took two fucking years of it and passed

and literally the only reason why I can pronounce the things that I pronounce in this podcast is because I watch sorry I listen to a lot of the revolutions podcast and the age of Napoleon podcast. I know I order really good Mexican food because of my family. That's true. Those tacos are delicious.

Yes. Except the time I puked them everywhere, but that's the story. That's the story for a different time. The story for a different time. Um, so France, as you can tell from the title of this episode, the second French intervention, has a bit of a history. We're not going to go too much into the first intervention, except that it was kind of like adorably named the Pastry War, because it's a French war.

Of course, it's the Pastry War. And, like, I'm pretty sure it's a show on the Food Network. I think so, yeah. Holy shit. I assume it's actually like one show. I watch a lot of the Food Network, so it's like the one annoying French pastry chef from the Cupcake Wars and then the one Mexican chef from Cutthroat Kitchen

just constantly bitch-slapping each other, and that is the Pastry War. That's a fact you can read in your history book i guess versus fun anyway mexico had just got done fighting what is known as the war of reform or the war of reformation um it pitched the liberals led by president benito juarez against the old school conservatives that made up the aristocracy the past catholics and other economic elites. Pretty much what it boiled down to is Juarez wanted liberal reforms while the conservatives wanted a government based staunchly on Catholicism

and one that benefited them, the rich, land-holding, bourgeoisie motherfuckers. During the fighting, both sides secured massive loans with obscene interest from european powers the european powers kind of like they do all the time were hedging their bets and playing a proxy war and arming and giving money to both sides with the full intent of collecting that debt when the war ends with from whoever won um the loans all but assured whoever won would not be able to actually pay them back. Right, wherever they thought Mexico had the money, never fucking seen Mexico. Yeah, and I mean they had some funds, but not in the way that we're ever going to pay it back.

But that was the point. They wanted to create some kind of like a debt slave or a colony without actually yeah without actually having to put in the hard work of doing it um well when juarez liberals won the war they were broke and surrounded by you know a war-torn devastated country uh juarez acting what he thought was his best interests um in his war we were repopulist i was you know pretty broke and just sick of it all proclaimed a moratorium on all foreign debts in 1861. As you can tell, this did not go over well with the powers in the European mainland, or anybody else that had a stake in the area. As some studies would say, the imperialists did not like.

That's not some studies studies that's just historical fact that's right let me check my notes here i'm reading from one eye that's correct he is um god damn those wait let me squint at my paperwork here western european capitalist imperials they've never caused a problem in their lives. Yeah, they didn't take it very well. And a movie that should surprise absolutely no one, the UK, France, and Spain, all teamed up to try to get that fucking money. Can I get some from your wine? You can.

Sweet. So they didn't really want to put in a lot of work. They weren't planning a ground invasion here. They weren't going gonna storm any beaches their plan was to pretty much kind of do what the u.s did with commodore perry in japan um just show up like look all the guns we got this isn't the one you want look at all these sweet blue uniforms give us our fucking money or we're gonna have issues open up your ports for trade and by trade i mean gross imbalances of trade that will only benefit us the pale skins right um and uh so yeah they they sent their fleet out their whole plan was to invade vera cruz and

seize its custom house it's the only thing they wanted um i'm not sure exactly how much that was worth but apparently it was enough for the three major european powers to all decide that was what they wanted um what yeah and there's no way he's going to pay back their debts but i'm also willing to bet the debts that they were trying to repay um they weren't actually worth what they what they claim they were to the mexicans they just wanted to bleed them dry. It was like the really shitty kid on the playground in a cartoon holding you up by your fucking ankle and just shaking you out for your fucking lunch money. Unfortunately.

Because you were the kid that had to get his fucking head shaved because he had lice and nobody wanted to play with him, so they just picked on him all day. Struck a nerve there? Maybe! Well, that fucking kid kid kind of like you know when they showed up to like grab by the ankle and shake it i was the same thing like when i got bullied or the only thing that came out was like when those tickets for the reduced lunch so i had that fuck yeah um well that's what everybody thought their plan was the french actually had an ulterior motive

outside their normal capitalist colonialism imperialism type bullshit um they didn't tell anybody about it um back in 1852 and napoleon the third the nephew of the first napoleon you know the good one had declared himself emperor of france and the rebirth of the french empire prior to that he had actually been elected president by popular vote, as popular as it is in the day. We're not going to go into how incredibly stilted their election system actually was. For that, I actually highly recommend you listen to the Revolutions podcast, which is far better than ours.

But he was elected by popular vote and was the youngest democratically elected head of the state all the way up until 2017 with the election of Emmanuel Macron. So it was a pretty big deal. Obviously, he was riding on Napoleon's wave because even though obviously Napoleon Bonaparte's campaigns didn't exactly end in wonderful success, campaigns didn't exactly end in wonderful success it was a um people were looking back at their golden memories of remembering french prestige which at the time they didn't exactly have his main goal is to reassert french influence in europe um and everywhere else expand territorial powers expand the sphere of influence pretty much bring them back to the glory days they're just trying to make france great again um he he was so far he had a pretty decent track record uh he had joined with the uk and defeated russia in the crimean war he assisted in the italian reunification which we touched briefly on in our very first episode with luigi codorna's shitty. He annexed the county of Nice in Savoy,

and he doubled France's overseas empire. And Mexico, fresh out of a devastating civil war and completely broke, probably looked like a pretty easy target. And you can imagine at the time where this colony would have been not only worth money for their coffers to probably fuel whatever stupid European war they were going to get in,

which they did get in later on, it would have given them a front door right to the United States. Right. And at this time, the timing was perfect. Yeah. As the U.S. was in their civil war. Yep. So they had no time to fucking deal with the south of the border.

They had their own border wars going on. And Napoleon actually waved all this away with a stupid philosophical argument um he explained his shitty colonialism by explaining that latin america quote unquote a term that he actually coined for this purpose um we're all joined together because your language were languages were all descended from latin And they were mostly Catholic. Napoleon wanted to join this Latin America together under his throne as a bulwark against Anglo-Saxon Britain and America. Of course, the Spanish and English didn't know about any part of that yet.

They definitely wouldn't have helped, even though they had allied to kick Russia in the dick in Crimea. There was no way they were all going to join forces to expand one of their colonial powers. They just weren't going to do it. It was against international relations of realism theory at the time, where they're all great powers and they're all eventually going to butt heads, so we're definitely not going to help. So with that, the allied navies appeared off the coast of veracruz between december 8th and

december 15th with the target city of veracruz surrendering immediately to the spanish on the 17th um so at this point their fleets are just floating around taking coastal cities kind of like floating from one to the other um the mexicans had no real navy to speak of or no coastal batteries or guns i mean this civil war they just fought was what you would imagine a massive peasant war was even though they had you know political differences those elites weren't fighting you know they right it was giant peasant armies with shitty muskets they didn't have the guns necessary to chase off a massive european flotilla let the country in shamble and divided yep um the few boats that the mexicans did call a navy stood

no real chance to go and stand up and fight them um which is exactly why the european allies planned it this way they knew if they landed as a giant army, shitty army or not, the Mexicans were going to show up and fight them. It was probably going to happen. It was a low-risk, high-reward plan. Go shake down the small guy. Their plan is going off without a hitch, and soon the inbred Mardukis of Europe would be happy as their debts are paid off, and they would also still have a footprint in North America.

They wanted to assert that influence over the U.S. at the time. The U.S. is weak and split. It's perfect for all three of them. Even if none of their armies are going to go storming across the border, because obviously they weren't, they could pick and choose and push influence on one. It was just the idea of being, in my opinion, that close to the U.S. at the time. And like I said, it was perfect timing for them.

And it's exactly the same shit we do now. They saw a nation that could be played. And that's exactly what they're trying to do. I mean, the Spanish and the English had advisors in the Confederate Army. But they never recognized the Confederate States of America. No, they're shit. Yeah, they were just kind of like hedging their bets against who might win. And, you know, they're playing imperialism.

I feel like that was a back-fucking-alley dice game between all the imperialists, like, let's see who's going to fucking win. That's what all European imperialism always was, except it was like that. But as the game went on and the monarchies survived and grew older, the people that were playing the dice game

got severe fucking cases of CTE as their bloodlines got interwound and inbred. And then soon you had someone like fucking Charles of Spain who was too fucking stupid to chew his own food. The South would have been fucking perfect for him. He probably would have been elected president.

He was just inbred enough. Well, so all these dominoes had fallen. All of them. The Allies had Mexico right where they wanted, and President Juarez, not the city of Juarez, that might get confusing, could do nothing about it. And then Napoleon III, as he

wanted to do, had to go fuck it up. In 1862, a French army under Comte de Lorenz landed and the Spanish and English realizes that the French weren't there just to collect debts. Like, wait,

we didn't talk anything about an invasion or troops. No, this is a fucking force. Which means, like, this whole time they've just been floating around out there, the French had an army loaded up in their boats and just didn't fucking tell anybody. Because the transit time, they're not going to, the transit time to send orders back, and then send orders back to the flotilla,

it would have been way longer. So this whole fucking army under Comte de Lorenz has just been sitting there. Imagine how shitty that must have been. Your quarters had to be so bad and this floating factory of disease and whatever awful shit you get from living in

a moldy wooden box for a long period of time. I know. That's it. About that. So a moldy wooden box for a long period of time i know yeah about that so um they realized that this isn't what they signed up for um they took their ships and fucked right back off to the mainland leaving france uh standing in mexico all by itself. But this is where my personal favorite part of the entire battle we'll talk about. Well, you want to talk about the Battle of Pueblo, right? The Siege of Pueblo? The only thing I wanted to talk about was Pueblo, however you want to say it.

Granted, not the best. I'm pretty sure I'm pronouncing it correctly because i'm the better mexican here you probably are my grandma would probably agree with you i do eat a lot more than you true it's a strength that i have just not tacos you can't hold them down i tried i'm not sure if it was all the taco vomit or the gallons of booze that we drank. Anyway, you can talk about the Battle of Pueblo, whatever. I think it's Pueblo. But anyway, so the Battle of Pueblo was, I think it was so, it was a great victory.

Why was Pueblo targeted? What was the importance of it? Well, at the time, French, they landed through south and they were going up north, basically sweeping through all of Mexico. And Pueblo stood as a, basically a fortress defense that Mexico had. And that they actually could, it was like built up enough where they thought they could stand up to the French army. Which they did for a good year. It delayed the French one whole year, which was plenty of time.

We'll later get into that, why it was plenty of time later. And we still celebrate it to this day as Cinco de Mayo, happy birthday. I say that as a joke because... Everybody in America thinks it's Mexican Independence Day. Pretty much. Yeah. But one year later, Mexico loses at the Battle of Puebla to Electric Boogaloo. But, you know, it's a thought that counts.

Exactly. But it delayed it just enough. So that's all I wanted to talk about. Happy Cinco de Mayo. Talking on Tuesdays and other shit. Tequila. You say that as you're drinking wine from a sippy cup. And, you know, like the Battle of Pueblo is important to the whole war

because it showed that one of the main reasons why the French failed, and obviously we're talking about this because the French failed, and we're not talking about that empire to our south today because the french failed um is because they underestimate their enemies which is super common among colonial powers where they think of the people with slightly tinged different skin as being subhuman and stupid and they can't possibly you know mount a successful siege defense which is fucking ridiculous. Yeah, just because they have a nice fucking tan, they can't put on a good defense? Because they've got round hats and dark skin, they cannot possibly use Western military

tactics against us, which is fucking stupid, because half of Waris' officers had studied in the United States, and the's officers had studied in the United States and the other half had studied in the great fucking Britain. So, yeah. I didn't know they even had to go to France to fucking pawn. Well, it was some kind of weird exchange program. That's why you get people,

the colonels and the cabins later on, who the soon-to-be sovereign of the second uh mexican empire picks them because his entire cabinet is french his entire government is french he's fucking austrian the only thing he does is um circle himself around eurocentric people because they're superior in in their opinions you know the the uh that's the whole idea behind colonialism we have to take charge of you because you can clearly not take care of themselves and yeah yeah it's just

it's the master superior ratio without the swastikas um you get that today when you try to have any kind of international relation talk about the continent of africa or south america where they just can't take care of themselves because they're different than us. That's clearly a racist argument that makes no fucking sense, but they put it into real world application back then, and then as soon as the natives collapsed, they were exploited and destroyed until the colonial superpower got bored and left, or there was some war of independence that lasted 15 fucking years in some places and they got chased off but the Battle of Pueblo

actually leads in to the battle I'm going to talk about and the battle I'm going to talk about is the one that you all guessed on Twitter or if you're the few people that listen to our podcast that's not connected to one of us somehow on the internet, then good, it hasn't been ruined for you.

So the most well-known battle of the war, outside of Cinco de Mayo, which, like I said, doesn't technically count. Happy birthday. Because stupid fucking gringos think it's Independence Day. Exactly. But it's also really fun when people always celebrate Cinco de Mayo and know nothing about it.

I think it's more fun when the same people who celebrate Cin denial and know nothing about it i think it's more fun when the same people who celebrate single denial hate fucking mexicans it's just yeah you don't need it you don't need an excuse to drink but i say that as someone who drinks a lot so you know whatever um and you know what the army does the same thing yeah Yeah, it's the day that ends in Y. Get fucked up. So this battle began and ended, and for probably the first time ever in the history of this podcast, the most historical battle will begin and end in the same day, on April 30th, 1863, when a detachment of 65 French foreign legionnaires

was sent to guard a convoy that was en route from, holy shit, I'm going to butcher this, Chiquihuiti to Palo Verde. Say that again. I'm not going to say that again. Please. No, I refuse. It's Chiquita with some spice at the end. Would you like to eat, sir? What was that? I'll have the fajitas. When the legion would you like to eat sir what was that uh i'll have the fajitas when the legionnaires sat down for their morning coffee instead of chilling out having a cigarette having a cup of coffee whatever they saw 250 mexican cavalry captain john don joe the commander of the legionnaire detachment and holder of a sweet self-made one hand that replaced his real one that had been blown off in a previous battle. He knew that he had to get his men behind something they could defend.

Which this nowadays, when we hear the story, we'll say, well, of course, they're Legionnaires. That is what they would do. Right. You know, they fight to the death. You know, Legia Paranostra, they're not not going to surrender but that wasn't the case at the time at the time the legionaries did not have this aura around them of no surrender um never quit attitude they were effectively criminals and rejects that were commanded by French officers, that was it. Other conscripts and levies from along the way,

the most important part was they weren't French, with the exception of their leadership. Right. Because, obviously, to the French military command, the only people who could command an army were Frenchmen. So it's kind of like a suspension of the time when you have to remember that these guys did not have that historical spree to court a build-off of that you know of today.

Or like Marines, for instance, know today. Or the Army knows today, where like we're constantly told, you never quit, you never surrender. That did not fucking exist. This is at a time of war where it was gentlemanly, you surrendered, rules were followed

you kept your saber and then you just waited out till the end of the war or someone ransomed you so keep that in the back of your mind as we talk about this um so captain don joe ordered his men until a trinidad fuck i'm gonna mess this up again do it hacienda is la Trinidad Fuck, I'm going to mess this up again. Do it. Hacienda? La Trinidad Hacienda into the town of Camerone which had about 10 foot walls

on 50 meters all around it. So it was a small hotel bed and breakfast slash fortress. Right. If you had cavalry attacking you while you're trying to do your b and b you want to do that la trinidad it's a place to go um the mexicans now knew they weren't going anywhere which is the downside of this they had them trapped now the craziest part of this whole

fucking thing is that's what don joe wanted don joe's mission was to protect the convoy don joe's mission was to protect the convoy not necessarily to survive no um the mexicans knowing they weren't going anywhere sent in a squadron of dragoons and four infantry battalions to reinforce that original 250 cavalry um but that's what don joe wanted to do he wanted to be distraction he wanted to pull as many mexicans towards him as possible. Did he know he was facing a small army? No, probably not. But still, that was his original plan. It's like, ha ha, now we have him exactly where we want him. He was fucking confused by the Mexican heat. No, this is exactly what the Honorable Captain John Joe wanted.

Didn't see out there and see, oh, there's a lot of brown people. They blend into the dirt. Erase it. I mean, could that be historical revisionism? Absolutely. Could the real story be that Captain Don Joe fucked up and got his all men bunkered up in a goddamn hotel?

Absolutely. Sure. Because when I was reading this i was like this guy got all those guys killed but the keppy blanc on my head says this is exactly what he wanted and he got it right where he wanted right you have the pride with you that's right even though my grandpa was an asshole which makes a whole lot more sense um so the battle started wave after wave of mexican infantry attacked the hacienda and were dropped um by the legionnaires that were hiding inside of it um now i think each legionnaire here's gonna have to

kill like 50 people escape to survive it's not gonna happen this bed and breakfast is not getting a good yelp review and i mean fucking all and it's it i don't know the french would probably get a pretty solid one at the time though, though. At the time, though, this is fucking horse shit. You know, the Rancho Huevos were delicious, but the wave of... What? But the waves of Mexican infantry could do without. Too much lead in the air.

Too many brown people to be. I would like this establishment if it was more like myself. There's too many thugs here. That would be the white Yelp review. I would like this establishment if it was more like myself. There's too many thugs here. That would be the white Yelp review. They wouldn't say Mexican. They wouldn't say black. They'd say thugs.

Or the music was too loud. The food was too spicy. Yes. So, I don't know how exactly this battle played out. I'm assuming the classically trained Mexican infantry were marching in the line formation and got chased off by the volleys. I personally would like to think that it was like a really bad Steven Seagal movie and they just sent like one Mexican at a time. And he got knocked out.

That would be fucking awesome. The next Mexican went up and then instead of shooting him, the Legionnaires did like a sweet wrist lock and snapped his neck. No, I would love to see a slick-haired fucking Legionnaire with a ponytail fucking up Mexicans with wrist locks and was it Jeet Kune Do that he used? That was Bruce Lee. That's Jeet Kune Do?

Yeah. What did... Steven Seagal is... Fuck. It's not Krav... No. No. Krav Maga is Rayleigh.

I know. I'm trying to go through my fucking martial arts here it's not judo it's no it's not it's a stupid it's a keto it's a keto you know fucking connection anyway um so don jo Joe eventually realized they were fucked they weren't going to get out they were surrounded which once again should be pointed out that was his plan

I guess he didn't realize how bad his plan was until he looked around and saw he just definitely wasn't making out of this one so instead of doing the normal thing at the time dropping your weapons and surrendering and getting ransomed off. Gentleman-like. Yeah, like a normal gentleman officer would have.

And he was. He went to École Militaire. I mean, he was a French normal captain. Right. Um, instead he urges men to take oaths, never to surrender, and to instead fight to the death. Um, and they took this oath on his fucking hand. They swore on his dead wooden hand that they would never surrender.

I wonder if they're wondering, like, is there stuff under there? How is he holding on? What? Is there a gears mechanism? Gorilla glue doesn't exist yet. Or you know there was like some whatever the French Foreign Legion version of a specialist

back they're like man why the fuck are we swearing on your gross ass hand like i'll do it but i'll complain about everything yes i'm going to kneel um and then to get his men ready for battle they cracked bottles of wine and all got properly drunk which is the least surprising thing that they've done so far exactly and as we try to do now. That's fucking right. I would assume he's getting fucked up on the Legionnaire version of 2-Buck Chuck, which is the 1-Fronk Jacques. Yeah.

I just thought of that. Sounds like it's a terrible feat to be squishing grapes. Nasty Frenchman featman fucking trench foot uh so after a few hours skin in my wine it's chunky uh after a few hours the mexican captain ramon lion lane whatever approached legionnaires to negotiate their surrender, as was normal at the time. He said, there's no point to this, and quote, you'll be needlessly slaughtered. Captain Donjo replied, we still have plenty of ammunition and shells. And shall continue to fight. That's right.

I'm pretty sure he didn't. He'll... Enough ammo? Well, it depends depends enough is relative did he have enough as like a combat load for 65 legionnaires absolutely did he have enough ammo to fight off half the mexican army that's where i was going he sure did not yeah um yeah he refused the order to surrender and the next next attack on the house, Donzo was shot and killed. Um, he was shot in the chest,

died shortly thereafter, and his body was drug away and protected by the rest of Legionnaires. A second offer of surrender was greeted with a Legion Sergeant screaming only one word, Mierde! Which is French for death. I mean, it's cool at the time, but like, I would

assume, like, go fuck yourself. Get fucked! Yeah, get fucked. Suck my dick. Scream death, and, like, the Mexicans are like, alright. I guess if you're offering. I'm sure they were probably, like, doing the fucking counting thing where they're like, nah, dude,

we fucking got you beat. Yeah, well, I mean, to, dude, we fucking got you beat. Yeah. Well, I mean, to be fair, the Mexicans have a history of having lots of numbers and losing anyway, but that's a different story entirely. So, over the course of the next ten hours, the Legionnaires fought on until they were completely out of ammo.

If you were thinking that's when they were surrendered, you'd also be wrong. They also didn't have plenty of ammunition, but still continued to fight. Now, it turns out, if you're crazy enough, you don't actually need ammo to fight. So at that point, there was only five men left still able to fight. There were still a few badly wounded to the point

they couldn't stand up and throw rocks anymore. So they mounted a fucking bayonet charge they fixed baguettes yeah stale baguettes their glorious charge killed two of them outright the other three were captured when they were brought in front of the mexican commander milan he reportedly exclaimed where's the rest of you and when one legionnaire stated that this is all we have, he said, these are not men, they're demons. The legions were allowed to keep their weapons in honor, and Captain Don Joe's bitching wooden hand

has become a legion relic and is housed in their museum in Albanyan to this day. I'm really wondering if his hand was like from Tropic Thunder, how the guy had the two fucking hooks for hands, but they were actually his real hands. I really want to know if those were, he just had a real hand under there. If you look at the pictures,

it's just an unmoving, frozen wooden hand. Like, it could have not been any use. Happy Gilmore. Happy Gilmore. Alligator took it. It's from Happy Gilmore, except he never had to rebuild it because apparently they made one hand much

sturdier back in the day. Well, his is like fucked up pottery. He made it himself. He only had one other hand to work with. Yeah, and I'm sure he could have done it with wood. That would have been way fucking bad. It is wood! No, I'm talking about the motherfucker from Happy Gilmore.

Oh, Chubbs? Yeah. Dude, you're speaking illy of the dead. Chubbs is dead. It is wood! No, I'm talking about the motherfucker from Happy Gilmore. Oh, Chubbs? Yeah. Dude, you're speaking illy of the dead. Chubbs is dead. We always do, so... That's fair. That's kind of our thing. So anyway, French troops entered Mexico City in 1863, and President Juarez fled with the entire state treasury to Chihuahua, where he would leave a government exile.

And that's where my family is from. Really? Chihuahua, where he would leave a government exile. And that's where my family is from. Really? Chihuahua. No shit. Mexico City and Chihuahua. All right. How did I know that? Now you do.

I just figured they're from Los Angeles. That too. So the French wrangled up enough Mexican officers who would work for them and create the Superior Junta, a law body that doesn't really matter and not going to talk about because then they quickly proclaimed the catholic empire of mexico officially the second mexican empire so who would be the glorious leader of the emperor of this this glorious emperor of mexico to take the throne yeah i mean there's an empty throne they have a country to unify surely you don't mean like a real live mexican right don't be absurd they can't possibly govern

themselves instead the crown is given to the younger brother of the austrian emperor a lily white motherfucker named fernan maximilian joseph who ascended to his new throne as Maximilian I on 10 April 1864. I feel like picking that job was like the paint department, paint schemes, the little paint cards you got. Are you pale enough to hold this throne? It's like when Family Guy and Peter got pulled over and the cop held up the race card. The race card. You had to be just pale enough.

And they happened to find the one random inbred fucking royal who didn't have a job he's just a prince sitting around you check out yeah yeah yep you're up go checking with the refs your emperor now um so the new empire of mexico is recognized virtually overnight by every european power because this is the kind of shit that they did um the u.s refused however um they still recognized juarez as legitimate president which at this point his government was like a shitty donkey cart fleeing towards chihuahua with like a handful of fucking followers um that's all you need uh but the u.s was balls deep in the civil war and couldn't do absolutely anything about it, and they could not enforce the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine, of course, saying, in retrospect, hey, everything that happens over here is our business.

Fuck off, is what it boils down to. Kind of something we do today, just with the whole world. So Imperial Mexican forces, which, so to point out who exactly made up these imperial mexicans um there wasn't suddenly like the entire mexican army just go okay you're in charge now we'll follow you it was all the conservatives who had just lost the war of reformation which is kind of funny uh when you think the french said this is the army that we need right here even though they just lost um but the conservatives wanted the uh empire to be re-established because they figured the empire would be more in their wheelhouse when it comes

to their beliefs um i'll be more conservative as mostly monarchs are conservative he's going to be very religious because it's catholic and at the time cath Catholicism was ISIS today. And it still can be. Yeah. So their forces made up of dissident conservatives who were still pissed about losing to President Juarez and their French allies really could not manage to either stamp out President Juarez's loyalists, who are now at this point called Republicans, or Juarezistas, they could not stamp them out or even control their realm of movement. At no point did they ever hand this war in the bag, and that is pretty evident right away. So almost every town around

the Rio fell, almost immediately, including the entirety of Sinaloa and Chihuahua. This is going to become important because the U.S. forces, completely unable to support President Juarez in any physical way, began flooding them with weapons, ammunition, and uniforms. And it was really easy when they controlled the fucking Rio River, to the point that one historian actually says the Juarezistas just looked like the Union Army.

Here's a bunch of blue uniforms. Go find the other blue uniforms. So to counter this, good old Emperor Max issued what was called the Black Decree. Hilarious coming from someone as white as he is. So it ordered the immediate summary execution

of any Mexican captured fighting his regime. It is estimated that over 11,000 of wars as supporters were executed under this law. And as you can imagine, like any other partisan or Civil civil war type situation uh where something like this happens um it did absolutely nothing to pacify the population all it is piss them off and swell the war east of the ranks right um but max is a fucking smooth-brained idiot and did not think of this um so 1866 rolled around and the war was not going in anybody's favor uh the french

were losing not controlling anything it was becoming expensive and the geopolitical situation in europe had changed as long as as well as excuse me in north america because now the u.s civil war is over right confederacy is dead in the ground where it belongs and the americans were rightfully pissed about the french being on the southern border because they didn't see this as like a mexican empire they just saw this as france like france parked their shit and is all in their sphere of influence then at no point did the united states ever consider emperor maximilian a legit sovereign. So they just assumed they were dealing with Napoleon III the whole time. And at this time, the French had a high desertion rate

because they believed America would intervene around this time. Well, America was pretty much saying they were. Which they kind of did did giving all these supplies and even actually they said that uh raiders were raiding uh uh you are sorry uh union army depots and supplies were just vanishing, which is like the worst excuse ever. It's like the old fell off the back of a truck, except like hundreds of thousands of muskets. Right. What the fuck?

Yeah. So U.S. foreign policy shifted from being against this puppet regime being to their south to outright threatening invasion to compel the French to leave. And at the time, this would have actually been a fucking awful move for the United States. The United States military is absolutely not ready to fight a European power, and the French military was leagues above their head. But the foreign secretary was kind of like smart enough to realize like fuck we do not want to fight the united states this is not what we want

and so he told napoleon iii you know franco-american relations is more important than your buddy maximilian right um and that is pretty much what happened. Eventually, seeing their weak point, the U.S. actually deployed forces to the southern border to kind of like force their hand. Again, it's like a dick measuring competition, but you only got balls. Right. So this is also around the time that few loyalists that Emperor Max had bailed on him. The conservatives abandoned the empire, effectively. His forces melted away. They assumed that their new Catholic emperor would be as uptate as they were.

But they were completely wrong. Maximilian wasn't even that devout of a Catholic. And he actually kept all of the laws of reform, all known as the things the conservatives and the liberals just fought a fucking civil war over. He kept them all in place because he actually agreed with them. Imagine looking over like

this is good. Good to go. Yeah, it turns out you brown folks actually got this shit done pretty well. I only got this just because of the shade of my skin. That Benito is one of the good ones This milk is spicy Fajitas all around

I'll have two Steak fajitas It's not a Mexican dish At all Just so everybody knows Thank you It's not? No it's not I mean honestly I figured you have tortillas at all. Just so everybody knows. Thank you. It's not? No, it's not.

I mean, honestly, I figured you have tortillas. You have a meat pile. You get a meal. In a sense, yes, but fajitas are not... You almost said fajitas. I almost did. So fajitas are not a Mexican meal.

It's just not. It's an American thing. Next, you're going to tell me General Tso's chicken is in Chinese. Please. This is why you guys aren't allowed to govern yourselves. Moving on. No, that's because of the color of our skin. Not because of the way we eat.

The way we eat would be fucking great because I love it. That's why we always go to a drive-thru taco place attached to a gas station, so clearly culture is the highest thing of our menu. So the emperor actually lost all of his backing in the form of the monarchists. I mean, they didn't run off

and join the huaristas, but they didn't want to back their boy Max anymore either. So the army was gone. And this is where suddenly the emperor's army swells through the ranks that you would not see anywhere else. They have a really weird alt-history video game that's only available as a bundle when you buy the Turner Diaries. So thousands of Confederate veterans flooded south into the Empire of Mexico. And there's a good reason for this. During the Civil War, the Confederates' president, Jefferson Davis,

heavily pushed Emperor Maximilian for an alliance. And this wasn't because of Maximilian's strength. Davis was smart enough to know, to realize that if I become friends with this shitty empire to our south, the French will recognize us. Well, for all of Napoleon III's weaknesses that he realized, the Confederates were not going to make it. They weren't going to survive this war, or he just wasn't really interested in pissing off the Union. Either way, he said no but emperor maximilian instead invited any confederate that still had legs attached to come move to mexico and set up fucking these little settler villages

because he was effectively trying to boost the number of white people because they knew that he knew they would support him uh he was the only other white guy there and he was in charge do you guys want to come shoot like minorities and shit it's like somebody set up a bat signal for shitty racists i hope they did the whole batman disappeared thing on maximilian too and went on to go fight the minorities well they got really upset when they realized they moved south and realized they had no more cousins to fuck because they were all up north still. My cousins. Her next son said it was cool.

So, we fuck. It was around the same time that Napoleon himself said, you know what, guys? I fucked up. And he packed all of his French soldiers into ships, and he abandoned his fake empire of Mexico.

Now, he wasn't that big of an asshole. He actually told Emperor Maximilian to get on the ships, too. He's like, dude, it's dying. Get out. You're not Mexican. You need to leave. Please go ahead and look at the color schemes that we got from Home Depot and Lowe's. Please, if you could

look at the color schemes that we used to pick you, you will see, sir, that you are not one of them. We watch HGTV. Next thing they're going for is open concept, and you don't quite fit in with their whole open concept. A Catholic white person is about as closed concept as it gets yeah uh so imperial mexican forces even with direct french assistance um could hardly keep

the waristas from slowly gaining ground um but without the aid of thousands and thousands and thousands of french soldiers they didn't stand a remote chance now um maximilian rejected napoleon's offer of exile which is not really an exile just going back home and said no i'm going to stand with my men his cabinet meaning his entire government who was all french not a single mexican among them did not hold the same loyalties they jumped on those ships and fucked off back to the continent dude you suck and maximilian did not reappoint a cabinet he just tried to run a government of his own. Now, he wasn't a dumb guy.

Up until this point, well, I guess that's arguable because look where he is, but up until this point, he was a very well-educated man who had succeeded in everything that he did. I think his only shitty part was listening to his brother, the Emperor of Austria, and he was like, bro, I got this idea for our franchise.

And he took it, and it ends up like, no. Dude, we'll start this chain. It'll be fucking sweet. Yeah. What's the chain? Toys R Us. Fuck! So, and... You got it. In 1867,

the emperor decided that the war was going so badly, he couldn't trust his officers anymore. They weren't doing what he wanted them to do. They were coming up with their own battle plans that were obviously inferior to his, the rich, uppity white guy. Because, yeah, I mean, all of his loyalists now are Mexican. All the French dudes saw the writing of the wall and fucking ran. And the only loyalists left are the people like not so

conservative enough they said he wasn't conservative enough but also realized that if they surrendered they would totally be murdered by the waristas because you have to realize the waristas flipped that black decree on its head anytime a imperialist fell into their hands they were also similarly executed so these guys who clung to maximilian weren't exactly clinging to him because like for the great victory or for the glory of the imperial or anything it was like well i saddle up this fucking wagon we gotta ride until it dies because end state in any way way, they're not going to make it. They're not going to survive. The riot didn't last long at all.

They're probably hoping for some last second white steed in the shape of Spain or England or some massive French army to come save them. I mean, this is the Austrian emperor's brother, and he hasn't lifted a fucking figured album at all. I don't even know anything about it because he's too busy getting fucking poon over in fucking austria or like he maybe he was like a good big brother and he's like i wouldn't work in the poland he's kind of a fucking idiot because i mean fast forward a couple years these two sides are trying to kill each other so it's true like real bad also really cool this was like a whole fucking gangbang of uh different countries

coming in for this battle for this mexican war there were the belgians who came in which sent in quite a bit of troops also the hungarians egypt actually sent in troops, which is, I had no fucking clue. What was the driving force? Now, were these mercenaries, or were these standard formations from these nations? For instance, the American Revolution, you had Hessians that showed up, and they definitely weren't part of the German army,

because Germany didn't exist at the time. They were just there for the fucking coin. I assume this is the same i honestly believe that as well in and looking at how many died and how many troops they sent it honestly looks like that yeah and a lot of them died from disease because let let's see... Well, it was pretty common with war at the time. Many more people died from disease and illness and unsanitary... Well, look at this. Like 6,000, over 6,000 French died. Right.

Including, well, over 4,000 of the 6,000 died from disease. It's not that... That's a fucking shit ton. That's not that surprising when you think that you're taking all these lily white motherfuckers from the continent and dropping them in Mexico. I mean, France literally did this,

but a hundred times worse, a couple years before in Haiti, during the Haitian Revolution, where Napoleon, the good one, the petite caporale, God rest his soul, sent thousands of Frenchmen to try to put down the revolution, and they pretty much all died by disease without even having to fight anybody. So this is kind of like a thing that they do.

Right. They don't think, like, this is probably an inhospitable area for people that look like me um right and i totally agree with that but it's still fucking insane yeah and of that i think a thousand a little over a thousand almost two thousand deaths were from the french foreign legion yeah which is also insane because usually you don't see that many deaths from the french foreign legion which is not normally that many yeah exactly so what's in a place like in china that actually kind of shows that the whole last stand of uh cameroon the battle of cameroon where he said no surrender fight to the end well it's because they get to swear in a sweet wooden hand i would do the same as well yeah i mean i i never got the chance to swear on any of

my captain or my troop commanders one hands um but i would probably totally do it i mean i've done dumber things probably sweet story yeah probably catch a wikipedia page for sure um so around this time when the French government bailed on the Emperor, it was around the same time that all of the foreign mercenaries bailed on him as well. They realized there was no money left in this. Right. This is a suicide mission. They hauled ass back to the continent.

Yeah, we're losing a shit ton of guys. We're leaving. But, like I said, this is actually not so terrible when emperor max takes command of his armies um when you look at some of the other sovereigns who decided fuck y'all i'm gonna run my own ship um like this like czar nicholas is a good example uh kaiser wilhelm actually tried to do that but by that point of world war one he actually had no power um and a few other ones before then um yeah oh we're gonna talk about him later um but emperor max had spent the vast majority of his life before now being a military leader he had gone to ikel military in saint serre

like i said um he commanded an entire corps of the austrian military now here's the problem though the corps he commanded was the navy and the school he went to was a naval school he was not commanding a navy here they are out of his own yeah he probably just assumed well fuck it i spent 30 years of my life in military school i should know how to run an army i played battleships yeah it's the same it's like the modern day equivalent of some asshole that you meet like you know i was gonna join the military one said i played call of duty like it's not the same man um or the dude that you meet from the navy who totally knows how to do room clearing but he's not a seal it's not true um so um he took command of this army and

it was immediately folded on itself it started getting beaten back uh he couldn't manage it correctly and his officers probably too afraid of black decree or too afraid to piss off the emperor just let him do it and so they retreated back to the city of Santiago de Quintero and that city was immediately surrounded and put under siege pinned with his back against the wall Max only had about 8,000 loyalists left and you have to imagine how loyal or dumb or a mixture of the two of these dudes had to be because they had stuck with them to the point that they were not going to escape the black decree themselves on the opposite side but they knew they couldn't have surrendered before then

otherwise they would have been forgiven for it because i mean um the waristas may have been a bit bloodthirsty but but Juarez himself was not. At least not for the time. There's a good chance if they managed to surrender before the fucking last stand, they would have been given a pass. No numbers are given for the amount of the loyalists that were murdered or executed, whatever you want to put it, by the Waristas. murdered or executed whatever you want to put it by the waristas um but it's significantly less than what the imperial forces did to them so there's a much less of a systemic amount of

violence there was still definitely some executions like anywhere from history but i was they had a much better chance so these dudes dudes are really dumb, really loyal, or they've done some awful shit, and they knew they weren't going to get away with it. Anyway, Max came up with this master fucking plan to break through the lines, make it back to Mexico City, where he had other forces stationed, and maybe he'll put up a better last stand. Because as you can imagine,

the Capitol had significantly more forces than 8,000 dudes. Their plan immediately went to hell when one of Max's officers, a Colonel Miguel Lopez, betrayed him and opened the gates for Juarez's forces. Max and several of his generals were immediately captured and sentenced to death. By firing squad. It gets better. Max's wife wife who had spent very little time

in Mexico at all and spent the every waking moment since the French left because she left with them back on the continent trying to get support

for her husband's country um drumming up support getting funds getting training getting mercenaries

you name it she was running around trying to do all that she didn't succeed, but she was trying. So, what she did succeed in doing was coming up with a plan to break him out of jail.

Wasn't that hard. If there's one thing that'll... Like a cake and a file? Even easier than that, it turns out. Because they're rich European Imperials, they're just going to fucking bribe everybody. But the whole plan fell on Maximilian shaving his beard. Because this isn't the 21st century, Maximilian doesn't fuck a Facebook page.

Most people haven't even fucking seen him. But some people have seen a passing painting of him that shows the giant lily white dude with the fucking throne, and Mexico with the giant beard. So the plan pretty much comes down to, hey, if you shave your face, you'll probably be all right. No one's going to recognize you. You're not tagged in this photograph. They're not checking their Instagram. He had it shaved, and they passed by, and he's, is that Max Millian?

Fuck. Kill that bitch. You got too many goddamn Twitter followers. But, Max refused to fucking shave it. He said, he thought it would have been an affront to his dignity

to shave his beard to fucking live. Because, you have to think, this isn't like the crack warista fucking dragoons here that are guarding him. Some fucking shitty dudes who couldn't even pull frontline duty and they're his prison guards. They totally accepted the bribe.

They already said they would. That's why she forwarded the plan to shave his beard and get him out of there. There was already a horse waiting for him to carry him back to a boat that was going to bring him back to the continent. All of this was already laid down. Literally all it required him to do was a fucking shave. They had a sweet fucking plan all ready, good to go. All he had to do was fucking take a razor to his face, fucking show off some goddamn skin.

He wouldn't do it. No. That's fucking insane. Yeah, something as simple as that. So? You shaved yours. I don't want to talk about it. It's an affront to my dignity.

All of Europe sent angry telegrams to what is now not necessarily officially the Republic of Mexico again, but pretty much to Mexico saying, don't execute him. Free him. He's one of us. Blah, blah, blah. Yada, free him, he's one of us, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda, please don't waste the imperialists. Juarez actually liked Max personally and did not want to execute him. You really just want to put him back on a boat, kick him back the earth, and forget this whole episode even happened. in a boat, kick him back to Europe, and forget this whole episode even happened. But because it was passed by an actual judge, he didn't want to overturn the sentence. And he knew

it was going to be a good message to anybody else who had colonial ideas on his country. So, with his beard, and I assume his dignity intact, Max was brought out to the hillside of Ciro de la Capanez at about 0640 on 19 June 1867 to be executed. I can imagine the actual time of that formation. Yeah, they were already out there at like 2 o'clock getting their weapons. It was stupid. Weapons draw. He paid each member of his 21-person firing squad a gold coin

not to shoot him in his face so his mother would be able to recognize his corpse. Leave that sweet beard intact. Or, just like I assumed, to preserve that sweet, sweet beard. That's honestly what I did as well. He had a lot of fucking balls as he faced on this firing squad. I mean, he was not emperor of this country for long and he had nothing to do with this country. He barely spoke Spanish. With his parting words were,

quote, I forgive everyone, and I ask everyone to forgive me. May my blood, which is about to be shed, be for the good of the country. Viva la Mexico, viva la independenciaia and then he was shot. After he was shot, he screamed out one word, HOMBRE! And then he died. That's the fucking best word ever. So, like, this dude who was about to be fucking murdered for independence,

like, he is the figurehead of not having independence. Like, him and, like, King Leopold of Belgium. And, and uh his last fucking parting words were long live independence that is about to shoot me in my sweet bearded face um it's almost like the anchorman fight not for the face yeah and they all like had a gentleman agreement and he got shot anyway but like how fucking delusional or stupid are you like may i forgive everyone forgive everyone for what taking back what's theirs yeah come on so his word of his death

eventually got around uh back to mexico city and the city surrendered without a fight and the second empire of mexico ceased to exist um his wife spent the rest of her life in seclusion refusing to ever accept her shithead husband was dead. Moving from one castle to another in complete seclusion until she died 20 years later. I'm sure she was talking about it to this day like there's a fucking plan. All you have to do

is shave this fucking beard. It's like the most eternal honeydew list ever. It except only has one bullet point shave beard so that's the thing to do bullet one shave beard not an option crumple i i just it blows my mind that like his parting message was like i forgive you for what you're about to do like motherfucker we forgive you they brought all of this this is a functioning country

before you showed up like it's it is that white man's guilt type shit that only exists from like 1800s monarchs it just fucking does not make any sense to me whatsoever. I'm on the home race thing.

I, why, I mean, I understand, he's probably going through, a shitload of trauma as, like, a torn of musket balls

tears his chest cavity apart, but, like, I imagine I would still at least scream out a swear word, not like, I'm just being, like, brother, right? Or man?

Something like that. You're supposed to be our subject matter expert here am i you're the only mexican i know that's really sad i'm sorry you lived in texas but we live in washington now those ways it gets up here you lived in texas for years let me rephrase that you're the the only Mexican I currently make a podcast with. Racist? No, affirmative action.

There's one of each of us. True. It's just fair. I agree. I just hope one day when I inevitably land up against the wall and shot for my

shit posting on Twitter I scream out HOMBRE! I hope you pick out something better than HOMBRE. Yeah, me too. Because I'm sure he was probably fucking flustered and didn't know what to say, and he was like,

HOMBRE! Flustered might be an understatement when he's lit up by fucking musket balls. I don't think so. He had dignity. So we're recording this one a little early, but it'll still be out on Monday. I'm flying out to Vegas tomorrow to cultivate a fucking mean sunburn,

and I won't be able to be here the rest of the week. But huge thanks out to the fact that our subscriptions have blown up to over 200 now. Oh, yeah. And we might possibly get a sponsorship out of it. I don't know if that's true or not. It's still up in the air, but it's looking good. It blows my mind that there is literally almost two company-sized worth of people that subscribe to our podcast.

And we're the only people that would make that analogy. It's a military history podcast. It's an acceptable analogy. It's acceptable. And I even said company instead of troop, because I understand the only cavalry douchebag here. And I even said company instead of troop because I understand the only cavalry douchebag here. But like always, rate us on iTunes, rate us on whatever platform you use.

It helps us immensely. Oh, yeah. Share whatever stupid history things that we share on Twitter. If you find them funny or interesting, we'll try to share something to go along with this. There's no YouTube videos that show him getting shot in the chest and screaming, like I've been sharing tons of Chechen War stuff, but I'll find

something interesting to show you. You can find us on Twitter. I'm at jcast99. He is at ncast, nickcast. I'm going to remember that eventually. It's pretty close to yours, but it's okay. It's weird because we didn't plan that.

And you can follow the podcast at lions underscore by. Leave us angry messages or suggestions as some of you have done. And we will get to them. Eventually. I might just reply with duck memes. Also to all of the soldiers in the 89th Military Police Brigade that were impacted by the video that I posted later this week. It was kind of funny.

But I'm glad that it helped. And a huge shout-out to FORSCOM General Abrams. He is the only leader I had in 10 years of military service who actually cares about anybody involved and uh i hope it's a warm feeling it's really nice it's nice to know that six years after i'm out of fucking army somebody actually starts to care but this is where the time comes now old man yeah yeah i'm feeling old um but yep we'll see you next time and uh yep see you then take it easy