History To Corner Women To | The Napoleonic Wars (Part 1/10)

Introducing Napoleon, the man who invented propaganda. The Napoleonic Wars (Part One) The show for people who like history but don't care what actually happened. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening and early access to series, become a Truther and sign up to the Patreon patreon.com/fintaylor This episode of Fin vs History is brought to you by Surfshark. Secure your privacy with Surfshark! Enter coupon code FVH for an extra 4 months at https://surfshark.com/fvh Chapters: 00:00 - Opening Animation 1:21 - It’s Time For The Boys 06:24 - The Glorious Death 10:52 - French Hitler 16:13 - He’s Like Messi 18:21 - He Looks Like He Smells 21:41 - You’ll See 24:44 - He Wrote Smut 27:51- What’s Scabies? 32:44 - She Had Black Teeth 38:23 - Real History 42:54 - The Mental Health Guy 47:58 - I Could Do This 50:51 - Napoleon’s Dog 53:45 - Josephine’s Affair Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The wheel had roads, electricity had the grid. Innovation needs infrastructure. Plaid makes AI work in finance. Visit plaid.com/ai to learn more.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Come on.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  I can't have it at 3pm for this.

• 0:31Speaker 02

  Dinner's ready.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Fuck you, mum!

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Come on.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Oh, it's coming.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Better not be another woman guest. It's not a make-up podcast, it's a bloody history podcast.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Come on, come on, come on.

• 0:49Speaker 03

  Welcome back to Finn vs History. Today, we start a 10-part series on the Napoleonic Wars.

• 0:56Speaker 04

  History doesn't get more history than this.

• 0:58Speaker 03

  Napoleon, Nelson, Wellington, Trafalgar, Waterloo, goats, guns, and there's no women.

• 1:15Speaker 05

  I'm gonna fucking come!

• 1:29Speaker 03

  Welcome back to Finn vs History. I'm joined by Horatio Gould.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  I would smell your underwear.

• 1:34Speaker 03

  And today, I've been the best boy, oh, I've been a good boy. We're finally starting a 10-part series on the Napoleonic Wars.

• 1:43Speaker 04

  Christ.

• 1:44Speaker 03

  I've sat through a week of art.

• 1:46Speaker 04

  Yep. We've had two women have hit the podcast.

• 1:49Speaker 03

  You've got your girlfriend on to talk about art, and I was very polite.

• 1:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:53Speaker 03

  We sat through the suffragettes.

• 1:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:55Speaker 03

  Because I knew there would be a month where the women have to go home.

• 1:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:59Speaker 03

  And I can just have some nice time by myself and eat meat like a dog.

• 2:04Speaker 03

  The Napoleonic Wars, it doesn't get better than this.

• 2:07Speaker 04

  Well, Bebe has gone to the fringe, so I've got two weeks at home alone as basically a single man. And this just is the perfect timing. Living on my own as a bloke, and now I'm doing 10 parts of the Napoleonic Wars.

• 2:19Speaker 03

  It's what Napoleon did this for.

• 2:20Speaker 04

  It's what he would have wanted.

• 2:21Speaker 03

  200 years later, for men alone. Women listeners, I imagine there's been many women listeners we've attracted in the last few months.

• 2:28Speaker 04

  Active female listeners on campus.

• 2:29Speaker 03

  It's been nice having you here, but now you must leave, okay? It's time for the boys.

• 2:34Speaker 04

  It's time, we're gonna retire to the billiards room to discuss the Napoleonic Wars.

• 2:38Speaker 03

  Discussing the Napoleonic Wars, okay? You can do your sewing and your cross-stitching and your gossiping in the front room, okay?

• 2:45Speaker 04

  Will maps be gotten out? Of course they will.

• 2:48Speaker 03

  Yes, will we move things across maps?

• 2:49Speaker 04

  Yes!

• 2:50Speaker 03

  Do the figurines have nice coloured uniforms?

• 2:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course they do, and it's none of your fucking business, to be honest.

• 2:55Speaker 03

  Your fucking business, love, all right? You go and drink sherry in the front room, and then your brains will get too tired, where the men stay up late, and we move troops across hills, the infantry come in, the cavalry come in, the artillery come in, there's a naval battle.

• 3:07Speaker 04

  We say what we would have done with 200 years hindsight.

• 3:09Speaker 03

  Yes, and also, but this is what I love about the Napoleonic Wars, is that it's actually warfare you can understand.

• 3:15Speaker 04

  Yes, it's probably the sweet spot, wouldn't you say?

• 3:17Speaker 03

  Exactly, this is exactly the point I was gonna make.

• 3:19Speaker 04

  Because, yeah, it's got a level of tactics where it's interesting, but it's like sport, I guess it's football in the way that it's like, it's really easy to understand.

• 3:27Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:27Speaker 04

  Whereas modern stuff, it's a bit more like cricket where you have to really...

• 3:31Speaker 03

  I don't even think, I think, people who listen to this podcast will know, when we get into World War II, we're at fucking sea, you know, we can't describe, it's all about who has the most tanks, and it's quite...

• 3:41Speaker 04

  You can only see, view World War II from a continent-wide lens, but this one you can, yeah.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  You can, this one, you know, this one, I know how Napoleon beat the Austrians at Austerlitz. And I will tell you, if you're female, and I corner you in a room, I will tell you how he did it.

• 3:59Speaker 04

  Corner.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  Listen, I don't get invited to many parties, but when I do, I will find a lone woman, I will corner her, and I will say, "Do you know how he beat, he beat the Austrians at Austerlitz? Do you know how he did it? He seeded the high ground, he left his right flank open, mind games."

• 4:15Speaker 04

  You watch those early Athenborough ones where it's like a lion chasing a pack of bison, and the ones who get caught on their own.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's me.

• 4:22Speaker 04

  You go for a weak one.

• 4:23Speaker 03

  Cornering a fat chick at a house party and laying pipe about Leipzig. Now, listen. Now, listen, okay, this is, it's an annual feature of Finn vs History. We take, we take a month just to fucking go swimming, all right? It's test cricket stuff, it's our second 10-part series. Now, the last one was controversial.

• 4:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:48Speaker 03

  We enjoyed it.

• 4:48Speaker 04

  Grueling.

• 4:49Speaker 03

  Grueling. It was, people thought, "Oh, that's a funny idea," and then by the time we got to Alec Douglas Hume, they thought, "This isn't fun anymore." But this, I mean, this deserves 10 parts.

• 4:59Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 4:59Speaker 03

  I mean, the story of Napoleon and the Napoleonic Wars is an opera.

• 5:03Speaker 04

  I mean, he's a precursor to Alec Douglas Hume, isn't he?

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, he is. He's probably the only man who's fit to stand in the pantheon where Alec Douglas Hume stands. The long road to Douglas Hume, the Napoleonic Wars.

• 5:16Speaker 04

  He did to the 18th, 19th century what Douglas Hume did to the 20th.

• 5:20Speaker 03

  Transformational.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  And again, once I have exhausted the Napoleonic Wars, and the fat chick would like some water, I say, "No, no, no, no, no, I'm now going to tell you about Alec Douglas Hume." The why I like the Napoleonic Wars, it should be said, that we are doing 10 parts, but for the patrons, we're gonna give you in two hits of five.

• 5:41Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  Because your prostates will not be able to withstand all 10 in one go.

• 5:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:46Speaker 03

  If you have Trafalgar in the same dump as Waterloo, you're done.

• 5:52Speaker 04

  Well, they got dog brains, don't they? They don't know when their next meal will go.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  They have Prader-Willi syndrome.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  We have found 50,000 sufferers of Prader-Willi syndrome who can't stop eating this podcast.

• 6:03Speaker 04

  They've got podcast Willie syndrome.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  Podcast Willie syndrome.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, and if you'd like to join, if you find you too are a fucking Labrador, then sign up, it's only £3 a month.

• 6:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:15Speaker 03

  So, yeah, you're right, in the Napoleonic Wars, for me, I mean, I, this was like, when I was growing up, before I even discovered Bond, I discovered Sharp.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  Which we're gonna be talking about on one of the patrons. Sean Bean, you know?

• 6:28Speaker 04

  Right.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  The aesthetics of the Napoleonic Wars are unrivalled in my mind.

• 6:33Speaker 04

  Masculine puffery.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  Yes. It's the sweet spot between dandyish and bravery.

• 6:41Speaker 04

  It's white tights covered in mud.

• 6:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:43Speaker 04

  It's like, it's...

• 6:44Speaker 03

  Don't threaten me with a good time. White tights covered in mud.

• 6:48Speaker 04

  But also, it's kind of arguably the First World War, right?

• 6:51Speaker 03

  Totally the First World War.

• 6:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:52Speaker 03

  And it's also better than the First World War.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  Much better than the, I'd say much better than the First World War. And also, Britain's role in it is more interesting, exciting.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  We stand alone again.

• 7:01Speaker 04

  And I also, we'll talk about Nelson over this series, I find, if you're doing patriotic history, Dunkirk 1940 sort of leaves me a little cold. I'm an Ashencore guy, I'm a Nelson guy. Nelson fires you up because a lot of the recent stuff has been, it's amazing that we managed to get off that beach, and it's like, it's not, this is, this is...

• 7:20Speaker 03

  It's amazing those three guys got those tight boys out of that cave without fucking them, you know? Nelson is a hero.

• 7:25Speaker 04

  It's an offensive thing.

• 7:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is.

• 7:26Speaker 04

  This is, I like this history because these are moments where you're on the front foot, you're getting after it, it's baseball, it's expansive football, you know? It's when, that one Southgate game against Spain where we were 3-0 up at half-time.

• 7:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:38Speaker 04

  And we're like, this is...

• 7:39Speaker 03

  But it wasn't in the tournament, was it?

• 7:40Speaker 04

  It wasn't, but it was like, maybe this is a new, this is a new dawn.

• 7:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:44Speaker 04

  It's that first half of football where it's like, it goes against our national idea of ourselves, but we get, but we get fucking after it.

• 7:50Speaker 03

  Well, I tell you what it was, it was the third place playoff, where we trounced France.

• 7:53Speaker 04

  Yeah!

• 7:55Speaker 03

  That's what the Napoleonic Wars was.

• 7:57Speaker 04

  It followed a similar beat.

• 7:59Speaker 03

  The whole tournament had been 1940.

• 8:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  And then the third place playoff, when we got knocked out, was the Napoleonic Wars.

• 8:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  An absolute fucking ding dong.

• 8:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  But also, I think you're right in that it's the sweet spot, so before the sort of 17th century, warfare is essentially blokes in metal running at each other.

• 8:18Speaker 04

  Or walking.

• 8:19Speaker 03

  Or walking, but it's pre-agreed, you know, it's like a sort of waltz, it's a dance.

• 8:24Speaker 04

  Sort of like a hydraulic press.

• 8:26Speaker 03

  It is a hydraulic, it's fucking reacting to a hydraulic press. And it's very, it doesn't get me going so much, you know? And then, when you get into, well, probably from the Franco-Prussian War onwards, it becomes a kind of slaughterhouse, and it's about industrial strength, and it's about numbers of planes.

• 8:45Speaker 04

  World War I is about trench conditions, really. The war is about...

• 8:48Speaker 03

  How smelly is your feet? It's not, it doesn't gird my loins. And then you get World War II, which is obviously awesome, but that's because of the Nazis, let's be honest.

• 8:58Speaker 04

  And you're honest.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  And I'm honest. Are you still listening to me? You still listening to me? Don't look away, I've cornered you. I mean, now I'm going to tell you about the rise of the Nazis, and why the Anstrus was a good thing.

• 9:11Speaker 00

  The wheel had roads, electricity had the grid. Innovation needs infrastructure. Plaid makes AI work in finance. Visit plaid.com slash AI to learn more.

• 9:26Speaker 03

  Because when you get into, you know, we've had Al Murray on this podcast. I'm sure one day we'll have James Holland on, who will tell us that the World War Two was actually about factories.

• 9:35Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 9:36Speaker 03

  And that really, he turns, you know, cinematic battles into fucking quick fit reports. And it's very, very demeaning to us who like narrative. The Napoleonic Wars, right? Not only can you understand the tactics, even if you're a thicky, thicky dumb fuck.

• 9:49Speaker 04

  So it makes you feel really small.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  You feel like a general.

• 9:52Speaker 04

  And that's all men are looking for in history.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  Is to feel like we know what we could have done, what they did. But also the uniforms, I mean, the French are wearing fucking red trousers for the whole thing. Like they're having a Sunday lunch at Putney.

• 10:05Speaker 04

  Right.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  Red trousers.

• 10:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:06Speaker 03

  In a battlefield.

• 10:07Speaker 04

  Because culturally, it's the age, it's the romantic age.

• 10:10Speaker 03

  It's the dandy, it's the romantic age.

• 10:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, poetry and, and everything is charged. Men are, seem far, far more emotional than women. It's like a rare period.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  But it's also the idea of a glorious death. This is a 50 year time in history, sort of 1780s to the 1840s, say, where the glorious death, there's no more. You know, it's kind of like Europeans are jihadis for a bit, where we're like, there is glory in death.

• 10:34Speaker 04

  And it's hard to go, oh, la, la, la, with a musket.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  Exactly. Oh, shit.

• 10:41Speaker 03

  No, it is harder because you're gonna rap it down. Yeah, no, it's harder to be a.

• 10:46Speaker 04

  So we haven't spoken to Charlie this whole series and he's been, he's been really holding his hands up for a while.

• 10:50Speaker 06

  How do you guys want to go?

• 10:52Speaker 03

  What do you mean?

• 10:52Speaker 06

  How would you ideally like to die?

• 10:54Speaker 03

  Oh, to die?

• 10:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 10:55Speaker 04

  What is, yeah, what is the?

• 10:57Speaker 06

  I think plane, plane crash.

• 10:59Speaker 04

  I think, I think stopping a terrorist attack would be pretty awesome.

• 11:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:02Speaker 04

  I think roundhouse kicking one terrorist off London Bridge and then another one comes like.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  I'll tell you what I'd like to do.

• 11:08Speaker 04

  Close to close combat and then like six of them on me. I kill five of them, but then the last one gets me and I bleed out and I say I'm not a hero as I bleed out.

• 11:16Speaker 03

  Do you know what I would do in that situation is that I would accidentally roundhouse kick a toddler off the bridge.

• 11:20Speaker 04

  Right.

• 11:21Speaker 03

  And then get.

• 11:22Speaker 04

  Into an XL bully.

• 11:24Speaker 03

  And then get shanked by, by policemen. Or get tasered by a policeman, have a heart attack and die, I'm too fat.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  I'd get tasered by a policeman, have a heart attack, I'm too fat and then die.

• 11:35Speaker 04

  That hero shot they have of like someone bleeding out, where it's like pulling up, it's just you but shit's spreading.

• 11:40Speaker 03

  But then also, but then also, uh, the, all the terror, I'd be the only casualty on the terrorist. They'd get stopped straight away. I've killed, I've killed a toddler and then I have a heart attack, so I'm tasered. That's what would happen in that situation.

• 11:53Speaker 04

  No, that's a glorious death.

• 11:54Speaker 03

  That is a glorious death. Uh, the Napoleonic Wars listeners, it's for me, the only thing that betters it is the Nazis. I just think the aesthetics, the uniforms, the dandy nature, the big fucking plumes.

• 12:07Speaker 04

  I was never a big Napoleonic Wars guys. I was, I was always skeptical of Napoleon as I am of all French history.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not French history. This series is not titled, it's not titled Napoleon. It's entitled the Napoleonic Wars. Okay, that's, that's a very crucial distinction.

• 12:22Speaker 04

  But France is a very different beast in this war to World War Two.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  Oh, of course.

• 12:26Speaker 04

  Because it's easy to forget, this is before they put springs under their arms.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, yes, this is, uh, this is ancient Athens, but for, for France.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  Right.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  They've done nothing since. In 1815, they went to sleep.

• 12:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:37Speaker 03

  You know, that's their, uh, 2000 B.C.

• 12:39Speaker 06

  Is this the only example of a wars where it's named after a guy? Like not the Hitlerian.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  The World War Two wasn't called the Hitlerian Wars, but if it, if it was World War One.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  In my house, I call it the Hitlerian, the Hitlerian journey.

• 12:52Speaker 04

  Well, you may think so.

• 12:53Speaker 06

  Why, why is it named after him?

• 12:55Speaker 03

  Well, because as we'll get into, it's a, it is World War, it's World War One.

• 12:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  But it's all about stopping him.

• 13:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:03Speaker 03

  And he's, he's the problem throughout all this, but there's, everyone is basically, it's all on Napoleon.

• 13:09Speaker 04

  Containing one man, basically.

• 13:10Speaker 03

  It's everyone ganging up on him, but then he's so, uh, good slash everyone else is so, uh, looking out for their own interests.

• 13:18Speaker 04

  Alexander the Great, it was his wars called the Alexandrian Wars, were they?

• 13:21Speaker 03

  Maybe.

• 13:21Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  The Hussite Wars, that's about Jan Huss, not the rapper.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. J. Huss, yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 03

  Not J. Huss, anyway. The Napoleonic Wars is where we'll be for the next month. Ladies, it's been nice knowing you.

• 13:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  So, uh, we are, we can't really talk about Napoleonic Wars without the French Revolution, but we're not going to spend too much time there because it's mad and a lot goes on.

• 13:45Speaker 04

  I listened to eight parts of French Revolution, I don't know a thing about it.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  It's the beginning, all I know is that it's the beginning of, uh, of being left wing. So I, I sort of go, all right, I, I, let's get to the good bit where it's Wellington and all that stuff. It's whiny French people chop their king's head off and then his missus.

• 14:03Speaker 04

  It's a bread riot also, price of bread goes up.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:07Speaker 04

  And they care a lot about bread.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, obviously. And then, um, and then what is quite funny is that the, the left wingers take over and that's way worse and everyone dies. And they're so fucking, the terror, the Robespierre terror.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  This is what the Telegraph was saying would happen to Corbyn.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  That is happening now, by the way. We are, you know, the terror happened, that was Starmer and we've, they've now, uh, it's now got an enlightened dictator.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  Executed Robespierre.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, Starmer's gone and now we have Burnham, Napoleon. Um, so, but the French.

• 14:34Speaker 04

  Funny calling the Starmer years the terror.

• 14:37Speaker 03

  The French are so fucking lazy, they have to invent a machine to chop people's heads off.

• 14:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:42Speaker 03

  They invent the guillotine in the 1790s.

• 14:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  And at the end of the French Revolution, that's when Napoleon becomes essentially, you'd say the first, is he the first dictator in the modern sense? Perhaps he is the first.

• 14:54Speaker 04

  Maybe.

• 14:55Speaker 03

  The first, because he's not a king and, and the French are inventing, you know, the American Revolution, they don't do this.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  And part of the reason that the French Revolution begins is that, uh, King Louis, the, I guess is the 16th, is it? He bankrupts the country, financing the American Revolution to spite the British.

• 15:13Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 15:13Speaker 03

  So he fucks it because of us. He is spiteful, yeah, and he gets what's coming to him.

• 15:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know, because it's part of me that thinks it's the first, the first, but it's actually Napoleon's working on classical grounds.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 15:23Speaker 04

  Into modern age, like he's Julius Caesar, he's Alexander the Great.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah.

• 15:27Speaker 04

  He's doing a lot of stuff that people used to do, but haven't done for thousands of years.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  But that's also why this is so good is that he is, you know, he's the first modern dictator. He is, you know, he's, he's French Hitler, really.

• 15:37Speaker 04

  If you think about problematic bookshelves of school shooters, massive tomes on Napoleon, which we both bought for this series.

• 15:45Speaker 03

  Oh, I've got one.

• 15:46Speaker 04

  Our big red flags, because I think, I think men throughout history, including Hitler, but many, many, I'd say problematic men, uh, read the life of Napoleon.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  Excuse me?

• 15:56Speaker 04

  And it sort of fires them up, right?

• 15:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:59Speaker 04

  What, it's more, I guess the incel school shooter mindset, right? Is it's about enforcing your will on others.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 16:06Speaker 04

  And because you're a loser that no one's to speak to, it's hard to do that. And then you read the Napoleonic books, you sort of relate to him because he's kind of an incel.

• 16:12Speaker 03

  Oh, he's a huge incel.

• 16:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, but then what he achieves, a lot of people in their heads, they're at Napoleon.

• 16:18Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 16:19Speaker 04

  And that not having anywhere to go can be pretty bad.

• 16:22Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 16:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:23Speaker 03

  Um, so Napoleon himself, we'll deal with him in this, in this first episode. He's born on August the 15th, 1769.

• 16:31Speaker 04

  Replace this.

• 16:31Speaker 03

  Let's play 1769.

• 16:32Speaker 04

  This is after Dick Turpin did a Iron Man up the country, right?

• 16:36Speaker 03

  It's after Dick Turpin and it's just before, uh, Captain Cook found Australia.

• 16:43Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  Found.

• 16:44Speaker 04

  Found, started.

• 16:45Speaker 03

  We found, started Australia. Uh, Australia didn't exist until Captain Cook found it.

• 16:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 03

  That's the position of this podcast, I won't be hearing any comments.

• 16:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:53Speaker 03

  Turn the comments off for this episode, I don't want to hear, I don't, he found some mushrooms and he dealt with them robustly, okay?

• 16:57Speaker 04

  It's like a video game where if you're not looking at it, it's not, doesn't exist. Do you know what I mean? Like it, it, it buffers as you experience it, right?

• 17:06Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah, exactly.

• 17:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:07Speaker 03

  So essentially, he's born now, he's born in Corsica and he's actually born Napoleone Buonaparte. He's, he's Italian.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  He's Italian. He's kind of like Lionel Messi, is what I view. He's the Messi, he's a short Italian man, basically, uh, who kind of has a new identity.

• 17:23Speaker 03

  So he's born in Corsica to an Italian noble family.

• 17:26Speaker 04

  I think Corsica's known for, I have a Corsican friend and the, the stereotype is like the Isle of Wight in France. That it's seen as like inbred central, very incestuous.

• 17:35Speaker 03

  But again, it's much more romantic when it's that close to Italy, isn't it? I do think Italy.

• 17:40Speaker 04

  Italian incest.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  Italian incest is like, you, you could do the same.

• 17:44Speaker 04

  Family.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  Exactly. Nothing more important than family. You could do the same incestual crime in Hull and you would have way more stigma for it than you would in Milano.

• 17:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, incest in Hull is getting more, it's more like Fred West. It's like, you could see that, it's kind of like 70s interiors.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  Both your eyes are too far apart, you know? The kid's gonna have eyes on the side of their head.

• 18:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  Whereas in Corsica, eyes, we're all dressing, we're all dressed well, splittatura, we're all riding Vespas, eating little fishes. I saw, or give my sister a little lingering kiss on the mouth.

• 18:20Speaker 04

  A very long lingering.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  A long lingering kiss and a long lingering fingering.

• 18:23Speaker 04

  And the kiss will only live when she turns 18.

• 18:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. Anyway, so he's born in Corsica and, uh, his dad, his family is, uh, is a sort of noble family. His mother, Letitia, uh, fucking hates him and spanks him a lot, spanky bot bot. This story in Stink shaped his character because he's always, he's always trying stuff to impress her.

• 18:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  But she's not having any of it.

• 18:48Speaker 04

  But I guess there's Sony, he must be the most written about guy ever, Napoleon must be up there for like biographies of his life.

• 18:54Speaker 03

  Not Matt Letitia in Napoleon, not Matt Letitia Bonaparte. Letitia Bonaparte. His mother was not a conspiracy theorist about the Ukraine war.

• 19:03Speaker 03

  What an arc that man has been on.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  Incredible.

• 19:05Speaker 03

  Who would have thought that that, one of the best English Premier League centre forwards has ever been?

• 19:10Speaker 04

  One of the, yeah, it just, his, his goal highlight compilation is sort of second to none.

• 19:14Speaker 03

  The solent Bergkamp. And yet he has become.

• 19:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:18Speaker 03

  I mean, an anti-vaxxer.

• 19:19Speaker 04

  I mean, I want to see, because he goes on Sony podcasts, I want to see all of his.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  We should get him on.

• 19:23Speaker 04

  All of his conspiracy takes cut between his best goals.

• 19:27Speaker 03

  Oh, I'd love that.

• 19:27Speaker 04

  Because he is hitting it top bin.

• 19:28Speaker 03

  Letitia, yay! I just think what, you know, why, why, why have Ukraine gone into Russia? You know, why have Ukraine gone into Russia? It's their fault, they started it. Oh!

• 19:40Speaker 03

  So when he gets to school, he goes to military school aged nine on a scholarship. And he faces severe bullying. People say he's got his nickname Straw Nose. Savage, absolutely savage burns. I mean, this is Kill Tony stuff.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  And he's, he's short famously, and he's poor and he's smelly. But again,

• 20:03Speaker 04

  Don't slag him off.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  What does, what does smelly smell like in 18th century rural France?

• 20:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:10Speaker 03

  This is the land of the smells.

• 20:12Speaker 04

  If everything's emboldened, nothing's emboldened.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 20:14Speaker 04

  If everything smells, nothing smells.

• 20:16Speaker 03

  True, but he, but he, he looks like he smells.

• 20:19Speaker 04

  Right.

• 20:19Speaker 03

  I think throughout his life, he looks like he fucking honks.

• 20:21Speaker 04

  But this is why he's sort of, he's got a school shooter vibe to him.

• 20:24Speaker 03

  He's a total school shooter.

• 20:26Speaker 04

  He's like at the edge of the classroom, you'll see, you know, then he's made fun of.

• 20:29Speaker 03

  He's the, he's the only school shooter in history who actually did it. He conquered Europe.

• 20:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  And then he just did one school too far.

• 20:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:37Speaker 03

  In Russia, really.

• 20:39Speaker 04

  In many ways, they all do one school too far.

• 20:40Speaker 03

  Well, all the fat ones do. Yeah. You know, but in their heads, they're, they're the Italian campaign.

• 20:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  When, when Columbine is happening, he's like, I'm doing what they did at Lodi and Marengo and Austerlitz. Yeah. You know, you know, but Napoleon never shot a fat kid. Okay. You know, he was dealing with a much more sophisticated sense of warfare.

• 20:59Speaker 04

  But also it's Columbine, it's copycat killings. He didn't know that was an option.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  No, exactly.

• 21:04Speaker 04

  So he did the Napoleon wars.

• 21:05Speaker 03

  Well, he had a Napoleon complex.

• 21:06Speaker 04

  He did.

• 21:07Speaker 03

  Napoleon was just had a.

• 21:08Speaker 04

  Which I used to have a routine about Napoleon complex because it is funny. It's just like, can a man, what can a man, short man do?

• 21:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:16Speaker 04

  Like he's, he's achieved more than anyone. He's one of the most like iconic person in history. And everyone's like, oh, it's because you've got a small dick, is it?

• 21:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:24Speaker 04

  It's like, what?

• 21:25Speaker 03

  Fuck off. But they said that about, they said that about Hitler as well in recently, the revisionism. Oh, he had a micro penis. Well, can you not just let his achievements stand? All right. Maybe he wanted to do it. And yes, he had a small dick.

• 21:39Speaker 04

  It's so funny. They, they keep bringing this up. It's like Putin's got an opponent complex. It's like, surely we should be talking about other.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  Some of us can have, some of us can have small dicks and not do all this. Is that the point? I've got a small dick. Where's my medal?

• 21:51Speaker 04

  But if you're going to slag Putin off, why are you going for the, why is that the, it feels like a rock, the wrong place to start.

• 21:57Speaker 03

  My eyes are up here, you know, it's like looking.

• 21:59Speaker 04

  My war crimes are up here, please.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  My war crimes are up here.

• 22:01Speaker 04

  They're not down there.

• 22:02Speaker 03

  Stop staring down there. My war crimes are up here. It is the same actually as the, as having to go, you know, constantly obsessing about Sydney's twinies chebs rather than her acting talents.

• 22:10Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 22:11Speaker 03

  Brackets as yet unknown. So now he retreats from his bullying into books about Caesar. Alexander the Great. Now he didn't have a book about Napoleon to retreat into.

• 22:25Speaker 04

  No.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  Because he was Napoleon.

• 22:26Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 22:27Speaker 03

  But this is exactly what you were saying.

• 22:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  You know, fat losers do now is they retreat into a book about Napoleon.

• 22:33Speaker 04

  Hundred percent.

• 22:34Speaker 03

  He starts, you know, from very early on, he has this sense that he is, that they'll see, they'll all see. You know, it is, it is school shooter stuff.

• 22:43Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 22:43Speaker 03

  I'll show them.

• 22:44Speaker 04

  It's Trump being slagged off by Obama. That side shot.

• 22:47Speaker 03

  White House Correspondents Dinner.

• 22:48Speaker 04

  That's him at school.

• 22:49Speaker 03

  He's just nodding. You'll see. To be fair, that was me at school. I'm Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner, you know, with my, my French.

• 23:00Speaker 04

  You'll see.

• 23:02Speaker 03

  Ian Burgas, you'll see. You'll see. One day, I'll have fucking 50,000 incels on my back and call. I'm going to take over this school with an army that's bigger than Hamas.

• 23:12Speaker 03

  Fucking hamburger ass. Anyway, so in 1785, he gets his first artillery commission. Now he is an artillery guy.

• 23:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:21Speaker 03

  So he's good at maths. And at this point in warfare, maths is applied devastatingly with, with cannons.

• 23:28Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  This is the age of the cannon.

• 23:29Speaker 04

  Because you can't, you need to know where you're shooting.

• 23:31Speaker 03

  Angles, mortars. It's all about, protractors are important.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  I think. Is it protractor or what's the, what did, what did Galton measure a bundle with? A sextant.

• 23:41Speaker 04

  Sextant.

• 23:41Speaker 03

  This is all tools that you need to work out angles, you know.

• 23:44Speaker 04

  Is it called a sextant because he was so horny doing it?

• 23:46Speaker 03

  No, I don't think it is.

• 23:48Speaker 04

  Right. You know, I got taken around the science museum by a listener to this podcast because you've got, we've got virgins in very high places.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  Why do you do that? Well, I've got upgraded the sumo. We do have virgins of very high places.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  We live in like a certain type of king.

• 24:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. And he was, um, yeah, I think as someone who's a, who knows a lot about science, he does say this podcast is occasionally completely unlistenable. There's whenever, I mean.

• 24:09Speaker 03

  It's not for you, mate. It's not for you. Okay. This is not for men who corner fat women and bore them about radioactive particles.

• 24:17Speaker 04

  He did, he did show me a V, a V2 bomb, a real one, which is pretty good. And he showed me a piece of the moon. And then he showed me an NHS bike from COVID. And I was like, well.

• 24:30Speaker 03

  An NHS bike?

• 24:31Speaker 04

  Yeah. So like a bicycle that carried the vaccine across London two years ago. And I was like, well, can we, this one not as good, you've really built me up. And I thought we were building up. I don't need to see anything from COVID, to be honest, mate.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:44Speaker 04

  Just a bike. I see that bike's outside. I don't need to see that.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  There's loads of them outside. I've got one, I've got one here.

• 24:50Speaker 04

  I like, shout out Mark. Good guy.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  So 1785, Napoleon gets his first artillery commission.

• 24:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  He is just 16, barely legal, or quite, maybe quite legal at this time, 1785. Now, his father Carlo had died in that year. And so he becomes financially responsible for the whole family. Now, this will never change. He is very socially awkward around women.

• 25:12Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  He loses his virginity aged 18 to a prostitute in Paris, having subjected her to a cold interrogative interview on the street. So supposedly he goes up to her and goes, uh, where are you from? Where's your hometown? How did you lose your virtue?

• 25:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:28Speaker 03

  Which is again, a chat up line many of our patrons will use.

• 25:31Speaker 04

  How did you lose your virtue?

• 25:31Speaker 03

  How did you lose your virtue, first of all?

• 25:33Speaker 04

  That's A tier nagging.

• 25:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Car from table. I need to know how you lost your virtue before I can buy you a drink. And then asked her if she enjoys her work.

• 25:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:42Speaker 03

  That's, he's starting to loosen up now. So do you enjoy what you do?

• 25:46Speaker 03

  And then he writes in his journal that the encounter, uh, he talks about it with an intense moral superiority and an awkward sexual urge. His sex, sex never fits well with him.

• 25:58Speaker 04

  No.

• 25:58Speaker 03

  You know, some people, sex doesn't, you know, it doesn't hang well on their frame.

• 26:02Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 26:03Speaker 03

  And I think Napoleon, it never has that.

• 26:05Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. It's tough being stuck in a, an unsexual body, but being sexual inside.

• 26:11Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. Very, very hard. So 1789 is when the French Revolution kicks off. The, the first blue hair brigade, blah, blah, blah.

• 26:21Speaker 04

  An interesting point at this period, Napoleon hates France. He's a Corsican nationalist.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  Buenaparte. He's still Italian at this point.

• 26:28Speaker 04

  And Corsica has been colonized by France. So, and he has a lot of hatred for them.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  And his dad was originally fighting in the Corsican War of Independence.

• 26:39Speaker 04

  And I think he's got a lot of writings that he tried to hide about Corsican nationalism.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  He writes novels. Do you know this? He wrote a fucking awful novel.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  Did he?

• 26:46Speaker 03

  In like the 1790s and it's so horny.

• 26:49Speaker 04

  Is it?

• 26:49Speaker 03

  It's about a guy who basically, it's about romantic novella about a cut soldier.

• 26:54Speaker 04

  At age 26, wait.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  Who dies heroically. It's called Clisson et Eugenie.

• 26:57Speaker 04

  Age 26, isn't he getting, he's getting after it at this point.

• 27:00Speaker 03

  I think he's maybe in Italy by this point. Is he in Italy by this point? Yeah.

• 27:03Speaker 04

  How's he doing this? Well, he's, he's doing campaigns at this age.

• 27:05Speaker 03

  But he finds campaigns so easy.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  Right.

• 27:08Speaker 03

  But he, he really, you know, this is the romantic age, as you said. So even though he's campaign, he went in campaigns, he's like, you know, there's something.

• 27:15Speaker 04

  Novella about being cut, even though he's cut. Yeah.

• 27:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. He's kind of.

• 27:19Speaker 04

  Because we haven't done much French history and we're, we're entering a new realm of horniness. We've done a lot of German history and we talked about German horniness, which is kind of like a, is a little unhinged, the horniness there. It's almost like they're not really horny. They don't quite get it. Do you know what I mean? The Germans, there's a lot of sexual stuff in Germany, but it's not really horny. It's like.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  Clinical.

• 27:38Speaker 04

  It's clinical. It's like, well, yes, chug me with the leather and put it, put the rock in my bum. Like, it's not very like, but then the French, it's a true horniness. It's like huffing dirty underwear. They've got massive noses.

• 27:53Speaker 03

  It's the COVID bat.

• 27:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 03

  France for horniness.

• 27:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. There's just like a, they have a different level. You can tell it's just a true horniness that.

• 28:01Speaker 03

  And this is why, this is why, as we'll see, Nelson stopping Napoleon from getting to India is so important. Because were the French horns ever to meet the Indian ones, the world would just be covered in cum and we'd all be dead. Okay? The French Indian War, I mean, God, if they, if they allied together, I mean, Christ.

• 28:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  We're just getting ahead of ourselves. So 1789, French Revolution, blah, blah, blah. King gets executed. Now Napoleon is a young artillery officer. He gets his major breakthrough during the Siege of Toulon in 1793. Now, uh, it must be said that the French in the, in the terror at this point, they've killed pretty much all their leading officers.

• 28:48Speaker 04

  Climb up the ranks. This is a good time to do.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  There's never been more, more space on the ladder to get up.

• 28:53Speaker 06

  Toulon is Toulouse.

• 28:54Speaker 03

  It's just by Toulouse. Yeah.

• 28:56Speaker 06

  But they're different.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah. There's an old joke, which is where'd you get your clothes from? Because they're all, did you get your clothes from France? Because they're all too long and too loose.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  Someone said that to me once after I did an Edinburgh, like a free French Edinburgh show.

• 29:08Speaker 04

  What?

• 29:09Speaker 03

  At the Buckets Beach, you went, where'd you get your clothes from France? Because they're all too long and too loose. I went, fuck off.

• 29:15Speaker 04

  Put the money in the bucket and fuck off.

• 29:17Speaker 03

  Add the money and then fuck off. Already fucking humiliated, playing whistle binkies. Yeah, now, what he does here is that there's an officer above him who's like, basically the British, God, God save them.

• 29:31Speaker 04

  Please.

• 29:32Speaker 03

  They are, by this point, by this point, right, in 1792, it's the beginning of what you would call the French Revolutionary Wars.

• 29:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  Where the revolution is starting to spread panic amongst the established European order. And so the Austrians and the Prussians and the Brits, maybe finance.

• 29:47Speaker 04

  They don't want it spreading in their own countries.

• 29:49Speaker 03

  No, we don't want this mad woke nonsense spreading.

• 29:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  So the Brits finance, what, I think, is this the first war, the first coalition, perhaps? There's a lot of coalitions and I'm not going to get too into it because it drags, it takes the fun out of it. But, so the British have seized the port of Toulon, which is where the French fleet are based.

• 30:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:09Speaker 03

  And Napoleon basically says, rather than taking Toulon, if we seize this one castle overlooking the bay, then we can then shoot the fleet from there and they'll have to retreat. And the officers are like, no, no, no, no, we go and get the thing. And this is the first moment where he thinks outside the box.

• 30:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:25Speaker 03

  And so he devises this plan, he wins, they win the battle.

• 30:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:31Speaker 03

  They get, and the British have to evacuate Toulon. And this is where.

• 30:37Speaker 04

  They pummel it, he pummels them from the shore.

• 30:40Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah.

• 30:41Speaker 04

  The undefended flag.

• 30:42Speaker 03

  With the cannons.

• 30:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  And this is where he catches severe scabies. So there's a dead gunner.

• 30:48Speaker 04

  What is scabies?

• 30:48Speaker 03

  And he takes the dead gunner's guy, dead gunner's gun, and loads the cannon himself, the swab. And then he gets the dead guy's scabies, which means he has this lifelong obsession with very, very, very hot baths.

• 31:02Speaker 04

  What's?

• 31:03Speaker 06

  It's basically where it's a sexually transmitted kind of rash, but it's little eggs that live under your skin. I thought I had it the other day.

• 31:10Speaker 03

  The other day, it's also recent.

• 31:13Speaker 06

  Jamila checked me in.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  Jamila Jamil checked you for scabies?

• 31:16Speaker 06

  No, Jamila was an old lady and she checked me in Forest Hill GP, which is my GP.

• 31:21Speaker 03

  Right. And. Saying that out on the podcast.

• 31:24Speaker 06

  And turns out I was just washing my, basically, if you scratch, if you wash your balls with shampoo.

• 31:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're not meant to.

• 31:30Speaker 06

  You're not meant to, but it feels so nice when it gets bubbles, so. So it turns out.

• 31:34Speaker 04

  Building a ladder.

• 31:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, I just get suds up there and then it, but it was actually causing quite a lot of dry skin.

• 31:38Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 31:39Speaker 06

  Not in a horrible way. And.

• 31:41Speaker 04

  No, in a lovely way. No, no, definitely not in a horrible way, it's lovely. You're dry skin balls.

• 31:45Speaker 03

  Enough, enough for you to go to the doctors.

• 31:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, and I thought I had a condition of scabies and turns out my balls are too clean.

• 31:52Speaker 03

  So you went to a woman called.

• 31:53Speaker 06

  I got a selfie with Jamila, I'll put, maybe I could put the picture in?

• 31:55Speaker 03

  You showed Jamila your balls?

• 31:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't.

• 31:59Speaker 04

  Did she have a look at them?

• 32:01Speaker 06

  She did, but because she had to.

• 32:02Speaker 04

  Did you have your, did you do this?

• 32:04Speaker 03

  Did you then say like, oh, this is such a mess? You try and fuck Jamila, look at these balls, aren't they such a mess?

• 32:10Speaker 06

  No, it is a mess, but.

• 32:12Speaker 04

  It is a mess, it really is.

• 32:13Speaker 06

  It's a mess, but it's not like.

• 32:14Speaker 03

  It's so crazy, it's like bending over, look at my asshole, god, isn't that such a, isn't that such a mess?

• 32:19Speaker 04

  What are we doing?

• 32:20Speaker 03

  What are we even doing? Who are you? I'm a doctor, yeah, but isn't that, isn't that fucked? Isn't it such a mess? Isn't my asshole such a mess? Should we kiss? No.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  Where are we going? Awful, absolutely awful.

• 32:34Speaker 06

  But yeah, if you've got guys, basically get dermo, dermo 500.

• 32:37Speaker 03

  Okay, this is before dermo 500.

• 32:39Speaker 06

  Dermo 500.

• 32:40Speaker 03

  The siege of Toulon happened before dermo 500.

• 32:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 32:42Speaker 04

  So their balls must be fucking scabies.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  Well, they're not washing their balls with soap because they're French, irrelevant at the time.

• 32:48Speaker 06

  But do get dermo 500 if your balls are.

• 32:49Speaker 03

  Okay, we're not sponsored by them, Charlie, I don't know why you're plugging dermo 500 so much. Okay.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  The wheel had roads, electricity had the grid, innovation needs infrastructure. Plaid makes AI work in finance. Visit plaid.com slash AI to learn more.

• 33:09Speaker 03

  Anyway, so he gets, he gets scabies and, I mean, he has that for years. So he's, there are times where he won't sleep. Once he's emperor, he'll just go for an hour long, very hot bath and then back at it.

• 33:20Speaker 04

  And he's got lifelong, this is lifelong scabies.

• 33:23Speaker 03

  For many years, I don't know if he ever.

• 33:24Speaker 06

  I don't know if they ever graduate from egg, I think they just sort of live there.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  Okay, we're getting bogged down in scabies, it's the first episode of the Prolific Wars, okay? My erection started to flag with all the scabies chaps, all right? I'm thinking of our listeners, they're thinking, hang on, if I'm cornering this girl at a party and I start talking about scabies, you know?

• 33:41Speaker 04

  Spats the siege of Toulon.

• 33:43Speaker 06

  But if you're listening with scabies, comment.

• 33:44Speaker 03

  Don't, no, no.

• 33:46Speaker 06

  Right.

• 33:47Speaker 03

  Comment what?

• 33:49Speaker 06

  Comment bug emoji.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  Right.

• 33:51Speaker 06

  And then a thumbs up.

• 33:51Speaker 03

  Okay, so the main thing about the siege of Toulon is that it's his first tactical success.

• 33:57Speaker 04

  And it's his, yeah, it's his first like bit of guile and cunning.

• 34:00Speaker 03

  It's also the first time he overlaps with Nelson because Nelson has gone to Naples to get Neapolitan ships to help.

• 34:07Speaker 04

  But he's not in the siege of Toulon.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  No, but he, so they miss each other by a couple of days. But he has promoted Napoleon to brigadier general at just 24 years old. Now, his next sort of great moment is in 1795 where he is helping.

• 34:22Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:22Speaker 03

  The, what, is it the Directory at this point? I don't really want to get into the French Revolution.

• 34:28Speaker 04

  Trying to hold it down with the council, but the genie's out the jar now for French people, trash on their city. They realise they can do it whenever they don't like anything.

• 34:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is the beginning of just the world, France, isn't it?

• 34:39Speaker 04

  PSG win the Champions League, well, I'm going to burn my house down.

• 34:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:43Speaker 04

  What are you upset about? No, I'm over the moon, I'm.

• 34:45Speaker 03

  Well, it's only a three day bank holiday, right, I'm striking, I'm fucking going to Paris, you're an idiot, I'm driving my tractor in the main road, fuck off. The first Gilets Jaunes, I guess, so this is the Reign of Terror and now, but he's trying, the people are, there's still many royalists.

• 35:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:00Speaker 03

  Because the king, or maybe the heir to the king is in Britain and we're harboring him and, anyway. So again, we've got to remember that he's supposedly a tactical genius and he suppresses this riot in Paris in 1795 by blasting crowds with cannons at close range. Genius.

• 35:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is balls to the wall stuff.

• 35:19Speaker 03

  Absolutely, what a genius.

• 35:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:20Speaker 03

  The military, why don't we just fire that into that crowd and they'll fuck off?

• 35:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:25Speaker 03

  So he suppresses the royalists for the, whatever, this Directory. But in 1795, he meets Josephine de Boharnay. Now, she is, well, you say that, so she's, she's a French widow, her husband has been beheaded in the terror.

• 35:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:48Speaker 03

  She had been going out with Paul Barras, who is one of the leaders of the Directory. And Paul Barras basically says to Napoleon, I'll give you a fucking, like a good military role if you take this fucking woman off my hands.

• 36:00Speaker 04

  So am I getting right, she gave unbelievable blowjobs and she had no teeth?

• 36:03Speaker 03

  She had black teeth.

• 36:04Speaker 04

  Oh, right.

• 36:05Speaker 03

  Because she grew up in Martinique in the Caribbean and would just, basically just eat sugar.

• 36:09Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:09Speaker 03

  So she has black teeth, her mouth is black, but he can't get enough of it.

• 36:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:15Speaker 03

  He's just like, I want to fucking, I want to shove my dick in your stinky coal hole.

• 36:22Speaker 03

  And then I want to have a blowjob. Yeah, no, he, she was apparently an absolute weapon at the sack.

• 36:27Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 36:28Speaker 03

  Historians discover references to her.

• 36:30Speaker 04

  She's a sexual terrorist.

• 36:31Speaker 03

  Her bedroom manoeuvre is known as le zigzag.

• 36:33Speaker 04

  Which, no one knows what that is.

• 36:34Speaker 03

  We don't know what they are.

• 36:35Speaker 04

  Now, Charlie, what do you think le zigzag could be?

• 36:39Speaker 04

  So this is what, this is a woman who's using her sexual guile to be a kind of an actor in history in many ways.

• 36:44Speaker 06

  I guess you're like flipping each other, you're kind of horizontally flipping each other and kind of like, you're sort of, it's like a factory machine.

• 36:53Speaker 04

  Remember, this is going to be the woman leading it though, because she's the one who's the technique.

• 36:56Speaker 06

  But then she, they kind of do a roly poly and then he's then on top and then they just keep adjusting that until they.

• 37:02Speaker 04

  So that's the zig.

• 37:02Speaker 03

  What you've got to factor into that, okay, is that Napoleon notoriously had sex like a horny dog in that. It was, it was two, two seconds. Oh, yeah, how was that for you?

• 37:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 03

  And then he was like.

• 37:16Speaker 04

  I imagine he's still got all his medals on.

• 37:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:18Speaker 04

  He's still got his sword on.

• 37:19Speaker 03

  Rattling, yeah.

• 37:21Speaker 04

  And he just gets his little member out and he goes, ah, immediately, and then he zips it back up.

• 37:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, it's four really big thrusts.

• 37:30Speaker 03

  And then he's like, tries to cuddle and she, I mean, she was like, oh, Christ. She, he meets her in 1795 and she was a star of the quote damp dress scene. So after the terror had subsided.

• 37:44Speaker 04

  This is sort of Girls Gone Wild stuff, like wet t-shirt competition.

• 37:47Speaker 03

  So Robespierre gets executed, the terror subsides and then everyone starts dressing in these like see-through dresses and then they wet them so that it sticks to their bodies. And it's, I mean, this is just French filth.

• 37:58Speaker 04

  This is French filth.

• 37:59Speaker 03

  Absolute, it's disgusting.

• 38:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:01Speaker 03

  But he meets her and then she smiles and he sees like a black mouth and he's just like, oh.

• 38:08Speaker 03

  And also, her breath must have fucking stank.

• 38:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, but.

• 38:11Speaker 06

  No, I think it would have gone beyond that. It would have smelled like.

• 38:13Speaker 03

  What do you mean?

• 38:14Speaker 06

  Well, it's like, it's so fucked. It's like, it's.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, again, it's this. Every time it's this. This is such a mess.

• 38:19Speaker 06

  It's like stone in her mouth. It's like beyond smell. It's kind of.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  Beyond smell?

• 38:23Speaker 04

  The Charlie Milner story.

• 38:26Speaker 06

  I think if it's, if it's, if her mouth is entirely black, I think it doesn't actually even smell anymore. I think it's.

• 38:30Speaker 03

  So she wouldn't smile in portraits because she just had black teeth and like.

• 38:34Speaker 06

  Is there a place for that?

• 38:36Speaker 03

  So he calls her a puss in boots and she's unimpressed by that.

• 38:39Speaker 04

  Right.

• 38:40Speaker 03

  But she has a kid, I think. She's slightly older than him, right?

• 38:44Speaker 04

  She's, yeah, she's a cougar. She's quite considerably older than him, I think.

• 38:47Speaker 03

  Cougar with a black mouth.

• 38:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  Christ. He meets her and even though she's, now poor Barris, as I said, he wants to get rid of her because she's just spending all his money. So he says to Napoleon, I will let you command the army of Italy as compensation if you take her off my hands.

• 39:06Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  So he marries her in 1796 despite intense hatred from Napoleon's family who are like, well, she's got fucking no teeth, mate.

• 39:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, and also from her. She's, she's not a fan of him at all, really.

• 39:19Speaker 03

  No, she doesn't really like him either. But she's a single woman with a child in 1790s Paris.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  She's very pragmatic, Josephine. Yeah.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  She had two children. Fair enough. She had two children. So she thought he was awkward and unfashionable and disgusting.

• 39:33Speaker 04

  Terrible gums.

• 39:34Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 39:36Speaker 04

  So rural.

• 39:36Speaker 03

  And he had very lank, he had lank hair on the side of his head that was kind of sweaty.

• 39:42Speaker 04

  Now it'd be like someone dressing in like 2008 sort of fashion.

• 39:45Speaker 06

  Oh, wait, I got it.

• 39:45Speaker 04

  Someone wearing like Topman.

• 39:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, good dude tops.

• 39:48Speaker 04

  So this is, yeah, so this is, he's kind of wearing this sort of stuff now.

• 39:52Speaker 03

  And he put really spiky hair.

• 39:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, and he's got the Kanye West glasses, you know, from the Strong.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  S Club 7 is what I'm imagining. He's in S Club 7, but now, and everyone's like, guys.

• 40:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. He's got van slip, slip on vans.

• 40:05Speaker 03

  So he, it becomes very quickly, the relationship with Josephine is so one-sided and ludicrous. He writes during 1796 saying, I'm returning in three days. Don't wash.

• 40:14Speaker 04

  Yes, this is very much, this sums up their relationship.

• 40:17Speaker 03

  French.

• 40:17Speaker 04

  Yes, this is Napoleon walking in with his horse.

• 40:23Speaker 03

  Another letter, another letter goes, you know well that I have not forgotten the small visits to your little black forest. Now, is that his mouth, her mouth or a puss?

• 40:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, we don't know.

• 40:33Speaker 03

  He gets the job as commander of Italy and this, we get to the Italian campaign. Clench your prostates, gentlemen, okay? This isn't, this is Napoleon, think of Mourinho at Porto, okay? Out of nowhere, this general starts knocking big fish out of the park.

• 40:49Speaker 04

  We're now getting, this is his first campaign. This is the beginning of real history now.

• 40:55Speaker 03

  Real history starts in 1796, Napoleon's Italian campaign. Now, France is fighting Austria. At this point, Austria, North Italy is basically Austrian. So they're fighting in Italy.

• 41:06Speaker 04

  Italy doesn't exist at this point.

• 41:07Speaker 03

  Italy doesn't exist. We are pre-Garibaldi, okay? Italy is just this kind of sexual harassment peninsula, this gropistan.

• 41:15Speaker 04

  Before they realise, we've got a lot of cultural ties here.

• 41:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:18Speaker 04

  We all like to grope and.

• 41:19Speaker 03

  Do you kiss your mother on the mouth? Because I do. We should make a country.

• 41:23Speaker 04

  Why are we separate countries?

• 41:24Speaker 03

  What are we doing?

• 41:25Speaker 04

  We should be like.

• 41:26Speaker 03

  Why don't we Anschlussi?

• 41:27Speaker 04

  An economic and political union.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  Anschlussia, yeah. So Garibaldi is the first man that realises that people in Milan kiss their mum on the mouth, as well as people in Palermo.

• 41:37Speaker 04

  Right.

• 41:37Speaker 03

  We should all be one country. What is it, Charlie?

• 41:39Speaker 06

  Have you ever kissed your mum on the mouth as a?

• 41:41Speaker 03

  No, she's Scottish. God forbid.

• 41:43Speaker 06

  If she was dying, would you kiss her on the mouth?

• 41:45Speaker 03

  Maybe no.

• 41:47Speaker 04

  Maybe no.

• 41:48Speaker 03

  Maybe no.

• 41:52Speaker 03

  Don't know.

• 41:52Speaker 06

  I don't think there's ever.

• 41:53Speaker 03

  I kissed my dad on the mouth.

• 41:54Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:54Speaker 03

  He can't stop going over kisses on the mouth. Every time he goes for a big kiss on the mouth.

• 41:58Speaker 04

  Tongue.

• 41:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:59Speaker 06

  Probably it's better to kiss your dad than your mum.

• 42:01Speaker 03

  I think so. I think a true, a straight man kisses his dad on the mouth and then, and then shakes his, shakes his mother's hand. Right, thanks mum. Yep, thank you.

• 42:13Speaker 03

  Daddy.

• 42:16Speaker 03

  Anyway, so we must get back to the Italian campaign. I'm sorry, I'm just imagining.

• 42:22Speaker 04

  French kissing my dad.

• 42:23Speaker 03

  French kissing my dad. Because it's the 18th century in Italy, okay? When in Rome. Now.

• 42:29Speaker 06

  You could kiss him like.

• 42:30Speaker 03

  Oh, Charlie.

• 42:31Speaker 04

  Charlie, we nearly, it's Italian campaign.

• 42:33Speaker 03

  It's Italian campaign.

• 42:34Speaker 04

  We're only, it's 45 minutes in, we haven't even started our first campaign.

• 42:37Speaker 06

  But you could do it like, you're killing it.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  What do you mean, you're killing it? What do you mean?

• 42:41Speaker 04

  At work, at work.

• 42:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, just, you know.

• 42:43Speaker 03

  Now Napoleon's appointment to the head of the Italian army is a gamble, but then again, they have got rid of all of their generals.

• 42:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:51Speaker 03

  He has done, he's done so well in Toulon and because he started having sex with the horrible black mouth Caribbean, Eman, Josephine. Juminiam Josephine. I don't know if she spoke like that.

• 43:01Speaker 06

  It's French Martinique. I've got a mate who lives there.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  How do they sound? Manjor, is it that or?

• 43:07Speaker 06

  I think it's more like kind of classically French.

• 43:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, right.

• 43:10Speaker 06

  It might get a bit of fusion, I don't know.

• 43:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:12Speaker 04

  But is the Italian campaign, this is not, is this the main front of the war at this point or is he being sent to a lesser front of the war?

• 43:19Speaker 03

  So there is a move to go through the Rhine into the First Reich of the Holy Roman Empire. So that's where I think, now, correct me if I'm wrong. In 1792, Britain and Austria and what maybe is Prussia declare war on France. And then I think Austria and Prussia maybe try to invade or there's talk of invasion through the Rhine. But then Napoleon says, well, if I go through Italy, I could get up through Italy into Vienna and stop them there and really put the willies up them. And I think that's maybe what he's doing. So he, he's basically turned the Italian front into the central campaign when it's not the central campaign.

• 44:02Speaker 03

  I think everyone thinks, well, give, in Napoleon, Italy, because really it's, we're going over the Rhine and going that way.

• 44:08Speaker 04

  But then he makes, he draws people in.

• 44:10Speaker 03

  I believe we're also in the era of the, the Austrian Netherlands, if you can fathom such a thing.

• 44:15Speaker 04

  I don't want to.

• 44:16Speaker 03

  I mean, Fritzl times Dutch people, unthinkable. I can't imagine the crimes they commit sexually.

• 44:21Speaker 04

  Coalition.

• 44:22Speaker 03

  The Fritzl, my god. Fritzl does not need to go to Amsterdam.

• 44:25Speaker 04

  The diary of Anne Fritzl.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  Walking through the windows, oh my god, just, I, I hate this red light district.

• 44:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:36Speaker 04

  Travesty in the basement meets travesty in the attic.

• 44:40Speaker 03

  It's just, it's just basement windows going, fucking hell, that's disgusting. Yeah, that's just the red light district with the raw Fritzls.

• 44:46Speaker 04

  And then they look up, oh my god.

• 44:48Speaker 03

  Oh no, there's a Jewish.

• 44:51Speaker 03

  Anyway, the Austrian Netherlands are a thing. So I think maybe there's, there's talk of going north as well, because Belgium doesn't exist yet. I know listeners, imagine.

• 45:01Speaker 04

  Imagine, imagine a world without Belgium.

• 45:04Speaker 03

  The pre-lapsarian bliss before Belgium, right? But again, no one had thought, hey, do you fuck kids and like chocolate? Because I like kids and fuck chocolate.

• 45:16Speaker 03

  You know, it's, it's the beginning of nation states, of nation building, you know? This is why this is such good history. Finally, I can, I get what's going on, you know? Anyway, so.

• 45:32Speaker 03

  He's 26 at this point and the Italian army obviously can't coordinate with each other. Right. Pluiss de Change, right? This is the long road to Mussolini, Mussolini in North Africa. So.

• 45:47Speaker 03

  Why is he so good, okay, in Italy? Firstly, he's the first, it's the first time post-revolution that a general or commander is actually just talking to troops and going up being like, you know what?

• 45:59Speaker 06

  How are you?

• 45:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. How are you though?

• 46:01Speaker 04

  Was he, is he like a men's mental health guy?

• 46:02Speaker 03

  He's a men's mental health guy, right? Hey.

• 46:06Speaker 04

  Does he Gareth Southgate them a little?

• 46:08Speaker 03

  Totally Gareth Southgate. He sits on a chair backwards and goes, what's really going on?

• 46:14Speaker 03

  We're out here in Italy, but how are you? You know, I know the war's going well, but what's going on in here? You know, open up. No, he took, because before that it all been.

• 46:22Speaker 04

  Because I guess because he hasn't come from noble birth, he probably.

• 46:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. But also it's the, it's the post-revolution. So the social mobility is the first time that exists really. So, so his, his armies start really loving this guy.

• 46:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:34Speaker 03

  Because he, they feel like he cares about them. So that they just all love him. They call him the little corporal. And he has this battle at Lodi, right? Now, in the Napoleonic Wars, there are a series of buzzwords, which basically, if you hit them hard enough, make men of age 14 overcome, right? Lodi, Auschwitz, Leipzig, Waterloo, Waterloo, Leipzig, you know, right? Now, what's fascinating about this is that, is that a lot of these aren't actually that good. It's just that Napoleon arguably invents propaganda.

• 47:05Speaker 04

  Yes, because this is actually a huge propaganda war on both, on both sides.

• 47:09Speaker 03

  Now, he actually makes a lot of his own myths.

• 47:12Speaker 04

  Right.

• 47:12Speaker 03

  Whereas I think, not to run ahead, to compare him with Nelson, Nelson kind of earns that, that, that reputation.

• 47:19Speaker 04

  Nelson's a big myth maker himself though, and he's a huge self-promoter. He has the aesthetic, so he's very much so.

• 47:25Speaker 03

  I'm talking about the actual military. And obviously, a lot of what Napoleon does is phenomenal militarily.

• 47:31Speaker 04

  Nelson's more principled as a.

• 47:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, but then actually, a lot of Napoleons is smoke and mirrors, right? So Lodi, what happens, this is in May 1796. Basically, there's a heavily defended bridge by, by the Austrians and the military, what's the word? Not etiquette, but doctrine. Military doctrine would say, well, you don't attack a heavily defended bridge. Napoleon just goes, fuck it, do it live, charges over. And I think basically the fact that he charges over spooks them so much. I mean, men die, but he takes the bridge. And this is kind of, in this day and age, you don't, you know, warfare is a pre-agreed.

• 48:10Speaker 04

  It's kickoff time.

• 48:11Speaker 03

  It is a kickoff time to wars. Napoleon does away with this in Italy. He also, he, this is where he starts splitting armies into two, outflanking people. He also gets his armies to live off the land.

• 48:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:25Speaker 03

  And to forage, so he doesn't have to deal with supply trains. Now, this is a big thing. Up until this point.

• 48:30Speaker 04

  It's decisive and quick. As soon as he sees a weakness, he just put everything into that.

• 48:35Speaker 03

  But he also, he basically, his armies live off the land. They forage.

• 48:38Speaker 06

  Off what?

• 48:39Speaker 03

  Off like villages. They get, not truffles, they're not pigs. They're not sniffing for truffles. They're not truffle pigs.

• 48:45Speaker 04

  Quite a luxury, I think, to feed a whole army on just truffles. It's quite like, it's quite a delicacy, I think.

• 48:51Speaker 06

  So not really foraging.

• 48:52Speaker 03

  Pigs don't eat the truffles, by the way.

• 48:53Speaker 06

  My uncle has truffle pigs. He's a truffle pig guy.

• 48:57Speaker 03

  Right. Where?

• 48:59Speaker 06

  In Somerset. He's got pigs.

• 49:01Speaker 03

  Anyway. The point is that before this, right, warfare was at a pre-agreed kickoff time, and these armies would walk it as one with a huge supply train, right? What Napoleon does, he goes, fuck the supply train, right? They're slowing us down. We're just gonna walk, and as we encounter villagers, we'll nick all their bread, you know?

• 49:20Speaker 06

  So they're not just grabbing onions?

• 49:21Speaker 03

  We'll grab onions.

• 49:22Speaker 06

  Oh, they are?

• 49:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, they are grabbing onions.

• 49:23Speaker 06

  I thought you meant out of the ground.

• 49:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're doing that as well. As they move, they're not, they're finding what they, well, they're taking what they find. They're not being supplied.

• 49:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:32Speaker 03

  Right? Which means that he can also spread his forces. So he's suddenly, he's got three different forces walking at once, rather than this one slow old ship of a force. They'd hunt boars, so they would kind of hunt, they'd hunt pigs, and so they go hunting while they're on the move. Anyway, this means there's a lot of outflanking in the Italian campaign. And so quite quickly, there's victory after victory. Lodi is the one.

• 49:55Speaker 04

  It also means you can draw people in. If you split your force up and they think you're playing with one force, it means you can direct where they go.

• 50:01Speaker 03

  This is the great thing about Napoleonic Wars. Warfare is basically, there are three, there are three things. There's infantry, cavalry, and artillery. And it's how you combine those to try and beat the opponent. And you're trying to get the opponent to do something, which would then mean you have a superiority and you can win.

• 50:19Speaker 04

  You're waiting for the mistake, basically.

• 50:20Speaker 03

  But you're also trying to, you're trying to get them to do the mistake.

• 50:23Speaker 04

  And then so you can have an overload.

• 50:24Speaker 03

  Exactly. You can encourage them, you know? It makes you sound very clever. It makes you sound like you could have done it.

• 50:31Speaker 04

  Yes, definitely.

• 50:32Speaker 03

  Because you could have.

• 50:33Speaker 04

  Well, with hindsight, yeah, I think I could.

• 50:34Speaker 03

  No, but even.

• 50:35Speaker 04

  I think I would have thought of everything.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  But if warfare was this, I could do it, because I understand it.

• 50:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  As soon as it became about like tanks and fucking artillery and superiority and material.

• 50:45Speaker 04

  This is the most moving stuff around, yeah.

• 50:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. Make him go there.

• 50:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:49Speaker 03

  Right? Ooh, come here.

• 50:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:51Speaker 03

  He comes there, and then you fuck him over there.

• 50:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:53Speaker 03

  Done. I'm a genius.

• 50:55Speaker 04

  Hide in the forest.

• 50:56Speaker 03

  I've got a Finn Taylor complex, you know? People are shoring up schools in my name. He'd also, he'd like pinch people's ears and like pull their noses as a sign of affection. And like, oop, pen, you know, what's this behind your ear kind of thing? The troops loved him. Right, they loved.

• 51:11Speaker 04

  Sort of David Brent.

• 51:12Speaker 03

  Kind of. He would also grab noses so hard that women and officers cried out in pain or had physical bruises, because I don't think he knew when to stop, really, you know? So then he establishes a bunch of like Italian republics, and he's also basically making policy on the hoof at this point. So he's not, he has no right.

• 51:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:30Speaker 03

  He has no authority to do this.

• 51:32Speaker 04

  Right.

• 51:32Speaker 03

  But he's acting out, he's just saying, oh yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna take, we're gonna make this part of the French Empire.

• 51:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:37Speaker 03

  And maybe just gonna take these republics.

• 51:38Speaker 04

  All these sort of, yeah, all the rules that are just, you don't normally break.

• 51:42Speaker 03

  But I guess there's such a vacuum, because it's all, every two years, there's a new authority in charge of Paris.

• 51:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:48Speaker 03

  He's just like, oh, I'm on the ground, fuck it. So he establishes the Sisalpine republics, very heteronormative republic.

• 51:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:58Speaker 03

  But he thinks we're gonna spread revolutionary ideals, liberty, equality, blah, blah, blah. Now, while this is happening, Josephine's obviously away. Is she getting railed yet? We don't know.

• 52:07Speaker 04

  I think she's constantly getting railed.

• 52:09Speaker 03

  He also, now, one of the big bains of Napoleon's early, early career is Josephine's dog, a pug called Fortuné.

• 52:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:19Speaker 03

  Right? He loves her puss, hates her pug. Fortuné would sleep in her bed.

• 52:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:26Speaker 03

  And it basically.

• 52:27Speaker 04

  He was very jealous of Fortuné.

• 52:29Speaker 03

  It bit Napoleon on the leg during their wedding night. So he's trying to rail his, his new bride, and then there's a pug. It's a growler, isn't it?

• 52:39Speaker 04

  He screams, his hat falls off, because he's wearing his big hat.

• 52:42Speaker 03

  Wearing his big hat and his medals. I mean, it's basically, it's an actual growler.

• 52:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:46Speaker 03

  You're trying to have sex with her, the little pug. It's like the Philip, the Philip Pullman, where you've got the, what are they called? The little shadow puppet, the puppets, you know?

• 52:55Speaker 04

  Oh, you like, you're familiar?

• 52:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, like your polar bear.

• 52:58Speaker 03

  Your Patronus or whatever.

• 52:58Speaker 04

  Right, right, right.

• 52:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, she's got a little pug that basically protects her when he tries to have sex with her. I mean, I, you know, I, I mean, I have a dog, and the dog is just there when we have sex.

• 53:10Speaker 04

  Really?

• 53:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's not involved, obviously, but it's there.

• 53:13Speaker 04

  Is it loving it?

• 53:14Speaker 03

  No, it's confused. And every now and then, I, every, you know, every once in a 50 times, whatever, I'll catch its eye, and I think, oh, that's weird.

• 53:21Speaker 04

  Why, wouldn't you kick it out? Or does it sleep in your room?

• 53:23Speaker 03

  It sleeps under the bed.

• 53:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 53:25Speaker 06

  Isn't it more like I've made it now? But if I've got, with my partner and I've got my dog and.

• 53:31Speaker 04

  Oh, I thought you were talking from the dog's perspective.

• 53:33Speaker 06

  No, no, from my perspective. I've got a dog and a wife.

• 53:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, it does put you off your stroke somewhat, when you see a dog just looking like, what?

• 53:39Speaker 04

  What the fuck?

• 53:40Speaker 03

  What are you doing, what are you doing to that?

• 53:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:41Speaker 03

  Whatever you're doing, but it fucking smells insane. You know?

• 53:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:47Speaker 03

  It's, it does put you off slightly.

• 53:49Speaker 04

  Do you want to tap out, so you can tap in?

• 53:51Speaker 03

  Come on, mate, you take over.

• 53:54Speaker 04

  I'll go lie on the dog bed.

• 53:56Speaker 03

  It's, I'm fucking climbing uphill here, you get involved. Absolute dog dinner down there, get after it. Anyway, now, the key, the key thing about the Italian campaign, right, is that he develops his military style. This is when he first starts to say things like, one must never interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake. The movement is much quicker than any other force. He's trying to encourage chaos, surprise. He's doing away with this previous thing where war is like a formal dance and stuff. And so by 1797, he's famous because he has been writing letters and pamphlets about this amazing campaign.

• 54:41Speaker 03

  And, you know, I think, oh, he does something where.

• 54:43Speaker 04

  But you're saying it's not that amazing?

• 54:44Speaker 03

  Well, in the book we read.

• 54:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:47Speaker 03

  The Lodi battle is like not actually that, what he does isn't actually that good.

• 54:52Speaker 04

  Right.

• 54:53Speaker 03

  And he loses a lot of men.

• 54:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:54Speaker 03

  But he basically makes it a brand. He's like, he starts making.

• 54:59Speaker 04

  And Napoleon's.

• 55:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. He starts making.

• 55:02Speaker 04

  Beats by Napoleon.

• 55:03Speaker 03

  He starts making insignia. So he, basically, everyone who fought there gets like a Lodi medal or a standard or something.

• 55:10Speaker 04

  And that's why the silhouette of Napoleon's icon, and this idea of him even being short and all of that, is because it's all part of the branding that.

• 55:15Speaker 03

  That's what I mean. Every battle, the battles may not actually that be good, that's my point, they're not as good as Nelson's, right? But he brands them, so I think you'd have a staff, and you'd have like Lodi, Marengo, Austerlitz.

• 55:30Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 55:30Speaker 03

  He's like, these are his big moments. And he's, he's myth-making as it happens, right? Anyway, while he's in Italy, he is sending desperate love letters to Josephine.

• 55:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:41Speaker 03

  Plea, I can't wait to smell your horrible, horrible thing.

• 55:44Speaker 04

  This is the golden age of horny letters, this.

• 55:46Speaker 03

  But Josephine has begun having an affair with a dandy called Hippolyte, Hippolyte?

• 55:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:53Speaker 03

  Hippolyte Charles.

• 55:56Speaker 04

  Tight-panted 24-year-old.

• 55:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:58Speaker 04

  So yeah, she's getting like, someone who can actually have sex.

• 56:02Speaker 03

  But he's a massive puff, aesthetically. Yeah, he's a proper dandy.

• 56:06Speaker 04

  Right.

• 56:06Speaker 03

  Tight-panted.

• 56:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:08Speaker 03

  And he, he's 24, he's like heavily perfumed.

• 56:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:12Speaker 03

  But he can actually have sex with her, rather than Napoleon's.

• 56:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:16Speaker 03

  And so they're, they're like reading out his love letters in Paris, laughing. And again, it's just building.

• 56:23Speaker 04

  I mean, that's humiliating.

• 56:24Speaker 03

  It's just building this incel.

• 56:26Speaker 04

  Your wife cheating on you and then laughing at your.

• 56:28Speaker 03

  You're like, I can't wait to have sex with her again. And she's like, yeah, whatever, mate. And then there's this like, yeah, this like snooty gay guy having sex with her. And they're like, I mean, it's just building into this incel, this rage in Napoleon.

• 56:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:40Speaker 03

  Many historical sources approached Josephine's behaviour with understanding, saying that a Napoleon approached sex the same way he did military campaigns, quickly.

• 56:49Speaker 04

  Well, when you say historical sources approach it with understanding.

• 56:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 56:55Speaker 04

  Is it, if your, if your, if your husband finishes quickly, are you allowed to cheat on him?

• 57:02Speaker 03

  Both women in this room are nodding.

• 57:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, fine.

• 57:04Speaker 03

  So.

• 57:05Speaker 04

  Fine.

• 57:05Speaker 03

  A someone who's about to enter marriage, I think you need to bear that in mind.

• 57:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:10Speaker 04

  The rules, the rules, I guess.

• 57:11Speaker 03

  Two seconds was the average time it took from Napoleon to orgasm.

• 57:14Speaker 04

  How do we know this?

• 57:14Speaker 03

  How is that guy lasting that long? Two seconds? Christ, is he having a break in between? Who's this stud horse? His valet confirmed the rumours.

• 57:26Speaker 04

  Right.

• 57:26Speaker 03

  He was not interested in prolonged seduction, tending to satisfy himself rapidly before returning to work.

• 57:31Speaker 04

  Yes, he's a, yeah, he's a workaholic.

• 57:33Speaker 03

  He's a workaholic, yeah. It's a, it's a release, isn't it?

• 57:36Speaker 04

  Are you a big long sex guy? Is it like, would you say you're like, because a lot of the time, a big thing for me in sex is like, I've got, there is other stuff to be done. Like, there's some people who are, it's like.

• 57:45Speaker 03

  It's quite repetitive after, you know?

• 57:46Speaker 04

  For some people, it's like six, and it's like, they're, all they think about is these long sessions. It's like, well, yeah, there's other, there's other aspects to life.

• 57:53Speaker 03

  We've got to eat.

• 57:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, I got, I got a job, like, I don't know.

• 57:56Speaker 06

  I think naturally.

• 57:57Speaker 04

  Are you quite like a?

• 57:58Speaker 06

  No, maybe like 15 minutes.

• 58:00Speaker 04

  I'd rather do something, you know?

• 58:01Speaker 03

  15 minutes is still quite long, isn't it?

• 58:03Speaker 06

  Maybe less, but I do.

• 58:05Speaker 04

  But are you like a, like?

• 58:06Speaker 06

  I imagine my dad.

• 58:06Speaker 04

  Are you like an all?

• 58:08Speaker 03

  What?

• 58:08Speaker 06

  When I'm trying not to come.

• 58:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, fine.

• 58:10Speaker 06

  I'll imagine my dad there, like, looking really sad.

• 58:13Speaker 03

  Really?

• 58:14Speaker 04

  So you think about it all the time?

• 58:15Speaker 03

  I can't do that, because my dad kissed me in the mouth, so I'm just pissed. When I need to come, I imagine my dad kissing me.

• 58:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 58:23Speaker 06

  He's just in the corner, like, either annoyed or sad.

• 58:25Speaker 04

  I think of a smelly fridge.

• 58:27Speaker 03

  Do you?

• 58:28Speaker 06

  No, that won't, that won't stop it.

• 58:29Speaker 03

  Again, you're just, just getting me going now. It's reminding me of my wife. For, like, coming back to a full salad drawer after you've been away for a month. Anyway.

• 58:43Speaker 04

  Christ, absolute filth.

• 58:46Speaker 03

  That's the end of part one. Napoleon is dominating Italy.

• 58:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, Josephine's being dominated by a dandy.

• 58:54Speaker 03

  By a dandy. And in the next part, we will deal with his British rival.

• 58:59Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 59:00Speaker 03

  Admiral Horatio Nelson.

• 59:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:02Speaker 03

  The one-eyed, one-armed genius.

• 59:04Speaker 04

  Is there a sex pitcher called the Nelson?

• 59:07Speaker 03

  I don't know, is there?

• 59:08Speaker 04

  Well, you bet you come in her eye and then kick her in the legs.

• 59:12Speaker 03

  Oh, it'd be the arm, wouldn't it? It'd be cut her arm off and kick her in the eye.

• 59:15Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, it would, yeah.

• 59:18Speaker 03

  That's already on the Patreon, along with the first five parts of this epic, this epic series. Men, it's happening. They're doing the Napoleonic Wars.

• 59:27Speaker 04

  Come on.

• 59:28Speaker 03

  So that's, so basically up to part five will be up to the end of Trafalgar. That's already on the Patreon, where for £3 a month, you get instant access. On our bonus episodes, we will be discussing Sharp, we'll be discussing Burke and Hare, which is around this time. Where else are we discussing? Oh, the history of cuckold, that's a lot of fun. Anyway, sign up for £3 a month, and if not, we will see you next time to get into Nelson. We're off and away on our biggest series to date. From all of us here, goodbye.

• 1:00:00Speaker 04

  Goodbye.