I Don’t Beef Wellington Someone Unless I Really Love Them | The Napoleonic Wars (Part 8/10)

Once, twice, three times a cuckold.. The Napoleonic Wars (Part Eight) 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 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 Chapters: 00:00 - Paula Hitler 05:56 - Cavalry Is Gay 08:37 - Hold On! 10:53 - Modern Day Cavalry 12:51 - Charlie’s Sleep 18:14 - England Pingland 22:03 - The School Sh*oter 31:25 - bin Laden 39:25 - Gangrene 41:39 - Philip Schofield 45:16 - Beef Wellington Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The wheel was brilliant, but the road made it iconic. Electricity was powerful, but the grid brought it to every home. Innovation needs infrastructure. AI is no different, especially in finance, where AI can't run without context. But it can run on Plaid's infrastructure. Built over 13 years to understand why money moves. Plaid makes AI work in finance. Visit plaid.com/ai to learn more.

• 0:41Speaker 01

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

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Still.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  And we're still here. It's Napoleon part eight.

• 0:49Speaker 02

  Part eight.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  The, the school shooter has, it's things are starting to go wrong for him.

• 0:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  The police are amassed outside.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Like Ozymandias, he has run out of fat kids to massacre.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  He is not, doesn't have enough ammo to turn the gun on himself.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Oh, fuck.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Is there anything sad that a school shooter who's run out of bullets to kill himself?

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Always leave one in the chamber.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Or is he too cowardly as well? Cause when it, he thinks he killed himself, but when it comes to it, his survival instincts kick in.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Oh no.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Oh no, I don't want to die. Oh, fuck. Um, we left off, uh, Napoleon had met his match in Russia, which did what Russia did and just set fire to the place.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  I mean, you can't, you can't really, it's not cricket. I mean, we're not playing that game. We could all just, we could all just, you know, let ourselves, you know? So I can't, I guess Russia had kind of ruined it.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  The jihad, was that?

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's white jihad.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  Did they al-Aqaba?

• 1:43Speaker 01

  As a country, they al-Uaqabed Moscow. When did they rebuild Moscow, Charlie? Cause they were.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  I was looking at this on ChatGPT.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  Oh, please, please cook.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  It was a young king, remember? And he's one of the, he was, he, ChatGPT ranks him third best Russian monarch. I've been getting a lot of rankings going.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  You can't understand history unless you rank it.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  I need to rank it.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  You need to rank it.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  And I like how, you know, you try and ask people who know about history and they go, well, it's a complicated thing. You know, you watch ChatGPT, here's one, two, I'm like, just give me a, don't, none of this bullshit. Just give me a definitive ranking. But he, cause he was young, he had a long reign after this and spent about 20 years rebuilding it. Most of it was wooden, so it was all burnt and he rebuilt it similar to like after the Great Fire of London. It was like rebuilt it in stone and stuff.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  So, uh, Napoleon has, uh, has had to retreat. Uh, now meanwhile, on his other front, Wellington is cooking in the peninsula.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Ah. Now, um, the Duke of Wellington, look, it's a big, it's episode eight.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  You've, you've had a lot of come noises this series.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  The prostates are imploded at this point.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Okay. They're hanging out the back of themselves, they're pink socking it.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  Every night I'm hanging out the back of myself.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Every night of the week, I'm hanging out the back of myself because we're not, and we're not even at the climactic battle yet. You know, and there's so many battles still to go through. Now Wellington, uh, he's, he had learned how to beat Napoleon in Spain.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  So Napoleon's brother, Joseph, uh, he had two brothers, I think, or he had maybe more. He had Joseph, he had Jerome.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Hey man.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Um, Jerome was his adopted brother.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, they're like the Paula Hitlers of this story.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Paula Hitler, say her name. Paula Hitler, who was Hitler's sister who worked in HR. What happened to Paula? Can we get Paula's story up? Why haven't we got a patron on Paula Hitler?

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Before we get into.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Just pause this.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Pause this.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  Why have we not dealt with the second most important woman in history after Eva Braun, Paula Hitler? What happened to Paula Hitler? She died of natural causes in 1960.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Suspicious.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  In Berchtesgaden, so she was still at the nest.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Well, that's good to know.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  That's nice.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  That's good to know that it stayed in the family for the sixties. She gave a recorded television interview in 1959. She's a broadcaster. She was she?

• 3:49Speaker 02

  No, no, she just had one interview because she's Hitler's sister. That doesn't make her a broadcaster, that doesn't make her Terry Wogan.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Paula Hitler. Paula Hitler worked as a housekeeper, office secretary and military hospital secretary during her life. She lost her job at a Viennese insurance company in 1930, when her identity was discovered. After which she was financially supported by her brother. Well, that is lovely.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's nice.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  You've got to take care of the people you come up with.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  How sad is that? Cause you know, her, just because of what her family did.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  It's discrimination.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  It's discrimination.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  She didn't do any of that stuff.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  She's the innocent Paula Hitler.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  She was a secretary.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  Paula Hitler's views on Jews, please.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Uh, sorry, we should use her name that she identified as Paula Wolf. That's why she changed her name.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  What was Paula Wolf's opinion on the, on the Jewish people, please? Um, because I think it's time we exonerate.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  You know, not all, not all Hitler, hashtag not all Hitlers.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  She was not politically active.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  This is the problem with sisters. Brothers, there will be quotes of them. Sisters do have an ability to keep their mouth shut in a way that brothers don't.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  I've written a book, my sister kept her mouth shut, kept her mouth shut, you know?

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, the other tailor.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  The other tailor.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  When people are looking at history, they'll be, they'll scour the internet for some.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Exonerate her, yeah? Let her live her life. Paula Taylor.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  She shared personal observations regarding her brother's Adolf's antisemitism.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Uh, while maintaining a posture of denial regarding the Holocaust, a posture of denial.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  So she's denying the Holocaust.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  But she's no, no, no, no, a post, she's maintaining a posture of denial.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  I don't want, I don't want to look at, what's going on? I don't want to see it. I don't, whatever's going on there, I don't want to know. I don't want to know about it. Whatever you do in your own room is up to, is your business.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  My brother and I love you.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  But you know.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  But you make it hard sometimes. You know, we'll always be family. But I don't like you.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Film, we need to talk about Kevin or, you know, the book.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  We need to talk about Adolf.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Once again, I feel my brother's loose hand across my face. Recalling her brother as a young boy, he remembers her brother as a little boy who led all the others when they played cowboys and Indians as children.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Makes sense.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Right. Anyway, Paula Hitler, friend of the pod, um, sister of the pod. Up there in the family tree with Elon Musk, Elon Musk is the grandfather, Paula Hitler is the pod sister. Um, however, we must get back to the pod. Now, uh, Wellington, the cold, cautious, arch-conservative.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  He is brilliant. Do more research on him. He is exceptional.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  A phenomenal character. Uh, he had integrity.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  He is one of the straightest guys, cause I also think his defensive style of warfare is inherently straight.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Well.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  There's something, it feels like he's defending his ass. No one defenders ass more.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Well, listen, this is why Napoleonic wars are the straightest history gets, because it's all about defending your rear. I don't want to be outflanked, you know? That's why I'm walking through Soho and I'm constantly, you know, I'm walking in a defensive square.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  We'll get to Waterloo, but Waterloo is the greatest defensive action of your rear card in history.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Yes, it is. It's the greatest, it's the straightest thing it's ever been. And so that's why when I walk through Soho, I'm in a square formation. Right? Because the gay cavalry, cavalry is gay, right?

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Cavalry is gay.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Cavalry is gay, because they're all woo, charging down there. They, you know, they will just run, they can't, you know, they can't, they won't impale themselves on the bayonets.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, Wellington starts to, uh, learn how to beat the French in the Peninsular War.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  He's a defensive general, although I think that does him some discredit, but he, he prefers, uh, sapping, uh, enemy numbers. And he only thinks he should attack to basically confirm a victory.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  He thinks victory is won in defence.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  But also the fact that that's relatively similar to Monty, do you think it's just more because of playing with British resources, saying we're not a land power?

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's definitely a bit of that. I was discussing with, um, Gemini, my AI friend. Uh, and I wasn't just going, can you rank the generals so I know who's the best? I was having a, a quite informed conversation.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Uh, about whether, you know, Wellington essentially.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Do you like me? Am I a good guy?

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Am I a good boss? Do you like working for me? I mean, I, I pay for your pro tier, but you know, what if I didn't? Will you still answer my questions? It's my knob, it's my knob, normal size. Is that normal size? Um, anyway, uh, yeah, I was having a conversation because Wellington arguably invents, uh, the kinds of tactics that end up as World War One. But he invents it a generation, like a hundred years before. Because before this, it was all about, um, you know, when we, I mean, we're rushing ahead, but you want to get people, you want to intimidate the opponent by showing them all your, uh, forces. You're standing, it's kind of, it's theatre.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Wellington, straight man, hates theatre, was like, I'm going to hide all my troops.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  I'm going to trick them. Concealment.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  He invents, uh, tactical concealment.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, millionaire wearing Billabong shorts, you know? You don't need to front your cash.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Let it speak for itself.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Let my Billabong shorts speak for myself. Are you a millionaire or are you just wearing Billabong shorts? So, um, he also invented the Wellington boot. Um, that's about as straight a shoe as you can get, really.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  And it becomes all the rage, uh, after he invents it. Now, uh, he had, not the armband, uh, he, thank you Charlie. He had, he had allied in Spain with a 68 year old general called General Cuesta. Uh, he observed battles from a carriage drawn by mules and he refused to fight on Sundays because, uh, you know, whatever, the week needs, he needs a nap in the week.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  And so he had to be hauled out of his coach onto a velvet cushion to watch battles, which only angers Wellington and makes him intrinsically more anti-Spanish.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Right, okay.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Um, so he, he basically thinks these Spanish allies are fucking stupid.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  He likes the Portuguese.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Because, you know, these people have a, yeah. And he ends up, uh, creating these defensive lines, the lines of Torres Vedras, which is a sort of secret 25 mile network of forts, redouts.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Tank, well, I mean, what, what we would look at as tank traps, sort of pits, uh, which basically, and then he backs out.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  Basically trenches almost.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Sort of, this is it. He kind of invents trench warfare a hundred years before. Um, and then the European powers, they forget what he does. They forget that he beats Wellington, that he beats Napoleon with this. And then they all kind of default to like, oh, attacking swagger and Elan, right? Which is why on the first day of the Somme and the start of the World War One, the French troops just walk in red trousers towards machine guns.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Get rolled by the Germans.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's another Germany, Brazil, seven one. Anyway.

• 10:27Speaker 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.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  The Battle of Vittoria is where Wellington smashes King Joseph Bonaparte's army. He ends French rule in Spain. And then he also basically takes all of Joseph's looted art and gold and rescues it. Does he put it back?

• 10:59Speaker 02

  One small side thing is that his big campaigns before this were in India. And he was actually quite attacking in India because he had far less men. He'd he'd beat an Indian force of 40,000 men with 7,000 men using quite expansive. So you had that element to his game as well.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  He kind of thought it was it was almost cheap or gay to attack.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  It was much more manly and straight to lie there.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Hold on.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Hold on. Probably the most Protestant general there is.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  So he's been cooking in Spain and Portugal. And after June 1813, he starts to incur into southern France. So Napoleon's southern border has been breached. It's his Falklands. Now, meanwhile, in the east, in March 1813, a sixth coalition has risen. Okay. Russia, Prussia, Britain, Sweden, Austria and many of the German states. And this sixth coalition have decided not Nick, Nick Clegg is not in this coalition.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  That's the seventh.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  That's the seventh coalition, which we're coming to. Nick Clegg is a crucial member of the seventh coalition. This coalition, they think they've worked out how to beat Napoleon finally, which is the Trachtenberg Plan.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  Sounds like it's gonna work.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  The Trachtenberg Plan is a plan that means let's, whenever we fight Napoleon, we get smoked.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  So why don't we go after his generals or his marshals and their forces and avoid and basically run away from Napoleon?

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Go after her ugly mates.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Thank you. You know, you see the pack of women at the nightclub. Well, I'm never gonna, it's never gonna work with her.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Don't go for the centre.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Neg the ugly one. You know, outflank the uglies on the side. Find the weak one, tear the weak one away from the pack.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  The less mobile.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  The less mobile. You know, the fat one in a wheelchair. You know, I can cause.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  The cavalry.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I also form squares to avoid the devastating cavalry attacks. The British cavalry attacks of women in mobility scooters in seaside towns. Ah! Trying to steal my chips. No.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  Well, the women are trying to steal your chips.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Yes, well, that's.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  And the seagulls.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Modern day cavalry, modern day cavalry is me in a defensive square.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Seagulls and women in.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Seagulls and women in mobility scooters with crutch in. Ah! That's their saber. The modern day cavalry is the one arm crutch. Anyway, basically, because Napoleon is so good. And because so much of this is mind games, he's trying to make the Allies do something and they end up doing it because they're just spooked. Whereas the other marshals don't have this aura.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  So.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely. There's a, there's a sense of confidence morale or that you're destined to victory if you see Napoleon's leading you.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. So after, I mean, he's bear in mind, he has lost, what, 600,000 men in Russia.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  It's the worst disaster in military history.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  Up until this point.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  The big army.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  He's lost the big army.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  The small army now.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  It's now a small army. So he now assembles another one very quickly, rapid conscription.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Media mommy.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Media mommy. Larmes moyennes. The teenagers that are barely old enough to shave are drafted. I mean, they're French, so they must have significant bum fluff though.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  An old grenadier said they smell more of school books than gunpowder. Basically, they haven't actually like fired their guns.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Why's this guy smelling kids?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Hey?

• 14:38Speaker 02

  Why's this guy smelling kids?

• 14:39Speaker 01

  He's an old grenadier. That's French slang. They basically haven't fired their guns yet.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  And also, you know, there's, the French are not using rifles.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  The French are only using muskets. As we discussed in our, in our sharp deep dive on the Patreon, you know, rifles and muskets, the technology, the French aren't getting into the new technology.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Why not?

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Because they're stuck in their ways.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  They're all like.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Exactly, but it's broken.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  It is broke.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  The economy, the French economy is in the toilet after 20 years of continuous warfare. They've also got no fucking horses, nay their name, because the horses all died in Russia.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  So this, in this period, Napoleon is only sleeping three hours a night.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  And sleep is very important.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Well, you, you know, you never regret sleeping instead of doing anything else.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  You know, it's never worth trading sleep for that thing that you're gonna do.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:33Speaker 03

  Is three the worst number of hours to get?

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Explain.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  I think if you. As a man who has tried every single type of hours.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  You know what? You could, you often see people ranking number of pints. Do you want to rank hours of sleep?

• 15:45Speaker 02

  You've done, I think, every hour.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, you have.

• 15:47Speaker 03

  I think seven is the best.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  Better than eight?

• 15:50Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 15:51Speaker 03

  I think 15 minutes is better than three hours.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  And I think anywhere between three and five is basically fucked. But then once you hit six, six onwards is fine.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  Six is good.

• 16:03Speaker 03

  Eight is too many. 50 minutes is better than three hours. I came to work on 15 minutes and we did all right.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Did we?

• 16:11Speaker 02

  What was, when have you been on the worst, when have you felt the worst working? Because you did some crazy late nights back in the day.

• 16:18Speaker 03

  I think when I missed the caveman shoot.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  How many hours was that?

• 16:21Speaker 03

  I think I got like five, but it was such a, it was such a mess. It was genuinely like.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Such a mess.

• 16:26Speaker 03

  It was like I woke up so.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  It reminds you woke up so, it was late and started masturbating because it was.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Well, I'm sure he did.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  God, this is so fucked up.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  This is such a mess.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  I'm gonna lose my job.

• 16:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, waking up, waking up to that was devastating.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  You need to get, I think for me, seven hours is good.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Well, that's the health, that's the healthy amount, isn't it?

• 16:45Speaker 03

  Three is fucking horrific.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Well, having, well, when you have new wards and stuff, I mean, you'll just take anything you can get.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, but.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Three, four hours, five hours.

• 16:53Speaker 03

  But you're a father and you do it for them.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is the point Charlie's making is when you do it, it's meaningful, it's for someone else. There's a purpose to it. Charlie has none of that.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  You've just stayed up too late, too late gooning. And you're late for work. Yeah, I've been craving my child, getting, getting him or her back to sleep. And you've just been awake all night.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Cradling your hog.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Cradling your hog.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  I did this for you.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Just cranking it. Shhh. You know, on seven screw, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Fucking hell. Anyway, it's these kind of people, you know, these teenagers that are gooning all night, Napoleon hires in his army, you know? Because all the actual men, he's left in Russia, they're in the bin. So.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  And also the Russian army, these are, these are such experienced veterans who have been through all of his big battles.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Like all the, the creme de la creme of.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's, it's decreasing the proportion of actual good troops.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Is now way, way, way, way low. What is it, Charlie?

• 17:51Speaker 03

  Nothing.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  I was gonna say creme de la Kremlin, but it doesn't work at all.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Creme de la Kremlin.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  It's not far off.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  It's just, it's just, yeah, it's a bit wrong.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  But he's French, isn't he?

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Napoleon?

• 18:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Part A, that's an absolutely devastating question to ask. Yes, Napoleon's French.

• 18:08Speaker 03

  Good.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Sort of.

• 18:10Speaker 03

  He likes onions.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Onions. Crucially, yeah. And part of Wellington's tactics is the scorched earth thing. So he's taking all the onions away so that when the French.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  Caramelizing them.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  He's caramelizing them. He's not, he's eating them like apples, he's a straight man. But he's taking all the onions away so when the French are foraging, they have got no onions.

• 18:30Speaker 03

  Where the fuck are the onions?

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  You know, you take away the onions, you kneecap the army. So somehow in, in 1813, even though he's got all these squeaky French, his exchange students with bum fluff. He still remains terrifyingly effective on the battlefield. The spring campaign of 1813, lads, prostate check. Napoleon, he wins victories at Lutzen and Bautzen. And for a minute, it seems possible that he can recover from Russia.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  Who are these victories against? Against the.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  It's the coalitions again. He's doing what he always does. He's separating them out. He's making sure they don't all coalesce. That's his main thing is that he's so fast, because he just is fast, that he can knock out allies one by one. So these coalitions, they're not working together quick enough. This is in Saxony, so this is in the, in the remains of the First Reich.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Now, there are opportunities for peace in 1813 in the summer and they kind of, they, they paused for negotiation in June 1813. Now, the, the difficult thing, the real moment of hubris is that he is married to a, what, 18 year old? Who is the daughter of the Emperor of Austria.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Austria, yeah.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Franz Joseph?

• 19:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  So in June 1813, there is a temporary armistice, which gives the Allies time to negotiate a strategy.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  I was thinking, sorry, Russia and Prussia should have changed. You can't both be called that.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Go on.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  It's too silly.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 20:03Speaker 02

  I'm the Russian, you're the Prussian. Is this too, you can't just put a P in front of another country's name. Pingland, England and Pingland.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Where's Pingland? Where's Pingland? Where are we saying that is? Ireland?

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  I mean, that's quite funny. That is quite funny.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  England and Pingland.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  England and Pingland over there. I'm gonna start calling, I'm touring Pingland. It's autumn. I'm coming to Belfast, Cork and Dublin. Still tickets left for the Pinglish leg of my UK tour.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  It just sounds silly.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Austrian Emperor Francis II is Napoleon's father-in-law.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  An in-law, it's, it's not an easy relationship.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  It is not, and yes, you don't want to declare war, genuine war on your in-laws.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  You know, it's a tough one to manage. Did he ask Francis II's permission or blessing when he proposed to his daughter? I'd like to know that. What is it, Charlie?

• 20:54Speaker 03

  Do you in any way feel that Amanda's dad is your dad at all? Is it, is it like?

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Definitely a father figure in my life, definitely.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  But would you ever call him dad?

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Very different, very different father figure, you know? He's not gay.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  That's for one.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  For one. You know, he's.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  He's not my dad.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  He's not my dad for two. A very practical man. An esteemed member of the community.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Is your dad practical?

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, he can play the trombone.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  I'll, I'll let that lie.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  Neither of us have dads who have any DIY skills.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  No.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  As, yeah, that's a, you can, your dad's quite DIY.

• 21:28Speaker 03

  I don't know if he is. He likes pots though, pottery.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Pottery?

• 21:32Speaker 03

  He like, he plays, he does pottery in his shed.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:35Speaker 03

  He likes clay.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Did you ask Bebe's father's blessing when he proposed?

• 21:41Speaker 02

  No, I didn't actually.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  That's disgraceful. Napoleon did ask for his blessing. Well, that is, that's good, you know?

• 21:47Speaker 02

  It's classy.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  That is classy. It's always nice and it's his blessing, not permission.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  You know, that's the way to do it.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  I'm doing it anyway.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  I'm doing it anyway, but you know, is that all right with you? Well, it's not, well, fuck you then.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Fuck you.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Fuck you, mother-in-law.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Um, anyway, so, uh, his greatest, probably his greatest strategic failure, actually, is that he allows Austria to join the coalition, which leads to, gentlemen, glasp, clasp your pink sock in your hand, the Battle of Leipzig, 1813. This is the largest battle in Europe before the First World War. Over half a million soldiers participated, and it is the bloodiest battle of the Napoleonic War. You have 200,000 French against 400,000 coalition troops. It is a meat grinder. Uh, now, that said, Tsar Alexander I and King William III of, I don't know where he's king of, uh, they just watch, uh, drinking champagne from a

• 22:43Speaker 01

  nearby hill. Classy. Um, there's a guy called, uh, Joachim Murat, who leads a 10,000 man cavalry charge that nearly breaks the Allied lines. Uh, he's Napoleon's brother-in-law. He designed his own uniform. Let's have a look at it. Skintight crimson red leather breeches, a tiger skin over the warhorse.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  Wow, this is like Charlie's tracksuit bottoms.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  A fur-trimmed cloak and a massive bicorne hat with the huge ostrich plumes.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Awesome. A tiger skin over the horse.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  That's lovely touch.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Are you trying to make it, uh, make them think that you're riding a tiger?

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, sort of, I guess.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Cause it, I mean, I don't, I think that's actually, I think the tiger skin and the skintight red trousers.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  The skintight red trousers, I don't think have aged well.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  No.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  But I do think tiger skin and a horse, there's something about that.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Uh, so Napoleon frequently mocked his feds.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  Sure. Devastating.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Anyway, uh, so.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  We don't know much about the Battle of Leipzig, I think in the, that's not one of the battles that gets talked about, I feel.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Well, you know.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Even though it's such, so consequential, and arguably more consequential than Waterloo in some ways.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Uh, I, I, no, no, no, no, no. Holding his pink, holding, holding my prostate. No, absolutely not. Explain that. Why is it more consequential than Waterloo?

• 23:54Speaker 02

  Well, it's his first proper military defeat on the battlefield.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  And it, it ends up with the kind of beginning of the end properly for him.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  This is the big, this is the big turning point, but.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  And it shows that he can be beaten on a battlefield.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, but all he's do, all he, the reason he's be beaten is that the Allies just work together and outnumber him. And, and so he was always going to.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  He's defeated by friendship.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  He, he was always, yeah, that's the real journey, the real lesson of this.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Is that.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  But imagine Battle of Leipzig in German history, it's talked about a lot, because I guess we have a quite Waterloo-centric, because it's more British, but we don't know about this because we weren't involved. Do you think?

• 24:31Speaker 01

  I think we paid for it.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  It's very consequential.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  I think we funded it.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  I think we paid for it.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Produced it.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  I think we paid six million pounds.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  I know, it's such a, such a, such a big number. I don't, I don't know. It's a lot, isn't it?

• 24:43Speaker 02

  But that's not exciting in the, in, when you're teaching history.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  We bravely bankrolled it.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  We bravely bankrolled. Uh, and so what happens is that midway through the battle, um, Saxon troops, uh, start marching towards the Allies. The French think they're launching a charge because the Saxons were fighting as part of Napoleon's German Empire. And then they just turn around and start for, firing at him. So mid-battle defections, uh, they get trapped in this vice. They have an escape route planned, but then they accidentally blow these bridges while they're still on the wrong side of it.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  They're too Saxon.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah. And then 30,000 troops are just stranded, um, and taken prisoner. And I, I listened to a, uh, quite boring, uh, podcast about, uh, if, if Napoleon had won Leipzig, and they say, no, no German state, no World War One, no World War Two. It's that, it's that crucial.

• 25:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Because, uh, this is where Prussia becomes, like, after this, you, Prussia is now the, the main power in the, in what is proto-Germany.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  Yes, it becomes the, the alpha German state, which basically leads to the German Empire.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Um, and with no Prussia, you get no World War One.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  Gives them the confidence. I mean, uh, so the Prussians lost to Austerlitz, right?

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Russians.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  This is sort of their.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Revenge.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  Revenge, and they're getting their confidence back.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  And the Prussians are coming more and more dominant in Central Europe. Now, having defeated Napoleon at Leipzig, Napoleon licking his wounds, uh, he runs back to France and the foreign armies cross into France for the first time since the outbreak of the Revolutionary Wars in 1793.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Well, it's amazing that he's still managed to get a force together after Russia. That's what's crazy, is that he's still having people fight in group.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  The big army.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  He lost the big army.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  You can't lose the big army.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  You can't lose the big army. Uh, in October 1813, Wellington crosses the river, uh, from Spain into France. December 1813, Austrian troops march through Switzerland into eastern France. January 1814, Prussia and Russian armies cross the Rhine. We now get into the Six Days Campaign. Uh, February the 10th to 15th, 1814, still, this school shooter is firing off.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  Still going.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  He's still finding teachers.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  To mow down.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  He's fa, he's just found the drama department.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Oh my God. Is there ever, is, is there ever, you know, a better department for a school shooter to find than the drama department? That's my, that's, my dad was a drama teacher, and I can tell you now that, that, that they would all be dead if a school shooter took them out. There's no one, you know, like, if, if.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  I don't know how much of a take that is. Um, I, I bet drama students, they would all be killed if they got shot in the head by a guy.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  No, listen, I spent my childhood in schools.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Okay? I lived in schools.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  Me too.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  My parents were, no, no, I'm not saying I'll take it. Listen, mate, I went to school, all right? Can you let me, can you let me cook? Because I actually went to school. Unlike some people in this room, who were homeschooled, right?

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Go on, cook, cook, cook.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  Right. So, uh, my parents were teachers. I lived in a girl's boarding house. I was a stud pick. I was reared as a stud pick.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  As we've discussed this.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  A panty sniffer, yeah.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was, I was a home-bred panty sniffer, okay? I was rattling around, foraging for sniffy pants. Now, my point is, is that I'm familiar, you know, I was rattling around schools on the holidays.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  You know, they were, in many ways, that was my playground.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  More bouncing, I'd say.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  I was bouncing around, you know?

• 28:18Speaker 02

  A rattle implies.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  I was bouncing, yeah, I was bouncing.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  Impries that it, there's hardness.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  I was, I was jolly and I was bouncing around departments, okay? Looking for something to do. Is that what you'd like to know? I was like a big inflatable pinballing around.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  Don't think you ever rattled once.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  No, no. Um, right? My point is, I was very familiar with the topography of private schools in the Oxfordshire area, you know? If I had wanted to, I would have been a phenomenal school shooter.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Okay? Because I knew the ground. I'm like Wellington at Waterloo. I would have hidden.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  You need to make sure, because it's quite a solitary thing by the nature of being a school shooter.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  You don't have a lot of friends.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  You don't have a lot of friends. That's the reason you're a school shooter, you know?

• 29:03Speaker 02

  So the key thing is making sure your rear guard's defended.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Well, obviously, my rear guard has to be defended.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  Because the only friend you have is geography, really, when you're a school shooter.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Well, the geography department are getting it first.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Because they're the only ones who understand the geography of the school.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Exactly. You take them out, suddenly you've got free rein, okay? So you have to take out the geography department. Now.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  Now, do you think some of the drama students, uh, a lot, I've, obviously did drama at GCSE and A level, so I'm, I'm kind of a bit of a scholar when it comes to.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Put your dick away, mate.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Uh, um, and if I, I wanted to get my dick out, I could mime it very, very well because of my skills.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Of course, because you've got an A level in drama.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  But I'm saying.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  Uh, but maybe a lot, a lot of what we did was, um, sort of animal work. Uh, a lot of it was maybe becoming trees and stuff like that. Do you think you could maybe blend into the surrounding better than any other student, a drama, drama student? Uh, you could maybe become the war?

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Well, my, no, my, my point, I was saying.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  A, a chair.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  My, my point, at this, uh, uh, at my point, they could play dead.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  Very well.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Which is how you survive a school shooting.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. It might be a bit too much, though.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  Oh!

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I guess you're learning from like the sort of the Shakespearean style.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Like those old 60s films.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Ah!

• 30:20Speaker 01

  A school shooter comes in.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  Ah, I'm struck!

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Um, anyway, my point is, uh, were I shooting up the school that I attended and lived in for eight years, the drama department would be a fucking easy win.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  The teachers in there are cowards. They're, they're, they're a feat, you know? Um, they're, they're kind of, their head's in the fucking clouds.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Right? Easy. Were I to attack the biology department.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  Go on.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  Okay? I would have a real fight on my hands.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Okay? Dr. Gunn, who used to dissect foxes in the car park off the back of his Land Rover, blood pouring down into the drains, you know?

• 31:03Speaker 02

  This is boss level stuff.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  A good guy, right? He almost certainly had a loaded shotgun under his biology desk.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Yeah? Now, were I to somehow defeat him, but then move on to the chemistry department, right? Certainly in the tenure of, uh, someone who I won't wait for, won't name for legal reasons, uh, I would have had a paedophile to contend with, okay?

• 31:22Speaker 02

  I had a chemistry paedophile as well.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Chemistry paedophiles.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Private school bumping mites at the New York Comedy Cellar. Was your pedo a chemistry teacher? Sick.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  You know, and that is why I couldn't go on Duke of Edinburgh because our, our Duke of Edinburgh leader was a chemistry pedo.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  That's, see, look, this is what you don't say. You know, it's very easy to say it's about a lot of privilege.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Privilege. Well, I didn't go on Duke of Edinburgh because my chemistry teacher was a paedophile. All right? Where's Stephen Bartlett when you need him?

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Anyway, um, my point, I don't know how we got onto this, but my point is that Napoleon,

• 32:08Speaker 02

  School shooting.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  The original school shooter is still, even though, this is what I was gonna say, the police are in the school now. They're clearing rooms, you know, they're in the drama student, they're in the drama, going, oh God, they're all dead. Oh no, I'm not. Wow.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  Brilliant.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Wow. Brilliant. Top marks.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Is that a tree? Oh my God, it's a child. Wow.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  And Olivier is among us. Anyway.

• 32:36Speaker 00

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• 33:06Speaker 01

  So in the Six Days campaign, he is, he is out, outmaneuvering these huge coalition forces that are now in France. You know, he's 44, he's still cooking, he's riding between battles. I think this is the point. Is this the point where in four days, he wins four battles against four different allies? I mean, he's just smoking them because I think someone said that he's never deadlier than when he's on his own turf, defending his own land. So he is, he is still mercurial. He is still the chess grandmaster. And yet he's just running out of manpower. And at this point, the coalition have realised, if you just, you know, when they form the sixth coalition, maybe it's the seventh actually, they're like,

• 33:45Speaker 02

  What Clegg getting involved?

• 33:46Speaker 01

  When they've got, well, we're not yet at Clegg, that's the seventh coalition. But they've got basically a million men. So, you know, it, it's kind of, the end is in sight. Even though he's cooking in kind of, I guess it's north eastern France, I think. The allies are just able to outflank him, you know, and they just, they walk into Paris. In 1814, there's not really much of a battle. And Paris surrenders, Napoleon's not there. He hears about it and he's like, right, we're going there to fucking save it.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  What I find quite interesting is that the Parisian women, though there was foreign troops in their city, seeing the Cossacks, they looked exotic in their fur hats. They all got the horn and were like really excited by this.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  Which I think says a lot, it's amazing to have foreign troops walking into your city. Your first thought being like, oh my God, fuck, some new talent just arrived.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Fucking hell. Jean Paul just got upgraded. Had worse Mondays. Cossacks are in Paris.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Anyway, so yeah, he, he's like, right, we're gonna go save Paris. And this is where, uh, this is kind of, this, well, this is his bunker scene.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  This is sacré blut.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  This is, yeah, well, this is the counterfactual.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  This is, yeah, exactly.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  If the bunker didn't work.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  He goes to Fontainebleau, which is, I think is where his generals are based. And he says, we're gonna raise an army and take back Paris. And they say, it's, it's not, Steiner. Steiner hatte Angriff nicht verstehen. Der Angriff Steiner ist nicht default.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  But the asphalt is, you know, he used the bridge there.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Es bleibt im Raum. Anyway. So Napoleon realizes his generals are not gonna fight for him and that this is the end. And so he has had a vial of poison on him the entire time since the Russian campaign. So he drinks it, but it's so old that it's not potent anymore. So rather than die, he just has severe stomach cramps and vomits for a day. Which is, you know, again, it's quite a school shootery. So now what happens now, and this are really, this is, this is kind of an astonishing, uh, he, he really gets away with this.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Because what the allies do now is they have a bit of a problem. They're like, okay, so we, we have finally conquered the kind of mother, the mother city of this empire. We have defeated Napoleon, we've, we're occupying Paris. But we can't kill him because he's technically a monarch now. And the whole reason we started fighting France 20 years ago was because they killed a monarch. So that's gonna, and they're all monarchs.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  But there's also, there's an awkwardness to Napoleonic warfare that I think goes out the window in World War Two. Where you, you take the capital, but then you sort of give it back. You're not really, you're not really taking land.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Well, it's like Wellington, when he was, when he was thankfully cleared after the inquiry, you know, and this is why he starts demolishing them in Spain. Because he has the confidence for a man who's been, who's been exonerated. Completely exonerated by an inquiry, unlike our chemistry teachers who were, um, attempted jail. Yeah, they, they don't fuck up the city. Like, you're, like, you're right. It's not,

• 36:51Speaker 02

  But it's also like you, you, you're not capturing it, you're not trying to hold on to it. It's not, it's, you're playing a game to see who wins.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  And then you kind of like,

• 36:59Speaker 01

  But also at this point,

• 36:59Speaker 02

  You shake hands and say, well, can we get some stuff in the treaty?

• 37:02Speaker 01

  But that's, that's also at this point,

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Whereas World War Two, you'll take, capturing land and you're building empires.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  But yeah, because at this point warfare is done away from cities. It is done like out there on a stage and a field. And whoever wins that, then like,

• 37:14Speaker 02

  So they're just in power, it's just kind of awkward. It's like,

• 37:16Speaker 01

  It's not until you get to like World War, that's why the Russian thing is so mad. They're, they're anticipating World War Two by 130 years by going, we're always gonna burn our city down. It's like, brother, no one's, no one's burning cities. No one's burning cities. No one's like sacking them.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  You guys are nuts.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  What the allies decide is they decide to send him into exile because on a tiny island of Elbe.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  Which I just saw is right next to Corsica.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  Really close to Italy. It's so close to France, actually. It's probably in the French Riviera almost, you'd say.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  But right by his homeland where he'll have the most like loyal support in many ways.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  It's not Idris Elba, but that must be who he's named after. Yeah, it's so close to France and Italy. And what is it, Charlie?

• 38:00Speaker 03

  What are you doing in exile? You're kind of like, what are you, are you just sort of reading?

• 38:03Speaker 01

  We're about to find out. So they send a thousand troops with him, so he has a guard. They basically say, you are still an emperor, it's just, it's not France, it's a model village. That's what they say, it's your punishment.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Because they, they kind of think they're being graceful and they think they're being charitable. And I think because the French Revolution,

• 38:24Speaker 02

  Is it out of respect, I guess?

• 38:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, but also they'd cut a guy's head off in the French Revolution. They decapitated the king. And the whole point of the allies is that we don't like that. This is how this all started. So we're not gonna do that to you. We're gonna give you, uh,

• 38:38Speaker 02

  And they were giving him toys so he didn't get distracted and stuff?

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, they gave him a toy empire, basically. And they'd also,

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Because they thought that would keep him busy, basically.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  You know, this is the, this is what they could have done with Bin Laden. Because they don't want Napoleon to be a martyr.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Right. So what, what, run me through what you would have given Bin Laden then?

• 38:54Speaker 01

  I would have given him the silly Isles.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  And then what, is he allowed to have like,

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Training camps.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Is he allowed to sort of run Ford Fiesta's into like post offices?

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Yeah.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  So he has like smaller scale?

• 39:11Speaker 01

  No, no, no, he's not allowed cars, it's bikes.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Right. So bid planes maybe, like a small,

• 39:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Wright Brothers planes with the bike and the thing. He can fly those into the post office.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  But again, the silly Isles is very close to Cornwall. So it's a similar scenario where they, he escapes. And you go, how the fuck has he got shit? Bin Laden's in Cornwall. And that, that is why the Bin Ladens now live in, is it Devon or Dorset, Charlie?

• 39:36Speaker 03

  Dorset.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 39:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:38Speaker 03

  There was a Cornwall 9/11. Did we talk about that?

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 39:41Speaker 02

  Was that the Rick Stein,

• 39:42Speaker 01

  Rick Stein's restaurant, isn't it?

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Bombing by the Cornish nationalists.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  Rick Riscoria was the head of security for Morgan Stanley during the 9/11. He saved two and a half thousand employees by ignoring initial official state put orders. He, wow, so he was Cornish born. Right, everyone, fucking get out of here. Oh my God, there's another one. Not another one. That's what she says. It's literally that. It's literally rendered from Bristol as 9/11 happened. The second playing, not another one. Oh my God. Anyway, she, he was helping people get out. And then he died going back in to help others. Inside the towers had collapsed. What a hero. Rick.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  Is that what you were trying to do? No, I didn't think so.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  All right, what were you trying to do?

• 40:21Speaker 03

  I was trying to find the attack on Rick Stein's restaurant.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Rick Stein's restaurant, the Cornish 9/11. We have talked about that. Yeah. Cornish separatists.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  The Cornish National Liberation Army. Anyway, they, they send Napoleon to Elbe, they give him some toys and a model village. And in his place, they replace him with another man who was not really rattling around.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  Bouncing about, rolling around.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Louis the Eighteenth, Louis the Large, rolling around.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  It doesn't show like traditional monarchy well, the fact that like,

• 40:53Speaker 01

  It says here, he was profoundly obese and loved chops, pastries and rich sauces.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  What's amazing,

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, but for the grace of God, go I.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  But what's amazing is that his whole family were like executed and causing huge revolutions that's completely changed France forever. Because they were seen as these hedonists who, while everyone was starving. And it's amazing that even when he's lost the power, still in exile, he's still stuffing his fat face.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  It doesn't imply that he's very focused on reclaiming power.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Have they learned the lessons of the revolution? It's been 20 years. He's just been getting faster and faster.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  His nickname was Le Cochon, meaning the pig.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. And Louis the Girthy, Louis de la Tonte. He had gout and dry gangrene.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  He's Sandro, he's Sandro.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  He is Sandro. Charlie, could you work, tell us about dry gangrene as opposed to wet gangrene? I did not know there was these two,

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Gangrene, the first question I say is dry or wet?

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Wet or dry? Dry gran green, dry gran green is caused by loss of blood flow, making the skin dry, shivvish and dark, as opposed to,

• 41:56Speaker 02

  Let's look at images. Let's see some rashes, please.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Come on, dog rabbit.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  It's like a big green foot.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Wet gang, here we go. Lovely. There's a, that's exactly what we want. Okay. So wet gangrene, from just my initial reaction, looks much worse.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'd like my gangrene dry, please. Like a martini. You want it really dry.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Shaken, not stirred. Yeah, dry gangrene just looks like really bad athlete's foot. Wet gangrene.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  It's like swamp, it's like an ogre, it's like Shrek's foot.

• 42:23Speaker 03

  Do you think anyone could pull off the name gangrene? Like gangrene Milner or?

• 42:26Speaker 02

  Or like gangrene is like, your gang's called gangrene.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  You're in the green gang.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  Gangrene.

• 42:30Speaker 03

  What is that, Mr. Gangrene?

• 42:31Speaker 01

  I reckon that's what they say on the Reddit forums for people who have gangrene. We're in the green gang. Welcome, you've just joined the green gang.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  We all talk, we'll talk about it to each other and feel better about it. We're the green gang. Ah.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's go after the gangrene community.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Go after the correctly old gangrene community.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  Too good for too long.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, fuck them. How are you getting angry in 2026? Come on. So Louis did not try to restore absolute monarchy, but he did restore the pantry. He created a sort of constitutional monarchy and kept a lot of the Napoleonic code. But yeah, he was just getting fatter and fatter. And also, I don't think he really did anything.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  He doesn't seem to have anything about him, really.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  So what is Napoleon doing while he's in exile? He arrives in Elba, May 1814. There's about 12,000 people there, one town, a few mines, and an annual income for Napoleon that the Bourbons, the Louis XVIII's family, they...

• 43:30Speaker 02

  So they were slow to pay?

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  So his invoices, he had to keep reminding them?

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, he set up automatic chasing. Hello, this is due in three days. Just wondering when it's going to come through. But he establishes ministers, a court. What is it, Charlie?

• 43:45Speaker 03

  Are you a loser if you're in his army now? The rest of the soldiers, like, I don't want to be in his kind of model fake town?

• 43:53Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, I think it's quite a confusing time because he's got, I think it's still pretty cloudy.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  I wonder if these...

• 43:58Speaker 02

  He's got so much aura.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  I wonder if these thousand people, the thousand army, are like his Imperial Guard, who are the troops that still haven't lost a fight yet at this point?

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Probably, the Imperial Guard would probably want higher positions than that. They're probably his more... A lot of them are like Corsicans and stuff.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 44:14Speaker 03

  And they just go foraging? What are they doing over there?

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Well, they're basically...

• 44:18Speaker 02

  It's an island that functions.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  It's an island he establishes a society, so he gets like ministers, a court, uniform. Thank you, Charlie. It is similar to when Philip Schofield went on Castaway.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  Yes, very much so.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  It is a kind of rehabilitation, but on Napoleon's terms. Much like Schofield had the camera, you know, and he decided what he told us on the island, you know? And much like Napoleon wanted to, thought he would be going to a better island, Schofield was like, "Oh, you're sending me to an island because I'm a paedophile? Oh, fuck, not that one." So Napoleon orders in 1814 the Great Latrine Decree, where he forces every homeowner in Elba to build an indoor latrine within two months or face severe fines.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  So what's great about Napoleon is he does do the dirty work. He sees...

• 45:00Speaker 01

  He likes it.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  He likes it all. He does the whole gamut.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Now, he's hoping that his young wife, Marie-Louise, will come and join him, but she doesn't. She stays in Austria and starts a relationship with a guy called Count Nipeberg.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Still always getting cucked, though.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Once, twice, three times a cuckold. Cuckolded again. I mean, you know, you feel like, this is again, the school shooter has been arrested. Okay, he's not been shot. He has been given exile in another school.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  Sorry, is this the guy who cuckolded him? I mean, he looks like he's trying to fuck your wife. Look at him.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, but this is a school shooter that's been given like a different...

• 45:40Speaker 02

  Sorry, get that back. The man she told you not to worry about. Yeah, I'll look after your wife. Don't worry. Like, that looks like he's up to no good.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Napoleon's been given like a different school to still kind of shoot up a bit.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 45:53Speaker 02

  A model school.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  A model school, right? A Steiner school, whatever, to shut off.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a bloodbath there.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  And yet, okay, he's still being cuckolded. So he's still in love with Josephine, even though they're divorced at this point, of course. But he gets, he manages to get one of his Polish mistresses because he'd been having loads of mistresses on the eastern front. And he also resented the surveillance by Colonel Sir Neil Campbell. And apparently he would walk around his villa putting on an exaggerated British accent.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  Hello!

• 46:24Speaker 01

  That's a disgrace. That's an absolute disgrace. So in May 1814, not long after Napoleon has arrived in Elba, he hears word that Josephine, his wife with no teeth and black gums, dies of pneumonia. She caught it off Sir Alexander I. Was she nosing him off?

• 46:46Speaker 02

  Was she nosing him off? You can't catch, is pneumonia, it's not ST, is it?

• 46:51Speaker 01

  No, you can catch a cold and then it turns into pneumonia. It's a flu thing. She caught it on a walk with him.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Anyway, Napoleon finds out via a French newspaper and locks himself in his room for two days. He said, and this is, you would think this is normally the other way around, he says, "I truly loved my Josephine, but I did not respect her."

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  That's an interesting, yeah, it's a weird...

• 47:14Speaker 01

  Normally you say, "Oh, I don't, I don't love, I've fallen out of love with her, but I do respect her."

• 47:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I respect her. No, I love her, I just don't respect her. Can you love someone without respecting them? I guess...

• 47:25Speaker 02

  Charlie?

• 47:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess so.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  No, no, sorry, I was saying...

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Oh, no, sorry, right, sorry.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  I love Charlie.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  Sorry, it's Charlie because this is sort of the hit.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I love Charlie, but I don't respect him.

• 47:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Sorry, Charlie, do you think you could love someone without respecting them?

• 47:40Speaker 03

  Oh, you can, yeah.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Yeah?

• 47:42Speaker 03

  You can, um, depends, it depends what you define as love.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I'm romantic love, I think you're talking about. Because I think there's a lot of people who don't respect their kids, but they love them through familial bond.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Well, it's just through pure genetics.

• 47:54Speaker 03

  No, I don't think you can romantically love someone without respecting them.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  No, that's what I mean, romantic, no.

• 47:57Speaker 03

  No, the respect has to be there.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's an odd way around. "I truly loved her, didn't respect her."

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Anyway, now this is probably my favourite bit of the story, is that while Napoleon is in exile, Wellington becomes the British ambassador in Paris.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  And Wellington says that he's not only content with defeating Napoleon on the battlefield, although he hasn't actually beaten him himself yet. So what he decides is to sleep with as many of Napoleon's exes as he can. Straight man, say his name, right? While Napoleon was exiled, Wellington, it says here, aggressively seduced. Aggressively seduced and slept with as many of Napoleon's former mistresses as possible. The singer Giuseppeina Gressini, Marguerite Georges. Georges said that Napoleon was more affectionate, but the Duke of Wellington was significantly more energetic.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Which makes sense in some ways, for the characters, not from their style of warfare. But Napoleon, he was a needy but quite soft and tender man in some ways. The love for Josephine.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  But he's a one-pump chump who'd fuck you like a dog and then get off.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  Yes, but he, I imagine, before the fucking, there's a lot of Napoleon, and after, you're getting a lot more.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  I think he's a lot softer in there, but Wellington's really giving it to you.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  Huzzah! Huzzah! You know, but there's no cuddling with Wellington, no. But that is all to a great...

• 49:24Speaker 02

  You sort of want, yeah, I think, imagine a woman probably wants Napoleon to do the foreplay.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Tag in, let Wellington fuck you. Yeah, yeah. Napoleon, slow build, slow build with Napoleon, and then, right, tag Wellington in.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Anyway, aggressively seduced, that's what I like. Wellington, you know, at what point does aggressive seduction become harassment?

• 49:46Speaker 02

  This is very much pre-me too.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Very brutal. You know, "Your Honour, it was not harassment, it was aggressive seduction."

• 49:54Speaker 01

  He was a notorious philanderer with a series of high-profile mistresses. Charlie, why have you got beef Wellington up? Is that what you think he thought that was?

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Oh, it's a sex position. Read that out, Charlie.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  A sex position in which the girl lays face up and the man takes a crap on her vagina and then fucks her.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  That was not what I was...

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Did you know it said that?

• 50:14Speaker 02

  No.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  But I knew it was going to say something like that, and I knew Charlie didn't want to read it. And I liked the pause Charlie took before reading it.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  You know, I genuinely thought like, oh, it's going to be, maybe that's a sex position named after how Wellington has... No, no, right.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:27Speaker 03

  How do you even, I guess I know how you do it, but why?

• 50:29Speaker 02

  I mean, that is incredibly, that's a closeted gay man right there.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  The girl lays face up and the man takes a crap on her vagina.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  Why is there no poo in this vagina?

• 50:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, gay Gordon Ramsay.

• 50:46Speaker 01

  Wow. Wow.

• 50:50Speaker 03

  Read the quote in sort of situ, please, Erasure.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  "Oh man, my dick smells rank after giving that beef Wellington to this one."

• 51:00Speaker 01

  I think you're reading the wrong voice. You've got to read it like Jerome Bonaparte.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, go on.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  "Oh man, my dick smells rank after giving that beef Wellington to that chick." Yeah. Well, that's absolutely disgusting and has no place in this series. My god, anyway.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Shall we talk about Wellington's wife, though? Because I think that's pretty funny.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  That is pretty funny, yeah.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  Do you know about his wife?

• 51:21Speaker 01

  The original beef Wellington.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, so interestingly, he seemed to, he met this young woman...

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Very hard to cook beef Wellington, just...

• 51:26Speaker 02

  Yes, which one?

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Well, both, actually.

• 51:31Speaker 02

  Got what?

• 51:32Speaker 03

  We've also got the Napoleon.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  Okay, interesting.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Come on, come on.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Do you want to read that out, Charlie?

• 51:37Speaker 03

  The Napoleon is when you stick all four fingers in an orifice, typically during a sexual act, similar to the knowledge number of photographs capturing. So you put four fingers in it anywhere you want, basically.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Oh, and it's buttons like that?

• 51:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, they're going for interesting aspects of the, of the two generals.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  I mean, these are, we really are giving our patrons ammunition that I pray for any woman who goes on a date with a patron.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  What, getting the Napoleon?

• 52:00Speaker 01

  Getting the beef Wellington out.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  If you can, if you...

• 52:05Speaker 02

  I only know two positions.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, the beef Wellington and the Napoleon. Which do you want to do first?

• 52:13Speaker 02

  You have 20 minutes to make your decision. Do the old John Motson.

• 52:16Speaker 03

  What he does do, chunky.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  Right, yes, his wife, story with his wife, so he meets a girl called Kitty, I think, and then before, it's before he's made his name.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's like an 18-year-old and it's very like, you know, that age, you meet someone and immediately say, "Will you be with me forever?"

• 52:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he's also not a, he's not a general at this point. He's not made his name.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  "I love you, will you marry me?" She says, "No," because he hasn't made a name for himself. He goes to India, is away for 10 years, comes back, says, "Will you marry me?" She says, "Yes." And then he can't stand it for the rest of his life, has a miserable marriage.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  There's a quote where he immediately says, "Oh, she's actually really ugly."

• 52:50Speaker 03

  I shouldn't have pooed on that fanny.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  What?

• 52:52Speaker 03

  I shouldn't have pooed on that fanny.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  That's his quote. "I shouldn't have pooed on that fanny."

• 52:55Speaker 02

  And he lindo's his brother.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  She has grown ugly by Jove.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  At the altar.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Fuck, I didn't realise it was at the wedding.

• 53:01Speaker 02

  It was at the altar, at the wedding.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  But, and this is why Wellington is such a tactical genius, they stay married for 25 miserable years, virtually ignoring each other. While he takes up a series of high-profile mistresses and shits on their fanny and then fucks them.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's nice about that is virtually ignoring each other, they're sort of back to back. It means your rear is defended.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Well, that's, yes, exactly. That's how, that's how you should sleep in bed as a married couple.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  Is there a more defensive position than a miserable marriage, when you both turn away?

• 53:25Speaker 01

  It's an infantry square in bed, you know? No one will invade you.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  Wellington, she, he had an affair with a courtesan, and then the courtesan threatened to publish her memoirs. This is a bit after the Revolutionary Wars, saying that he's going to, she, he's going to publish them unless Wellington pays hush money. He says, "Publish and be damned. Fuck off then, do it." And then she said that Wellington was a, quote, "most unentertaining visitor", and that wearing his red ribbon, he looked like a, quote, "rat catcher." Well, he was a rat catcher, you know?

• 53:57Speaker 02

  He caught the biggest rat of all.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  "Don't fucking hate the, hate the player, hate the game."

• 54:00Speaker 02

  Who's this?

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Who's that? That's Kitty, that's his ugly wife.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, well.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  Well.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  I wouldn't shit on her, Annie, put it that way.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  That's absolutely appalling.

• 54:28Speaker 02

  That's such an awful thing to say to a fat old woman.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  That's the worst thing you can say to a woman. She's good looking, I wouldn't show her a fanny if you know what I mean.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  I'll put it this way, to shut up my feelings, to be concise with my feelings. Take what you want from this.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  Did you have a date last night? Yeah, it was alright. I wouldn't share the fanny if you know what I mean. And by that I mean I wouldn't actually do it.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Anyway, right.

• 54:59Speaker 02

  Christ.

• 54:59Speaker 03

  Must be hard on a hygienic to do that as well.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, it probably is genius.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Fucking hell. Probably about as good a hygiene rating as a regional Indian restaurant.

• 55:11Speaker 03

  Worse, I reckon.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Eh?

• 55:12Speaker 03

  Much worse.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, exactly. Anyway, look, let's get off the beef, winning and sex position and get back to the fact that he's in Elba. He's in Elba and he's getting bored. He's rattling.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Or he's bouncing because he's quite fat as well at this point.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, midway between a rattle and a bounce, I'd say.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  Anyway, yeah, so, when is this? This is February time, eighteen fifteen. Colonel Sir Neil Campbell, who is just sort of checking in on Napoleon with the Royal Navy Guard, he has sailed to, I think Livorno in the Italian peninsula, to check in on his mistress and Countess Miniacci. And Napoleon seizes this moment to quietly board a ship with about a thousand of his men, the Incontinent it was called, which is a massive...

• 56:01Speaker 02

  Incontinent?

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Not the Incontinent, no, not there yet. And he disguises the ship somehow, I don't know how, and he slips past the naval patrols that were circling Elba. They painted the ships, they painted over the French colours and disguised it like a British merchant vessel. And so this tiny platilla slips past the British blockade. And he arrives near Antib, which I just went to on holiday, lovely place, on the first of March eighteen fifteen. Now, he knows there are royalist strongholds on the south coast, so he marches through the Alps once again. And he forms this route which is now known as the Route Napoleon. And he has a tiny column of a thousand troops, wearing his hat and his grey coat.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  And he is met at some point, maybe in Grenoble, by a series of royalist troops who hear he's coming. And they've been sent to arrest him. And then Napoleon steps forward, unbuttons his coat, takes his trousers down and says, "Look at this."

• 57:04Speaker 01

  He opens his chest and he says, "Soldiers, if there is one among you who wishes to kill his emperor, here I am." And then in the silence that follows, one voice cries, "Vive l'empereur!" And Napoleon is on his way to Paris to reclaim somehow the throne he lost less than a year ago.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  Maybe the ultimate aura farm, potentially.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  Incredible.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  There's probably not been a more significant one in history.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  We're going to leave that here for this episode. In our next episode, we will get to Napoleon's final hundred days and the best battle of all time.

• 57:38Speaker 02

  Best battle.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  The goat battle.

• 57:40Speaker 02

  It's best battle.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  It's the best battle.

• 57:41Speaker 02

  Chat GPT, what's best battle? This one's best battle.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  This is top ranked S tier battle. Okay, Jackmate is putting this top in his ranking. We will get to the Battle of Waterloo.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  See you next time.

• 57:56Speaker 02

  They're getting more pained.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  They are. Well, it's painful. It's fucking ten wanks in a day. It's a ten parter. You've got to think for these poor people. That's already on the Patreon, by the way, along with some terrific bonus episodes on Sharp and Birkenhead, lots of fun stuff there.

• 58:14Speaker 02

  Review of Napoleon's...

• 58:15Speaker 01

  What is it, Charlie?

• 58:16Speaker 02

  The Ridley Scott...

• 58:17Speaker 01

  Didn't have anything. We did a history of cockolds. That was a lot of fun. Charlie wrote a cock poem. Anyway, we'll see you next time for the greatest battle of all time. Goodbye for now.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  Goodbye.

• 58:43Speaker 04

  Kayak searches and compares hundreds of travel sites. But unless I repeat the word kayak, Kayak thinks you won't remember that. So Kayak asked me to say kayak as many times as possible. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak. Kai. Ak. Kai, Kai, Kai, Kai, kayak. Kayak, kayak, kayak. Search, compare and save on your trip. Kayak. Got that right.

• 59:14Speaker 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.