Dominic Sandbrook
Appearances
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Long had the snake lived in the dungeon, coiled in the black and filthy water, bloated from feasting on the Empress's prisoners.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Because serving alongside them was a soldier called Cacaumanos, who later wrote a military manual. And in this manual, he wrote, Araltes campaigned with the emperor and performed great deeds of valor against the enemy, as was fitting for one of his noble race and personal ability, Araltes Harold.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And it's fascinating because that suggests that there are people in Constantinople now who are aware of Harold's noble descent. So, though I think they see the manual is probably written after he's become king. So after he has, spoiler alert, after he's returned to Norway. Anyway, they smashed the Bulgars. They captured the Bulgar king. They cut off his nose. They gouged out his eyes.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
They led him back in chains to Constantinople. And Cacaumanos says that the emperor rewarded Auraltes for his valor and gave him the title of spatharocandidatos, which is a court rank, not a military one. So a kind of rank at court, very prestigious for any foreigner, let alone a barbarian from the wilds of the north.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So he now gets an even fancier sword and he gets a special golden torque called the Maniakion, which he gets to wear. It's a bit like the Ottomans giving Nelson that massive great jewel. Yeah, and Harold's only 25 at this point. So he's clearly made a name for himself and he's done extremely well and it's all very exciting.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
But now this is where the sort of Game of Thrones side replaces the Lord of the Rings. So the Emperor Michael, he's Michael IV. He's called Michael the Paphlagonian. He's from the Black Sea coast of Anatolia. And his brother John, who was the eunuch kind of Lord Chamberlain, had got him a job at the court. He's got all his brothers a job, hasn't he? And basically all his cousins and stuff.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So there's one called Anthony the Fat, who becomes the Bishop of Nicomedia, thanks to John's string pulling. And John is essentially the kind of prime minister, isn't he? He is. Littlefinger. Littlefinger or Varys. He's a eunuch, so he's Lord Varys, isn't he? Yeah, he's Varys. From Game of Thrones. So this guy, Michael, he had seduced Zoe. He'd possibly murdered her husband in his bath.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
He's now been emperor for six years. He's in his late 20s. Michael Sellers says he was as fresh as a blossom, bright eyed and apple cheeked. Nice. So that's nice. Unfortunately, Michael's good looks are starting to curdle. Because he's always suffered from epilepsy and it's getting much worse.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And when he has fits, this is hidden from visitors to the court behind a series of elaborate curtains which can be deployed at any moment. But he's now suffering from edema, dropsy, which means that his body is being grotesquely swollen with fluid. And by late 1041, it's pretty obvious that he's dying of this. There's no cure. They don't know what to do.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And now he has come to the golden city of Caesar, Constantinople, and he is a recruit in the Varangian Guard. And we will be finding out how giant serpents feature in the story later on. But for now, we are in 1035. And what is going on?
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Although I suppose they could try and drain him, but that doesn't work. Now, John, the eunuch, says to him, look, you're going to have to name a successor, and ideally from our family, because we want to stay on top. And as luck would have it, they have another Michael, who is their sister's son. It's brilliant, isn't it, how everyone is called Michael? We've got loads of Michaels. Or Harold.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
He says, why don't you adopt this Michael? You and Zoe adopt him as your son. He'll be named Caesar and we'll put him in a townhouse in the suburbs and he can hang around. And when you die, he'll come in as Michael V. So we come to the 10th of December, 1041. Michael IV is bloated, he's swollen, fluid everywhere, shambles. So his loving days are over. His loving days are over.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
He's taken to the monastery of St. Cosmas and St. Damien. And there he's given holy orders, actually. It's not just kind of confession. He's given holy orders. He's tonsured like a monk. And then he dies. Meanwhile, Michael V, he's brought to the palace. It's really smooth succession. It works perfectly. So everything looks great. However, there is a twist. So we've mentioned only in passing Zoe.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Zoe is now in her late 50s. She is the one person in the palace who has the blood of the Macedonian dynasty. I kind of imagine her as looking like Diana Dawes. Yes, who would she be played by now? She's quite sort of... Blousy. I was going to say blousy. Well, I can tell you what Michael Sellers says. Zoe was well-rounded, though not very tall.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
She had hair of gold and her entire body glowed with the paleness of her skin. There was little sign of her age. In fact, if you noticed the perfect proportions of her limbs and did not know her, you would have thought she was a young woman, for her skin was unwrinkled, glossy and smooth, with no lines anywhere." I think it's fair to say Michael Sellers is slightly objectifying Zoe.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
He is, isn't he? He's behaved poorly. He's let himself down. Or he's paying compliment to the power of the unguent merchants of Constantinople. He is, because as we'd established last time, she loves a potion or cream. So hence, wrinkle-free? Wrinkle-free. Ointments. She's basically massively into ointments.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
She is, Michael Sellers says, a woman of passionate desires prepared equally for life or death.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Now, she had placed a bet on Michael IV, and actually that had gone horribly wrong because once he'd... I mean, you say his loving days were over when he became swollen with dropsy, but actually his loving days had ceased before that because as soon as he became emperor, he basically locked her in the women's quarters and said, I've had enough of you. Don't come out.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So now she's back, and she's got this Michael V, who's her adoptive son. Do things work out better with Michael V? They do not. He is determined to have a break with his predecessor and bring in all his own people, Scythian eunuchs. So these may well be Slavs or Pechenegs, and he'd get rid of the old guards. But the person he really hates with an absolute passion is Zoe.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
What Michael Sellers says, once he had addressed her as mistress, but now the very idea made him want to bite off his own tongue and spit it away in disgust. So we'll put him down as undecided. Yeah, he's not a fan. And he waits for a few months till Easter 1042 and then he makes his move.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So we left Harold in the last episode at the point in which he has just enlisted in the Varangian Guard, this kind of special forces unit of largely Scandinavian mercenaries. Very baggy trousers. With great silk trousers, exactly.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So on Easter Sunday, these Scythian eunuchs burst into her chamber and they drag her out and they drag her before him. And he says, I know you've been trying to poison me. You know, you're clearly as guilty as hell. You're going to be sent off to the Prince's Islands in the Sea of Marmara, just off Constantinople. And you'll be sent to a nunnery. Get thee to a nunnery. I mean, literally.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So very reminiscent of what's going to happen to Edith. a few years later, when Edward the Confessor packs her off to a nunnery. I mean, nunneries are obviously very useful if you want to get, you know, an unwanted queen. Exactly. So we're told she was immediately put on a ship along with certain men who were given free hand to insult her.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
She stripped of her purple robes and her head was shaved, and I quote, as though she was a common whore. That's very harsh. Very harsh. And I imagine her hair. Golden hair. Golden hair and much treated again with all kind of ointments and...
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
salves and pomades and now casually thrown aside very poor now Michael has clearly made a massive miscalculation here because Michael Sellers the chronicler who knows a lot about kind of court politics says you know everyone despised him he was regarded as a slave to his emotions erratic and all this And Zoe was very popular in the city.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So she has been the most glamorous person in the life of Constantinople since she was basically born in 978. She'd been born in the purple. Her father was an emperor. Her uncle was an emperor. Her grandfather was an emperor. She's part of the furniture. She's a great favorite of the crowds. So on Easter Monday, the next day, the word spreads to the city. Everyone was worried about the Empress.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Deep down, men knew matters had got out of hand and they were not afraid to speak up about it, says Michael Sellers. The Emperor Michael V, he sends the city's prefect to read out a statement in the...
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
in the forum to explain what he's done and the crowd go absolutely berserk smashing everything up rioting and whatnot they end up breaking into the cathedral Hagia Sophia they get the patriarch to start ringing the bells they rouse the city there's general sort of chaos and fighting and looting and stuff there's actually a fragment in the sagas
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
by a guy called Valgaard, who was a guardsman, a Varangian guard from Iceland, who ended up becoming a Skald, a poet, who says, You see, I think that's brilliant. And I was saying earlier how I prefer kind of blank verse to rhyming verse when it's Vikings.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Now, no sooner has he enlisted, Tom, the news reaches the imperial city that Arab corsairs have sailed into the Aegean, raiding the towns of the Greek islands and carrying the men, women and children. off into slavery. And so for Harold Hardrada, the adventure begins. Brilliant. Very exciting. So actually, he's now going to be on campaign for the next six or seven years.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Also, Dominic, just to say about the patriarch, Alexios, that John the Eunuch, the Varus of Constantinople, he had tried to get rid of him and replace him. And there's all kinds of weird political currents that we can only vaguely glimpse, I think, that are going on, including the Varangians. So the Varangians, their loyalty is pledged to the imperial family.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
They're mercenaries working for the imperial family. And I think it's a fair assumption that they feel very put out about the arrival of these Scythian eunuchs. The Pechenegs. And there's some form of power struggle, I think, between the two of them. And my guess is that they are probably in on this riot. And it's all being planned.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And it's actually a little bit more of a counter-coup than it is really a riot. Anyway, by the Monday afternoon, it's become a massive street battle. It's Michael and his Scythians against the mob and the Varangians. And on the Tuesday, I mean, this would be a superb kind of HBO series or something.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Because on the Tuesday, the attackers break into the palace, partly through the emperor's box in the Hippodrome, which has a tunnel leading through to the palace or corridor. They kind of fight their way into the imperial quarters. And guess what? Michael has escaped. He's gone off with his uncle Constantine. They've gone down to the dock. The palace has its own dock.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
They've rushed down to the dock. They grab an imperial yacht. I love it that they have yachts. They have imperial yachts. I know a lot. And then they head off in this yacht. But it's obviously not an ocean-going yacht because they can only go so far. So actually, they just go down. They don't even really get out of the city.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
They dock by the Studios Monastery, which is near the city walls, and they get out and they go to find sanctuary in the monastery. Now, in the meantime, the rioters have got hold of Zoe. She's been brought back from the island, shaven head, which is sad. They've also dug out her sister, Theodora. Who's been in a nunnery for eight years. She's been in a nunnery for ages. Willingly or?
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
No, I think slightly unwillingly. Yeah, okay. So they dug her out. They've got the two of them and they say, right, we want you to rule as co-empresses. Let's just get rid of this Michael bloke. We hate him. So what to do with him? A load of rioters and Varangian guards break into this monastery, totally ignoring all the stuff about sanctuary. They drag him and his uncle outside.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Now, at this point, I have to say, Michael, who's behaved poorly, I think, throughout, he completely shames himself. He does not react as a Viking would react. A Viking would meet his death with a quip and a poem. So how would you react in this situation? With a quip and a poem. I've already told you. Yes, I think I would.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
There's no doubt in my mind. I hope the opportunity doesn't come about for me to hold you to that. Well, if I'm ever taking sanctuary in a monastery in present-day Istanbul and rioters and Scandinavians drag me out, I hope I don't do what he does, which is he clings to the altar sobbing like a baby.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Then he clings to the pillars, weeping, praying to God, and worse, saying, it was all my uncle's fault. I never wanted to do it. That's low. I would do that. That would be me. So they take him outside. They hold him down. This is a bit that younger listeners will very much enjoy. He's screaming and shouting and they gouge out his eyes. So the point of doing that is if you're mutilated...
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
you can't continue to be emperor. Right. As with kings. So it's what Godwin has done to Alfred back in England, gouging out the eyes. As with that, there's always the risk that you may end up killing the person you blinded. Well, risk. Is that a risk or is that an added bonus, Tom? Well, yes, I suppose. I suppose. So listeners may be wondering more about Harald Hardrada.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
The sagas say the person who does the eye gouging is Harald. He's the person who did it. So this is in King Harald's saga. It's a scowl called Theodolf. He wrote this, And Snorri, the chronicler, writing two centuries later, he says,
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
In these songs and many others, it is said that Harold himself blinded the Greek emperor and they would surely have named some Duke, Count or other great man if they had not known this to be the true account. And King Harold himself and other men who were with him spread this account. So the historical method in operation there.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Can't be sure exactly how long, but let's say roughly six or seven years. As that Adventures in Time book, which I recommend to our listeners, describes his life is a blur of action, racing into battle on the deck of a war galley, storming ashore on an island at dawn, scaling the walls of an enemy castle, dealing out death with a sweep of his sword.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So there is the historical method at the heart of the Icelandic sagas. Men said it, numerous sources. We've sifted the sources, and it's very clear that Harold Hardrada did this gouging. So you may well say, all's well that ends well. Michael, sans eyes, he dies of his wounds a few months later. There may also have been some castration involved. The sources differ on that.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
I don't know if Harold was also responsible for that. Let's say he was. So he didn't write a poem about that? No, he didn't. He scattered the genitals far. Yeah. If listeners want to send in their own poems, I wonder what that poem would be like. Harry in for the ravens. Address them, please, to Tom Holland, courtesy of Goldhanger.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Zoe and Theodora reign briefly as co-empresses, and then Zoe marries a nobleman, and he becomes Constantine IX. Now, clearly, the Varangians have really benefited from this. They regain their old position at the top of the tree. Harold is their commander. We're told that a lot of gold changed his hands, so Michael Sellers.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
The revenues budgeted for the military were set aside for the use of others, a cluster of sycophants and those who were appointed to guard the empresses. So that's Harold. Harold and the Varangian guards. So... Things appear to have worked out brilliantly for him. He's now very rich. He's more powerful than ever.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
He's the right hand of the Empress, a genuine player in the politics of Europe's most glittering empire. All looks good. And then, Tom, one day, he is woken by a ferocious hammering on his door. When he opens it, he sees guards outside and their faces are cold.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And admirers of Dominic's Adventures in Time series will know that when guards with cold faces appear on the scene, excitement is bound to follow. A giant snake is never far away. And so adventure will follow in the second part of this super-sore-away episode. We'll see you then. Hello, I'm William Durimple.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Now, actually, the truth is we're getting most of this from the Icelandic sagas, which, as we said last time, were written down at least 200 years later. by people living in a different world. I mean, living in Iceland, I couldn't really be further away from Constantinople and still be in Europe. That's right. And they're also much more obviously Christian.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Hello, welcome back to The Rest Is History. So, Dominic, cold-faced guards have intruded on Harold. Absolute cliffhanger. What's going on? Well, this is a good point to stop and ask ourselves how true any of this story is. So, as we said in the first episode, any biography of Harold Hardrada has to rely on these very colourful sagas that have three massive problems.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Number one, they're written down centuries later. Number two, they often wildly contradict each other and the stuff in Constantinople is often incredibly confused and contradictory. And number three, as we've said before, many of the elements of them are clearly fantastical. So,
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
For the stuff we would have been describing, effectively what biographers of Harold are doing is trying to stitch together a plausible narrative out of disparate elements in the sagas. And that is assuming that any of it might be true. That any of it. But we know that some of it clearly is true because of, for example, the stuff about Auraltes. Right.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
But his involvement in what was clearly a very celebrated episode... If he's your hero, you would want to intrude him into something like that. I mean, it would be like, you know, kind of Flashman or something. Yeah, the eye gouging. There's a bit of a Flashman quality, isn't there, to Harold Hardrada's life? Slightly.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So there are three elements that we haven't fitted in that appear in the sagas that historians and biographers have sort of grappled with. Number one, at some point, Harold is imprisoned. possibly by Zoe. Number two, there is some kind of love affair, possibly with Zoe, but probably not, probably with an aristocrat called Maria.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And number three, there is a death-defying escape by ship from Constantinople. And they could be completely made up. But they might not be. Can I just ask, Dominic, I mean, the key thing for Harold has been to get gold. Yes.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And so the question hanging over all of this, if there is, you know, he does get locked up and escapes and makes a death-defying escape on a ship, as we will explore, where is his gold? How is he getting his gold out? Has he sent it back already? Or what is happening there? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And they are doing an awful lot of projection. There's a lot of fictionalization. And there is a lot of use of literary formulae, which means it is very difficult for us to be certain, to have any degree of certainty about what he did. However, we have what people at the time would have called Roman sources, what we would call Byzantine sources.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And the guy in Denmark is a Jarl called Svein, who is Knut's nephew. So it's still a family kind of row, really, isn't it?
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
They give a sense of the kind of campaigns the empire was fighting. So we can sketch out a very tentative narrative, I think. We do know that they did fight pirates in the spring of 1035. So Snorri Sturluson's saga, King Harold's saga, which is part of the cycle called Heimskringla,
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
That tallies with the account of a Greek chronicler called John Skylitzes, who talks about ships from North Africa attacking the Cyclades. So there probably was a bit of action in the Aegean.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And then probably later that summer, 1035, the Varangians are sent to the far eastern borderlands of the empire, so Armenia, where the imperial army is besieging a city called Berkri on the shores of Lake Van.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Now, this is a world that is very kind of fragmented and confusing because the Abbasid Caliphate is largely broken up, and there's all kinds of rival emirates across the Middle East, kind of Arab, Turkic, Kurdish, and so on. So it's sort of all very confusing. The Roman army is besieging this city. The Vikings normally hate sieges. They're no good at them.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And one of the things that I always thought was intriguing is that, Ellis, if so, Harald Hardrada's wife, one of her sisters has married Edward the Exile, who is the half-brother of Edward the Confessor. So even England is part of this snarl of even Scandinavian matrimonial alliances. I mean, it's so odd, isn't it?
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Theo and Tabby were telling me about a series called Vikings Valhalla, which I've never seen, which has some of this in it. Oh, really? But I think this should be like a much bigger budget and more exciting thing. So I think all of this stuff is... This makes Game of Thrones look kind of footling and trivial. So just on the north, Norway and Denmark have been locked in this long-running struggle.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Magnus in Norway, Svein in Denmark. And for Harald, this offers an opportunity but also a threat. If he can get back to Scandinavia quickly, he can profit from this and become a third player and profit from the uncertainty. But if he waits too long and Magnus of Norway wins and rules both, then it'll be much harder for him to get a foothold. So perhaps early 1045, late 1044, hard to say.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Around about this time, he makes his move and he goes north. And we do know that in about 1045, he arrives in Sweden in a place called Sigtuna. And there he receives very bad news. Magnus has got the upper hand. He's left it too late. Magnus has been crowned king of both Norway and Denmark. And Svein has agreed to be his jarl, basically his deputy in Denmark. Now Magnus is a serious player.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
He's half English, always a good sign. His mother was an English slave and he'd become king of Norway at the age of just 11. But he proved really good at it. He was brilliant at winning support. He's actually an incredibly skillful politician. And he got this nickname, Magnus the Good. And this is in part, it's not because he's kind. Yeah, he's good at politics.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
He was well-spoken and quick to make up his mind, noble in character, most generous, a great and valiant warrior, says the Heimskringla Sagas. So Harold, he's got all this cash, but he's the underdog. And they finally meet, uncle and nephew, in Skuna, which was then in Denmark and now is, of course, in southern Sweden, that autumn, 1045.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And the sagas describe how Magnus is there with his fleet and he sees this ship coming from the east with gilded dragon's head, you know, covered in gold and jewels. And this huge messenger. In this story, in 1066 generally, there are always these messengers who actually turn out not to be, you know, the sort of mouth of Sauron who turn out to be Sauron.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
This messenger comes and says to Magnus, would your Uncle Harold be welcome? And Magnus says, yeah, sure. And then the messenger says, I am Uncle Harold. Good fooling. And Harold says, you know, hello, nephew. How would you like to divide the kingdom between us? Not really.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Well, we're told Magnus gave his uncle a friendly answer, saying he would take the advice of his chieftains and the wishes of his subjects. He gives him a diplomatic answer. I said he was good at politics and they part on quite good terms. But it's pretty obvious to Harold that Magnus is going to give him nothing.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
They don't really enjoy them because they don't obviously have many towns and castles in Scandinavia, so sieges aren't really their thing. But this one goes very well. And the sagas say, oh, that's Harold. Harold's just a brilliant man and he's responsible. But in reality, the overall commander who plays a bit of a part in Harold's story was a Greek general called George Maniarches.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So Harold sends a messenger to this bloke, Svein, in Denmark and says, let's restart that war. Let's divide Norway and Denmark between us. Now, Magnus, he doesn't fancy the war starting again because... Norway is not a rich country. You know, it doesn't have many towns and markets. It doesn't have especially rich farmland.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
I mean, that's one reason they've got involved in the whole Viking business. But Dominic, it is rich in giant men with double axes. It is, but they require payment. And he struggles. It's a big problem for Norwegian kings to raise tax because they don't really have the same infrastructure as somewhere like England. Yeah. So Magnus thinks, I can't compete with all this gold.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
I just don't fancy a war. So eventually he sends a message to Harold and he says, look, Actually, I will share the kingdom if you will share your gold. And Harold thinks, well, fair enough, because I don't really have many Norwegian contacts, and it would be a massive hassle fighting this war. So they have this meeting, this very entertaining meeting to share the gold.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Harold makes a huge display of all the gold. He gets a huge ox hide, and he pours all the chests out, massive piles of gold. And he says very loudly, I have traveled to many lands and taken many risks in order to earn all this gold. And then they're going to get their men to weigh and divide all the gold equally. But the point is they've both got to put in what they've got.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And he says, nephew, what gold have you to add to all this? And Magnus says, oh, well, I've actually spent all my money on these wars. I've got one thing, which is a golden arm ring, one ring. And he puts it in. Harold, this is not much for a king of two kingdoms. And some would say it is not rightfully yours. And Magda says, my father Olaf gave it to me the last time I saw him. True.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
But only after he took it from my father for no good reason. Massive tension in the air. Harold is dissing. He's dissing Olaf, actually. He's a brother. And saying that Olaf had taken it from his own father, Sigurd the Sow. So everybody's very anxious about this. And everybody says, oh, this clearly is not going to last. Like, clearly at some point...
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Harold is going to turn on Magnus or vice versa. One of them is going to go. But we never get to that point because you remember in the Road to 1066 series, so the last couple of weeks, people were always dropping dead unexpectedly. Yeah, convenient moments. Convenient points when their acting contract had come to an end.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Well, in 1047, end of 1047, Magnus is off the coast of Denmark fighting Svein. And he has a dream in which Olaf appears, his father. And Olaf says, look, you've got a choice. You can live to a ripe old age. But you will commit a crime that will damn you to hell. Or you can die young now and join me in the afterlife. And Magnus, I think foolishly says, well, I'll die young.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
I'd like to join you in the afterlife. Do you think that's foolish? I think that you don't know what the nature of the crime. I mean, I'd want to know more about the crime, I think. But this is happening, what, a thousand years ago? And he'd still be in hell now if he'd gone for that. With no prospect of release. It's like those experiments they do on toddlers.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Do you want instant gratification now or you get two cakes later? I'd probably take the cake now. I'd opt for death and heaven. Well, in that case, you would have exactly the same fate as Magnus. He wakes, immediately comes down with a fever, and on the 25th of October, 1047, he dies. And in one of the sagas, there's a lovely bedtime scene. Deathbed scene. Bedtime scene?
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
He was another giant like Harold Hardrada. So Harold Hardrada, I think we established in the last episode, was he seven and a half feet tall? Seven and a half feet, yes. Maniarches, I'm going to read you the description by the monk and courtier Michael Psellus.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
I mean, I suppose it is bedtime in a sense. Harold comes in to see Magnus. Ah, nephew, I see you're dying. And Magnus says, leave Denmark alone. Leave it to Svein. Let them go in peace, the Danes. Harold obviously has no intention of doing that. He's now one. He's King of Norway. It's all he ever wanted. It's all he ever wanted.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Everything has been the fighting with snakes, the gouging out of eyes. And do you know what? Yeah. You've written these Adventures in Time books to inspire your young readers to follow their dreams. And Harold has followed his dream. And now he's King of Norway. So there's a lesson there, isn't there? But you know what the real lesson is?
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
It hasn't made him happy because his time as King of Norway is a little bit sad, I think, because it's basically 20 years of really boring war against the Danes in which nothing ever happens. Just constant raiding. And I imagine quite a lot of stuff involving cow buyers and that kind of thing. Yeah. Kind of burning people's cottages and stuff in a desultory way. Yeah. Really bad weather.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
He just fights for so long. He's got a massive warship. I mean, the best thing about it is this warship called the Great Serpent. I mean, Freud would love this. So Olaf Tryggvason had had a ship called the Long Serpent, but Harold Hardrada insisted on having a ship called the Great Serpent. And he commands this ship.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
There's one battle, a battle at a place called Nisor, which is off Western Sweden between the Norwegians and the Danes. The Norwegians win, but they're all just miserable and cold, and they've both massive losses. No one's ever going to win this war. But the Great Serpent is still erect and proud. It is. But there's just a sense of joylessness to it at this point, I think it's fair to say.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So basically, this war has gone on for, what, 15 years or something. And eventually, Harold gives up his ambitions. It's fine. Spain can have Denmark. I've had enough. And all this has been very, very expensive. Now, during all this, Harold has clearly been trying to turn Norway into...
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
into a more centralised, kind of nationalised, tax-paying kingdom like, dare I say, England, or to some degree, I guess, in the future, Denmark. Or, more obviously, I'd have thought Constantinople. Oh, Constantinople, which he's seen. Yeah, but it's going to look more like England, I suppose, in the long run. Yeah. Because he's also doing other modernising things.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Michael Sellers said Maniakis was a wrathful man, fully nine feet tall and possessed of a violent temper, a fiery whirlwind with a voice of thunder and hands strong enough to make walls totter and shake gates of brass. He had the quick movement of a lion and the scowl on his face was terrible to behold.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
He tries to develop a national coinage. And although he himself is clearly not a, you know, if he is pious, he's definitely not a turning-the-other-cheek kind of man. He does encourage Christianity and he brings in priests and monks from Kiev and Rus. And of course, you can see why he would do that. He likes the idea of one God, one ruler, one church, state power. He's got his brother, hasn't he?
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Olaf, who is well on the way to becoming Saint Olaf, who gets enshrined in the Great Cathedral. And it's interesting, a lot of the kingdoms that are formed at about this point in time have patron saints who are from the ruling family. Olaf is the paradigmatic example, who are just massively, massively important to the regime because they give divine legitimacy to the dynasty.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
But it's a difficult process in Norway. I mean, Norway, the terrain isn't ideal for trying to impose a kind of a nationalizing regime. There's constant tension with the landowners in the north and in the centre of Norway. It's not hanging out with glamorous blonde empresses, is it? It really is a bit miserable.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And also I think there's an element of Harold is becoming possibly a little bit insufferable. Snorri Sturluson, who writes this very admiring biography of him in the saga, says King Harald was an absolute monarch. And the more secure he felt on the throne, the more imperious he became so that hardly anyone dared to differ with him. And the big issue, as always, is money. It's tax.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
He has been trying to raise taxes to pay for this incredibly boring war with the Danes. In 1064, the last full year of the war, the farmers of Norway's uplands basically refused to pay their taxes. It was a tax revolt. So it's like he's turned into Keir Starmer. He's having to deal with angry farmers. Angry farmers. It's the same old story. Well, don't forget angry farmers had killed his brother.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Angry farmers and people in reindeer magic cloaks had killed his father. We seem a long way now from magic reindeer cloaks. And I have to say, slightly the poorer for it. Yeah, we are the poorer for it. There's no doubt in my mind. Things have got worse, and this is the point at which they do.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So 1065, when the war is over, Harold launched a savage harrying campaign against the uplanders that in some way actually anticipates William of Normandy's harrying campaign. I mean, this is what, there's a definite similarity here that when you have kind of, these are very, very ferocious, merciless monarchs.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
who when they are challenged by provincial, perhaps more small-c conservative interests that are resisting the modernizing efforts of the monarchy, they react with lethal and terrifying force. Snorri Sturluson, the king ordered farmers seized, some of them maimed, others slain, and most of them robbed of everything they owned. The peasants pleaded for mercy, but his verdict came with fire.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So again, advice and lesson there from history for Keir Starmer. his scowled Theodulf. No scowl can find words for the royal vengeance that left the Oplands ravaged and empty. King Harald's deeds will be remembered forever. And exactly that, as you said, Tom, this is the origin of the nickname Hard Rada, which at school I can remember being told it was Hard Ruler. It's kind of severe, isn't it?
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
But Michael Sellers says that all, basically all Varangians are, I mean, at least nine, ten feet tall. Yeah. Sometimes you just have to trust the sources, don't you?
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
That's the translation now. Or even tyrannical or, I mean, some people might say robust, of course, Tom. That's... If you admire a strong leader as I do, you would say robust, like our own greatest ruler in the 1650s. But anyway, that's by the by. We've got to the end now of 1065. Harold is now probably 50 years old.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Elisif has born him two daughters, but she has pretty much vanished from the sources. We know he has a second wife called Tora, who has had two sons, but we know virtually nothing else about her. I think there's a slight sense of Harold of, I don't know, ambitions unfulfilled or frustration. It's a very powerful scene, isn't it? And I guess it would require...
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
not just a great historian, but a great historian with an incredible command of the English language, fully to evoke the mingled glory and pathos of the scene. And I wonder, Dominic, if you can think of such a writer and whether perhaps you have a passage of his prose to hand.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Do you know, Tom, it's extraordinary that you asked that question because by a remarkable coincidence, I can think of such a person. Shall I read it? Yeah, why don't you? Because I think you'd give these readings the power and the majesty that they deserve. Yeah, and when I finish it, people can try and work out who they think wrote it. Yeah, and maybe order the book.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
An air of scepticism. You can carry scepticism too far. Well, there's kind of a hint of Samson there, I think, in his description. They're shaking the gates of brass, making walls totter, exactly. So Maniakes and Harold didn't get on at all. And the sagas say the Varangians demanded that Harold be put in command, said this Maniakes has got to go.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
The golden sheen in his hair had long since faded, and he could feel a stiffness creeping into his bones. Though Harold would never have admitted it, he seemed a figure out of time, waiting for the end. Sometimes he wondered if he would ever again know the thrill of adventure, the joy of battle. And then, one cloudless day... A ship rounded the headland and turned into the fjord.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And Dominic, that author is, of course, yourself. Your thrilling book about the Vikings, available from all good bookshops. And we know it's a cloudless day. We know this ship has rounded the headland and turned into the fjord. And I think it's fair to say that with that ship and the advent of the year 1066, everything will change, won't it? It will change, Tom.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
It was a colossal, greedy, pitiless thing, a creature of nightmares. Already it had sensed their presence, and even now it was rising for the kill. Its cruel head loomed from the shadows. Its yellow eyes glittered with hatred. Its fangs glistened with beads of poison. Its forked tongue flickered with pleasure. Harold moved fast, groping among the corpses, scrabbling through the filth.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So to give people a little preview of what is coming, 1066 is upon us and next week we'll begin our climactic series on the epic events of that year. The death in England of Edward the Confessor and the accession of Harold Godwinson. Harold Hardrada invades England and the great showdown at Stamford Bridge and then the invasion of William of Normandy and the battle to end all battles at Hastings.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And Tom, there's some amazing news, isn't there, for members of the Rest Is History Club. Would you like to share that news with them? Yeah, incredible news. You'll never have heard anything like it before, ever, while listening to this podcast. But just to break it to you, if you're a member, you will hear all four episodes immediately.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And Dominic, more stunning news that, again, will come as a total revelation to listeners, that if you're not a member of the Rest Is History Club, There is a website where you can sign up and that is therestishistory.com. It's what Harold Hardrada would have wanted, isn't it? Yeah, it is. I mean, he would definitely be, he'd be one of the elite Varangian guard of the Restless History Club.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Of that, there is no doubt. All right. On that bombshell, we'll return next time with 1066. Goodbye. Bye-bye.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
But actually, Maniakes had Harold recalled to Constantinople. But that worked out well for him. Because if this story is even remotely accurate, he then got sent on a very exciting expedition. So we do know that the emperor had concluded a deal with the Fatimids in Egypt to rebuild the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which had been semi-destroyed by a mad caliph. In 1009.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So Al-Hakim, who features in my thrilling vampire novel, The Sleeper in the Sands. Really? Yeah. Is he a vampire? No, Al-Hakim isn't. But vampires are present. Vampires are definitely present. But also, Dominic, just to say that the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which had been built by Constantine and was pretty, you know, I mean, it's the great focus of Christian devotion.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
it has a massive impact, not just on Byzantium, but on Latin Christendom. And the news of it going back to Latin Christendom stirs up all kinds of millennial anxiety. So it's part of this kind of swirl of apocalyptic dread that in the long run will feed into the First Crusade. So Urban II, when he does his great sermon, kind of summoning the First Crusade, he makes mention of
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Exactly this, the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. And it may not surprise Jewish listeners to discover who a lot of Christians in Latin Christendom blamed for this. And it wasn't Al-Hakim. Oh, really? So does this give rise to a lot of pogroms and stuff? It gives rise to one of the first kind of big outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence in Latin Christendom, yeah.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So it really reverberates. Right. So anyway, the emperor has concluded this deal to go and rebuild it. And he sends a team of architects and carpenters and stuff and bishops and monks and Roman bigwigs who want to go and see the church. And a Varangian escort was sent with them, and the sagas say Harold was one of them.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Jerusalem is a bit of a building site when they get there, if he does genuinely go. It had been very badly smashed up by this mad caliph and by the Fatimids generally, but there'd also been a series of earthquakes in the 1030s. So if they got there, a lot of the stuff was in ruins.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
The sagas say that Harold is there as part of this escort, and he, and I quote, generously gave donations, so much gold that no one knows the amount. The sagas also say he'd left all his gold in Constantinople before he left. So those things can't both be true.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And given that he's saving all this money in his saver account, I think it's highly unlikely that he traveled with enormous quantities of gold. Snorri Sturluson in King Harold's Saga says, Harold went to the Jordan and bathed in the water in the manner of all pilgrims. Might be true, mightn't it? Yeah, there's absolutely no reason to believe that wouldn't be true. That's exactly what he would do.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
But his longest posting, so probably after this, was to Sicily. And this seems to have been from about 1038 to 1041. And Sicily, of course, as you will note, Tom, is one of the great strategic prizes in the Mediterranean. And we did the series about Carthage versus Rome. Remember, you were taking us through all the battles there. I mean, basically, that hasn't changed at all.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Sicily is very fertile. It's very rich. It's perfectly placed. It's been under Islamic rule for, what, 140 years, something like that? The Kalbid emirs, who are based in Palermo, and they're the people who introduced oranges, lemons, sugar, silk, and all sorts of exciting irrigation systems. We do love an irrigation system. On the rest is history. Do we not? Oh, I love it. I love it.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Can't get it. I mean, history is basically the story of irrigation systems, isn't it? In a very real sense, yes. Yes. So the Roman army landed probably about 10,000 troops under George Maniarches, nine feet tall. Must have been very displeased to see Harold Hardtruck. Yeah, I know. Now, this is where the sagas really get stuck in. They have some great fun with all this.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So to give you a sense of the sort of stories they tell, we've got bird action. So Harold gets the Varangians to collect birds. They fix bits of burning sulfur to their feet and send them out over the town. You know, they land on all the thatched roofs, the graves have been flamed. The slight drawback with this story is that it's been told about every commander in history.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Well, but more specifically, Dominic, it's been told about St. Olga. Of Kiev. Of Kiev, who's the grandmother of Vladimir. And she was the very first Kievan ruler to be baptized. Right. And she played exactly that trick, didn't she? And I think it was the Drevlians. It was. It was the Drevlians. So I think you can see a certain influence there, I would say. Well, hold on.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
You could say, therefore, the story is clearly made up. This is just the Olga of Kiev story. Or you could say... He's been influenced because he's been in Kiev and he's picked up these important military techniques involving birds. You could say that. Then there's tunnel drama. So this is outside a town near Mount Etna.
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553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And the sagas, which always paint maniarchies with his nine feet of flesh as an absolute fool, he says, oh, we can never take this town. And Harold says, no, if you allow me the loot when I get in, I shall show you. And he and the Varangians dig a tunnel all the way from a nearby ravine They burst out of the tunnel into the great hall of the defenders while they're having a feast.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Who would have thought it? Slaughter them all, throw open the gates. That was good killing that day. And my favorite one is the coffin ploy. Oh, this is brilliant. This is the Syracuse one. This is in Syracuse. So they can't take this town. The Romans don't know how to take this town. He says, I got a brilliant wheeze. They spread the word. Harold is very seriously ill. Then the word spreads.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
His fingers found a broken piece of wood. But the monster was faster. Suddenly it was on him, its horrible coils winding around his chest, pulling him down towards the water, squeezing the very last breaths from his lungs. So that was J.R.R. Tolkien in his brilliant book, Adventures in Time, Fury of the Vikings, a chapter entitled The Return of the King.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
He's dead. And the Varangians send messengers into the city where there are Christian churches as well as mosques. And they say, look, we'd love to give our commander a church funeral. I know we've been besieging you, but would it be okay if we came in? And the local churchmen, very kindly people, say, oh, yes, okay, as long as you can only bring 12 men in to bury this guy.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
But Tom, it would astound you to know this is all a cunning trick. And actually, Harold is not dead. He's one of the 12 pallbearers. And they're all slightly implausibly wearing armor and carrying swords under their silk mourning clothes. And they're all 12 foot. Yeah. So at this point, actually, his great friends in the Varangians, they're also part of the pallbearers.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And these are two splendid men called Ulf and Haldor. They're both from Iceland. They are described as men of exceeding strength and superb warriors. And the amazing thing is the three of them map perfectly onto Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli from the Lord of the Rings. So Ulf, we are told, a man of great understanding, clever in conversation, active and brave, and with all true and sincere.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So he's clearly Legolas. Whereas Haldor, very stout and strong, he was not a man of many words, but short in conversation, told his opinion bluntly and was obstinate and hard. So he's Gimli. Yeah, he's a dwarf. So Dominic, so they're both from Iceland. Yeah. Do you think that this makes the story less or more plausible?
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So in other words, is Snorri Stelarsson kind of making it up and making them be Iceland because he's an Icelander? Or is it preserving authentic memories handed down by the... The people of Iceland. There's no doubt in my mind that this is preserving authentic memories that have never been embellished and are scrupulously accurate. So the story that follows is true.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
They get inside the gatehouse with this coffin and then apparently they drop the coffin. They blow a trumpet. The coffin blocks the gate. So then the rest of the army can pile in after them. There's incredibly fierce fighting. All three of them are wounded. Harold's standard bearer is killed. And Harold says to Haldor, pick up the standard, pick up the standard.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
But Haldor is fighting off a dozen men at that point. And he says to Harold, let the devil carry the standard for you, you coward. And Harold... Do you want to do Harold's laugh? He gives a great belly laugh, doesn't he? He does. You are talkative today, Helder, but fearless all the same. And then he smacks off another head with his axe. This is exactly what happened.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
I'm afraid I might have broken the microphone with that mighty laugh. Yeah, I think you've broken the sound barrier with that. Now, the sagas say that as a result of all these wheezes, they managed to take Sicily. And people can gauge the accuracy of the sagas by the fact that, in fact, Sicily was never taken. And the Romans ended up with just a pitiful foothold in the northeast.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And actually, Sicily didn't... Here's the irony. Sicily didn't fall till the end of the century, and it fell to the Normans. Because it does fall to people of Scandinavian descent. Yeah, but not these guys.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
So we've been talking about this in our previous series, about the Normans, adventurers, who've been going to the south of Italy at the beginning of the 11th century and building their castles there. employing their armor, their horses in a predatory manner, and they start looking at Sicily. Amazingly, they launch an invasion. There is another famous bird-related story in this.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
In 1066, Roger de Hauteville, the great who will become the ruler of Sicily, defeats a Muslim army, and the Muslims have brought along carrier pigeons And Roger takes these carrier pigeons and he orders the paper that they'd been carrying to be dipped in the blood of the Muslim dead, given back to the carrier pigeons, who then fly back to Palermo with news of the great Muslim defeat.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And the Normans then capture Palermo. Wow. So there's a lot of bird-related action in this episode. People of Scandinavian descent interfering with birds for military purposes. Yes, it's the theme. So they don't take Sicily, but everyone says that Harold has done brilliantly. And when he gets back to Constantinople, he is, we are told, promoted to an elite bodyguard of the emperor.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
Manglovites, as it's called, and he has a special golden sword. And then the emperor, Michael IV, who you may remember from the previous episode was the emperor's toy boy, who has basically strangled his predecessor to become emperor. He's going off to fight the Bulgars in 1040. And we know, we really do know that he takes Harold Hardrada with him.
The Rest Is History
553. The Last Viking: Warrior of the New Rome (Part 2)
And obviously, Dominic, it wasn't really J.R.R. Tolkien, was it? It was you! It was an even better writer. It was an even better writer. Yeah. And you are describing there one of the countless thrilling scenes in the epic life of Harold Hardrada. fugitive from Norway, mercenary captain for the Grand Prince of Kiev.
The Rest Is History
535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com.
The Rest Is History
535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
So if you were pointing purely on merit... Tiberius is obviously, obviously the best qualified, the outstanding candidate to succeed Augustus when the time comes as emperor, as master of the Roman world. But we know from Suetonius' account that Augustus basically tries to do everything possible possible
The Rest Is History
535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
Not everything possible to avoid it, but he's constantly looking at other candidates from his own family. So Tiberius is his stepson, not his son. And what Augustus really wants is his own flesh and blood. So his grandsons to succeed him, because he's had a daughter, hasn't he, Augustus, called Julia, who is not his daughter by Livia, but by a previous wife. Exactly.
The Rest Is History
535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
And he wants her children to succeed him, not this guy who's somebody else's son. Right.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
A few days after his arrival on Capri, Tiberius was enjoying his seclusion when a fisherman unexpectedly came up to him and presented him with an enormous mullet, whereupon, alarmed that someone had been able to negotiate the most inaccessible reaches of the island by climbing a pathless cliff, he ordered that the man's face should be scrubbed with the fish.
The Rest Is History
535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
But in reality, they die of natural causes.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
Okay. So he's had the most fantastic apprenticeship to become emperor. And then we get into the stories in Suetonius' account. We get into the story of how Tiberius actually does. And actually, it's not all attacking people with fish. Perving on islands and stuff. A lot of it is he's actually really good at being emperor, and he's a very proficient and serious and impressive one.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
I only thank my lucky stars, cried out the fisherman as he was enduring this punishment, that I didn't bring Caesar the huge lobster that I also caught. Whereupon Tiberius gave orders that the lobster should be used to grate the man's face to shreds. So what a shameful moment in Roman history this is.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
Right. And that takes us back, obviously, to that introduction, the business with the fishermen, which we will come to. Take the cruelty first. I recently reminded myself reading your excellent translation of Suetonius, that he particularly targets his rivals. So the other descendants of Augustus, the rest of the family, people who might be a plausible threat to him.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
And he does that actually quite late, doesn't he? So he's been emperor for 15 years. He's actually been off on his pleasure island on Capri for two years. And now he decides, okay, I'm going to get rid of all Augustus's other descendants. That seems a bit weird to me.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
The only one left is this youngest one, Gaius Caligula. And of course, we will be coming to him next week. So not content with that, according to Suetonius, Tiberius then becomes even more savage and brutal, doesn't he? Because there's been a failed coup against him, hasn't there? His former right-hand man, a guy called Sejanus, who has supposedly been carrying out this reign of terror in Rome...
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
turns against Tiberius. He's accused of leading the coup. Tiberius gets rid of him. And then Tiberius just goes mad and starts killing everybody. Is that basically the gist of it?
The Rest Is History
535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
It's a notorious incident in the life of the Emperor Tiberius, who, of course, ruled from AD 14 to AD 37. And it's recorded in Suetonius's great biography of the Caesars. now translated by our very own Tom Holland. So, Tom, this is a very famous story.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
I'm actually struggling to work out how physically that would work. But it's fair to say that either Tiberius or Suetonius has a very strange imagination. Do you think that's fair, Tom?
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
No, it gets worse, doesn't it?
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
It's the story that sort of captures the capriciousness and the cruelty of the aged Tiberius as he sits there on his pleasure island in the Bay of Naples. So what's going on here? Unpack this story for us. So...
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
All right. Well, let's explore that a little bit more after the break. Tiberius held the rule of earth and sea for 23 years without once permitting so much as the merest spark of war to smoulder in the lands of either the Greeks or the barbarians. And he bestowed upon the world both peace and the blessings of peace right the way up to his dying day.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
And he did so what is more with an ungrudging generosity of spirit. He was a man of deep common sense, the most skilled in penetrating to the heart of a person's secret intentions of all his contemporaries, whom he surpassed in wisdom as in rank. No one on both sides of his family had a nobler ancestry. No one was more sagacious or better read. So that's not Suetonius.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
That's Philo of Alexandria, who is a Judean philosopher. And that's an obvious corrective to all the stuff about minnows and assaulting people with lobsters and killing all these people and whatnot. Now, Philo obviously is not as close to the circles of power as Suetonius would later be. So Philo is from Alexandria. But he'd been to Rome, hadn't he? He'd been there a year after Tiberius's death.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
So he might well have spoken to people who knew Tiberius. And, you know, he's not completely to be discounted. So, Tom, what's going on here? Why does that account differ so much from the lurid kind of, I mean, I was going to say Hello Magazine, but of course it's not Hello Magazine. It's far, far more scandalous than anything in Hello Magazine than that version of Tiberius.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
Well, in your introduction to the 12 Caesars, which I was talking about in the last episode we did, about how interesting it is, you make the point that the biography of Tiberius is the most unstable and the most unsatisfying in some ways of all the biographies in Suetonius' book. Yeah.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
because he never strikes a balance between, I mean, he just, you know, first we have all the stuff that says Tiberius is brilliant. He's doing loads of stuff with grain. And then we have all the stuff that says he's absolutely terrible. He's throwing people off cliffs.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
But there's no attempt by Suetonius really to make any psychological sense of the fact that you've got these two different versions of the same man's character.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
So that idea that you get from Suetonius that Tiberius is a man with two faces, that there's the good Tiberius and the bad Tiberius, that's not then psychologically implausible, is it? If he's a man torn between two very different roles that he feels from birth he has been appointed to play.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
One of them is the Claudian, the heir to the Republic, and the other is the heir to Augustus, who's basically going to inherit this autocracy. Yeah. So it would make sense then that he's somebody who is himself a very complicated, torn, possibly quite unhappy man.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
So just to remind everybody, Tiberius is the second Roman emperor. Augustus has been the first, and now Tiberius has succeeded. So he spends time in Rome, and then he arrives in Capri, and he settles there in the year 27, doesn't he? When he's quite old.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
So to give a modern analogy, which will appeal to our American listeners, it's a little bit like very, very senior American politicians who accept the vice presidency and are therefore reduced to just sort of hanging around in the president's shadow. But it's that, but magnified to an extraordinary degree. The Romans take that very seriously, don't they? The idea of father and son.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
And if he's been reduced to the level of Augustus' son and heir, he's not nothing, but he's a pale shadow of what he once was.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
By the standards of most rulers in history, not tyrants, but most rulers of any kind, that's a pretty meagre death toll. I mean, that's hardly the work of a sort of blood-crazed maniac, is it?
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
I mean, it's not Stalin.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
You could put your coat on near a statue of Augustus. No one would cut your head off. Exactly. You could go and have a pee with one of his coins in your purse and you're not going to be arrested. And as for the people, so he does despise the people, doesn't he? But that's the norm for a Roman patrician, right? Goes to the territory. Of course, you're going to look down on the people.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
That's completely natural and normal.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
And to be fair, Tom, his reign is 23 years long, and it is a reign of great stability, prosperity, and above all, peace. Think about all the civil wars, the chaos on the frontiers that is to come in Roman history. Yeah, Tiberius's reign is a kind of oasis of stability compared with what before and after.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
How then do we reconcile that with the attacking people with fish, throwing them off the cliffs, interfering with children, all of this stuff that is so shocking and horrible?
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
But hold on, how do you reconcile that then with the
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
So actually what these stories are, therefore, they're almost, maybe this is too simplistic, but they're part of a literary formula that is establishing Tiberius as somebody who is, I was about to say, he's not exactly more than human. But he is maybe a degree more than human. He is exceptional. He has that very kind of unsettling sense of the divine about him.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
Because, of course, he's part of the divine family, isn't he? The imperial family.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
Right, that's a big claim. So Tiberius died on the 16th of March, 37, and he was 77 years old. And he was succeeded by that little boy that we talked about earlier, who he had spared, the brother of Nero and Drusus, who was Gaius, who's better known by the nickname Little Boots, Caligula. And Caligula, I mean, if you think Tiberius is a good character...
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
My words, we're going to have some fun with Caligula. And the good news for members of the Rest is History Club, Tom, our very own Praetorian Guard, is that they can listen to that episode on Caligula right away. If you want to join the Rest is History Club, it is, of course, at therestishistory.com. But if you don't, we will be back on Monday with...
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
Well, was he the most blood crazed depraved maniac in ancient history or is the reality more complicated? I have a terrible feeling that Tom is going to say it's a little bit more complicated, but we will find out on Monday. Time will tell. Yeah, time will tell. See you then. Bye bye. Bye bye.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
No waiting in line with people who are sick with who knows what. Thanks to Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon One Medical, healthcare just got less painful.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
So there are sort of two things I would say that people who know anything about Tiberius know about Tiberius. One is he's up to... Terrible, terrible sexual misconduct on this island, which we'll get into.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
And then the other is that while that is happening, there's a kind of reign of terror in Rome by the head of the Praetorian Guard, this guy called Sejanus, who basically has deluded Tiberius and has secretly kind of taken all his power and is killing everybody in Rome.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
So Tiberius is simultaneously a sort of depraved old goat, but also a stupid old fool who's got no idea kind of what's going on and in whose name all these terrible things are happening. And I guess the question is, because Tiberius, we know that Tiberius was a serious person. Very serious. That he was a very, I mean, he was genuinely very serious. Yeah, wasn't he?
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
Quite humorless. Not humorless. But he has a sort of dual reputation, doesn't he?
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
Yeah. We know that he's regarded as a very proficient military commander, that he's a serious politician. You know, when he succeeds Augustus's emperor, nobody thinks it's bizarre or outlandish that such a man is in command of the Roman world.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
So the question is, is all this stuff about attacking people with fish and doing terrible things to people in swimming pools, is all this just spin and mad propaganda? Is it fake news? Or does it get to some truth about Tiberius' character or about the nature of imperial power and power corrupting? And I guess that's the... question at the heart of this episode, isn't it?
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
And what's even worse for Tiberius, or better, depending on your viewpoint, is is that both his mother and his father descended from branches of the Claudian family, aren't they? So the Kennedys have been going for 200 years, and both of your parents are from different branches of that family. So he is born two years after the Ides of March.
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
Everything has kicked off, civil war, and actually his father, for all his prestige and all the grandeur of his name, has backed the wrong side, hasn't he, in the civil war after Julius Caesar's assassinations?
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535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
Yeah, a quick question. So are we to believe that Augustus has genuinely fallen in love with this bloke's wife? It's a genuine love match. I mean, that's the only explanation, isn't it, really?
The Rest Is History
551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Harold, eldest in birth as in wisdom, was by the king's favour appointed to the earldom in his father's place.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
So to pursue that thread, the issue for Henry VIII, of course, was that he was setting himself against the king of Spain, the pope and so on and so forth. The issue for Edward is that he is setting himself against, in the short term, a more dangerous opponent because that, of course, is Godwin, the most powerful person in the kingdom. So, well, he does have allies, doesn't he?
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
I mean, that's one thing we should say because there are other magnates who don't like Godwin.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
Best thing that's ever happened in Coventry.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
And then what about the Normans? Because Edward, of course, has spent so many years in Normandy and he brings some Normans with him when he comes, doesn't he?
The Rest Is History
551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
And last time we were talking about Duke William of Normandy, the villain of this story. And today we're on somebody who I've always... Held a candle for. Held a candle for, exactly, exactly. Do you see yourself reflected in his character and his prowess? The terrible face of a lion, endowed with mildness of temper and a ready understanding. He could bear contradiction well.
The Rest Is History
551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
So to some degree, the Norman, I mean, people always say, what if the Norman conquest never happened? But the integration of the English and the Norman worlds has already started long before 1066.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
Isn't that interesting that they're already anticipating the possibility of... that, you know, neighbouring predators might make a move.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
I mean, it's all adding up. It's all there, isn't it? Yeah, it's uncanny. It's uncanny. So this is actually from a biography of Edward the Confessor, not of Harold. That's right. So Harold is a supporting character in this book. Yes.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
Right. So here we are at the end of 1051. The Godwins, it looks like they're out, they're down. But I guess the issue for Edward now is that by kicking out the Godwins, he has thrown his lot in completely with Seward and Leofric. And he's in their power to some extent, isn't he? I mean, basically because there is now no counterbalance to them.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
But some historians do doubt it though, don't they? I mean, some historians are like, well, we cannot be certain what the arrangement was And it may have been much less, you know, he may have made noises, but not been definitive. I mean, the fact that it's so vague in the sources.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
Well, I mean, all of the people, almost all the people we talk about spend time in exile, don't they? And make astonishing comebacks.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
Now, there are 15 years to go. The clock is ticking towards the point at which these combustible circumstances will ignite, and we will speed up that process after the break. Beyond the walls of London, beside the River Thames, there stood a monastery dedicated to St Peter. It was an insignificant place, and under its abbot, only a small community of monks served Christ.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
The king, therefore, devoted as he was to God, fixed his attention on the spot. for not only was it close to a rich and famous city, but it was also a delightful spot, surrounded with fertile land and green fields and near the main channel of the river, which bore abundant merchandise of wares of every kind for sale from the whole world to the town on its banks.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
Right. Or that bloke Harold Harefoot. I mean, make up a nickname later if necessary.
The Rest Is History
551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
So that's an account in the life of King Edward about how Edward the Confessor came to build a great abbey or a minster, as the Anglo-Saxons called it, to the west of London. So it's to the west of London and it's a minster. And guess what they end up calling it? Westminster. Duh. Wow. Amazing. So, Tom, this is the origin of Westminster Abbey.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
And not only that, but because if she paints Edward as this sort of, you know, he's thinking about God and his mind is on higher things and all of that. I mean, people, yeah, they're like, oh, brilliant. But it sort of emphasises that her family is, Godwin and his sons have been the people who've actually been making the machine work and keeping England going.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
And he chokes to death. But there's no suspicion here of foul play, is there? I mean, this just seems like an occupational hazard. Are they just eating enormous amounts of ill-cooked meat? Very tough meat.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
But there is a bit of a balance of power thing going on here, isn't there? Because Harold had been Earl of East Anglia, but now he's taken over the kind of premier job, which is Earl of Wessex. So he's got the heartland region. But... He's replaced in East Anglia by a guy called Elfgar, who is the son of Leofric. So you've got Leofric in Mercia. You've got Elfgar in East Anglia.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
You have this boat, Seawood in Northumbria and Harold in Wessex. And Edward can kind of play them off against each other, presumably. There's a bit of a balance.
The Rest Is History
551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
So we're talking today about this family, the Godwinsons, who we left out of the previous episodes because we wanted to do them all today. And they're obviously massive players in the story of 1066 because we've already had three members of the family. We've had Harold, we've had Tostig, and we have had Edith.
The Rest Is History
551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
And behind them, hence the name Godwinson, is this bloke Godwin, who is not massively well-known, I would say, in English history today, but is a titanic figure. in English history in the 11th century. So tell us a bit about Godwin and why his name carries such significance to people in the 11th century.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
And to make matters worse, he's put taxes up, hasn't he? So people are not happy about that.
The Rest Is History
551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
Isn't there an interesting shadow story here in the Norman Conquest, which is we always think of it as kind of Normans versus Anglo-Saxons and Danes. But actually, there's this rivalry between these two families, the family of Leofric and the family of Godwin that runs through. I mean, we're talking about decades of English history leading up to the Norman Conquest.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
Lovely to get the Salisbury area in.
The Rest Is History
551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
Well, we will be back next week with a new series, a two-part series, Looking North, and we'll be looking at that somebody else. We will be telling the story of, I think, the most thrilling, the most terrifying, and the most glamorous man that the Viking world ever produced.
The Rest Is History
551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
We'll be going to Norway, to Eastern Europe, to Kiev, to Constantinople as we follow the life and adventures of the last of the Vikings, Harold Hardrada. And you can, of course, hear both of those episodes at once by signing up to the Rest Is History Club at therestishistory.com.
The Rest Is History
551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
In the strength of his body and mind, he stood forth among the people as a second Judas Maccabeus, a true friend of his people and his country. He wielded his father's powers even more actively and walked in his ways, that is, in patience and mercy and with kindness to men of goodwill.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
So in that sense, I guess they are really good embodiments of Anglo-Saxon England because, of course, for centuries, Anglo-Saxon England has had a huge Danish component to it, hence the place names and the people's personal names and the Thor's hammers and all of those kinds of things. So just on Godwin, you could say about Godwin, yes, he's a symbol of upward mobility.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
He's also a symbol of collaboration with an occupier.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
But disturbers of the peace, thieves and robbers, this champion of the law, threatened with the terrible face of our lion. Well practised he was in endless fatigues and doing without sleep and food, and endowed with mildness of temper and a more ready understanding. He could bear contradiction well, not readily revealing or retaliating, never, I think, on a fellow citizen or compatriot.
The Rest Is History
551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
But maybe there's an explanation for this, which is that Edward, as we will discuss, has been in Normandy for the great majority of his adult life. So he doesn't have the affinity, the connections, the networks in England. Whereas Godwin, he may hate Godwin and he may think... I think it's completely reasonable that you might have a grudge against somebody who tried and mutilated your brother.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
But Godwin does have all the patronage networks, all the connections, and it's presumably hard to do without him.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
But obviously the biggest symbol of this is who Edward marries, because when he arrives, he needs a wife. And January 1043, he gets married. And three months later, his wife is crowned queen. And the identity of this woman is Godwin's daughter, Edith. I mean, you could hardly have a more powerful, you know, physical, visual symbol of the reconciliation of the two men.
The Rest Is History
551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
Indeed, the fault of rashness or levity is not one that anybody could charge against him. So Tom Holland, the name of this paragon, this patriotic icon. Dominic Sandbrook. This hero, this enduring hero of the English people, a man worthy to stand as England's last true-born king. It is, of course, Harold Godwinson. Earl of Wessex, the man who falls at the Battle of Hastings.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
There is one issue. which is there's one thing anybody who's ever heard of Henry VIII knows there is one thing a king has to do, and Edward does not do it because they don't have any children.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
Don't believe it. I just don't believe that story. I think if she's that beautiful, you'd overlook your animus against the father. In fact, the animus against the father might be an incentive.
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551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
Tom, if we adopted that attitude, I mean, our podcast would be about 20 minutes shorter by and large.
The Rest Is History
551. The Road to 1066: Countdown to Conquest (Part 4)
We normally say that after we've spent the previous eight minutes. I agree. I agree.
The Rest Is History
543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com.
The Rest Is History
543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And that does not go down well with the other people in the expedition. As Fréz Simon says, the people were in such a state of ill humour that they almost mutinied. And this is before they've left. This is before they've left. Anyway, they set off. After a few weeks, they reach a river called the Maragnon, which is the main source of the Amazon.
The Rest Is History
543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
So that runs from the Andes, sort of down and eastwards, deep into the jungle. So if they follow it, they will be swept along ultimately towards... The Atlantic. Yes, they're going from west to east. Yeah. From left to right, exactly. I mean, it's a heck of a way. It's 4,000 miles. Yeah. They're not intending to go to the Atlantic by any means.
The Rest Is History
543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
They think they'll go into Amazonia and there'll be a sort of Aztec-style kingdom. Yeah. And they can seize its gold, make themselves the masters of it, then go back to Peru and say, brilliant, we've done it. And so they're not particularly worried about how they're going to go to get back coming upriver against the current.
The Rest Is History
543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
They have not thought this through, I think it's fair to say, because we shall see quite quickly they start to, some of them say, how are we getting back? Yeah. I think for some of them, it probably is always an option that they may have to continue all the way and then loop around the top of South America. And we shall return to this idea.
The Rest Is History
543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Anyway, after a while, they find their first native villages. Fray Simon reports that, you know, the people were very impressive. They had woven cloth sort of shirts and things. So they had, you know, this is not a totally unsophisticated civilization by any means, but they don't find any gold. And the Spaniards become increasingly restless. Surprise, surprise.
The Rest Is History
543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
As the weeks go by and they go deeper and deeper into the jungle, there's a lot of muttering that Ossua is more interested in dallying with Doña Inés than finding gold. There's no hint of gold. What's going on? Clearly, Ossua finds it very difficult to impose his authority on all these hundreds of kind of ex-cons.
The Rest Is History
543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Yeah, and he has a series of lieutenants that he employs who are constantly bickering and feuding among themselves. I mean, these are people who... It's not a military expedition. These are not people who are used to following orders. These are people who are used to being... They're mercenaries. They're kind of adventurers. I don't want to speak out of turn, Tom.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
I feel that you would be very uncomfortable in this environment. I wouldn't like it at all. No. I'd stand on the margins wringing my hands. I mean, I've been on tour with you when there was just four of us. Yeah. And I just can't see you enjoying this atmosphere. No. The sweat and the lack of shaving, if nothing else, because you're always a clean-shaven man. I am.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Anyway, they proceed down the river. Fray Simon says of Ursula, he's too merciful, and at times his acts savoured of weakness. But then he does that classic thing that quite weak leaders do, which is from time to time he kind of lashes out and inflicts severe punishments on people randomly. And so people say, well, you don't know where you stand with him. You know, he's not consistent. Yeah.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
So they're not happy. They capture an Indian girl at one point and they say, these people that Oriana met who were called the Amagua, you know, all these years ago when he went down the Amazon, where are they? And she says, well, I've never heard of these people. And they realise with a sense of horror, we could be hundreds of miles from where these people live.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
If El Dorado exists, it could be 2,000 miles away.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Yeah, no sense of anything really, but just the sort of the green vastness and the sound of the snakes slithering in the undergrowth and strange monkeys screaming. Screaming in the night. You know, that's basically what... Sleuths. Snoring. Exactly.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Now, after a while, this other brigantine, their shipwrights were clearly massively incompetent because this other brigantine springs a leak and they have to move everything out of there onto these rafts. So the German film version bears very little resemblance to reality. But the one thing it does have is a lot of raft action. Yeah. And that is true to life because they are on these rafts.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
It starts pouring with rain. It's in the rainy season. By Christmas, 1560, it's the rainy season. It's constantly raining. They've got no shelter. They're soaked. They've run out of food. They're really miserable. And they are totally and utterly lost. And this is when Aguirre really enters the story. He and one of his mates...
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
who's a man called Sal Duendo, are going around and muttering to the others. First of all, Aguirre says, this business about El Dorado is clearly absolute total tosh. Like, this is just a stupid children's story. We should go back to Peru and just start rampaging through Peru and steal the gold of Peru. if we really want gold that badly. And secondly, he says, Ashura is a terrible leader.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
He spends all his time with his mistress, Donya Ines, who's basically the real mistress of the expedition. He is selfish, and I quote, an enemy of giving away and a friend to receiving, which I quite like as an expression. And he is going to force us to stay in the jungle until we're grey-haired old men. And, you know, if we don't act...
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
We're going to get deeper and deeper, and we're going to be just completely lost, and we'll all die. I mean, he's got a point with both, hasn't he? I mean, he's not wrong there. Aguirre is a madman in many ways, and we shall see. He does behave unbelievably badly, even by Restor's history standards. But in this, he's not actually wrong.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
So when he goes around saying this, people say, well, who's going to be in charge? And Aguirre, to his credit, he doesn't say myself. He says, there's a young nobleman who's traveling with us called Don Fernando de Guzman. His birth and merits are worthy of greater honors.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And he says to Guzman, he goes to Guzman, he says to him, look, if we get rid of Ursua and you take over the leadership of the expedition, Philip II may well initially be annoyed, but when he hears the circumstances, he would consider it a good service and he will specially reward you.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And he says to Don Fernando at this point, look, we won't kill Ursula, we'll just leave him by the side of the bank or something. I mean, by the way, I mean, that would be effectively to kill him, I imagine. I mean, it's not like he's going to make a new life for himself in the jungle.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Anyway, Don Fernando, as I think you can expect with a man who goes around calling himself Don Fernando, he's a very vain man. Right. And he is, and I quote, swelled up by the wind of ambition. He gave thanks for what they offered him and assented to all their projects. There was something in the air that night. There was. A star so bright. Alan Partridge's son is called Fernando. Yeah.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
I imagine these people as being very similar. Right, so Don Fernando says, right, I'm in. Okay, let's get this plot started. And at that point, Aguirre says, yeah, there's one slight change, actually. We probably will kill a sewer after all. And Don Fernando is shocked by this, but he's in too deep. He's implicated in the plot, so he can't back out.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
I would have hardened up by this point. You and I are completely on the same page on this. So on New Year's Day, 1561, they're camped in this village by the side of the river. Assua has sent some of his key lieutenants to scout ahead, and that gives his opponents the perfect opportunity.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And as darkness falls, a group of Aguirre's men gather outside Assua's hut, and they find him lying in his hammock talking to a pageboy. And he says to them, sort of in a friendly but suspicious way, Caballeros, what seek ye here at this hour? And they kind of, I imagine there's a lot of cackling. Well, They draw their knives and swords, plunge them in, and that is the end of Pedro de Ossua.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
He is dead. And then they start shouting. It's interesting what they shout, actually. They start, liberty, liberty, long live the king, the tyrant is dead. So at this point, they're trying to dress it up as an act of loyalty to Philip II. They've had a bad leader, they've got rid, and the king will be very happy. Sic semper tyrannis. Exactly.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
The camp is in total uproar because people can hear the shouting and screaming. They butcher another of Ursula's lieutenants, who's a man called Vargas, who's come out in his cotton armour. So this is one thing the German film gets wrong. They're all wearing enormous metal armour in the German film, but in reality they'd have worn sort of Aztec or Inca-style cotton padded quilted armour.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
But the metal makes them look sweatier. I mean, it's good for the visuals, I think. And wearing a quilt in a film just looks ridiculous.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
No, no, no. So then, of course, with staggering predictability, they immediately break into the wine stores. They all drink this wine and get absolutely wasted. They round up Asu as other mates. They kill them as well. They don't kill Doña Inés.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
So she's just hanging around in her own hut. She's not mentioned at this point, but we know she's mentioned later on. So she's just presumably quaking in her hut, very anxious.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
I have to tell the listeners, if they've already formed a great attachment to her as a character, the second half will make challenging listening. So they then assemble the next day with massive hangovers. And Don Fernando is the new leader.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And he says, I've decided we'll continue the search for El Dorado because when we find all this gold, the king will forgive the murders and he will give us handsome rewards. So we should draw up a document explaining... The Spanish are so legalistic, aren't they? They did this all the time in the conquest of Mexico. Do you remember when we did that series?
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
They're always drawing up requirements and reading out legal documents to people who don't understand them and things.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
I mean, it just seems a bit odd. There's lots of them. Remember, they travel with 400 people. I suppose they think the news will come out.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And because some of the people there were not party to the plot and perhaps a little bit displeased about it, so they think it's better to have an excuse. So they draw up this legalistic document. Don Fernando signs first, and then Aguirre steps up, and he signs his name as follows. He writes, Lope de Aguirre, the traitor. Wow. And there's great gasps and shock, and Aguirre laughs.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And how does he laugh, Dominic? I imagine a demonic laugh at this point. Ha ha ha! I'll do a variety of laughs later on. There'll be a lot of opportunities. That was terrifying. He says, you have killed the king's governor, one who represented his royal person, clothed with royal powers. We have all been traitors. We have all been a party to this mutiny.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
No. See, again, there is an alternative explanation, which is the only sane person in a world of fools.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Yeah. Well, because of what he says next, he then says to the assemble company, this business about El Dorado is demented. Even if we found it, there is no way Philip II would allow us to keep it. He would send in viceroys and governors and bureaucrats, It's madness to be wasting our time on this. We should go back to Peru. There's a load of treasure there.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Let's kill everybody in Peru and take the treasure. That's just a much more sensible way of proceeding. There's a huge argument. The council breaks up and this issue is unresolved. So they set off downstream again, deeper and deeper into the Amazon. Now, by this point, Aguirre has clearly realised what perhaps some of the others have not yet woken up to.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
There is no way, actually, that they're going to be able to get back upstream. Because by now the current is getting stronger and stronger. It's really strong. You know, the Amazon, these are big rivers. There is no way with these terrible rafts that they're going to be able to go back the other way. You know, the more I hear about him... The more you like him.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Well, we'll see if you can maintain that position in the second half.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
So they now discover they've got massive holes in their rafts. They have to stop by the side of the river and build new ships. That takes them three months. I mean, day after day, hammering and stuff, you know, cutting down trees to make nails and planks and things. They've got no food. They're living off wild fruit. And I have to say their own horses because they had horses on these rafts.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
So they're now eating them. And Aguirre actually is quite pleased about this, because he thinks, if we eat all our animals, there's no way we can sort of settle down or be tempted to capture towns and, you know, all this stuff. We'll just have to keep going all the way to the Atlantic and get out of here, which is basically what I want to do.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And it's holding a mirror up to the carnage of the original 16th century expedition. Exactly. It's very like Apocalypse Now in that sense. So they shot it in the early 70s, as you say. They shot it on location in the Peruvian Amazon. And Herzog at one point threatened to shoot Kinski, his lead actor, and then turn the gun on himself.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And I think it's about this point that the mood really, really starts to darken. What do you mean, starts to darken? Yeah, because that was all prelude. That was all quite jolly. Because previously, when they'd got on reasonably well with the native population, they had done a bit of trading. Of course, there'd been a bit of violence, but nothing completely off the scale.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Now, there's a lot of fighting. And basically, the word spreads that the Spaniards are bad guys. And whenever they go out to look for food, they're often ambushed by Indians. There's also a huge row, one of endless huge rows inside the camp. Some of Don Fernando's friends say, look, you actually need to get rid of Aguirre. But he doesn't have the guts. He demotes him as second in command.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And the problem is, Aguirre, as we've established, is a very vengeful man. So Aguirre just notes this slight, he hides his fury and resentment, but he's determined one day that he will get his revenge. So we come to March 1561. Don Fernando and Aguirre call another meeting. You can sense that the mood is getting very paranoid.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
They begin by demanding that every man pledge his loyalty to Don Fernando by God and the Virgin. And then Aguirre addresses the men and he says, look, we've been talking, the plan has changed. We are going to forget about El Dorado now.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
We are going to seize the wealth of Peru and we will crown Don Fernando Guzman, our general, by the grace of God, Lord and Prince of Peru, the Maine and Chile, to whom by right these kingdoms belong. Wow, there's a twist. He says, we forswear our allegiance to the king of Spain. And Aguirre makes this huge pronouncement.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
He says, from this day forward, I pledge myself to my prince, king and natural lord, Don Fernando, and I swear and promise to be his faithful vassal and to die in his defence. So that's a death sentence, isn't it? And then he turns to Fernando. He bows. And in front of everybody, he kisses his hand as the new Prince of Peru.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And Tom, I hate to tell you, but with that traitor's kiss, the real nightmare begins. Brilliant, Dominic.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Guess what? The clock is ticking for Don Fernando, I think it's fair to say, Tom. So he's the Prince of Peru, but they're lost in the middle of the jungle, so it's fair to say his title is purely nominal at this point. And Aguirre says, look, this is how we're going to get out. I've got my plan. We'll finish building these brigantines, these ships.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
When they're ready, we will sail all the way down the Amazon, another 2,000 miles or whatever to the Atlantic. Dead easy. Then we will head to an island called Margarita, which is off the coast of Venezuela. There is a Spanish base. We will take that base. We'll get supplies. We'll recruit people there. Then, he says, we'll sail up to Panama. We'll seize the capital.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And that's sort of been reported as he was basically forcing Kinski to film scenes at gunpoint, which I think is a slight exaggeration. But the filming of it was demented. But that actually, of course, reflected the subject matter, which is, as you say, this expedition. Yeah. That's very, very Heart of Darkness, actually. The 16th century expedition.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
We'll kill all the royal officials. We'll take control of the Spanish fleet based in Panama. We will rally the colonists of Central America. And we will cross the Isthmus of Panama and launch a seaborne invasion of Peru and seize the gold of Peru. Now, if you were standing in the middle of the jungle, soaked with rain, you've only eaten kind of overripe fruit for the past month and a horse.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And Dominic, I'm imagining a lot of leeches. Yeah, loads of leeches. When someone outlined this plan to you, which involves a lot of travel... A lot of capturing of implausible capturing of fleets, crossing of isthmuses and multiple South American countries. You might say, I find this implausible. You might equally say, well, what's the alternative? Yeah, well, that's what they say.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
They say, fine, let's give it a go. Why not? What's the worst that could happen? I think it's fair to say they haven't really thought that through because the worst that can happen is probably a lot worse than they're imagining.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And as we'll see, maybe they had a few laughs along the way. So they set off. They go into the river network again of Amazonia eventually. They built the ships. We're in April 1561. This is the point at which Robert Silverberg says in his book, in all the records of South American conquest, Aguirre stands out as the only man who ever went to great lengths to avoid finding El Dorado.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Because whenever they see an interesting looking tributary, He says, don't even look at it. Keep going. He's got his plan. He doesn't want anything to interfere with it. Again, he's right. Of course he is. They don't want to get lost in this maze of rivers. It's a terrible sort of labyrinth, sort of riverine labyrinth. They're eating fish. They are living off turtles and manatees. That's terrible.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Manatees are endangered. Perhaps this is why. El Loco. They're all incredibly emaciated. They're all going a bit mad. After a few weeks, Don Fernando, who's still hanging around, some of his friends say to him, this is mad. I mean, the El Dorado thing was pretty mad. But this idea about looping around and conquering Peru is absolutely bonkers. It's never going to work. Let's get rid of Aguirre.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
But they delay too long. They talk about it, but they don't do it. They have a sort of complicated plan. They're going to invite him aboard a ship and stab him and all this. And in the meantime, word leaks out. And so Aguirre finds out about it, and he decides he will strike first. So the first person that he gets rid of is his friend, Senor Salduendo, who had been his ally earlier on.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
He's started sleeping with Doña Inés, and Aguirre finds that disgraceful. And he denounces his former friend as a traitor. He sends his men to overpower him and to butcher him with knives, which they do. He says, actually, Doña Inés is a massive drain on this expedition and a distraction. She's got to go. And he sends two of his henchmen, who are called Carrion and Yamoso.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Yamoso will be reappearing in this story in a colourful manner. These two guys turn up with daggers to kill Doña Inés. And the various chroniclers and eyewitness accounts really go to town on this. They're said to have stabbed her so ferociously that she drowned in her own blood. One account says they took an unnatural delight in mangling what had once been so beautiful.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
It's about European colonizers, colonialists, conquistadors. In Heart of Darkness, which we did a podcast on a few weeks ago, they go up the Congo. Joseph Conrad, his narrator, Marlow, goes up the Congo. He's in search of this guy, Kurtz, who's lost his mind. Well, in this story, it's the people who are going up the river who lose their minds.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Another, even the most hardened men in the camp at the sight of the mangled, that word again, the mangled victim, were broken hearted. For this was the cruelest act that had ever been perpetrated. But Aguirre, he doesn't mind. He thinks it's great. I mean, it's what he wanted. It's what he ordered. So that's not true.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Yeah, that's true, actually. You're quite right. And you've pointed out a terrible discrepancy in the sources. I have. Oh, Tom, this is the kind of forensic detail that marks us out as a great history podcast. So Don Fernando has been sort of watching all this impotently and is horrified. But as our sources say, he now has just become a quivering jelly of a man.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
He became fearful and changed in appearance, but he didn't protect his person with more care, nor take Aguirre's life, nor seek to rally more friends, for he had become so timid and listless that for care of his own life he took but little note. It seemed that he carried death in his eyes. So the end comes for him a few days later. They're camped on an island in the middle of the river.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Aguirre's men burst into his hut. They kill his chaplain first, stabbed him so ferociously that the sword pinned him to the mattress. Then they go by Don Fernando's kind of hammock and he wakes. And Aguirre said to him very gently, don't be alarmed, your excellency. And then they killed all Don Fernando's friends while he was just sort of lying there in his hammock looking mournful.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And then they shot Don Fernando with their arquebuses and hacked him to pieces with their swords and threw him in the river. So that's the end of him. So he never becomes King of Peru. He never became King of Peru at all. He just floated down the Amazon in bits. It's a warning never to have dreams above your station.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
You should always be kept in check. Accept your lot. Don't aim high. Don't follow your dream. So the next morning, everybody wakes up and Aguirre addresses the whole camp. And he says, look, I did this for the safety of the army. Because if Don Fernando had been allowed to live, we'd all have perished. He says, please, everybody.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
He says, please consider me, from now on, your friend and companion. You will not be disappointed, for you can scarcely conceive how much I desire to administer to your pleasure and contentment. Of course he does. And he says, to maximise everybody's pleasure and contentment, a few quick ground rules. From now on, all private conversations are outlawed, and you can no longer go around in groups.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
To stop conspiracy. To stop conspiracies. We can have no more of this plotting. I mean, that's rich, given from the chief plotter, but he says, look, there's been far too much plotting. And he also appoints a kind of Praetorian guard for himself of Basques with arquebuses.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
So actually behind that, I think there may be a sort of serious point, which is that there are clearly internal feuds and rivalries. Aguirre is a Basque himself, and it may well be that, very hard for us to detect, there is perhaps an issue here between Castilians and Basques, or something like that.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And particularly this bloke, Aguirre, who I think it's fair to say is one of the strangest and most unsettling characters we've ever done on this podcast. It's really interesting. The books about him are often written by, some of them are by professional historians. But one of the best, for example, is by a guy called Robert Silverberg, who's actually a science fiction writer. Yeah, he did.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
They are Castilian by and large. And as we will see, the sources, I do believe that a lot of this happened, that a lot of what is being reported is true.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
But I think the spin they are putting on this is very particular, as we shall see, because these are eyewitnesses who have been part of a rebellion against the King of Spain and want to excuse themselves by explaining how they were being misled by a madman. So it may be that Aguirre isn't... Less mad.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Right. Not a madman. Not a madman at all. A very good manager. But you would follow him into the jungle, Tom, would you not? I absolutely would. I'd do whatever he said. But I mean, if it all went wrong... Would you then smear him as a loco? Claim that he had a limp and stuff? I'd like to think I'd stay loyal. Right. Well, some of Aguirre's people did say law rights at the end. That would be me.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
I mean, if he was like Unai Emery. I mean, not if he was like Klaus Kinski. Yes. Just putting that on the record. Fine. Yeah, you wouldn't follow a German, is what you're saying. I wouldn't follow a very sweaty guy with bulgy eyeballs who's wearing too much armour.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
No, he doesn't. Very kind of dapper coat and...
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
scarf do you know what he is he's courtly yeah he is a word one would often use of a spaniard yeah courtly is absolutely the word you're right he actually has kind of quite a 16th century face i think like a kind of cavallero in a an el greco painting right they're now in i guess where are they they are in northern brazil they've got completely lost do we know how far they've got to get to the atlantic now
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
They're well over halfway. They are now probably go round about a river called the Rio Negro. So they're heading across the border into what is now Venezuela. And just to ask, no one has ever done this before? No, they have no idea where they are. Now, actually, at one point they see campfires. They saw lights burning on the horizon. And they have a few guides left, a few native guides.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Some of the guides say, God, this could be it. This could be the land of the Amagua, these people who are very rich. And Aguirre is furious at this. He says, on pain of death, nobody is to look at this town or talk about it or mention the Amagua again.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Because he's really wedded to this plan of sailing around the top of South America and then crossing the Isthmus of Panama and then seizing the gold of Peru. He's right. Well, he's also at this point very, very paranoid.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
So Fray Simon says, so many were the fears that disturbed the wicked conscience of Aguirre, that although he'd killed those whom he feared, he never felt secure from the survivors. And I think that's definitely true. At this point, he really starts getting into his garrotting.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
So there hasn't been a lot of garrotting so far, but now, I mean, I can't stop the narrative every five minutes for all the garrotting. Just assume that it's constant. I mean, it's a more merciful way to go than stabbing someone to death. So perhaps he's...
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
coming around to him well this I think you would disagree with Tom because I think there's a hint of a kind of satanic nihilism I love a satanic nihilist so Fray Simon says that Aguirre at this point banned his men from praying and he said throw away your rosary beads you don't need them he said if you're worried about your souls you should play dice with the devil It's a good phrase.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And then he says, he's very Friedrich Nietzsche, actually. He said, he told his men that God had heaven for those who chose to serve him, but that the earth was for the strongest.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
He knew for certain there was no salvation and that being in life was to be in hell and that he would commit every species of wickedness and cruelty so that his name might ring throughout the earth and even to the ninth heaven. He's like the judge in Blood Meridian. Yeah, Blood Meridian. Or the Marquis de Sade or something.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Yeah. And he wrote an absolutely brilliant book called The Golden Dream, a history of quests for El Dorado. Like, very scrupulously researched, very serious book. And he describes Aguirre in this book. He says he's the single most villainous figure in the annals of the Spanish conquest, which is, you know... It's quite a high bar to clear. Yes, it is.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
There's a kind of ideological sadism to him, I think, at this point, if this is to be believed. They now enter the Orinoco River, and the river is widening, which is great news for them, because it means that they're clearly approaching the Atlantic. It's really hot and humid in Venezuela in July, which is when they're there. And Aguirre is very hot tempered.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
He says, we've got all these porters and guides with us. Let us abandon them here. So they abandoned them on the riverbank and they're crying and they're desperate. And there's nothing there. I mean, it's nothing there at all. Kind of dangerous animals and mudflats. And a couple of the Spaniards say, come on, this is a bit harsh. I mean, we've been travelling with these guys for months.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And Aguirre says, right, you've got to go. And he has them garrotted or shot, people who try to protest. And then at last, on the 1st of July, 1561, they enter the Atlantic. This incredible voyage, they've covered 4,000 miles in nine months. They've lost about half of the original party at this stage. But they're still alive. 17 days later, they glimpse the island of Margarita.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
When they see the island, Agri says, brilliant. And he celebrates by garroting two more of his men, who he thinks could conceivably betray him to the authorities when he gets there. And then they sail to the island and he sends a messenger ashore to ask for help with the words, we are ordinary sailors lost at sea.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And presumably this is quite convincing because they must look an absolute mess after. Yeah.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Nine months. Nine months. They've been there nine months. They're emaciated. They're sodden. They're filthy. The governor completely believes this. So he turns up with his officials. It's all very, very friendly. And Aguirre says, would it be all right if we came on shore? Can we take some exercise and bring our weapons just to practice? And the governor says, yeah, great.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
So they march ashore as though they're kind of on parade. It's very well planned. And then they sort of unsheathe their swords and level their guns and they take the governor and his officials hostage. So this is obviously not a huge place. You know, you're talking about hundreds of people rather than thousands.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
But because, as we said at the beginning, the Spanish presence is quite thin, it's quite thinly spread. So they march into the main town of Margarita. They seize the fort. They lock up the governor and all the other bigwigs. They break into the treasury. They steal all the gold that's been stored, ready to be shipped to Spain.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
They burn the account books, which to me is a sign that there is clearly some kind of serious political motive behind all this. It's not just kind of insane nihilism. Because clearly, this is an attack on the idea of authority and royal authority. And what I think, as we'll see runs through this, is Aguirre and some of the others clearly have a deep resentment.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
He's already said, if we capture El Dorado, Philip II will take it from us and give it to...
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
aristocrats and viceroys and bureaucrats and of course that had you know for cortez in mexico when we did that episode that that series a couple of years ago that had kind of happened to him he'd conquered it all and then been sort of pushed out and so i think that's at the back of their mind i wonder also is there a kind of element of basque nationalism would be anachronistic because the basques are proud mountain people
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
I mean, a lot of these people are from the kind of Spanish periphery. So, you know, famously, Cortés and his allies in Mexico, a lot of them had come from Extremadura, the sort of borderlands. And again, Aguirre is from a borderland. He's not from metropolitan Spain, Castile, from, you know, one of the great cities. And I think there probably is a fair bit of resentment, actually.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And then there's the great historian of the Amazon, John Hemming, who wrote a brilliant book about the fall of the Incas. And he says of Aguirre, simply, cruel, psychopathic, a man of unmitigated evil. Yeah, so people are going to enjoy this. Yeah. Yeah, it's always good to have a character like that on the podcast.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
of kind of royal officials. But also Spanish, Castilian kind of authority. Exactly. And actually, we'll see, there'll be more proof of this in a second. One great problem for them is that a missionary is visiting Margarita, has stopped at Margarita while they're there, a man called Montesinos, a guy from Santo Domingo. And he has a big ship and he gets away in the chaos. Bad news for Aguirre.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
It's very bad news. He goes off to the mainland. And this is the point at which word of Aguirre's and his kind of misconduct begins to spread across the Spanish colonies. So from this point onwards, he has lost the element of surprise that I think was so important to him. And I think this is the point at which, dare I say, he really does begin to lose the plot.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
So up to this point with all the garrotting, I think there has still been an element of rationality. But we're told that at this point, some of his men tried to defect and he was, quote, furious and raved like a madman, foaming at the mouth with rage and passion. He has them captured. He garrots them.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Their bodies are displayed with the message, these men were executed because they were faithful vassals of the king of Castile. Perhaps another bit of evidence for your point, Tom. Or of kind of class resentment, perhaps. I think there definitely is a bit of class resentment.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And actually, sort of jumping ahead, in the 20th century in particular, some Latin American historians said, this guy's not a madman. He's a class warrior. He's a socialist. He is a Marxist avant la lettre. possibly going a little bit far. Is that based on the evidence so far? But he issues orders.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
He says we must round up all the, and I quote, bishops, viceroys, presidents, auditors, governors, lawyers and procurators, as well as the caballeros of noble blood. In other words, the gentlemen. These people have been sucking the Indies dry. And he doesn't mean from the native inhabitants. He means from us. We have won through our sweat and our blood Violence.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
We have won this land and this gold and it is being sucked from us by pen pushing bureaucrats, you know, elitist establishment types, chinless toffs. And I think that is definitely there. So at this point, there's a bit of a reign of terror in Margarita. The richest citizens are locked up. Their money is stolen. The governor is garrotted and his officials are garrotted.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Aguirre is now ruling with a kind of rortifier. So if anybody hesitates to garrot somebody, he garrots them as well. He says, you know, you've got to be in on this. And now there's a really, really terrible moment. We talked about this on stage, didn't we? And I always used to really enjoy this part of the story.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
He hears a rumour that the royal troops have landed, which is not true, and he goes out to face them. And he leaves his chief lieutenant, who's a guy called Martin Perez, in charge of the fort. And when he gets back after this false alarm, one of his other men, they're all feuding the whole time, one of his other men says, Martin Perez has been plotting against you, which is not true.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Aguirre says, right, bring him in. He comes in. Aguirre's men kind of leap out from behind the furniture or something and stab this man and shoot him with an arquebus. But Perez is not killed. He's hideously wounded. Blood and entrails are everywhere. And he manages to, like a sort of Frankenstein's monster, he lurches out of the room. Imagine this lovely colonial mansion. Holding in his guts.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Wooden balustrade. Leaving this... And he's lurching like a monster down the corridor. People screaming and running in terror and stuff. And... Aguirre's men are chasing him, still trying to stab him and shoot him and stuff. And eventually they corner him, I mean literally in a corner, and they manage to finish him off, they cut his throat. And it's a terrible scene.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
I mean, his entrails are everywhere. Aguirre spots one of the men clearly looking a little bit green. Yeah. And this is a guy called Anton Yamoso, who had been one of the murderers of Doña Inés. And Aguirre says, you don't look like, you know, you don't seem to be enjoying this. Were you part of his conspiracy? Do you hold so lightly the love that I feel for you?
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And Yamoso is terrified, and he protests his innocence. And Aguirre seems completely unmoved, and he's kind of reaching for the garrote. And Yamoso drops to his knees by the disemboweled body of Martin Perez. You know, he basically wants to prove his loyalty. He shouts, curse this traitor. I will drink his blood.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And then, as Fray Simon reports, putting his mouth over the wounds in the head with more than demoniac rage, he began to suck the blood and brains that issued from the wounds and swallowed what he sucked as if he were a famished dog. And Aguirre says to him, oh, brilliant. You know, you and I are very much on the same page. You're clearly on the side of the angels.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And so Yamoso has proved his loyalty, which is great. On the one hand, it seems so grotesque as to be an exaggeration.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
They wouldn't make it up. And it's a very detailed story. It's a very detailed story with names, kind of dates, places. So it's so hard to tell what the truth of this is. But undoubtedly, there is a lot of very genuine violence. And I don't think there's any doubt that they have gone, because he would often say to his men,
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
If you're thinking now the King of Spain can take us back, you are greatly mistaken. We are in so deep now that we just have to keep going. Well, that signature, the traitor, I mean, that's really what kicks it off, isn't it? It is. I mean, he's not wrong. He recognised, I think, straight away, there's no way back from this. When we're in, we're all in.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
So now he decides, right, we're going to have to carry on with the rest of the plan. We'll cross to the mainland. He has an exciting new flag, which he's had specially made. A pirate flag, of course. It's black with red crossed swords on it. I mean, honestly, if you were... You were at some New World port and you saw a ship with that flag sailing towards you.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
I don't want to be having to either have my brains drunk by somebody or drinking somebody else's brains. No. I mean, I wouldn't even drink your brains, Tom, to be frank. Oh, I'm glad that's on the record. So they cross to the mainland. It takes them eight days. On the 7th of September, 1561, they arrive on the coast of what's now Venezuela. And it's deserted.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
The word has spread that he's coming and the people have been told, evacuate the towns. We're sending troops that this madman is on the loose. We'll sort this out. He burns his ships, a very kind of, you know... Alexander the Great's. Alexander the Great's detail, exactly.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
He burns his ships and he says, he orders, he's got heralds and he says, go and proclaim a war of fire and blood against the king of Castile and his vassals. He marches on this town called Valencia and he's in a very sort of Mr. Kurtz mode at this point. So he's been carried in a hammock. It's incredibly hot. He's got a fever. He's completely emaciated.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
We're told by the sources he was reduced to a skeleton at the point of death. And I suspect at this point, some of his men are thinking, oh, I really hope he dies. If there's some way we could get out of this. But he doesn't die. And fortunately, he recovers from the fever madder than ever. You keep saying this, that he gets madder than ever. Yeah. You don't think he was mad before?
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
I think there's still some way to go, frankly. I mean, the whole drinking brains stuff. The drinking brains is poor. I agree with that. I think you have to be pretty mad to be madder than that. He let the Basque country down there, I think. Yeah, he did. So he celebrates his recovery by executing a man called Gonzalo.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And Gonzalo's crime is that he'd gone off without permission to catch some parrots. That's the laugh. I think at this point there's a lot of crazy laughter. As parrot fancy as slaughtered. Slaughtered around him. They get to Valencia and he writes this mad letter to Philip II, which many historians have written about this, say it was one of the maddest letters in Spanish history.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Well, all history, you might say. I mean, let's pick it up. It is properly mad. It says, King Philip, son of Charles the Invincible, I, Lope de Aguirre, thy vassal, am an old Christian of poor but noble parents of the town of Oñate in Biscay. Actually, an old Christian is an interesting line because it's a reminder that actually Spain was not entirely Christian until relatively recently. Yeah.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
So he's contrasting himself with the Jews and the Muslims who've converted. Exactly. So his identity is saying, I am of loyal, you know, Spanish stock. And he says, for 54 years, I did the great service in Peru in the conquest of the Indians. And I did all this in your name. And I didn't ask your officers for payment.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
But you have been very cruel and ungrateful to me and my companions for such good service. Again, the hint of the political resentments that may lie behind this. We won these lands while you remained quietly in Spain. Remember, King Philip, that thou hast no right to draw revenues from these provinces, since their conquest has been without danger to thee. Again, that point.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
He complains a lot about the cruelties which thy judges and governors exercise in thy name, the oppression of thy ministers, who give places to their nephews and their children, who dispose of our lives, our reputations and our fortunes. So, you know, there are all these kind of nepo babies coming over here and taking the big jobs.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Also in a very 16th century theme, resentment of the religious orders. The corruption of the morals of the monks is so great. They pretend, they tell you that they're converting Indians, but actually they are enemies of the poor, they're avaricious, gluttonous and proud. The poor, by that he's again not speaking about the Indians, he's speaking about Aguirre and his compadres. Yes, exactly.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And then there's an ending which I very much enjoy. Because the great thing about this is he lurches from one thought to another in the same sentence. So he says, my comrades and I pray to God that thy strength may ever be increased against the Turk and the Frenchman and all others who desire to make war against thee. But because of thy ingratitude, I am a rebel against thee until death.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Signed, Lope de Guire, The Wanderer. So, as John Hemmings says, an extraordinary document, a mixture of rebellious defiance, megalomania and self-pity. Robert Silverberg says, few kings had ever received such a message from a subject. Shifting kind of attitudes within the space of sometimes the same sentence. And the tragedy is, Philip II probably never even got to read it.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And that's Aguirre. Yeah. There's an argument possibly he's the only sane man on the expedition. Isn't there some historian who says that he's the only man in history to look for El Dorado who didn't want to find it? Exactly. Exactly. Well, we'll come to that. In fact, he tries to dissuade other people from trying to find it.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Because there's no evidence that you did read it. It must have been intercepted by a royal official who filed it under M for mad. I mean, to be fair to Philip, though, I mean, he does love reading a letter. That's basically all he's doing, isn't it? Yeah. He's sitting in a very gloomy in El Escorial. Yeah. This would have livened up his day, I think. I know.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And then suddenly you get that. Let's get to the end of the story. Aguirre ends up cornered in this town called Barquisimeto in Venezuela. A lot of his men have deserted. There's an awful lot of foaming at the mouth. There's a very famous incident while he's marching into Barquisimeto. It's pouring with rain and the horses are slipping and sliding in the mud.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
He shakes his fist at the heavens and he shouts... Does God think that because it rains in Torrance, I'm not going to reach Peru and destroy the world? Then he does not know me. Brilliant. I compared him to a Shakespeare hero, but actually he's now turning into a kind of Marlowe hero. He totally is, isn't he? So he gets to Barclay's Meadow. They're surrounded by royalist troops outside the town.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
I mean, they are literally, Tom, they're literally eating the dogs. They're like the people of Springfield, Pennsylvania. Yeah. Supposedly. The local governor issues promises of amnesty to Aguirre's men, so some of them start to slip away. He says, the time has come, I think we should garrote some more of my men. The sick and the unwilling, let's have a little purge.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
We'll be a leaner, more efficient outfit. And even his lieutenants, his loyalists, say to him, oh, come on, that's going too far. What about the bloke who drank the blood? The bloke who drank the blood actually stays there. Well, you'll see, he literally is the last person with him. So actually the drinking of the blood. Yeah, it was a genuine sacrament. Yeah, it kind of was.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Aguirre has a massive meltdown in the middle of October. He summons all his men, what remain of them. He puts a dagger to his chest. He says, why don't you cut out my heart? He says, I have killed a lot of people, but I quote, I want you to understand that I did it in order to protect your lives and for the benefit of all. It's a real kind of self-pity here.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
This does not unfortunately impress them. So most of them defect. And on the morning of Monday, the 27th of October, 1561, Those who are left say, could we please go out and make a last stand against the Royalist Army? He says, fine. They go out of the town. As soon as they get out of the town, they kind of drop their weapons and start shouting, long live the king, God save the king.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And they defect as well. Aguirre is gutted by this. The only person who's left is this boat, Yamoso, the blood and brains man. And Aguirre says, why are you still here? You know, why haven't you left me? And Yamoso says, so moving. He says, we were friends in life. I will live or die with you. And Aguirre, we're told, made no reply. He was crestfallen and lost. So that, I think, is lovely.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
So let's give everybody a bit of context because there'll be lots of people who are not familiar with this story at all. So we're in the Spanish Empire in the late 1550s. So that means the Aztecs and the Incas have been conquered a generation ago. Loads of silver is flowing back to Europe from Mexico and Peru.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
What follows, perhaps less so, Aguirre goes to his room and he gets out his arquebus, his gun, and he goes to find someone we haven't mentioned, Elvira, who has been there the whole time. Age, what's she now, 14? God, she must be so embarrassed. Yeah. Oh, Dad. He's really let her down. And he goes in and he says to her, my daughter, my love, I thought I should see you married and a great lady.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
But my sins and my great pride have willed it otherwise. Commend yourself to God, my daughter, and make your peace with him. For I can't bear that you would be called the daughter of a traitor. And that's quite moving. Perhaps a little more prosaic is he then also says, I don't want you to become a mattress for the unworthy. Which, you know, we know what that means.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Elvira is extremely disturbed by this, falls to her knees and starts pleading. She says, father, father, Satan is misleading you. And she's got a maid called Juana who manages to wrestle the gun from his hands. But then he really lets himself, Elvira and the Basque country down because he pulls out a dagger and stabs Elvira through the heart.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Yeah, it kills his daughter. There's a twist. I thought that he was going to kill himself. No. Well, you would think it would be a more satisfying story in a way if he now turned the dagger on himself, but he doesn't. Actually, what happens is moments later, royal troops burst into the apartment.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Aguirre picks up the arquebus again, but he's shaking so much that he can't fire it, and he bursts into tears. After all that, he has a soft heart, after all. The soldiers lead him outside. There is talk of a trial, but actually, here's the important thing. Loads of his old cronies who defected are there, and they say, oh, no, no trial, no trial. We should just kill him straight away.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Because they don't want the truth to come out. Because, of course, they don't want the truth to come out of their own complicity. And two of his old gunners volunteer to do it. You talked about Shakespeare. or sort of Jacobean drama or something. So in true Jacobean drama style, the first shot doesn't quite kill him, but he's still able to talk.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And he says, that has done the business, even though it hasn't. So then they have to shoot him again. He's now dead. They cut off his head and they put it in an iron cage. They cut off his hands. They wanted to send his hands on a kind of tour. So they sent his hands to the towns of Merida and Valencia. But the soldiers got bored of carrying them.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
But if in your mind you're thinking, OK, well, South America has been conquered by Spain. The story is over. That's not right at all. Spanish rule is very fragile and it's really just confined to the coasts. And Spain itself, although it's very rich and powerful, it's in a kind of world of trouble. So the emperor Charles V abdicated in 1556 and Spain and its empire passed to his son Philip II.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
One of the hands ended up being thrown in a river, and the other one was thrown to the dogs to eat. So that's payback for his men eating all the dogs. Yes, I suppose so. So the dogs have had the last laugh, which is nice. They have, yeah. So that's the end of Lope de Aguirre, and I guess the question, very briefly at the end, is what it actually means.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
like a bit of a meaning? Do you not like a meaning, Tom? You love a meaning! This is very out of character. It's just the random madness. But maybe it isn't, you see. So for some people, so I guess for Werner Herzog in that film, it's not random madness. You could say it's Joseph Conrad-style Heart of Darkness.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
You go into the heart of the jungle, your complicity in colonialism leads you into evil. I mean, that's how some people have interpreted the story. Alternative explanation, of course, is that it's rather like Mr. Kurtz. It's about the human condition, and it's about you know, we've all got a Lope de Aguirre, a brain-sucking, daughter-murdering madman inside us, whether we like it or not.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And that's actually how most historians, they have said he represents human evil in its purest form. Or there's the, he's a revolutionary. Well, that's, I think, the more interesting explanation. And there's a very recent book by an American writer called Evan Bulkin. I think it was his PhD, called Wrath of God. And he argues he was the first revolutionary, I mean, South America revolutionary,
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
has loads of revolutionaries, Che Guevara most famously, he argues that Aguirre makes sense politically, that you put him into the context of mid-century Spanish America, very flimsy colonial control, endless feuds, endless revolts, huge resentment of royal authority. And Bulcan points out all the accounts we have of him are from people who were complicit in the revolt.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And what they needed to do afterwards was to convince the Spanish authorities that it hadn't been political, that they had been coerced by a uniquely demented and demonic leader. Well, the demonic, presumably, because then it would explain how they had been seduced, that effectively they've been the victims of witchcraft. Exactly.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
That Aguirre represents, that's why that point, the thing about, oh, he doesn't want to go to heaven. He's determined to throw himself into this kind of Sardian pursuit of all that is cruel and brutal and all of this. That's why I think it was very important to them to make that point, to say there was no political context to this at all. It was an exercise in pure demonic evil by a madman.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
But there clearly was a political context. It's the signing his name as a traitor that kicks off the whole... Well, I mean, it's a coup, isn't it? It's an attempted coup. It is. And as Evan Bulkin says in his book, Latin American history is a saga of rebels and populists and strongmen who appeal to the... common man against overweening royal or state authority.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
You know, Simon Bolivar or Juan Perón or whoever it might be. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, the country with which Aguirre is most closely associated. So Hugo Chavez's culture ministry, I read in Evan Bulkin's book, I think, had a section on its official website praising Aguirre as a, quote, soldier, traitor, pilgrim, father, lover, dreamer. I think father is a bit of an ironic one there.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
He appears to be very rich and powerful, but he inherits a great mess. There's huge inflation thanks to all of this silver. Spain has been fighting all these wars in Italy and the Holy Roman Empire. He has to default on Spain's loans straight away. He's got no money. He's struggling to raise taxes in Spain itself. And the obvious place to look is the New World.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
There definitely is a magical realist, and maybe this should be our last, our closing point. The most famous of all European travellers who went to Latin America was a guy called Alexander Humboldt, German. He went to Venezuela in 1799, and he reported that the locals there said to him that at night, strange ghostly fires danced over the plains.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
He wrote, This fire, like the willow the wisp of our marshes, does not burn the grass. The people call these reddish flames the soul of the traitor Aguirre, and the natives believe that the soul of the traitor wanders in the savannas like a flame that flies the approach of men.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And of course, Tom, members of the Rest Is History Club will get all four episodes of that series on Monday. And if you want to join them, you merely have to sign up at therestishistory.com. Adios. Very exciting. Hasta luego. Goodbye.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Let's get more gold and silver from the New World. But the problem is that his authority, and this is going to be really important in explaining the political context of this story, his royal authority is very weak in the Spanish colonies.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
So in Peru, for example, the Incas have, as it were, fallen, but there are still only about 4,000 European Spaniards in Peru, in Lima and whatnot, and they are fighting these endless civil wars and there are little rebellions and feuds and things. And in 1556, a new viceroy called the Marquis of Cañete, arrived in Lima from Spain.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And Dominic, when he arrives in Lima, does he find the lilting of a Spanish guitar? He doesn't actually, Tom. He hears the sound of screams and chaos. Because law and order have slightly broken down in Lima. This is not the world of Paddington Bear. It's a much darker world. The place is in chaos. There are unemployed soldiers and ruffians everywhere. Total sort of feuds and vendettas.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And he has to try to sort this out. He wants to find money.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
A weapon with a personal nickname. Exactly, yeah. Gut splitter. Yeah, the widow weeper or something of that kind. Anyway, at about this point, when the Marcus of Canete arrives in Lima, an Amazonian Indian chieftain arrives in Peru from the east. And it's very like the sort of barbarians on the periphery of the Roman Empire.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
There are all kinds of movements of people who are pushing other people because of the arrival of the Europeans. So it's caused kind of chaos among the tribes. And this bloke is taken, the leader of this tribe, is taken to see the Spanish authorities. And he says, we've traveled a long way. We've traveled along the Amazon. And I have seen lands rich in gold.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And the Marcus of Canete's eye, you know, he raises his eyebrows at this. Yeah, he's, oh, brilliant. And this tallies with two things that people in the two great colonial cities of the western side of the continent, which are Lima and Quito, now in Ecuador, this tallies with two things that they believe.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
First of all, 10 years or so earlier, a man called Francisco de Oriana had led one of the great expeditions in all history. The first European expedition on the whole length of the Amazon. And he had traveled for 4,000 miles. And he, Oriana, reported that he had seen very large, very rich settlements.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
people who lived in towns, people who wore fine woven clothes with great pottery, and loads and loads of silver. And for centuries people have assumed, since then, that this was all nonsense and just a fable.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
But actually now the trend among historians of Amazonia is to say, actually Amazonia probably was more built up than we think, and there were more people there, and they were more sophisticated, and they were all killed in the long run, a lot of them by disease and things. So they've been discounted ever since. But archaeologists now think there's a lot of truth in this.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And then the second thing is that in Lima and Quito, people have been swapping stories about this place called El Dorado. And this seems to have originated as a very garbled and exaggerated and confused report of what the Spanish were doing on the other side of the continent in Colombia, where they were conquering a people called the Muisca. And these Musco are quite rich.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And this basically became embellished and garbled into a story of a land so rich that the king could sort of paint himself in gold dust, throw a load of gold into the lake every year in a religious ritual. And there's gold everywhere and there's a lake full of gold and all of this kind of business. Because El Dorado is literally the golden man, isn't it? The golden one. Exactly.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
So, the Marcus de Canieta, anyway, he arrives in Lima, and there's all of these different rumours hanging around, all the stuff out there in the Amazon, who knows, and his great brainwave is, and it's really smart, I'll get rid of all these ne'er-do-wells with their scars by saying to them, lads, why don't you go off on a massive expedition to go and find El Dorado?
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Because if they do find it, he'll be the man who saved Spain's finances. He can send all the gold back to Philip II, and that's great. If they don't find it, and they all die, brilliant, he's rid of them. It's win-win. So to command the expedition, he appoints a fellow called Pedro de Ossua, who is a knight from Navarre, from Pamplona.
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Everyone says he's very brave, he's very gallant, he's very headstrong. He's actually not without experience. He has been serving in New Granada, which is Colombia, for about 10 years. He's already gone on some El Dorado expeditions. No joy, really. But he's not a complete idiot. So he is appointed to lead the expedition.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
He is told, when you conquer the province of Amagua and Dorado, you will rule it as governor. And he thinks, well, brilliant. Because this is, of course, what conquistadors want. They want a slice of territory and they want an official appointment so that they can make money out of it. That's what all this is about. It's what Cortes, Pizarro, all of these people.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
So Ossua, over the next year or so, he gathers his team. He gets a very, very large expedition by the standards of the day, about 400 Spaniards and thousands of Peruvian Indians, native Peruvians, I suppose people might call them now. And it's the largest European force for the next two centuries to enter Amazonia.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
I have to say most of the people on this expedition are not people with whom one would choose to go on holiday. They're kind of gangsters, mercenaries, ex-cons. They're hard men, I think it's fair to say, Tom. And they start building all these rafts and brigantines on the edge of Amazonia that they will use to go into the kind of river network. It's kind of a spaghetti western only in a jungle.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Exactly. It's a spaghetti western or... So we're going to be doing some episodes about Harold Hard Roger going into the lands of the Rus. And I think there's a slight Viking element to this. Kind of slightly terrifying men who would be no strangers to a facial tattoo. Yeah. Kind of venturing in search of gold and hopefully some slaughter. A lot of stubble, though. Exactly, yeah.
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This is a slightly sweatier version, I think it's probably fair to say. Anyway, in the summer of 1560, before he sets off, a sewer gets a letter from a friend. And the friend says to him, look, you're making two dreadful mistakes. Mistake number one, you are taking your mistress. What? Please tell me she is incredibly ugly. No. Please tell me she's not absolutely gorgeous. Tom's so gallant.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Well, but it's for our own good and for the good of the expedition. So, no, she's said to be the most beautiful woman in all of Peru. That is mad. Disastrous. 400 desperados and one woman. Yeah, so she's a young widow. She's probably mixed race and mestizo. There were like four or five eyewitness accounts written after the event. On this issue, they're frustratingly inconsistent.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
So some say she's a woman of unimpeachable honour. Others say she's a little bit free with her affections. It's hard to say. So it's hard to know the truth there, Tom. I think listeners just make up their own minds. Anyway, a Suez mate says, you are mad to take her with you. Nothing good will come of it. And I quote, greater evils will follow than you can possibly suppose.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And I have a sense they're not wrong. Yes. Well, especially as the friend also says, you're not just taking quite bad men. Some of the men you're taking are unbelievably bad men. And he says the worst is a man called Lope de Aguirre. So we know from a letter that Aguirre later wrote to Philip II, which we shall come on to. Aguirre had been born in 1510 in the Basque country.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
He'd come to Peru in his early 20s. He'd worked as a horse breaker and a general enforcer. That's a terrifying CV, isn't it? And... There's a wonderful account based on other accounts by a Franciscan monk called Fray Simon. And Simon said of Aguirre, he was of short stature and sparely made, ill-featured, the face small and lean, beard black, the eyes like a hawk.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And when he looked, he fixed his eyes sternly, particularly when angry. So he's generally a slightly unsettling presence. Yeah. All the chroniclers agree that he talks a lot, he's very roughly spoken, he's incredibly bad-tempered, and he's incredibly vengeful. And when you think this is in the context of... The conquest of South America. Yeah.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And people are saying, now this bloke, you know, he's crossed the line. That's very disturbing. So he's always been kicked out of towns. He really is a spaghetti Western character. And as Fray Simon says, he has a limp, which I always think is an unsettling sign in a conquistador because he's been shot in the leg.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Fray Simon says he was driven from one province to another and was known as Aguirre el Loco, the madman. Right. So he's signed up to this expedition. And the other thing is, he's brought with him his daughter. So his daughter, he had a daughter with an Indian woman, and his daughter is called Elvira. And how old is she? Thirteen. Thirteen years old. Oh, so he's taking her out of school.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Well, she always travels with him, and apparently he is completely devoted to her. Like, this is his real soft spot. Right. You know, he takes Elvira very seriously. But, I mean, should anyone be listening and think you've taken their children out of school? Don't. Just don't do it. You have to pay a fine, don't you, in England?
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
This is a salutary warning, I think, of what could happen, what could go wrong. Certainly don't go to the Amazon with a group of ne'er-do-wells. No. Pedro de Ossua, the commander of the expedition, completely ignores this letter, which is madness. And on the 26th of September 1560, he sets off with his expedition into the tributaries of the Amazon.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
And right from the start, surprise, surprise, things start to go wrong. They've built all these ships, but there are massive leaks on them, and he has to leave all but one of them behind. What, so he's setting off, and he's got all these ships built, and then he can't take any of them, except for one? He can take one brigantine, and then loads of rafts.
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543. Death in the Amazon: Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Because it takes ages. And, you know, because the people are getting very impatient. And to be honest, I've had to cut out already a lot of feuding. Okay. There's been a lot of feuding already. I'm getting a really bad feeling about this. Right. So they all cram into these rafts. But a sewer insists on keeping one cabin just for himself and Donya Ines.
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533. Wojtek: The Bear Who Beat the Nazis
Polish families, taking them to railway stations, cramming them into cattle wagons, sending them off eastwards towards Siberia. And these are scenes that are very reminiscent of the fate of Jews in occupied Nazi Europe who were being rounded up and put in cattle wagons, unheated, women, children, as well as men, no food, no drink, freezing cold. And it's been estimated that by early 1941,
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about one and a half million Poles have been driven into exile. And that of these, by the summer of 1941, between a third and a half of all these Poles who've been deported are dead, either from malnutrition or from the cold or from exhaustion or, of course, from disease. So it's the same process of... genocidal expulsions that you're seeing in Nazi Germany, which are much better known.
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Yes. So there's a Polish government in exile by this point in London. which means that they're unable really to resist British pressure. And Britain wants this Polish government in exile essentially to ally itself to the Soviet Union, which of course is really tough for the Poles to do.
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I mean, you know, the Soviet Union has dismembered their country, stabbed them in the back, deported millions of their fellow citizens. But they do it. And one of the reasons that they do it is that they see that this is a way to secure the release of the Poles who have been kept prisoner in the Soviet Union.
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And among these prisoners is one of the very few Polish officers who had been deported to have survived Soviet captivity. And this is a man called Vladislav Anders. And he had spent, so he hadn't been taken into a wooden shot. He'd been taken to the Lubyanka, the NKVD prison. And he'd spent months there, kind of horrendous experience of imprisonment. But then he's released.
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And initially he thinks, if I'm going to carry on the fight against the Germans, then I'm going to have to do it with the Red Army. But he realizes very rapidly that Stalin is not going to allow an autonomous Polish military force to assemble in the Soviet Union. You know, the risk in Stalin's opinion is too great. And so therefore, Anders starts thinking, well,
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we should try and get these guys out of the Soviet Union altogether and see if we could maybe fight with the British. And Stalin is also very keen to see the back of them. And so Stalin and Anders agree that Stalin will allow Polish prisoners to travel down to the Caspian Sea, to sail across the Caspian Sea and land in Iran together.
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And the reason for that is that there is a British military presence in Iran because at this time Iran is under joint Soviet, US and British occupation. And specifically the rendezvous is a port called Pahlavi on the Caspian Sea that I gather is now called Bandar-e-Anzali. And
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Throughout the spring and summer of 1942, over 100,000 Poles, and this includes women and children, are ferried across the Caspian Sea. They've travelled all the way across the Soviet Union from the camps that they've been kept in. They've travelled there and they're now being ferried across the Caspian Sea And they arrive in Parlevi and they're in a terrible condition.
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You know, they're hunger ravaged, they're disease ridden, they're shattered. They've traveled vast, vast distances. And I think British officers looking certainly at the men think, oh, God, I mean, how are we ever going to get there? these people in addition to fight. But the British have brought food, medicine, ambulances.
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And although lots of Poles do die, there are also lots who then start on the road to recovery. And civilians are sent to camps outside Tehran and Esfahan in Iran. And then they are sorted out and they're sent onwards to various territories within the British Empire. So Australia, New Zealand, Rhodesia, Kenya, and lots of these poles.
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I mean, actually, they kind of end up settling in these various countries and staying there for good. But the plan for...
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the young men, these Poles who have come to join the British to fight the Nazi enemy, the plan for them is to send them from Iran through Iraq to Palestine to train them, to get them ready to join British forces, and if needs be, to join the fight against Rommel, who at the time is kind of advancing across North Africa towards Egypt.
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And this force of Poles, they can't call it the First Polish Corps because the First Polish Corps is, you know, that's the body of Poles who were stationed in Britain. So they become the Second Polish Corps. And the nickname that they get given is the Anders Army.
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I mean, it has the force of a kind of folk tale, I think. And as with a folk tale, there are various accounts of exactly how Wojtek comes to be a part of this movement of Polish troops to Palestine. But I think the basic outline is clear. So there's a group of Polish soldiers, maybe officers, maybe private soldiers, accounts differ.
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And they're in the wilds outside Tehran and there they meet a young Iranian boy and he has a sack tied around his neck and he opens up the sack and inside it there is a tiny bear cub. And the boy tells the Poles that the mother of this cub had been shot by hunters. And the cub had been abandoned and the boy had found it.
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And it's something that he can sell because it's the customary fate of abandoned cubs to be sold to trainers who will raise them as dancing bears. And to be a dancing bear is hideous. I mean, you're chained, you're kind of whipped, you're prodded, you have a miserable life.
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So the Poles know this and obviously have a sense of fellow feeling for an animal that has suffered bereavement and faces a terrible future. So they buy it from the boy.
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Probably barter or food or maybe they've got a few coins. Anyway, they come into possession of this bear cub. And what happens next? Various stories. So one story says that this this cub is bought by a Polish officer who gives it to the niece of another officer. And this niece is called Irina. And she looks after the cub for three months in the civilian transit camp where she's been stationed.
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And then. The bear is kind of very mischievous, full of fun. It's clearly not a good place for a kind of wild animal to be kept. And so Irina gives it to the army as a mascot. And the bear ends up being given by a lieutenant in... and as his army to Polish soldiers in the second transport company. And these have already reached a base at Gedera in Palestine. So that's one account.
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Another account, and this is the one you'll get in Eileen Orr's book, which is a wonderful account of Wojtek. And she says that actually it was Polish privates in the second transport company had come into possession with Wojtek right from the beginning, that they were the ones who had negotiated with this
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Iranian boy, and that they had kept the bear with them as they traveled to Palestine because they weren't really allowed to have a bear with them.
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And when the commanding officer is told, we're really sorry, sir, we've got this bear cub, he allows them to keep it because he recognizes that it's really good for their morale, that the soldiers are devoted to the cub and that it's kind of raised their spirits.
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So the bear is variously known, I think, by Poles as Wojciech or Wojtek. So Wojciech is the formal, Wojtek is the informal, and it means happy warrior. Right. And in due course, Wojtek grows up to full size. He's an absolutely enormous bear. And then another Wojtek joins the company. And so the bear is called Big Wojtek and the soldier is called Little Wojtek. So his full name is Big Wojtek.
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But as a cub... Wojtek is given a kind of carer, one of the Polish soldiers in the Second Transport Company. And this is a guy called Peter Prendis. And most of the soldiers in Second Transport Company are young. They're kind of teenage or early 20s. But Peter is he's 46 and he's probably the oldest soldier in the company. And that is why he is given responsibility for the bear.
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It's thought that he is he's the guy who will prove the best parent. But actually, the role that Peter plays is not that of a father, but of a mother. Daddy bears, I gather, do not bring up their babies.
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No, cubs are raised solely by their mothers. And so Peter comes to be nicknamed by his comrades Mummy Bear. And, I mean, you read the accounts of it and... Wojtek, he's a little cub. He might get frightened. He might get scared. Whenever he does, he runs to Peter and Peter picks him up in his arms and cradles him, cuddles him, gives him his finger for Wojtek to kind of suck on.
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It's all very sweet. But then gradually, of course, Wojtek starts to grow up and he's a great laugh.
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is he yeah bears are like that though aren't they he loves it so there's um initially there's there's great fun and games with a dalmatian that's owned by uh by the british liaison officer he is uh he's always climbing trees and then finding that he can't he can't climb down so he just drops down and falls on passing soldiers and this is all great fun yeah and um he's he's um
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Well, I'm not going to call him a perv because, of course, he's a bear. But he's very keen on stealing the underwear of Polish female soldiers.
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So to quote Eileen Orr, the women, part of a Polish signals unit, were furious because after months of living rough in their isolated camp in the dusty desert, they had only recently taken a rare trip to Tel Aviv to acquire the much cherished underwear. And Peter has to go and... Get it back. Get the underwear back.
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Trying it on. Who knows? I don't know. The thing he really loves is swimming. And this is obviously a problem if you're in a kind of dusty, parched land in Palestine. So whenever he finds water, whenever he finds a kind of river or a pond or mud or whatever, he'll kind of roll in it.
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And the larger he gets, the more his use of water has to be rationed because, of course, it's a very precious commodity. And so he's always trying to sneak into the shower hut. This is another example of his mischievous nature. Right. And on one occasion he does this and he finds that there's an Arab spy in the corner. So he's cornered.
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So his reward for this is he gets an extra long shower plus lots of fruit and beer. And beer. So he's tanked up half the time. So he loves beer and he loves cigarettes and he loves coffee. The cigarettes have to be lit, but he won't smoke them. He eats them. But I think the reason for this is is that at no point does it cross Wojtek's mind that he's a bear. He assumes that he is a Polish soldier.
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I mean, he has no reason to think otherwise. He's been brought up by them. He lives among them. He adopts their habits and he marches with them. He kind of learns to kind of salute. I mean, he does this without being instructed. He just kind of picks up on it.
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You do it. And so you can see why he would become a massive, massive favourite, not just with the 22nd Artillery Supply Company, as the 2nd Transport Company has now become, but with the whole of Anders Army, the whole of the 2nd Polish Corps. Obviously, really, really good for their morale. You can completely see why officers are going, yeah, let's keep this bear. It's good.
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Well, maybe not if your underwear has been stolen and he's trying to get into the shower with you. Yeah, maybe not. But I think in general, very good for morale. But then in December 1943, there is a crisis because Wojtek and his company are moved to Egypt, to Alexandria.
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And the reason for that is that by this point, Rommel is, you know, he's gone and the British have invaded Sicily and going up Italy and they need the Poles to help them in this terrible war. And the crisis is that soldiers are... forbidden to transport pets or mascots. There is no room in the transport ship for such animals.
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So their solution to this is to draft Wojtek officially into the Polish army as a private. And the British authorities approve this. They stamp Wojtek's military papers. He is now enrolled as a Polish soldier officially. And on the 13th of February 1944, Wojtek and his comrades, they're in Alexandria, they board a troop ship and they set sail westwards across the Mediterranean.
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And their destination, Dominic, is Taranto. And from there, Monte Cassino.
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So after your virtual visit, Amazon will deliver your prescriptions directly to your door.
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Yes. So one of the most celebrated monasteries in the whole of Latin Christendom, founded in AD 529. It had been rebuilt and rebuilt. It kind of had this glorious heyday in the 11th and 12th centuries. 14th century, there'd been an earthquake. It had been rebuilt again.
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So it's a great emblem of the kind of the ability of the Catholic Church to rise above all the disasters that could be thrown at it. And now it is in the eye of this terrible storm because the allies have to knock it out, essentially.
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Because the Germans have occupied it and the Allies feel that they have to destroy the German positions if they're going to have a hope of breaking through and getting on to Rome. And we actually spoke to my brother in an earlier episode about the build-up to the Battle of Monte Cassino. But Wojtek arrives right in Rome.
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And I think every Polish friend I've got has said... Do you know the story of Wojtek? So a particular shout out, if she's listening to this, to Bozena, who first mentioned Wojtek to us and in fact gave us a children's book about it. Maybe it was the one that you saw in the shop in Gdansk. And This is about a bear, but important to emphasise that it's about a Polish bear.
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the middle of it as it's kind of reaching this terrible climax and as you said in my brother's reading anders and his army are given the opportunity to storm monte casino to capture it and you know this is a mark of great honor because as my brother says it's the toughest of nuts. And there have previously been three attempts to take the monastery. It's failed.
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The monastery itself has been bombed completely into rubble, which actually means that it's now harder to take because there are more places to kind of hide. Three offensives have failed. The Poles will now take part in the fourth offensive, Operation Diadem, and in fact will kind of spearhead it. So the task of the Poles is to capture a mountain that has defied all the previous Allied troops.
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They've smashed themselves against it and broken against it. So can the Poles do it? So 24th of April 1944, they start moving up the foothills to take up positions for the final assault. And it is the job of Wojtek's company to keep the Polish artillery supplied with shells, with ammunition, as the Poles make their advance towards Monte Cassino, so inching forwards.
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And they do this for three weeks and it's an exceedingly perilous and dangerous job. So they are having to drive at night to avoid, you know, enemy artillery, kind of sheer hairpin bends, people always kind of driving off cliffs and things like that.
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So to quote a Polish veteran who's cited by Eleanor in her book, when we finally pulled into the positions of our artillery, we unloaded the ammo and fuses and after a short rest turned round and got out as fast as possible. In spite of all our precautions, a number of trucks crashed into the steep gorges, killing their drivers. So it's a very perilous business.
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Well, he's terrified and he stays in the lorries kind of whimpering, covering his eyes with his paws, you know, completely shell-shocked. But then he starts to get his his kind of mojo back and he climbs out of the lorry that he's been hiding in. And he kind of looks around and wanders over to a tree and he climbs up the tree and he kind of watches the action.
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So he's down seeing his friends carting, you know, shells up to the guns and carrying crates and things. So he drops down from the tree. And he walks over to his fellow soldiers and he holds out his paws to indicate that he'd quite like to join in the fun. He doesn't really know what it's about, but his friends are doing it, so why wouldn't he want to join in?
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He's never, of course, been trained to...
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to to handle heavy boxes of munitions but he's a bear so he's very strong and so actually he turns out to be absolutely brilliant and he he does this with all his mates and the boast is that he never drops a single shell and he does it kind of for as long as he wants to and then if he gets bored he'll go off and maybe have a you know have a have a sleep or something or right have a bit of a dose.
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And if they want to get him back on, they give him a lit cigarette or bar of chocolate or something, and then he'll join back in. And he puts in really, really sterling work. And he contributes to the softening up of the German defences that enable Anders Army on the 11th of May to begin the long-awaited fourth offensive. And it's an absolutely murderous battle.
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So in the account that you read about those British officers walking the battlefield of Monte Cassino, the bear is helping Polish gunners. And these Polish gunners are fighting on the British side against the Germans. And so in a sense, this is what I said at the end of our previous series, that we wanted to give a kind of coda to that story. Terribly dark, bleak, somber story.
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It lasts, you know, days and days and days. So just to give a description again for my brother's book, this is just one passage. On one occasion, a Polish lieutenant had been standing behind three men. A shell came over and exploded right on top of them. He commented, two of the men disappeared into thin air. There was nothing left.
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But on a bush nearby, I saw the ammunition belt in the stomach of the third. That was all that was left. Soon after, he spotted a soldier sitting down close by, simply staring into space. The man was covered in dust and had a glazed expression on his face. The lieutenant bent over and touched his back and saw that it was covered in blood. The man, he realised, was dead.
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Yes. No, he doesn't get hit. So he carries on throughout this. I think, I mean, obviously, if he'd been in the forefront of the battle, it would have been rather different because that is, I mean, really brutal. And on the 17th of May at last, Anders leads the Poles in a second attack on Monte Cassino. The Germans withdraw. 18th of May,
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the Poles see a white flag flying over the ruins of the monastery and they're so shattered by what they've been going through that it takes them time to find enough men who are strong enough to go up to the height to take possession of the rubble of the monastery.
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But they get there and they raise the Polish flag over the scene of desolation and a bugler plays St Mary's trumpet call, which, according to legend, had first been played on the walls of Krakow to warn of the Mongols.
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And so it's hard not to think of all the emotions that must have been felt in Polish breasts hearing that and thinking of the fate of their own country, looking around at the rubble of this ancient dynasty.
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I mean, Wojtek would be an amazing subject. Of course. Do a CGI bear.
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Well, Paddington, I mean, you do have a kind of track record. I missed out on Paddington, but I think Wojtek, I was born to play that part. So the Poles have lost a lot of men. Second Polish Corps have lost 1,150 killed. 3,050 have been wounded. The 22nd Artillery Supply Company, so that's the company that Wojtek's been serving with, you know, they have suffered casualties.
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So, you know, Wojtek undoubtedly has been, you know, he's been in the line of fire. But they have done heroic work. So to quote Orr, during the Battle of Monte Cassino, Wojtek's company supplied approximately 17,300 tonnes of ammunition, 1,200 tonnes of fuel and 1,100 tonnes of food for Polish and British troops. Oh, good on them. And he gets a badge or something. There's a...
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So they all get the badge? They all get the badge. So it's a badge featuring Wojtek carrying an artillery shell. And he's got, you know, it looks as if he's marching off to go to battle. And this becomes the badge of the 22nd Company. It's kind of one of the most sort of pieces of military memorabilia that you could possibly have.
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And it becomes the kind of the, I guess, the emblem of the 22nd company. And it gets copied and copied. And it kind of obviously serves to broadcast Wojtek's fame far beyond the limits of his own company. And if Wojtek is promoted to corporal, this is the moment where it happens. I mean, it's contested. I think the military records have been lost.
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So we will say he gets promoted to corporal at this point.
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The war goes right the way on till Bologna, which is the last town that the Poles capture. And as you say, Wojtek is with them throughout this whole campaign. And he does, you know, he does have kind of brushes with danger, but these tend not to be from German bullets. So he... He finds a pack horse and he thinks this is great fun. So he stalks the pack horse and corners it.
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And the pack horse lashes out and kicks him in the face with its hooves. And this does him some damage. And maybe the time he comes closest to death is where he wanders into a base that's been set up by Indian soldiers serving with the British army. And he wanders into a tent and curls up with a Sikh soldier who wakes up and discovers this huge bear. Lying next to him.
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And he's so alarmed that he reaches for the gun and realizes that it's a tame bear, a pet bear, in time not to kill him. So the war ends. And this is a great time for the 22nd Company because they're stationed on the Adriatic. Very nice. The war is over. It's summer. There's a beach. So they all go down to the beach. Wojtek, again, I'm afraid, disgraces himself with girls.
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But I guess this is also a palate cleanser. It's a way of... kind of plunging back into the heart of darkness, but coming out perhaps the other side.
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So he has this trick where he swims underwater towards a group of unsuspecting women. And then he'll suddenly surface in the midst of them. And there's lots of kind of screaming and splashing. And Wojtek thinks this is absolutely hilarious. And, of course, for the Polish soldiers... who then have to come over and explain to the Italian women who this bear is.
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You know, it's a great way of meeting girls. Let me introduce you to my bear. Yes. He's a babe magnet. I think might be one way to describe him. So he's having a lovely time. His fellow soldiers are having a lovely time. It all looks great. But then of course, the shadow of Stalin falls over their prospects again, because we are now into the, you know, the onset of the Cold War.
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And Stalin does not want seasoned soldiers who have fought with the British going back to Poland. And he doesn't even want them on the continent of Europe. And this is expressed to the British government. And the British government say, OK, well, we will, you know, we'll take them back to Britain. So they go back to Britain and specifically they go back to Scotland.
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And in September 1946, the 22nd Company arrive on Clydeside. They march through the streets of Glasgow. They're cheered as heroes. And among their ranks is Wojtek. And these soldiers are now the responsibility of the British government. And the reason for this is that that they're very conscious of the debt they owe the Poles.
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And I think, I mean, I don't want to speak for Polish people, maybe they can correct me, but I think that is a huge part of why the incredible story of Wojtek, the bear who basically becomes a Polish soldier, why it has the kind of resonance that it does. So before we come to Wojtek, We've also done a number of episodes on famous animals in history.
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And again, I think it's this thing that has been shadowing British attitudes throughout the war, which is a feeling of guilt. And for the British government in particular, this guilt is, of course, compounded by the fact that Churchill has signed Poland over to Stalin at the Yalta Conference. So there's been, you know, yet another British betrayal of Poland.
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And to quote Neil Acheson on how the British government feel about this, they hope to soothe their consciences by handling the problem of the Polish armed forces in a generous and humane way. An interim treasury committee for Polish questions was set up immediately after the London government was de-recognized. So that's the Polish government that had been in London throughout the war.
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The British government has recognized the kind of the puppet government that Stalin has set up in Warsaw in their place. Yes. So to continue quoting Ashton, in effect, this meant that Britain, although exhausted and bankrupt at the end of nearly six years of war, was taking on the duty to pay and maintain and house the Polish armed forces in the West.
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The problem is that Stalin will not take back people from these Polish brigades unless they actively volunteer to go back. So in other words, they have to be communist sympathizers to do it. And in the event, I think only seven officers go back, something like 14,000 privates opt to head back. There are a few of these from the 22nd Division and they want to take Wojtek with them.
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And there's a massive row about this. But the vast majority of soldiers from the 22nd Division opt to stay in Scotland and they get to keep Wojtek. The commanding officer says you cannot take him. And instead, where do they go? They go to Winfield Camp, which is this camp above the Tweed, just down from Berwick. And initially, there is some hostility from the locals.
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You know, they're all suffering from rationing and things. But there are two things that help, I think, to thaw the relations. And the first is, again, this sense of how much people in Britain owe the Poles. And the second is that the 22nd Division have this bear. And Wojtek is the kind of perfect ambassador because he remains as amiable and as full of fun as ever.
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He's still got Peter with him, you know, so kind of mummy bear. He's got all his mates. And I think it just never crosses his mind that he's not one of them. In his own mind, he's a pole, not a bear. Absolutely. And so... They take him to dances. And when he goes there, Wojtek gives the local children rides on his back. He amuses them by doing huge farts. They all find this hilarious.
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Again, kind of breaks ice with the local girls. Right. Wojtek is taken swimming in the tweed. So he's brought down from the camp and he's led on a chain because they can't risk him being kind of swept out into the North Sea. And he goes swimming beneath the Union Bridge, which is this wonderful bridge built in 1822. It's the oldest functioning suspension bridge anywhere in the world.
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And Wojtek has a wonderful swim beneath it. And I've actually been to see the camp, the site of the camp where Wojtek stayed. And there's a big pool there. And you know how much Wojtek likes pools. And all around it are trees and they're still marked with his claw marks.
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So we've done dogs, we've done monkeys, and we have actually already had a number of bears on The Rest is History. So we did an episode on the inauguration of the Colosseum in AD 80. and that featured a bear from Caledonia. There's the polar bear that was given to Henry III by the King of Norway in 1252, and which was kept in the Tower of London.
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And I just want to give a shout out to Livy, who I know will be listening to this, who took us up there and showed us where the trees were. The paw marks of Wojtek. On the living tree. It's a kind of wonderful thing. And it's so odd. This is a story, as I said, begins with all this darkness and horror that you were describing on Monday.
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And yet there is a link that takes us to a tree above the tweed that is marked with the claw marks of a bear.
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They do. And the measure of this is, of course, that there's very strict rationing at this point. And Wojtek is a bear with a huge appetite. And it's not just the Poles, it's all the locals kind of, you know, they get together and they make sure that he has enough food.
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And maybe it helps that on the far bank, so on the English bank opposite the Scottish side of the Tweed, there is a honey farm in the village of Horncliffe, which is excellent. And again, a shout out to them. Brilliant. So they're able to keep Wojtek in half. You genuinely could not make that up. But then, Dominic, I mean, you know, this heartwarming story, but then tragedy. Oh, no.
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Because in 1947, the 22nd Division start to be demobbed. So they found settlement across Britain. The camp is going to be closed down. The men leave for civilian life. And... The question is, what is going to happen to Wojtek? He can't get a job, can he? He can't get his job. You know, he can't be reunited with his loved ones because his mother's dead. You know, real problem.
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So it's decided that he will be taken to Edinburgh Zoo.
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And on the 15th of November, 1947, you know, he's loaded into a cage. The cage is put on the back of a truck and he's driven off to Edinburgh. Oh, that is quite sad. And everyone who watches him go in 22nd Division is devastated, none more so than Peter. And from this point on, it is said that if anyone ever mentioned Wojtek's name to him, he would burst into tears.
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And his comrades as well are devastated. They are repeatedly making trips to the zoo.
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He'd lost his family and now he's losing Wojtek.
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And that is why, genuinely, the Polish soldiers who'd been his comrades are always visiting him. And sometimes they'll break into his enclosure and wrestle with him, like in the good old days. And when they leave, Wojtek tries to clamber out through the bars. And it's not just the Poles who feel the tragedy of this.
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I mean, so the director of Edinburgh Zoo, this guy called Thomas Gillespie, I mean, he wrote, I never felt so sorry to see an animal that had enjoyed so much freedom and fun confined to a cage. Oh. There are shards of light in this story. So one is that Peter, who had lost his family, he is reunited with most of them.
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His two older sons are lost for good, but the rest of his family, they do come and join him in London. Right. And Wojtek also, it's not total misery because I'm very happy to say that he becomes obsessed by penguins. So he takes a huge interest in them. And whenever they kind of march past, he'll watch them with huge fascination. And also, of course, Poles continue to visit him.
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And it's not just his former comrades, because by now, Wojtek has become an emblem for Poles in Britain of everything that they've been through. And so they will come and watch and talk to him. And he always perks up.
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And then there was Lord Byron, who kept a bear when he was a student at Trinity, because he'd been told he couldn't have a dog. So he wrote in his diary, I've got a new friend, the finest in the world. When I brought him here, they asked me what I meant to do with him, and my reply was he should sit for a fellowship. So Byron and his bear.
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And this is a story that starts to get resonance in Britain as well, particularly, I think, in Scotland, in the Borders region and in Edinburgh, to the extent that ultimately Wojtek is always appearing on Blue Peter. The children's TV programme. Children's TV programme. So he's a kind of a regular star. Yeah.
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But towards the end of his life, so going into the 60s, he does start to become very depressed. He goes into a steep decline. And on the 15th of November, 1963, by which point he's been in the zoo for 16 years, he's put down.
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Yeah, so... I think that he is a worthy hero for an episode of our podcast. Definitely is. And I think it... For a number of reasons. So we've talked about how... This is a story that spans a vast range of places. So it begins in Poland, it takes us to Siberia, to the Middle East, to Italy, to the woods above my Scottish estate.
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It reminds you just how much of a world war the Second World War was. I think also Wojtek is a very moving symbol of Polish-Scottish friendship. So I know that he is hugely famous in Poland, but he's pretty well known on the borders as well. Schoolchildren there know all about him. There's a statue of him in Duns, which is just up from the Tweed.
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And there's a statue in Edinburgh commemorating his presence there. Quite right, too. But I think above all, and the reason why it's good to have this as a coda to the terrible story that we've been telling in our previous three episodes, is that Wojtek's career does kind of rub up against the horrors that overwhelm Poland in the war.
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But because he was wholly innocent of them, knew nothing of them, he somehow seemed to provide, the Poles who were with him, with a way of kind of staring into the abyss of their own grief and everything that they'd lost, their bereavement, in a way that was kind of less painful than staring into that heart of darkness directly, I think.
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I mean, again, I don't want to kind of put words into the Polish soldiers who went through all that, but that's the sense that I get from reading about the obviously very profound bond that they felt. with this kind of, this innocent animal.
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And that is surely why... you know, these bereaved homesick, grieving men had adopted him in the first place. It's why the Polish officer said, yes, let's keep him. It's why the British high command recognized this and said, yes, we will, you know, enroll him as a private. And it's why they invested such love in him.
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And I think it's why to this day in Poland, Wojtek does remain kind of very loved.
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There are actually other examples of bears who served as mascots in war. Probably the most famous of these is an American black bear who was called Winnipeg. And Winnipeg came into the possession of a guy who originally had come from Birmingham. So he was a Brummie who'd emigrated to Canada. And he'd settled in Winnipeg in Manitoba. And there he'd become a vet.
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And then in 1914, war broke out and the news came to Canada, you know, dominion in the British Empire. So lots of Canadians signed up to fight for king and country. And Harry Colborne, he got the train from Winnipeg to get shipped for Britain and at a station in Ontario.
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He got off the platform and there, for reasons that are not entirely clear, because it seems quite an odd thing to be for sale, but he gets an orphaned bear cub. And because he's already feeling homesick for his native town of Winnipeg, he calls this bear Winnie. Takes him, this orphan bear, with him to Britain, trains with the Canadian unit that he signed up to.
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And then in December 1914, he crosses the Channel to go and fight on the Western Front. And he can't take this orphan bear with him. So he donates it to the London Zoo. So Winnie becomes one of the star attractions in London Zoo. And Winnie is there the whole way through the First World War and stays there after the First World War. And in 1924, a writer called A.A.
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Milne takes his son, who's a little boy called Christopher Robin, to see Winnie, this Canadian black bear. And Christopher Robin thinks this bear is wonderful, goes back home and changes the name of his teddy bear from Edward Bear to Winnie the Pooh. That's Winnie the Pooh.
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Okay, so there is another famous bear that does see action because this is a bear who gets taken up in the Korean War by a US paratrooper unit... And she's bought as a cub from a Japanese zoo, say right at the beginning of the Korean War in 1953. And the paratroopers, you know, they go to Korea and they take her up in planes and make her do paratroop jumps.
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I mean, does she do it? Does she like it? Well, she hates it. I mean, she absolutely hates it. I mean, you know, you're a bear and you're being chucked out of a plane. Of course you're going to hate it. And on her second jump, understandably, she's so upset that she starts biting the soldiers as they try to push her out. And then on her fourth attempt, she actually chews up the boot of a soldier.
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But they keep doing it. They keep chucking her out of the plane with her parachute. And she ends up garlanded with honours. So she wins a parachutist badge. She wins a Purple Heart. She wins a Korean Service Medal. But I think it's fair to say that she's not an enthusiastic paratrooper. She doesn't enjoy it.
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And in 1954, so she's only seized a year's service, she's discharged and sent to Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. So we could have gone to Lincoln Park Zoo when we were in America, couldn't we? We were in Chicago.
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So those, I guess, are the two bears who serve as mascots and who have kind of won a certain measure of fame. But Wojtek's story is a different order. I think it's the strangest, it's the most moving, and it's definitely the most historically resonant of any bear, not just a military bear, but any bear in history. Because Wojtek isn't just a mascot.
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He's literally enrolled in the Polish army as a private for reasons that we'll come to. And rises, right? And is promoted. Probably gets promotion to a corporal. There's kind of debate about this, but I think almost certainly becomes a corporal in the Polish army.
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And the reason that it's a moving story is that Wojtek, who is, again, like the two previous bears that we talked about, is bought as a cub. He grows up and he provides an emotional focus for soldiers who had been uprooted from their homeland. Many of them lost their families, had suffered unspeakable traumas.
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And this bear provided them with a focus for kind of wellsprings of love that perhaps otherwise wouldn't have had a focus. And I think that this is a huge part of why Wojtek is so famous and celebrated in Poland. But I have to say... There's also a personal link for me because, as we will find out, Wojtek ends up very close to the banks of the Tweed. Right, where you've got your house.
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My Scottish estate. Yes. So, I mean, it's kind of mad to say this about a bear. Yeah. But I think his story really does provide a window onto the kind of the miseries of Polish history in the 1940s. But it is also, it's a kind of charming story at the same time. And it's one that feels like it has a kind of personal connection to me. So it's a story I've wanted to do for a very, very long time.
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OK, so as you say, Poland is defeated. It's carved up. It vanishes from the map. But there are Poles who want to continue the fight. And basically, there are three ways in which Poles are able to do this. And the first, and I guess the most dangerous, is to continue the fight in Poland itself.
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And as you said in the previous episode, the German occupying forces have targeted the Polish elites for complete elimination. And their aim is to reduce the mass of the Polish population to kind of helotage, to the status of the helots that the Spartans used as their slave labor. That's what the Germans want to make the Poles become. And so effectively for...
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Lots of Polish young men, they feel that resistance, I mean, why wouldn't you resist? Because the alternative is either enslavement or extermination. And this is something that they are kind of facing up to very, very early on. So in April 1940, forced conscription in Germany is introduced. Polish young men are kind of rounded up and taken as slave labor into Germany.
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And so rather than submit to that, lots of Poles take to the forests. And this is the genesis of the Polish resistance. Yeah, of course. It's like something out of medieval history. They're centered in the vast woods and forests that spread over much of Poland. And by 1943, the Polish resistance numbers almost half a million.
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which is by far the largest resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Europe. But its ultimate fate is miserable because it's destroyed by the Germans. I mean, they're embroiled in the Warsaw Rising and all that. And then, of course, by the Soviets who are invading and who are not friends of the Polish resistance, want to see it wiped out. Yeah, it's a terrible story.
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And I'm sure one day we'll come to that awful story. The other option, if you have managed to get outside Poland, is to continue the fight by signing up perhaps with the French and then after the fall of France with Britain. And the Polish forces in Britain come to number almost 80,000. So we talked yesterday about how...
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Lots of Polish pilots fight for the RAF in the Battle of Britain, perform heroically. Polish sailors join the Royal Navy. Churchill admires them hugely. I think that they garner a great deal of sympathy in Britain, both for the fate of their country, for the evident heroism with which they're defending Britain, and I suspect a measure of guilt at the failure of Britain to come to Poland's rescue.
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And these soldiers are stationed, lots of them are stationed in Scotland. They are posted along the eastern Scottish coastline to ward off a possible invasion from Norway. And one of the places where a camp is set up is above the Tweed, just downriver from Berwick. And this camp is called Winfield Camp. It's a centre for lots of Poles there.
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So there is, of course, a third reservoir of potential soldiers that is waiting to be tapped on when the Soviet Union enters into alliance with Britain in the wake of Operation Barbarossa, which in turn means that the Poles and the Russians are then fighting on the same side. But before that...
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The fate of Poles in Soviet-occupied Poland is pretty much as grim as it had been for the Polish elites in Germany because the Soviets want to eliminate them just as much as the Germans do. And you described how in your Brevora format, the episode that you did before this. how the Soviet forces had invaded Poland on the 17th of September 1939 in the wake of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
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533. Wojtek: The Bear Who Beat the Nazis
It comes as a total surprise to the Poles, to the Western allies. The Polish forces are already disintegrating and this just completes that process. 200,000 prisoners of war are taken, 15,000 of these are officers, and these are taken to three camps in Russia and Ukraine, and then they vanish. And no one is really sure what happens to them.
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533. Wojtek: The Bear Who Beat the Nazis
And the truth is only discovered later in the war, in the wake of Operation Barbarossa, when the Germans are invading, going into Russia, into Ukraine, and in a forest called Katyn, they discover the corpses of 5,000 murdered people.
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533. Wojtek: The Bear Who Beat the Nazis
polish officers and the germans the germans with supreme hypocrisy trumpet this as an example of soviet war crimes which of course it is but it ignores the fact that the germans are doing committing even worse crimes And these officers who were found in Katyn, they'd been killed in March 1940, along with all the other Polish officers on Stalin's personal orders.
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533. Wojtek: The Bear Who Beat the Nazis
But it's not just, as we said, it's not just the officers who are dispatched. So in February 1940, the Soviet authorities had begun the kind of mass expulsion of the Polish civilian population. And the NKVD, which is the kind of the predecessor of the KGB, had begun herding up
The Rest Is History
549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Strange tales were told of Olaf Tryggvason's return to Norway. One day it was claimed the new king was in a fit mood to be entertained.
The Rest Is History
549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
And, Tom, he wants to bleed England dry, as so many raiders have done, but also he's after...
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
I have no time for Wessex's saints, to be honest with you.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
So now we really are into the routine of Danegeld, aren't we? Because... The issue now is that Svein knows he can just come back again and again, hit England, get more Dane Geld, and use that Dane Geld. I mean, this is your Kipling lines.
The Rest Is History
549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
Well, that riveting passage, finely wrought prose, that was produced by none other than our very own Hollywood's own Tom Holland in his book Millennium. It's about the end of the world and the forging of Christendom. Is that the subtitle of the book, Tom? Yeah, that kind of stuff. Exactly.
The Rest Is History
549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
If you pay Dane Geld, you will never get rid of the Dane because Svein uses that to beef up his army, beef up his fleet, and then come back the next year or two years later for more money. Yeah, it's like going to a cash point with somebody else's card. Right, because every time the Danes return, 1006, 1009... They are better equipped, more formidable, more terrifying.
The Rest Is History
549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
I have to say, there's an absolutely brilliant book on this that I read a few years ago by a Norwegian historian called Tora Skaer called The Wolf Age. And it does this in basically kind of week by week narrative. And it just goes on and on and on. Of all of these conquests. And one of the key characters is a guy called Thorkell the Tall. And he is very tall. And he's called Thorkell.
The Rest Is History
549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
We've established that. He's really brutal and effective, isn't he? I mean, he keeps looting and pillaging all these towns. And so in 1011, they go for a place that's even more significant than Wiltshire and the Salisbury area, which is Canterbury. Yeah. The seat of Christianity in England.
The Rest Is History
549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
Do you know the name of the man who, this is so Tolkien, the name of the man who finished the archbishop off, he was called Thrum. Yeah. Thorkell and Thrum. Yeah. Yeah.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
So in the long run, Æthelred's solution is yet again financial. He can't fight... It's interesting, isn't it, that England, despite being so wealthy, just doesn't have the martial tradition, the martial culture?
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
They're a perfect match. We ended last time. With a reading from Fury of the Vikings, listeners may remember that Danish refugees, in the wake of a terrible massacre in the towns and villages of England, have fled across the North Sea to Scandinavia to bring the news to the Danish king, and revenge is coming. So today, in this mighty series about the events of 1066, we turn from England...
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
sticking into the heart of england because it leads to york the great second city of england and which for so long had been a viking capital there's loads of danes in this area i mean there are people with danish surnames uh there are danish place names yeah there are all these people who perhaps for whom it is perhaps not such a stretch to imagine having a danish overlord rather than
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
An English one. And it seems pretty clear at this point, doesn't it? Do you agree that Svein... This isn't another raid. He's like, right, let's finish this now. I'm actually just going to take this over and this is going to become part of my empire.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
And this will be really important later on. The fact that these children, one of whom is called Edward, so listeners should remember him, are disappearing into exile in Normandy to her homeland.
The Rest Is History
549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
So now the dynasty that has ruled England for so long, the dynasty of Alfred and of Edward the Elder and of Athelstan, has gone off into exile. The Danes are the masters of England. And a Danish king. And a Danish king. Yeah, in Svein Forkbeard. And then an unbelievable George R.R. Martin style twist happens. The 3rd of February, 1014. Tell us what happens to Svein Fortbeard, Tom.
The Rest Is History
549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
So listeners, make up their own minds. Was he killed by St. Edmund in a dream with a pole? Or did he, as I read in another book, have a stroke in his scunthorpe? Basically, you can divide the human race into people who go with the stroke and scunthorpe or the pole people.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
to Scandinavia, to the Northlands. We look north to the world of the Vikings, which is now beginning to change. And that opening reading about Olaf Tryggvason rejecting Odin's beef is a reminder of the throes of cultural and social change that are transforming Scandinavia. So, Tom, you talked last time about this guy, Olaf Tryggvason.
The Rest Is History
549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
Previously done. Yeah, that's not really an endorsement, is it? But Arthur Redd does obviously come back. He does. So Thorkell switched sides by this point.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
When we make this as a TV drama, he should be played by an AI de-aged Sean Bean. That will give people a clue as to what happens to him. As to whether he's going to win.
The Rest Is History
549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
He is a terrifying, slightly sinister Viking leader who had beaten an English army in 991 at the Battle of Malden, who had led all these pillaging raids across southern England, and has extorted a huge amount of silver from England's king, Æthelred the Unready. But... Olaf Tryggvason is an embodiment of change in himself, isn't he?
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
Only a boy, you ship batterer, when you launched your boat, no king was younger than you. So those were lines, lovely lines, written by a praise singer about the Very young, very impressive, very frightening son of Svein Forkbeard. And this is a man familiar to anybody who enjoys anecdotes about waves, because he is a young man called Knut. And Knut came with his father Svein to England in 1013.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
He's probably battle-hardened even at that point. He'd probably been on previous raids. His father has been struck in a dream by St Edmund with a pole and has died. And so Cnut is now the leader of, well, he's the leader of what? Is he the leader merely of a war band or does he want to be the claimant to a grand North Sea empire that includes England as well as Denmark and Norway?
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
He's got a dilemma, hasn't he, Tom? Does he give up and basically go back to Denmark? Or even at this young age, does he go for it as his father was going to do?
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
Because he's converted to Christianity and he's been paid off by Æthelred and he has gone back to Norway. So tell us a little bit about him and why he matters.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
And they arrive in the summer of 1015. Ethelred is dying but not quite dead. So the question in everybody's mind is this. Is it going to be Edmund Ironside who succeeds, his heir, or is Cnut going to finish what Svein Fortbeard started and basically assimilate England into the world of the Scandinavian Empire?
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
So he's very much the little finger of this story, isn't he? Because he's always changing sides and betraying people. And basically, you never can be entirely sure. Well, he's on his own side and he is constantly swapping from Edmund to Knut and back again.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
It's sort of true, isn't it, that basically everybody who dies in this period, there's always an account that claims that it was while they were relieving themselves in some way. Not everyone, but it's certainly a running theme. It's a feature, isn't it? Yes. So we're in 1016, exactly half a century before the very famous conquest of 1066.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
But this is a conquest just as complete and just as remarkable in some ways as the Norman conquest. This is a Danish conquest. The dynasty of Alfred the Great has been, it appears, definitively driven off the throne. And the Danes, I mean, they really are the masters of England now under Canute.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
Since we raised the comparison with the Norman conquest, here's the crucial question. What happens in England? So my sense is that actually Cnut, the top jobs, obviously he gives to his own supporters, to Danes. So he keeps the heartland of Wessex. But Thorkell, the very tall guy who's swapped sides a few times but has now ended up on the winning side, he gets East Anglia.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
And another Dane, a guy called Eric, gets Northumbria. So they're parceling out the kingdom, rather as William will go on to do after 1066. And these guys aren't eldermen like the Anglo-Saxons. They're something new, aren't they? Jarls.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
That's exactly the kind of thing that you look for in a series like this, isn't it? Yes, exactly. So that's about the jobs. What about the crucial thing, which is about the money? The attraction of England is that it's so rich. Yeah. All of these men, these mercenaries who have flocked to Canute's banners, they have done so because they thought they were going to get the money.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
What happens to the wealth of England? Is it basically just parceled out and looted? Can I quote from Millennium? Do you want to quote from yourself?
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
Regular listeners will be disappointed if I don't mention Dennis Healy at this point in his 83% top rate of tax in the early 1970s. So Dennis Healy, exceeded only by Knute. But, so here's the question. Top jobs given to Danes. The money parceled out and basically the entire income of England for a year taken and put into Danish coffers.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
Why is it, therefore, that nobody remembers the conquest of 1016 when it must have been psychologically pretty devastating, particularly for the English elite, Many of whom must have lost not just their money, but their power, their status, their prestige, their self-worth, all of those kinds of things.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
So the first one, she's from Northampton, isn't she? And she's an elder woman's daughter and she has the brilliant name of Elf Gifu.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
So let's just park her onto one side. So there's Elf Gifu and her son, who is Harefoot. Harold Harefoot. Yeah. Now, you said that there were two wives of Canute, and this really is a twist. Yeah, it is. Great twist. Because he has married the widow of his father's former adversary. Æthelred, he has married Emma of Normandy. He has, in 1017.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
So this speaks to Cnut's political sensitivity and sophistication, doesn't it? He's not just a Viking warlord. He has, you know, as you put it in your notes, he's waded through blood. He has ruled by the sword and by terror. He's won his crown. And yet, once he's done that, he is sufficiently skillful to recognize that there are continuities he wants to preserve.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
He wants to work with the existing traditions. He clearly wants to conciliate is the wrong word, but ultimately he knows he will have to work with the English. England is his prize and he wants it to thrive under his overlordship. And I guess... He's also Christian, which means he's got a lot in common with the people of England.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
So in that sense, there's a slight Charlemagne aspect to this, isn't there? Somebody from ultimately a barbarian pagan lineage who now is standing there in Rome in the city of the pope and the Caesars. You know, winning respect and recognition from his peers. Yeah. I mean, Canute is a tremendously, you know, I know this is a violent age and he's paid very violently.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
But as a politician, as a statesman, he's a very impressive figure.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
Because Normandy itself at this point does not look a terribly formidable proposition because it's become bitterly divided.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
Yeah, I think it's important for people to get that into their heads, isn't it? That the Christianisation of Scandinavia is the moment that really marks the end of the Viking Age. But it's not because these warlords think kindness is brilliant and I love turning the other cheek and all that kind of thing. It's because they think Christianity is a winner's religion.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
So, ladies and gentlemen, will England remain happy and united and forward-looking under the reigns of Knut and his successors? Will Normandy fall apart and what will happen to this seven-year-old boy, William? What prospects for him? Well, you can, of course, find out.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
Right now, if you're a member of the Rest Is History Club, because you can listen to our next episode, which is all about the rise of William of Normandy. But if you're not a member of the Rest Is History Club and you want to, you can sign up at therestishistory.com and, you know, Bob's your uncle.
The Rest Is History
549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
But, Tom, for those people who don't want to do that, we will be back on Monday with the next thrilling chapter of this epic story. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
The Rest Is History
549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
People who are Christians are rich, they're powerful. And also, if you're a king, to have one religion, one god... That sounds great. You know, get everyone to believe the same thing and therefore believe in you.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
At his side, there suddenly appeared an old man, cloaked and white-haired, with only a single eye. Entering into conversation with the stranger, Tryggvason found that there was nothing the old man did not seem to know, nor any question to which he could not give an answer.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
Yeah, it's an amazing site, actually. I'll tell you what, it's accessible within half a day from Legoland. I know, I remember it well. It's an excellent trip. The Danish Tourist Board, if they want to sponsor us, they really ought to because I recommend it to the listeners. It's a long weekend. You can knock off Legoland and the Yelling Stones in the same trip.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
And of course, this matters because these stones, the guy who set them up, King Harold, you mentioned, his nickname is Bluetooth. And these stones showing the integration of of pagan and Christian, and of course, all Denmark and Norway being joined together, are the inspiration for Bluetooth technology, would you believe?
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
All evening the two of them talked, and even though the king was eventually persuaded to retire to bed by a twitchy English bishop who had grown suspicious of the one-eyed stranger, Trigvason could still not bear to end the conversation, but continued it even as he lay on his furs late into the night. At last the old man left him, and the king fell asleep.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
In his cold blue eyes, Tom, there was only death because Svein Fortbeard has just heard the news of the massacre of Danes in England. And he has also, according to some sources, heard that one of the victims is his own sister, Gunnhilde. Right. And this is a man with whom you do not want to mess. So Tietmar, the Bishop of Merseburg. said that he was, and I quote, not a ruler, but a destroyer.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
And Svein Fortbeard, he may be, you know, a new kind of Dane in that he is a king in a Christianizing world and he has more bureaucracy behind him and all of this kind of thing. So he's not a Viking raider or a Viking warlord, but he's just as frightening and formidable as the most sinister and blood-drenched of Alfred the Great's adversaries or whatever.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
Right, than either the boneless.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
Yeah, the one that you tell in your book. Not necessarily the truest, but the one that you enjoy the most, Dom, I think it's fair to say.
The Rest Is History
549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
So Svein had been a comrade of Olaf Tryggvason, the guy who rejected Odin's beef. But they are rivals within the world of the North Sea, aren't they? One of them is Norway, the other is Denmark, basically.
The Rest Is History
549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
But his dreams were strange and feverish, and waking up abruptly he cried out for the stranger again. Even though his servants searched high and low, however, the old man could not be found, and Tryggvason, brought to his senses by daylight, shuddered at his close escape.
The Rest Is History
549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
Right. So this is a thing. Svein Forkbeard at this point, who is this very formidable character, of course, famous for his beard. We should stress this. He has this forked beard, which I think in itself is quite intimidating. Yeah. So he is the man that Æthelred the Unready has basically chosen to It's mad. But I guess Æthelred thought he had no choice.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
He thought the Danes were a fifth column and he just had to get rid. But, I mean, you've said in your notes that if he'd been facing somebody else, it might have been a reasonable calculation. But as it is, because word is bound to reach Svein Fortbeard, it's, and I quote, the worst policy decision in the whole of English history.
The Rest Is History
549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
I mean, Bridget Philipson might have something to say about that, Tom. Yeah.
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549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
When it was reported to him that two sides of beef, a gift from the stranger, had been used in a stew, he ordered the entire cooking pot flung out. A godly and responsible act, for clearly it was out of the question for him, as a follower of Christ, to feast on meat supplied by Odin.
The Rest Is History
549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)
So let's get into Svein Forkbeard's revenge. So he clearly spends the next few months mustering his forces, assembling his fleet, sharpening their swords. And then a few months after the St. Brice's Day Massacre in 1003, He lands in Wessex, in the heartland of the English kingdom, at the head of this gigantic fleet and a massive expeditionary force.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hi, everybody. Dominic Sandbrook from The Rest Is History here.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
I think occasionally you as well. I accept. Maybe me more often than you. Tom who speaks English like it's his third language. But Conrad as a man, he's very reserved. He's very sensitive. He has this deep sense of irony and kind of scepticism that runs through everything he does. Very sceptical about human nature. He is intensely, in many ways, intensely conservative.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Indeed, quite anti-democratic in many ways. When people sometimes say you can't create great art or great literature... You know, if you're of a very reactionary disposition, I think Conrad's is one of those people who probably proves that comprehensively wrong. Anyway. 1889, he's been off in the South Seas. He comes back to London. He starts writing his first novel, Almayer's Folly.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Right. And there's so many great stories. So, obviously, JFK, you and I disagree about JFK because I, of course, think it was Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone and you think differently. But there are other stories. You mentioned attempted assassinations. So, for example, FDR. FDR was almost shot before his inauguration in 1933.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Then at the beginning of 1890, he goes for the first time back to his homeland, Ukraine. And it doesn't go well. He doesn't get on with his family when they're there. You can well imagine he's probably built it up in his mind about what it would be like. It's very disappointing because he's quite aloof and because he's had all these strange experiences, he doesn't quite fit.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Well, also, he's got sea legs now, hasn't he?
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Possibly. Because when he gets back, and it's disappointing, the first thing he does is to go to sea. Now, before he'd gone to Ukraine, he'd been talking to a company in Brussels about a Belgian shipping firm, about joining one of their ships, and he's actually already signed a contract. Now, this company, people will be reminded of all these companies from the episode we did about E.D.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Morel, all these steamship companies with concessions and contracts. This company is called the Société Anonyme Belge pour le Commerce du Congo. So it's handling the commerce from the Upper Congo, and it had been founded a year earlier to export ivory and rubber from the interior. So it runs a steamer service and it has a series of trading stations of its own.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And why does Conrad sign up with this company? Well, obviously, one reason is he needs the money. He's effectively, you know, a mercenary. He will take the money to go on various voyages all over the world. But as his great biographer, Zizisov Naida, who's a Pole, his book is absolutely, it's quite hard to get hold of. So this is your third language, Polish? Yeah, exactly. Excellent.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Excellent, Tom. Thank you. Fluent pronunciation there. Thank you. It's not like I'd been preparing for hours. Nida points out that Conrad had always dreamed of Africa. As a boy in Ukraine, aged about nine, he had pointed his finger at a map where there was a blank space, as there was in those days, and he had said, when I grow up, I'd like to go there.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Now, he gives that line to Marlow, doesn't he, in Heart of Darkness, and there's no reason to doubt that Conrad himself thought like that. Anyway, there's also no reason to believe, by the way, that he doubts the civilising mission, because he actually writes about this in letters to his uncle at the same time.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Anyway, May 1890, the 10th of May, he boards the ship, the SS Ville de Maceo of Bordeaux, for this journey that his biographer Nida says is the most traumatic journey of his life. They go off down the coast of Africa. Even before they get to the Congo, one passenger says to him, you're going to the Congo? That's an absolute nightmare. That's not what you want to hear, is it? Yeah.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
He says, basically, everybody who goes there, they either die or they come home early because it's so terrible. And Conrad actually says, and I quote, I'm a Polish nobleman cased in British tar. Doesn't get better than that. No, that's the best thing you can possibly be. So anyway, about a month later, they reach the capital of the Congo Free State, Boma. So it's just 50 miles inland.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And that's an attempted assassination that really could have changed the course of history because no FDR. Does the United States still enter the Second World War? Does the story of the 20th century play out completely differently? So... There is so much to talk about, and I'm really, really looking forward to doing it. What are you looking forward to most, Anthony?
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And here, if people remember from the previous episodes, there's the various complicated ways you have to move up the river. Because of the rapids and all that malarkey. Because of the rapids. So he gets a steamer upriver to Matadi, and Matadi is the last point before the rapids where you have to get off. Now, at Matadi, he meets somebody that we talked about on Monday.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And this is somebody who we're going to be hearing about from John Banville in next week's bonus episode. And this is Roger Casement. So the British consul, great Irish patriot, an amazing character. And Conrad really took to Casement, didn't he? He said, it's a great pleasure to have met him. He thinks, speaks well, most intelligent and very sympathetic.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And there's a lot of talk that you find about Conrad and Casement and what they did. Conrad himself seems to have misremembered what they did. He said, we shared a room together. They undoubtedly didn't because Casement wasn't there for a lot of the time.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
But they definitely spent a lot of time together and they probably made trips together to see some of the local villages to find porters and things to carry all Conrad's stuff. So I think it's probably at this point that Conrad starts to see some of the terrible scenes that we've quoted in the previous episodes. So, for example, Tom, you read that passage about the six blokes
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, they are. I mean, what does Conrad say? He said at one point, his book was, when he was pitching it to Blackwoods, he said it was a portrait of inefficiency and incompetence in Africa. Yeah. It's like getting a train in Britain. So he's on a rail replacement bus. That's what he's on.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
So he hangs around with Casement for a couple of weeks and then they've got the porters and he's ready to start overland from Matadi. And he wrote a diary in English in his third language, which gives you some sense of what it was like. Mosquitoes at night when the moon rose, heard shouts and drumming in distant villages past a bad night. No water. Camped on an exposed hillside near a muddy creek.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
No shade. Tent on a slope. Sun heavy. Wretched. Night miserably cold. No sleep. Mosquitoes. And on they go. And at one point, he definitely passes a skeleton tied to a post, which is a very... Imagine seeing that when you... Yeah. So that's a sign, you know, remember, Conrad is very, very, very well-travelled.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
I mean, admittedly, most of his travels have been at sea, so he hasn't often gone inland in the places he's visited. That's so interesting, isn't it?
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And the deeper he goes inland, the more the violence becomes apparent. apparent to him. Perhaps violence that you don't see to the same extent on the coast, it's hard to say. So at one point, he sees a government official beating porters, blows with sticks, raining hard, stopped it. In other words, he intervenes to break it up.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
The 2nd of August, he arrives at Leopoldville, now Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. And there, as you mentioned in the novel... his proposed steamer has been damaged. So he has to transfer to another steamer, which is called, with sublime irony, the Roi des Belges. You often read that he's the captain. He's not the captain.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
There's a guy called Koch, a Dane, who is the captain. And Conrad is going to be the number two. And we know... from his correspondence, he's already disillusioned because his uncle, Tadeusz, writes to him at this point and says, don't walk out on the contract. You'll lose all your money and you'll get a bad reputation among the companies as somebody who can't be relied upon.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
So he's clearly been writing home and saying, this is terrible. I'm actually thinking of breaking my contract. And his biographers think that This is probably because he's fallen out with the company manager who he's going to have to give a lift to. So he's been travelling with him. And the company manager is a Belgian called Camille Delcommune.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And he really is in Heart of Darkness because there's the company manager in Heart of Darkness who is modelled directly on this bloke, Delcommune.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Exactly. So on they go upriver. They go very quickly. They're covering 1,000 miles in a month. I mean, these don't mess around, these steamers. And on board the ship, there's Captain Koch, there's Conrad, there's a mechanic from Belgium, there are 25 African crewmen, Del Commune, and three other company agents. And we know from traders' accounts that the passage upriver, it's very lonely.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
You don't pass many of the ships. The countryside is desolate. There are burned-out villages. You know, the people are hiding in the bush. Depredations of the force publique. And so, as Ziziswaf Naida says in his biography...
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
The atmosphere of Heart of Darkness clearly is inspired by this kind of oppressive, claustrophobic isolation that Conrad must have felt on this boat going up river with just the silence and the emptiness.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Definitely do. Definitely. So on the 1st of September, they get to the last navigable point on the river. This is what's then called Stanley Falls. Now it's called Kizangani. And this is basically, you know, now in the heart of Central Africa. And, And Conrad wrote later, I said to myself with awe, this is the very spot of my boyish boast.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
What an end to the idealized realities of a boy's daydreams. So this is the point that he pointed to on the map all those years ago. And he's got there and the sense of not just crushing disappointment, but more than that, dare I say, the horror of what he has seen. Like Musk arriving in Mars. That wasn't a comparison I expected, to be honest. Right.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
They stay there, Stanley Falls, for about a week, and they pick up the local agent, who's a guy called Klein, a Frenchman, Georges-Antoine Klein. He's in his late 20s. We know very little about him. He had terrible dysentery. And they decide, well, we're going to take this guy Klein back. So then they turn back. Now, Klein died on the return journey. He died after a couple of weeks.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
To the listeners, if you're not excited by that, I don't know what would excite you, frankly. So the good news is pre-sale tickets are available this Friday, the 21st of February from 10 o'clock in the morning, exclusively for our Rest Is History Club members. You will get an email with the link before the sale begins.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And his story is clearly the model in some way for the story of Kurtz. And Kurtz, when Conrad first sat down and started writing the book, he was called Klein. But apart from that, there is nothing to connect them. There's no sense that this guy Klein was a... A madman, a bad guy, a guy who'd stared into the depths of the human soul. He's just a French bloke who's got terrible dysentery.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
But here is the sort of the germ of the idea of Mr. Kurtz, I guess. Yeah. Anyway, they get back to Kinshasa after about three weeks. And here, Conrad writes to a friend of his back in Belgium called Marguerite Porodowska. And he says to her, I've actually now got terrible dysentery and fever. And I'm incredibly miserable. He says, I regret having come here. I regret it bitterly.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
I find everything repugnant. Especially, he says, the people. And he's talking about the Europeans. And I am repugnant to them too, from the director in Africa, who has taken the trouble of telling a good many people of his intense dislike of me down to the lowest mechanic. Basically, everybody hates me. Now, the interesting thing is he never mentions the Congo itself.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And the violence in the Congo is a reason for his unhappiness. And do you think that's... He's burying it? Well, possibly, because Sajisrof Naida says in his book, and I think this does make sense, he says he thinks that Conrad had basically failed to hide how unhappy and how shocked he was with what he could see. And that the other people, the del Comune, the other agents, saw that and
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
and took against him. He was kind of a livid liberal. Yeah, that he basically is spoiling their fun and he's judging them. And you can see, therefore, it would sort of make sense that they would find him repugnant because he's a walking rebuke to their project. So he's definitely ill for the next few weeks. And then he vanishes. So Conrad vanishes.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
The paper trail disappears and he vanishes from sight. As Nida puts it, the image becomes confused, blurred, obscure, which is actually very appropriate given the way Conrad writes. And actually, the next time we come across him, he's back. He's in Brussels in January 1891. And then the next time we see him after that, he's in London in February. There's no diary entries. There are no letters.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
There is nothing. And it's as though I think whatever has happened in those last days or weeks in the Congo, he wants to forget it, whatever it is.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And I think it's plausible that it's during those last weeks that he really reaches his verdict on the Congo Free State. Yeah. When he attains what he called the distasteful knowledge of the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience and geographical exploration. And there are sort of fragments in later letters and whatnot that give a sense of what he thought.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
So in 1903, just a few years later, he told his friend Cunningham Graham that a founder, Tom, of the Scottish National Party, so a man with whom you'd have a lot to talk about. He said to Cunningham Graham that Leopold and his three state agents were, and I quote, a gigantic and obscene beast. So that's fascinating, isn't it?
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And if you're not a member of the Rest Is History Club, just go to therestishistory.com to sign up and to get your email with the link.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Because again, we're talking about this idea of going into a prehistoric landscape. That is the beast. That is the beast. And he actually ends a letter to Cunningham Graham saying, you know, if you want to find out about this, you should talk to my mate, Roger Casement. He could tell you things, things I've tried to forget, things I never did know.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
You know, there's this kind of sense of like the stuff at the periphery of his vision, half glimpsed, half understood that's going on. And he doesn't really want to think about it because it's so terrible.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Absolutely. And the book absolutely has that flavour. So for the next three years, Conrad goes back to the Merchant Marine. He sails around. And then in 1894, he retires from the sea and he devotes himself to writing. And he writes a couple of novels and he writes lots of stories in magazines like Blackwoods and The Strand, famously where Sherlock Holmes started.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And in the middle of December 1898, he starts his third piece for Blackwoods magazine. And he says to the publisher, it's a narrative about a bloke who's on a river in Central Africa. I'm thinking of calling it The Heart of Darkness, but the narrative is not at all gloomy.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
which is clearly I mean that's not true and he obviously doesn't want the publisher to say yeah not for us mate yeah it's like us with Theo trying to persuade him to do an episode it's really upbeat and jolly and people will love it full of fun and Conrad says to him the theme is the criminality of inefficiency and pure selfishness when tackling civilising work in Africa
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Now, interestingly, this is Conrad's own thing. He's not been inspired by E.D. Murrell's campaign or anything like that, because that hasn't even started yet. Yeah, it hasn't begun, has it? No, nowhere near. So it's obviously something that he feels he has to do or wants to do. And it's presumably the time where everyone still thinks it's brilliant and it's civilising and hooray. Exactly.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Now, the most shocking thing for people like us, Tom, is how much Conrad is being paid. Blackwood's paid him £60 for this. So in relative income terms, that's about almost £50,000 today, which is a sign of how well this kind of writing was paid back then. And how highly rated Conrad is, I assume. I mean, he's not Conan Doyle, I accept, but at this point, he's not that highly rated.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
There's just so much money in short stories and journalism and Far, far more than there is today. Great days. Yeah, great days. So he turns it around. By the 6th of February, he delivers 38,000 words to Blackwell's, which I think is quite slow. I think it's pretty fast. That's three weeks' work. That is three weeks' work. Come on, mate. Anyway, it's published in February, March, and April 1899.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
So just before we go to the break, for people who are not familiar with the book or need reminding, what has he produced? Most accounts that you read say that it's narrated by this guy, Marlowe. That's actually not true. Marlowe is not the narrator. It's Russian dolls, isn't it? Yeah, there are narratives within narratives.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
So basically, the narrator is part of a group of people who are on this ship, the Nelly, off Gravesend in the Thames. So in England and night is falling and they're all just hanging around on this boat, but they've got to wait there for the turn of the tide. Haven't they? They can't, they can't go home yet.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Yeah. And Marlow is kind of leaning against the mast. He's sort of sitting down leaning against the mast. He's a sort of weather-beaten sort of sea dog, you know, hard-faced sea dog character. And he kicks off suddenly. They're all just sitting around in a desultory way as night is falling. And he doesn't talk about the Congo. He talks about Britain.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And he says very famously, and this also has been one of the dark places of the earth. And then he starts musing. You talked about this, Tom, a long time ago when we did an episode about Roman London. I think we opened with this message. He says, what must it have been like to be a Roman in Britain? The feeling, you know, to be sent north from Italy or wherever.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
So if you're a patriotic Brit who loves the special relationship, if you're an American living in London, or if you're an American who just loves getting on planes across the Atlantic to see the very highest quality entertainment, we absolutely expect to see you there in the West End on Sunday, the 30th of March.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Now, as you can probably tell from the noise of the pool, I am joined by a friend of the show, Anthony Scaramucci, who is on his island, surrounded by the luxurious trappings of wealth. He is, of course, the host of The Rest Is Politics US. And Anthony and I have a very special announcement. on Sunday the 30th of March.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And you arrive in Britain and you have this feeling that the savagery, the utter savagery had closed around him. All that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
But then he's very unsentimental about the Roman Empire. He says, "...it was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind, as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness." And then he kind of goes on from that to think about empires in general.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. That it's kind of a noble ideal... But in practice... Well, in that, he has switched from the Romans to Europeans, hasn't he? He has indeed. He has indeed.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And this then leads him to tell them a story. And this is the story of Heart of Darkness. And it's a story set in the past. So it's not set in 1899 when they're getting rubber. It's back in the heyday of ivory. And he says, you know, the word ivory rang in the air. You would think people were praying to it. Of course, that's as we'll discover. Literally true. That's literally true.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Marlow, like Conrad, is hired to take a steamboat up the Congo, although the Congo is never named.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
So, but it's clear, you know, there's no, it's clear, I think, where we're talking about.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Yes, I think so. I mean, it's... I think so. Exactly. Yeah, I think it definitely universalises it, which is why I think it's completely reasonable to set it in Vietnam in a bulk lips now or whatever. Yeah. So his job is to go up the river to collect this agent, Mr. Kurtz, from the interior. Everybody says to him, are you going to see Mr. Kurtz? Mr. Kurtz is absolutely brilliant.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Mr. Kurtz is half English, he's half French, although people say all Europe had contributed to the making of Kurtz. He's a brilliant writer. He's painted this beautiful oil sketch.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
of a woman holding a torch kind of a figure of progress of course he is and I quote an emissary of pity and science and progress he is the enlightenment he is western civilization you know he's just absolutely brilliant but
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And to tell you the truth, what I'm really hoping is that on the night, Anthony will finally reveal the truth about behind the JFK assassination.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
So there is a darkness there right from the start. There is indeed. And quite early on, Marlowe starts to get some kind of sense that all is not well with Mr. Kurtz. And at one point later on, he discovers that Mr. Kurtz has written this enormous report for the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs. And it's a brilliant piece of work. It's amazingly well written.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
But it ends with this weird scrawled phrase, exterminate all the brutes. which kind of sets alarm bells ringing, I think. Another of those kind of terrifyingly quotable phrases. Yeah. So Marla gets the boat upriver. He has a series of quite scary adventures. I say adventures, but they're... They're not really, are they?
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
The thing is, they're riffs on the kind of adventures you would see in boys' stories, but they're told in a really unsettling... Like, he can't understand what's going on.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Well, there is an attack when they reach the station. Remember, there's all the spears that are thrown at them and the bloke next to him is killed, actually.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
No, it's not at all. Marlowe is just standing there basically doing nothing, doing all of it. He's not a sort of active, exciting protagonist. Loading his rifle or that kind of thing. Anyway, they get to Kurtz's station. All the worst suspicions are confirmed. The station is surrounded by posts with severed heads.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And I don't want to spoil the story completely for people who haven't read it, but as the company manager puts it, Kurtz's methods have proved unsound. He's been going about his business in an unsound manner. I mean, he's basically being worshipped by the locals as a god, but he's behaving very violently. Kurtz himself is a very sick man. He's an emaciated ghostly figure on a stretcher.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
So not like Marlon Brando. Not like Marlon Brando at all, but very like this bloke Klein that Conrad himself had picked up. Marlowe and Kurtz have a series of chats, slightly strange chats, very elliptical, elusive, hard to work out exactly what they're talking about. Kurtz is dying, clearly. Kurtz says to Marlowe, oh, it's a terrible shame.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
I'll never have the chance to carry out my... I had immense plans, he says. It's going to carry out great things. But we never really find out what those immense plans add up to. Anyway... They finally head back downstream with Kurtz, who is dying. And then we get to that scene that you opened with Tom, where Kurtz, his final words, is lying there.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And he says, it's like he's looking into the distance. And he says, or is he looking into his own soul? We don't know. And he says, the horror, the horror. It's a really famous death scene. There's a brilliant essay for people who are interested online by the New Yorker's critic David Denby. He first wrote it in 1995. And he calls it the most famous literary death scene since Shakespeare.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And I think it's very famous now because of Marlon Brando, because of Apocalypse Now.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Now in Apocalypse Now, for people who've seen the film, this is basically the end. Kurtz dies, end of the film. But interestingly, that's not the end of Heart of Darkness. Marlowe comes back to Europe and something in him has changed. He talks again and again about feeling loyal to Kurtz.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
He says that Kurtz will have a bit of the reading in the next half, I think, that Kurtz has stepped over the edge of something and seen something profound. We don't know what it is. As a result of this, Marlowe comes back and he goes to Brussels and he feels completely alienated from life in Brussels. He's had an experience that has changed him.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Now, Kurtz has given him a packet of papers, entrusted it to him, and the very last scene of the novel is him giving the papers to Kurtz's grieving fiancée.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
She's got kind of a crazy headdress or something. And I felt kind of slightly out of tune with everything else in the novella. I totally agree with you. I think that's the one moment in the book where Conrad yields to kind of late Victorian African melodrama. Agreed. In this woman who's like... incredibly impressive and statuesque and sort of, she stands there, you know, lamenting loudly.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Waving spears and... Yeah, and all of this. Kind of Boudicca figure. Anyway, he hands over these papers to the fiancée and to his horror, she says, tell me about when he died. What was the last thing he said to you? And the very last thing that Marlowe does in the whole story is he looks her in the eye and he lies to her and he says, the last word he pronounced was your name.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Now, before we get to the break, I would really like to tell you about another Goalhanger podcast, Legacy, hosted by Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And this season, they are looking at perhaps one of the most famous leaders of all time, Genghis Khan, the Mongol leader whose empire expanded from Korea to parts of Eastern Europe.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Do you know, Tom, that's an amazing revelation to me. I didn't know that. You did not know that.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And yet, Tom, that's only one side of the story, isn't it? Because did he not also develop the Yam postal system across his empire? And his treatment of women, I read, was entirely inconsistent. Yeah.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And the series is a really extraordinary listen, in no small part because Peter wrote the bestseller The Silk Roads, which is all about Genghis's part of the world, and you will be hard-pressed to find someone who knows more about the Mongols than Peter Frankopan.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Yeah, we'll answer all those questions in this. You have 45 minutes. Pick up your pen. Start now. Literary scholars have tried for more than a century to answer those questions. And finally, we can reveal the answers. Brilliant.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
So on Kurtz himself, loads of scholars have tried to argue that he's a real person. And they've tried to find out who Conrad was inspired by. And I think there are three or four candidates that come up again and again. So one candidate is a bloke called Major Edmund Bartolot. And he, I'm sorry to say, was a British officer.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
He had gone with Stanley, Henry Morton Stanley, to rescue... It's such a complicated story, basically. They went to rescue an Egyptian governor called Emin Pasha, who didn't need rescuing, in the Sudan. And this guy Bartolot behaved, it's fair to say, very poorly. He went mad. He started flogging people wildly. He put loads of people in chains and he started running around biting women. Really?
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Yeah. Very bad behavior. And eventually, this African bloke shot him dead, and that was the end of him. And everyone said, God almighty, what a terrible advert for Britain. Let's never speak of this again. So there's that guy, Bartolot. He possibly is an inspiration for Kurtz. Then there's a Belgian called Arthur Hoddister. Strange name for a Belgian, I always think, but there you go.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
He was an ivory trader and was brilliant at it, like Kurtz. He was ruthless. He had a harem of local women. There were rumors that local people worshipped him as a god, but he came to a very different end from Kurtz. He was tortured, beheaded, and according to some accounts, eaten by Swahili slave traders for intruding on their patch. That would have been a good end to Heart of Darkness.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
It would have been an unexpected end. Yeah. Then there's a guy called Carl Peters, who was a German. He was basically Germany's answer to Henry Morton Stanley. He launched his own expedition to rescue this bloke, Emin Pasha, who didn't need rescuing. He discovered ancient sites along the Zambezi River. He's basically got a bit of the Indiana Jones. Unfortunately...
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Even Germans were embarrassed by this. He also went a bit mad. He was incredibly violent. His nickname was Hangman Peters, because basically, you know, you said good morning to him and he hanged you. He was very violent.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And even the Germans who were behaving quite badly, it's fair to say, or indeed very badly in southwest Africa at this point, even they're ashamed of him, which tells his own story. And then the final candidate, which Adam Hochschild mentions in his book, King Leopold's Ghost, is a guy called Léon Romm. Romm was a Belgian. He was a captain in the Force Publique.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Like Kurtz, he liked painting and writing, and he collected butterflies, which is nice, like Vladimir Nabokov. And Maximilian. Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. But also he was an obsessive hunter. He had loads of African concubines. He had, at the time, and I quote, the reputation of having killed masses of people for petty reasons. And he kept a flower bed at his station ringed with human heads.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
That's very Kurtz. Which is very Kurtz. So as Juswaf Naida says in his biography of Conrad, Conrad may well have drawn on all these examples, but it's clear that Kurtz is all of them and none of them. As Nida says, the model for Kurtz comes from literary and philosophical tradition as much as it does from real-life African behaviour.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
You mentioned what I think is the obvious thing, which is Faust. Yes. So Faust has sold his soul to the devil. And it's not just Marlow, but obviously Goethe wrote about Faust and then Thomas Mann will write about Faust a few decades after Conrad. And there are a few references Marlow says at one point in Heart of Darkness, Kurtz has taken a high seat among the devils of the land.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And later on, he talks about how the powers of darkness are about to claim him for their own. So this idea that Kurtz's soul is sold to the devil, you know, it's a very old idea and kind of European. But there's also something,
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
knew about Kurt he's the embodiment of progress remember that he's so talented he's so he is the epitome he's the embodiment of civilisation and there is an argument I think that what he's doing in that long remember he writes that very long report yeah so exterminate all the brutes exactly There's an argument that that report is in itself the embodiment of the European project in Africa.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
To categorise, to set down on, to turn everything into accounts and ledgers. Which began with Napoleon going to Egypt. Exactly. To put Africa down on paper and control it and map it. Very Edward Said. Yeah, that is the act of colonialism, effectively. Well, European colonialism. European colonialism.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
So is this, therefore, a story about colonialism and is Kurtz the embodiment of all that's wrong with it? At one level, I think the answer is obviously yes. Marlowe at the beginning is given those lines about taking the earth away from people with flatter noses than ourselves that are kind of very pointed.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Later on in the book, only a little bit later, before Marlowe actually goes to the Congo, he goes to visit his aunt. And his aunt has been reading newspaper stories about Africa and empire. And she says, oh, it's brilliant. Love this project. Weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways. And Marlowe actually says to her, this is even before he's gone, he says, it's about money.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
The company is run for profit. You know, he's unsentimental about what is...
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
I think that's absolutely right. And I think the beginning of the book, by transposing what happens to Britain, it makes it very obvious that Conrad is conscious that this has a wider implication, that this is a kind of universal message. But here's the complication within the complication.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
The framing narrator is very keen on the British Empire because while he's at Gravesend, he muses on the knight errants of the sea, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire, the dreams of men, the seed of commonwealth, the germ of empires. People have sailed out from here with the spark of Britishness. And isn't that brilliant?
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Marlow, the other narrator, he also thinks the British Empire is brilliant. He says at one point he sees a map with a lot of Africa splashed with British imperial pink or red. And he said, oh, that's good to see because one knows that real work is being done there, i.e. the British Empire is different from other empires. So very Kipling. But we know that Conrad himself thought that.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
So just after he's finished Heart of Darkness, the Burr Wall breaks out and his Polish relatives say to him, what do you make of this? You know, an empire against a little people at the Burrs. You know, it doesn't ring any bells. And he says, well, the British are brilliant. Liberty can only be found under the English flag all over the world. So he's for the Burr War.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And then after he died, his great friend and collaborator, Ford Maddox Ford, said a line that always amuses me. The British Empire was for Conrad, the perfection of all human perfections. So Conrad, obviously a brilliant judge of empires. But this has led some people to say, well, hold on. You can't celebrate this book as a criticism of empire. In fact, let's go further.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
This book is itself massively tainted with the crimes of empire. It's a tainted example of imperialist literature.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Well, there are at least two critics who think you would. So one of them, I think you mentioned him already, didn't you? Edward Said, Palestinian-American critic, one of the most famous literary critics of the last half century. He wrote a brilliantly influential book, shall we say, called Orientalism, which some scholars think is a terrible book. I think it's brilliant.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
I think you say it's brilliant. Anyway, Said says, yes, you would recognize Comrades as an imperialist because he doesn't ever reject imperialism in his book. His book should end with people being given their freedom or some savage critique of the imperialism that has enslaved them. I mean, that is what you get. That is what you get. What? A savage critique? Yes.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Well, maybe it's not savage enough for Edward Said. And Edward Said is also really disappointed that Conrad doesn't give the Africans a chance of redemption or a chance of escape. And I mentioned in the essay by David Denbigh, The New Yorker, He had a little passage in this essay in 1995 imagining, saying, well, how would that work?
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Like at the end of the book, you know, Kurt rises from his deathbed and says to an African chief, one day your people will be free and the clouds clear and the sun shines and everybody's singing and dancing. It'd be ridiculous.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
I totally agree with you about that, Tom. But there's a more substantial critique. Now, this is by an African writer called Chinua Achebe. So Nigerian, isn't he? Yeah, born in 1930. And in 1975, Achebe gave this lecture at the University of Massachusetts.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
To people who don't know, this will sound like such a trivial and footling thing, but this is one of the most influential lectures ever given about literary culture at all. It's one of the great demolition jobs, and it's actually a foundational moment for what's called post-colonial literary studies. And Achebe said, I hate this book.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
I hate Conrad and I hate this book, basically because he just sets up Africa as the heart of darkness. It's the place where Europeans go to find the evil within themselves. Conrad's message is keep away from Africa or else. You'll fall victim to the allure of the jungle. The darkness will find you out. You'll become evil if you go to Africa.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And he said, and I'm going to quote him, the point of my observation should be quite clear by now, namely that Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. And he goes on to say, can a book which dehumanizes Africans, which treats Africa as the heart of darkness, et cetera, et cetera, can it be called a great work of art? My answer is no, it cannot.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And this has always been incredibly contentious, this argument among scholars and enthusiasts for Joseph Conrad. Is this basically a racist book? And now on college campuses, you will find a lot of people who say it is and either don't teach it or who teach it as an example of literary racism.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Now, a lot of people listening to this will expect, because with the rest is history, that at this point we kind of turn our guns on Chinua and Chibi and say, this is terrible, Conrad's brilliant, blah, blah, blah. Actually, there are elements of his critique, I don't know what you think, Tom, but that I think are justified. So, first of all,
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
The book does present Africa as primeval, as unfathomable, as prehistoric. Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. Okay, I accept that.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
I agree with you, but you might not know that reading Conrad's book.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Yes, I suppose so. I suppose so. But those two passages are quite far apart and you might not draw the connection.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Now, the second charge, I think slightly harder to quibble with, I would argue, is that this is a book about Africa that has no serious African characters at all. And when they speak, they don't speak. They chant, they grunt, they make, and I quote, a drone of weird incantations, strings of amazing words that resemble no sounds of human language, like the responses of some satanic litany.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And even the physical descriptions that are quite harrowing They're quite dehumanizing. So the porters that you mentioned, you know, the people who are carrying the stuff in their heads and they're chained together, they had the complete death-like indifference of unhappy savages. Or the railway workers dying in the grove. Black shapes, black shadows of disease and starvation.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Would you talk like that about white European characters? I'm not entirely convinced that you would. That I would accept.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Well, I mean, first of all, there's a real complication here, which is that this isn't actually Conrad talking. This is Marlowe talking.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
fix your critique. You can, but I think you have to... So Achebe basically says in his lecture, I'm going to just basically treat Marlowe as if he's Conrad. But Marlowe isn't Conrad. Conrad is the character listening to Marlowe, if Conrad is in the story at all. So I think you just have to be a bit careful by always assuming that an author and their main character are the same person.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Absolutely, Tom. Yes. Hi, everybody. So Heart of Darkness, Conrad's great novel or novella, has kind of overshadowed the series that we've done on the Congress. It would be weird not to have an episode talking about it because it's arguably one of the most influential works of literature ever. written in the last 120 years or so. We are not, the rest is literature.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
I think that's absolutely right. Now, actually, ultimately, I think this question about is it a racist book or is it not is actually quite a boring one. I don't think it's... Conrad clearly, I mean, it's such a terribly cliché thing to say. Conrad obviously is a man of his age. He reflects the assumptions that he has grown up with
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
both in Russian-occupied eastern Poland and Ukraine, and later on sailing around on British merchant ships. I mean, he's not outside time. Of course, he has prejudices and assumptions of his own, and they are expressed in his writing.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
But the overall effect of this book is obviously not a... I mean, it's a book that clearly makes you think really seriously about the moral issues of imperialism and the civilising mission and colonialism and whatnot. I mean, how can it not?
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Couldn't agree more. I mean, whether or not, of course, Conrad may have been racially prejudiced. I mean, he may mean, he may not have been. It's, as you say, it's actually, I think, an incredibly boring question because this is such an interesting book and there's so many more things to say about it.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And I think that going beyond that, The lasting appeal of the book is obviously it's about more than the Belgian Congo. It's about more than King Leopold's free state or anything like that.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
To me, the key line in the book is actually that line that we quoted earlier, right at the beginning before they even got to the Congo, where Marlow says to the people on the boat, and this also has been one of the dark places of the earth. And he's talking there about England. He's not talking about the Congo.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And the darkness is there even before the steamboat has started its journey up the river. The darkness is not in the Congo. It's not even in England. It's in humanity. It's the human soul. That's what I think the book's about.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And I don't think it's even that he thinks this is what imperialists do. I think it's what human beings do. Conrad had an... I find it very attractive because I share it, a remarkably bleak view of human nature. In his letters to his friend Cunningham Graham, the SNP bloke that we mentioned earlier, he says of mankind, the year before he wrote Heart of Darkness,
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
But purely in a literary sense, in a kind of purely literary cultural sense, it's an enormously important book. It's a brilliant example of literary modernism. So the prose is very, you know, it's dreamlike. It's like a hallucination. It's very overwrought. There are shifts in time, narrators within narrators. And the effect of all this is when you're reading it,
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
He wrote to Conor Graham, he said, mankind is silly and cowardly, a wretched gang. We're born initiated and succeeding generations clutch the inheritance of fear and brutality without a thought. And another letter he said, people go on, he said, about honour, justice, compassion, but nobody really believes in them. People believe only in, and I quote, gain, personal advantage, satisfied vanity.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And words vanish, nothing remains, absolutely nothing, only a drop of mud, cold mud, dead mud, launched in black space, turning round an extinguished sun. I love those lines. Conrad has a view of mankind, of human beings that is unbelievably sceptical, ironic, bleak, dark. Conservative.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Definitely. But I think the interesting thing about that is it's not just temperamental, but it's of his time. Because I was thinking about the literature of the 1880s, 1890s.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
So in 1890, the year he went to the Congo, one of my favourite books, La Bête Humaine by Émile Zola, which is about basically, I know it sounds very unpromising, it's about a Parisian train driver who turns out to be a sex-crazed homicidal maniac. Yeah. He published this book, and it's basically about the evil that is lurking within us all. Even the most banal person is actually deep down.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
We could all be serial killers and rapists and whatnot. This is such a popular idea in very late Victorian culture.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Yeah, absolutely. Or 1899, the same year Conrad... publishes Heart of Darkness. That's the year that Freud publishes the Interpretation of Dreams. The idea that buried deep down in this kind of very primal and unfathomable way are anxieties and ghosts and terrible urges that we try to repress in our kind of civilized daily lives, but will always come to claim us at night.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
I mean, again, all of this sort of stuff is simmering away in the European imagination at the time that Conrad is writing.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
It's quite a short book, isn't it, Tom? But you feel unsettled the whole time. There's a kind of sense of anxiety. And it's very influential. So T.S. Eliot, the great poet, he loved Conrad's Heart of Darkness. He had a poem called The Hollow Men that begins with a quotation later on in the book, Mr. Kurtz, he dead.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
I think. I think it's not just harsh. I think it's a total waste of time. I think it's a complete and utter waste of time when the book is so rich. And we've talked for too long. And actually, we're not in the business of preaching to listeners. Listeners can make up their own minds. They should read the book. If you think it's racist, great. Crack on. If you don't, brilliant.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Tom, why don't we end with the end of the book?
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Anthony is over in the UK and we have decided to do a live show together at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London. Haven't we, Anthony?
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And that passage that you read at the beginning, ending with those famous words, the horror, the horror, He wanted that, didn't he? His original epigraph for his great poem, The Wasteland.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Yeah, I completely agree with you, Tom. I think it's a really good point. I think you can argue the heart of darkness prefigures so much of the kind of cultural commentary of the 20th century about, and we'll get onto this in the second half, about man's capacity for evil. Fartic, you might call it. Exactly. Gazing into the future and seeing the horrors that await.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Now, if you're not interested in literature at all, you may be thinking, well, so what? Who cares? I mean, here's a good answer to that. Heart of Darkness, I would argue, is by far the preeminent cultural representation of Western imperialism, particularly in Africa. More than King Solomon's mines? I think it's Heart of Darkness now.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
I think Heart of Darkness and King Solomon's Mines are kind of the polar opposites, aren't they? Yeah, they really are. King Solomon's Mines is the journey into the heart of Africa that is swashbuckling, that is ultimately an optimistic story, that is jolly, that never questions, I think, ultimately, the right of the adventurers to be there. This is an adventure that goes horribly wrong.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And it's very much about the dark side of that.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. And actually rather liking Solomon's Minds, Heart of Darkness has had a massive cultural footprint. So everything from video games like the Far Cry series, which basically riffs on Heart of Darkness, to most famously Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now, which came out in 1979 and transposes it to Vietnam War.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And Apocalypse Now, even the making of it. Yeah. turned out to be a kind of riff on Heart of Darkness because they made a film about the making of it called Hearts of Darkness. And very famously, Francis Ford Coppola said about the making of Apocalypse Now, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane. Yeah, the horror, the horror.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Absolutely, absolutely. And then there's a third dimension, I think, of this book that makes it incredibly interesting. And that is that initially... In the first few decades after its publication, it was seen as a book that was very critical of imperialism. It was seen as the great literary assault on the civilising mission.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Exactly. 1890s, 1900s is the high point of the discourse, as it were, of imperialism, both pro and anti-imperialism. But now, in the 21st century, Heart of Darkness is seen not as an attack on imperialism by a lot of critics, but as an example of it, as a book that is fundamentally imperialistic and, above all, very racist.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And it's probably the one book that has come to symbolize the attack on the Western canon, I suppose you might call it, or the criticism of the Western canon. So if you're at all interested in what people think about imperialism, Europe in the world, literary history, cultural history in the last century, Heart of Darkness is at the center of a lot of those kind of debates, isn't it? So...
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
We'll get into a lot of these issues, particularly in the second half. But in the first half, I think we should set out two things. The first of all is, who is Joseph Conrad? And what's he doing in the Congo at all to inspire this book? And secondly, what is the book about for people who don't know? So just very, very quickly, very swiftly to summarise.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
If you've never read the book, it's the story of a sea captain called Marlow. He takes a steamboat up the Congo, and he's looking for a brilliant agent of this what appears to be a concession company called Mr. Kurtz, who's a great ivory trader. He's up there in the interior, and he seems to have lost his marbles.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And when Marlowe gets there, he finds out that... All kinds of stuff has been going on. Yeah, all kinds of stuff has been going on. We'll unpick all that a bit later on. Now, Conrad was asked, what's the book about? And he said, Heart of Darkness is experience pushed a little and only very little beyond the actual facts of the case. In other words, you really want to understand what it's about?
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
It's a true story. It's a true story exaggerated.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Exactly. So let's start with Conrad himself. His name actually isn't... I mean, Joseph Conrad's fiction is full of kind of holes and mirrors and, you know, stories within stories. His name actually isn't Joseph Conrad. His name is Józef Teodor Konrad Kozienowski. And he was born to a Polish noble family, an impoverished family in what's now Ukraine in 1857.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
And this was a sort of very rural world that had once been part of the eastern borderlands of Poland and has now been swallowed up by the Russian Empire. His mother, Ava, died when he was seven. His father, who had the brilliant name Apollo, who was a poet. I love that. Yeah, and a Polish revolutionary. So he's a tremendous man, Apollo Korzeniowski. He died when Yusuf was 11.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
So he's brought up by relatives. He's very bored at school. He's obviously, you know, he's not in the best of form. And he says he wants to go away to sea.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Exactly. Exactly right. So in 1874, his relatives clubbed together and they get together the money to send him to, what is he, 1617, to send him to Marseille to join the French merchant marine. This is a weird thing that he shoots himself at the chest, but it seems to have been a little bit performative.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
Yeah. As I guess so much is in his fiction. I think that's absolutely right. And I think he's, Conrad is always a very, I think a troubled man is too strong, but he is a man with a deep sense of deep melancholy to him, I think, throughout his life. He sails all over the world, Caribbean, South America, and then he goes up in the world.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
He joins the British merchant marine and he stays there for until 1889. And he has all kinds of adventures all over the world. He goes to Australia. He goes to Bangkok. He goes to India, Singapore. And you can see a lot of that reflected in his fiction. Lots of tales of adventure in the South Seas and all of this.
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541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
They are indeed, exactly. So there is something, when his books first came out, people reviewed them as kind of slightly sea stories, you know, classic tales of the sea, but a bit weirder than usual, and only over time did people kind of work out exactly what he was doing. So at this point, he's still using the name Korzyniowski. English is his third language. I mean, this is the amazing thing.
The Rest Is History
541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo
He starts writing in the late 1880s. He writes his stories in English. But I mean, imagine writing in your third language.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. This episode is brought to you by Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
So this is surely a key moment in the transition from late antiquity to early medieval, right? That a vestige of kind of Roman cultural, spiritual life has been smashed. More power has been concentrated in the hands of the warlords who are now making themselves kings.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Okay, well, that's good enough for me. Okay, but not everybody in the church thinks Charles is a bad guy. And in fact, there are bishops who think, oh, he's brilliant, aren't there?
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
The Merovingian dynasty, from which the Franks were accustomed to choose their kings, is thought to have lasted down to King Chilperic III, who was deposed on the order of Stephen II, the Pope of Rome. His hair was cut short and he was shut up in a monastery.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Who on earth would that be? We'll find out after the break. What a cliffhanger. Who is this person? Don't go away.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
okay i have to tell you i was just looking on ebay where i go for all kinds of things i love and there it was that hologram trading card one of the rarest the last one i needed for my set shiny like the designer handbag of my dreams one of a kind ebay had it and now everyone's asking ooh where'd you get your windshield wipers ebay has all the parts that fit my car no more annoying just beautiful
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Though this dynasty may seem to have come to an end only with Chilperic III, it had really lost all power years before and it no longer possessed anything at all of importance beyond the empty title of king. The wealth and the power of the kingdom were held tight in the hands of certain leading officials of the court who were called the mayors of the palace and on them supreme authority devolved.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Head to Blinds.com now for up to 40% off select styles plus a free professional measure.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Rules and restrictions may apply. Welcome back to The Rest is History. We ended with one of the great cliffhangers, not merely in the history of this podcast, but I think in the history probably of all human civilization. Who or what is the possible source of authority that could bestow kingship on Carloman and Pepin? These people who are ruling Australia and Neustria in the realm of the Franks.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Massive questions. Massive question. And you gave a little spoiler, I felt, disappointingly. You said our eyes would be turning to Rome. So tell us, who is this person?
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Yeah. Well, they're not entirely wrong, to be fair.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
All that was left to the king was that content with his royal title he should sit on the throne with his hair long and his beard flowing and act the part of a ruler. Whenever he needed to travel, he went in a cart which was drawn in rural manner by yoked oxen, with a cow herd to drive them.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
So Ravenna, to be fair, had been an imperial capital for a while.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
But the Pope is not entirely devoid of assets, is he? He's got his spiritual assets. He's still a prestigious person. He's still the preeminent head of any church in the Christian world, right? He's got a palace that was given to the papacy by Constantine. And he's the heir of St. Peter. So he's not nothing. He's not nobody. Yeah, you're absolutely right.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
In this fashion, he would go to the palace and to the General Assembly of his people, which was held each year to settle the affairs of the kingdom, and in this fashion he would return home again. That's the opening to the life of Charlemagne by Einhardt, the Frankish scholar and courtier. And he wrote that just after Charlemagne's death.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Right. And is this where we get back to the Franks? Because surely, and one very obvious person, is one of the sons of Charles Martel. And in particular, Pepin. We talked about Pepin in the first half. So Pepin is going to step forward as the sword and shield of the papacy, is he?
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
And he's describing the greatest, the most famous of all Frankish kings, one of the titanic names in all European history. Lots of people, I think, Tom, will have heard the name of Charlemagne. But to be completely honest, I think a lot of people have heard the name and have no real sense of who he was. Was he French? Was he German? Obviously, he was neither.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
He's got John Adams's voice, President John Adams.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
He's like Richard Nixon. Right, right. I think we agreed that Nixon was from Somerset.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
So he's talking about the Merovingian bloke who's still hanging around. He's saying, let's get rid of him. Give me the crown. Enough of the Merovingians. Who cares about them?
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Well, he's the father of both and yet was neither. Now, Einhardt, let's just talk about Einhardt for a second, because he writes this very extraordinary biography of Charlemagne, doesn't he? Yeah, pretty unique, really. Yeah. And he was very proud of the fact that he was so familiar personally with Charlemagne, wasn't he?
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Oh, yes. We love a short man on The Rest Is History. We do. Yes.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
And so do the Franks live up to their side of their bargain? Because obviously he's looking to them to protect him against the Lombards, isn't he?
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
You know, everything is ready for even more impressive conquests. But there's an obvious problem, this issue of two sons. So the Franks have a history of dividing up their realms, but to avoid fighting, to divide them up between different brothers. And when you've got two brothers here, Charles and Carloman... Is there not an enormous latent potential for a civil war between the two of them?
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Wonderful. So if you're a member of the Rest Is History Club, you can hear the next episode and indeed the third episode in our Charlemagne trilogy right away. If you're not, you can hear them by signing up at therestishistory.com. What better Christmas present to yourself could there be? Literally can't think of any.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
But if you're Scrooge or the Grinch, then I'm afraid you're going to have to wait till next week because we'll be back on Monday and then on Christmas Day with the final two episodes of our mighty series on the life of Charlemagne. Tom, a veritable tour de force. Thank you very much and goodbye. Bye-bye.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Well, here is a reminder that we at therestishistory.com offer gift memberships. So if you're good at dropping hints, or if you're short on a present for a family member, for a friend, or for a partner, Tom and I would like to remind you of the ultimate Christmas stocking filler. And it is, of course, a subscription to the Rest Is History Club, which is full to the brim with bonus episodes.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
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The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
And we have some incredibly exciting news to tell you, don't we, Dominic? We do. So we often say we've got exciting news, but this is genuinely very, very exciting news. We are thrilled to announce that after the sellout show that we did earlier this year, The Rest Is History will be returning to the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday, the 4th of May to perform live once again with an orchestra.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
So that first show that we did this year was a truly glorious experience. And we are hoping that this, too, will be an unforgettable night. There'll be great music. We'll be telling great stories. We'll be delving into the history. So you had better get your hands on tickets for the show as soon as you can.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
That is the Rest Is History live with the Philharmonia Orchestra Tchaikovsky and Wagner. It's at the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday, the 4th of May. Now, the tickets are available for members on Wednesday, the 18th of December and for the general public on Thursday, the 19th of December. And please make sure that you don't miss it.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
After all, Christmas is just around the corner. And a very happy coincidence, our first official Rest Is History book is now out as the perfect stocking-sized paperback.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
It's sure to make the festive period much more entertaining for all involved, and it is available in bookshops everywhere now.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
A lot of people find it very hard to pin down neither holy nor Roman nor an empire, famously said about it.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Sinister forces are scouring the globe for the secret to an ancient power, and only one person can stop them. Indiana Jones. Adventure Calls.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Okay, let's get going and let's get a sense of the context. In the last three episodes, we talked about the rise of the Franks, the warlords of the West, and we ended with the Battle of Tours. And people who listened to the first episode will remember that Charlemagne is not, in fact, the first Frankish warlord to have the title of Augustus.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
They will remember that three centuries earlier, another Frankish warlord, that is to say Clovis, had been hailed as Augustus, but not in Rome, in Tours, in the Shrine of St. Martin. He wasn't crowned by the Pope. He was crowned by himself, like Napoleon. Yeah.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Out now on Xbox Series X and S, Game Pass and PC. Rated T for Teen. Copyright and trademark 2024. Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved. This episode is brought to you by Google Gemini. For anyone new to Gemini, it's an AI assistant that you can have real conversations with. I'll give you an example. If you have a job interview coming up, you can ask Gemini to help you prep.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
So Charles Martel, the hammer. And he's the bloke who won the Battle of Tours, of course. He absolutely is.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
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The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
They've got St. Martin. They've got all that stuff.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
They've been primed to swallow this actually by decades, if not centuries, of prejudice against the Poles.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
I suppose, I mean, Danzig, there had been tough periods where Danzig had been Polish, so it had changed hands. So maybe Berwick. Yeah, maybe Berwick is a good example. Danzig, don't forget, the population is 90% German, and most ordinary Germans would absolutely say Danzig ought to be part of Germany. It's bonkers that it's a free city. They don't like the Poles.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
They are really the one nationality that most Germans are united in regarding as backward and dirty and all of that kind of thing. And most people... that they simply can't conceive that the Western powers would fight for Danzig. After all, they didn't fight for the Sudetenland. Why would they fight for what is obviously a German city? That's the way they think about it.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
So while all that's going on, Hitler is planning this diplomatic coup. So if you're Hitler and you look at this, the one thing you fear most is that you would fight Britain and France in the West and Poland and the Soviet Union in the East. Now, a deal with the Soviet Union, obviously it would be a massive U-turn because so much of Hitler's ideology is based on anti-Bolshevism.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
But all this time, Ribbentrop has been saying to him, I mean, just think if we did have a deal with Stalin, it would solve so many problems. Is it really so outlandish? Isn't it a good idea? You know, shouldn't we think about it? And the good news for the Nazis is, is that from Stalin's point of view as well, the timing is absolutely perfect. Because Stalin has just had this, the great terror.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He has just killed almost a million people in two years, including almost all of the top brass of the Red Army and the people who run all the munitions factories and all of the technical experts and all of these people. He's killed all these people. The Red Army is in an absolute mess, total shambles. He knows that one day Hitler will attack him because Hitler has been saying that for two decades.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He knows he's in no state to resist. So he thinks, well, why not? I mean, why not buy ourselves a little bit more time? Because, although he knows as well, of course, that Britain and France, you know, they've made informal kind of feelers about a deal with Stalin, but he knows that they despise him. And he also thinks they're weak, right?
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
The British and French do send a military mission to talk to Stalin. Have you seen this? And it was led by a man called Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett Ernal Earl Drax.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
But this guy is quite a junior guy. And the French send, I think, an even more junior person. And Stalin's like, what? These people are not serious. I mean, they're never going to give me a proper deal. Like, it would have to answer to their parliaments and all that. This isn't going to go anywhere.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
But who cares? They'll just have to lump it. Yeah, exactly. That's the thing. So Stalin that spring started to send out signals to the Germans. He started to make speeches attacking the West. He sacked his long-serving foreign minister, Maxim Litvinov, who was Jewish and hated the Nazis and had been trying to work for years for better relations with the West.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And he replaces him with Vyacheslav Molotov, named after the hammer.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Yeah, like Charles Martel. Molotov means hammer in Russian. So Molotov is the ultimate kind of Stalin, ultra-loyalist. And he's not Jewish. And the Nazis take that as a very promising sign. Ribbentrop loves this idea of a deal because, of course, A, it would stab Britain in the back, which, I mean, he hates Britain and he can't wait. What a coup that would be.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
But also for Ribbentrop, Ribbentrop is the ultimate courtier. He wants to cement his position as Hitler's most effective and most loyal underling, especially vis-a-vis his great enemy, Goering. So Ribbentrop is kind of working very hard on this all through the summer. And on the 5th of August, a Soviet diplomat says to him, you know, Stalin is actually quite interested in this. This could happen.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And then they get this great breakthrough on the night of the 19th of August. So the first of all, the Soviets agree after months of on-off talks, they agree a trade deal.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
with the nazis they will sell them raw materials in return for german manufactured goods and then hitler and ribbentrop are at the eagle's nest they're overlooking this amazing sort of panorama of the mountains on the german austrian border and they get a call stalin would like to open talks about a deal A non-aggression pact.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
We know what they're worth, but more importantly, a deal to divide up Poland between them. And he's inviting Ribbentrop to Moscow to conclude the deal. Now, Ribbentrop, as you can imagine, is absolutely thrilled by this. Stalin says, I'd like you to come in a week on the 26th of August. And at that Hitler's face falls a little bit when he hears the news. He says, oh, that's very late.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
I really need the army to strike Poland, you know, latest 1st of September. Because once it starts raining, that will turn the flat fields of Western Poland into a quagmire and that will be very bad for our tanks. So really, we would ideally like this deal earlier. And Hitler does something extraordinary. He intervenes personally.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He sends a personal message to Stalin via the German embassy in Moscow. Please, can Ribbentrop come earlier to Moscow? This makes an incredible impression on Stalin. Stalin has always been treated by the West as a complete pariah, as a kind of madman, you know, an animal, loose in the world of civilized human beings. And here is Hitler, who has demonized Stalin for so long.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Treating him as an equal, treating him with respect, saying, asking very politely, please, can my foreign minister come a week earlier? So a tribute to the efficacy of good manners. Yes, I guess so, Tom. Because two days later, on the afternoon of the 21st of August, Stalin sends a telegram back and he says, oh, that would be lovely.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Ribbentrop will be very welcome here in two days' time on the 23rd of August. And Hitler inevitably is with Albert Speer at the eagle's nest when he hears architectural chitchat. Yeah, balustrades or something, when he gets the news. And Speer wrote an account of this. He said, Hitler stared into space for a moment. He flushed deeply. Then he banged on the table so hard that the glasses rattled.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And he exclaimed in a voice breaking with excitement, I have them. I have them. And then he called for champagne.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
I was thinking about that. I think it's Britain and France. I think at this point... Or the Poles as well? Possibly the Poles as well, of course. But I think... He is maddened with hatred now of the West, Hitler, because he feels they cheated him of his war and then they gave the Poles their guarantee. You know, he's a bitter, he's a bad man out of Hitler, Tom, what can I say?
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Anyway, the news breaks. They announce the news in Berlin just a couple of hours later, so just before midnight. So they don't keep it secret? No. This is an interesting thing. Until I'd read up on this, this was a revelation to me. I'd always thought it was done kind of back channels. No, that the reaction to the Nazi-Soviet pact actually comes before the pact is formally signed.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
So they announce the news. Ribbentrop would be flying to Moscow to conclude a deal with Stalin. And now some old, long-standing Nazis are appalled. And actually, there are stories of people throwing down their badges outside party headquarters in Munich. Munich, where the Nazi party began. People who would be very, very anti-Bolshevik and would have been for 20 years. who are like, what?
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
The Bolsheviks are our greatest enemies and they're throwing their badges away. But lots of Germans actually think, oh, brilliant. Now we won't have a war with Russia. And that's such a relief. Isn't that wonderful? You know, great news. Because, of course, they don't want war.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
I think bewildered and confused. If you're a Stalinist, of course, you just say, well, Stalin is the great genius. But there are definitely a lot of communists who are proper Marxists who are appalled by this and who are really troubled by it. But then lots of people make up excuses. They say, well, Stalin had no choice. He was abandoned by the West, all of that kind of thing.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
So the next day, the 22nd, Hitler convenes a big summit at the Berghof, at the Eagle's Nest. He gets 50 senior officers and Ribbentrop. Ribbentrop has packed his bags and is poised to fly. And Hitler says, this is a really important meeting. I don't want anyone to take any notes. It is absolutely top secret. But because it's so important, some of them write down their recollections afterwards.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
So we kind of know what Hitler said. And even by his own standards, it's an extraordinary performance. He says, I'd always planned for a European war, and I'd always thought we'd fight West and then East. But I've changed my mind. It's because of the economic situation, because the wheels are about to come off our economy.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And he says to them, the reason we're doing this now is because of me, because I'm actually such an extraordinary person. Everything depends on me because of my political talents. There will never again in the future be a man with more authority than I have. I mean, imagine listening to this from your boss. I could be eliminated at any time by a criminal or a lunatic.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
No one knows how much longer I shall live. Therefore, we'll have to have the war now because, I mean, I could be dead in a year. Who knows?
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
You would. Now, this is when he comes out with his line about Britain and France being little worms. He says, I saw them in Munich. They won't fight.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Yeah. I've looked into their eyes and I've seen that they're wimps. Yeah, exactly. And then as for the deal with the Soviet Union, he says, yeah, I mean, it's an unusual departure for a fascist. However, he says, I know that Stalin is a very sick man. I mean, talk about projection. Stalin, he says, is a very sick man. After Stalin's death, we'll rip up the deal and we will break the Soviet Union.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And then there will begin the dawn of the German rule of the earth. Imagine listening to that with a straight face. I mean, obviously, these guys do listen to a straight face. Now, after lunch, he outlines the plans for how they're going to fight the war in Poland. We'll talk about that next week in Monday's episode about the war in Poland itself. So we'll just leave the speech at that point.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Because this is the point when Ribbentrop leaves. Ribbentrop excuses himself after lunch. He flies to Berlin. Then he gets on Hitler's, he changes planes to Hitler's private Condor plane and he flies to East Prussia. He spends the evening in East Prussia and he's nervously going over his notes for the meeting with Molotov the next day.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And then on the early morning of the 23rd, Ribbentrop flies on to Moscow. What an extraordinary moment this is. I mean, imagine what's going through his mind. And he takes with him, by the way, Hitler's personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, who's a great source on this. And we'll be talking about some of the comic activities with photographs later on.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Cigars and photographs and drinking. So Ribbentrop finally lands in Moscow and he is met by sort of grim-faced men with cars straight away. and he is driven directly to the Kremlin, the seat of communism on Earth. I mean, what an incredible moment this is. And he's escorted into this long, sort of gilded marble hall with chandeliers and whatnot. And waiting at the end, there's Molotov.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
But to his surprise, there's also another man, a small man, with very familiar features. Because he has a moustache. A gigantic moustache and is, of course, Stalin. Now, Ribbentrop didn't know that Stalin was going to be there to meet him, so he's a bit taken aback. And Ribbentrop comes out with his sort of polished, diplomatic... You know, we're lovely to be building a new relationship.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
We're looking forward to this moment for years. And Stalin is very relaxed and jovial. And Stalin says, we've poured buckets of filth, he uses a much more earthy word than filth, over each other for years. He says, but there's no reason we can't bury the hatchet now. Come on, let's bury the hatchet. And Ribbentrop kicks off with a very, very Hitler idea.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Let us stun the world with a non-aggression pact to last 100 years. Very Dr. Evil. That's very Dr. Evil.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And Stalin kind of laughs. And he says, if we say this pact will last for 100 years, people will laugh at us for not being serious. I suggest 10 years. 10 years is more reasonable. There's the difference between Hitler and Stalin, right? But both of them must... Equally, no, it's not going to last.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Of course they do. That's the amazing thing. Absolutely it is. So the pact is one thing, but of course the really important thing is the secret protocol to divide up Europe between them. And Ribbentrop says, here's Hitler's offer. You can have Finland. You can have Estonia. You can have most of Latvia. You can have eastern Poland up to the River Vistula and the San.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And you can have the Romanian region of Bessarabia, which is modern-day Moldova, which, of course, they do get. And Stalin says, that's all great, but I would also like the coast of Latvia. And that's a bit of a stumbling block. And Ribbentrop says, I'll have to ring Hitler. I can't agree to that. I'll have to ring Hitler. Now, Hitler is at the eagle's nest.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And it's an extraordinary scene, actually. He's pacing up and down very nervously on the terrace. He's very tense. His adjutant was with him, Nikolaus von Beloff. And he described, he said it was a beautiful evening, an August evening in the mountains. And the sun was setting.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Von Beloff said, as we strolled up and down, the eerie turquoise-coloured sky to the north turned first violet and then blood red. At first we thought there must be a serious fire behind the Untesberg, the mountain. But then the glow covered the whole northern sky in the manner of the northern lights. I was very moved. And I told Hitler that it augured a bloody war. Oh, that's nice.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
That's a moving, moving thing to say. And Hitler replied that if it must be so, then the sooner the better. For the more time went by, the bloodier it would be. And at that point, the phone rings. And everybody's like, oh, my God, the phone's ringing. It's the news from Moscow. And Hitler picks up the phone. And he just listens in silence and he doesn't say anything.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And then he puts the phone down and he still says nothing. And then he says, bring me a map. So a map of the, of all the states. And someone brings him this map and Hitler stares at it. And then half an hour later, he's like, okay. And he rings back and he says, yes, agreed. Now, back in Moscow, Ribbentrop puts down the phone and he says, it's on. So they finalize the details.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
At midnight, Stalin's servants bring in caviar and vodka and Crimean sparkling wine. So Ribbentrop would have enjoyed that.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Maybe he could have a... Maybe they did a little tasting. Put me in touch with your supplier. Yes. And they light up a load of cigarettes and they start making toasts. Stalin incredibly makes this toast. He says, I know how much the German nation loves its Fuhrer. I should like to drink to his health. And he leaves. He keeps that quiet in 1943. He does indeed. Yes, he did.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He didn't talk often about that toast. Now the documents are ready. They've been finalized and they're prepared to sign. At this point, Hoffman, the photographer, comes in and he sets up this huge tripod and his camera and everything. And Stalin says, hold on, hold on, hold on. You can't take photos like this.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
We have to clear all the glasses away, all the caviar, because otherwise people will say they signed this pact when they were absolutely wasted. And that's really bad publicity. So... They clear the stuff away and then Hoffman takes the photos. And these are the photos that you see if you Google it.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
So you see Molotov and Ribbentrop, very smart suited, actually, given the abuse we've given Ribbentrop about his suits. They're signing and Stalin is in the background beaming, looking very jolly because he's tanked up on vodka and sparkling wine in his kind of beige tunic. Moustache bristling. And then Ribbentrop rings Hitler again.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Hitler inevitably has been watching a film with Goebbels, but he's not really been enjoying it because he's too nervous. He wants to find out how it's going. And Ribbentrop says, brilliant. It has been a complete success. We have everything we wanted. And Hitler says, congratulations. And then Hitler says, that will hit them like a bombshell.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
There is, I think, a lot of stress. I think Hitler's not the devil. He's a human being. He's made of flesh and blood. And at this crucial moment in his career, the moment that his life, his political career has been building towards, the outbreak of the war in Europe that he has been predicting for so long. I think he's in a bit of an emotional state, actually.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Well, Ribbentrop flies back to Berlin to a hero's reception, not surprisingly. Hitler hails him, says, you know, well done, mate. Brilliant. You are second Bismarck. And of course, to Ribbentrop, that is music to his ears. Ribbentrop and Hitler now... They're absolutely convinced this has guaranteed them a free hand against Poland.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
With the Soviet Union out, there is no way Britain and France will fight. They're convinced of this. Now, I mentioned the photographer Heinrich Hoffmann. He has come back to and he's been developing his photographs of the signing, which Stalin had said, clear the glasses away. And he goes into the Reich Chancellery to show them to Hitler. Hitler is obsessed with Stalin. He is absolutely obsessed.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He's his only peer, isn't he? Yes, I think so. Hitler said there are only three great men in the world. They are me, Stalin and Mussolini. And Mussolini is definitely third. So Stalin is the other great man. And he's just fascinated with Stalin. And he says to Hoffman, does he order people? Does he order them? Or does he cloak his orders in the guise of wishes? What about his health?
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Does he really smoke so much? How does he shake hands? What's his handshake like? It's just a shame they never met, isn't it? Oh, they'd have got on so well. A lot of the Nazis, we know this from Ted Heath. Did you know this? Ted Heath went to a Nuremberg rally, the future British prime minister, when he was on a kind of gap year in Germany. Yeah, in 1938. Yeah.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And he said he met Himmler and Goering. He said they had terrible handshakes by and large, very limp, drooping handshakes. And I would imagine Hitler had a poor handshake. Stalin, I don't know. I think he'd have a crunching handshake. Stalin's a bear hug kind of man, isn't he?
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
The thing that Hitler is really fixated on, have you seen this? Stalin's earlobes. Yes, because that's a sign of Jewishness, isn't it? He says, are they ingrown and Jewish or are they separate and Aryan? And the photographer Hoffman says they're separate. And Hitler apparently is delighted by that. He says, oh, that's brilliant. I'm so pleased. I'm glad that Stalin's got Aryan earlobes.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He's in a bit of a mess because he doesn't know whether Britain and France are going to enter the war or not. Everything is in play. And yeah, he actually got the time wrong. So he said 5.45, but it was actually 4.45. He stumbled there and said the wrong time. And he was very, very hesitant and with good reason, right?
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And then they get out the photographs and Hitler's face falls to the floor. What? He says, oh, what a pity. There's not a single one of these photographs we can use. And Hoffman, who considers himself quite a good photographer, is quite displeased by this. Why? And Hitler says, well, in every single photograph, Stalin is smoking. And he says the German people would take offense at this.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Yeah, exactly. Hitler wants to reduce nicotine in cigarettes.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He's a health and safety Nazi. Exactly. He's a nanny state Nazi. What can I say? Hitler says, the signing of a pact is a solemn act. Which one does not approach with a cigarette dangling from one's lips? Such a photograph smacks of levity. See if you can paint out the cigarettes. And so the photographs that are released to the press by Hoffman have been doctored
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And Stalin's cigarettes will be taken out. It's so Orwellian, isn't it? First they came for the cigarettes. That's true. Yeah. Then, yes. So Stalin's reaction is, it's fair to say, is a little bit less eccentric. So Stalin met his entourage the next day and his underlings had gone out and shot a load of duck. He loved eating duck. So they're eating all this duck and Stalin's in brilliant form.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He's never been happier. And he says, you know, he's a smarter man than Hitler, frankly. He says, of course, it's all a game to see who can fool whom. I know what Hitler's up to. He thinks he's outsmarted me, but it's actually me who has tricked him. Well, is that true? I mean, you know, Hitler... Hitler's the one who launches a surprise attack. Yeah, but who's got the last laugh, Tom? True.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
I mean, yeah. Anyway, they're both bad men, let's be frank about it. Now, in the rest of the world, the reaction, of course, is total shock. among the communists, in British newspapers and French newspapers and so on. Neville Chamberlain is a broken man because of this. Joseph Kennedy, the American ambassador, said, he looks like a broken man.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He said he could think of nothing further to say or do. He felt that all his work had come to naught. I can't fly again because that was good only once. In other words, Chamberlain recognises there's no possibility now for any more appeasement. The whole constellation has changed. However, Britain will not change its approach. So this is one thing that Hitler really misjudged.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Hitler was convinced that this marked the end of the British and French guarantee to Poland that there's no way they would fight. But actually, the 22nd of August, the day that the news of the signing of the pact reached London... the British cabinet reaffirmed its commitment to Poland.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
This is the moment that he throws the dice and we all know what the consequences for Europe will be, but also the consequences for Hitler himself. He looks ahead there to his own death. I won't take this uniform off unless either victory is won or I am dead. And he's already, I think, anticipating what he will do if things go wrong, i.e. the Wagnerian fate.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And they decided to send the ambassador in Berlin, Neville Henderson, to the eagle's nest with a letter to Hitler to say, don't get this wrong. We are not going to change. We are still completely committed to Poland. And how does this go down with Hitler? Poorly, I think it's fair to say. So we talked about Henderson last time. He loves a carnation. He's an old Etonian.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He's got a gigantic moustache. He's very elegant. Family link to Alice in Wonderland. Exactly. So Henderson turns up at the Eagle's Nest and Hitler just starts ranting and raving about it. He can't believe that the British are doing this. Hitler says, you know, we've wanted to be friends with you. You clearly hate us. We will fight you to the last man.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And Henderson is very upset by this because he has spent his career trying to get in with the Nazis. He sees that as his task.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He's not right at all. He's a brilliant lesson in self-delusion. And Henderson is really upset by Hitler's reaction. He basically storms out in the verge of tears or verge of a massive outburst. outburst of rage or something.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
You don't think so? You don't think Roy Stewart would break down in such similar circumstances? Yeah, Roy Stewart's a later Etonian.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
All right. Well, Henderson, I think, is very emotional at this point because all his work has come to nothing. And when he goes out, do you know what Hitler does? He literally slaps his thigh. This was Hitler's great thing. Does he chortle? He does chortle. He says, ha, ha, ha, ha, Chamberlain won't survive this discussion. His cabinet will fall this evening.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
It does really feel like a kind of board game, doesn't it? Kind of like diplomacy or something. It does. But also in which one person has now completely lost sight of reality because there's no way Chamberlain's cabinet is going to fall apart. I mean, Hitler is completely deluded. So I think at this point, Hitler has just completely lost the ability to read what's going on in Britain and France.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
I mean, he's all over the shop because the next couple of days go by and he gets all these reports from London. The British are actually preparing for war. They've made coastal defence preparations. They have requisitioned merchant ships. They put their air raid on standby. In France, almost a million men have been called up to the colours. Hitler can't get his head around this. What?
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Why are they sticking by the mad pledge to Poland? Why haven't they yielded to reality? And so he says, well, I'm going to have to change tactics, clearly. So on the Friday, which is the 25th of August, he's moved back to Berlin and he says, get Henderson back. So Henderson comes back to the Reich Chancellery and he says, look, I've changed my mind. I will make Britain a very generous offer.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
If you let me solve this Polish problem, I promise that will be it. And I will guarantee the integrity of the British Empire. And actually, I'll even lend you German forces to defend the British Empire, as long as you let us have some of our pre-1914 colonies back. So come on, that's a brilliant deal. We can be friends. And he says, do you know what? It's such a good deal, actually.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
I think you should take my private plane and go to London and offer it to Chamberlain personally. And then he says, I mean, this is shameless. He says to Henderson, the thing is, I actually hate war. I'm not a warrior. I'm an artist. When this Polish business is settled, I'll probably give up and just go back to art because that's what I'm really all about.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Yeah, dead at the funeral pyre of his capital. Exactly. So this is the second episode of our trilogy about the Nazi war on Poland. And we ended last time, Tom, as you may remember, with Hitler and his generals drawing up their plan of attack. On the 11th of April 1939, the Poles have resisted their attempts to persuade them to give up Danzig and to turn themselves into a satellite state.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Yeah. Just an artist. You're going to slap your thigh and chortle. Almost certainly. But once the recording is finished, I think, just privately. Just imagine, Tom, imagine there's no religion. Imagine there's no countries. It isn't hard to do. That's what Hitler said afterwards. He just loves art. Come on.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
So the irony is, of course, while Hitler is pontificating about art, imagine this and that and the other. His generals are preparing to launch the invasion of Poland the very next morning. The very next morning, Saturday the 26th of August. Everything is ready. The final decision is delayed because Hitler is still talking to Henderson about his love of watercolours.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
But at last, that afternoon, he gives the order. We'll go in tomorrow, the 26th, 4.30 in the morning. The British will be taken by surprise. It'll be a fait accompli. They'll just have to suck it up. Brilliant. Everything is ready. The wheels are put in motion. The generals are ready. And then, unbelievably, at 7.30 that evening, they get a new order from Hitler. It's off. It's cancelled. What?
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
What's happened? What's happened? Unbelievable twist. Well, Mussolini. Mussolini once again has thrown a spanner in the works. Late that afternoon, he sent Hitler a message. This war you're planning against... Actually, I don't fancy this war at all. Italy's not ready for a war. We don't fancy this. Hitler can't believe it. What? The Pact of Steel is for nothing?
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He says, Mussolini has betrayed me. The Italians are behaving just like they did in 1914. You can never rely on the Italians. So, I mean, it's all right for Hitler to rip up...
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
pacts and treaties but when it's done to him he doesn't like it at all yeah on the other hand Tom you could say the Italians had let Germany down in 1940 so Hitler could you know should perhaps have been forewarned anyway it's too late to stop all the preparations the army are outraged I mean they do stop most of the preparations but some units do go ahead so there's a there's an attack on a railway tunnel in the Carpathians that is actually beaten back by the Poles overnight and
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
The Poles wanted to order general mobilisation of their own, but the British and the French say, don't do it, don't do it. Don't provoke Hitler. And as we will discover next time... That's really, I mean, terrible for the Poles. This is terrible for the Poles, because it means when the war does start, they are not properly ready.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
So, as a result of Mussolini dragging his feet, the timetable is sort of frozen. Everybody is still in place, but, you know, the war has been postponed. And that gives Hitler one last chance to find a deal with Britain. Now, at this point, he has given up on traditional diplomacy. The stuff with Henderson isn't going to work, clearly. Ribbentrop says, look, it's pointless.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
They're not going to abandon Poland now. But Goering is still hanging around in his white suit. He kind of likes the idea of a deal. Not least because it would kind of stiff Ribbentrop, right? Exactly. He has this mate who's a Swedish industrialist called Berger Dalarus, who Goering uses often as a kind of go-between with London. And Hitler says, well, let's maybe use this bloke, this Dalarus.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
So he's drawn up this plan for an attack on Poland. And it's about the same time in April that Joachim von Ribbentrop, very much not somebody admired by the rest of history, it's fair to say, for all kinds of reasons, sartorial and ideological reasons,
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
So he sends this Swedish guy off to London with an alliance offer. An alliance offer for Britain. So he still hasn't given up on that old idea.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
It is. I was just thinking about that. The Kaiser's various attempts at the last minute to have a deal with the British. And he says, look, Dalarus's offer is Germany gets Danzig. Germany gets the Polish corridor. Germany gets its old colonies in Africa and stuff. But it will guarantee Poland's borders and it will do all this deal with the British Empire and it will defend the British Empire.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
The difference this time is Hitler says, we'll have this deal first and then we'll only worry about the Polish business afterwards. It's so important to me to be friends with you in Britain. Now, there's a lot of faffing around with this offer that we don't really need to go into because basically the underlying reality is that all the time Hitler is still making plans for the invasion.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He has not given up on the invasion idea. So after Dalarus has been sent off to London, he gathers the Nazi top brass, the leaders of the SS, Himmler, Heydrich, Goebbels, all these bad guys. And Hitler at this point is really strung out. He's exhausted. He's massively stressed. His voice is cracking. And he says, OK, we're going to do it on Friday the 1st of September.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
There'll be no more postponements. I made up my mind, you know, enough faffing around. This is going to happen. And he says, this is going to be brutal. But for as long as I live, there will never be any. We would never surrender.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
It's interesting that at this point, even at this point, before it's even started, he's contemplating, at least in part of his mind, his own death and the possibility of defeat. And actually, Goering says to him privately at one point, he says, listen, we don't actually need to fight the British. We don't need to do this. We don't need to gamble everything.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And Goering has not, I think, been completely honest with Hitler about the Luftwaffe's capabilities for obvious reasons. And he says to Hitler, look, we don't need to do this. You know, you don't need to prove anything. And Hitler says to him, all my life, I've always put my entire stake on the table, which is true. He gambled and gambled and gambled and won and won and won until he didn't.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Until he didn't. Exactly. So the evening of Monday, the 28th. Henderson pitches up again. He's drunk half a bottle of champagne to steady himself. Champagne? What is it with sparkling wine and these people? Before meeting Hitler. And he says, look, we've got the latest stuff from this Swedish guy. We're not going to do a deal with you while this Danzig thing is dragging on.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Tailoring very high on the list. That he suggests an idea that on paper seems completely unthinkable, which is why don't we do a deal with our ideological arch enemy, Stalin, and divide up Poland between us? And we'll be following that story in today's episode. But... The man you've been ventriloquising there, in an impression that may get you cancelled, is kind of hard to tell, isn't it?
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Fine, we can talk about Danzig, but there is no way that you can invade because if you do that, we will fight you. And Hitler says, OK, I'll think about it. So a day goes by. Then on the evening of Tuesday, the 29th, Henderson comes back for his answer. And Berlin now is in darkness. The government in Berlin has ordered a trial blackout.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
There are hundreds of people waiting outside the Reich Chancellery because they know that this is kind of the last chance for peace. And Hitler, I mean, I was going to say unbelievably, but of course it's perfectly credible. he decides to try the same trick that he had done in Bad Goudersberg. With Chamberlain. With Chamberlain.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He decides to just completely change the rules of the game and raise the stakes. And so instead of being Mr. Nice, he starts ranting and raving, oh, I'm sick of you British, you don't care about Germans, you don't care if we're being slaughtered. And he says, oh, you've encircled Germany, you've tricked us, you've betrayed us, all of this kind of thing.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Henderson, for the first time, probably in his diplomatic career, really, with Hitler... completely loses his temper and he says, ''I won't listen to this language from you or from anybody. How dare you insult the British government. If you want a war,'' says Henderson, ''then you will have it.'' And Hitler says, well, fine.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
I mean, the Poles should come send someone tomorrow to give me everything that I want. And if they don't, I'll send in my army. I'm not waiting any longer. Now, actually, amazingly, Henderson at this point, he walks out and he's steaming with rage. But he's still, because he's an appeaser and has always been an appeaser, he's still partly, you know, part of him still wants a deal.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And so he actually says to London... Maybe we should get the polls to negotiate. Maybe we shouldn't give up completely. And Chamberlain back in London says, no way. We're not going to be bullied again by Hitler. Chamberlain by this point has, I think, definitely run out of patience with the policy of appeasement. He says, we are not going to yield on this point. There is nothing more to discuss.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
So the stage really is set now. The next day, Wednesday the 30th, the Poles begin to mobilise. They should have done it earlier. They had delayed the request of the British and the French to avoid provoking the Germans. That will cost them very dear, I'm sorry to say.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
No, I don't think so. They'd still have fought. I think they would probably still have fought. I think they can't conceive that the British and the French won't intervene. Right. Okay.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Yeah. But I think the British and the French have sent slightly mixed signals. They've sent a military mission. They've sent some sort of pretty pitiful supplies. The British and the French have been saying to them, you know, it'll be a long war. They've been sort of hinting that they... Their intervention will not exactly be as game-changing as the Poles might like.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
But Polish national pride, Polish public opinion, they will make it very, very difficult for any kind of compromise, I would say. So where are we? Thursday the 31st of August 1939. First thing that morning, Hitler says to his generals, the invasion will start tomorrow. He signs the attack order just after midday, and then he confirms it an hour later.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
I don't think so. You don't think so? No. I think there was a lot of gusto there.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
That afternoon, early that afternoon, Ribbentrop arrives at the Reich Chancellery, and he says, look, no give from Britain. It's looking pretty bleak on the British front. And Hitler says, well, I've already given the order. De zacker roller, things are rolling. And Goebbels writes in his diary that afternoon, it looks as if the die is finally cast. An analogy that will appeal to you, Tom.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And late that afternoon, a very ominous sign, they cut the telephone lines to and from the Polish embassy in Berlin. And at 11 o'clock that evening, the 31st, you have the first reports of incidents on the Polish frontier. The most famous one is at a radio station at a place called Gliwice, now Gliwice in Upper Silesia.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
So this was basically a radio station generally used for kind of weather forecasting. And there are reports that Polish troops have stormed a German position, that they executed the staff and they broadcast Polish nationalist slogans. Actually, what happened was the attack was organized by the SS. It was planned directly by Reinhard Heydrich.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Both the attackers and the defenders were SS men and they were actually firing blanks. And when they left, they left three bodies behind them.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Canned goods, exactly. Is the sort of the jargon. Two of these guys were concentration camp inmates. They'd been killed with lethal injections and dressed in Polish uniforms. And the third man was a Pole, a Pole who was a German citizen. He was a local farmer, and his name was Franciszek Choniok. And he had been arrested the day before. He was well known for being a very patriotic Pole.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
I suppose you do. Yeah, I suppose you do.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And he was arrested, thrown into prison. And then he was taken out of prison and put to sleep with an injection. And then he was taken asleep to the radio station. And then he was shot dead. And his body was dumped there. And he is the first of the six million Poles who will be killed by the Nazis in the next six years. So we'll get on to the fate of Poland in Monday's episode.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
But just to tie up this bit of the story. The war proper began at 4.45 the next morning, Friday the 1st of September, when an elderly German battleship called the Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the Polish military depot on the Westerplatte, which is a peninsula that commands the entrance to Danzig's harbour.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And the same time that happened, 60 German divisions, about one and a half million men, spearheaded by tank divisions, began to cross the border, flood across the border from Germany into Poland. And by the afternoon of that day, Friday, you have the first reports of bombings, of Stuka attacks coming in from Western Poland, and the Polish army is already beginning to fall back from the border.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Yeah, method acting. Anyway, Hitler himself, he's 50 years old. He had celebrated his 50th birthday on the 20th of April 1939, so just nine days after the plan was drawn up for the destruction of Poland. And to mark the big day, I mean, it is one of the most extraordinary birthday parties in history. Goebbels organised what Ian Kershaw, Hitler's great biographer, called...
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Hitler addressed the Reichstag that morning at 10 o'clock. As you described, Tom, he was wearing his Wehrmacht uniform and he never takes it off. I mean, presumably he takes it off to sleep. To have a shower. Yeah, but he never dresses again in civilian clothes. And you did that performance with gusto because that's what we associate with Hitler. But actually, as we said, he was very nervous.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He stumbled over his words. He's very downbeat. He gets the time wrong. And even that line, looking forward to his own death, is a hint, I think, at the doubts that must have been there, if only subconsciously. It was a very gloomy day in Berlin. There was no public enthusiasm at all. The American journalist William Shira described the, quote, astonishment, depression on the faces of the people.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
No excitement, no hurrahs, no cheering, no throwing of flowers, no war fever, no war hysteria. Of course, they're all still waiting to find out what Britain and France will do. And Hitler did make one last attempt, another attempt through this Swedish guy, Dalarus. When Dalarus went to meet him at the Reich Chancellery,
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
In Kershaw describes the scene in his biography, Hitler, probably as a result of stress and tiredness, Not the gun oil. Not the gun oil. His breath was so repellent. The odour from his mouth was so strong that Dalarus was tempted to move back a step or two. So, you know, Hitler's hygiene has kind of collapsed. His halitosis is... Yeah.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And Hitler says, you know, tell the British, this is their last chance to avoid a fight with me. I will fight them for 10 years if I need to, which is not a very... Yeah, it's not very emollient. No, not very emollient and obviously doesn't work. The next day, the second Britain and France, by now, had ordered full mobilisation. They begin evacuating children from the cities.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Chamberlain is in talks about drawing up a war cabinet, bringing Winston Churchill back as First Lord of the Admiralty. And that evening is the evening of the very famous debate. Chamberlain gives... as he so often does, a very ill-judged speech in which he says, if the Germans pull back from Poland, maybe we could still talk to them. What a mad thing to say.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And this is the moment at which famously, as the Labour leader Arthur Greenwood stands up to reply, one of Churchill's sort of allies called Leo Amory shouts, speak for England, Arthur. And this is a great shock to Chamberlain, the sense that he's lost touch with the public.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
With many of his own party. And indeed with his own cabinet, because afterwards his cabinet say to him, look, enough. You've got to give an ultimatum. And Henderson goes to give the ultimatum first thing the next morning. So it's Sunday the 3rd of September, 9 o'clock in the morning. Henderson goes to the foreign ministry in Berlin. Ribbentrop.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Do you remember when we did the series on the First World War? All those scenes of the ambassadors crying and foreign ministers shaking hands. Yeah. None of that now. It's really kind of moving, actually. Really moving. Well, Ribbentrop is cut from a very different cloth. He will not even meet Henderson. He refuses even to see him. And Henderson gets interned, doesn't he? He does indeed, yes.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
So Henderson has to make do with the interpreter, Paul Schmidt. So he gives him the ultimatum. As surely everybody listening to this podcast will know, the ultimatum expired at 11 o'clock. The Germans didn't reply. And a few minutes later, Chamberlain made that very famously gloomy speech. And no such undertaking has been received. And consequently, this country is at war with Germany.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
You know, announcing the beginning of the Second World War for Britain and for France. But let's end with the interpreter, Paul Schmidt. He said, I took the ultimatum to the chancellery where everyone was anxiously awaiting me. There was something of a crush and I had difficulty in getting through to Hitler. When I entered, Hitler was sitting at his desk and Ribbentrop stood by the window.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Both looked up expectantly as I came in. I stopped at some distance from Hitler's desk and then I slowly translated the British government's ultimatum. When I finished, there was complete silence. Hitler sat immobile, gazing before him. He was not at a loss, as was afterwards stated, nor did he rage, as others allege. He sat completely silent and unmoving.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
an astonishing extravaganza of the Fuhrer cult. So they have a huge parade of limousines down this new road, this new avenue in Berlin called the East-West Axis, which has been planned as the main boulevard of the new capital of Germania. Berlin will be renamed in time Germania. That's Hitler's plan.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
After an interval which seemed an age, he turned to Ribbentrop, who had remained standing by the window. And Hitler asked, What now?
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Drawing up little plans and big domes and things. Exactly. They have huge torchlit parades. And at midnight, so midnight's the moment basically that Hitler's birthday begins, Speer presents him with a big model for the new triumphal arch that they are planning, which would be the biggest triumphal arch in the world. Yes. So much bigger than the Arc de Triomphe. Exactly.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And then the next day, there's a gigantic military parade, a five-hour military parade, and Hitler stands there. You know, he doesn't sit down. He stands and watches the whole thing and he's clearly delighted. And again, this is a reminder of how strange Hitler is, because I think for most dictators, this would be the apotheosis, the climax. You've turned 50.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
You've conquered, you know, everything. You've achieved all the foreign policy goals of any German nationalist, pretty much. This is the point to stop and slow down and enjoy it.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
No waiting in line with people who are sick with who knows what. Thanks to Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon One Medical, healthcare just got less painful.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Yeah, absolutely. But as Ian Kershaw points out, 50 is an age where a lot of people tend to take stock. It's your classic kind of midlife crisis moment.
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Well, that's Hitler, as Kershaw said. He spends all the time thinking about his own approaching death. Death is on his mind all the time. He has a sense of loss of vigour, great anxiety about his health and this tremendous sense of time running out. It's really important to him to strike soon. Most of his high command are ultimately desperate to avoid war with the West because they think
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531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
why gamble everything why risk everything when we've achieved so much you know we're in power we enjoy being in power we don't want to throw that away that's what that's how most authoritarians and dictators think not hitler he must have his war so eight days after his birthday he gives a landmark speech at the reichstag he renounces the non-aggression pact with poland so tom this is picking up your point from last time about what these pacts were the answer is nothing
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He also tears up the naval treaty with Britain. And for the first time, he publicly lays out the grievances that he and Ribbentrop have prepared. So that's Danzig, which we heard about last time, and the Polish corridor. And then a month goes by and he summons his commanders to the Reich Chancellery and he gives them the full Adolf Hitler bingo card. So we're being strangled economically.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
We need more living space, our racial destiny, all of this kind of stuff.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Yeah, the Jews are behind everything, of course. He says Poland is the target. Absolutely, there will be war. But here he goes beyond anything that he has said to his generals before. For the first time, he does not talk. He explicitly rules out, in fact, a friendship or alliance with the other Anglo-Saxon Germanic world power, which is Britain or England, as he always calls it.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He had always talked in the long run about some kind of deal with England. You know, that basically was part of his vision. Germany rules Europe. Exactly.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Exactly. But now for the first time, he says explicitly, England is our enemy and the showdown with England is a matter of life and death. So he's already beginning to recalibrate his attention a little bit from the east towards the west to see the west as an ideological archenemy as well. And for the first time, we have a preview of what's going to happen in 1940.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He says, you know, I've been thinking about this a lot. We will have to take Holland and Belgium. We'll take France. We can easily take France. Of course, he is right. They do easily take France.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Yeah. And as we will see in next week's episode, as the war begins, there is a case that, you know, if the French had shown a little bit more gumption. Had gone in.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
gone in hard yeah it would have been a very different outcome but he says we can take France we'll take the Atlantic seaboard and the channel and that will allow us to blockade England we'll strangle England and bring them to their knees the only question in his mind is the timetable I think at this point he's still thinking we do Poland this year
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And then maybe, you know, the West, Western Europe in a couple of years time.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And that will run through today's episode. His misjudgment, Hitler has judged his foreign policy coups very cleverly up to this point. But I think from this point on, or rather from the final attack on Czechoslovakia that we did last time, From that point on, I think he completely misreads London. Do you think that's because he's actually met the British and French leaders in person?
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
That's a good point, actually. It's funny that he starts to get them wrong after he's met them. Yeah. I think that's part of it. I think vanity is part of it. He feels... He was so affronted by Chamberlain and Chamberlain getting applause in Munich and so on. And he has such personal contempt for Chamberlain that he just can't take him seriously at all.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
But also, I think by this point, A, Hitler's off his head on gun oil. But B, he has completely drunk the Führer Kool-Aid. You know, he now thinks all this business about I've been chosen by Providence. Yeah, he's all into that. You don't want a leader who thinks like that. I mean, that's mad. Anyway, that spring and summer, Ribbentrop's diplomats lay the foundations.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
They make all these more non-aggression pacts, which, as you will know, Tom, are worthless, with people like the Danes, the Latvians, the Estonians. We shall see, of course, what these non-aggression pacts are worth. He does a deal with Yugoslavia for its copper. He does a deal with Romania for its oil and its wheat. So these are clever deals. These are stocking up. It's like playing a board game.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
I think you're absolutely right. And I think that's been running through the 1930s within the democracies themselves, of course. All these bright young men at Cambridge who are Stalinists, for example.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
They look stuffy. They look boring. They look dithery. They look weak. And if you're, as you say, if you're a government in Eastern Europe looking for an ally, you say France, really? I mean, they were great allies at Czechoslovakia. And where are they now? Whereas you think Hitler wins, you know, he judges things correctly. He's decisive. He's strong.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
You know, that's the calculation that a lot of these people are making.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Yeah. Seductive. It's glamorous. It seems modern. Exactly right. Yeah. Exactly. Now, one person who has it a little bit ambivalent is Mussolini. Mussolini doesn't want a war at all, but he's basically tricked into signing the Pact of Steel, a renewed, deepened military alliance.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
With a load of people who've got skull and crossbones on their hands.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
I mean, you know, there are clues there. But Ribbentrop says to him, listen, don't worry. I mean, we're not thinking about war for five years, which is, I mean... That's all right, then. And Mussolini says, oh, well, fine, fair enough. Yeah, we'll do it.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
All that summer, Hitler does his usual trick that he'd done last time of basically trying to pretend that he hasn't got any military plans at all. So he just goes on a tour of his childhood haunts in Austria. He goes to Bayreuth to listen to Wagner. I know you're a great devotee of Wagner, aren't you, Tom? So again... a disturbing similarity.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Yeah, and you love the Mitfords. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's all stacking up.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
It's all quite odd. And of course, he spends loads of time in the eagle's nest going for walks and talking to Speer about triumphal arches and watching terrible films and stuff. Meanwhile, just as in the Czech crisis, Goebbels' propaganda machine has cranked up pouring out all these grievances.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And what they will do, just as in the Sudetenland, they'll take a genuine, often a local grievance with a grain of truth and then massively amplify and exaggerate it into a colossal injustice. So this time, remember last time it was a guy who was basically a PE teacher called Konrad Henlein. Yeah. And now there's a fellow called Albert Forster. He's the Nazi party chief in Danzig.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
He came from the same town, interestingly, as Henry Kissinger called Fürth. in Franconia. Kissinger, of course, a refugee from Nazi Germany. I mean, a huge part of Kissinger's makeup is that experience.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
Anyway, there's this huge stream of stories saying basically, you know, ethnic Germans in Poland are being beaten up. They're being attacked, all of this kind of thing. Now, it is true that Poland has a much more nationalistic government than Czechoslovakia did.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
But as Richard Evans says in his book on the Third Reich, these stories are nevertheless massive exaggerations at best and complete inventions at worst. And what Forster's goons will do is they will stage provocations to try and get a Polish counter reaction. So they take a great offense at the fact that Poles have things like customs offices and post offices in Danzig.
The Rest Is History
531. Hitler's War on Poland: The Pact with Stalin (Part 2)
And they're always claiming that Polish postmen and customs inspectors are kind of beating up Germans and all of this kind of thing. And the thing is that this has a very ready audience in Germany. We talked before, didn't we, in the Munich episodes about what ordinary Germans make of all this kind of thing. Do they believe it? And I think a lot of ordinary Germans absolutely swallow this stuff.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Frenchman, where now are those qualities which once distinguished you? Where now is that national character of greatness and loyalty?
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
I mean, you could say she might be being naive because by leaving him alive, you would create problems for the future. But, you know, she's being commendably compassionate, Tom.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
who was on trial for his life, was the erstwhile King Louis XVI. And this, Tom, is one of those speeches that defines the French Revolution. The French Revolution is a great rhetorical event. And we've done a lot of great orations. We had Saint-Just last time saying that you can't reign innocently and the king must die. And here we have Romain de Cez saying that
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
I mean, obviously, he had his head cut off, but he was always going to. But historians would generally say that that was very clever from Charles because actually he was right. The court was illegitimate. And he basically said, come on, everyone knows this is a put-up job. And has no legal foundation. And he wasn't wrong, and he got a lot of sympathy for that. Right.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
I suppose there are two interesting things there. So number one is, the weird thing is that answering point by point, it is madness because on some of those points, he is clearly guilty. He did flight to Varennes. He did get in touch with the Austrians. He has been in touch with counter-revolutionaries. He has been conspiring against the revolution.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
But the interesting thing is that in his own mind, clearly, Louis doesn't think he's guilty. He thinks these guys are bad people who have done a coup and have seized control of the revolution. Actually, I am blameless. I mean, that's the interesting thing. He wouldn't choose that strategy if he didn't have absolute confidence in his own innocence.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
But in the long run, very bad move for the Girondins in this. I mean, and one of their own goals that they have been scoring for the last few months, right, that they keep coming up with these wheezes that don't quite work. Right. And which make them look royalist.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
You should fear, lest you efface humanity from your heart, and you should find the compassion for this man who has suffered enough. And basically, nobody listens.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
At that point, some of them are hoping he might bring them back into his ministry and that they wouldn't have to have this kind of coup.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
I vote for death because I'm so kind, is basically what he's saying.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
The worst man in this story. Who's that? This is Philip Equality, who is the king's own cousin. What a terrible man he is. I mean, at least abstain or at least say exile or something like that. But to go all in in this way for your own cousin, I think is very, very bad behavior.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
People pay good money for that these days. Yeah, it's a brilliant idea. Marie Antoinette would love that, wouldn't she? That's a honeymoon holiday.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
Death. Well, what a moving scene. And actually, I'm embarrassed but moved to report to the listeners that Tom actually can't continue because he too has dissolved into tears. So we're going to have to take a break. And we'll return after the break when Tom has regained his composure to tell you about Louis' fate. This episode is brought to you by Vanguard.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
Throughout history, people have always looked for ways to make life easier. Just think about the Romans. They built aqueducts to bring water straight to their cities so they didn't have to haul it themselves.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
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The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
Welcome back to The Rest Is History. The good news is that Tom has dried his tears. The bad news is that Louis Capet is facing an appointment with Madame Guillotine. So, Tom, we ended with Malzeb sobbing, announced the verdict to Louis, and then the convention themselves sent a delegation to Louis, don't they, to sort of formally read the verdict to him. Yeah.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
So that's three days after the trial. And he remarkably still is very composed and indeed serene when he receives them.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
The novelist, yeah.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
And she's a teenager, isn't she? She's, what, 15 or so? Yeah. So that's that.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
Because he's part of a, he's the sixth generation, I think, of Saint-Saëns who've been executioners, isn't he?
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
Again, this is very Charles I in Whitehall, isn't it? Absolutely the same scenario.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
If the guillotine doesn't work, they can turn their cannons on him.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
Well, they're doing it deliberately.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
Crikey. What a moment. So you mentioned the crowd. The crowd, of course, are mainly troops because the ordinary people of Paris have been kept away from this moment. But within a couple of hours of this, am I not right in thinking that the troops have moved away? People come into the streets. It's a little bit like on a public holiday. People are strolling around and
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
you know, I know it's January, so it's not exactly that they're enjoying the sunshine, but people are acting as though it's just an ordinary Sunday or something sort of taking the air as though nothing has happened.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
It's interesting how that has escalated from an opposition to this king, which would have been the case a year earlier, that this king is complicit with counter-revolutionaries and foreign infiltrators and all that kind of thing. But it has widened, hasn't it? They've self-radicalized. So now it is an opposition to all kings and to kingship more generally.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
Yeah. Because of course he'd been fasting because for religious reasons. Yeah.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
Wow. What a dramatic end to the third series on the French Revolution. Season three has come to an end with the execution of Louis XVI. But many of the big players are still around and in play. Marie Antoinette, Rob Spierre, Danton, Marat. In season four, which will be coming later this year, we will find out what happens to all of those characters. A little spoiler alert for you.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
None of them make it into... Well, they definitely won't be around in season six or seven, will they? That's for sure. So there's an awful lot of drama, a lot of bloodshed to come. No doubt in our forthcoming bonus episodes for the Manchester's History Club members, we'll be talking about some of the issues that have come up in this series. But thank you for listening.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
We will return to the French Revolution later in the year. Tom, merci beaucoup et au revoir. Au revoir.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
Would you show your powers in overwhelming with misfortunes the man who had the noble resolution to repose such confidence in you? Have you no more respect for the sacred duties of hospitality? is no commiseration due to such unparalleled misfortunes.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
And so this has become more than just a case about Louis and his own personal misdemeanors. He is on trial as a symbol of worldwide despotism and monarchy.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
He was later on strictly come dancing.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
They want a big set piece.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
It's the ritualistic kind of kickoff, isn't it? And you say if he's found guilty, there is no doubt that he will be found guilty from the beginning. I mean, we're going to be talking about the trial, but I don't think there's any doubt in anybody's mind that he's not going to be walking out a free man, kind of punching the air and stuff outside the Old Bailey. No.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
No, I just wanted to maintain the suspense. Yeah, okay.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
Okay, very good. Dramatic tension.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
Do you not think that a king who ceases to be one is not a victim sufficiently striking without its being necessary to add such accumulated miseries to his fate? Frenchman, this revolution which regenerates you develops great qualities. but fear, lest it should at the same time efface humanity from your heart, without which every other virtue is lost.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
So the trial is doing two things simultaneously, right? It's trying Louis as a private individual who has betrayed the revolution, but it's also doing that Saint-Just thing of trying him as a symbol of monarchy. He stands in effectively for all the monarchs that France has ever had.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
This is very execution of Charles I, isn't it? We did two episodes about that with our friend Ted Valance. Remember, there's all that business where a bit of Charles' cane falls off and no one picks it up. Yeah, and he has to get it. Yeah, this is all exactly the same thing again.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
And obviously, they all know the story of Charles I, so there must be a slight element of role-playing on all sides, actually, that they're kind of conscious that this has happened before.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
So that was the somewhat florid concluding statement of a fellow called Romain de Cez, who was a lawyer from Bordeaux. Tom writes here that he was celebrated for his sonorous eloquence. As I think you can tell. As you can tell. There he was standing on the 26th of December 1792 before the National Convention in Paris. And of course, the man he was defending.
The Rest Is History
547. The French Revolution: The Execution of the King (Part 4)
But there's also an issue... He's got an issue, to be fair to him, with his weight, hasn't he? He says, basically, I'm too fat to stand up in court. That's his excuse.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
No, no, that's a very critical report by this Belgian guy. But there's actually worse to come because that first quotation, the Free State official mentioned an overseer twirling a whip. And this whip becomes the supreme symbol abroad of King Leopold's model colony because this is a whip called the chicotte. And it's basically a strip of hippopotamus hide that's been dried in the sun.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
It has a very sharp edge, doesn't it? Yeah. So it breaks the skin. 25 strokes of that you will pass out. 100 strokes of that will almost certainly kill you. And there are all kinds of accounts of from people who see Leopold's soldiers, his enforcers, flogging children who are sometimes as young as seven or eight.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
There's an official called Stanislas Lefranc, a Belgian magistrate, who arrived in the Congo. He saw these boys being flogged. These are like eight-year-old boys. And the reason is that they had all laughed in the presence of an official. And he was so across, he told his men to flog every boy, every servant boy in the town, 50 lashes.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
So that's very like the SS officer in the Polish village with the schoolboys. Yes, it is. Flogging them. Yeah. And Lefranc complained and it was stopped. But afterwards, Lefranc was called in by his superiors and they said to him, don't do that again because that undermines discipline. We need discipline in this town. And most Europeans just seem to have taken the use of the chicotte for granted.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
They don't wield it themselves.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Absolutely, you do. So the enforcers, this is a private army called the Force Publique. I mean, an absolutely terrifying organization. By the mid 1890s, there were about 19,000 men in it. It's the biggest army in Central Africa. And it's a private army with a small group of white officers. And the men are all black Africans. The officers tend to be Belgian.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
The ordinary soldiers initially, they are mercenaries from West Africa or from Zanzibar. But over time, they're replaced with conscripts from the Congo. I say conscripts. But there is an argument that these are effectively slave soldiers.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
There's all kinds of evidence in the Belgian files of orders for chains and things, chains required to bring young men or boys from the interior to work in the force publique. We know that agents were paid a bonus for how many men they provided for the force publique. Some of them would buy teenage boys from friendly chiefs.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And these teenage boys, when they were maybe chained, led to barracks, told they had to join the army. They would serve a seven-year term. They were incredibly badly treated. I mean, they themselves have flogged with a chicotte. And they spend an awful lot of time fighting among themselves, basically fighting mutinies.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
So in the book King Leopold's Ghost, there are long narratives of these hideous, bloody mutinies where false public units have turned against their officers and then other units have to be brought in to deal with them. And if they're not fighting mutinies, they're fighting rebels. Because we said last time how ethnically fragmented the Congo is.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
It has a long history of ethnic violence before the Belgians ever arrived, a history that never really goes away. And you could argue that the force publique and indeed the free state generally is just a new and deadly player in an endlessly shifting world of rivalries and alliances.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
No. I mean, these campaigns, these rebellions and kind of guerrilla campaigns and counterinsurgency operations can last for 10, 20 years. And they involve, I mean, when Francis Ford Coppola turned Heart of Darkness into Apocalypse Now, there was a real logic to that because actually these counterinsurgency campaigns look very much like the Vietnam War.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Villages being burned to the ground, civilians being rounded up and murdered, women being raped, children being enslaved. It's kind of hideous, hideous scenes.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
It is indeed. It is indeed. Now- Some people listening to this may say, you're presenting a very, very dark picture. You've obviously read this book that presents a very bleak picture of life in the Congo. Is there a more positive side?
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Next week, we'll do a bonus episode for our Restless History Club members talking about the critics of the Adam Hochschild's book and people who have said, oh, there's actually another side to the story. But just one note on this. Leopold, of course, had promised... a civilizing mission. But it's fair to say there is actually very little evidence of that.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
So there are no state-funded schools for African children, for example. There are some religious foundations, but there's no attempt whatsoever to set up a state educational infrastructure. He does, however, have children's homes, which are called children's colonies. But the point of them is merely to provide recruits for the force publique.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
So the world is told that these are orphanages for children with no parents, but often these are the surviving children of people who have been killed in the kind of counterinsurgency operations and dragged back in these hideous forced marches in which maybe a third of the children will die. And then they're put in these children's homes.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
where discipline is enforced with the chain and with the chicotte, about half of the children in these homes die. And if you live, you then join the force publique in your turn. So the cycle continues. How are the people who are organising this feeling about this? They feel great about it, by and large.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Well, some do, of course, and we'll get on to this. I mean, Conrad does, famously. Yes, but Conrad... We will do an episode on Heart of Darkness next week in which we'll discuss how when Conrad went on his journey, on the way back, he writes letters home to friends and relatives. And he says, nobody talks to me. Everybody hates me. I'm very isolated. Everybody regards me as repugnant.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And an obvious explanation for this is that he has shown his shock and at what he sees and his disgust. And other people say he is unsound. He's not to be trusted. He's not one of us. Because he comes out of that absolutely traumatized, doesn't he?
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
But I can't believe that there aren't other people who... There are other people. I mentioned that magistrate, Lefranc, who said, stop flogging the boys and is then told off for it and said, you're undermining discipline. Right. So there are such people.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
You're speaking as somebody who's unaware of history. I mean, people often behave like this.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
There are voices of conscience, and we will come to some next week. We will come to the people who give information. to the campaigns against King Leopold.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
The military men, they were all for it. I mean, there are lots of accounts of military men who say, the Congo is actually brilliant. You can do what you like. It's much better than being at home in Europe. You can be a big man. Remember that quote? You can be a warlord if you want. I think that the truth of the matter is we're not talking about huge quantities of men. Remember, 500 maximum.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
By and large, if you go and if you stay more than a few weeks, you're signed up to the project. If you don't like it, you go home straight away if you don't like that project, I would say. You find a reason to get out. But if you go, you become desensitized very quickly. I mean, it's rather like asking how did Wehrmacht officers justify what they're doing in 1941? They find a way of doing it.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
That is a huge question. But you see, I don't think that's a very hard question to answer because I think human beings often behave like that in history because I have a very bleak view of human nature. It's not a puzzle to me because I just see it recur again and again.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
You can argue that there are two things we have. I mean, there's an imperialistic mentality and there's, of course, a racist mentality. So they don't regard the Africans as people like themselves and they believe they have a right to treat them as they choose.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
You don't go to the Congo to work as a mercenary if you've got a bleeding heart, I think it's fair to say.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
said oh i'm not sure about this but i think that tells its own story i mean that's the thing that they're self-selecting and the weight of their prejudices their cultural baggage means that they are perhaps predisposed to think it's okay it's also kind of what heart of darkness is about that i say we will come to that but just before we go to the break there's one thing that we've completely missed in this episode and that is an african voice
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And the truth is they are really hard to come by because as we said before, people aren't writing things down. We do get fragmentary sources collected in interviews. So here's a really good example that also answers your question. There was a free state agent who I think was American born called Edgar Canisius.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And later on, he ends up basically turning against the free state and giving a lot of information to campaigners against it. And he collected stories from people. And one of them is a woman called Ilanga from the east of Congo who had been kidnapped by the force publique. And she told her story to Canisius and he repeated it.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
He was convinced that she was telling the truth because he also met the men who had kidnapped her. So he said, I believe her when she's telling me what happened. I'll just read an extract before we go to the break to give people a sense of what this was like on the ground. So this is Ilanga.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
She says, We were all busy in the fields when a runner came to the village, saying that a large band of men was coming and that many white men were with them. Three or four came to our house and caught hold of me, also my husband Alika and my sister Katinga. We were dragged into the road and tied together with cords about our necks.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
We were all crying, for now we knew that we were to be taken away to be slaves. We set off marching very quickly. My sister Katinka had her baby in her arms, but my husband Alika was made to carry a goat. We had nothing to eat, for the soldiers would give us nothing.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
On the fifth day, the soldiers took my sister's baby and threw it in the grass, leaving it to die, and made her carry some cooking pots. On the sixth day, we became very weak from lack of food and from constant marching, and my husband, who marched behind us with the goat, sat down beside the path and refused to walk more. The soldiers beat him, but still he refused to move.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Then one of them struck him on the head with the end of his gun and he fell upon the ground. One of the soldiers caught the goat, while two or three others stuck the long knives they put on the end of their guns into my husband. I saw the blood spurt out and then saw him no more, for we passed over the brow of a hill and he was out of sight.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Well, Tom, as you know, I am absolutely passionate about NordVPN. One of the things I love about them is their Threat Protection Pro, an absolutely brilliant antivirus tool. It is so effective and so powerful. It is integrated directly into the NordVPN app. So what it does is it protects you from phishing and other cyber threats.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And the brilliant thing about it is it allows you to browse safely and smoothly.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
That's one of the things that make me so passionate about NordVPN. So to stay secure online, you really should take advantage of our exclusive NordVPN discount. You really should, you know. All you need to do is to go to nordvpn.com slash restishistory. When you sign up, you can receive a bonus four months on top of your plan and there is no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
The link is also in the episode description box.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
That's absolutely right. And we'll get onto the railway and the people who died working on it a little bit later. But to go back, Conrad made his journey up the Congo in 1890. And it was about this point that this terrible story entered a new chapter that was even darker than before.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And this new period, this terrible period in the Congo's history, traces its origin not to Belgium, actually, but to Belfast in Northern Ireland. So in October 1887... An inventor called John Dunlop had attached a pneumatic rubber tire to his son's tricycle as an experiment to see if this would work. And within three years, the Dunlop company were making tires commercially.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And from that point onwards... There's a huge bicycle craze, a bicycle boom with these rubber pneumatic tyres.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Yeah, I think something like that. I mean, people have known about it certainly for decades, but it's only at this point in the early 1890s that the worldwide rubber boom really gets underway. And I guess it's because people need rubber insulation for the new telephone, for telegraphs, for electrical wiring, for electrification.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
It promotes rubber, the enthusiasm for rubber in bicycles, but also it's used in tubes and in factories and all these kinds of things. So it's the great more of industry. Absolutely. Now, where do you get rubber? You can get wild rubber or you can get plantation rubber. In the Congo, in the forests of the Congo, rubber vines are very plentiful. The costs, as with ivory, are very low.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
You don't need to cultivate it. You don't need fertilizers. You don't need equipment. You just need people to go and collect the rubber. And I'll explain how they do that in a second. So for Leopold, this is amazing. A rubber boom has started. And as luck would have it, he has one of the world's great supplies of rubber. But...
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
He knows he's only got a limited window in which to do this because investors were already pouring money into plantations of rubber trees in Asia and in South America. And rubber trees are much easier to tap than rubber vines. And that would give him what, about 20 years? He's got 20 years to tap the rubber vines in the Congo before these trees become, as it were, operational.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Absolutely right. Now, how do you get the rubber? Here's the catch. While rubber comes from these gigantic vines that wind their way around these trees. And these vines can grow so high, 100 feet high, they go up to the sunlight. And then once they're there, they'll sort of corkscrew for hundreds more feet through the kind of jungle canopy, the forest canopy.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And to get the rubber out of the vine, you basically have to slash the vine with a knife, and then you hung a pot or a bucket to collect this kind of milk, the sap. And
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
that comes from the vine now the downside of doing that in the Congo is when you go into the forest a lot of it is swamp so it's kind of flooded you're wading through it and you're surrounded by snakes crocodiles and all this kind of thing so it's a health and safety nightmare I think it's fair to say Tom now once you've got the sap the milky stuff You need to dry it.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
You want it to coagulate into the rubber. So what a lot of gatherers would do is they would get it, they'd cut the vine, the stuff comes out, then they spread it. I know this sounds really weird. They spread it on their own body. They wait till it's dried and then they kind of rip it off their body. Imagine how painful that is. Bits of hair in it. And then they put it into baskets.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
and carry it with the baskets on their heads. They will walk for tens and tens of miles down to the river to the nearest European agency. And here the rubber will be again left out to dry and then it will be loaded onto barges for the coast. So as all of that makes clear, it's quite an operation for the person who's actually gathering the rubber. I mean, you don't want to be eaten by a crocodile.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Yeah, it's not a great job, is it? No, it's not something you choose to do. Podcasting is a better career choice, I think it's fair to say. Basically, nobody wants to do it. The only way you'll get people to do it is to force them to do it.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Definitely. Self-accusatory. Absolutely. A very self-lacerating irony there, the high unjust proceedings. And today's episode will be quite a dark subject. So we're going to get into the realities of the Congo Free State under the regime of King Leopold.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And there you have it. So this is where the force publique, the sort of mercenary force, the private army of King Leopold, and the various militias that have been enlisted by the concession companies... where they come in. Their job is to round people up and get them to go and get this rubber. And we know how they did it from the British vice consul who wrote this report in 1899.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And he said, an officer told me what they do. They go into a village and The inhabitants all run away. They start looting the village, the sort of mercenaries who've gone in. Then they seize the women of the village. They chase them, they seize the women, and they keep them as hostages until the men have gone and got enough rubber. And then when the men have got the rubber, they sell the women
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
back to the men, and then they move on to the next village. So they're basically hostages. It's the systematic, deliberate, planned taking of hostages. In the manual that was given to Congo Free State from the company agents... There are instructions about the best way to take hostages. Do they use the word hostage? No, they don't use the word hostage.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
They say it's a way of bargaining, it's a good way of negotiating, all this kind of thing.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
They don't want this manual to fall into the wrong hands, exactly. So basically, you take the hostages and then you would say, look, we need four kilograms of rubber every two weeks. And when you hit your quota, you can have your hostages back. Are people paid to collect rubber? Some chiefs are paid with beads or with salt. Some chiefs are paid with slaves.
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We know that in 1901, a chief told a Belgian official, he said, oh yeah, I was paid. I was given six women and two men. And I was told, quote, I could eat them or kill them or use them as slaves as I liked. Eat them. But that's what he said. I mean, maybe that was the Belgian being, you know, the Belgian official saying, mocking the chief, it's impossible for us to know.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Cannibalism is not totally unknown in the Congo, but equally, it could be something that the Belgian, the Europeans are projecting on. Now, in some areas, it really is a police state. Workers would need a permit to leave their village because they're required for the rubber quota. In other areas, workers are actually given numbered metal discs. to wear around their necks.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
I say workers, of course, that you could argue workers is the wrong word. They are effectively, this is slave labor. And so these are slave collars, basically. Slave collars. And we are talking about enormous numbers of people. So one company, One of the biggest concession companies, the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company, ABIR.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
In 1906, in its account books, it listed 47,000 Congolese workers, workers again in inverted commas, who are collecting rubber for it. And again, that's that weird thing that you're talking about, Tom. Do they even need to make a list? Why are they doing it? Because they're still so addicted to the formal legal paraphernalia.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
They want to believe that what they're doing is not naked exploitation, but is good business practice, I suppose. And can I ask about the Anglo in that? Yes. It had once been a British company. It is actually no longer at this point. Its shareholders, I think, are almost exclusively Belgian by the early 1900s. So there's one more thing.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And this is the single most notorious aspect of life in the Congo, which many listeners may have heard of. A guy who describes this very well is, you mentioned missionaries, an American missionary called William Shepherd. In 1899, Shepherd was based in a region called the Kasai, which is in the south of the Congo.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
A lot of horrors in this. There are indeed. Before we get into them, let's remind ourselves what happened last time. The central character was King Leopold II, King of the Belgians, this lonely, awkward, selfish, ruthless man whom we likened in that episode, Tom, to you. And he has carved out his own private colonial fiefdom, a huge chunk of Central Africa with the Congo snaking through its heart.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And this was an area that was plagued by fighting between loyalists to the Congo Free State and rebels. Shepherd went deep into the forests and he found abandoned villages that had been burned to the ground and were littered with corpses. And he was horrified.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And he kept going and he got to the camp of Leopold's loyalists, to kind of tribes that were loyal, that had collaborated with the Congo Free State. And he was struck as he approached straight away by the smell of something being smoked, like meat being smoked. And he said the chief took him to a sort of wooden framework of sticks under which there was a fire burning.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And on the framework, on the sticks, on the kind of frame, were hands, 81 right hands, human hands. And the chief said to him, see, here is our evidence. I always have to cut off the right hands of those we kill in order to show the state how many we have killed. And the point of smoking them was that they wouldn't rot.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
The Congo is very hot and humid, so you smoke them means you can preserve them. The chief could show them to Congo free state or concession officials and then get his reward. Now, this is a very, very controversial subject among people who write about the Congo. Some people say it's a kind of long established practice.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
It's a practice that comes from African and Arab slave traders who've been cutting off people's hands. And it's unfair to blame this on King Leopold. Well, I mean, it's a practice that goes back to ancient Egypt.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Others say actually what happens is that under the free state, other historians, under the Congo free state, this becomes institutionalized and sort of systematized in a way that it had never quite been before. That it almost... It becomes part of the box ticking, the accountancy. It becomes industrialised. It becomes industrialised, exactly.
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One common misconception that people will have is that these were cut off living people. That's perhaps because you'll have seen photos of living people whose hands have been cut off. Because it happened in Sierra Leone, didn't it? Notoriously. But most of the victims were already dead. There's another great book on the Congo by David van Rebroek, a lot of it based on oral history.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
That makes very clear that most of the people who had their hands cut off, I mean, they're already dead. They're corpses. Leopold himself, when there's a great storm, as we will come to next week, about the cutting off of hands, he was very annoyed that people criticized him for it. He said, cutting off hands, that's idiotic. He said, I'd cut off the rest of them, but not the hands.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
That's the one thing I need in the Congo. is people's hands to collect the rubber. I mean, that gives you some sense of Leopold's cynicism. But I think what happened is that among the force publique, cutting the hands off corpses does become almost an end in itself because they take them back to their officers. They're European officers. And this says, I'm taking the job seriously.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
I've killed lots of people. Here is the evidence. And there was some suggestion, and I think it's correct, that forced public officers were paid bonuses based on how many hands. So it's like scalp hunting in the Wild West. Exactly. It is. That's a really, really good comparison. Now that we're at this point, I think it's fair to say that we really are kind of morally in the heart of darkness.
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I mean, this is the kind of thing that really, if you're a sensitive listener, you've probably already stopped listening. There are some writers who think a lot of this has been exaggerated and sensationalized.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
For me, I mean, we will talk about this a lot in next week's bonus, but for me, I think there are far too many accounts of European agents forcing people to eat excrement or to drink castor oil or shooting holes in people's earlobes and using them for target practice and stuff like that. I think there are far too many examples for them all to be exaggerated or indeed made up.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
I think you have to believe that all these missionaries are inventing stories. There are some notorious examples. There was a guy called Leon Fievez. He collected more rubber than anybody else. He was from a farming family in Wallonia in Belgium. He was the commissioner for the Équateur district. We know that he boasted about his methods. He told his men, cut off heads.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Somewhere between 8 and 12 million people may be living there.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And he cut off heads to inspire loyalty and discipline because people weren't giving him food. He cut off a hundred heads. He would ask people to bring baskets full of hands. He was completely open and unashamed about it.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
His agent, his operative, Henry Morton Stanley, the great explorer, though bloodstained explorer, has signed treaties with 450 different settlements, giving their land, their economic rights, and crucially their labor to the International Association of the Congo, which has proved to be a front for the Congo Free State, which has been set up from May 1885.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Exactly. So let's move the clock forward to 1895. The Congo Free State is now celebrating its 10th anniversary. Leopold is also celebrating his 60th birthday. His life, in many respects, is absolutely miserable. His wife hates him. She spends all her time riding horses. And laughing. Well, she doesn't laugh anymore, actually. Laughter has fled, I think it's fair to say.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
His oldest daughter, Louise, has married a German prince, and their wedding is, if anything, even worse than Leopold's. She tried to run away on her wedding night, and she ends up being locked in a nursing home for six years. So that's a bit miserable. Second daughter, Stephanie, she married Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, and he killed himself at Meierling in a murder-suicide pact with his lover.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
It would make an amazing play, the home life of Leopold II. But also, he's...
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
pretty bonkers in his own way he's very lonely he's a massive hypochondriac he's such a hypochondriac that every day they have to boil the tablecloths to kill germs and he wears when he goes outside and it's raining he wears a waterproof bag over his beard to stop his beard getting wet which seems very peculiar why didn't he shave his beard off Good question.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
I think he thinks the beard is a sign of his tremendous masculinity, I think is what he thinks. His great pleasures, you mentioned one of them last week, which is he has a special ironed copy of the Times every day. His other great pleasures are spending money on monuments and pavilions and parks and stuff. Golf courses. Golf courses. He loves a golf course. He does like a golf course.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And his other great pleasure is sleeping with very young girls. So in 1885, he was actually named in a British court... as a client of a disorderly house in London, and he was accused of paying £800 a month to have a supply of girls in their very early teens. He's a bad man. I think we can conclude that King Leopold II was a very bad man.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Now, all of his spending, of course, reflects his big earnings from rubber. It's really hard for us to know how much money he made from all this rubber. But I mentioned one concession company, Anglo-Belgian India Rubber. They made a profit on their rubber of more than 700%, and their stock price rose 30 times in four years after they started investing in rubber.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
So I think it's a fair assumption that Leopold is making tens of millions, maybe more, in today's money, an enormous, enormous sum of money. And things are only going to get better for him. His railway, by the time he turns 60, his railway is finally nearing completion. It has been a gigantic and a hideous project. 60,000 people have worked on this 200-mile railway. They've built 99 bridges.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
But the project has eaten people because of dysentery, because of yellow fever, smallpox, and so on. They've had to bring in workers from West Africa. They've brought in hundreds of Chinese labourers from Hong Kong and Macau. These people have been brought often under false pretenses. They're chained together. They're flogged if they falter. There are constant rebellions.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
The death toll is impossible to estimate. The official figures say 1,800 Africans and Asians died, but it could be far greater. There are some historians who think maybe hundreds were dying every single month.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
It's all about the kindness. It was said afterwards that every single sleeper on the railway, that's what Americans call the tie, which is the wooden slat that basically goes between the rails, that every single one of those planks cost one African life. And I don't think that's such a tremendous exaggeration.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
In all this process, Leopold has assured the world, and in particular the other governments of Europe, that his motives are philanthropic. Even six years later, he told the Belgian prime minister, the Congo state is certainly not a business. If it gathers ivory on certain of its lands, that is only to lessen its deficit.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
So Leopold, he thinks, well, when the railway is done, I can dream bigger with all my money. We can push maybe the railway up to the Valley of the Nile. We can have a railway that goes up to the Sudan and to Egypt. He starts putting feelers out to Gladstone, the British prime minister. Would you be interested in selling me Uganda? And he says to his courtiers, Belgium is an up and coming country.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Spain, Portugal, the hated Dutch. They're decadent. We can move in on their colonies, actually.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Yes. Now, there are the first glimmers of criticism. The very first critic really is an African-American missionary called George Washington Williams. He went to the Congo to try to save souls. Well, he's an amazing man, isn't he?
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Exactly. And this bloke... George Washington Williams, right? He's had this meeting with Leopold. Then he goes to the Congo. He goes up into the interior and he's like, what? This is awful. This is a complete con and a fraud. And he publishes an open letter. And he says, this is unbelievable. The forced public are out of control. They're killing everybody.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Your Majesty's government is engaged in the slave trade, wholesale and retail. It buys and sells and steals slaves. And is that where he uses the phrase crimes against humanity? I think he does. Yes. And now Leopold organizes a massive press counterattack, says this guy's an attention seeker, he's mad. And unfortunately for George Washington Williams, he dies of tuberculosis just months later.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
But this is the very first little dent in the edifice that Leopold has very carefully constructed. And there are more. So in 1896, another missionary, a Swede, tells an audience in London that the force publique are collecting human hands. There's an even bigger scare, and this tells its own story, the biggest scare of all.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
In other words, we're paying out so much money because we're so committed to the philanthropic civilizing mission that we promised that we need to gather a little bit of ivory to make ends meet. This, it is worth saying very starkly, is completely untrue. From the very beginning, Leopold is really interested, I think, only in one thing, and that is maximizing his profits.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
The forced public hanged an Irish ivory trader called Charles Stokes because they said they'd caught him selling arms to Arab slave dealers. And the fact that they had hanged a white man, very shocking. And the European papers start to say, well, hold on. If they would hang a white man with impunity, what are they doing to the Africans if that's how they behave?
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
So actually, Leopold deals with this, again, very cunning. He sets up a fake commission for the protection of the natives with missionaries on its board. And he says they'll look into this. I mean, they never actually really travel to the Congo. They don't really have a proper meeting. But they issue a report. Brilliant. All sorted. Necessary reforms have been made.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
So then, as now, if you've got a problem, set up a commission. Set up a commission, yeah. In 1897, Leopold arguably reached his apogee. A World's Fair opened in Brussels. There were two great sites built and decorated in the Art Nouveau style of the day. One of them was completely devoted to the Congo Free State.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
There were stuffed animals, there was coffee and chocolate and tobacco, there were ornaments and woodwork and all this stuff. But the highlight was 267 human beings that were exhibited in specially built villages like animals in the zoo.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
There was even a sign, the blacks are fed by the organizing committee, said the sign, because people were giving them sweets, throwing sweets to them, which was making them ill.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And people just taking it completely for granted. A million people went to see this exhibition in Brussels. And we have no indication that any of them thought anything but that it was absolutely brilliant. They loved it. And when the Africans were finally taken home to
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
the congo one newspaper said the soul of belgium follows them and like the shield of jupiter protects them may we always thus show the world an example of humanity the smugness and the sort of right sense of righteousness um off the scale so leopold what could possibly go wrong he's got his colony he's got his rubber he's got his money you know everything looks great
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Nothing could spoil it, or could it? Because it's about this time that a young clerk on the docks at Antwerp where the rubber is being unloaded, begins to wonder about the trade. He sees all this rubber and ivory being unloaded, and he thinks it's weird because it's not really showing up in the company's accounts, like somebody's skimming off the top.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
What he also can't understand, this young shipping clerk, if we're getting all this rubber and ivory in, what are we paying for it with? What are the people of the Congo getting back? And when he looks into it, he finds something that really shocks him because the ships that are going back to the Congo are not being loaded with trade goods.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
They're being loaded exclusively with rifles and ammunition. And it's at that point that this young bloke- Yeah, the light bulb. The light bulb goes off. And as he later puts it, he said, "'It was bad enough to stumble upon a murder, but I had stumbled upon a secret society of murderers with a king for a ringleader.'" And this young man's name was Edmund Dean Morell.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And as we'll find out next week, he is going to change the world.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And the proof of that is what he does on the very first day of the Congo Free State's existence. So on the 29th of May, 1885, the day that it is proclaimed, He issues a decree that all vacant land now belongs to the state, i.e. to him. But because the word vacant is not defined, what is vacant land?
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Now, Tom, as you know, I'm not just a man of history. I'm also known for my involvement in the performing arts. Are you now? I must confess that early on in my acting career, my stage presence did come under a little scrutiny from Britain's finest newspapers.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Yeah, and I will remind the listeners that in Scotland, they order their reviews in a different way. So one is at the top and five stars is the worst review you could get. So we were very happy with that one-star review. But like a lot of great masters of their craft, Tom, I learned from it. I grew. I evolved. I knew I would bide my time before returning to the boards. And guess what? You're not.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
No. Yes. Tom, I have to tell you, I have returned to the boards. I'm performing once again. And the brilliant news for our listeners is that you can go and you can be transfixed by my performance right now because I am honoured and privileged to appear in the latest Sherlock & Co adventure, The Adventure of the Norwood. Builder. Please tell me that you are playing the Norwood Builder.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
I'm playing a much better character. I'm playing Hector McFarlane, a solicitor from Blackheath accused of murder. Goodness, as Lestrade's officers bear down on me, Tom, I have nowhere else to turn but to 221B Baker Street.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Well, very much like this one, we were better acting, I think it's fair to say. It's a stable mate of ours. They are a massive show. They get 10 million downloads. Outside, I believe, The Archers, this is the biggest audio drama in Britain.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
It genuinely is brilliant. So My Son is a massive Sherlock and Co. aficionado. It basically goes through all the original short stories and the short stories that are often forgotten in modern day adaptations. It transposes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's narratives to the modern day. So Watson himself is making the podcast while they're doing the adventures. You can pick up any adventure you want.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
You don't have to follow the whole series to get stuck in. It is absolutely brilliant. Do you know who else thinks it's brilliant, Tom? The Guardian newspaper. One of those prized one-star reviews? No, a five-star. They said, and I quote, very funny, mildly sweary and hugely popular. Do you want to know what the Times said?
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
It said a breakneck series that Gen Z, or Gen Z as members of it say, that Gen Z is hooked on. Wow. And now that you're appearing on the show, I mean, that will confirm the hook, won't it? It absolutely will. And the Guardian listeners will be beside themselves with joy. So, everybody, please listen to Sherlock & Co. The Adventure of the Norwood Builder. It's multi-part. It's brilliant.
The Rest Is History
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Part one is out now. Jump right in wherever you get your podcasts. And here is a clip from that very episode.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
What does that mean in a world like the Congo, where the locals don't necessarily have the same concept of property rights as Belgians do? That effectively means the entire land of the Congo.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
The decree. Yeah. The decree is an order being sent out to operatives in the Congo. It's not a question of... He's issuing orders to his officials. That's how it works.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
As he has done with the treaties, right? He needs to have something to show the other European... If anyone asks, as we will discover next week when people do start to ask, he needs to have a paper trail that he can show to say, I'm doing it all completely above board. Right.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
What now happens is that the territory of the Congo Free State – remember, 67 times the size of Belgium, the size of Britain, Spain, Italy, France, and Germany put together – this is carved up into gigantic territories, which are awarded as concessions to private companies.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Now, most of these companies are owned by Belgian shareholders, but in most cases, at least 50% of the shares belong to King Leopold himself. In other words, even where he's handed out concessions, and it's not the Congo Free State running the territory itself, he is going to get the lion's share of the profits. And what is more, when those companies pay tax or they pay tolls, they pay it to him.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
So he wins everywhere you look at it. So how is the free state going to work? It is slightly different from other European colonies because it has a tiny, tiny infrastructure. So if you think about India in the same period, there was an Indian civil service in Britain. Thousands of people applied to it. There were exams. It was very sought after.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
prestigious and thousands of people were sent out to work as kind of district commissioners and officials and all of this kind of thing. And it's all very obvious what it is. It's very public.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
It's not the case in the Congo, and the numbers are far, far smaller. After five years of the Congo Free State's existence, there are still fewer than 500 Europeans working in the Congo as traders, soldiers, missionaries, officials, and so on. The biggest of these groups – and it's no more than 80 people – are based in this new capital, which is the port of Boma.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
That's pretty much where Stanley had finished his famous trek across the heart of Africa. And so in Boma, they have built docks, they've built warehouses, there's a hotel, there's a military base, there's a hospital, there's a post office, and so on. The governor general is based there, but the governor general really is a cipher.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
We won't be mentioning any governors general because they're not important. All the decisions are made in Brussels by a tiny cabinet of officials who are answerable to Leopold. So in effect, he rules the Congo. I've written in the notes an absolute monarch, but that's not quite the right term. Actually, the right term is a proprietor. He is the owner of the Congo and he runs it as the proprietor.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
As the chairman of the board, he has the final decision. As for the other white men in the Congo, they are strung out along the river in a line of these kind of makeshift stations. So often these stations are no more than a handful of thatched huts and kind of block houses with the flag of the Congo Free State, the blue flag with the gold star flag.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And it's in one of these stations that Mr. Kurtz in Conrad's novella is based. Exactly. The inner station, right in the heart of the interior. Now, if you are sent out there, if you go out there, you will have servants. Your contract stipulates that you can have a bottle of wine a day, and your contract also promises you
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
A regular supply of marmalade from England, butter from Denmark, foie gras, which would appeal to the airway producer, canned meat and so on and so forth. But whether or not a lot of the men get these supplies regularly is, of course, a very different matter because it depends on the steamboats. Almost all of the men who go are single. Very uncommon for them to take wives.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Most of them take up with local women. And they're not necessarily Belgian, are they? In fact, most of them aren't Belgian. No, most of them are not Belgian because, as we said in the last episode, most Belgians are not interested in having a colony. They're not… Imperially-minded people. No, and they're not particularly maritime people either.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
So the idea of getting on a ship and going out… Belgium doesn't really have a merchant navy at this point.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
He's not Belgian, Mr. Kurtz. The one group that is very heavily represented among the people who work for the Congo Free State is people who have been in the military. And that, as we will see, tells its own story.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
So these guys have two things that other Europeans don't have, because people who listened to the last episode may be wondering, if other Europeans found this so difficult and didn't go up the Congo, what do these chaps have? They have two things. One, they have automatic machine guns. So the Maxim gun, which was the first automatic repeating gun, was invented in 1884.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
That was the year that Stanley completed all the treaties for Leopold. So whatever happens, we have got the Maxim gun and they have not. Exactly. And the second thing is modern medicine. So the thing that would always pull people off going up the Congo was the threat that you would die of disease.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
In 1881, scientists had proved that yellow fever was carried by mosquitoes, so people are now travelling with mosquito nets. They're also travelling with enormous quantities of quinine to fight malaria, which they have imported from plantations in the Dutch East Indies, a sign of the globalisation of the world. Of course. Also, they've got steamboats.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
They do indeed. All of that said, the death rate is still actually quite high. So the question is, why on earth would you go? And I think the answer is that the Congo appeals to the kind of people who might otherwise have gone to the Klondike or to the Rand in South Africa, or indeed might have joined the French Foreign Legion or something like that.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
So if you want adventure, this would be perfect. Exactly so. So Adam Hochschild, in his brilliant book, King Leopold's Ghost, that we've mentioned quite a lot, he says, "...someone fated for life as a small-town bank clerk or a plumber in Europe could instead become a warlord, an ivory merchant, a big-game hunter, and a possessor of a harem."
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And he quotes a brilliant letter from a Belgian officer to his family in 1894. Vive le Congo, says this guy. There is nothing like it. We have liberty, independence and life with wide horizons. Here you are free and not a mere slave of society. Here one is everything. Warrior, diplomat, trader.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
Exactly it is. He uses the word trader, that Belgian officer. And of course, what lies behind that and what lies behind the entire project is the single word ivory. That is what they are here for. Getting ivory is dead easy. You just shoot and kill an elephant and then rip out its tusks. The hard part is getting the ivory out of the Congo.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
So Leopold so far is relying entirely on steamboats, but there is that 200 mile section around the rapids where you can't use the steamboat. So here you have to go over land. And ideally what you need is not team supporters trudging up and down the trail. You want a railway. Yeah, of course.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
So by 1887, he has a team of surveyors sketching a route around the rapids, and it will take a very long time. They don't actually start laying tracks until 1890 because the terrain is so difficult and because of the threat of disease and so on. So for now, he has to rely on tens of thousands of porters, hence what we talked about in the introduction.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
They're building a railway in their own interests. It's kind of progressive hard labour. Yeah, because once we finish the railway, they'll have a brilliant life because there won't be porters anymore. That's basically the logic.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And of course, what they're carrying, they're carrying the steamboats, but they're also carrying the marmalade, the foie gras, the rifles, machine gun ammunition, all of this stuff. They're not paid because under the Congo Free States laws, there is no money for Africans. Africans are not allowed money.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
So they are being paid generally in brass, sometimes in cloth, but in these kind of brass rods, which is a kind of strange makeshift currency. And we've quoted from Heart of Darkness already, but we don't need to go to fiction to know how they're treated. A Free State official in his memoirs, and it's This is a quotation that's so like Conrad's quotation. It's extraordinary.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
A file of poor devils chained by the neck carried my trunks and boxes towards the dock. He says there are a hundred of them, trembling and fearful, the overseer walking by with his whip. For each stocky and broad-backed fellow, how many were skeletons dried up like mummies, their skin worn out, seamed with deep scars, covered with separating wounds.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
And then he says, again with a kind of bitter irony, no matter, they were all up to the job." And then a Belgian senator visited in 1896. Again, he says, everywhere we went, unceasingly, we meet these porters, black, miserable, with only a horribly filthy loincloth, frizzy and barehead, supporting the load. They come and go like this by the thousand.
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539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
requisitioned by the state armed with its powerful militia, handed over by chiefs whose slaves they are and who make off with their salaries, dusty and sweaty, insects spreading out across the mountains and valleys, their task of Sisyphus, dying alongside the road or the journey over, heading off to die from overwork in their villages. So that's not an entirely positive report, is it?
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Because what happens is that basically after a few days, they give in. Under unrelenting French and British pressure, on the 21st of September, They get a message from Prague. The Czechoslovak government sadly accepts the French and British proposals, but they say that on the condition that you will do everything to safeguard our vital interests, i.e.,
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
The Sudetenland will be given away, but you will maybe give us a guarantee or give us a pledge. You'll give us something anyway. Yeah, which would obviously not be worth the paper it's written on. Well, that's the thing, isn't it? So meanwhile, what's Hitler been doing during all this? He has been doing his usual thing, which he does when he's stressed.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
He has massive lions, watches these terrible films. Works out holes in flagpoles. Exactly. Does all this kind of thing. He thinks that the Czechs probably won't give him what he wants, but he now, having seen Chamberlain, He thinks, hey, that guy's not going to fight. That guy's never going to go to war. So he says to Goebbels, I think we can probably push for a bit more, actually.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
I think let's up the ante. So let's get to the 22nd of September. Now we welcome back to the rest is history.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
A great theme of all our series about Germany between the wars, which is the spa hotel theme. So people will remember we had a lot of spa hotels in the last season.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Well, it's like a fan favourite location. We're revisiting one of the Night of the Long Knives spa hotels because the next meeting between Chamberlain and Churchill is scheduled for a spa hotel in Bad Godesberg on the Rhine River near Bonn. The whiffs of sulphur. Enormous sweating Germans beating each other with birch twigs or whatever they do. Mugs of hot water.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Yeah, drinking filthy water, laughing at nothing. Just dreadful. Anyway, Chamberlain lands at Cologne Airport just after midday. He's got his umbrella as is traditional. He has to inspect a detachment of SS troops. Then he's driven to this hotel on the right bank of the Rhine, the Petersburg Hotel.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
It's been decorated for him by Ribbentrop, who stuffed it, I read, with fruit, cigars, hydrangeas and eau de cologne. So common. So, yeah, exactly. You turn up and there's a load of eau de cologne. That's common.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Hitler was on the other bank of the Rhine at fan favourite, the Dresden Hotel. This was where he had planned the murder of Ernst Röhm. It's a happy memories for him. But he's in terrible form, Tom. He's all nervous. Chamberlain's coming. The journalists are there, the place is swarming with press, and they see him looking strained and twitching.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
And it's at this point that they start a rumour, some of the press, the German press actually, says, that he'd choose the carpet. So they nicknamed him the Teppichfresser, which means the carpet biter. And this becomes a big nickname for Hitler in the kind of 1930s, 1940s among the press. People say, oh, Hitler, he's always biting the carpet. Anyway, so Hitler's there biting the carpet.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Finally, that afternoon, Chamberlain comes over to the spa hotel to the Dresden. Chamberlain's delighted with himself. Chamberlain thinks, well, I've done a brilliant thing here. I've done a great bit of work. The Czechs have given in. You can have the Sudetenland. We will give a guarantee to the Czechoslovakia for the rest of its borders.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
And he says, maybe it would be a nice thing if you signed a non-aggression pact with Prague as well to show your good intentions. And then job done. We can all go home. Hooray. Brilliant day's work. And Hitler says, I'm sorry. Actually, I've changed my mind. The circumstances have changed and I have more demands.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
He says, my friends in Hungary and Poland also have territorial demands on Czechoslovakia and I need them to be satisfied. And actually, now that I think about it, I don't really want to wait for the Czechs to give me the Sudetenland because they're mistreating our people every hour. I'm actually going to send in, I would like to send in my army right now, please. That's my plan.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
So I'm actually just going to go for it. And Chamberlain, he sits there and the kind of blood drains from his features. He says... Yes, but Reich Chancellor, exactly. Herr Hitler. He is outraged by this, and he basically storms off back to his hotel and refuses to come out again. So they're in their kind of rival hotels. Power play. Very, very much.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Chamberlain doesn't show up the next day, the next day's meeting. He sends a letter instead, and he says... A firmly worded letter. A firmly worded letter. He says, British public opinion will not stand for this. This is very poor. He says also... The Czechs will fight you if you try to go in without a deal. Hitler sends him a letter back, quite a polite letter actually by Hitler's standards.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
And eventually they agree that they will meet that evening. So back at Hitler's hotel. Chamberlain goes in and Hitler says, I've changed my mind. Actually, they can have four days. They've got to be out on the 28th. And then I'm going in. They've got to be out. Otherwise, it's war. And Chamberlain's very shocked at this. And then another twist. We do like a twist in this series.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
A man comes in with a note for Hitler. Hitler opens this note and he says, ah, my God, the Czechs have mobilized their army. And there's this long silence. And Chamberlain apparently thought that Hitler was just going to go absolutely berserk and order an invasion right then and there on the spot. And then Hitler says, fine, they can have a bit more time. They have to be out by the 1st of October.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
I'll give them more days.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
We're not the chief villains in this.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
And, of course, it sells to Chamberlain by appealing against Chamberlain's vanity. He says to him... This concession that I'm making that they can have till the 1st of October, I'm only making this for you because of how much I respect you. I wouldn't make this for anybody else. And of course, he loves this because he thinks I am the star of the show. I have once again pulled off this coup.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
So Chamberlain goes back to London. Hitler goes back to Berlin. Hitler spends that next day, which is Sunday, strolling in the gardens of the Reichstrasse with Goebbels, and he says, look, what we're going to probably end up with now is we'll get the Sudetenland, we'll probably have to leave it at that, and then we'll come back next year or whenever for the rest of Czechoslovakia.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Meanwhile, Chamberlain is meeting his cabinet, And many of them are actually really shocked. They're much more shocked than Chamberlain was that Hitler had been asking for more. Hitler had kind of changed the terms of the game.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
And they say, well, what we'll do is we'll send Horace Wilson to Chamberlain's kind of right-hand man, civil servant, send him back to Berlin, and we'll tell Hitler, look, we'll stress to him, you cannot attack the Czechs. We have to get the deal. If you use force at all, then the French will enter the war and Britain will support France.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Yes, absolutely there is. 26th, 27th of September, this is when they start making really serious preparations. You know, kind of anti-aircraft batteries are being called up and there's thoughts about evacuating people from cities. Gas master children and things. Exactly so, exactly. So the next day, Monday the 26th, Horace Wilson gets to Berlin. He gets there in the afternoon.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
He finds Hitler in a very peculiar mood because Hitler has got a big speech that evening at the Sportpalast in Berlin. Oh, sport again. It's this endless PE theme. Yeah, exactly. It's going to be all these people in the stadium, indoor stadium. With medicine balls. Hitler's going to address 20,000 people. He's going to address them. And Hitler's in a very, you know,
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
sort of grumpy mood and he says to Horace Wilson I'm sick of all this like negotiations and hotels and stuff he says basically the cheques have to be out by the 1st of October or if they're not I'll attack them and he says and I quote if France and England want to strike let them go ahead I don't give a damn And he says to Wilson, do you not think that we want to fight? Come and see my speech.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
So Wilson goes along to see this speech. And Hitler is absolutely ranting and raving like a lunatic. William Shira, the American journalist we've quoted a few times, he was there and he said, Hitler was shouting and shrieking in the worst state of excitement I've ever seen him in with a fanatical fire in his eyes.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
And he's screaming about Germandom and the Germans being oppressed and we will stand and fight and all this kind of thing. And his audience, who are keen Nazis, go absolutely berserk. Every sentence they applaud. And at the end, they chant for minutes forever. Führer befehl, wir folgen. Leader, command, we will follow. You know, this sort of quite chilling scene.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
So not the way that Chamberlain would address the good people of Birmingham. Not at all. I've picked up a rather nice tea cozy. Yeah, exactly. People of Birmingham would enjoy a kind of an indoor arena. They could do it at the NEC in Birmingham. Villa Park. It's not indoors though, is it? It's not the same. No, it's not, I suppose. Anyway, this is spiralling off.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
The next day, Horace Wilson goes back to the Reich Chancellery and he says, look, I've had a new message from Chamberlain. Chamberlain says, don't use force. If you don't use force, we will guarantee, Britain will guarantee that the Czechs will clear out of the Sudetenland. So Britain is actually really now... Yeah, get out of your well-prepared fortifications. Yeah.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Britain is letting itself down, I think, at this point, Tom, it's fair to say. And Hitler actually is very sulky at this point. He says, oh, I don't care what Britain does. I don't care what you do. All I care about is the Czechs have got to be out by the 1st of October. He says, look, I want an answer in two days. Are they going to clear out or not?
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
If they do not clear out, he says, I will smash the Czechs. He repeats that again.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
two more times i will smash the czechs and wilson who is a very tall man he kind of draws himself up to his full height he says i am warning you if you do that and if france feels on a bound to fight in defense of its obligations to czechoslovakia quote the united kingdom would feel obliged to support her and hitler just stares in with those cold blue eyes and he says
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
If France and England strike, let them do so. It's a matter of complete indifference to me. I am prepared for every eventuality. It is Tuesday today, he says. And by next Monday, we shall all be at war.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
This is an ad by BetterHelp Online Therapy. Now, Tom, you and I often hear about the red flags that we should avoid. But what if we focused more on looking for green flags in our friends and in our partners, indeed, in our producers? Now, if people aren't sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify green flags.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
It can allow you to actively wave them and identify them in your own relationships. So, Tom, can I ask you, do you have any relationship green flags?
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Well, Tom, therapy can help you identify red and green flags. It can help you learn positive coping skills, and it can teach you how to set boundaries and enforce them. It can help you work through anything. and empower you to be the very best version of yourself.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Yeah, he's not the most stirring of... No, no, listen to that. You're not going to like, you know, reach for your gun and rush to the battlefront, are you? I mean, Chamberlain, you know, he was never a war leader. He said explicitly, I am a man of peace to the depths of my soul. Armed conflict between nations is a nightmare to me. He's completely upfront about that.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
I think because people... probably deep down know that it's shameful. And yet at the same time, they think we must do anything to avoid a rerun of the Great War. It would be worse, wouldn't it?
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
London and other cities would burn. Exactly. Now, even as Chamberlain is preparing that speech, People are queuing up for gas masks in British town halls and village halls. The first children, blind children, are being evacuated from London. They've installed anti-aircraft batteries on Westminster Bridge. There is this sense that a war that nobody wants is coming and will happen within days.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Interestingly, the mood in Germany is very similar. So that same day, the 27th, that Chamberlain made that speech, Hitler had arranged for a motorised division to pass through Berlin towards the Czech border. And this was basically, he wanted really to impress the diplomatic corps with Germany's readiness for war and Germany's war enthusiasm.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
And there's an amazing description of it by William Shira, the journalist we've mentioned a lot, and he talks about how the motorized division goes through the tanks or the armored cars or whatever they are, and people won't look at them. People turn away. They duck into the subway. They don't cheer. There is total silence.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
He says it was one of the most striking demonstrations against war that I've ever seen. And actually, you know, Goebbels and the Nazi high command, they're all quite disappointed with the Berlin reaction.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Yeah. War with Britain and France. Really?
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Yeah. As they would be in 1939. Yeah.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Well, we'll see about this point about the Nazi high command is a really important one. And it's about to produce another of these twists in the story. So the next day is Wednesday, the 28th of September. The House of Commons in London holds an emergency debate.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
And at this point, most people think we will probably be at war within, could be within hours, because if Hitler gives the go ahead, France will feel honour bound to defend Czechoslovakia and we will feel honour bound to fall in behind France.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
So Chamberlain is giving this enormous speech, this slightly plodding speech to his fellow MPs, explaining the whole backstory, all the negotiations with Hitler, all being for nothing, all this kind of thing. And then there's an amazing, I mean, it really is an amazing moment. He has passed a note. It kind of comes down the chain along the bench. A piece of paper. A piece of paper.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Sir John Simon, who's sitting next to him, hands him this piece of paper. And it's news from the British ambassador in Berlin. And he stops talking. He reads it. He pauses. He clears his throat. Very theatrical. And then he says, I have something further to say to the House. He says, I've got an invitation. I have an invitation from Herr Hitler to meet him in Munich tomorrow morning.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
He's also invited Signor Mussolini and Monsieur Deladier. Signor Mussolini has accepted. I've no doubt Monsieur Deladier, he's the French Prime Minister, will also accept. I need not tell you, he says, what my answer will be. As in, I'm definitely going to go. And when people hear this, There's this colossal roar of relief. Peace in our time.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
I mean, people are literally shouting because people credit Chamberlain with this, right? They say he wanted to, he called for peace to the last moment and Hitler has blinked and they are cheering. They're waving their order papers. People are literally shouting, thank God for the prime minister. Hurrah for the prime minister and all this kind of thing.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
And the debate is brought to a premature conclusion and People are crowding around Chamberlain. They pat him on the back. And actually the last person to go up and shake his hand is Winston Churchill, who says to him, Godspeed. Because he's going to go off on this mission to try and bring peace to Europe. And actually what lies behind this is,
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
is an intervention from a character who's well-known to our listeners. He's been very quiet in the last few episodes. I think it's fair to say... He's been off hunting. A bad man, but a memorable man, because we finally welcome back to the rest of history the sweating, white-suited bulk of Herman Goering.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
So Goering at this point is an absolutely enormous man. If you see him in this suit, the suit is like multiple sizes too small for him.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Yeah. So Goering, who's a sweaty man as it is, he's been sweating like a beast for the last few days because he's in a massive funk about the idea of a European war. He thinks a European war is bonkers. Like, we're going to get the Sudetenland. What do we want to fight France and Britain for? He hates Ribbentrop with an absolute passion.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
He keeps saying to Ribbentrop, stop asking for a war, you fool. And at one point they have a massive row. Goering says, well, I know what war is. He says, if Hitler wants a war... I'll be on the first plane over Britain. But he says to Ribbentrop, I'll make sure you're strapped in next to me on that plane. Imagine if you were on that plane. What a terrible nightmare that is.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
He's so large, isn't he, that he's going to crash the plane. I'm in the middle of the three between Goering and Ribbentrop. What a nightmare. Anyway, what actually happens? Goering goes behind Hitler's back. He sends messages to Mussolini and informal messages to London and Paris. And he says to Mussolini, I think you should call. If you call for a peace conference, you're Hitler's ally.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Hitler will have to go along with it. And actually, if Mussolini calls for a peace conference, it's a brilliant way for Hitler to kind of back down a bit on the war thing without losing too much face. He will look like a person who in the final analysis was prepared to be reasonable and because he gave in to his great pal's request. And so this is exactly what happens.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Earlier that day, the Italian ambassador had gone to see Hitler and said, oh, the Duce thinks you could postpone the invasion, have one more meeting with the British, invite the French along. And Hitler's kind of trapped. He could ignore Mussolini completely, but that would risk his alliance with his biggest ally in Europe. So Hitler says, yeah, fine.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Yeah. You would take him for the house painter he once was. Which he wasn't, was he? No, he was never a house painter. He was a postcard painter. The fact that Chamberlain is describing it in such banal detail to his sister, this extraordinary meeting, is a reminder of an unprecedented moment it is, right? People don't normally do this. So in the last episode...
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
All right. So that is the cue. That is what lies behind the infamous Munich Peace Conference, which begins the very next day. And I think at this point, we've been leading up to Munich, but it's actually worth pausing to make a point that I think is often lost. If you've been listening to all their story, it should be obvious at this point that Munich is not the great turning point.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
The British and French have already basically told the Czechs to give over the Sudetenland and made it very clear they will not fight for the Sudetenland. So actually, what's happened at Munich is not Chamberlain and Delatier backing down. It's Hitler backing down. It's Hitler not forcing his war on the Czechs and on the world because of Goering and Mussolini going behind his back.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Furious about it. Yeah, Hitler feels cheated. And this will run through the rest of this episode and indeed next week's episodes. Hitler's sense of being cheated of his war. Now, Chamberlain doesn't get this at all. Chamberlain still thinks, I'm the star of this story. I mean, everyone in Britain kind of treats him like he's the star of the story.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
When he flies out the next day, the whole cabinet comes to the aerodrome to see him off. The high commissioners of Australia, Canada, Ireland, and South Africa, they all come to see him off. Godspeed, good luck, all that kind of thing. They think he is the architect of this, which he absolutely isn't. And Chamberlain loves it. He says it has this... Quotation to the cameras.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
When I was a little boy, I used to repeat, if at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again. That's what I'm doing. When I come back, I hope I will be able to say, as Hotspur says in Henry IV, out of this nettle, danger.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
It's not a good omen. But on the other hand, It's kind of nice to think that we once had prime ministers who would randomly quote from Henry IV. Yeah, I can't imagine Starmer doing that. No, I can't imagine Starmer doing that. So, as soon as he lands in Munich, the conference opens straight away.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
They're meeting in Hitler's Munich headquarters, the Führerbau, it's called, which is this huge neoclassical building that was built especially for the Nazi party. It's not a hotel, but it's basically... Got that vibe. It's got that vibe. It's full of kind of marble and flowers. And I'm sure Ribbentrop has sprayed it with eau de cologne. Yeah, of course. Champagne.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
the first of our two-part series on Munich, we talked about how rare it is for European statesmen to do this, to fly to each other's countries at the drop of a hat for an emergency summit. This didn't happen in the build-up to the First World War. Chamberlain is doing something extraordinary here. He's boarded his plane. We ended last time at Heston Aerodrome.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
So the delegates all go straight up to Hitler's private study. And they're sitting around these sort of little table beneath a portrait of Bismarck.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Because that's where the peace with honour, peace in our time line comes from. He's quoting Disraeli after 1878, I think it was. So they're around this table. Hitler is there. Mussolini is there. Edouard Deladier, we haven't mentioned him. He had actually fought at the Battle of Verdun. So he's a serious person, but he's very, very miserable.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Everyone said he looked like a snail, which I can kind of see, actually.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
What tremendous judges of character they are. But they'd have a sense of who they thought were. I suppose they would, yeah. They would. Now, of course, the people who aren't there, the Czechs. No one's invited the Czechs. Hitler has said, there's no way the Czechs are coming. And the Czechs are outraged at this. And Chamberlain said to Edvard Benes, the Czech president, well, I'll represent you.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
I mean, that's like classic British arrogance, isn't it? The conference, actually, I didn't really know this about the Munich conference until reading up on it. It was a complete shambles. German efficiency, it was not. They didn't have enough pens and pencils. They forgot to bring any paper. It was a complete mess. And the phones didn't work properly.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Ribbentrop was going mad about the phones not working. He said it was a great embarrassment for Germany. And the British had to go back and use the phones in their hotel because the phones didn't work properly. Anyway, as we said, I think the weird thing about the Munich conference is so well known, but it's such a non-event because it's basically just kind of nothing to decide, really.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
They've decided. They've already decided. Hitler's going to take the Sudetenland. Britain and France are going to let him do it, and that's it. And it takes them 13 hours to go through all the technicalities. Chamberlain and Deladier are obviously a little bit downbeat. Hitler's just bored. He doesn't speak any language but German, so he can't understand what's going on.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
But I'll tell you who does speak a lot of languages, who's a real master of tongues. Like you. Very like me. Very similar people. Journalist. Yeah. A certain strut. Thanks. Yeah. Physical resemblance. I mean, come on. Mussolini speaks German. He speaks English and he's fluent in French. So Mussolini is like doing a bit of translating. He's having a great time. Is that how he's doing it?
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
He's doing it like a guy from a restaurant in New Jersey. Yeah. Welcome, willkommen, bienvenue. So at about two o'clock in the morning of the 30th of September, the deal is done. The Czechs will have 10 days to get out of the Sudetenland. 10th of October, the Germans will march in. And when you say the Czechs, I mean, you mean it's not just the Czech army. It's literally the Czechs.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Well, this is unclear, right? A lot of Czechs flee the Sudetenland. It's not laid down that they have to. And they're not being offered any compensation or anything?
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
It's a very bad deal. Anyway, the deal is done. There's no point in you complaining about it now. They bring out, they say there has a big signing. Hitler dips his pen in the special inkwell that he has to sign the deal. There's no ink. There's no ink in the ink. Well, Ribbentrop's face, furious. What would Freud make of that? Yeah, another disaster for Germany.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Actually, I watched the final scenes, the Pathé newsreels on YouTube. Hitler looks exhausted. Mussolini is having a brilliant time, clearly. But actually, the person who's also loving it is Goering. Goering is in this unbelievably tight white suit. And he's kind of cracking jokes and slapping people on the back and stuff. Because, of course, he regards this as a victory for himself.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
He's launching this remarkable kind of diplomatic coup in a desperate attempt to avoid war over Czechoslovakia, a war that Hitler is planning to launch on the 1st of October, which is just two weeks away. And which Chamberlain doesn't know that, of course. No, Chamberlain doesn't know that at all. So just on Chamberlain and his flight,
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
They've gone out shooting together. He's having a wonderful time. Hitler, though, is very gloomy and despondent. He's actually not got what he wanted, which was his war. And the next day, he has one last meeting with Chamberlain. They're obviously very tired because they've been up until very late. Chamberlain goes in to see him. This is where he presents his piece of paper. Piece of paper.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Chamberlain surprises him.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
We promise that we will never go to war. Britain and Germany will never go to war again with each other again. No fairy will ever die again. Now, in Robert Harris's novel about Munich, which is brilliant, he presents this as quite a... Chamberlain isn't clearly emotionally invested a lot in this piece of paper.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
If nothing else, it is actually a useful political prop because I think it is important, that piece of paper, and in the decline of appeasement. Stiffening British. Stiffening British resolve. Hitler has made an explicit promise that he goes on to break. And so I think it is an important piece of paper. Hitler at the time sees the piece of paper. He's baffled by it.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
He thinks it's a complete waste of time. He says, sure, I'll sign it. I mean, I don't care. And he signs this piece of paper. And Ribbentrop says to him afterwards, what was that piece of paper? And Hitler says, it was of no significance whatsoever, which I think is wrong.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
I think it really mattered in terms of British public opinion because this is the piece of paper that Chamberlain waves when he gets back to Heston Aerodrome. The paper that bears his name upon it as well as mine. You know, the promise. Peace with honour. Peace for our time.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Which is, of course, what Chamberlain says when he comes back, and he's greeted by great crowds, and he's invited onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace, and he's the absolute hero of the hour in Britain, and indeed in the English-speaking world. More generally, there are messages from America, from Australia, Canada, well done, but presumably not from Prague. But not from Prague at all.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
The news of the deal reached Prague on that same morning, so the 30th of September, and President Benes was having a bath when the news was brought to him. And he said, very presciently, he said, it's a betrayal which will be its own punishment. They think they will save themselves from war and revolution at our expense, and they are wrong. He did think about fighting anyway.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
So here's an answer to your question. The Czechs did think about fighting anyway, and they thought about asking the Soviet Union for their help. And eventually they decided, look, we're bound to lose. We're not going to condemn our people to so much suffering. And they said, Benes said, we've been defeated not by Hitler, but by our friends, our so-called friends.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
There are huge demonstrations in Prague, people saying don't do it. But of course they do do it. The German army crosses the border, just as Hitler had planned. Huge crowds of Sudeten Germans throwing their flowers and giving Nazi salutes and all this kind of thing. And his answer to your other question, About the Czechs. So there's a huge population flight from the Sudetenland.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Chamberlain left with the goodwill of the British press kind of ringing in his ears. Every newspaper in Britain said it was brilliant that Chamberlain was doing this. They were so excited. The news from Paris, you know, Paris sent him messages of support. The French are delighted that he's doing it.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
By the time the Germans crossed the border, about 25,000 Czechs had already fled. Leaving their homes, leaving their possessions. Leaving everything. You know, the classic thing of people with their thing on carts.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Exactly. And in the next two months, another 150,000 people, including obviously the Jewish population of Sudetenland, who know exactly what Nazism will mean for them. This was a catastrophe for Czechoslovakia. They lost 3 million people. They lost 11,000 square miles of territory. They lost a fifth of their industrial production.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
And crucially, they lost those frontier defences that you've been talking about, which have now fallen to the Germans without a single shot being fired. So if the Germans do want to finish the job, if they want to go deeper into Bohemia, nothing to stop them at all.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
What is worse, or as bad, Hungary and Poland both nibbled at the borders of Czechoslovakia and took more bits, as we'll talk about the Polish bit next week. And Czechoslovakia, the whole balance of it was kind of upset. So the Slovaks demanded more autonomy. Basically, they end up with a much weaker, more federalized country.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
There's a Czech bit, there's an autonomous Slovakia, and the Far East, there's a bit called Subcarpathian Ruthenia, which is now in Ukraine, which is kind of a Ukrainian majority. And there, the German consul is basically the big man. So in other words, the process of dismemberment has begun and Hitler can basically move in to claim the rest whenever he fancies it.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
No. So that plot, which we talked about last time, Ludwig Beck, Admiral Canaris, Oster, all these other characters who are thinking about moving against Hitler, that's completely fizzled out. Hitler's done it again. Another foreign policy coup. So there's no mileage for a conspiracy against him. And they say Chamberlain saved Hitler. We would have moved against him.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Whether that's the case and whether it would have worked, I don't know. But they definitely think that Chamberlain saved Hitler.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
It's a kind of ancestor of the Stauffenberg plot, which is what slightly leads me to think it probably wouldn't have worked because, of course, the Stauffenberg plot fizzles out within a day.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
As it is, people across Eastern Europe in particular think Hitler wins. Hitler is the master now. So two countries, in particular Hungary and Romania, from this point onwards, they basically say, well, there's not much point in this. The French are trying to build all these alliances. They're a complete waste of time. They'll never fight for you. We want to be in with the Germans.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Crucially, I think, for Britain, the Dominions, that is Australia, Canada, and so on, New Zealand, they have made it clear to him they are very, very reluctant to be dragged into a war in Central Europe.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
They're the big men now. But the person who isn't happy is Hitler. He wanted his war, and he's been betrayed, as he sees it, by Mussolini and by Goering and by Chamberlain.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
In the last episode, I quoted Ian Kershaw saying about how cunning Hitler's foreign policy coups had been, how brilliantly planned, how ruthlessly the propaganda had been cranked up. What a great judge of timing Hitler had been. This is really the first point at which I think you can say his instincts completely begin to desert him. He believes his own publicity and he misreads the situation.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
I think you're dead right. I think he completely misreads Britain and France after this. I mean, all the stuff like they will never fight, they're weak, all that. He is dead wrong. He's running out of time now before they do fight. And he doesn't see that, I think. He doesn't see that at all. One thing about Hitler, though, he feels that the German people have let him down.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
He's really discomforted that there was not more enthusiasm for war in the autumn of 1938. He was shocked that people cheered Chamberlain as he drove through the streets as a peacemaker. So they've let Germany down, they've let Hitler down, but worst of all, they've let themselves down. They've let themselves down. They've let the school down. And he says...
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
So I wonder whether the pogrom of Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, against the Jewish population of Germany, which happens just a few weeks afterwards, November 1938. We did an episode on it in our previous season. The violence of that, I think, and the violence for which Hitler, you know, he personally was responsible. He ordered it.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
I wonder at some level whether his sense of frustration that he hasn't got his war, his obsession with... He's like a kind of spoiled, very violent toddler.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
I mean, that's the impression you get with this. Lashing out, exactly. On the second night of Kristallnacht, he summons a closed meeting of German newspaper editors and he says to them, I'm sick of all this stuff about peace, world peace, peace propaganda, or peace is the most important thing. And he said, it isn't the most important thing. You know, we need war. We should arrange things, he says.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Exactly. So off he goes with their goodwill. It's actually not his first flight. This is one of the things that people think about Chamberlain that is wrong.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
So in a quote, the inner voice of the people itself slowly begins to cry out for the use of force. And from this point, he is already thinking about the next conquest. This is the thing with Hitler. He just cannot. He's addicted. He's like a drug addict needing his next hit. Yeah, he needs the next hit. So the next thing he thinks... I'll get the rest of Czechoslovakia.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
He wants a port called Memel, which was a Baltic German seaport that's now basically been swallowed up by Lithuania. But he's also now, for the first time, thinking about another target. And this would be his biggest target yet. And this... would be Poland.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
It is. And they'd only like gone, circled the field and then landed again. But he had been in a plane before. It was great fun. Anyway, he's travelled this time with his closest aide, who is a guy called Sir Horace Wilson, who is one of the civil servants, who is one of the key architects of the appeasement policy.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Basically, let's solve the European issue by giving in to their more reasonable demands. That's how they see it. So they have ham sandwiches and they drink whiskey on the flight. I think that's an excellent combination, actually. I think more airlines should offer that as an option. It's a smooth flight, but then they get into Munich and there's a bit of a storm, a bit of turbulence afterwards.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Oh, it's an omen there, yes. It is an omen, yeah. They are escorted by a German plane to the ground. Chamberlain comes out of the plane and he's very happy. He's smiling for the cameras. He's very confident. In his own mind, I think it's really important for people to get this in their heads about Munich. Chamberlain is not doing all this...
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
sort of reluctantly, grudgingly, like he is the victim in all this. He's seizing the moment. In his mind, he is the star. He is the hero of the hour. He is the man of destiny, the modern politician who has seized European history by the scruff of its neck. The arbiter of the continent's fate. That's exactly how he sees himself. Although that said, the anti-appeasement MP, Harold Nicholson,
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
said that Chamberlain and Horace Wilson arrived in Germany with, and I quote, the bright faithfulness of two curates entering a pub for the first time. That's a brilliant description. Which I think is pretty close to the mark. So you sort of get a sense of that from Chamberlain's, from that reading, right? There's a big sort of... It's very pooterish quality. Yeah. There were lots of cars.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
No waiting in line with people who are sick with who knows what. Thanks to Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon One Medical, healthcare just got less painful.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
People were saluting. Hitler had some smart shoes on.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
So he arrives at the Berghof, Hitler's Eyrie, his eagle's nest. It's pouring with rain. It's very cloudy, which is why he says he can't see Salzburg. He's not the first British visitor to go there. David Lloyd George. And the Duke of Windsor, who had been Edward VIII, notoriously had been. Had been there, exactly. And Hitler, as he describes, he's waiting from the steps. They shake hands.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
If you look at the photos, they both look very jolly. Chamberlain, of course, has his umbrella and his hat. He obviously makes this remark about... Hitler looking like a house painter. And actually, he's even more damning. I mean, British snobbery is a great theme of these episodes.
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529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
When he goes back to the cabinet later on, he says Hitler wasn't, I quote, the commonest little dog he had ever seen, though it was impossible not to be impressed with the power of the man. So he despises Hitler, and yet at the same time, he recognizes that there is a kind of demonic quality to Hitler.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Though, as we will see, I think Chamberlain completely misreads the balance of power between himself and Hitler. Anyway, he's arrived at the eagle's nest. Hitler says, come into my study. They go into his study. Ribbentrop, who is hanging around, is not invited in. So that would have improved his mood. No, no. He hates Chamberlain, hates Britain, loves German sparkling wine, but hates Britain.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
He's not allowed in, says Ray Cross. And for three hours they talk and there's this storm raging outside, very kind of Wagnerian. Hitler is speaking quite softly. It's all been translated by his interpreter, who's a guy called Paul Schmidt. And he's going on and on about how badly the Sudeten Germans are treated.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
And Chamberlain says, look, if you will rule out force, I will consider anything to make you happy. Now, we can talk about any kind of solution, but you must not fight. Hitler, at this point, loses his temper. And he says, well, I mean, you talk to me about force. But he says, but Benes and the Czechs, they're already using force against my countrymen in the Sudetenland. I will not accept this.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
I will settle this question, all this kind of thing. And then he starts a trouble with Hitler. He can't control himself. Yeah, he goes off on a rant, doesn't he? Goes on a massive rant.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
He says, I don't care if there's a world war. You know, if I want to settle this, I'd rather have a world war, frankly. Let's have a world war. And Chamberlain is very cross at this point. Chamberlain does not give in to him. Chamberlain is not a wimp and a weed. Chamberlain says, well, if you think like that, then I've completely wasted my time. There's no point in coming.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
He says, if that's your intention, why did you have me coming to Berchtesgaden at all? Under these circumstances, I think it's better if I leave straight away. And amazingly, Hitler backs down at this point. People don't normally talk like this to Hitler. Hitler says, oh, well, Well, let's go back to your previous thing. You said you would grant self-determination to the Sudeten Germans.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Well, maybe we could. Maybe let's talk about how that would work in reality. And Chamberlain obviously thinks to himself at this point, you stand up to this bloke. And he will back down. He will be reasonable. How are we getting this?
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
So this is a combination of Schmidt wrote memoirs later on where he talked about all this. I mean, Schmidt is an amazing source. But also Chamberlain reports all this to his cabinet. And he also writes about it to his sisters. So the letter to Ida that we began with. So we get kind of different... So there is a possibility that he might be slightly bigging up his...
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Oh, I think throughout this, Chamberlain is definitely bigging himself up a bit. I don't think there's any doubt about that. In Chamberlain's version of the conversations, he is always the star and he is playing Hitler. Whereas I think in reality, it's the other way around. Anyway, they agree. Chamberlain will go back to Britain and will talk to his cabinet.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
And Hitler says, fine, I'll wait for that. And I won't order any precipitant military action. And so Chamberlain goes off and he goes down and stays at a hotel down at the bottom of the mountain in Berchtesgaden. Now Chamberlain thinks, great, I've got a good result. Hitler, once Chamberlain's gone, is delighted. And he's rubbing his hands with glee, literally rubbing his hands.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
And he says to Ribbentrop, well, I've got Chamberlain to give me this Sudetenland. He says, it's win-win. If the Czechs refuse... and won't go along with this, then we'll have a war. And if they say yes, then I'll take the Sudetenland and maybe I'll just come back for the rest of Czechoslovakia later.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
He'll be poorly treated in his own mind.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
So he never does. So that never happens. No. I think probably best for Britain's image that we never had Hitler over. He went to Liverpool, didn't he? Yeah. So the thing about Hitler's offer here, right, is that it is quite a departure from what he previously wanted. Up to this point, he's been talking about the Sudetenland merely as a pretext to get the whole of Czechoslovakia.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
He doesn't just want the Sudetenland. He wants to break up the whole of Czechoslovakia. But now he's saying, well, maybe I will just take the Sudetenland and I'll come back for Czechoslovakia for the rest later. So to that extent, he has kind of slightly blinked. Anyway, Chamberlain goes back to London. Everyone says, oh, you've done brilliantly. Well done. What a tremendous man you are.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
And he goes straight in to brief the cabinet. And here I think it's sometimes very tempting to just be unremittingly hostile to Chamberlain. But here is a point where I think it's very difficult to be anything but hostile because he clearly has completely misread the situation. Because he says... I've met Hitler. I'm absolutely convinced that Hitler's objectives are strictly limited.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
He says, I believe Hitler when he says he only wants to bring German speakers into the right. It's like George Bush gazing into Vladimir Putin's eyes.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
This is exactly what he says. He says, well, in spite of the harshness and ruthlessness I thought I saw in his face, I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word. I mean, given what we know about Hitler, so they know about the light and the long knives. They know about the Anschluss. They know all this. That's a mad thing for Chamberlain to say.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Yeah, the Czechs, they feel absolutely furious.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Yeah, I mean, you could say exactly. If you're a Czech listening to this podcast, you're like, the British are behaving with complete arrogance here. They're just basically signing half our country away. I mean, that's the story of Munich, isn't it? The Czechs, the story of the next few days is actually really simple.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
The British, with very enthusiastic French backing, say to the Czechs, right, you've got to give them the Sudetenland. And no, you can't. You probably shouldn't even organize a referendum. Just just hand it over. That's the quickest thing.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Because, well, first of all, they don't know that about the German economy, but also they will lose. The Germans have done their war games. They're pretty confident they can win in a matter of weeks. But they're going to lose anyway. I guess they think they're being put under enormous pressure by their supposed friends. Be reasonable. Give them the Sudetenland.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Tom, you're quite right. You are quite right. And lots of listeners to this podcast will no doubt say you were right. I think it's because they think, given that we'll lose either way, maybe if we get an international guarantee, we give them the Sudetenland and then we get a guarantee that By the French and the British.
The Rest Is History
529. The Nazis' Road to War: Showdown in Munich (Part 2)
Yeah. And the Czechs are arguably in a stronger position than the Poles were a year later. For sure. Poland, that took about a month. Could the Czechs have held out for two months or longer? I mean, ultimately, I think the Germans would have won. And the Czechs with no allies?
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Marianne is the embodiment of the French Republic.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
And it's, of course, at this point that people are singing the Marseillaise, the marching song of the Army of the Rhine that has swept through the capital. But it's also at this point that people alight upon a new symbol of France, which is this figure of Marianne.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
But is it not because of that image, I would say, the chilliness and the... I think that is the draw, isn't it? The women think, I could be the one who melts the ice-cold, incorruptible heart. All that... But actually, we're just talking about women as spectators here, watching men. But there are, well, we've had one woman in particular.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
So we talked about Marion Swinette, but on the side of the revolutionaries, we've had one woman in particular that we've mentioned a few times in the more recent episodes, who actually is an agent. She has genuine political influence, and that is Madame Roland. So tell me about Madame Roland.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
They literally say, She is the new Madame de Pompadour. She's the new Madame du Barry. She is the overmighty female favourite who has corrupted and seduced this sort of slack-minded, gullible men who flock around her. I mean, she fits it basically into a standard demonology, doesn't she? She does.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
Right. That's the way that which blue collar Trump voters talked about Hillary Clinton, for example, nagging. She's only got where she has because of her husband. She's always telling us off and telling us what's good for us. All of that kind of thing.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
And we know what the Romans thought about women being involved in politics. They thought it was a terrible thing.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
Well, the good news for people who like the rest is history is that there are such women because otherwise there would be no second half. So return after the break and we will meet two of them. See you then. Today's episode is brought to you by A Thousand Blows, the new original series premiering exclusively on Disney+.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
We did indeed. So I don't know who yours is, Tom, but the person who we've talked about in the rest of this history that I often think about is a young woman called Sophie Scholl, who grew up in Germany in the late 1930s, early 1940s. And she was a young woman of enormous sort of earnestness and kind of moral seriousness.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
And she and her brother Hans joined and were key parts of an organisation called the White Rose Group, which distributed pamphlets and leaflets across Germany attacking the crimes of the Third Reich. And as you'll remember, Tom, Sophie came to a very sad end. that she and Hans were captured and they were interrogated and tried and executed by the Nazis.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
And the story of her in prison, in the Stadelheim prison, in the last hours before her death, and she's sort of praying and she's completely unapologetic about standing up against the horrors of Nazism. I think it's one of the most inspirational stories in all history, not just in 20th century history.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
It's brilliant, isn't it, Tom, that women's stories like these are being restored to their proper place in recent history. And that's one reason I'm looking forward to this new series so much. So this segment was brought to you by our friends at Disney+.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
Dominic, what do you find useful about Nord? Well, Tom, as you know, I am absolutely passionate about NordVPN. One of the things I love about them is their Threat Protection Pro, an absolutely brilliant antivirus tool. It is so effective and so powerful. It is integrated directly into the NordVPN app. So what it does is it protects you from phishing and other cyber threats.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
And the brilliant thing about it is it allows you to browse safely and smoothly.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
That's one of the things that make me so passionate about NordVPN. So to stay secure online, you really should take advantage of our exclusive NordVPN discount. You really should, you know. All you need to do is to go to nordvpn.com slash restishistory. When you sign up, you can receive a bonus four months on top of your plan and there is no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
The link is also in the episode description box. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Before the break, Tom promised you, he said he'd got binders full of women who were pushing for full political rights. And actually, one of them is an old friend of the show. So a tremendous character who was very prominent in the Women's March on Versailles, cut a very flamboyant figure.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
And that is Terroir de Merricourt. So she had kind of pistols in her belt. She looked a bit like a pirate. She had a kind of... Like Adamant, yeah. She looked like a new romantic. Exactly. She had a kind of liberty cap. She had a fancy hat. She's on a horse. Cut scrape figure. But actually, she then gets into a bit of a mess, doesn't she? Terrible scrape. Yeah, a scrape. Is that what it is?
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
It's a scrape. So she's captured by Austrian agents. Tell us about that. Well, because she's actually Belgian.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
So just before you move on to the other person you want to talk about, there are other people who agree with her, other women who agree with her and say, especially when war is declared, they want to join the war effort. So there are two sisters called the Furnig sisters who took up arms in the defense of Valenciennes in the east of France.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
The general was so impressed by them, he promised to put them in the line of fire at the first opportunity. And then there's a petition put up by an activist called Pauline Leon, which was read out to the Legislative Assembly. So this is summer 1792. Our fathers, husbands and sons may perhaps be the victims of Erin and Miss Fury.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
Could we be forbidden the sweetness of avenging them or dying at their sides? You cannot refuse us. Society cannot deny us this right, which is given us by nature, unless it's claimed that the Declaration of Rights does not apply to women. And the Legislative Assembly, do you know what it does? It just ignores them because people are embarrassed.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
And actually, in April 1793, the convention bans women, officially bans them from going into battle. But that issue of the Declaration of Rights brings us to the other great character that you're going to talk about today, who is a great favourite of mine, and her name is Olympe de Gouges. So tell us about her.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
Or maybe she's really his daughter after all.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
Oh, right. So she's his... What does that make her? His... Step-sister. Yeah, step-sister. Yeah.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
If you were worried about your standing in revolutionary Paris.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
She translated Adam Smith. Yeah. Tremendous. And Thomas Paine. And Thomas Paine. And she actually runs her salon. Unlike Madame Roland, she allows other women to come to her salon. Including Olympe de Gouges. So that's where they would all have met.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
And isn't it interesting that the more hardcore Jacobin, the Montagnards they call, Rob Spierre and his circle, people like that, They're often among the most contemptuous and the most scornful.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
And you would think in other respects, I mean, it's a really good example, I guess, of what some listeners may say is the kind of the patriarchal attitudes, the misogyny, that in other respects, they are so democratic. But on this issue, they say women. Are you joking? I mean, ha ha ha. Women voting. Wouldn't that be a great wouldn't that be a thing?
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
Yeah, I don't find it inspiring at all. Well, I don't think everybody should have the vote, so that's the difference between me and the French revolutionaries. So who do you think should not have the vote? I probably wouldn't give it to anybody. But I'd definitely raise the age thing. I think probably 30, 40. And also property. I think you need to be a property.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
Marianne represents the permanent values that found her citizens' attachment to the Republic, liberty, equality, fraternité. The earliest representation of a woman wearing a Phrygian cap, an allegorical figure of liberty and the Republic, made their appearance at the time of the French Revolution. The origins of the name Marianne are uncertain.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
I mean, you could translate patrie, right, as homeland or as fatherland, couldn't you? You absolutely could.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
You need to own property, don't you? Fine. Okay.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
can't really believe that that's it's not just that there is it so if you think a hundred years hence when there are going to be huge arguments about women voting often among the most vociferous opponents of it are other women You know, opposing suffrage campaigns, not just in France, in Britain, in the United States, wherever.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
And don't historians think that effectively a lot of women had internalized the assumptions of the age, that they have come to believe, they come to believe what they're told, that they have their domestic sphere, which is their domain, right? And that there is the public sphere, which is the domain of men.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
Tom, I could not agree with you more, I think, actually. By far, she's the most radical. So all that the men are arguing for, the Robespierres, the Marats, whatever, it's within the bounds of the imagination. There have been republics, right? I mean, England executed its king. There has been the Dutch Republic. There's the Roman Republic. It is perfectly plausible to imagine that.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
You might think it's a bad thing, which a lot of people in France obviously did. But you can imagine it. It's not making your head hurt to think about it. But I think with this, what's clearly the case when she presents that Declaration of the Rights of Women…
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
When she unveils it, the ridicule, the contempt, the disbelief that greets it is a sign that a lot of people just simply cannot imagine a world in which women exercise political power. Including women. Yeah, including women themselves, exactly. That they are, as it were, I don't want to say prisoners of the same imagination, because that casts people in the past... are somehow lesser than us.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
We're more enlightened. And I don't generally like that kind of language. But I think it is fair to say that just as we are trapped by our own preconceptions in ways that we don't even recognize, they are absolutely trapped by theirs.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
Well, Tom, there are a lot of people in the world right now, when we're recording this, who would listen to this episode and would say they are mad. I mean, there are people right now, you know, in the people who are currently administering Afghanistan or indeed Iran, who would say, you know, a lot of what Olympe de Gouges was arguing was bonkers.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
So maybe we shouldn't be entirely complacent about it, I guess.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
Well, I'm not saying something good about the revolution. I'm saying about Olympe de Gouges, because as we will discover in a future episode. Revolution doesn't treat her well, does it? No, it does not treat her well, which is yet another black mark, I'm afraid. So, jolly good, Tom. That was absolutely fascinating. And kind of overdue, we should have done a lot about men in the revolution.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
We've done quite a lot about women as well. Well, we have. We did start with a woman, I guess. So next week, we will be getting back to the narrative, won't we? Because I think we left it last time with the Prussians. Cliffhanger. They were approaching Paris. They're 120 miles away, and they've just turned to finish off the last French army at Valmy.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
And listeners will be excited to hear that there is going to be a thrilling twist to the story. We love a thrilling twist on The Rest is History. Can't wait. So, Tom, what could people do if they wanted to hear that episode now, literally now?
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
And just to be very clear, we are a mixed club. And Tom, do we treat our male and female members equally? We're all about equality. We treat them equally badly. And on that bombshell, we will see you next time for the most exciting twist in European history. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Now, Tom, as you know, I'm not just a man of history. I'm also known for my involvement in the performing arts.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
Are you now? I must confess that early on in my acting career, my stage presence did come under a little scrutiny from Britain's finest newspapers. Oh, yes, this is the famous, notorious one-star review in the Scotsman, is it? Yeah, and I will remind the listeners that in Scotland, they order their reviews in a different way. So one is at the top and five stars is the worst review you could get.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
So we were very happy with that one-star review. But like a lot of great masters of their craft, Tom, I learned from it. I grew. I evolved. I knew I would bide my time before returning to the boards. And guess what? You're not. No. Yes. Tom, I have to tell you, I have returned to the boards. I'm performing once again.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
And the brilliant news for our listeners is that you can go and you can be transfixed by my performance right now because I am honoured and privileged to appear in the latest Sherlock & Co adventure, The Adventure of the Norwood. Please tell me that you are playing the Norwood Builder. I'm playing a much better character. I'm playing Hector McFarlane, a solicitor from Blackheath accused of murder.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
Goodness, as Lestrade's officers bear down on me, Tom, I have nowhere else to turn but to 221B Baker Street.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
Well, very much like this one, we were better acting, I think it's fair to say. It's a stable mate of ours. They are a massive show. They get 10 million downloads. Outside, I believe, The Archers. This is the biggest audio drama in Britain. Well, I have no doubt, Dominic, that it is more interesting than The Archers. It genuinely is brilliant. So My Son is a massive Sherlock and Co. aficionado.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
It basically goes through all the original short stories and the short stories that are often forgotten in modern day adaptations. It transposes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's narratives to the modern day. So Watson himself is making the podcast while they're doing the adventures. You can pick up any adventure you want. You don't have to follow the whole series to get stuck in.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
It is absolutely brilliant. Do you know who else thinks it's brilliant, Tom? The Guardian newspaper. One of those prized one-star reviews? No, a five-star. They said, and I quote, very funny, mildly sweary and hugely popular. Do you want to know what the Times said? It said, a breakneck series that Gen Z, or Gen Z as members of it say, that Gen Z is hooked on. Wow.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
And now that you're appearing on the show, I mean, that will confirm the hook, won't it? It absolutely will. And the Guardian listeners will be beside themselves with joy. So, everybody, please listen to Sherlock & Co. The Adventure of the Norwood Builder. It's multi-part. It's brilliant. Part one is out now. Jump right in wherever you get your podcasts. And here is a clip from that very episode.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
But the Élysée Palace thing that I read at the beginning is wrong. Am I not right in thinking that we know better than the Élysée Palace? No one. So the Élysée Palace said... You know, who knows where the name comes from? We know precisely where the name comes from. The name comes from this poem that is written in, I think, October, is it? October 1792? To mark the founding of the Republic.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
And interestingly, the poem is not in French. I mean, that's what makes it so fascinating.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
So the figure... Of liberty. We've talked so much about the influence of the Romans in particular on the French revolutionaries. So this is a very obviously classical figure, basically a goddess holding the fasces with an axe. and a liberty cap. That's right, isn't it? So, is there a little bit of Athena about this figure, maybe?
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
Marianne was a very common first name in the 18th century, and she thus came to represent the people. The counter-revolutionaries used the name derisively when referring to the Republic. So, Tom, that was the website of the Élysée Palace talking about the great symbol of the French Republic. Marianne.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
Right. She's classless, I suppose, isn't she? I mean, she's not defined by any. And because she's antique, she doesn't represent any particular group in contemporary France. She's universal. Exactly.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
So we started the entire cycle of French Revolution series thinking with a woman, with Marie Antoinette, and the extraordinary misogyny of the attacks on her. And then, although virility, masculine friendship, martial virtue and all of that, these masculine ideas have mattered enormously to the ethos of the French Revolution.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
There have been moments, haven't there, when women have taken centre stage. So I think you did an episode about the women's march on Versailles, when the market women go and bring back the King and Marie Antoinette. And the symbolism of it being the market women, I think, is really important there, isn't it? Yeah. And then, of course, you've got women who are prominent in the sans-culottes.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
So this is a symbol that emerges at the point that we've just got to in the great narrative of the French Revolution, the summer and autumn of 1792. We heard last time about the terrible September massacres that took place as the Prussians were advancing on Paris.
The Rest Is History
545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)
who are storming the Tuileries, who are shouting slogans in the streets. So it's not just a man's revolution by any means.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
But actually, I tell you, he's really nice to him. And this bears out my view that actually, I think you're very hard on this person and you paint him in an unduly dark light. And that is Augustus. Augustus is ultimately a kind man and is lovely to Claudius. Except when slaughtering senators. Yeah, but who cares about them? He's very nice to Claudius, isn't he? He's very nice to Claudius.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
He's not very nice to Claudius. Yeah, but compared with the rest of the family, Tom.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
OK, now, you said to give a talk about this academic subject. Now, it's true you can be academically very prominent and a complete and utter fool. And I think we can all think of people who tick that particular box. But this business that Antonio said, oh, anyone who's really stupid, I call him a bigger fool than Claudius. And Claudius is an absolute dribbling idiot.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
If he's a dribbling idiot, how is it he's giving academic lectures? I mean, again, people who've spent time at our great universities may find that question easy to answer. But no doubt you'll have your own answer, Tom.
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537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
When the conspirators who were lurking in wait for Caligula moved everyone else along on the grounds that the emperor wished to be alone, Claudius retreated to a wing of the palace known as the Hermaeum. Not long afterwards, alarmed by the distant shouts of murder, crept away to a nearby balcony where he hid himself behind the curtains hanging in front of the door.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Yeah, a slobbering, twitching, socially incompetent historian. Who would have thought it? I mean...
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Sometimes it's good to write an improperly immersive, well-textured history. And that takes multiple volumes. What can I say?
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
And he's a historian. He's a contemporary historian.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
That's absolute rank idiocy. I mean, that is rank idiocy from him to... Yes, I think it is. ...to rake all that up again.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Oh, my God. So I'll tell you one thing. Theo would never forgive me if I didn't remind everybody that this is actually what happened to our erstwhile producer, Don Johnson, when we went to New Zealand. Remember he sat on that bench and it collapsed?
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
There he cowered, and as he did so, a soldier who happened to be wandering past noticed his feet and dragged him out, intending to ask him who he was. But then, as he sank to his knees in terror, recognised him and hailed him as Emperor. The soldier then led him away to where the other Praetorians were all milling around, uncertain what to do.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Which must be proof that Caligula thinks of his uncle as a harmless fool because he wouldn't be promoting him in this way as a potential rival if he thought he was a serious, formidable person.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Oh, dear. Some people who listen to this podcast say there's too much banter, but I think if anything, there is not enough.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Yeah, because Caligula will want to get rid of him.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
The soldiers put him in a litter, and because his own attendants had run away, took it in turns to carry the unhappy and fearful man on their shoulders to their camp, and all the crowds they passed on the way pitied him on the assumption that he was an innocent being bundled off to execution.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
So is it possible the stuff about the curtain is nonsense and an invention, a folk tale, too good to be true, and that actually he's in the conspiracy from the beginning, he's been paying these blokes, and actually all this... He may not be acting out of ambition so much as fear. He thinks, I'm next for the chopping block, Basically, I've got to act now. I'm not such an idiot.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
I'm going to act now because otherwise Caligula's going to have me killed.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Received within the ramparts, he spent the night under the protection of the Praetorians, but in a mood of relief rather than of any great expectation. But as the next day passed, so large crowds of people gathered outside the Praetorian camp, agitating for a single man to be given rule and calling for Claudius by name.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
High stakes. So come back after the break to see if this stammering, twitching, socially inept historian turns out to be a good emperor.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Well, Tom, as you know, I am absolutely passionate about NordVPN. One of the things I love about them is their Threat Protection Pro, an absolutely brilliant antivirus tool. It is so effective and so powerful. It is integrated directly into the NordVPN app. So what it does is it protects you from phishing and other cyber threats.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
And the brilliant thing about it is it allows you to browse safely and smoothly.
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537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
is reliable. That's one of the things that make me so passionate about NordVPN. So to stay secure online, you really should take advantage of our exclusive NordVPN discount. You really should, you know. All you need to do is to go to nordvpn.com slash restishistory.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
When you sign up, you can receive a bonus four months on top of your plan, and there is no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. The link is also in the episode description box. This is an ad by BetterHelp Online Therapy. Now, Tom, you and I often hear about the red flags that we should avoid.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
But what if we focused more on looking for green flags in our friends and in our partners, indeed, in our producers? Now, if people aren't sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify green flags. It can allow you to actively wave them and identify them in your own relationships. So, Tom, can I ask you, do you have any relationship green flags? I certainly do.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Well, Tom, therapy can help you identify red and green flags. It can help you learn positive coping skills, and it can teach you how to set boundaries and enforce them. It can help you work through anything. and empower you to be the very best version of yourself.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
These chants prompted him to allow an armed assembly of the Praetorians to swear allegiance to him, and to promise each one of them 15,000 sesterces, thereby becoming the first of the Caesars to win the loyalty of the military by paying them a bribe.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Claudius, written off for half a century, an idiot, a fool, a stammerer, unfit to be exhibited in public, is now the master of the Roman world. And Tom, how does he do? The answer is actually he does all right, doesn't he?
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
And there are plenty of examples of politicians who are laughed at a lot of the time, but actually are big enough to ignore it and end up being pretty successful.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
So that last sentence, I'm not sure whether that's really true, but that's Suetonius in his life of Claudius, as translated in the New Penguin Classics edition by our very own Tom Holland. And Tom there, Suetonius, is taking the story forwards from where we left it last time. We left it on a cliffhanger.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
It's a really important thing for any politician at any point in history, I would say. Massively important. Yeah.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Now, probably the single most famous thing that he does that people who've listened to a lot of the rest of his history will remember is he orders the invasion of Britain. He doesn't personally lead it because he's hardly a kind of obvious military man, but he associates Britain He's associated with it. Right. And it's his invasion.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
And presumably he's doing that because he knows from his study of history that nothing is better calculated to stir the emotions of the populace than a military victory, even if it's against a people as useless as the Britons.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
The Emperor Caligula, mad or not, definitely a populist, has been assassinated by Cassius Kyria and the Praetorian Guard. And the question is, is Rome going to turn back the clock 60 years to the time of the Republic and all the chaos at the end of the Republic? Or is it going to continue with the family of Augustus, known as the Caesars? So take us forward.
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537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Yeah. But it's not just military, is it? He likes a grand projet, public works, sort of a lot of hydraulic action, I think it's fair to say.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
I think Ostia is one of the best places you can go. If you go to Rome... My single recommendation to the listeners is to go to Ostia Antica. It's as good as Pompeii and there's nobody else there. There you go. You've heard it.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Putting money into the economy. So the other thing is that Claudius is not – although he's quite old school – He's not like a Tiberius kind of dour killjoy who sneers at the pleasures of the populace. So you said Claudius would like a chapter on snooker. He'd enjoy a night out at a smoke-filled snooker hall.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
So these are the people, like anyone who's read I, Claudius, will remember Narcissus and Pallas and people like that, who presumably, they're very bright and they're very good, but I would guess... they must attract a lot of haters, of course, because everyone in the Senate is massively resentful.
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537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Now, I was hoping we'd get on to Messalina. So Messalina is, he basically has his pick, I guess, does he? And he picks a very young, beautiful and crucially very blue-blooded wife.
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537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
I think the beauty and youth, these are perks. She's the great-grandniece of Augustus, right? So she helps him to sort of say, I'm the heir to the greatest emperor, the first emperor.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Well, if you've seen or indeed read I, Claudius, you will remember that there is, I mean, it's one of the great scandals, not just in Roman history, but all history. When Claudius, he's at Ostia, isn't he? He's looking around that splendid site that I was recommending to the listeners. And if the Ostia tourist board want to get in touch, I'd be very keen to hear from them.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
So he's looking around Ostia and somebody, a concubine of his, comes up to him and says, Messalina is carrying on behind your back. And not just carrying on, she's up to all sorts, Tom.
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537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Yeah, maybe people have, there's been a bit of an internal power struggle that we can't really glimpse and that maybe the bureaucrats, the freedmen have, you know, turned against her.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
So like the last days of Boris Johnson, where there was rival briefing between his wife Carrie and some of his aides, remember?
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
And that's what explains these incredibly lurid stories. Again, iClaudius has great fun with these, that she has been, you know, you describe it in your notes as an all-day sex-a-thon with Rome's top courtesan.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Just to give people a sense of it, he is 59, she is 34. So a 25-year, exactly 25-year...
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537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Yeah, so this isn't going to end well. I mean, to be fair to Agrippina, she might well be thinking, if I don't do this, one day Britannicus will become emperor and he'll probably kill my son because my son will be a rival claimant. I think that's exactly what she thinks.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
She's like Lucy Worsley.
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537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Let's go back to Claudius for a second. He died in October 54. Yes. So that's what, four years after he'd adopted Nero as his heir. And it's always thought, isn't it, thanks largely probably to Suetonius and also to I, Claudius, that he was poisoned by Agrippina and Nero with mushrooms. Suetonius says he was poisoned with a dish of mushrooms. Do you think that's true?
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537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
No, I agree. I agree completely. But actually, where I'd slightly probably disagree with you is I don't necessarily think this is actually as different from modern history as you would think. Because modern history, too, is freighted with all kinds of assumptions, folk myths, urban myths. And actually teasing out what really happened is the impossible goal for any historian of any period.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
And also, which wouldn't solve the, you know, wouldn't end the conversation. I mean, because these things don't. So if people want to make up their own minds, what they should do is to buy Tom's new translation of Suetonius' book, The Lives of the Caesars, which is available now from all good bookshops with Penguin Classics. Tom, a great translation, a great series, I have to say.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
A tour de force, I think, is the approved Restless History terminology. So that was absolutely tremendous. And by the way, the book is brilliant, so people should absolutely go and buy the book. And we will be back next week with something very different, another of history's great monsters, actually, and another story in which it's actually quite difficult to get at
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
as it were, the truth of what really happened because there are so many different accounts. And that is the story of King Leopold and the Belgian Congo. So we will be telling that story next week. The Heart of Darkness, indeed. Okay, on that bombshell, goodbye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
And she's a lovely, sweet-natured girl, isn't she, by all accounts? Yeah.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
No waiting in line with people who are sick with who knows what. Thanks to Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon One Medical, healthcare just got less painful.
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537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
So let's get back to this moment of the curtain. This bloke in the Palatine, Praetorian, he sees these feet sticking out under the curtain. He takes Claudius to the Praetorian camp. And presumably the Praetorians at this point are thinking of Claudius purely as their puppet. He's somebody from the family, so they feel a sentimental attachment perhaps. And they think, we need a figurehead.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Here's this bloke. Who cares what his backstory is? He's got the right bloodline. Great, bring him in. Well, we...
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
And actually, I said he's got the right bloodline, but that's not quite right, isn't it? Because now it comes back to this issue that Suetonius was very interested in with Caligula, which really loomed large for Suetonius then, and I guess must do now again, which is exactly whom are you descended from?
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537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
So just to recap for people who don't have the family tree in front of them, Claudius is the nephew of Tiberius. He is the brother of Germanicus who never got to become emperor. He's also the grandson of Mark Antony. I mean, he's very well connected. Yeah. And he's the step-grandson of Antony's great rival, the first emperor Antony.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
So he has all kinds of connections, although the crucial one, the one with Augustus, is not a blood connection.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
I was about to say Kamala Harris. People gave her a lot of hard time, but I didn't mind her laugh, actually. I thought it was quite endearing. Well, you might have liked Claudius's then. But I wouldn't say hers was a bray. If his was a bray, I would dislike it because I don't like a braying laugh.
The Rest Is History
537. Emperors of Rome: Claudius, Paranoia and Poison (Part 4)
Suetonius says he stammers and twitches. Yeah. And when he gets angry, he drooled and snorted mucus. And I hate that in a man, Tom, the snorting of mucus.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com.
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Sure, yes. So obviously for Beethoven, Vienna is much more foreign than it is for Mozart. It's the capital of the Habsburg dynasty. It is at this point by far the biggest German-speaking city in Europe, with about a quarter of a million people, so that's twice as big as Berlin. It's a city at war. So from 1792, Austria is at war on and off for the next 22 years or so.
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
It's twice occupied by the French. There are stories about Beethoven literally sheltering under his bedclothes as the shells are kind of raining down overhead. And also, of course, for him, it's the city of Mozart. And when he arrives, Mozart has been dead for a year. And people are already saying, who is going to be the next Mozart?
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
You have a sense, I think, that if the next Mozart doesn't exist, they're going to invent him anyway. And very soon after Beethoven's arrival, they say, call off the search. We have found him. In fact, after his first year, his teacher, Joseph Haydn, wrote to the Elector of Cologne, and he said, he will be one of the greatest artists in Europe, and I will be proud to call myself his teacher.
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And the lovely thing is that is exactly what Tom's teachers used to say about James Holland. Sorry, Tom. Sorry. No, I'm used to this.
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Four long years. Now, he can't just be Mozart because the context has changed. For example, the way you make music is changing. Beethoven literally has different instruments to play with. For example, pianos that have a much greater range and a richer sound. So if you've wondered why Beethoven might sound different from Mozart, that's one of the reasons.
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
But even more importantly, I think, the way you make money from music has changed. So until this point, as Tom was describing in the first half, most musicians depended on an aristocratic household. So Beethoven's teacher, Haydn, depended on the Esterházy family. He lived at the Esterházy Palace over the border in Hungary. He was dressed in Esterházy livery as effectively a servant.
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
He was a servant. But Beethoven moves in a new world. Beethoven is supported by a whole range of different aristocratic patrons, not as a servant, but as a kind of business client. So a good example of this is one of his first great patrons, who is a bloke called Prince Lichnowsky.
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
They did indeed. It's a bit like our Restless History tours. And Lichnowsky offered Beethoven an annual allowance plus board and lodging, and Beethoven said, yes, but on the condition that I'm absolutely not coming as a servant. I'm coming as somebody who is almost an equal of yours. In other words, Beethoven is very, very protective of his status and his independence.
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
There's a very famous episode in 1808 So Napoleon Bonaparte, not a friend of the rest is history, has set up his brother Jerome as the king of Westphalia. And to bolster his regime, a bit like a kind of Saudi billionaire with a football club, he wants to get a star player. And the star player he has in mind is Beethoven.
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
He offers him a massive salary to come and be his kapellmeister, his director of music. And Beethoven tells everybody this in Vienna. Of course he does. He wants a counteroffer. And he gets one. Three of his patrons, Archduke Rudolf, Prince Kinski, and Prince Lobkowitz, club together, and they offer Beethoven an amazing deal.
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
4,000 florins a year for the rest of his life if he stays in Vienna, and he doesn't even have to write another note. The contract says this is in recognition of his extraordinary genius as a musician and a composer. They want to liberate him from the mundane cares of earning a living so that he can get on with writing works that ennoble the arts.
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Now, nobody had ever done this for a composer before, a deal of this magnitude. And it means that Beethoven has more security and more freedom, arguably, than any composer who has ever lived to this point. He doesn't have to work to order. And this obviously goes to his head a little bit. His status, his independence means so much to him. There are two wonderful stories that illustrate this.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
So one in 1806. He goes with his mate, Prince Lichnowsky, for a country weekend. There are a lot of officers staying there as well. And Prince Lichnowsky says to Beethoven, Ludwig, I would like you to play the piano for these guests. And that's how Prince Lichnowsky spoke. And Beethoven says, I'm not in the mood. I don't want to play. I don't want to play on cue. They have a massive row.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And afterwards, Beethoven says to Prince Lichnowsky, listen, yes, you're a prince, but you are a prince because of an accident of birth. It's very figurative. Very figurative. I am who I am because of what I have done. There are thousands of princes and there always will be. But there is and there only ever will be one Beethoven.
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Then, 1812, it's the kind of thing that I have to put up with from you. 1812, Beethoven and the German writer Goethe are strolling arm in arm through the park.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
It's just like us. Kensington Gardens, before this show. Exactly, exactly. And they see coming towards them the Emperor Francis I and his son, the Archduke. And Goethe goes to get out of the way and to bow. And Beethoven supposedly says to him, what are you doing? We don't make room for them. They will make room for us.
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And whether or not these stories are true doesn't really matter, because what they tell you is about the image of Beethoven and the conception of him, his own conception of himself, not as a servant, but as a star. I think he's probably the first composer who genuinely believes that every note that he writes will be played for as long as people are making music. So every work really matters.
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
These are not throwaway commissions. They're expressions of his soul, his intellect, his genius. You can look at the number of symphonies he wrote. Mozart wrote 41. Haydn wrote 104. Beethoven wrote just nine. Because to him, this wasn't just entertainment. It wasn't something that you listened to while people were playing cards. This was art. This was serious.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
So it was first performed in 1804. It's twice as long as any of Mozart's symphonies. Everybody agreed that it was extraordinary, a work of genius. But people also said, many of them, that it was too long, that it was too loud.
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Like the General Custer series, exactly. Tom, there were mugs then and there are mugs now. But they all recognised it was a work of genius, right?
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
I mean, that's what matters. And people said of the Third Symphony, this is so radical, so glaring. It is a work of anarchy. And of course, this has a political dimension, because at the time, the Austrians are fighting against people that they believe represent the forces of anarchy.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Yeah, it's a little bit more complicated. Is it?
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
That's astonishing. So, at first, Beethoven was sympathetic to the ideals of the French Revolution, and he was fascinated by the figure of Napoleon, a self-made man who blazed like a comet across the sky of Europe. And originally, a very famous story, he was going to dedicate this third symphony, the Eroica, to Napoleon.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
But then, in December 1804, he heard that Napoleon had crowned himself emperor. And he said, what? He's just another politician. He will sacrifice the rights of man on the altar of his ambition. He will become a tyrant. He wasn't wrong, Tom. And he rips the manuscript in two, and he scratches out the dedication to Bonaparte on the first page. So no dedication to Napoleon. But good news.
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Tom, we are and we always have been a patriotic podcast. And I'm very pleased to say that Beethoven never wrote a piece called Napoleon, but he did write one about the Duke of Wellington. And this is famously terrible, isn't it? Well, I mean, it's patriotic, but you've got to be honest. Why does he hate Britain? This was called Wellington's Sieg, Wellington's Victory.
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
He wrote it in 1813 to celebrate our brave boys' victories in the Peninsular War. Tom, you'll be pleased to hear that it incorporates both Rule Britannia and God Save the King. So the EU went for Beethoven's Ninth, and they could have had that. Absolutely madness. How different history would have been. You don't hear this, but the rest is politics. Anyway...
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
The following year, 1814, Napoleon is temporarily booted out to Elba. Vienna explodes in celebrations and festivities. There are balls, there are receptions. This is Beethoven's most successful year. It's the year in which he makes most money. It is the year in which his pieces are performed more than any other. And it is now that he stages the final version
The Rest Is History
527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
of his one and only opera, which is called Fidelio.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
is is
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
O'er the land of the free O'er the land of the free O'er the land of the free
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Haltet euch zurück!
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Now, as you've been listening to this episode, you might have noticed that this episode had something a little extra special, didn't it, Tom?
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And if you were there, you will remember how absolutely extraordinary their performance was. We are thrilled to have them featured on this episode. And frankly, we're even more thrilled to be able to make that recording of that event open free to everybody in the podcast who wasn't able to attend in person.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Surprise, surprise, it's more complicated than that. So, Beethoven had been working on Fidelio for years, and he got the idea from a French play about a bloke who's rescued from prison by his wife. But it seems pretty likely that the French play is actually set during the Terror, and this bloke may be an aristocrat.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And I think the politics of Fidelio may be a little bit more complicated, more conservative, maybe, than people think. So remember, this is taking place, this premiere, in Vienna in 1814, in an atmosphere of conservatism, of reaction. The old order has won. And at the end of Fidelio, When the hero gets his freedom, he doesn't get it because the mob has stormed the prison, not at all.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
He gets it because of the intervention of the kind-hearted, benevolent governor, effectively the emperor. In other words, this is a victory for the old order. It's the old order that has prevailed. And the freedom that the opera is celebrating, Tom,
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
In 1814, those first audiences in Vienna, to them it's freedom from the war, freedom from the tyranny of Napoleon, freedom from the despotism of the French. The despotism of the French.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Yes. Exactly, exactly. But I think there's another aspect of Fidelio that is actually more interesting.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Some of Beethoven's biographers suggest that this picture of this bloke who's locked up in a prison, cut off from the outside world, is a kind of nightmarish self-portrait, because as many of you will know, at the time that Fidelio goes on stage, Beethoven has been going deaf for probably at least 12 years, the cruelest punishment possible for a composer.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Now, his deafness probably starts at the end of the 1790s, when he's in his late 20s, We don't know really what caused it. We do know that in the summer of 1802, he went to a place called Heiligenstadt for the summer, and he wrote a letter to his brothers, explaining, apologizing for his horrendous form in recent months.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And he said, listen, the truth is, I'm losing my hearing, and that one day I will be cut off from the outside world. I'll have to live like an exile in my own head. And he says, I've thought about ending it all, about ending this wretched existence, but it was my art that held me back. It seemed impossible to me to leave this world until I'd written all the works that I was capable of.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And that brings us back to something that's been running through this story from the very beginning of the show, which is the idea of art as something special and something sacred, dare I say sacral, Tom? Go for it. It is art that saves us, that gives our lives meaning.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And this, of course, becomes one of the foundational ideas of Romanticism, the idea that art is the supreme good, the summit of human existence, that it is art that makes life worth living. Now, of course, that's not much consolation to poor Beethoven who is losing his hearing. His hearing, in fact, gets worse and worse.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
By 1814, the year of Fidelio, if you sit down to listen to something and it's Ludwig van Beethoven playing the piano, you know you're not in for a brilliant evening because he can't tell if it's been tuned properly and he also can't tell if he's making mistakes. So actually at the end of the year, he gives up playing in public and at this point he starts carrying these conversation books.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
So when he meets you in the street and you're talking to him, you have to write down in the book what you're saying. So, sad to say, by the mid-1810s, Beethoven has, to some extent, ended up in that dungeon. Now, he had a very unhappy and lonely love life. Some of you may know that he wrote a letter to a woman that he called his immortal beloved. It's a great film, Gary Oldman.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Which he made into a Gary Oldman film, exactly. In which he said, you know, you're the love of my life, but we can never be together. And we don't really know, again, who that was. His family life was a nightmare. For a lot of the 1810s, he's locked in this dreadful custody battle over his nephew, Carl. In 1820, he turned 50. And by this point, I think he's a very disconsolate figure, Beethoven.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
When he goes out, he's very scruffy and distracted. At one point, the Viennese police arrested him for being a tramp. And part of the problem, of course, is they're talking to him, and he can't hear what they're saying. It's a bit of a problem. But the weird thing is that all this is actually great news for the Beethoven brand.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
because it perfectly captures the ethos of the Romantic age, the idea of a lonely hero who is battling with his demons in a kind of spiritual exile. Now, all the time, Beethoven is still making music. He is making music that is more demanding, more challenging than ever before.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Some people say it's too challenging, so you have a sense of an emerging breach between the masses, who like the kind of fun, easy operas that are coming from Italy, and the connoisseurs, who think that if it's difficult, that means it must be profound. And Beethoven himself was in no doubt about who he was writing for. He said, I don't write for the masses.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
I write for people who are cultured, like you. But even though people find his stuff very difficult, they never doubt that Beethoven is a star. And by the 1820s, he really does have a brand. People are painting his portrait. They're making busts of him.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Images of Beethoven are going all over Europe, and they're appealing to people who had never really existed before in the history of classical music. They're not admirers. They're not supporters. They're not patrons.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Yeah, absolutely. And I think part of the reason for this is that Beethoven's image perfectly fits the demands of the times. This is a conservative age, an age of reaction. So people love the idea of tradition. They love the idea of Beethoven as the culmination of a tradition that began with Mozart and Haydn. But what's more, his German-ness is really important.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
The French Revolution was a foundational moment in the history of German-ness. That moment when French troops crossed the Rhine is when modern German identity is born. So people are looking for a German hero, and Beethoven perfectly fits the bill. But all the time, his health is getting worse,
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
By the end of 1826, he's got pneumonia, he's got jaundice, he's got liver issues, and of course he can barely hear anything at all. But apart from that, he's doing fine. Yeah. Apart from that, he's in great form. Now, we described his final days earlier, the presents and the wine and whatnot.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
But sad to say, on the 26th of March, 1827, in the middle of a tremendous thunderstorm, he takes his final breath. And it is said that at the very end, he opens his eyes, he lifts his right hand to heaven, he clenches his fist. And then he collapses, the artist defiant to the end.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Thank you.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Thank you.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
It's almost as if we'd scripted it. And as we said before, his death was an extraordinary public occasion. People were literally queuing up to take snippets of hair from his head to wear in lockets around their necks like religious relics. Now, there was a very revealing eulogy at the cemetery gates, and it was made by Vienna's greatest playwright, a man called Franz Grillparzer.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Tom, are you familiar with his work?
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Well, Grillparzer in the eulogy did not mention God at all. Extraordinary. He mentioned only the gods of music and art. He was an artist, he said of Beethoven. That's how he spoke again. That's how all Germans speak when they're talking about art, Tom. And all that was his was his through art alone. He was an artist and who shall arise to stand beside him? Who indeed?
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And this, I think, was Beethoven's greatest legacy. You talked about Mozart as a genius. I think what Beethoven, rather, creates is the idea of the Artist with a capital A, the individual who suffers and overcomes, the martyr, the man who stands alone from the masses, somebody whose work, like mine, is long and difficult and therefore profound.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Tom, he can see things and hear things that you and I can't. Well, he can't actually hear them, can he? I mean, that's the whole point. No, that's true. We'll always have that over Beethoven, won't we? So let us end with the passage that for many people represents the climax of Beethoven's genius.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Beethoven began his Ninth Symphony in 1822, and at its heart is Friedrich Schiller's Ode to Joy, which he'd first written in 1785, a kind of hymn to Enlightenment values. As always, it's a complicated story. Wow. Schiller... Schiller was horrified by the excesses of the French Revolution. He was horrified by the execution of the king and the terror.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And he actually toned down his original Ode to Joy to make it less radical, to make it more conservative. And this is the version that Beethoven used. But my favorite story about the Ode to Joy and about the Ninth Symphony is one that many of you will know. Lots of you who know the story of Beethoven will know this story.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Because when the symphony was first performed in 1824, Beethoven stood at the front, waving his arms next to the conductor, even though he could not hear a note. And when it was all over, he couldn't hear the applause behind him. And very gently, the singer Carolina Unger turned him round so that he could see but not hear the standing ovation.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And Tom, let's be honest, it's hard to admit it, but we would be nothing without our own aristocratic sponsors. So a huge thank you to Tony Pastor and Jack Davenport, the Habsburg emperors of our hearts.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Thank you to our Viennese aristocratic patrons, the brilliant Tabby Syrett and Anoushka Lewis, and to our Parisian friend, the peerless Theo Young-Smith, and all of their colleagues at Goldhanger Podcast.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Thee, O men, thee, O Israel, the world, thou givest.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Thank you for watching.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Thank you.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
© BF-WATCH TV 2021
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Thank you.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Absolutely.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
When I wrote that joke, I knew you would laugh. So, Tom, you ended with Mozart's death and funeral in 1791. No great send-off, a slightly lackluster occasion. And let's start by fast-forwarding three decades to March 1827, to the death and funeral of his great successor Ludwig van Beethoven. And it's a completely different scene. As Beethoven lies dying, also in Vienna,
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Presents, cash, cakes are coming in from all over Europe. Beethoven's last recorded words greet the arrival from Mainz of a case of his favorite Rhineland wine. And his last words were, pity, pity, too late. And then he died. And when he did die on the evening of the 26th of March, it was the news story of the year.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
So when they held the funeral three days later, crowds had gathered outside Beethoven's apartment. There was a choir outside to see him off. The schools were all given the day off. On the way to the church and then to the cemetery, the crowds were so thick, it took them ages to pass through.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And all the way, some of the best-known people in Vienna were holding a kind of torch-lit parade, most famously, the young composer Franz Schubert. So clearly, something had changed since the death of Mozart, and a lot of that has to do with Beethoven himself. So many of you, I guess, will already have an idea of Beethoven in your mind.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
The wild hair, the ferocious frowning expression, the unkempt appearance, the papers falling from his pocket. An intellectual, an artist. Mozart is fun, and Beethoven is serious. That's the stereotype.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And I think this is really important because I think it is Beethoven, more than anybody else, who invents this idea of the creator, the artistic genius, as a lonely, difficult, unhappy, but brilliant man, a bit like Tom. Now, One difference between Beethoven and Mozart, obviously, is that Beethoven is not Austrian. Beethoven is German. He was born in Bonn in the west of Germany in December 1770.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Bonn was a small town that belonged to the electorate of Cologne. And music was the family business. Beethoven's father was a singer, but his alcoholism stymied his career. Now, as with Mozart, his father pushed him ferociously. He started giving him regular keyboard lessons when Ludwig was just five. He would make him practice until he cried. He would make him practice until midnight.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And he would beat him when Ludwig made a mistake. And did it work?
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
No. No. It didn't, because although Ludwig was clearly very good, he wasn't a prodigy on the scale of Mozart. When he reached the age of 10, he was still barely known within his own town. Nobody effectively had noticed him on a continental scale. But then, at the age of 11, he got a new piano teacher, a massively important figure in his life, who rejoiced in the name of Christian Gottlob Nefer.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And Nefer was a Protestant. The Beethovens were Catholics. And Nefer was tied in to the Enlightenment. So he was full of ideas about reason and virtue and reform, full of the writings of Voltaire and Kant. And he passes these on to the young Beethoven. Now, through his Enlightenment enthusiasms, Nefer is very well connected. And one of his friends is a chap called Count Ferdinand Waldstein.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
who lives in Bonn and is very friendly with the Elector. And it's Waldstein who gets Ludwig a job playing the organ for the Elector. They think this is tremendous. They have great ambitions for Ludwig. In 1787, when he's 16 years old, they send him to the city of music, to Vienna. And there, legend tells, he meets the great man. He meets Mozart.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And the story runs that Mozart got him to play the piano. Ludwig played, improvising brilliantly. And Mozart stood there impassively. And when the last note died away, Mozart said nothing. He just went into the next room where his friends were sitting. And he said to them, keep an eye on that young man. One day, he will give the world something to talk about.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And do you think that actually happened? I think that happened. And that's how he spoke. That is just how he spoke. Well, maybe it did happen, maybe it didn't, but the fact the story exists at all... Yeah, that's the important thing, right? The fact the story exists at all is proof of how desperate people were to see a connection between them. But that first trip didn't last long.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
So Beethoven came home after two weeks because his mother was ill. But then in the autumn of 1792, he came back to Vienna for good. Why? Because the French Revolution had broken out. French armies were rampaging across the map of Europe, spreading perturbation and despair. The court fled Bonn. Bonn was no longer safe, and Beethoven was sent to Vienna.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Now, of course, by this point, Mozart was dead. So Beethoven is going to study with that other great Austrian composer, Josef Haydn. And before he left, Count Waldstein wrote him a note. Mozart, he said, is dead. But Mozart's genius is still alive and is in mourning. And it is waiting for somebody. It is waiting for you. And from Haydn, you will receive the spirit of Mozart.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And so off he goes to Vienna, the city where he will compose his greatest works.
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527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
so so
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Now, we'll come back later in this episode to this side of things. But basically, for 200 years, this has been the kind of wild east of the Viking world. They've got all this network of forts and towns and so on. They're going all the way down the rivers into Ukraine towards the Black Sea and Constantinople, which is obviously the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And Olaf has taken shelter, probably in Kiev, with the Grand Prince Yaroslav of Kiev, who's basically of Scandinavian descent.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
So Olaf has been gone for two years. And then in the spring of 1030, a dramatic twist, one of many in the story, word reaches Norway that Olaf is on his way back. He's got about 200 warriors who are kind of Slav mercenaries and Norwegian exiles.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
It's a phrase that you definitely want to be using on a podcast. When you're talking about Slav mercenaries, you're living the dream. So he goes back and he arrives in Sweden. And the Swedish king, who's called Onund Jakob, he gives him some more men. And then he recruits some more troops in Sweden, some more Norwegian exiles and so on. And so Olaf has this force of about 2,500 men. And then...
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Harold, his younger brother, turns up. So Harold, at this point, is about 15 or 16 years old. Please, brother, may I fight with you? I think his voice broke when he was about eight. Oh, maybe when he was three, playing with his Viking ships. I imagine he's pretty formidable. Massively hairy? I think it's more he's got a mane of blonde hair, so he tosses in the wind.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
I hope one day, brother, to have a moustache like yours. LAUGHTER And he will. Well, he will. Well, hold on. Hold on, actually. I can't believe I didn't read this out. Snorri Sturluson says at this point he was very stout and manly as though full grown. As though full grown, Dominic. Yeah, but very stout and manly. What, so he's fat?
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
No, because stout in these days... So Olaf the Stout is not that he's fat. It's actually that he's sort of sturdy. Like me. So... Right. Harald has raised a couple of hundred men from the uplands of central Norway. He's crossed the mountain spine of Scandinavia and he's gone down to Sweden to meet his brother. So they all assemble... And then they decide they'll set off back to Norway.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And they're hoping to get more recruits as they go. And they cross the spine again through the passes into the Norwegian uplands. Now, there are some accounts, because this is the age of Christianization, that say that Olaf forced recruits to be baptized and he made them paint white crosses on their shields. We must depend on God. Only with his power and mercy should we gain victory.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And I cannot have pagan men in my army. But actually, most of the historians' accounts that I've read of this say this is probably nonsense. That actually this is a back projection by later Christian chroniclers. And that actually, almost certainly, it's a mixture of all kinds of random people in this army at this point.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Oh, they do. I'm not saying that he doesn't shout about Christ and have a cross. What I'm saying is his very ragtag army, I don't think it has the quality of a crusade.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Yeah. Anyway. They come down into the height of summer, 1030, and they come down into the most fertile bit of Norway, which is called the Trondelag, and surround the city that we now know as Trondheim, which at the time was called Nidaros. And they're going through this valley, and at the end of the valley is the village of Stiklestad, Stikler's Farm.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And this is the setting for this great battle, probably the most famous battle in Norwegian history. I don't know how many Norwegian listeners we have, but they'll be very excited about this. And as they advance down this valley, they see at the end a huge army waiting for them.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
So this army, their enemies, these are A, Canute loyalists, and B, basically local farmers and local peasants who hate Olaf. And they are horrified that all these Slav mercenaries have turned up and they're about to pillage their lands and sort of, you know, attack their families and stuff.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
I think they've disappeared from the story completely. Gothorm and Halfdan. I don't think they've turned out. No, no, no.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
They wouldn't, but they're actually too busy tending their crops, Tom. They've got no time for this kind of nonsense. Now, in the sagas, there are some absolutely splendid people involved in the enemy army. So the head of it, the head of this kind of loyalist army, is a local strongman called Kalf Arneson, who's a sort of Canute loyalist.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Then there's a bloke called Thorstein the Shipwright, and he has a grudge against Olaf because Olaf confiscated a ship from him as punishment for murdering somebody. Snorri Sturluson says that Thorstein the shipwright was, quote, very ardent and a skilled killer of men. That's nice. Which is nice.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
But by far the most terrifying person who you mentioned in that wonderful reading at the beginning of the show is this guy who's called Thorir the Hound. And Thorir the Hound, I'm sure he existed. He's a warlord from the northern coast of Norway. So he's been in touch with the Sami people. And he's wreathed in mystery and magic. He's a sorcerer as well as a hound.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Yeah, I really, really like it. This bloke bears it out. He's wearing a Sami cloak of 12 reindeer skins with, and I quote, so much magic that no weapon could pierce them. And if people doubt that... We will have evidence for it later on in this story. He's got good medicine. He's also got a magic spear. He's got a magic spear, and he said, I will use this magic spear to kill Olaf.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Now, they outnumber Olaf's men four to one, and they are absolutely pumped. They are gagging for battle. Kalf Arneson, he raises his banner, and he addresses his men, and he says... He who does not fight bravely today shall be held a worthless coward. Spare none, for they will not spare you. Now Olaf, who's massively outnumbered, he raises his banner. You mention it in the reading.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
The Sea Serpent. He unsheathes his sword, which is called Hnitir, Striker. And he gives his own speech. Of course he does. And he says, They may have more men, but it is fate that decides victory, not numbers. I swear that I will not flee from this fight. I will triumph or I will die. Argh! And all his men assemble.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
It's got his great lieutenant standing at his side, who obviously is called Bjorn the Bear. He's there. Doesn't Bjorn mean bear? Yeah. Well, yeah, it's just a tautology. But I mean, you know, it's there to... Don't forget the Slav mercenaries there. They might not know that, Tom. Yeah, fair enough. So it needs to be explained.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
It's also got a kind of Lancelot character who's called Roggenvald Bruceson, who's the son of the Earl of Orkney. You're a big fan of Orkney, aren't you?
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
you know, deep into the Middle Ages. So he's there, Rogenwald, and everyone should remember him because he'll be important in this story. But Harold, what about Harold? Olaf says, I do not think my brother Harold should be in the battle for he is still a child.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Certainly I should be in the battle for I am not too weak to handle a sword. And if necessary, you can tie my hand to the hilt. That's what he says. He's stout and manly.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
He did not speak like that. So anyway, this is the first time that he comes out with one of his poems in the face of death. He says, um, my arm is wing. Well, I shall stand. I will hold good with heart and hand. My mother's eye shall joy to see a battered bloodstained shield from me. That's great. There's no doubt. I think in any listener's mind that this absolutely happened. Um,
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
So at about one o'clock, according to the sagas, these two lines advance on each other. Thorough the Hound is shouting. Olaf is shouting. They're kind of the tension mounts. It's very Bernard Cornwell. And then the two lines crash together and sort of try to work out from the sagas, which, as we said, written much later with masses of kind of fictionalization and back projection.
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552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Yeah, so Tom, we've done a lot of great characters and the rest is history, but I think Howard Hardrada has a claim to be the most exciting. Certainly his life is the most dramatic and unexpected. So you and I, when we studied 1066 at school, yeah, Howard Hardrada is really an exciting supporting character, isn't he?
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Olaf's men are almost certainly more skilled, more experienced than all these farmers and peasants. So when the sagas say they made initial headway, that's very plausible. But over time, the sheer weight of numbers four to one tells against them. So in King Harald's saga, which is part of a big cycle called Heimskringla, says, the peasant army pushed on from all quarters.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Those in front hewed down with their swords, those behind thrust with their spears, and those in the rear shot arrows, cast spears, and threw stones, hand axes, or sharp stakes. Soon many men began to fall. So in other words, Olaf is very embattled. And Harold. And then, remember you said, Tom, the heavens proclaimed their verdict.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
as is oddly so often the way in decisive battles in history, guess what happens? There is a total eclipse. So we're told the saga say the sky and sun became red and then as black as night. And to read from a thrilling version of this story for younger readers, blood-curdling roars rose from the peasant army. The gods had spoken. The king must die.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Now they surged forward, emboldened, triumphant, closing in on their former master, their faces twisted with demonic rage. That also definitely happened. So a very prosaic version of what happens next is basically the peasant armies, whether the initial surge,
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Olaf is outnumbered, his men are cut down, his standard bearer is cut down, drops the sea serpent banner, the morale breaks, people start running, and at some point Olaf himself is slaughtered among the piles of bodies. But the sagas tell a very exciting story. So basically all boils down to this duel between Olaf and Thorir the Hound.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
He lands this fantastic blow on Thorir, he slashes at him, but... Thorir is wearing that sami reindeer skin coat. It was as dust flew from this coat and Olaf's sword just glances off it. And then Thorstein, the shipwright, hacks at Olaf's leg with his axe. Olaf falls over a boulder, which apparently you can still see on the field, called Olaf's Stone. And you were driving very near the site.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
You opted not to go and look at it. I just don't like stones. I find them very dull. I find them disappointing. And also, I had a brilliant image in my mind of this battle. Yeah, you didn't want to be disappointed. I didn't want to be disappointed by some prosaic stone. Anyway, Thoreau the Hound, remember, he's got a magic spear. He plunges it up through Olaf's male shirt into his chest.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And then Kalf Arneson hits him in the neck.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
He's one of the three contenders in the great Game of Thrones, arrives suddenly in the middle of 1066. He crosses the North Sea, he leads an army into York, and then he faces Harold Goldwinson in this sort of thrilling showdown at Stamford Bridge.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Yeah. A Viking would know that, though. They wouldn't need to be told.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
It would be a reassurance. You're right. That's true. That's true. Oh, that's nice. Anyway, he probably dies with a smile on his lips, I like to think. A grim smile. Now, almost everybody else we're told in the sagas is killed, too. But not Harold. Harold has somehow been wounded and put out of action. So he's kind of lying among the piles of bodies.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And this guy, the Earl of Orkney's son, Roggenvald Brussersen, He helps him up and he drags him off the battlefield into the woods. Now, Thorir the Hound is leading a kind of mopping up party to kill all the survivors, but they managed to evade him and they reach a woodsman's hut.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And there, the woodsman, a kindly forester, he takes them in and he says, listen, I will look after young Harold until he's well enough to travel. So I think it's probably fair to say at this point, this probably didn't happen. This feels a bit fairytale to me, Tom.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Yeah. He's a patron saint of Norway. We've had a few implausible saints on the podcast. He's definitely one of them. He's got a church in London. Yeah. So, Rogenvald goes off and he leaves Harald with this woodsman. And days or weeks we don't know go by. Harold's wounds heal. And eventually the woodsman's son says, I will guide you through the forests and over the mountains to Sweden.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
We're told that they stayed off the roads. They made their way through the woods. And Harold wore a hooded cloak to hide his face. So he's very much kind of the ranger of the north. I like to think he travels under the name Stroider. Yeah, Trotter. Yeah, Trotter. That's Tolkien's original name. And he devises one of his lovely poems during the journey. Now from wood to wood I slink, rated little.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Who knows? But I may win better fame later. I mean, it's not really... As poems go, it's probably not the best, but...
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Anyway. Yeah, he's really tired. Yeah. He's just lost his brother. He's also a teenager. He's also a teenager. Come on, don't be hard.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Yeah, I'm being too hard on him. I feel ashamed of myself now. Anyway, they go through all this wild country. He goes down into Sweden. The Baltic Sea lies beyond. He meets up with Rogenvald. And that winter, they hunker down, brooding on their defeat. And then, says the saga, the spring came. And Harald and Rogenvald hired a ship and that summer they sailed east to the lands of the Rus.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
But his story before that is so colourful that I think, I would be interested to know what you think, I think it's surely a contender for the most exciting life in medieval history.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
So... For the last 200-odd years, the Vikings have been going east as much as they've been going west. They've been sailing across the Baltic and the Gulf of Finland to what's now Russia, Estonia, and Latvia. We did a couple of episodes about this in the early days of The Rest is History.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
But just to remind people, the Vikings would head up the rivers, they'd carry furs and slaves, they'd go deep into Eastern Europe, and then they would make their way through the river network to the Black Sea and then south to Constantinople. And over these 200 years, they have built a chain of trading stations and forts and settlements stretching for 1,300 miles.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And this becomes known as the Kingdom of Cities, Garderike, but it's better known today as the Land of the Rus. That word probably, there's lots of academic arguments about it, which we talked about before, but it probably comes from an old Norse term that means rowers, because they often rowed down these or up these rivers.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And obviously it's from that that we get Ruthenia, Russia, Belarus, and so on and so forth. Now, we can pretty much guess which way Harald went because there's a set route, there's kind of a highway. So he and Rogenvald would have crossed the Gulf of Finland to roughly near modern St. Petersburg, and then they'd have taken the River Neva upstream to Lake Ladoga, Europe's largest freshwater lake.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And here on the southern side is basically the gateway to the Wild East, which is a place called Storaia Ladoga. which is this sort of, it is like a wild west town. And you mentioned Neil Price, Tom, the great historian of the Vikings. He calls it a muddy riverine deadwood with greater ethnic variety plus swords and a multitude of gods. It's such a great description.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Exactly. So to give people just a little preview... He fights that first battle when he's a teenager. He flees Norway into exile. He ends up as a mercenary for the Grand Prince of Kievan Rus'. He crosses the Black Sea to Constantinople. He joins the Varangian Guard. He fights everywhere from Sicily to Armenia. He becomes engulfed, quite literally, in the snake pit of Constantinople politics.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
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The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. by far the biggest city in Europe. So in the summer of 1034, Harold and some companions, we're told the suspiciously round number of 500 companions, go south down the Dnieper, very well-traveled path, past the rapids of Zaporozhye to the Black Sea, down the Bosphorus, and then up the Golden Horn into the city of Constantine.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
One might say the dragon pit. Exactly. And then he returns to claim the throne of Norway. So it's a very kind of Aragorn trajectory. The guy who disappears into exile as a sort of mercenary or a ranger from the north and then returns to reclaim his throne.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Olaf and Harald crashed into the enemy line like a storm ripping into a forest. Men were falling on every side, shards and splinters and splatters of blood flying into their faces.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Yes. Aragorn. A bit more wading through the blood of other people, I think it's fair to say. But I think there are two important dimensions of it, sort of more seriously. So one is, as you've said, it is a brilliant reminder of the interconnectedness of this world. So 11th century Europe. So these trading networks, cultural networks, political and so on, that link the fjords of Norway together.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Not an unfamiliar place for Norsemen to go. They've launched attacks, haven't they, in 860, 941, 944?
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
The Romans had seen them off with a combination of Greek fire and icon intervention. They paraded with icons with magic powers. Not magic powers, I should say, divine powers. Indeed, supernatural. And seen them off. So the historian Kat Jarman has a book called River Kings. Read that book, Tom? About following beads. The Amber.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And she has loads of stuff in there about what we know about customs. They're all kind of customs arrangements and special regulations for Norse travellers arriving in Constantinople. So he's not, you know, an incredibly unfamiliar figure.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
No, he's going to fight. So for Harold, what is he, 19 years old? This must have been an absolutely jaw-dropping experience. The Golden Horn, the huge walls, the markets, everything. the bathhouses, the forum, the hippodrome, the massive palace complex of the Caesars. I mean, we know there's the famous story about when emissaries from the Rus went into Hagia Sophia
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
which was then 500 years old, and they said, we didn't know if we were in earth or in heaven, for surely there is no such magnificence or opulence anywhere in the world. Yeah, we cannot forget that beauty. Exactly. And actually that reflects a deeper picture, or a wider picture, which is that actually... the Byzantine Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, for once it's actually doing pretty well.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
It's at a kind of medieval peak under the Macedonian dynasty who are ruling it. They've crushed the Bulgars. They've recaptured a bit of territory in Syria. They've recaptured a bit of territory in Sicily and in Georgia. They're going through a kind of literary and artistic renaissance. So actually things are looking quite good for them and they're quite self-confident and quite buoyant.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
to the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and so on. These are not completely different spheres of action. People move between them.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Now, Harold will get very, very involved in kind of Constantinople politics, and we'll get onto that in the next episode. But just to give listeners a sense of the picture, there has just been a change of emperor at the top. So the emperor in the early 1030s had been a guy called Romanus III, who was basically a bureaucrat. He was in his mid-60s.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And he was married to the Empress Zoe, born in the purple, so from the imperial family. She's younger. She's in her mid-50s. And Zoe, I think it's fair to say, she's a character, isn't she, Tom? Yeah, she is. She's a memorable character. We'll discuss her in more detail on Thursday. She's blonde. She's very voluptuous. She's very clever. She's incredibly vain.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
She's always sort of taking strange potions and sort of smearing creams on herself. Unguents. Unguents. She loves an unguent. Now, she's been having an affair with a younger palace official called Michael, who's in his 20s, very good looking.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And in April 1034, so just before Harold arrives in Constantinople, the emperor's officials, Romanus' officials, came into his bathroom and found him dead in his bath, strangled probably. And almost all the sources say it was Michael who did it. He had murdered this bloke. And he has now become emperor because he's married Zoe and become emperor himself, Michael IV.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And actually, the empire is being run by his brother.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
John the Orphanetrophus, I think is his name. Anyway. He's running the show. Michael, this kind of handsome toy boy, is now the emperor, and Zoe is still on the scene as empress. And it's fair to say, I think, a nest of vipers, Tom. And I choose the serpentine analogy for good reason.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
They do indeed. But for the time being, you know, Harold, there's no reason he should really worry about all this. He's just an obscure Scandinavian mercenary. His name will mean something to Scandinavians, but it won't really mean anything to the Romans.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And he is heading not for the palace, well, not for the center of the palace, but for a building that may well adjoin it, which is the barracks of the most glamorous warriors in Christendom. And these are the Varangian Guard. So the Varangian Guard, I mean, they're the sort of sexiest of all medieval elite warriors, aren't they?
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
They are a bodyguard established in 988, at the point when Volodymyr the Great of Kiev had decided to embrace Christianity and to do this marriage deal with the emperors. And Volodymyr had sent, we're told, 6,000 Norse and Slavic mercenaries who became known as Varangians after the Norse word Va, which means oath. So they are literally called the Oath Keepers.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And then the other thing is, you described him, as people do, as the last Viking. And we'll discuss that in more detail later on. And his life undoubtedly is a window into... the last sort of embers of the Viking Age, so a changing Scandinavia. We've hinted at this in the last series we did about the roads, 1066.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Exactly. So the idea that you would swear an oath and you would become a kind of team. A blood brother. Exactly. These over time, we've now moved on sort of 40, 50 years from this, but they're still going and they've become a kind of special forces unit. Right. So they will be sent across the empire to Syria, to Sicily, wherever, you know, to take part in sieges and stuff like that.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Parachuting in. Exactly. Most of them are Scandinavian, not all. So there are Anglo-Saxons and certainly later on. Well, there will be quite a few more in due course. And Slavs. They become famous. There are sort of hints of them in Roman sources. Yeah. They are famous for drinking, for having double-headed axes, and general sort of berserker ferocity, I think it's fair to say.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
The most famous relics of them are in Hagia Sophia, and there's a bit of graffiti that says Halfdan. In other words, a guardsman guarding the imperial family worldwide. would have written basically Halfdan was here. And there are scrawled longboats, aren't there, in the upper galleries? I mean, an amazing thing to see.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
We have a sense of them from picture stones on the island of Gotland and also things that have been found in graves in Scandinavia that they might have worn sort of baggy silk trousers and had kind of armour in rectangular little plates, rather like step nomad kind of armour.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Like you, Tom, after you went to India and you returned an Indian garb. Yeah. I guess maybe. Yeah, I think there's an element of that plus the French foreign legion. Yeah, they've seen things. All of that. And I mean, you don't come back from a gap year with your pockets loaded with gold. No. But these blokes absolutely do.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
So to be a Varangian guard, you were paid 40 gold solidi for a regular guardsman. And if you get to guard the imperial family, you get 44 solidi. That's as much money, if not more, than you would get from a really, really good Dane Geld payout. And of course, it's much more reliable. Basically, you've signed a contract. As long as you don't get killed. And gold is better than silver.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Yeah, of course. Remember we had Eleanor Barraclough on talking about the sagas. So in one of her books, I think it's Beyond the Northlands, she describes these people as strong, silent types dripping with gold, swayed in expensive fabrics and weighed down by top-of-the-range weaponry. And she compares them with the Rangers of the North in the Lord of the Rings.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
So, you know, the Rangers, when they turn up in the Fellowship of the Ring, Aragorn and whatnot, they're kind of these strong, silent, battle-hardened, mysterious figures behind their hoods with suspiciously fine swords. But not prone to berserk. No, I guess not. But we just don't see that. Feats of violence. I like to think it's happening offstage in Tolkien's world. Don't you? Yeah, I suppose.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
The massacres of orcs or something. Yeah, I guess. All those little orc babies. Right, exactly. So Harold, it makes complete sense that he will do this. If he is able to not get killed and to save his money, he'll be able to go back to Kiev, a rich man. He'll be able to marry Elisif.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
He'll have the blessing of the Grand Prince of Kiev, and then he can think about going back to Norway to reclaim his throne. So he goes to their barracks, and we're told brilliantly that he signs on under an assumed name, very Strider-like, and his name is Nordbricht, North Bright. That's what he chooses. And so, Tom, he's joined the Varangian Guard, and the stage is set for adventure. Hooray.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
So the way in which villages are becoming towns, warlords are becoming kings, pagans are becoming Christians, and the Viking Age is passing into history, and his life seems to be the perfect punctuation point, I would say. Now, the other point, we shouldn't perhaps labour too much. You've alluded to it.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Ahead... Fly Sicily, Armenia, Jerusalem, the murder of an emperor, eye gouging and a terrifying encounter with a giant snake. But will Harold ever make it back to avenge his brother and reclaim his throne? Tom, will he put aside the ranger and become who he was born to be? We'll find out next time.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
The best sources for his life are these sagas, like Heimskringla, great sagas sometimes written by Snorri Sturluson, the great kind of saga writer, written in Iceland centuries later. What are we talking, sort of 12th, 13th century sagas? So they're written long after the event. And as we will see, there are a lot of fictional and fantastical elements, which some scrupulous historians would cut.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
You know, they would do their best to eliminate from the podcast. We've done the opposite. Well, I've certainly done the opposite. I think it's best to play those up because, Tom, as we always say, it's important to see the world as they saw it, isn't it?
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
But the good news for everybody is this is a podcast and not a PhD.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
So if you're hoping for giant serpents... You'll get them. Berserkers covered in birds screaming, you know, at the top of their voices, this is the podcast for you. But let's start in history with what we know of the historical Harold Sigurdsson. So he's born in the uplands of Norway, probably in 1015. His father is a kind of local king, what they call a petty king, a kind of regional big man.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And his father had the brilliant name Sigurd Sir, Sigurd the Sow. And he had this nickname, the Sow, because he preferred farming to fighting. And sometimes people think, well, obviously this is derogatory. They imagine him as a kind of, you know, a lazy man who doesn't, you know... doesn't go out and smite his neighbours or whatever.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
But actually in the sagas, the portrait of Sigurd is quite generous. And I quote, he was a careful householder who kept his people closely to their work and often went about himself to inspect his crops and meadows, the cattle and the smithies.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Yeah, I think that's fair. Much loved by his vassals or whatever, I would imagine. Respected.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And he is married to this woman called Auster. She's the widow of another kind of provincial bigwig in the Westfold of Norway. And she's had a son with this guy called Olaf the Stout. Now, when Harold is born, so Olaf, his half-brother, is about 20. He's going to play a massive part in Harold's life because Harold is going to hugely look up to him.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
So Olaf, we know more about Olaf at this point than we do Harold. Olaf has been involved in war from a very young age. Supposedly, according to the sagas, he first went into battle when he was 12. And he fought in Finland and Estonia. He was part of that Scandinavian horde who descended on England in the years of Æthelred the Unready.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
So he served with this bloke, Thorkell the Tall, who we talked about last time. And he actually was one of the people who ended up as a mercenary fighting for Æthelred the Unready. Yeah. He's the guy who supposedly pulls down London Bridge. Exactly. Thereby inspiring the nursery rhyme.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Now, he's also spent time in Normandy, a place we talked a lot about last time, a crucial sort of node in the network across the sort of North Sea and the Channel. He'd been baptized a Christian in Rouen, and he later becomes a great champion or he's seen as a great champion of Christianity in Norway. But whether he's very pious, I think, is dubious.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
I think for him, Christianity is about power and about status and about generally smiting his enemies and making himself king.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
For a moment Harald lost his footing, but then a hand was dragging him back up, and Ulf the Icelander flashed him a grim smile. Olaf raised his voice again, rallying his men for another charge, the sea serpent waving proudly overhead. Yet in the corner of his eye, Harold could see the terrifying figure of Thorir the Hound.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Right. Jesus wouldn't like that, Tom, would he?
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
It is. His scalds, his poets, said that he was the ember breaker of battle. He gave gold to his loyal men and carrion to the ravens. That's what I like. I like that in a king. And actually, in all the poems that were composed about him when he was alive, there's no mention of being kind or turning the other cheek. There's an awful lot of mention of smashing people's heads in with hammers and stuff.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
So anyway, thanks to this head-smashing, Olaf has actually stamped his authority on the different kind of strongmen of Norway. And around the time of Harald's birth, so 1015, he's recognised as the king of Norway. So another brilliant example of the way in which the Viking Age is passing into history and being replaced by a kind of more ordered, more structured kind of world.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
So Harold, at this point, he's still only a little boy. Our first anecdote about him as a boy is in 1018 or so. His father has died, so Sigurd has died, and Olaf comes to visit his mother. So this early 20s guy who's become king, his half-brother, he comes to visit their hall in a place called Ringarike.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And the story is that Harald is there with his older brothers, Gothorm and Halfdan, and they're very shy of their relative, the king, and they can't meet his eye. They have the hearts of girls. They do. But Harold, who is three years old, sits on Olaf's lap and tugs his moustache. The mark of a king. Yeah. Olaf says, brother, you will be a fighter one day. And then the next day...
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Olaf is walking with his mother. They're having a chat in the sort of the fields and they come across the boys playing by the stream and the other boys are playing as farmers. But Harold Hardrada, the future Harold Hardrada, is sort of playing with long, ten long ships. And Olaf says to him, the day may come, brother, when you command real ships.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And then he says to them, and I'm sure this definitely happened, Tom. He says, what would you like? What would you like most in life? And Gutthorne says, I would like a lot of fields. And Halfdan says, I would like cows. And Harald, age three, says, house cows. So many they would eat all Halfdan's cows at a single feast.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And Olaf says to Auster, his mother, he says, well, well, mother, you are bringing up a king. So this is all very impressive, and I'm sure that this all happened. But actually, all the sources agree, and there's no reason to doubt them, that Harold is an exceptionally formidable character.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
So Snorri Sturluson in King Harold's Saga says, Harold was a handsome man of noble appearance, his hair and beard yellow. He had a short beard and long moustaches. Peculiarly, the one eyebrow was somewhat higher than the other. So he's kind of Roger Moore-like in that respect. You know, he can raise an eyebrow, At a merry quip. Yeah, he's brutal, but suave. Suave, exactly. His height was five L's.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
He was stern and severe to his enemies and cruelly punished all opposition or misdeed. So five L's, as historians point out, that would make him seven and a half feet tall. And the sources do say he's very, very tall. But he's probably not seven and a half feet.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
I mean, the one thing that people know is that Stamford Bridge, at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, he says of Harold Gobinson, what a small man.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
His teeth bared with savage laughter, his black spear dripping with blood, cutting through the crowd towards his brother. And it was now, as the battle hung in the balance, that the heavens proclaimed their verdict.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Yes. So he's blonde haired. He's incredibly impressive. And the portrait we get of him generally, I think in the sagas, captures that last of the Vikings feel. There's definitely a sort of, he's huge, he's ruthless, he loves gold, he likes fighting. And the sagas always have him. There's a brilliant book called Laughing Till I Die.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
by Tom Shippey, the great kind of expert on kind of Norse and Anglo-Saxon literature. He's written a lot about Tolkien. And Tom Shippey says one of the defining things about Harald Hardrard and the Salkers is he's always making quips and composing poems in the face of danger and stuff. The Vikings took that. That's very much a Viking sensibility.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
That, you know, there's a fatalism coupled with a sort of, I laugh in the face of death. which I don't doubt because you can tell that from the way he behaves. I don't doubt that that's true to his character to some degree.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
As he sits around the hearth, Tom, listening to the... to the bards or the skulls kind of telling their stories about Ragnar Lothbrok or whatever.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Yeah, so they're not really going on those piddling little raids anymore. What they're doing are launching proper invasions and seizing kingdoms and piling up gold on the skins of oxes. That's what they're doing. So he next appears in the sagas in the spring of 1030 when he's 15 years old. And a lot has changed since the days when he was, you know, tugging people's beards.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
So his brother Olaf, Olaf the Stout, this guy who'd united Norway, has had a massive falling out with Cnut, the king of Denmark and England, who we talked about in the last series. Now, we know that Cnut and Olaf did know each other. Their paths had undoubtedly crossed. in England back in the days of Svein Fortbeard and so on.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
And some Scandinavian historians think that what had basically happened is that Olaf had probably promised to be Cnut's vassal and had reneged on the deal, which is a big theme of Danish and Norwegian history. Well, because they'd fought each other on opposite sides in England. Exactly.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
So in 1028, so two years before 1030, Cnut had sailed from England with 50 warships and had actually been welcomed by the Norwegians with open arms. So it's pretty clear that in the north, in particular of Norway, the local magnates actually didn't like Olaf and wanted him out. And Canute, we're told, when the sagas had bribed them with enormous quantities of gold and silver.
The Rest Is History
552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)
Every man who came to him and wished to be his friend had his hands filled with coins. So Olaf, Harold's brother, has fled. He flees over the mountains to Sweden with a handful of his closest friends and his son Magnus, who will come up again on Thursday. And from Sweden, he took a ship across the Baltic and he vanished into the forests of what is now Russia.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. This episode is brought to you by Vanguard. History's greatest minds knew when to let experts handle the details.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
But I guess they think the Norwegians and the Danes have been fighting each other in the war, which we described last week as one of the most boring wars in history. So they probably think, well, they're too busy worrying about each other to be interested in England.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
Well, they're probably even less keen on a Norman king because a Scandinavian king would be at least a vaguely known quantity, whereas the Normans represent something unsettling and new, right?
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
Alfred the Great, right. So there are a few people hanging around from that family, aren't there? Because although Edward the Confessor famously had no children, he does have a nephew. So Edmund Ironside, so people may remember him from the series we did before Harold Hardrada. on the kind of last days of Anglo-Saxon England, Edmund Ironside had a son called Edward who'd gone off to Hungary.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
And that person, Tom, is obviously Harold Godwinson, the Earl of Wessex. But just before Harold Godwinson. So they know that they're going to face an invasion, right? Which means that they must take William's claim very, very seriously. Or at least know that William takes it incredibly seriously. So right at this point, they know if we don't choose William, he is definitely going to invade.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
Kind of confusing for him, but also convenient they're both of the same name. Kind of. Yeah. It helps with Valentine's Day, I guess.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
I think this reflects very well on Harold. He's like, yeah, whatever, who cares? He takes the same attitude towards the bones of saints that I would, Tom. I think it's fair to say. So brilliant, though not brilliant in another way, because as you say, Harold must know, as everybody else knows, that once he accepts the crown, it makes invasion as close to inevitable as you're going to get.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
So presumably that's why they're in a great rush. They want to get this done and dusted and they get on with their military preparations.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
Right. And this is Harold's brother, Tostig. So tell us a little bit about Tostig.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
So what does all this mean for England? Because it means not only is there the looming threat of William, there is the possible threat – at this point seems quite unlikely – of an attack from Scandinavia, but there's also Tostig hanging around. So there must be a massive sense of uncertainty, anxiety, dare I say dread, as the months pass.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
Oh my word, what a terrifying moment. So that's Halley's Comet, isn't it? Halley's Comet has appeared. Everybody knows what that means. Bloodshed is coming. And do you know what? We might have a little bit of it after the break. See you then.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
Now, Tom, as we know, history is full of spectacularly bad financial decisions. The South Sea bubble, tulip mania. Do I need to go on?
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
Head to investengine.com slash history or use the promo code history for a welcome bonus of up to £100. For a limited time, they're also offering a further bonus of up to £4,000 if you transfer your ISA or invest in their pension account.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
So that was the audiobook of The History of the English-Speaking Peoples, and that was read by none other than Sir Winston Churchill, Tom, the top Briton of all time. And that book, interestingly, was published in 1956. But I read from a very reputable historian, that's you, that Churchill wrote those words, or I quote, reportedly wrote those words.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
Welcome back to The Rest Is History. We are in the weeks after Easter 1066. England has just been visited by Halley's Comet. So Halley's Comet was named after the astronomer Edward Halley, who in 1705 calculated that this comet reappeared about every 75 years. However, that's not how people view it in 1066, is it, Tom? Because they say, Comet 1066.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
Yeah, I mean, he's got one terrible foreign menace on his mind by the Normans and another looming just on the horizon. Yeah.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
He's also about the natural metier of a Frenchman. So even with all this, even with all his carts of dung and his hard-faced greedy Frenchmen and whatnot, It's still a big, it's still a challenge, isn't it? He's got to basically get them across the channel. He's got to land. He's got to win battles. He's got to get to London, all of that stuff.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
She, like me, has forgotten about the Welsh. Anyway, obviously this is now Tom Holland bingo. Yeah, right. Because not only is there military technology that puts the Normans ahead, but dare I say there's also spiritual technology or at least a sort of ideological technology.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
Defeating foreign enemies, smiting them. Smiting Germany, the French, or sometimes the Spanish. Or the Germans. Yeah. A whole range of people getting defeated.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
The more I hear about this Hildebrand, the less I like him. He's a man who plunges... England into 500 dark years only reversed in the 1530s. I think it's fair to say, Tom.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
He's going to be killing an anointed king, more Tom Holland bingo. And killing an anointed king is a big deal. But not maybe if this king is steeped in sin. Is that basically the claim?
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
You could burst on your deathbed. That could happen to you. And let's see if that happens to William.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
He's done it. He's got exams on it next week on 1066. I mean, all the time we're talking about Harold Hardrada and William and Harold and all that stuff.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
Oh, my word. Harold Hardrada is back. Unbelievable scenes. What a bombshell. Do you know, I'm so excited that if I was a member of the Rest Is History Club, I'd listen to the next episode right away to see what happens when Harold Hardrada lands. What's Harold Gobinson going to do? Well, I know. Amazing stuff. Heart-stopping drama.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
And if I wasn't a member of the Restless History Club, I would head immediately to therestlesshistory.com because I would be agog with excitement to find out what happens next in this extraordinary epic story of 1066. So, Tom, that was so exciting. I just can't wait for the next episode. And on that bombshell, yeah, goodbye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
It speaks to our extraordinary self-confidence and self-assurance as a people that we enjoy this story so much.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
Well, it was like, I mean, Game of Thrones, right? Whereas armies from different continents are suddenly all fighting for the same, the Iron Throne. I mean, this is clearly one of the inspirations for that. Rival warlords competing with their vast armies that represent different civilizations for one prize, and only one is going to win.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
So just to remind people, we talked about the Godwins and we talked about Edward the Confessor's reign before we got into Harold Hardrada. So you had Godwin. He was a great collaborator with Cnut, wasn't he? Basically a self-made man who had risen as Cnut's, not exactly his right hand, but one of his hands. Subtle, ruthless, plausible. That's like me, Tom. Then you had the Godwinsons.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
So if you've been putting off sorting out your ISA, or if you are new to investing, Vanguard's managed ISA makes it simple. You know, life is busy and figuring out investments can be really overwhelming. But with Vanguard, you don't have to do it alone. They will help you work out your risk appetite. They'll match you to an investment plan that is right for you. And then...
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
So Harold, he's Earl of Wessex. He's succeeded his father.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
Right, let me just stop you there. So the Anglo-Saxon monarchy does not proceed on the automatic assumption that, That the next person in the, you know, as it would now, the next person in the family tree automatically, unquestionably gets the crown. There is a degree, there is maybe an expectation that they'll be seriously considered, but there is a degree of flexibility in the arrangements.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
So now we have this kind of conclave-style scenario where the different... earls, bishops and whatnot are gathered in Westminster, they have to decide and they have to do it obviously pretty quickly because nobody likes nature abhors a vacuum. So the Godwinsons are obviously the key players, Harold, Goethe and Leofwine. They've never been unchallenged, have they?
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
Because there's always been a counterbalance, which is this Mercian dynasty that goes back all the way to, what was his name? Leofric.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
Yeah. And they've been serious players all through this period, the Leofric people.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
So this is the balance of forces. These people assemble on the 6th of January, and as they survey the scene... They effectively have three main candidates, I would say, for the throne of England. Well, possibly four. Possibly four. Let's say three and a half. Okay. So they've lived in the shadow of a conquest already, which is the conquest of Canute in 1016. Yeah.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
So from the moment they assemble, they must be thinking, well, we don't want that to happen again.
The Rest Is History
554. 1066: The Shadows of War (Part 1)
And there is a slight possibility that could happen again, isn't there? Because they know that there is a very powerful contender across the North Sea in Norway. And that person is Harald Hardrada. And he does have a little bit of a claim, doesn't he?
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com.
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
¶¶ ORCHESTRA PLAYS
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Wow. Thank you, Nardis. That was amazing. And thank you, Mozart. So remember, Mozart was just 14 years old when he wrote that piece. Yeah, amazing.
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
So, Tom, this is very like our situation, isn't it? This is how we are treated. They're in the audience tonight. Our executive producers, Tony Pastor and Jack Davenport, they treat us like employees, don't they? And we, like Mozart, feel humiliated, treated like servants. And this is exactly what happens to Mozart when he goes back to Salzburg, right?
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Thank you.
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Now, as you've been listening to this episode, you might have noticed that this episode had something a little extra special, didn't it, Tom?
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
And if you were there, you will remember how absolutely extraordinary their performance was. We are thrilled to have them featured on this episode. And frankly, we're even more thrilled to be able to make that recording of that event open free to everybody in the podcast who wasn't able to attend in person.
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
So, Tom, Mozart has left Salzburg. Does his gamble pay off?
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Right, so there's the famous moment, for those of you who've seen Amadeus, which apparently is reflected in some of the sources, that Joseph II, the emperor, sees one of Mozart's productions and says, it's great, but there are too many notes. LAUGHTER
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
But Tom, let's get down to what really matters. The point of going freelance is often to make more money. Is Mozart making more money? He is making more money, yes.
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Shameless.
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Well, the wonderful news is that Tom will not be singing that aria. It's going to be sung by William Thomas, thank God. And the aria is called, ,, which means, I believe, open a little bit your eyes. William.
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Tom, ladies and gentlemen, I hate to say it, but that is how a professional does it. Gotta start somewhere. So, thank you very much. That was wonderful. So, Tom, Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni are both great successes. And obviously, the image that we often have of Mozart is this sort of ludicrous spendthrift.
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
But don't they show that actually he's an extremely capable entrepreneur as well as a magnificent composer?
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
So the traditional version of this story is that it's a very strange and eerie and haunting moment in his life, isn't it?
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Good evening, and welcome to The Rest Is History.
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
But even so, Tom, this is surely the most tragic moment in the history of classical music, of music generally.
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Thank you.
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
It was played by the brilliant orchestra that I have behind me, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. We have the Philharmonia Chorus. And above all, the most important person who's on the stage tonight, the person whose idea for this evening this was, the person who has made it possible, and that is our majestic conductor, Oliver Zeffman.
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
Thank you, Oliver. Thank you. Now, those of you who've seen the film Amadeus will know that it is the story of a brilliantly talented man who is hounded to his death by a mediocre rival. Yep. That's what it's about. And Tom, this is very much the dynamic. at Goldhanger Podcasts, is it not?
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
A genius with a capital G. Absolutely, and that's why the lives of Mozart and Beethoven are a brilliant window onto the world of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. We'll be exploring in this show the emergence of the idea of the genius and the idea of art with a capital A, and the way in which that reflects political and social change, and also, frankly, the way that people make money.
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
So it's a continuous story that we've got for you tonight, but we're going to tell it in two halves. We will be coming to Beethoven in the second half. Now, can I just ask, are there any members here of the Rest Is History Club? Very good. So you can listen to that second half right away.
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
It is. That is Theo's joke. Theo is very cross if people tell that joke and they don't give him the credit, so well done, Theo. Because in his own way, he's a genius. So, for now, in the first half, it is the story of Mozart, and that will be told to you by Mr Tom Holland. Tom, take it away. Right, so... Mozart.
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
He did. He did, and people laugh, and they shouldn't laugh, because it was a sublime performance.
The Rest Is History
526. Mozart: History's Greatest Prodigy LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall
So this is very like the scenes at the Northamptonshire regional poetry competition.
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com.
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
So to go to this thing about it being a drama, you make this point at some length. You talk about this in your introduction to the new translation.
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
And also to pick up your point about Augustus being the godfather, you make the point that Augustus from the very beginning, arguably his greatest political skill, is that he's brilliant at playing lots of different parts and he has lots of different kind of masks and personas. And you describe him as Rome's greatest actor.
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
And there's this very, very famous scene, which is from Suetonius, where Augustus is on his deathbed.
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
and he has himself all kind of primped and whatnot he does his hair and he he has his jaw set straight and then he has all his friends in and he says to them do you think i played my part in the comedy of life well and then he says he quotes lines from a play if the play's been a good one clap your hands and let me leave the stage to the sound of your applause it's a brilliant brilliant ending yeah if if it really happened i mean who knows whether it happened or whether it's a
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
folk tale that was told about Augustus.
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
So this idea of the Caesars as actors, that kind of runs through Suetonius, doesn't it? That they're playing parts on a stage.
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
And as these things were being done, so he wept, and cried repeatedly, that I should die a mere artisan. When, during the delay caused by these preparations, a letter was brought to his freedman by courier, he snatched it and learned by reading it that the Senate had proclaimed him a public enemy and ordered a search made for him so that he might be punished according to the ancestral fashion.
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
That thing about Augustus as an actor, This is also a brilliant kind of primer in politics and how politics works. And politics as, I mean, it's something that actually, you know, Donald Trump instinctively knows and Keir Starmer doesn't, which is that politics is about performance and about display and ritual and so on. And show business, I guess, to an extent.
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
And Suetonius is brilliant on politics as show business. That runs right through the 12 biographies, doesn't it?
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
And obviously Augustus establishes the template for what it is to be a good emperor. And to some extent, I guess you could argue the story of Suetonius' book is the story of people struggling to fill his shoes.
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
Definitely the case of Tiberius, I guess, with the Caligula and Claudius, the initial successors. They're all part of his family. I mean, this is the remarkable thing, isn't it? That it's a kind of monarchy in all but name. Yeah. At first, purely for dynastic reasons, not because they've won power. Well, Tiberius is a very accomplished man. The others are not so accomplished.
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
But as long as that family endures, which it does to the time of Nero, the line of succession, it kind of makes some sense. But when Nero is killed, and then you have the year of the four emperors, and then the rise of the Flavian dynasty, how do they see themselves in terms of their succession? I mean, they're still trying to become Augustus, aren't they?
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
And when, after asking what this punishment might be, he learned that a man sentenced to it would be stripped naked, have his neck put in a fork, and then be beaten to death with rods, so terror-stricken was he that he grabbed two daggers he had brought with him and tested the blades of both, after which, on the grounds that the fatal hour had not yet arrived, he put them away again.
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
In a very chaotic world.
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
But then came the horseman, who had been commissioned to bring him back alive, closing in upon him. When he heard their approach, he said in a shaking voice, quoting Homer, The thundering of swift-footed horses echoes in my ears. Whereupon, with the assistance of his secretary, Epaphroditus, he slit his throat.
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
So a slightly quieter age, I guess, but without the excitement and the histrionics. Of the first Caesars. Yes. Now, by the way, listeners who are interested in those first Caesars, we have three episodes to come on Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius. And obviously, if you're a member of the Restless History Club, you can hear those straight after this.
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
But we will be back after the break to hear about Suetonius himself, because this is a fascinating story about the man who wrote these biographies, and actually the man from whom we derive so much of our understanding of the early Roman Empire. So we'll be back after the break.
The Rest Is History
534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
As a boy, I obtained a small bust of Augustus, an old bronze which had the name Thurinus, inscribed on it in letters of iron, albeit almost faded away. I made a gift of this statuette to the Emperor, who now keeps it in his private chamber as an object of reverence. So this comes from Suetonius' biography of Augustus. And Suetonius is, of course, talking about himself.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
And it's a very rare glimpse of the author himself. He's telling you a little detail about the statue that he gave to the emperor, as we will discover the emperor is Hadrian. So Tom, unpack this a little bit for us.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
So what else do we know about him? So do we have any sense, for example, of when he might have been born or where his family came from?
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
Although still on the margins of consciousness when a centurion came bursting in and pretending to have come with the aim of helping him, held a cloak up to staunch his wound, he only muttered, too late and such loyalty. With these words, he died, and so fixedly did his eyeballs bulge from their sockets that onlookers were filled with horror and dread.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
Cranky. That's a strange memory.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
And people have kind of played with that to go backwards, to say, well, if he was a young man then, then he was probably born round about the time of the death of Nero, because that would place him as a very young man during the reign of Domitian and Domitian's campaign against the tax evaders and so on and so forth. And he's from... Is that right?
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
What, his family are from North Africa originally?
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
But luckily for Suetonius, he doesn't end up in the north of England. In Vindolanda. He ends up working very closely in the Imperial Archive. Is that right? So in Rome, in the libraries in Rome.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
But this is a problem, isn't it, in the long run? Because in 122, so this is the thing about going to Britain, you should basically never go to Britain because Suetonius and Septicius Clarus gone to Britain as well with Hadrian.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
So that tremendous passage is describing the death of Nero. On the 9th of June, 68, it was written by the Roman scholar Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus in his great collection of biographies, The Lives of the Caesars, The Twelve Caesars, depending on what you call it. And I'm delighted to say that that was translated by a top amateur translator.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
Something terrible happens in Britain and they're sacked.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
Have they been rude to Hadrian's wife? Is that it?
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
So just on this issue of sex, this is the thing that when people first read The Lives of the Caesars, especially if they're young and they're sort of really into the Romans. So I remember having this book when I was 13 or so, having it for Christmas. I went to my grandfather's house and I had it with me. It's, you know, oh, very good. He's reading a Penguin classic.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
And I can remember sitting there reading through it and kind of going really red. Blimey. Yeah, kind of, oh God, I hope they don't find out. It's really, really strong stuff, some of it. It really is, yes. Is Suetonius, do you think, peculiarly fascinated in it or is he typical? Does he tell us something about Roman society and culture more broadly?
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
And you make the point in the introduction, don't you, that the Romans didn't have the distinction that we had between private and public. So the idea we have, which is that you have a public face, but you also have a private life and you have a right to a private life, would have struck them as absolutely bizarre, absurd and meaningless.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
Because to them, the idea of privacy in and of itself was perverted and sinister and weird.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
And that gifted young amateur, Tom, is yourself because this is your new translation of Suetonius coming out in Penguin Classics on the 13th of February. Very exciting.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
Right. And that brings us on to those characters that we'll be doing in the next three episodes, Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius. Because in each case, Suetonius makes a series of kind of punchy allegations about what we would call their private lives. And how much can we trust what Suetonius is telling us? So, for example, about Caligula getting up to no good or Tiberius' filthy habits.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
Is this part of a kind of literary tradition? So, in other words, it's just invented, it's propagandistic, it's political spin, effectively. And how much do you think it's grounded in the reality of what must have been a very different kind of sexual culture to our own?
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
Well, on that point about cultural context, obviously one problem that we have reading this is that our understanding of sexual morality, as it were, and in fact, our understanding of sexuality more broadly, is completely at odds with the Romans' understanding. So, for example, you made the point that they would have had no sense of the terms that we use, heterosexual and homosexual.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
That would have just seemed weird and baffling to them. Is that right? Yeah.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
But the taboo for them is if that's turned on its head and somebody who is a powerful person allows himself to be exploited or yields to others in some way or debases himself.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
That's unbelievable. But I'll tell you what, the interesting thing is that the life that kicks off the volume, the 12 Caesars, the first of the 12 lives... is obviously that of Julius Caesar. But this was a suspicion that was attached to Julius Caesar, was it not?
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
Was it not claimed that as a young man he'd gone off to Bithynia and the king of Bithynia had had his way with Julius Caesar and everybody said, well, that shows that Julius Caesar is an absolute nothing and a weakling and he's a nobody.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
One small slip when I was a young man and they judged me forever, that kind of thing.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
They're endlessly readable and endlessly fascinating. And so, as we said, in the next three episodes, we are going to dig in, dig deep into three of them. And they are two of the most notorious of all the Caesars. So Tiberius on his island on Capri getting up to no good or not. and Caligula. I mean, Caligula's is one of the great biographies in all history.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
I mean, one of the most fascinating lives in all history, let alone Roman history. And then we'll also look at the Caesar who inspired I, Claudius, the book and the series, and that is, of course, Claudius himself. So if you want to listen to those episodes right now and you're not already a member of the Rest Is History Club, just head to therestishistory.com and sign up.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
You get a host of unbelievable benefits. You do. But you also get to listen to Tom's dissection of these extraordinary lives immediately. But we will be back for the rest of you on Thursday with the sordid, or not, life of Tiberius. Tom, thank you so much. That was an absolute tour de force. Great fun. And we'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
Yeah. So let's just run through very quickly for those people who don't know. We kick off with Julius Caesar, crosses the Rubicon. Yeah. Sort of topples the Republic, but famously is not the first emperor, as everybody thinks. So he's the one we kick off with. Then it's Augustus, the first emperor, arguably the greatest politician in Western history, who establishes the template for what follows.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
Then we have Tiberius. We will be doing an episode about Tiberius, won't we? We will. And how would you describe him in a sentence? Grizzled, experienced general who misbehaves on the island of Capri. Or does he? Right.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
So the fascination of these stories is both that they describe the evolution of Rome, so from republic to empire. Mm-hmm. But the other element of it is the extraordinary vividness and richness of the lives that it describes and the details.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
So many of the things that people best know, that people immediately reach for about the Roman emperors, particularly the sex and violence, many of these things come from these these biographers, don't they? So we mentioned Tiberius. So Tiberius, when he's in retirement, unbelievable sexual depravity, or is it, on the island of Capri, or Nero, or Caligula.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
No waiting in line with people who are sick with who knows what. Thanks to Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon One Medical, healthcare just got less painful.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
I mean, these stories all come from Suetonius by and large, don't they?
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
Well, you made this point in your introduction. For people who are hesitating whether or not to buy your translation, I have to say, it obviously pains me to say this, especially to say it publicly, but it's prefaced by a brilliant introduction by you. Oh, you're very kind, Dominic. where you explain all the context and whatnot.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
And you make the point that the pharaohs of Egypt or the great rulers of Persia, these people are just names, really. It's very hard for us to get a sense of their personalities. But thanks to Suetonius, you have a real sense. You know what Augustus said.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
his appearance of modesty and simplicity. You know the tastes that Nero had, what clothes he wore, all of these kind of details that allow them to speak to us as flesh and blood, three-dimensional characters in a way that's not really the case with any other people or very few other people from the ancient world.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
There's quite a lot of beastliness in your translation, isn't there? Because obviously the first thing I did when I saw your translation was to check for all the beastly bits. And they're very much present and correct. You haven't gone for the asterisks.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
Though I have to say, if there are people listening to this podcast with 10-year-old children who love the Romans, this probably is not the ideal book because there's some quite pungent behavior, isn't there? I think it's fair to say.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
So Robert Graves obviously turned the raw material from the 12 Caesars into his novels I, Claudius and Claudius the God. And iClaudius then became a BBC TV series in the 1970s, hugely successful. And the appeal of it, I guess, both in iClaudius and actually in Suetonius' original, is it's got a little bit of the soap opera about it, hasn't it?
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
The sex and the violence, the narrative twists, the melodrama, because it is a family. Certainly the first few lives are a family melodrama, the family of Augustus and the crazy things that happen. Yeah.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
Now all Nero's attendants urged him to place himself beyond the reach of the indignities that were closing in on him. And so he ordered them, as he watched, to dig a hole the size of his body, and to collect such fragments of marble as could be found, and to bring water and firewood ready for the disposal of what would very soon be his corpse.
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534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)
You've said it in the American way, Tom. You've absolutely shamed yourself.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. At the end of France, there is a plain filled with woods and fruit trees.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
Right. These are tools of dominance and oppression. They're tools, they're symbols of surveillance and control, but they're also, you know, they're impregnable. You put them on a hill or on a rocky outcrop or whatever it might be, and there's no way that the people in the surrounding countryside can storm, or very difficult for them to storm it.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
And as you have pointed out in your notes, this is very reminiscent of the way that... you know, when the Greeks wrote about the intrusion on the world scene of the Romans or the Chinese about the coming of the Mongols, they would say, oh my God, there's this extraordinary new people who are absolutely formidable, very frightening, very brutal. They kill everybody.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
You control that territory now once you put down your castle.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
But because, of course, France is such a competitive arena, Anjou's neighbours then have to follow suit, don't they? So that by this point, or certainly by the time Robert goes off on his jaunt to the Holy Land, Normandy too has lots of castles. So you have to, because it's basically a harms race.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
But I guess the question then is, is there a kind of human dimension to this? And this is a really interesting story.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
They, you know... Where they come from. Yeah, where they come from. And the Normans... are greeted by writers beyond Normandy's borders with the same kind of awe and terror, aren't they?
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
But the paradox, though, right, is that if you have your Fultnera or whoever who controls all this stuff, this makes him, you know, much more powerful and the potential, therefore, for a very strong and domineering state indeed. On the other hand, if they're not controlled... They could easily be tools for complete fragmentation.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
You could have independent castles and independent groups of knights and all this kind of thing. So if you have a weak king or a weak count or duke or whatever, then the potential for complete anarchy, an armed and violent anarchy, is surely greater than ever before.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
All of which means that for Robert the Magnificent, for all his magnificence, going off on his pilgrimage is kind of risky and, dare I say, irresponsible. I mean, he is the authority figure. If he leaves, isn't there a danger that all the different mercenary bands, as it were, will set up their own private fiefdoms?
The Rest Is History
550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
It's literally as if you'd been on holiday with Dan Snow. I would never poison Dan. No, he'd poison you. No, Dan would never poison me. You would put him in the shade, Tom, with your enormous download figures. Come on. And my pistachios.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
I'm not reading that. You can read it. Absolutely, you can read it.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
What an unbelievably thrilling cliffhanger. Join us after the break to find out what happens to William of Normandy. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. And so at last we come to one of the great monsters in all history, Duke William of Normandy, the man who shamed himself and his country by winning the Battle of Hastings and carrying out the Norman Conquest.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
So we're in July 1035, and this bloodstained figure is at this point only eight years old. He's William the Bastard. Everyone calls him William the Bastard because he's not legitimate. And basically, the odds are massively against it. I mean, he probably won't live to the end of the year. You see, I'm surprised you don't admire William. Really?
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
I think we said recently that I, in this series, there's nothing I like more than law and order. And he's very much a law and order man.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
They like the Rolling Stones.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
Well, no one does doubt, although William is only eight years old. So inevitably... The early years of his, in inverted commas, reign are going to be very bloody and contested. I mean, whatever he does and how many eight-year-olds are prepared to take the reins of this warrior state?
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
So these are the castles being used as tools of anarchy, basically.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
And what about William? I mean, he's only eight. What's he doing in all this? He's presumably not going around castrating people.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
And the fact that he is observing this from Italy is a reminder to us in England, we tend to think of the Norman conquest as the Normans are going one way. he has seen a great stream of Norman freebooters, adventurers, rogues, you know, mercenaries, whatever, heading south into Italy and beyond.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
Yeah, it's a good... But we should think about this a little bit more carefully with our own royal family. There may be a similar... Thank you. Thank you.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
And actually, for me, one of the great fascinating stories of Normans is how they expand southwards and become a Mediterranean power.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
, , , , ,, P. P. P. P. P. P. ac ac ac ac ac ac ac ac ac ac ac ac ac ac ac ac ac ac ac ac ac ac in P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P la� la� la� la� la la la la la� la� la� la� la� la� la� and.?
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
Oh, you wouldn't. I mean, that's not a mother you want to be reunited with, frankly. But here's the thing, right? So this has been a mad story so far. All these people called Harefoot and Harthacanutes and whatnot, and just ridiculous twists. But now there is another...
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
insane twist to this story, which, you know, if you were the Game of Thrones script writer, you'd say, come on, this is a bit much. So Harold Harefoot basically has won. Yeah. He's king. The years go by. He is 25 years old. He could live for another 40 years. You know, a lot of English listeners to this podcast may be thinking, I've actually never heard of this bloke, Harold Harefoot.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
I don't believe this man was ever king of England. And the reason for that is the sources are so kind of fragmentary and vague, but also unbelievable twist. He drops dead out of nowhere for no good reason.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
Let's just sow that seed. If later on there's another king of Norway hanging around and there's an English succession crisis, he might dig this out and say, whoa, I am actually entitled. Yeah, I'm in. I'm the king of England now. So how does Harthacnut do? He's terrible.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
That's only a demi-truss. That's more a kind of Rachel Reeves. That's a Rachel Reeves, but then a truss effect.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
This is why you could never really make a drama of this, because people would say, I've invested so much in these two characters, this feud between Hereford and Harthacnut that I assume will dominate the rest of the series. And then, no, they're both dropped dead for no obvious reason.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
But that doesn't work out. So she just basically then, what happens to her?
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
In this narrow place, there lived a great number of very tough, strong people, the name of whom was Normans. Such were their numbers that in time, as the population grew, the fields and orchards of Normandy proved insufficient to keep them all fed.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
But that's all very unlikely, right? Because this guy, Edward, who's finally become king, he's hale and hearty. He could have sons. And if that were to happen, you know, there would be no opening whatsoever.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
I wonder who you could be thinking about there, Tom. Well... We will find out in our next episode when we turn to one of the glittering stars of English history, the last English king, hero to all who knew him, the story of Harold Godwinson. Now, if you want to hear that episode right now, and why wouldn't you? You can if you're a member of the Rest Is History Club.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
And if you're not already a member, then just go to therestishistory.com and sign up. But we will be back next time with the next thrilling chapter in this epic saga. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
Okay. Well, let me just pause you there. So last time we heard about how Normandy was established. So that's under a guy called Rollo or Rolf. Rolf. So we're talking about Northmen, Vikings effectively, who have carved out and semi-being granted this territory in northern France by Charles the Simple. And that was in the early 10th century. So Rollo died probably about 930.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
But now we've moved on a bit in time. So the last person that we met who was the leader of the Normans was a guy called Richard II, Richard the Good. So he's the brother-in-law of two other characters that we met last time, Ethelred the Unready and Knute. And he had kept Normandy pretty settled, stable, secure.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
And he's, of course, the brother as well of Emma of Normandy, who's got herself mixed up in all kinds of exciting dynastic shenanigans over in England, which it would take another hour to explain. Yeah. So... Richard II in Normandy, things actually have been very ordered and secure under him, right?
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
Therefore, the Normans scattered here and there throughout all the various parts of the world, making their way into numerous regions and countries, abandoning what little they had in order to obtain very much more. These people departed their homes, but they did not follow the custom of most people who go through the world, entering into the service of others. rather like warriors of old.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
And to give people a sense, I mean, it's far more than, let's say, I don't know, being the governor of a US state or something, because you're also an international player, aren't you? You can almost run your own foreign policy. Is that fair?
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
And yet Normandy itself is not remotely as rich and powerful as the Eastern Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, not least because Normandy is embattled, right? It's surrounded by predators and rivals.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
Well, you know, my views on that. My sister-in-law went out with a man called Paddy and he only drank milk. We went with them to Lisbon and he only drank milk. And the Portuguese aren't really into drinking milk. So it was a total washout. And I've always been bitter about it since then. I mean, I didn't drink milk.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
This is what happens if you get involved with this milk drinking business.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
Their aim was to make everybody subject to them and under their lordship. And so they took up arms and broke the bond of peace. And whether as a mass of infantrymen or on horseback, they proved themselves great in deeds. So that was the terrifying opening to the history of the Normans, written, Tom, in the mid-11th century by a monk called Amartas.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
Fulk the Black. That's a great name.
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
But also what Fulk represents and people like him represent is something bigger than just the sort of the dynastic soap opera of 10th century politics. He's not a blowhard. He's not just a kind of wild barbarian. There is a, is it fair to call it a revolution?
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550. The Road to 1066: Rise of the Normans (Part 3)
There is a massive transition in European military life underway at this point, of which the Normans will be the great beneficiaries and the embodiment. And that transition comes about because, and here's what I think a crucial difference between France and England. France is so divided and fragmented. It's competitive. It's militarily competitive. And that breeds technological change.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hi, everybody. Dominic Sandbrook from The Rest Is History here.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Exciting. But before we get into all that, before we get to the shadows and the deadly peril, what we haven't done is actually tell people exactly where we are and who we're dealing with. So let's do a bit of that. John Dee is born in the summer of 1527. He's born in London in the shadow of the Tower of London. But actually, he is of Welsh descent, isn't he?
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
So his father is called Roland, and he's from Radnorshire.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Right. And there's so many great stories. So obviously JFK, you and I disagree about JFK, because I, of course, think it was Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone, and you think differently. But there are other stories. You mentioned attempted assassinations. So for example, FDR. FDR was almost shot before his inauguration in 1933.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
And we know that John Dee must have been an extremely bright boy. And of course, because his father has done very well, he's able to send his son to a grammar school and then sent him to Cambridge University, where Dee, again, is brilliant. And it's at Cambridge. It's a mixture, isn't it? Because there are some people there who are hot Protestants, very evangelical at his college, St. John's.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
It's famous for its evangelical Protestants. But it's quite a lot of diversity. There are loads of Catholics as well. So he's getting ideas and whatnot from everywhere. And he's quite ecumenical by nature.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
And that's an attempted assassination that really could have changed the course of history, because no FDR. Does the United States still enter the Second World War? Does the story of the 20th century play out completely differently? So There is so much to talk about, and I'm really, really looking forward to doing it. What are you looking forward to most, Anthony?
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
But as we will see, Dee is being very disingenuous here, isn't he? Because there are other very good reasons, more obvious reasons, why he gets this reputation as a conjurer. So before we get on to the fact that he is genuinely a conjurer, part of this is religious, because he's kind of an ecumenical fellow by temperament.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
His more evangelical, hot Protestant friends think, oh, you've got Catholic sympathies and they love a bit of magic. And you're mixed up in all that, aren't you?
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
But if that's not sinister and un-English enough... He's also really interested in maths, isn't he? Which is also very sinister. So calculating and conjuring are synonyms at the time. Yes. And so doing a lot of complicated equations and whatnot is an unmistakable sign that you're in league with the devil.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
So alchemy and astrology are two obvious ones, but even more exciting is the language of the angels, which he's absolutely obsessed by, isn't he?
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
And this guy Kelly is going to come into view eventually, isn't he? But before we get to that... It's all kicking off politically. And this is very challenging for Dee himself because he could be facing a very brief appointment with either a funeral pyre or whatever or the chopping block. And this comes back to Edward VI, ultra-Protestant, you know, four years old or whatever he is. Yeah.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
He dies in 1553, and we did a podcast about this. We did a two-part about Lady Jane Grey. There are Protestants who want to stop Edward's sister Mary, who is Catholic, becoming queen, but that fails, and Mary, who is determined to turn back the clock and restore Catholicism, is back on the throne.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
If you're a patriotic Brit who loves the special relationship, if you're an American living in London, or if you're an American who just loves getting on planes across the Atlantic to see the very highest quality entertainment, we absolutely expect to see you there in the West End on Sunday, the 30th of March.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
And encompassing the death of a king or queen is a dodgy thing. And he doesn't manage to keep this a secret, does he? So the word gets out. And when people know that he's done this, I mean, he's in real trouble. He really is.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
So surely he's now massively exposed himself. I mean, he's changed sides enough times now for everybody to distrust him. But He's been this bloke's sidekick. He's been interrogating Protestants. Why is he not punished? Why is there not a massive backlash against him?
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
And to tell you the truth, what I'm really hoping is that on the night, Anthony will finally reveal the truth behind the JFK assassination.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Does he not still have some credit with Elizabeth for doing that horoscope? I mean, is she not still grateful to him for that?
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Well, I'll just actually look into this mirror that I've got next to my computer. Yeah, do some scrying. Ask the angels. It was actually Sunday the 15th of January, 1559, which is, funnily enough, that's the date I would have chosen. So, good choice. Wow.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Well, that's very like me because I did it through the language and the secrets of the Daily Mail. He did it through the language and secrets of angels. Some people would say the same thing. We'll take a break and we'll return with more John Dee. This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Well, Tom, as you know, I am absolutely passionate about NordVPN. One of the things I love about them is their Threat Protection Pro, an absolutely brilliant antivirus tool. It is so effective and so powerful. It is integrated directly into the NordVPN app. So what it does is it protects you from phishing and other cyber threats.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
And the brilliant thing about it is it allows you to browse safely and smoothly.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
That's one of the things that make me so passionate about NordVPN. So to stay secure online, you really should take advantage of our exclusive NordVPN discount. You really should, you know. All you need to do is to go to nordvpn.com slash restishistory. When you sign up, you can receive a bonus four months on top of your plan, and there is no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
The link is also in the episode description box. At four of the clock in the morning, my mother Jane Dee died at Maud Lake. She made a godly end. God be praised, therefore. She was 77 years old.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
The Queen's Majesty, to my great comfort, came with her train from the court and at my door, graciously calling me to her on horseback, exhorted me briefly to take my mother's death patiently, and withal told me that the Lord Treasurer had greatly commended my doings for her. She remembered also how at my wife's death it was her fortune likewise to call upon me.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
So that's John Dee's diary for the 10th of October, 1580. So his mother, Jane, has died at 77 years old. Very good innings. And it's a sweet little moment. Elizabeth I, you know, was she going to be the empress of all Catholics and Protestants? But she's still not too grand to stop off and see how he's doing. Doesn't that reflect well on Good Queen Bess?
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Tickets for this event are on sale now. To buy yours, just go to therestershistory.com. Unfortunately, this is not the book you seek. I discovered it in my boxes on my return from Bohemia. But one treasured book was missing. I believe Edward Kelly replaced it. A rare text, larger than this one. It contained many mysteries which Edward could understand with divine assistance.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Now, as you can probably tell from the noise of the pool, I am joined by a friend of the show, Anthony Scaramucci, who is on his island, surrounded by the luxurious trappings of wealth. He is, of course, the host of The Rest Is Politics US. And Anthony and I have a very special announcement. on Sunday the 30th of March.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
And a great example of that is this project that he's fascinated by, or he has been fascinated by for most of the preceding decade, which is this idea that you mentioned in the first half of a British empire. It's so interesting that he's using those words before there is even really a British empire. Yeah.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
But the funny thing is he's obsessed by the sea and cartography and all of that, but he's never been to sea himself. Well, as you know.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Yeah. And the second thing that he has, he's got lots of books about occult science, alchemy, astrology. Of course he does. And then the third thing, antiquarian books. Now, why are these antiquarian books? So they're going back to the time of King Arthur and Welsh princes and stuff. Now, why are they so important for... for the future.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
As is Elizabeth. Right.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
But those books that Dee has on Prince Madoc, I mean, let's be frank, they're works of fiction.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
The Emperor Rudolf took great interest in both him and this book. Edward said it contained a secret method for obtaining immortality. So that, everybody, was Dr John Dee, who is a character in the TV drama A Discovery of Witches. which is a series based on the All Souls trilogy by Deborah Harkness.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Yeah, so it actually genuinely matters, and it inspires particularly Walter Raleigh, doesn't it? Yes. You mentioned in the first half him going off to El Dorado, or of course he famously went off to Virginia and founded the Roanoke colony. And he's been reading or listening to Dee. These ideas are rattling around Walter Raleigh's brain. So this actually has real-world consequences.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
So he's the bloke who's talking to the angels. Yes. And we can't be entirely certain where he came from. He's probably of Irish descent, hence the name Kelly. But he's from the Midlands, right? From Worcester, possibly.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Hard to imagine how you'd measure that.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
And those people who've seen it will know that the series begins with a historian who goes to the Bodleian Library and because she's a witch, she discovers all kinds of amazing stuff. So a vampire from Downton Abbey who is at the fall of Carthage. So it's a time travel story. And in season two, Tom, which I don't believe you've got to yet because you've just started watching this.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
I mean, you made the noise of the angel there, but Dee can hear nothing. And Dee, I think it's fair to say, can see nothing. No. So some listeners may say Dee is, for an intelligent person, he is being unbelievably credulous. in basically believing this bloke who says, I've seen an angel and I've heard him talking to me. I mean, you can neither see nor hear him, but I assure you he's there.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Why is he so gullible?
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
In season two, they go back to London in the time of Elizabeth I. And this is when they meet the person I was just ventriloquizing, Dr. John Dee. So tell us about Dr. John Dee.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
No angel would really have that name.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Well, I mean, it's fair to say everything goes wrong, right? Everything does go wrong. What follows is an absolute and utter disaster. Yeah. So four months they're on the road and they get to Lasky's hometown, which is called Lasko. And it's when they get there that Lasky realizes that the angels have been misleading him because basically he's not going to become king of Poland.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
So just for a second, your own personal view, like what's going on with Kelly? He's conjuring up this, or he's pretending he can see like this weird girl and all that. Is he mad or is this a colossal con?
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Which neither of them can see.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Two things to say. One, Dee surely is the most gullible person we've ever had on this podcast. And two, I mean, his wife has no say in this. What is this, like, indecent proposal?
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Lovely, Tom. What a fascinating, what a richly fascinating story. Some would say the story of a wise and wondrous sage. That's Tom, who is a much kinder person than I am. Some would say the story of an absolute mug, which is what I would say. But listeners, you can make up your own minds. Yeah, you decide. That's the story of John Dee.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
And we'll be back next time with something completely different. Thank you very much, Tom. And goodbye. Bye-bye. Now, Tom, as you know, I am not just a man of history. I'm also known for my involvement in the performing arts.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
I must confess that early on in my acting career, my stage presence did come under a little scrutiny from Britain's finest newspapers.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Yeah, and I will remind the listeners that in Scotland, they order their reviews in a different way. So one is at the top and five stars is the worst review you could get. So we were very happy with that one-star review. But like a lot of great masters of their craft, Tom, I learned from it. I grew. I evolved. I knew I would bide my time before returning to the boards. And guess what? You're not.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
No. Yes. Tom, I have to tell you, I have returned to the boards. I'm performing once again. And the brilliant news for our listeners is that you can go and you can be transfixed by my performance right now because I am honoured and privileged to appear in the latest Sherlock and Co. adventure, The Adventure of the Norwoods. Please tell me that you are playing the Norwood Builder.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
I'm playing a much better character. I'm playing Hector McFarlane, a solicitor from Blackheath accused of murder. Goodness, as Lestrade's officers bear down on me, Tom, I have nowhere else to turn but to 221B Baker Street.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Well, very much like this one, we were better acting, I think it's fair to say. It's a stable mate of ours. They are a massive show. They get 10 million downloads. Outside, I believe, The Archers, this is the biggest audio drama in Britain. Well, I have no doubt, Dominic, that it is more interesting than The Archers. It genuinely is brilliant. So my son is a massive Sherlock and co-aficionado.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
It basically goes through all the original short stories and the short stories that are often forgotten in modern day adaptations. It transposes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's narratives to the modern day. So Watson himself is making the podcast while they're doing the adventures. You can pick up any adventure you want. You don't have to follow the whole series to get stuck in.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
It is absolutely brilliant. Do you know who else thinks it's brilliant, Tom? The Guardian newspaper. One of those prized one-star reviews? No, a five-star. They said, and I quote, very funny, mildly sweary and hugely popular. Do you want to know what the Times said? It said, a breakneck series that Gen Z, or Gen Z as members of it say, that Gen Z is hooked on. Wow.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
And now that you're appearing on the show, I mean, that will confirm the hook, won't it? It absolutely will. And the Guardian listeners will be beside themselves with joy. So, everybody, please listen to Sherlock & Co. The Adventure of the Norwood Builder. It's multi-part. It's brilliant. Part one is out now. Jump right in wherever you get your podcasts. And here is a clip from that very episode.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Well, just to be clear to the listeners, we're not really about making amends on the rest is history because we do whatever we like. Today, we'd like to do Dr. D. And Dr. D, I mean, one reason for doing him, quite apart from what a fascinating person he is,
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
He is a brilliant way of getting into the story of 16th century England because he lives right the way through from the final days of Henry VIII all the way through to the advent of James I, James VI of Scotland and the dawn of a new era, doesn't he? So this is the age when England is sort of seesawing wildly from Protestantism to Catholicism and back again.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Anthony is over in the UK and we have decided to do a live show together at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London. Haven't we, Anthony?
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
And part of that is because he's fascinated by cartography, astronomy, exploration. So the idea of looking west across this vast expanse of sea kind of comes naturally to him because it's intellectually fascinating to him.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
And just to be clear for listeners who perhaps are puzzled by the combination of these things, what we would call sort of magic, the occult arts, and what we would now call science, so the stuff you do in school, these in the 16th century are not at all separate genres. They are seen as part of the same body of learning and people don't really distinguish between the two.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Hence alchemy and chemistry, for example.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
I mean, the irony is that we now know that that was at Hogwarts, but they didn't know that then. Yeah, they didn't know that, did they? Anyway, so Dee, he knows about all these things, doesn't he? So you mentioned alchemy, astrology, astronomy. He knows about maps. He knows about all this stuff. But this is quite dangerous at the same time, isn't it?
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Because in a Protestant age, a lot of people are very suspicious of all of this knowledge.
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542. Elizabeth I’s Sorcerer: Angels and Demons in Renaissance Europe
Right, because how do you tell the difference?
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
I think a bit of both. I think if his honour had not been insulted, perhaps he might have taken the money and settled for peace. Really? Okay. Yes, I think so. I think. The sense that he's been shamed before the eyes of his own people and of Christian Europe generally was clearly very strong. And so he decides that he's going to fight. And so war breaks out.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
Charles descends from the Alps into northern Italy. And his immediate target is Pavia, because that is where Desiderius has set himself up. But it's also because, according to reports, that is where the two nephews are, the two princes, who I'm sure have been kept in a tower. However, when he gets there, Charlemagne finds that he's too late, that the princes have been sent away to Verona.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And so he splits his forces. So the life of Hadrian, the Pope, we're told Charles left most of his forces at Pavia and with a number of his bravest Franks moved rapidly towards Verona. And this is a move that clearly takes the defenders of Verona by surprise. And Calamans' sons and his wife, who has the brilliant name of Gerberga.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
They all surrender themselves to Charlemagne, although according to the life of Hadrian, Carloman's wives and sons immediately handed themselves over of their own free wills.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
So it sounds slightly like there's some special pleading going on. And the intriguing thing is that from this point on, that is the last dimension of them.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
Well, I mean, they may have been, you know, tonsured, so had their hair shaved off and packed off to the monastery. But if they were, we don't hear about it. They're probably being killed. They've been killed. I mean, you know, maybe Charlemagne Richard III did. I mean, we don't know.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
Yes. Right the way through the winter. Desiderius holding out. And Charles seems to have had a slight wobble. He abandons the siege and he goes south to Rome. So it's his first visit to Rome. And he goes to St. Peter's tomb and he prays there. And whether it is for St. Peter to intercede with God to help him in the siege, or maybe, I mean, maybe it's the expression of a guilty conscience.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
I mean, maybe he feels bad about what he's done to his nephews. We don't know. But it's clearly the case that when he goes back to Pavia, his morale has been boosted. He's back in the saddle. He's full of vigor. And he prosecutes the siege with a kind of renewed sense of aggression. And if he was praying...
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
for God's assistance, then God gives it because a terrible plague breaks out in Pavia and it causes such devastation that Desiderius basically surrenders. He has no choice. Wow. So again, quoting from the life of Hadrian. the wrath of God raged and stormed against all the Lombards in that city.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And they were so enfeebled by disease and death that the excellent king of the Franks captured the city together with Desiderius. And that essentially is the end, not just of Desiderius' ambitions, but of the independence of the Lombard kingdom. And Desiderius is taken back to Francia. He is tonsured. He is sent to a monastery. And Lombardy, the kingdom isn't erased.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
Charlemagne becomes king of the Lombards. So from this point on, he is described in his charters as king of the Franks and of the Lombards. But Lombardy is now clearly a part of Charlemagne's empire and his power now extends right the way to Rome. So it's a significant advance of the Frankish frontier.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
I mean, back to the time of fall of the Roman Empire in the West. Yeah. The Alps had always been a kind of frontier. So the early fifth century. Yeah. So that's an extraordinary achievement. It is. And when you consider that on top of that, at this point, he thinks he's conquered Saxony, you know, and those are reaches of land that the Caesars hadn't even ruled.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
I mean, he's starting to look very, very impressive. And the truth is that Charlemagne is a very great war leader. Indeed, he leads his men personally into battle. He conducts campaigns personally. The strategy is all his. And it's very rare that there isn't a campaign being fought somewhere on the frontiers of the Frankish realm.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
So in 790, one of the annals of Charlemagne's reign, so these are histories that record the doings, you know, in terms of what happened each year. The entry for 790 is simply, the Franks did nothing. Right. i.e. they didn't go to war. You know, this is the shortest entry we have in this annul, and it reflects the fact, you know, this is an amazing thing. There were no wars this year.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
It's the only time it happens. So every other year there is military action. And it is taking place on all the various frontiers of Charlemagne's empire. So there's Spain. So we talked in the episode we did on the Battle of Tours and in the previous one about how the Frankish kings have been pushing, let's call them the Arabs, back from the Loire region. back beyond the Pyrenees.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And Charlemagne actually crosses the Pyrenees and takes the fight to the Arabs in Spain itself. He captures the town of Pamplona, pulls down its walls so that it can't be used against him. And then he returns across the Pyrenees.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And this is a retreat that is very, very famous because as his rear guard, which is guarding his baggage, is going through the pass of Roses Valles, Rosivo, it is ambushed. And the baggage is taken.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And the commander of this baggage train, who is one of Charlemagne's palatini, so the people who attend him in his palace, paladins, as they will come to be called, Roland, the great paladin, he has a horn and he blows on the horn to signal to Charlemagne the disaster that is befalling him. And this will become the theme of one of the great, great medieval epics.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
I mean, it's a wonderful story and we could perhaps at some point do an episode on it, but it's not strictly relevant to the life of Charlemagne himself because all of that romance is massively overblown. It's not the great disaster that the poets would make it seem. Although having said that, I mean, it's obviously not brilliant that he's lost all his luggage.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And actually from that point on, Charlemagne is pretty much content to leave the Pyrenees alone. at least until the beginning of the 9th century, as we will see.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
Well, the thing is that I think for a long time, the assumption has been among people like the Avars that it's cost-free to go and raid a monastery or something or to attack a town. There's nothing anyone can really do about it because they're so mobile. But this isn't Charlemagne's perspective at all. If people raid his kingdom, then he's going to go after them.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And so that's exactly what he does. And in 791, he leads what seems to be a very intimidating invasion, which he then has to abandon because there's a massive horse plague. So all his horses, about 90% it's estimated of his horses get wiped out. And this seems to be really bad for him. However, it's much worse in the long run for the Avars because, of course, the plague spreads to Pannonia.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And if they lose their horses, then they're completely screwed because without horses, they can't do anything. Their entire offensive capability depends on their ability to fight. shoot arrows from the saddle. So by the mid 790s, the Avars are being harried by the Franks, but their kingdom is starting to implode. So in 795, the Avar Khagan, so the kind of Avar chieftain, is killed by his own men.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
One of his deputies then opens negotiations with Charlemagne, writes to him to surrender his land, his people, and himself to the king. And to accept the Christian faith at the king's command, a Frankish strike force then advances against the great central palace of the Khagan.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
It's called the Ring, a great kind of structure full of all the loot that's been taken from northern Italy and from Bavaria. And the Franks take the whole lot and they pile it onto great wagons. And it's driven back to Charlemagne's court back in Austrasia, the Eastern Frankish kingdom.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And Einhard probably saw it, Charlemagne's biographer, because he gives this description of all this treasure coming into town, drawn in 15 carts, each pulled by four oxen and carrying great piles of gold and silver and precious robes of silk. And Einhard thinks this is great.
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He describes Charlemagne's victory over the Avars as the greatest and most terrible that he ever fought, but with one exception. And that exception is the war that Charlemagne fought against the Saxons. Because in fact, the hope that Charlemagne had had and that Paulinus had had when writing that poem was
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the war against the Saxons was over, that they had accepted defeat and had accepted baptism, this proves to be massively over-optimistic, because in fact, the war rages for decades. It rages for decades for the same reason that the Romans had found it so hard to conquer Germany, because despite their overwhelming military strength,
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The Franks find it a real struggle to kind of pin their opponents down, to force them to accept defeat once and for all.
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Yeah. And this ultimately is what had defeated the Romans. But Charlemagne, in a way, I mean, his policy is kind of even more unyielding, even more unstinting, even more merciless than the Romans had been. So pretty much every spring, the Franks are riding out. to harry the Saxons. If they've broken treaties, then they will be punished really brutally.
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Every autumn before they retreat back to their bases, the Franks torch the harvests of the Saxons so that they will then starve through the winter. Wherever they find a settlement in a rebellious area, they will torch it. And from 795 onwards, and again, this is very Roman, the Franks adopt a policy of mass deportations. So they are
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taking entire peoples, entire communities and transporting them deep into the Frankish empire. When they capture the Saxon elites, they're taking them as hostages, which again is very kind of Roman and bringing them back to Charlemagne's court and kind of educating them as Christians.
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As I say, these are atrocities on a Roman scale, but the truth is that Charlemagne's inspiration is probably not Roman, but in the Old Testament, because the Pope, when he had crowned Pepin, Charlemagne's father, had hailed the Franks as a new Israel. The example of Israelite warfare actually offers... A king like Charlemagne who wants to extirpate a pagan people, quite a lot of inspiration.
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So in 782, there's a famous atrocity after a particularly violent uprising by Saxons who had supposedly accepted baptism and submitted to Charlemagne and then kind of turn against the Amasca priests, destroy churches and all of that. So Charlemagne orders that 4,500 prisoners be beheaded on a single day.
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And the likelihood is, is that in ordering this punishment, he is inspired by the example of King David in the Old Testament, who similarly, you know, we have this description in the Bible, every two lengths of captives were put to death and the third length was allowed to live. So it may be that there were even more prisoners and Charlemagne spared those.
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Well, Roman and biblical. I mean, it's the fusing of the two great inspirations on the Carolingians. He's bringing it to bear on the Saxons. And it's a prosecution of total warfare on a scale that is so brutal that by the late 790s, Saxon resistance finally is over. starting to be broken. This is a victory of an order that the Romans in Germany never really succeeded in winning.
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To that extent, Charlemagne can celebrate it. But of course, there is an obvious and unsettling question that is hanging over the entire war and the particularly brutal strategy that Charlemagne's been adopting in the final decade of that war, which is that the triumph might be worthy of Augustus, but is it worthy of a Christian? What does Christ think about all this?
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This really matters to Charlemagne because Charlemagne is a very devout Christian. What he is doing, he's doing as that poem written by Paulinus suggested that you quoted at the beginning of the show, he's doing it in the hope of winning eternal life. What if the violence and the horror that he's inflicted actually is opening the gates of hell to him. And that is a very pressing question.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
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Well, partly because I always enjoy hearing your Yorkshire accent. Right. But also because the author of that letter was from York. He was a Northumbrian, so an Anglo-Saxon, called Alcuin. And Alcuin was a very distinguished scholar in the noblest traditions of the great achievements of Northumbrian scholarship. Venerable Bede. So he had been taught by a disciple of Bede, exactly.
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So there's a kind of scholarly link between those two extraordinary people. And Einhard, again, the biography of Charlemagne, he thought Alcuin was brilliant. He described him as the most learned man to be found anywhere. And the thing that's impressive about Alcuin is that he's also very, very good at politics. He's kind of a very seasoned diplomat.
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So in 781, he gets sent by the Bishop of York, who basically wants to be an archbishop. And there's some doubt about this. And so Alcuin goes to Rome to negotiate the absolute confirmation that the Bishop of York is actually an archbishop and Alcuin succeeds in doing that.
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And then he's going back through Italy when he runs into Charlemagne and Charlemagne is all over him and says, please come and stay with me, stay in my court. And the reason for that is that Charlemagne, as well as being a very successful and on occasion brutal warlord, is also a man who is devoted to learning, to scholarship,
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to kind of broadening the cultural horizons of himself and of his people. And he essentially, he wants a teacher. And Alcuin is a brilliant teacher. And so he stays at Charlemagne's side. He goes back to England for a couple of years. But otherwise, he stays in Francia from this point onwards. And from his letters, you can see he's a bit scared of Charlemagne. He's a bit nervous of him.
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But they do seem to have become genuinely good friends. So Charlemagne has this massive bath complex and they hang out in the baths together, kind of making jokes about Virgil. And Alcuin's a great japester. He's a great one for a nickname. So he calls Charlemagne perhaps tellingly David, as in King David. And it's all great banter and they get on tremendously well.
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And Alcuin is by Charlemagne's side pretty continuously throughout this period. And then in 796, he's quite elderly by this point. I think he's about 60. He retires to Tours, which of course is the great shrine of St. Martin. So it's the most significant of all the Frankish shrines. And there he becomes the abbot.
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But he continues to take an interest, obviously, in what's going on beyond the walls of the monastery. And In 796, which is the year that he's gone to Tor, there is one thing more than anything else that is worrying Alcuin. And essentially, it's Charlemagne's policy in the East, his policy to the Saxons.
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It's because what Charlemagne is doing is a very radical policy. It's not something that Christian kings and emperors have been in the habit of doing, kind of imposing conversion at the point of a sword.
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People may have a vague sense that this is all that medieval kings did, but certainly in the early Middle Ages and even back in the final years of the Christian emperor, this wasn't what was happening. Because the Roman assumption, which the Franks seem to have inherited... It's basically that to have faith in Christ is both a kind of a marker and a perk of being civilized.
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And the Christian God is so powerful. Why would you want to share him with your enemies? I mean, it's much better to keep him for yourself. But I think that the longer that Charlemagne fights the Saxons, the more obdurate the Saxons seem to be, the more he comes to think that his enemies are fighting in the shadow of demons.
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He is making war not just against the Saxons themselves, but against these monstrous demons that they worship. Therefore, he will never defeat the Saxons until he has also banished these terrifying and demonic gods from their lands. In addition to his military strategy, he imposes this strategy essentially of trying to wipe paganism out with extreme prejudice.
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So in 776, Charlemagne imposes a treaty on the Saxons that obliges them to accept baptism. They don't have any choice. And there's this kind of mass baptism in the River Lippe, kind of thousands and thousands are baptized. But then, of course, the moment he's gone, they all revert. And this then seems apostasy and Charlemagne is made even more furious. And so it becomes a kind of hideous cycle.
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In 785, he pronounces that scorning to come to baptism, so refusing the offer of baptism, will henceforward merit death. And he also lists a whole host of other practices that have been part of Saxon traditional way of life for goodness how long. And these two are capital offenses. So offering sacrifice to demons, as Charlemagne describes it. Cremation, so you're not allowed to do that.
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Yeah, so Charles, he rules the Franks. He's the son of Pepin, who's made himself king, getting rid of the Merovingian kings. He's the grandson of Charles Martel, great warlord. And Charles in Latin is Carolus. And so the dynasty that Pepin has founded and that Charlemagne belongs to is known by historians as the Carolingian dynasty. So Charles is top Carolingian. He's top Frank.
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You have to bury a body. Or eating meat during Lent, so the 40 days before Easter. And this is by miles the most brutal program for bringing a people to Christ. that anyone has ever attempted. This is why Alcuin objects to it. He feels that this is not what a Christian king should be doing at all. I think what sharpens this sense for Alcuin is that he is an Anglo-Saxon.
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The Anglo-Saxons remember how they had been converted, which is essentially by the example and the inspiration of holy men, not warriors. Whether it's Irish monks in the north who convert Northumbria, or the missionaries sent from Rome, under Augustine, who founds the Archbishopric in Canterbury. And I think the Anglo-Saxons also have a feeling of kinship with the Saxons.
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There's a sense that they're cousins. And so this had been an inspiration for a lot of Anglo-Saxon missionaries over the course of the 8th century to go to pagan Germany. So we talked about one of them in the previous episode, Boniface from Devon. Boniface had gone out there and he'd certainly given no quarter to paganism.
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Like Charlemagne, he had been confronted with a great holy tree that had been sacred to Thor, and he'd chopped it down and turned it into a church. But the thing about Boniface is he does this without mailed men at his back. He is doing it as someone who is not carrying weapons.
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And even though Boniface was sponsored by Charles Martel, he never turns to the Frankish warlord and says, can you give me some men? The whole point is that if you are confronted by armed warriors, then you allow them to cut you down. And this is what actually happens to Boniface. So in 754, he's hacked to death by Frisian pirates.
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The prayer book that he had in his hand in which he held up to try and stop the blow of the sword. gets cuts all the way through it and is preserved as a holy relic. And it's an example to Christians of how you should properly convert pagans. You shouldn't be going in and, you know, massacring them, burning villages and things.
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Yeah. And of course, unspoken is also the thought that, you know, you are going against God's will in doing this. And I agree, it is brave of Alcuin to do it. I mean, they may hang out in the baths and, you know, banter. But Charlemagne is still a very intimidating figure. But Alcuin does write to him. And what's amazing is that Charlemagne seems to have taken it on the chin.
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So that same year, 796, he orders the program of forcible baptisms to be eased. And then the following year, he issues a new charter for the Saxons, kind of easing off the prescriptions. I wouldn't say making the laws against paganism more liberal, that would have That would be an anachronistic way of putting it, but making them slightly less punitive, I guess.
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So Alcuin's take is that essentially you should rely on monasteries rather than on kind of military forts to pacify the Saxons. Charlemagne doesn't go that far. he continues to harry and burn and whatever.
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But I think there is a sense in which the monasteries that are built in the rear of the Saxons and which Charlemagne starts to plant over the eastern reaches of his kingdom, they have been compared by scholars to the great Roman legionary bases. These are centers of Christian power from which Christianity can reach outwards and spread eastwards.
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And in that sense, it kind of perfectly fuses the double meaning of correctio, this Latin word for, you know, bringing order where there's disorder. that it is a matter both for warriors with swords and for scholars and monks with pens. So there's this phrase, the Carolingian Renaissance.
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And to be honest, he's top guy in Europe because he has put the whole of the old heartlands of the Roman Empire in his shadow. And he is now pushing eastwards. And that, I think, excellent poem that you read by Paulinus, who in due course, as we said, will go on to become a saint. This is celebrating the conquest and the conversion of the Saxons. And these were a pagan people on the eastern flank.
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The Carolingians don't think that what they're doing is a Renaissance because they think that what they're doing is simply carrying on traditions that reach back to the Christian Roman Empire, but that things need to be corrected. And so that's what the program is all about. It's not a Renaissance. It's a program of correctio.
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and himself, which is why he had got Alcuin. He wanted a great teacher by his side. I think the reason for this, it's a bit like listeners may remember a while ago, we did an episode on Alfred. After Alfred's victories over the Vikings, his first aim is to restore the monasteries because he sees learning as fundamental to bringing his people to heaven, to winning them eternal life.
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That is his duty as king. If he doesn't do that, if he doesn't succeed in bringing the souls under his charge to Christ, then he will answer for it at the day of judgment. I think the same shadow hangs over Charlemagne. It's a really urgent, pressing mission for him. It is kind of education, education, education, but it's not just education for its own sake. It's about getting his people to heaven.
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That's why I think he's so keen on Alcuin, because he has inherited from his father Pepin and his grandfather Charles Martel a sense that actually the Anglo-Saxons are best at this kind of thing.
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So Boniface, when he had gone out to convert the pagans, he'd actually also had to work quite hard among the people on the eastern flank of the Frankish Empire, who supposedly had been Christian for centuries, because he finds that they're in a terrible state. So he writes of the Frankish clergy. They spend their lives in debauchery, adultery, and every kind of filth.
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And he's not writing that in any tone of jealousy.
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That's the first example, perhaps. And the other thing also that's very striking about Anglo-Saxon scholars when they come to Francia which was Gaul, a Roman province where people supposedly speak Latin. The Anglo-Saxon scholars have learned their Latin from books. they arrive in Gaul and they find the Latin being spoken by the Franks basically unintelligible.
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And the reason for that is that it's on the verge of becoming French. You know, it's evolving. But to Alcuin and his compadres, it's a sign that the Franks, you know, are hopelessly uneducated, that they've let their inheritance from the Romans slip and that therefore it's not just their morals that need improving, it's also their ability to speak Latin.
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That matters because to the Anglo-Saxons who had been converted by Roman missionaries, the association between Christianity and Romanitas is much stronger than it is among the Franks. We talked about this before. For the Franks, Christianity had always been Gallic, It had always been self-sufficient within Gaul. It hadn't looked to Rome for its example.
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But for the Anglo-Saxons, Rome is the great example. It's a Pope who converted them. And so the fact that it's an Anglo-Saxon like Alcuin who is in charge of the most significant monastery in Francia is really important in integrating Frankish notions of Christianity into a kind of Europe-wide understanding and making it Roman.
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So it's from this point onwards that you really start to have a kind of common Latin Christianity rather than one that is a Christianity that consists of multiple different versions of it. Right. You know, one in Rome, one in Gaul, one in wherever.
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of the Frankish Empire. Relations with the Franks had been terrible for ages and ages. They'd endlessly been raiding Frankish lands, licking their cattle, all that kind of stuff. This had been a grumbling cause of complaint under the Merovingians and then under the Carolingians. But Charlemagne, he's very much a guy for a radical solution.
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So the word Bible comes from the Greek word biblia, which means books. And Christian scriptures consist of lots of different books. And it had not previously been the habit to gather them within a single text. But Alcuin is all over this. There is a tradition of doing this, say, in the Northumbrian monasteries. And he brings this to Tor.
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And it's from this point on, really, that these collections of books, which are being assembled within the covers, you know, within a single set of covers, start to be known collectively as Biblia, i.e. a Bible. So it's from this point on that you start to get Bibles. And Alcuin's aim is to get as many of these Bibles out as he possibly can. And it's actually quite kind of information technology.
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There's a monk in Tor, he picks up one of these Bibles and he's amazed that you get all the different books of the Old Testament and the New Testament in a single text. And he kind of exclaims, this is a library beyond compare.
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And it's a bit like when iPhones or iPads or whatever first came out that people would say, you know, all the knowledge of the world is on this tiny little tablet, this tiny little phone.
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And Alcuin is quite Steve Jobs because he has a massive emphasis, not just on the volume of data, but also that this data, these books should be easy to use, easy to read, that they should be beautiful, that the production qualities should be completely streamlined. And so the Bibles and other books as well that are being produced in the scriptorium at Tor are
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are written to be as user-friendly as possible. And essentially, when you look at a block of text now written in the Roman script, so the script that English and French and German and everything uses, you are looking at a script that has been mediated by Carolingian scholars, by Alcuin and his fellow monks. So it's under Alcuin's guidance that for the first time, words don't run into one another.
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So if you think of a Roman inscription, you know, there's no spaces, but now you start to get spaces. Also the use of capitals to indicate new sentences. Again, a complete innovation. And my favorite innovation, the Carolingians start to introduce new punctuation marks.
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And in a sentence where there is doubt being expressed, they start to use a kind of lightning flash, which over the course of time will evolve to become the question mark. Wow. It's brilliant. So again, Alcuin, you know, he's all about the milk of doctrine and all that, but he also, he's the inventor of the Bible and the question mark.
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He's piling right in and saying, okay, I'm not going to put up with this. I'm going to conquer them. So he had gone to war against them in 772. So that's the year after he's become sole king. And this has lasted on and off for five years. And now it seems to Paulinus that Charlemagne has succeeded in his aims, that the Saxons are conquered. It's absolutely brilliant. And so he salutes Charlemagne.
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Yes, he's creating a common Christian culture. And of course, texts are for those who can read. So these Bibles are kind of going to monasteries or whatever. But Charlemagne and Alcuin are both very, very concerned to reach out into the countryside. So people may wonder, it's a long time since Clovis was converted. The Frankish elites, the aristocracy, all of that are clearly very, very Christian.
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But what about the peasants out in the countryside? What do they know about it? Probably very little. Yeah. And these are the people that Charlemagne is also very, very concerned to reach. And the key people here are the parish priests. And Boniface had complained about the fact that they're hopeless, they don't know anything.
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And Alcuin also actually says he worries that the priests, they don't really know what they're talking about. And so again, he devises kind of little books, little format books that can be slipped into a pouch or something. that give the basics of Christian doctrine, give the Lord's Prayer, give the Creed, give various key passages from Scripture or whatever.
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These are sent out into the parishes, out into the countryside. It's an unprecedented experiment in the West in mass education. Within a few decades, the bishops in Francia are able to assume that priests should have a basic modicum of knowledge.
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And in fact, there's this wonderful account of a priest in about the kind of the 840s who gets imprisoned by his bishop for having forgotten everything that he had learned, which always kind of sticks in my mind. Wow. I mean, if you got punished for forgetting everything you'd learned. that would be a real problem.
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And this again, it's hard to emphasize how significant a moment this is in the history of Western Europe, because this is the moment when the process of Christianization really starts to happen. It's not just for the elites anymore. It's reaching out into the whether it's kind of annual or whether it's from cradle to grave, are starting to be marinated in Christianity.
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So if you're drawing up a charter, a legal agreement, if you're tending to a sick animal, if you're working out where you should dig a well, when you should begin the harvest? All of these questions are starting to be framed in Christian terms by priests who have been given the kind of intellectual know-how and ammunition that enables them to do this.
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Yeah, and Charlemagne has prescribed that every priest should know the Lord's Prayer and should know the Creed, and that they should in turn instruct everybody in his kingdom in the Creed and in the Lord's Prayer. And so that is giving to people kind of fundamentals of familiarity with Christianity that they hadn't previously had. And it has a kind of saturating effect.
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The consequences of that are utterly profound for the future of European culture. It means that people start to take for granted assumptions that are rooted in Christianity to the point where they don't even realize where these assumptions have come from. And I think it's in this sense that you can call Charlemagne the father of Europe.
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So this is a phrase that is being applied to him within his own lifetime. I mean, in all kinds of ways, it's a ridiculous thing to call him because as we will see, his empire actually doesn't last very long. But I think in this one sense, the Christianization of people out in the reaches of the countryside, he does deserve that title.
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But of course, Dominic, father of Europe is not the only title that he will end up with.
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May God grant the Clement Prince as his reward for achieving such a victory, the sweet pastures of eternal life. It's all looking good.
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And we will be bringing you a brand new show, and this time discussing two more of history's most extraordinary, fascinating, and iconic classical composers, in this case, Tchaikovsky and Wagner. And these extraordinary lives will be brought to life thanks to the accompaniment of the renowned Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by the celebrated Oliver Zeffman.
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royalalberthall.com on Thursday the 19th of December with a pre-sale for the Rest Is History club members and Royal Albert Hall friends and patrons 24 hours earlier on Wednesday the 18th of December at 10am.
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Are you a fan of The Rest Is History, but yet to dive into the weird and wonderful world of The Rest Is History Club? Or is there someone dear to you who won't stop banging on about the show?
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If the history buff in your life is always regaling you with the same old facts about Churchill or Napoleon, why not get him or her, and let's face it, you, a present?
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
It is packed to the brim with the most bizarre historical questions you never thought to ask, like what was the most disastrous party in history? Which British politician plotted to feed his lover to an alligator? And why was a Brazilian emperor mistaken for a banana?
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It's just that he is more impressive and he has more resources to draw on. Therefore, he can behave in a way that hasn't been seen in Western Europe for a very long time. Peter Brown, the great historian of late antiquity, says of Charlemagne that he was not a warrior chieftain in a fragile, epic mode. He trod with the heavy tread of a dominus, so a Roman lord, a lord of Roman determination,
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capable of deploying resources on an almost Roman scale. And these resources are preeminently military because he has inherited from Pepin and from his grandfather, Charles Martel, by far the most menacing war machine in Europe. But he adds to that some very, very kind of distinctive personal qualities. So in the previous episode, we heard from Einhard, who was this very short scholar who
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who wrote a biography of Charlemagne. And Einhard summed up Charlemagne as having two particularly striking character traits. He said that he had greatness of soul and a constant firmness of mind.
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And I guess you could, if you were not as prone to praising Charlemagne as Einhard was, you could say that these qualities correspond perhaps to having very broad horizons, a capacity to see things on a very large scale, and also a capacity to take a very, very long view. And to Einhard, these qualities remind him of perhaps the greatest of all Roman emperors, who is Augustus.
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And this is why Einhard models his biography on Suetonius' biography of Augustus. And there is something Roman about the approach that Charlemagne takes to the Saxons. So anyone who knows how the Romans behaved to the Germans, or indeed to the Gauls when they conquered them, they are murderous in their response to perceived slights or insults.
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And certainly Charlemagne's policy of outright conquest, we've got these kind of fractious barbarians, let's go and conquer them and pacify them. That is a very Roman approach. And there's an account from a chronicler describing Charlemagne's early campaigns against the Saxons. And it will sound to people, I think,
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
like the historians of Rome describing the onslaught of the legionaries against the barbarian people. So this chronicler writes, Charles devastated the lands of the Saxons with fire and sword and left them emptied of people. And when he targets a particularly celebrated Saxon shrine, he's described as destroying it utterly and taking away all the gold and silver he found there.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And I think even when we say the Saxons, that again is a Frankish formulation that reflects the tendency that the Romans had, which was to kind of perceive pagan peoples, tribal peoples, peoples on the fringes of their civilization in terms that they would understand. And of course, that's what the Romans had done to the Franks.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And now the Franks are doing it to these people that they kind of bundle together as Saxons.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
I think he does. I mean, not actually to Augustus, but to the Christian emperors who had ruled a great Christian realm. And of course, that is one point of difference between Charlemagne and Augustus, is that Charlemagne is not just a great conqueror, but he is a Christian conqueror. And there's a kind of quality of paradox to that, because there hasn't really been such a figure before.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
So when he advances into the lands of the Saxons, he's not aiming just to conquer them. He wants to save their souls. He wants to bring them to Christ. And this great shrine that I described Charlemagne as destroying in 772, it's not just that it's rich. It's obviously the fact that it is a pagan shrine. It's flamboyant. fearsome. It's phallic.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
It's basically a massive great pole sticking up out of the Saxon earth, famed across Saxony and believed by the Saxons to uphold the very heavens themselves. Charlemagne chops it down to demonstrate that this isn't true, that it has no sacral potency whatsoever. I guess even the looting of its treasures can be justified in terms of what churchmen in Charlemagne's realm
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
are coming to describe as a process of correctio. It's a Latin word which means the bringing of order where there is disorder, burnishing what has been besmeared and besmirched. Can I, at this point, quote for myself from Millennium? Do. This program, here was a program to whet the ambitions of warlords as well as scholars.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And to send men into battle beneath the fluttering of banners, the hiss of arrows, and the shadow of carrion crows, quite as much as into the mildewed quiet of libraries.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
You can see that he's been a great influence on me. prose. But there is this idea that Charlemagne cleaves to very, very passionately that in bringing sword and fire to the lands of the Saxons, he is also bringing order. And essentially, it's all for their own good. It's all for their own benefit.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
Well, in the previous episode, we heard how the Pope in Rome had anointed Charlemagne's father, thereby providing him with the religious legitimacy that he wanted. So it's become very important to the Carolingians. The papacy basically has licensed them to become kings. So a very important figure. But he's been menaced by the Lombards.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And essentially, the quid pro quo between the Carolingians and the papacy is that the Pope will anoint kings and all that kind of stuff. And meanwhile, the Carolingians are expected to keep the Lombards, who are these very impotent people in the north of Italy, keep them on a kind of tight leash.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And Charlemagne, whose ambitions are clearly considerable in a way that not even his father's had been, even when he's in Saxony, is thinking about what could I do against the Lombards. Maybe I could just swallow up their kingdom. When he strips this great pagan shrine of all its treasure, I think he is thinking, this is great. I can use this to essentially fund a war against the Lombards.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
He will need it because the Lombards occupy a stretch of land that is dotted, as you said, with ancient Roman cities that have walls that are impressive. The Lombards are a kingdom a bit like the Franks. I mean, on a smaller scale, but kind of a challenge of a different order to the Saxons. And they're also Germanic. Is that right? The Lombards? They are Germanic. They command the Alpine passes.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
So that's a potential problem. And there is also bad blood between Charlemagne and the Lombard king, who's a man called Desiderius, because Charlemagne had been married to the daughter of Desiderius for a year and then basically had dumped her. I think for diplomatic reasons rather than personal reasons, because he needed to marry someone else from Central Europe.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
Well, I think that is probably actually the biggest consideration of all, because Charlemagne knows that the one thing that could really cripple his offensive capacity and the integrity of his empire is kind of factional rivalry with rival members of his own family.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And we know that this is weighing on his mind because we have a life of Hadrian I, who's become Pope shortly after Charlemagne's come to power. And in this biography, it says that the wife and sons of the late Carloman king of the Franks had taken refuge with Desidius, who was trying hard to make good his contention that these princes should assume the kingship of the Franks.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
in the hope of stirring up dissensions in the kingdom of the Franks. And in fact, Desiderius writes to the Pope and says, look, I've got these two boys, crown them, anoint them, give them your legitimacy. Hadrian refuses because he essentially has to weigh up which of these two guys is likelier to win. And he decides that Charlemagne is the likelier.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
But he's still in an awkward position because Desiderius is between him and Charlemagne. And in fact, when Hadrian sends a messenger to Charlemagne saying, you know, please come to my rescue, I'm being menaced. He can't actually use the Alpine passes because they've been shut off. And so he has to send the messenger via Marseille, which then goes up to Charlemagne. And...
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
When Charlemagne gets this message, it confirms his worst anxieties, essentially that Desiderius will be using these two nephews to strike at him. And so he thinks, okay, I've got to go to war. So the summer of 773, Charles summons his peers, his warriors, his advisors to Geneva, in Switzerland, holds a great council there. He wants to get the support of his followers for the war that's to come.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And then having got that, he advances southwards. He seizes control of the two main mountain passes over the Alps. And once he's done that, he then sends ambassadors to Desiderius. And you can see what his main target is, because even at this point, His prime anxiety is to get hold of the nephews.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And he says to Desiderius, look, I am willing to hold off war and I'm willing to pay you a frankly enormous amount of money if you will hand these boys over to me. And Desiderius refuses. And Charlemagne, I think, is really quite surprised by this. Janet Nelson, in her brilliant biography of Charlemagne, offers an explanation for why Desiderius should have refused Charlemagne's offer.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
She writes, Charles underestimated one thing that was beyond price, the Lombard king's honour. What father does deals with the man who has repudiated his daughter?
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. The Norman Conquest is the great turning point in the history of the English nation.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
The great threat to any realm is a succession crisis, is the death of a king. And when Edgar dies, he dies in 975. And so the question is, what's going to happen next? And what is worse, if you're living in the medieval period, the one thing you don't want to see is a comet. Right. Because you know that that brings absolute shambles and disaster. And Edgar dies. They look up.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
Jeez, what a comet blazing overhead. Terrible scenes.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
And it was published. It took him 13 years to publish it between 1867 and 1879. And Tom, finally in the rest is history. we come to the greatest narrative of English history. And at its centre is the most famous year in our history. It's the astonishingly thrilling and unpredictable events of 1066.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
The illegitimate guy, the teenager.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
So now this means that the other bloke, Ethelred, ready or not, is going to become king. But he's only 10, and what's worse... They're consecrating him as king. And it's at this point that people see a bloody cloud. I mean, that's literally what they call it, a bloody cloud. So this is in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. It must be true. It must be true. Many times in the likeness of flames.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
And it appeared most of all at midnight. And it was formed of various beams. And then when it became day, it glided away. I mean, that's a terrible portent, isn't it?
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
So, big spoiler alert, he ends up having a very, very bad reputation. as a king of England. And some scholars think this is incredibly unfair. And actually in your notes, you give an example of how he's wielding the machinery of government in a very effective and competent and well-thought-out way. So you mentioned the coins.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
So they will recall all the silver coins and they will re-stamp them and then he will take a cut and they will reissue them. And this is basically to maintain the integrity of the coinage and to eliminate forgery and fakes. And also to back up the royal treasuries, because he's always taking a cut.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
And this is the kind of thing you can only do if you are running a really, really well-oiled, well-organized machine. And you can do this in maybe the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople, or you can do it in...
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
you know, the caliphate or in Cordoba or whatever, but you can't do it in a shambolic divided realm like that of the Franks where they're all just stabbing each other in the back and it's all very chaotic.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
But here you have the problem, right? Because we've been describing the victim, as it were, of this crime, if it is a crime. The prize, which is England. But it's from this point, the reign of Æthelred, that people overseas start looking at all this and saying, oh...
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
England, very peaceful, you know, so they obviously are not, you know, as accomplished at fighting as other people because they're too busy messing around with their coins and thinking about silks. Let's get some of this. Let's have some of this. And this this starts to become a problem. What about the 980s? Yeah. And you have escalating. You must have been always piracy.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
There must have been always raids, small scale raids that probably don't even show up in the Chronicles. It's from this point that the Danes, for want of a better word, the Vikings come back into the story.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
Do you want to know a fact about that, Tom? Yeah, tell me. So obviously the Battle of Moulton is one of the most famous old English poems, but you know who was obsessed with the Battle of Moulton? J.R.R. Tolkien. And the stand that Beardnought makes at the Battle of Malden is apparently the inspiration for the stand that Gandalf makes at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm. I did not know that.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
He wasn't ready. They turned up and he wasn't ready. So the thing about him, you could argue he is so hard done by. And indeed, there are historians like Simon Keynes who say... You know, actually, all that we think about him is just pure propaganda. He's been really, really maligned by history. He's not the first person to ever try to pay off raiders. No, Alfred did it.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
Alfred had done it, exactly. I mean, he's paying off... God, I saw an amazing fact. The first payment of Dango, which was £10,000... To pay that off, he would have had to have handed over two and a half million individual coins.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
I mean, enormous piles. But you could argue, what else can he do? They don't have coastal defences of a kind that would protect every last village along the English coast. I mean, you can do your best, but the Danes are mobile. They could strike at any point. Maybe paying them off is actually the more sensible thing.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
Every great drama needs terrible villains. And finally, we come to the villains of this story. We will take a break and then we'll return with a man called Rollo. See you in a second.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
Rollo had a dream, and in it he saw himself placed on a mountain higher than the highest mountain, in a house of a Frankish style. And on the summit of this mountain he saw a spring of sweet-smelling water flowing, and he washed himself in it and was cleansed by the water of leprosy.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
Then, around the base of the mountain, he saw many thousands of birds of different kinds and various colours, but all with red wings. And these birds went one after the other in perfect harmony to the spring on the mountain and washed themselves in it. When they had all been anointed by the waters of the spring, the birds all flocked together as though they were friends sharing food.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
And they carried twigs in their beaks and worked as fast as they could to build nests. So that is a lovely story of a dream had by this guy, Rollo. And it's by a historian who was writing in the time of Ethelred the Unready and was explaining how Normandy, this wretched hive of scum and villainy, came to be founded. So, Tom, before we get into this bonkers dream, Rollo...
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
We call him Rollo, or the Normans call him Rollo, but I read the other day that back in his native Scandinavia, his name was Ganger Rolf. Yeah.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
Rolf. That's a kind of H on the front, doesn't it? Yeah, like the Muppet. Ganger Rolf. Anyway, tell us about Rolf or Rollo.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
So Tom, we're going to get into this story in tremendous and thrilling detail in the weeks that follow. But first of all, you said British history. So obviously this happens in England, but it's enormously significant in the long run for Wales and for Scotland, but also for Ireland too, am I right?
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
about the ceremony. Yeah, go on. They had to queue up to kiss Charles the Simple's foot. Yeah, because he's in his stirrup, isn't he? He's on his horse. And Rollo said, I'm not going to kiss this bloke's foot. And he said in his stead, one of his thugs would do it instead. And this bloke went forward to kiss this king's foot.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
And then he jerked the foot up so quickly that Charles the Simple fell off his saddle and fell over backwards. And all the Vikings...
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
So, you know, I only told that story because I knew you wouldn't resist the opportunity to do your trademark laugh.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
This is the key thing, right, about the Normans. The thing that people always argue about. Are they Northmen, hence the name? Or as Theo, a producer, would say, and indeed lots of listeners to this podcast would say, actually, that Northmen stuff is all just English, sort of the English trying to make excuses. And actually, these people are really French.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
So there's a lot more of that laugh, basically, in the world of William Longsword.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
And yet there is another side to the story, which is that As you said, as time has passed, these people have been slowly, dare I say, Frenchified. They've become a little bit more Christian over time.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
Yeah, because we have a lot of overseas listeners in Australia, in the United States, whatever. And they might be saying, well, you know, who cares who rules England? Why is that a big deal for me?
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
Right, because could you not argue, if you're him, you could say, instead of just buying these people off year after year, or maybe trying to fight them, why don't I say to them, you know, I don't know, a bit like the Romans with the Germanic tribes. Why don't you say to them, guys, you know, why don't you just come and live here and you can police the coast for me?
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
That's basically what Charles the Simple had done with the Normans.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
Right. Well, we'll get into this a little bit more when we do our episodes about Norway and about Harold Hardrada later on. And about how much is he motivated, as you said, by wanting to copy the Prince of Peace? And how much is he really thinking Christianity is the prestige religion? It means status. It means power. It means kingship. It means authority. And that's what I'm buying into.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
But just to go back to England. So there are Vikings left in English waters, aren't there? Because Æthelred has actually bought a large part of Olaf's army and possibly some of his fleet. So there are probably thousands of troops of Danes basically hanging around and we will come to what happens to them. But also I know this is absolute Tom Holland bingo. So, you know, yeah, let's go for it.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
So enjoy yourself. The millennium is coming and people at this point. So at the end of the 10th century, people at this point start to think, well, when the year 1000, when we get to the year 1000, that probably be the end of the world. So we should start making our dispositions accordingly.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
And there's actually, there's a lot of this, isn't there, in the final decades of the century. And whether or not churchmen believe it, it's kind of irrelevant because the person who definitely seems to have believed it, who maybe thinks...
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
I've actually been appointed by fate, by God, to be the person who's in charge at this crucial moment in human history, in the history of the universe, is Æthelred himself.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
Well, that sounds lovely. Now, we'll come back to Emma in this series because she is a massive fan. massively interesting and important figure. It's a shame we don't actually know more about her in her life because she's one of those women whose story kind of blazes across medieval history. However, I enjoyed your wheat field metaphor. Did you? You picked that up. I did pick that up.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
And I'm thinking... I can see where you're going with it. And I can see that Ethelred is also somebody who enjoys a wheat field metaphor because he is going to develop this metaphor himself in an excitingly bloody way.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
And they keep rebelling, don't they? So I had a look. They rebel in 997, 999, The year 1000. I mean, they are very disputatious and difficult because they are thugs.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
So this is what sets the scene for the massacre of St. Bryce's Day, which is on the 13th of November, the year 1002. I mean, the amazing thing about it, I guess, is that in a more disorganized state, it would not have been possible. But precisely because England is centralized, well-run, a well-oiled machine. Æthelred can send out his orders across the kingdom.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
We can't be sure how many people are killed, but to people across the kingdom and to say on such and such a day, you round up the Danes and kill them all.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
Well, Tom, do you want to know what a bestselling recent history of this period for younger readers makes of this moment? So sometimes historians are criticised for not using enough imagination. And I don't think you could say this about this passage. Let's hear it. So this is from your book for children on the Vikings. As darkness fell over the Thames, a ship pulled away from an old wooden jetty.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
Since the first settlement of the English in Britain, the introduction of Christianity is the only event which can compare with it in importance. And there is this wide difference between the two. The introduction of Christianity was an event which would hardly fail to happen sooner or later.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
And not just that, but also the Norse element too, right? All those three people, Harold Hodrada, Harold Goldwinson, and William of Normandy are all reflected in the words we're using. Absolutely.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
Huddle the board wrapped in their cloaks was a group of young Danish men who had managed to escape the flashing knives. For days they sailed east, chilled by the gales and soaked by the waves, grief and shock written all over their faces. Only when they glimpsed the dunes of the Danish coast did they breathe a sigh of relief.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
When they stood there in the hall of the king, panting out their dreadful story, he said nothing. But in his cold blue eyes, there was only death. The next morning the word went out. All men must make ready. When spring came, the king was sailing west. Swain Forkbeard would have his revenge. And this time, there would be no quarter. Cold blue eyes.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
there amazing so next time spain fortbeard has his revenge goodbye goodbye here's that clip we mentioned earlier on
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
What it has in common with the French Revolution or with, I don't know, a TV series like Game of Thrones, say, with which it might be compared, is it's a thrilling soap opera. There are all kinds of twists and turns in the narrative. There's all kinds of courage and duplicity and treachery and extraordinary acts of bravery and resistance and whatnot.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
But at the center of it are these three fantastic characters. And they're all three are warlords. And each of them stands for, I guess, in the public imagination, a wider kind of civilization, I guess. So the Saxons, the Norse, and the Normans.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
So at the heart of this is the prize, right? Like the Iron Throne and Game of Thrones, the prize is England. And you mentioned, oh, who should care about England? It's on the edge of Eurasia, all this kind of thing.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
But actually, the really important thing that listeners should get into their heads is that England is such a prize because it's an incredibly precocious nation state that is peaceful, well-run, and crucially rich. That's what makes it so tempting for overseas predators to
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
In accepting the gospel, the English only followed the same law which sooner or later affected all the Teutonic nations. But the Norman conquest is something which stands without a parallel in any other Teutonic land. If that conquest be only looked on in its true light, it is impossible to exaggerate its importance.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
So I guess the first question is, why is England so exceptional in the kingdoms of Europe? So when the Franks are all fighting each other and divided and whatnot, when Germany, what becomes Germany is obviously, you know, so divided. Why is England exceptional in being so rich, so peaceful, so well organized, so centralized, all of those kinds of things?
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
So he's the guy who had saved Wessex from the Danes, from the pagans, in the middle of the 9th century, in the late 9th century. And he had begun the process. I mean, he hadn't completed it, but he had begun the process of welding together all the different Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, hadn't he? And he'd invested in towns, in fortifying the towns and all of these kinds of things.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
He's Athelstan's nephew. Yes. So when Edgar is crowned in Bath, he is becoming king of something that lots of historians actually now say is one of Europe's very first, one of the world's very first nation states. People who think they're all part of one big national family, the Anglican, the English, and this is England. And one of the things that defines it is law and order. You pay your taxes.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
There's a state. This is how it works. It's not anarchy. It's centralized. This is how it works.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
And yet, there is no event whose true nature has been more commonly and more utterly mistaken. So that was Edward Augustus Freeman, who is the Regis Professor of History at Oxford University. And this is the opening of his gargantuan six-volume history of the Norman Conquest, which was commissioned to mark its 800th anniversary, the 800th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
I think that's completely reasonable. I have to say, for the people who wonder how the rest of this history works, I will just say that while Tom has been talking about the unique, exceptional wealth centralisation sophistication of England, he's actually been trolled by our producer, Theo, who's writing in the chat, looking forward to the French invasion. which is poor from you, Theo.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
Well, is it French? I mean, this is something that we will be discussing. So Theo's trying to throw Tom off piste. I know he won't because I know, Tom, you want to talk about Edgar. Now, Edgar is always known as Edgar the Peaceable, which makes him sound like a lovely... He's a lovely guy, likes flower arranging and watercolours.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
But in reality, people call him Edgar the Peaceable because if you step out of line, he will probably blind and scalp you.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
Yeah. I think people generally like ravaging in history podcasts. So, you know, time will tell. And Dominic, they like Law and Order, don't they? They do like both. And I really, I like Law and Order a lot. So Edgar's your kind of guy? He's absolutely the kind of guy that in my previous incarnation as a newspaper columnist, I would have very much applauded. You'd have been all over him.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
Yeah, I'd have been all over him like a rash.
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548. The Road to 1066: Anglo-Saxon Apocalypse (Part 1)
So to put Theo back in his box, this is a brilliant example of the contrast between what's happening in England and what is happening in what's now France. On the one hand, you have centralization, bureaucracy, and uniformity, and on the other, you have a sort of gibbering chaos, all kinds of nonsense. Yes, exactly. However, however...
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540. Horror in the Congo: A Conspiracy Unmasked (Part 3)
It's always been the boast of this country, says Herbert Samuel, not only that our own native subjects are governed on principles of justice, but that ever since the days of Wilberforce, England has been the leader in all movements on behalf of the backward races of the earth.
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Here is an occasion when those responsible for our policy might pursue these great traditions and add to the annals of the good deeds of this country.
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Exactly, exactly. So its supreme irony is that it's Britain's imperial position that allows it to take this view, which, of course, some listeners may say is rank hypocrisy, but others may say is an example of the kind of ambiguity of empire, right? Well, we'll be talking about this, won't we, in our bonus episode. Exactly. Now, the Foreign Office, when it hears about this debate, says, OK...
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You know, let's not rush into anything. Let's actually try to get some hard evidence ourselves rather than relying on this activist. We have a man on the ground in the Congo and we'll ask him to find out exactly what's going on. And now we come to the other great hero of this story. And this is a man called Roger Casement.
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And next week, Tom, I know you're going to be talking to the Irish novelist, the great prize-winning novelist, John Banville, about Roger Casement's story. He's an extraordinarily interesting figure. There's a richly fascinating life.
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Because we should mention he's the British consul, but he is Irish. Yes. So just very quickly on Casement, because we'll be doing him next week. Casement's born to a Protestant family in Dublin. He went to the Congo when he was 19 years old. He is implicated. He had worked for Henry Morton Stanley as a surveyor. He'd worked on the route for Leopold's Railway.
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Casement is a very handsome, striking man, an enormous black beard, great sense of natural dignity, very polite. He's a great talker. Everybody comments about his voice, says what a beautiful voice he has. No sense of humor whatsoever, I think it is fair to say, which is always a good thing in an activist, by the way. You don't want them to be sort of ironic. You want them to be earnest.
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And everybody always remarks how kind and gentle he is. Even when he first arrived in the Congo, people said he's very nice to the Africans. People said he was too nice. He gives away too much. Joseph Conrad had met him in his journey in 1890. Well, they'd gone together on the Rue de Belge, the steamship. They had hung out together.
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Conrad had written in his journal that Casement was most intelligent and very sympathetic. And Casement undoubtedly had heard stories about the darkness because we know that in 1887, he'd been on the steamboat with a Belgian officer who said, life in the Congo is brilliant. I pay my men five brass rods for every severed head they bring me.
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So Casement had joined the British Colonial Service. He'd worked elsewhere in Africa. And then in 1901, the Foreign Office sent him back to the Congo as Britain's consul. And before going to the Congo, he went to see King Leopold in Brussels. King Leopold said, oh, brilliant. I hope you have a great time in the Congo. If you've got any issues, come to me first. You know, if you saw anything wrong.
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I'm the father of the Congolese. Exactly. Casement goes to the Congo and quite clearly he's very disturbed by what he sees. He says it's beastly. He starts asking the Foreign Office if he can go on a fact-finding trip to the interior. And for various reasons, it doesn't happen. But then after this Commons debate, they say, OK, you can go. Please go and find out what on earth is going on.
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So Casement goes off on this mission. He is not, I think it's fair to say, a happy or a well man. He's got malaria. He's got dysentery. He's also plagued. I'm sure you'll talk about this with John Banville, Tom. He's plagued by doubt and guilt because Casement is gay. And his sexuality is a kind of a torment to him in many ways. He has all these sort of agonies of fear and doubt and whatnot.
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Well, the one thing that was missing – so two things that were missing. Morel was born in France, and his father was French, and then he went to boarding school in England. So you should have done an accent that was a cross between... Oh, like Theo Young-Smith. Right, like Theo Young-Smith. That's the voice you should have done. Theo has many qualities, but he's not barrel-chested.
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Anyway, he goes upriver by steamboat. He spends three months in the interior. Have you seen this? So for company, he has a bulldog called John, and he has a servant called Hairy Bob. And Hairy Bob can cook only three dishes, chicken, custard, and boiled sugar. Chicken and custard is delicious. Well, I mean, if you've got dysentery, is this the ideal diet? That's my question.
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No wonder his case was so miserable. So he goes into the interior, and what he finds is even worse than he feared. And we know this from his daily diary. The country a desert, no natives left. I walked into villages and saw the nearest one. Population dreadfully decreased. Only 93 people left out of many hundreds. And then a really sort of moving entry in his way.
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August the 30th, 16 men, women and children tied up from a village in Boye, close to the town. Infamous. The men were put in the prison. The children let go at my intervention. Infamous, infamous, shameful system. Now, all the time he is sending dispatches back to London and he says, oh, this is dreadful.
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Leopold has, and I quote, put the natives on a path to their final extinction and the universal condemnation of civilized mankind. And you can well imagine the Foreign Office getting these and thinking, oh, come on. Oh, no. Because they don't want to cause a huge fuss.
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Exactly, exactly. Because that, of course, is the worry for the Foreign Office and for the British government generally, is that, you know, sure, look into the Congo Free State, but stop there. You know, you shouldn't be looking into other colonies because, of course, our colonies are perfect. Anyway, he gets back to London eventually, goes back to England in 1903. He writes his report.
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He actually finished the report coming home from a country house weekend with his old pal, Joseph Conrad. Now, his report is written in this kind of legalese.
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He's not barrel-chested. He's not barrel-chested. So yes, I think you captured the barrel-chest very nicely there, Tom. Congratulations. Thank you, Dominic.
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But you mentioned the depositions. So at the end, he has kind of witness statements that go into all the horrors. And the Foreign Office are really shocked by the witness statements. The British ambassador to Belgium says, I can't believe that the Belgians would have done this. They're cultivated people, even under a tropical sky. Surely the Belgians couldn't have lowered themselves to this.
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Anyway, this report is finally published. Britain sends copies at the beginning of 1904 to every signatory to the Conference of Berlin. Even Leopold can't ignore this. I mean, this is a big story. And he says, well, I'll set up my own commission to investigate it. That's his usual ploy. And in the second half, we'll see how that turns out for him. But Casement is not yet finished.
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He now really has the zeal of a convert. He gets in touch with Morell. They have dinner in London and they talk until two o'clock in the morning. And Morell gave a wonderful, a wonderful, vivid account of their first meeting. which I will read. He said,
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Morell said in his memoir, you know, I often see him, Casement, now in imagination, as I saw him at that memorable interview, crouching over the fire in the otherwise unlighted room, unfolding in a musical, soft, almost even voice, in language of peculiar dignity and pathos, the story of a vile conspiracy.
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And as Casement talks in this beautiful voice of his, Morel said, I believe that I saw those hunted women clutching their children, flying panic-stricken to the bush, the blood flowing, the ghastly tally of severed heads, and all this kind of thing. You know, Casement's skill as a storyteller is so important. This voice that everyone talks about. Exactly.
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Now, Casement says to him that night and afterwards, look, I think we should set up a big new organization devoted to the Congo. And Casement says to him, you know, the Congo is different from other campaigns. The Congo is a unique evil. And if we can rouse the British people, the world might be roused. Britain had played that part before, meaning in the campaign against slavery.
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Could we raise a throbbing in that great heart of hers? This is a tremendous story. It's about kindness, but it's also about how brilliant Britain is.
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Yeah. And listeners will discuss this in the bonus episode. Is the Congo unique or is the Congo symptomatic of the crimes of imperialism? And this is an issue for historians to this day. And indeed for moralists and theologians. Exactly. Ongoing debate at the moment. Very, very, very bitter debate, I think it's fair to say.
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So anyway, Morel says, look, I mean, the new organization, I don't really have the money to set this up. Casement says, here's a check for £100, which he can't afford. It's more than a month's salary for Casement, a lot of money. Morel uses this to buy a typewriter, and the Congo Reform Association is born, one of the great human rights campaigning organizations.
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Now, after this, Casement slightly drops out of the story. The Foreign Office give him a promotion. They promote him to consul in Lisbon. So off he goes to Portugal. Which he doesn't like because he finds it too civilised. Yes, it's boring. He and Morel are still great pals. They had a code. They had nicknames for each other. So Casement was Tiger. Morel was Bulldog.
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And Leopold was the King of Beasts.
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But Morel is more. He looks like a bulldog. Yeah, he looks like a bulldog. And maybe there's a sort of patriotic thing there. You know, he's kind of British bulldog with his barrel chest. Maybe. But I think of John. Okay. I don't think Casement is a tiger. If you're going to be an animal, Casement's not a tiger. No. I think he's a puma. A puma? Yeah.
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Because he goes to South America and he's a kind of man of the shadows. Yes, I suppose.
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Anyway, that's. But it's good to have a dog. In the story. I love a dog on the rest of history. We're very keen on dogs. So Morel throws himself into this new association. It has its first meeting in Liverpool, of course, the great shipping port in 1904. And it gets 1,000 people. Now, it's slightly different from other human rights campaigns, and this is perhaps why it's more effective.
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It's a very establishment campaign. He has all kinds of endorsements from earls and viscounts, especially bishops. He loves a bishop, and he loves an MP. Bishops are very big in the antipartheid. Indeed. He loves an MP. And he never, Morel never criticises the British Empire or colonialism per se. He loves Britain. He loves Britain's empire. So that's not just a tactical move.
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He genuinely thinks Britain is top nation and also top nation for kindness. And that's why Britain is peculiarly well equipped to lead this campaign. I think he genuinely thinks this. And he is, for somebody who basically was a shipping clerk, he turns out to be absolutely brilliant at running this campaign. He works incredibly hard.
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Yeah, he absolutely is. He is the link between the abolitionist movement that fought slavery in Britain, America and elsewhere a generation before and the human rights campaigns of the later 20th century, the anti-apartheid campaign and so on and so forth. And today's episode really is the story of how he and his friends and his allies bring down Leopold's regime.
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He writes 600 letters a month, which is 20 letters a day on average. He's a brilliant speaker. He will talk without notes to audiences of thousands week after week after week. He's great at tailoring his message to different audiences. So to businessmen, he will talk about Leopold as monopoly betrays free trade. To bishops, he says, it's our Christian duty.
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To audiences of the sort of common people, he says, it's Britain's responsibility as top nation to lead the world. He always makes sure he has MPs from different parties sitting on the platform, as well as all the local bigwigs. He's great at wooing rich supporters. So the Cadbury's Chocolate Family, we did a podcast about them last year. They're Quakers.
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They see themselves as great philanthropists. He gets loads of donations from them. He likes a celebrity. So Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes creator. He gets Conan Doyle to rallies. He gets him to write his own book on the Congo, The Crime of the Congo.
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What a perfect recruit. Probably the most famous writer of the day. Very patriotic. You know, you can't write him off as a do-gooding, bleeding-hearted. You know, he loves a campaigning cause, Conan Doyle, but there's no doubt that he also loves Britain. So the perfect, perfect person to have. And Morell also knows the value of the modern image.
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So it's Morell who really pioneers the use of slideshows with all these pictures of people with their hands cut off. And this is, in a way, the highlight of his rallies. It's the bit that everyone's been waiting for and that everyone will remember. He shows them the pictures, and that's the thing that really, really has an effect. A.J.P.
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Taylor, the great historian, himself from a dissenting background, said that Morell was, in his view, the single best historian most effective activist, most effective leader of a campaign in British history. And I don't think he's wrong, actually.
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But as kickers go, he's probably the best kicker or one of the best kickers. The Johnny Wilkinson. Yes. Moral kicking. And not just in Britain. So by the middle of the 1900s, there are branches of his association in France, in Germany, in the countries of Scandinavia, in Switzerland, in Australia, in New Zealand.
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And he has put the issue of the Congo Free State on the front pages of newspapers in almost every country on earth. So the question is, Is this enough to trouble Leopold? How will the king fight back?
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Last week, we heard about how since 1885, King Leopold II of Belgium has presided over this reign of terror in the Congo Free State in pursuit of ivory and rubber and, of course, money. And this is the story of how he loses his grip. The Congo doesn't become independent or free, of course. It passes into Belgian government hands.
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The fattest men in history. Come back after the break to meet this extraordinary man.
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Definitely. So we'll come to Twain in a little bit because Twain joins the campaign against the Congo Free State campaign. But first of all, well, how's Leopold? How has he reacted to all this? I mean, I think it's fair to say he probably does think what the words that Twain has put into his mouth. Leopold is now, he turned 60 in 1895. He's a very rich man, but he's very unpopular in Belgium.
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He has all these villas on the French Riviera. He's got a massive yacht. He spends a lot of his time in the south of France. A lot of Belgians say to themselves, well, he's got this massive colony, all this money, but we're not seeing any benefits from it. Dominic, what about his love life? Well, he's disgraced himself, Tom, I think. He's let Belgium down.
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So he has got this new mistress who is exceedingly controversial. She's a young French prostitute called Caroline de Lacroix, or Lacroix, the different versions of her name. They probably met when he was 65 and she was 16. They probably met at a brothel or hotel in Paris.
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But Leopold loses this prize that he has spent all his life trying to seize and then trying to sort of hide from the world's gaze. So, yeah, this is Edmund de Morel's story, really. So let's talk a little bit about him, Tom. He is born in Paris in 1873. Father French, mother an English Quaker, which may be relevant. His father died when he was young. He went to boarding school in England.
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Now, Leopold's wife, who of course he hated, died in 1902, and he now becomes completely obsessed with Caroline. He installed her near his castle at Lachen outside Brussels. He spent millions of francs on jewels and clothes for her. He gave her a retinue of servants. I mean, disgracefully, Tom, he took her with him to Queen Victoria's funeral, which was an enormous scandal.
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She bore him two children in 1909 and 1910. And actually, far more than the issue of the Congo Free State, this is what destroys his reputation in Belgium. But the two issues become slightly conflated in the world's press. So when her second son was born, there was some issue with his hand. I'm not exactly sure what it was, but whether he had a withered arm or what it was.
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But anyway, there's an issue with his hand. And Punch magazine in England, then very, very popular, published a cartoon showing Leopold holding this baby with a kind of injured hand. And he's surrounded by African corpses with severed hands. And the caption says, vengeance from on high. In other words, God has punished you for what you've done to these people. Yeah, that's pretty punchy. Yeah.
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Well, literally. Literally, yeah, exactly. So now Leopold is very upset by all this, of course. And he does something very modern. He employs a PR campaign of his own. They place articles in the newspapers about abuses in British colonies, i.e. he's saying, you are the most dreadful hypocrites. You know, you think I'm bad. Look at what you're doing in Nigeria or Sierra Leone or Africa.
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He's got a point. Well, we'll discuss whether he's got a point in the bonus episode. But it's fair to say, I think it's absolutely fair to say, all European empires have skeletons rattling around in their closets. He's not wrong about that. That's for sure. He gets his tame shipping companies to sponsor books and articles. He sets up lobby groups with, I mean, all with these sort of comical names.
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The Committee for the Protection of Interests in Africa. Yeah. The Federation for the Defense of Belgian Interests Abroad. You know, all of these groups that, again, sound very contemporary, don't they? I mean, the kind of thing you see all the time.
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Of course it is. Of course it is. Or they subsidise magazines, which he does. He has a magazine called New Africa, The Truth About the Congo Free State. This is classic. It's so common now, but at the time it is groundbreaking. And he spends a lot of money on journalists. And we know about this because we have the paper trail of his attempts to bribe the German press.
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And entertainingly, his chief agent in Germany, who was a guy called Ludwig van Stuyp, claimed that the Belgians were very slow about handing over, about reimbursing him for his costs. And he wrote to Brussels and said, where's my reimbursement? And he said, now you keep asking me for receipts. Obviously, I don't have any receipts. Yeah, it's all underhand.
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Because I'm giving people cash, brown envelopes or whatever. By the way, one issue for Leopold is that our old friend, the Kaiser, In Germany, the Kaiser absolutely despises Leopold. He called him Satan and Mammon in one person.
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That's the man. Right. Okay. Yeah. I think there's a fair bit of double standards. Exactly. Now, the battle moves in about 1904 to America. America, of course, was the first country to recognize the Congo Free State. It's a bit of an embarrassment, do you think? Yes, I think so.
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And Edmund D. Morel says, you know, the United States has a special responsibility to address this because they are the country that basically opened the door to Leopold getting this territory.
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Absolutely. So missionaries will often do tours, speaking tours, British missionaries in America, American missionaries in Britain. There is a sense of, dare I say, a special relationship, a sort of moral relationship on this front. So in 1904, Morel goes to America. He meets Theodore Roosevelt at the White House. He recruits Mark Twain. Twain is then in his 60s.
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He ended up becoming a British subject and becoming a clerk. And he's an obscure man. When he's 18 years old, he starts work for a Liverpool shipping company called Elder Dempster. And... As luck would have it, this shipping company has the contract for the steamship trade to the Congo. They have a monopoly. So they handle all the steamships that go to and from the Congo.
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He's probably the most famous author in America. He's all in on the campaign.
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And he's a great activist. He's a great campaigner, Twain. He goes to Washington three times to lobby the president, to lobby Congress. And it becomes this huge crusade, petitions signed by thousands of people, by governors, by senators, university presidents, and so on. Now, Leopold, again, doesn't take this lying down. He fights back. He mounts a lobbying campaign in America.
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He offers Congo concessions to the Guggenheim family, to John D. Rockefeller. He gives artifacts to the American Museum of Natural History because he knows that J.P. Morgan is on the board. And he pays American academics to defend him.
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So to give you just one example, a guy called Frederick Starr from the University of Chicago, he's paid by Leopold to write a series of articles for the Chicago Tribune called The Truth About the Congo Free State. But then Leopold makes a terrible mistake and Tom, we promised a very large man. And now he rumbles, he looms into view.
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He's about 21 stone. I don't know what that is in American measurements.
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Exactly. President Taft is famously large. He's the fattest president in American history. And this bloke makes Taft look like a kind of gymnast. Exactly. So this guy is called Colonel, I mean, you couldn't make it up. He's called Colonel Henry I. Kowalski. And Leopold takes him on as his chief lobbyist and pays him the equivalent of about a million dollars a year today, 100,000 francs.
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Now, Kowalski has a series of problems. One, he's a total fraud. And two, he's a narcoleptic. And this may be related, I think, Tom, to his fatness. So he will fall asleep unexpectedly. He's a lawyer. He'll fall asleep in court. He falls asleep when he's waiting to meet people in hotel lobbies. And he also, I read, falls asleep in the street. So he'll be like walking down the street or something.
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And, well, I don't know, is he still standing up? Does he fall over? I mean, he's a large man. Don't sheep go to sleep standing up? Standing up, exactly. So you'd hope that he wouldn't fall. The sort of tremors. Yes. Echoing across New York. Anyway, the Belgian ambassador, when he hears that Leopold has employed this guy, says, what? This man is a notorious fraud. What are we doing?
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So basically, after the first year, the Belgians don't renew this guy Kowalski's contract. Actually, no, we've changed our minds. Kowalski, when he's not asleep, is outraged by this. And do you know what he does? He goes straight to the newspaper baron, William Randolph Hearst, and he says, I've been working as a paid lobbyist for King Leopold II of Belgium. Would you like the story?
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And to Leopold's horror, in December 1906, the New York American, one of Hearst's papers, banner headline on its front page. King Leopold's amazing attempt to influence our Congress exposed. And Kowalski has told them everything, including the fact that he's been paying a staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to basically derail congressional resolutions on the Congo.
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And for every day for a week, Hearst's papers lead with the Congo. Pictures of the severed hands, shocking missionary accounts, the works. It's a massive story. And basically, by the time it's all over, Leopold has comprehensively lost American public opinion.
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actually just makes him seem even worse in American eyes. Yeah, an evil, corrupt European king. I mean, he's the perfect villain, isn't he? With his sort of 12-year-old mistress or whatever she is. I mean, it's a terrible... He is a very bad standard bearer for European colonialism, I think it's fair to say. So Leopold has probably only one card left now.
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Remember that he had set up one of his little fake commissions to investigate the casement report. So this has three judges on it. There's one Italian, there's one Belgian, and there's one Swiss. And Leopold is pretty confident that they will fall into line because the Italian bloke already works in the Congo as his chief appeal court judge. So he thinks, well, what could possibly go wrong?
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Exactly. They have been given the contract by the Congo Free State, and obviously they don't want to lose it. It brings them in a lot of money. Now, by the late 1890s, at which point Morel is in his mid-20s, they are sending him often every month to Antwerp because, of course, he speaks French. So, you know, he's a useful employee.
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And unbelievably, to his complete horror, the judges, they take it far too seriously. They say, well, we'll obviously go to the Congo and we'll investigate the abuses. It's like, you know, oh no. They go up the river by steamboat. Joseph Conrad style. They talk to 400 witnesses. They talk to Africans who've been flogged with a chicot.
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They talk to people who've been held hostage, all of this kind of thing. Leopold, meanwhile, is lurking back in Brussels, waiting for their report. And he starts to hear rumors that one of the judges, we don't know which one, has started crying during the interviews, has been so moved by the stories. That's a very bad sign for Leopold. Then a terrible sign.
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The judges come back and they go to brief the governor general. So that's in Leopoldville. I guess it's in Leopoldville at this point. Or Boma, the original capital, I'm not sure which. This is a guy called Mr. Kostermans. They go to brief him about their findings. Kostermans, when they leave Kostermans' office, Kostermans is so shocked that he doesn't speak to anybody for days.
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And then two weeks later, he cuts his throat with a razor and kills himself.
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Well, of course, if he's the governor general, he probably hasn't even gone up river into the interior and seen what's going on.
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I think there are people who probably work in the, who are, as it were, civil servants, who perhaps have just closed their eyes. Do you think? I don't know. He perhaps, in part of it, I think it's... It's very common in history. You have people who are part of their mind. They kind of know what's going on. But they've closed that door. Maybe it's guilt. Maybe it's guilt, yeah. As well as shock.
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I don't know. So the report came out in November 1905. And again, it's a very lawyerly kind of...
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He's the ideal person basically to stand there at the quayside supervising the arrivals and departures of all these steamships. He's already interested in Africa. Why wouldn't he be? You know, Africa is a very exotic and exciting subject in the 1890s. He thinks the Congo Free State is brilliant. He believes what he reads in the newspapers about its civilizing mission.
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So that report really was Leopold's last chance to recapture the narrative. And obviously he completely failed. By this point, he's become an even more grotesque figure than ever. He's in his early 70s. He's a massive hypochondriac. He's riding around Belgium on a gigantic tricycle, drinking decanters of hot water, which he thinks are good for his health. Everyone in Belgium hates him.
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And once this Kowalski business comes out in America and then the reports, obviously by his own tame judges, he realizes the game is up. And effectively at this point, he realizes I'm going to have to get rid of the Congo and I want my money back. And so he decides he's going to sell it to the Belgian state. The one thing, of course, that at the beginning he didn't want to do.
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Now, unfortunately, for those of us who would like to see justice done. Leopold is in a very strong position here. This has been horrendous publicity for Belgium.
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Of course, especially when there are Belgian politicians who are absolutely mortified by this and horrified that the name of their country has been associated with this. Absolutely. I mean, this isn't... Because this has been King Leopold's project. There have been Belgians involved. You're absolutely right.
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There have been Belgians who have blown the whistle and there have been Belgians who have been really, really shocked and campaigned against it. But for the Belgian government, I mean, could you get worse publicity for a small country? Obviously you couldn't. And the British and the Americans are putting them under intense pressure. You cannot let Leopold sell this to France or Germany.
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We don't want the French or the Germans to get hold of the Congo and all of its rubber and all of this. So the Belgians decide under this Anglo-American pressure they're going to have to buy it off him themselves. And they do.
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Because of his dodgy accounts, the negotiations take ages, more than a year, but in March 1908, they finally agree they will pay him 50 million francs, which is the equivalent of billions of pounds or dollars today. Thankfully, Leopold doesn't have very long to spend his winnings because he died in December 1909, probably of cancer.
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Of course, Leopold being Leopold, his death is a massive scandal because it turned out that he'd secretly married his mistress, Caroline, just before his death, and he'd left her most of his fortune, not his daughters.
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There's a massive scandal, a huge legal battle, three-way legal battle between Leopold's daughters Gareline and the Belgian government for control of his estate. I can't believe Robert Harris hasn't written a novel about this. But the thing is, it ends up being forgotten because just five years after his death, plucky little Belgium becomes the casus belli for Britain in the First World War.
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He actually writes articles about Africa and about the Congo Free State for industry magazines because he fancies himself as a bit of a writer. And he says, it's got a great future. King Leopold, what a tremendous fellow, all of this kind of thing.
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And it has a new king now, his nephew, Albert. And he becomes the great symbol of Belgian resistance, doesn't he?
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They do get, yes, they do get great war washed. Exactly. So let's just say very quickly about what happened to the other characters in this story. Stan Lee... at the time, actually, came out of this pretty untainted by the Congo scandal. He'd become an MP, a Liberal Unionist MP. He died in 1904. So round about the time the furore is reaching its peak.
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But it never really seemed to sort of engulf him. Although, of course, now, you know, modern historians and biographers, when they write about Stanley, I mean, obviously, the Congo plays a very large part in his story.
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So Casement, who we'll be hearing lots more about next week with you and John Banville, he ended up becoming the champion of another great humanitarian campaign. So Rubber Workers in the Peruvian Amazon, he's a great champion of them. He's knighted in 1911, but then he becomes absorbed by another cause, which is Irish freedom. Extraordinary story.
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And he ends up on a U-boat with a load of guns, trying to smuggle weapons in. Kind of three days before the Easter Rising. I mean, spoiler alert, he's hanged for high treason. Most of his Congo allies plead for clemency. Morel pleads for clemency. Conan Doyle pleads for clemency. But interestingly... Joseph Conrad did not and refused. And Conrad said Casement had taken honors from Britain.
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He'd represented Britain. We've got a knighthood, haven't we? He had then betrayed Britain and, you know, he got what was coming to him. So Conrad's a pretty conservative figure, so that's not necessarily surprising. Morell carried on campaigning about the Congo, even after being taken over by the Belgians. We'll come to that in just a second.
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But he was radicalized eventually, a little bit like Casement. So in the First World War, Morell is probably the best known pacifist in Britain. And he ended up being sent to prison for sending pacifist pamphlets to Switzerland, which was in breach of the Defense of the Realm Act. He ends up joining the Labour Party. He stood for Labour in Dundee in 1922. He beat Winston Churchill.
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at the House of Commons. It's amazing how all these figures kind of intersect. They connect. I know there's a great book to be written about, you know, imagine a book with your characters like Conrad, Casement, Morell, Churchill, all of these, Mark Twain, Anyway, he died tragically of a heart attack two years after being elected to Parliament when he was just 51. So that was the end of him.
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But his legacy, of course, is a tradition of human rights activism that never really goes away. And obviously, we're still very familiar with to this day. But before we close, we should just a word about the Congo. Because the real question, of course, is how does it change? What changes after Leopold is gone?
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It's definitely true that when the Belgians take it over, there are fewer reports of atrocities. We don't have the same reports of burned villages, people being taken hostage. It doesn't seem to have been the severing of hands, all of that stuff. However, a lot of the caste in the Congo are the same people, the same officials, the same station chiefs.
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Absolutely. Absolutely. But he's standing there on the quayside at Antwerp and he's watching that scene that we described earlier. And he starts to become suspicious of the ships that he sees. Because as we described at the end of last week's episode, he sees all this rubber and ivory being unloaded from the ships. But nothing is going back the other way.
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The force publique continues with the same name. The rubber trade continues, and there is still forced labor. Even after the First World War, the Belgian Congo is notoriously brutal. They're still using the chicots. They're still using forced labor. The focus has moved now to mining copper, tin, and gold. But the conditions in those mines are pretty horrific and thousands of people die.
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And he goes there and it turns out all to be the fault of Al Capone. Yeah, and Tintin in the Congo, you can't get it. You have to order it specially. You can't get it now. It's been withdrawn from sort of general sale in children's bookshops. It's seen only as a kind of historical curiosity because the portrait of Belgian colonialism,
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and of the people in the Congo is seen as inappropriate for 21st century children, which I can completely understand, I have to say. Even in the Second World War, when obviously Belgium is one of the allies, there's still forced labor, and the colonial government demands 120 days
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per person of forced labour from its African population to meet the Allies' demands for rubber for their trucks, for their jeeps, for their tyres of their aeroplanes and so on. So, you know, there is that dark side to the Allied war effort. Now, some scholars have tried to make a case for the
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And I've said, you know, great public health campaigns, trying to eliminate sleeping sickness and yellow fever and things like that. And there's perhaps a degree of truth in that. But one thing that people always say about their colonies is, you know, look at the results, judge us on the legacy.
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And the truth of the matter is, if you look at what became of the Belgian Congo after 1960, after independence, I think it would be very, very hard to say that's a record to be proud of.
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He is indeed. He is indeed. So there's obviously still loads to talk about. And actually in Thursday's episode, we'll be going back to the book that we began with, which is Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. A great subject for a history podcast because it's one of the most influential works of fiction ever written. Conrad himself is a A fantastic character. Extraordinary man.
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And the impact of that book is really, really worth talking about. So that's what we're doing on Thursday. But for Arrested History Club members, a day earlier on Wednesday, we'll be discussing the deeper questions from this series. So we'll be asking about the death toll. How many people died in the Congo Free State? And is it fair to call it, as some people do, a genocide?
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Is it fair to see it as representative of European colonialism generally? So in other words, does this tell us something very dark about European imperialism? And should we perhaps revise the sort of canonical version? And what are the controversies that surround Adam Hochschild's book, the book on which we base so much of the series? So that's for Restless History Club members.
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And if you want to join, you can just head to therestishistory.com and then you'll hear it. Thank you very much, Dominic.
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So he kind of thinks, well, what are we trading for? Four, what are we giving them in return? Now, at one point, he's called in by the Secretary of State of the Congo, who describes as a man thin to emaciation, inhuman, bloodless, petrified. I mean, there is a quality of Bram Stoker to quite a lot of what he's writing about. Sinister things in crates. Exactly.
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I was about to say there was something of the Hollywood melodrama, but actually the comparison with Dracula is a really nice one. This man calls him in and he's absolutely furious. He says the newspapers have reported what was in one of our recent shipments back to the Congo, a huge consignment of guns. And this sort of stuff shouldn't be appearing in the newspapers.
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Make sure it doesn't happen again. And Morel is confused by this. He thinks, well, why are we shipping so many guns back to the Congo? And why can't the newspapers report it? Why is it such a big deal? I mean, it's interesting that the guy assumes that Morel would understand. Yes, exactly. Isn't that so interesting? Well, I think a lot of people perhaps would not have been curious.
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Morel is curious. So he goes away and he starts just idly almost looking into the account books, looking into the figures in the office. And he thinks this is weird. Nothing really adds up. The accounts that he sees, the figures written down, the ledgers, don't match what he can see coming off the ships, the massive consignments of rubber and ivory. And that's not reflected in the earnings.
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And it becomes obvious to him that there's a lot of fraud going on. Somebody is skimming off the top. And the answer, of course, is King Leopold. King Leopold is lying about the amount coming in and about how much money he's making. But the other thing that becomes obvious to him once he starts going through all these kind of dusty ledgers is that consignment of guns was not the exception.
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It was the rule. They are sending thousands and thousands of guns and rounds of ammunition to the Congo and nothing else. And we ended last week's episode with his great moment of revelation, a very kind of Hollywood scene. I was giddy and appalled at the cumulative significance of my discoveries. It must be bad enough to stumble upon a murder.
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I had stumbled upon a secret society of murderers with a king for a ringleader. I mean, it would make a great film, wouldn't it? It would, absolutely. Tabby, our assistant producer, said it reminded her of the Robert Harris novel about the Dreyfus case. An officer and a spy. And it very much has that quality. Yeah. Yeah, kind of whistleblower. Exactly.
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So Morel goes to see the head of the company, who's a man called Sir Alfred Jones, the head of the shipping magnate. So he must be thrilled. Of course. Sir Alfred Jones is horrified when Morel says, I found all these discrepancies and I'm extremely concerned. Jones says, well, listen, I'll go to Brussels myself and I'll talk to the king about it.
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Then Jones calls in Morel a few weeks later and says, well, I've been to Brussels. I saw the king. The king said, yes, he's very disturbed about what you've discovered. He'll set up a commission. Exactly. Reforms will be carried out. And Sir Alfred says to Morel, don't worry. The Belgians are doing great things, and we have to give them time to get their African house in order.
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In the next few months, Morel finds that he's being frozen out. He's not going to Antwerp as much as he was. Then he's offered a promotion. Great news, you've done so well, and you're going to be posted overseas. And then he says, no, I don't want to go overseas. I want to stay in Britain. And then he is offered another promotion to become a consultant, pushed up the ladder of the company.
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And it's very clear to him that the company are now trying to shut him up. Or to offer him a bribe. Effectively, both. I mean, that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to either get him out of the picture or push him upstairs, push him into a back office, well-paid, stay quiet.
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So in 1901, at the age of 28, he resigns from Elder Dempster and he resigns to become a full-time writer, but not just any writer. As he wrote himself, his goal was, and I quote, to do my best to expose and destroy what I then knew to be a legalized infamy, accompanied by unimaginable barbarities and responsible for a vast destruction of human life.
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In other words, he has quit the company to become a full-time campaigner, to become an activist. effectively. Now, the real puzzle is why? What is it in him? that makes him want to do this. See, I don't think it's a puzzle at all. I know what you're going to say.
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Well, that's the only, that is one possible explanation. The only downside with that is there's absolutely no evidence for it because we do know that he's in no way personally religious and there's no evidence that his mother did have this influence on him. So it's a supposition and it's not an unreasonable one, but it's only a supposition. He has values. Yes, he does.
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And where do these values come from?
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Maybe they come from his boarding school, Tom. You're underplaying the importance of the score, which is sad. I don't think so.
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Well, the truth of the matter, of course, is we don't know. What we do know is he does feel personally responsible. because he has worked for the company. And I think that's a huge part of this story. And it is also with his great ally, who we'll come to later. This is the story of two men who both felt implicated because they had both been perhaps naive in some way.
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I think the parallels are very, very clear. It's a very common story, actually. Some of the keenest abolitionists tend to be people who've been involved with the trade in some way. Anyway... At first, he struggles. And this is something actually that Adam Hochschild's book doesn't really capture, that actually at first...
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He succeeds only because he gets funding from a rival Liverpool shipping tycoon. And this is a guy called John Holt, who's a rival of Sir Alfred Jones and gives him the money to found his own paper, the West African Mail. So there's a really good article on this by a scholar called Dean Clay. And he points out that basically this is a question not just of altruism, but of business rivalry.
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This rival tycoon wants to bring down Elder Demester, or at least do them down a bit. So he gives Morel the money to do his campaign. And Morel starts to pour out not just, you know, dozens of articles, thousands of words, but millions of words. So an enormous quantity of what we have been saying in this podcast about the Congo is
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comes from Edmund D. Morell because he is the single biggest source. He's publishing books, he's publishing articles, editorials. When you look behind so many of the anecdotes and the quotations and indeed the statistics, they come from this one man. And he never goes to the Congo, that's the thing, rather like King Leopold.
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But the extraordinary thing is he is absolutely brilliant at persuading insiders, even people within the mercenary force, the force publique, to leak material to him, which goes back to your question, Tom, last week about are there people who feel guilty? Are there people who have regrets or have doubts?
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There clearly are because from 1901 they are feeding this guy information, the facts and figures and anecdotes and all of these kinds of things.
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Exactly. He gets so much information, he starts to taunt the administration of the Congo. He'll print lists of... of things that their own employees have offered to sell him. He'll say, basically, here's the bullet-pointed list of the things that I'm being offered. At one point, they issue an instruction to their subordinates.
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They say, stop writing things down because Morella's reprinting them in his newspaper. He gets hold of that order, and he prints that in his newspaper as well. So he's mocking them the whole time. But his single most powerful source, actually, this will please you, Tom. Doesn't please me, but it doesn't surprise me. Let's put it like that.
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It's not from within the administration, but it's missionaries. So many of the most shocking stories that we mentioned last week about floggings, about beatings, about these horrendous atrocities. These are from Protestant missionaries, often British, American or Scandinavian.
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They are seared on the mind, and that's partly why his campaign is so effective. So by about 1903, within two years of leaving his job, Morell has managed to, by writing and writing and writing, and he's got all these great journalistic contacts, he places pieces everywhere, he's managed to make this a political issue in Britain.
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And in May 1903, the House of Commons actually holds a debate on the Congo Free State. There is a motion to call upon the signatories to the Conference of Berlin to take measures to ensure that the Congolese people are going to be treated with greater humanity. And the motion is introduced by the Liberal MP Herbert Samuel.
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And he, in his speech, so I had a look at Hansard for the text of the debate, he deplores what he calls the seething turmoil and barbarous acts of repression under King Leopold. You know, he doesn't hold back. But the brilliant thing for us, Tom, is that he presents this as a great patriotic British endeavour to clean this up.
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Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com.
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Perhaps the interpretation of the Quran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Muhammad. From such calamities was Christendom delivered, by the genius and fortune of one man.
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Right, so Char Martel, although there is a Merovingian king, we don't need to really worry too much about him. He's called Theuderic IV.
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But Char Martel is the ruler of huge swathes of what was once Gaul, Austrasia, Neustria, Burgundy, and so on. But that leaves one other place in the southeast of France, which is Aquitaine. and Aquitaine stands against Charles Martel. Is that right? And this is going to be very important for our story of the Battle of Tours. So Aquitaine has got a duke called Odo, or Odo. Let's call him Odo.
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So tell me about him. He's a very grizzled, experienced bloke.
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Charles, the illegitimate son of the elder Pepin, was content with the titles of Mayor or Duke of the Franks, but he deserved to become the father of a line of kings. That was Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most famous passages of historical prose ever written.
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And they are launching raids all the time northwards as far as Burgundy, right?
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Can I just stop you right there? So a lot of listeners may find that really interesting because that obviously undermines the idea that this is a sort of titanic clash of civilizations and that people are consciously engaged in a clash of civilizations. Because here you have an alliance between Christian and, in inverted commas, Muslim and a marriage alliance along with that.
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So there's no sense that they've crossed some kind of tremendous ideological divide in doing that.
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He is describing the legacy of the Battle of Tor, which was fought on the 10th of October 732, or perhaps 733, nobody is entirely sure. between the Franks and what he called an invading force of Saracens. So Tom, great passage, great book, great subject. Just bring some of it alive for us. So who is Charles? Who are the Saracens? Where are we and what's going on?
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Okay, so what will happen? Will they strip it bare? Will there be a great battle? Who knows? Come back after the break and find out.
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Head to Blinds.com now for up to 40% off select styles plus a free professional measure.
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Rules and restrictions may apply. In this year, two comets appeared around the Sun, striking great terror into those that saw them. One went before the Sun, rising in the morning. The other followed it, sinking in the evening, as if foreboding dire calamity for East as well as West.
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Certainly, one anticipated the day's beginning and the other the night's, so that they might act as a sign that evils threatened mortals at both times. They bore a fiery torch to the north as if to start a fire. They appeared in the month of January and remained for nearly two weeks. At that time, a very serious plague of Saracens plundered the Gauls with miserable slaughter.
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So that was the venerable Bede, writing in the Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Now Bede, not brilliant at dates, to be fair to him. He said this happened in 729.
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He's at least three years out here. Probably. So he dated the comets to 729, but there wasn't any Saracen invasion of Gorn in 729. Most scholars think he's got in a muddle and he's actually talking about 732. Which is a bit odd because he actually claimed that he finished his book a year earlier. So maybe he put this in afterwards.
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Saladin in the Ladybug.
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I was about to say, it's one where the limbs of the bow kind of curve away. So it's a sort of more elaborate curve. Yeah. So they kind of curl back on themselves. Like a horn, almost.
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Yeah, Arabian Night kind of bow. And because of that, because of the extra sort of tension or whatever, you can have a shorter bow. So in other words, it's easier to fire when you're on horseback.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
So it's a bit like the images of fighting that you get in Bernard Cornwell's books, which are, again, not a massively dissimilar period. People packed in a kind of shield wall, stabbing with their swords relentlessly through the gaps in the enemy line.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
Kind of impassable, immovable, indomitable.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
So that's it. The invaders, the raiders have been beaten off and they've vanished with their stuff because they don't want to lose their, what plunder they've already gained.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
But what it isn't is a long-planned, cold-blooded, coordinated, massive invasion. No. It's not that.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
The one thing I would say is if they have that, they have to keep supplying it with men and whatnot from beyond the Pyrenees, which does look like a pretty significant natural barrier through most of history between France and Spain.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
You've made a massive leap in the course of a sentence from they'd probably got Aquitaine to suddenly Italy has fallen as well. Like your dominoes are falling very quickly.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
And this is an argument that people made particularly in the 19th and early 20th century, isn't it? That the Battle of Tours, if it was fought in 732, was one of the genuinely pivotal moments when history might have gone differently. That had the Franks lost to the Saracens...
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
Which is so common. That's what Christians think of them in the early years of Islam, isn't it?
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
then Islam, the advance of the Arab armies would have continued up into France and that the entire course of European and world history might have been different. And in fact, all Europe might have fallen within the kind of Islamic world. And people genuinely made that argument very vigorously, among them Adolf Hitler, right?
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
Are there not some other reasons why you could question the idea about the momentousness of this battle? So, for example, the Mayad Chronicles often mention big defeats. So they mentioned defeats in the early stages of the Reconquista, for example, but they never mentioned this at all. Like it doesn't even feature.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
They treat it as a raid that just, you know, just one raid among many and beaten back. I looked this up. There were more raids in 734. There was a raid in 736. And there was actually, some people think, an even bigger raid, even bigger invasion in 739. when the Umayyads got to Burgundy, only to be beaten back by the Franks. So in other words, this was not the end of their incursions.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
So in that sense, it's not really a turning point. It doesn't change anything because they just keep coming.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
But there's one other thing which is even more important, which I think is arguably much more important than the Battle of Tours, and that's in 740, a huge revolt breaks out in what's now Morocco, Great Berber Revolt. And that basically cuts off Umayyad Spain from the sort of Arab heartland.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
It means that the age of raiding kind of comes to an end because they can't keep raising all the, you know, there's so much internal dissension and the Emirates can't keep raising all these Berber troops.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
So that would seem to undermine the idea that, oh, they get Akutay and then they get this and they get this and they get this because actually they've got so many problems in their own kind of backyard, as it were, that they were actually never going to be able to do all that because of the massive ructions going on in North Africa.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
All right, well, if people want to listen to that, we've got an episode on Umayyad Spain, which I greatly recommend. But for the time being, we're going to be going on with the story of the Franks, right, Tom? So what's coming up next?
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
Brilliant. So next up is our Charlemagne trilogy, one of the most epic stories we've ever done on The Rest Is History. Now, the good news, if you're a member of The Rest Is History Club, is that you should have all three parts of that trilogy right now.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
Now, if you're not a member of the club and you'd like to get your hands on them, all you need to do is head to therestishistory.com and sign up and you can have that Charlemagne trilogy straight away. If not, I'm afraid you'll just have to wait. See you then. Bye bye. Bye bye.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
Well, here is a reminder that we at therestishistory.com offer gift memberships. So if you're good at dropping hints or if you're short on a present for a family member, for a friend or for a partner, Tom and I would like to remind you of the ultimate Christmas stocking filler. And it is, of course, a subscription to the Rest Is History Club, which is full to the brim with bonus episodes.
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522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
It's got access to the much-loved Discord chat community. It's got newsletters. It's got all kinds of goodies. Simply go to therestishistory.com and look for gifts.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
We do. So we often say we've got exciting news, but this is genuinely very, very exciting news. We are thrilled to announce that after the sellout show that we did earlier this year, The Rest Is History will be returning to the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday, the 4th of May to perform live once again with an orchestra.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
So that first show that we did this year was a truly glorious experience. And we are hoping that this, too, will be an unforgettable night. There'll be great music. We'll be telling great stories. We'll be delving into the history. So you had better get your hands on tickets for the show as soon as you can.
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522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
That is the Rest Is History live with the Philharmonia Orchestra Tchaikovsky and Wagner. It's at the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday the 4th of May. Now, the tickets are available for members on Wednesday the 18th of December and for the general public on Thursday the 19th of December. And please make sure that you don't miss it.
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522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
After all, Christmas is just around the corner. And a very happy coincidence, our first official Rest Is History book is now out as the perfect stocking-sized paperback.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
It's sure to make the festive period much more entertaining for all involved, and it is available in bookshops everywhere now.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
But this is not what the vast majority of historical scholars now think, is it? Most agree now that the Battle of Tours was massively overblown. It was kind of a propaganda victory above all else, partly because the Arabs are not trying to launch a massive invasion of what was once Gaul. It's a raid, one among many that they launch.
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522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
And the consequences are perhaps not as great as is often thought.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
I do think when you read an academic on the Battle of Tor, academics who say, oh, it's a terribly important moment, it's a pivotal moment in world civilization, a battle that changed everything, they always do tend to be of a very particular political persuasion.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
All right. Well, let's start with the Arabs. So Gibbon calls them Saracens, which is not a word that you often hear these days. But actually, they're not really Arabs, are they? Most of that army are almost certainly Berbers from North Africa, from what we'd once have called Mauritania, or probably a lot of them from Spain. So they're not Arabs. And actually, are they even Muslims?
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
Because, of course, at this point, Islam is still in the process of kind of being formed, isn't it, to some degree?
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
It's a raiding party and not, I guess, totally unlike Scandinavian raiding party in a not massively dissimilar period.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
So now beyond that is the land of the Franks. And that's the kingdom we talked about last week. It's ruled by the Merovingian dynasty. We left it with Clothar II. He's won his victory over Brunhild and he's basically got a monarchy over the whole of what was once the Roman territory of Gaul.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
So all the different kingdoms are now acknowledging him as their, all the different bits rather, are now acknowledging him as their king. But I read that the seeds of the Merovingian's downfall had already been sown. It's
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles from the Rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire. The repetition of an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of Poland and the highlands of Scotland. The Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates. and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames.
The Rest Is History
530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com.
The Rest Is History
530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
That's true. So maybe it does. Who knows? Maybe if more Czechs had read Three Men and a Boat, the story. The story would have ended very differently. Right, we shouldn't laugh about this because it's a very tragic story. Hacher, his daughter and the foreign minister travel by train to Berlin. He's asked for a meeting with Hitler.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
It takes them five hours and they arrive in the evening of the 14th of March. Hitler behaves, he's a very poor host, I think it's fair to say.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Yeah, exactly the same. He keeps him waiting in this hotel. Always hotels with Hitler. What is it with Hitler and hotels? Keeps this bloke waiting in a hotel for ages while he is finishing watching a film, a comedy, I think, called Ein Hoffnungsloser Fall, which means a hopeless case. An ominous, ominous title there for the Czechs. Finally, at midnight, Hitler says, right, I finished the film.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Get this bloke over to the Reich Chancellery. So Hacher is brought to the Reich Chancellery and there they make him inspect the Guard of Honour. They have all their guns and stuff and their steel helmets. A sort of humiliation for him. Do they have the skulls at this point? Yeah, there's probably a lot of skulls. To be fair, the Kaiser had all sorts of uniforms with skulls on, didn't he?
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
So even great associates of the rest's history have kind of got a bit of skull decoration. At 1am, Harker is shown into Hitler's massive study in the Reich Chancellery. It's absolutely rammed to people. So all the bad guys are there. Ribbentrop's there. Goering is there. Wilhelm Keitel, the general, is there. And Harker, this guy, is very, very nervous.
The Rest Is History
530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Is he polishing his glasses as they steam up? He undoubtedly isn't thinking about Jerome K. Jerome. Thinking wistfully about comic songs. Exactly. Hitler launches into this massive rant against the Czechs. He says, I've had enough of you. You know, you're terrible people. And to protect our security, I'm going to impose a protectorate over Czechoslovakia.
The Rest Is History
530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
I'm going to absorb it into the Reich and it'll become a protectorate of Germany. My troops, he says, are on their way. Too late. They can't be recalled. They're going to cross your border at six o'clock in the morning. I want you to ring Prague, tell your people to offer no resistance. And if they offer any resistance, we'll kill you and we'll crush them.
The Rest Is History
530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
And Goering, he chimes in for good measure. He says, oh, my air force, the Luftwaffe, will be over Prague by dawn. And it's up to you whether they bomb your city into dust or not.
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No, I don't think he does. It's not exactly an empty threat, but it's pure blackmail. And at that, I mean, incredibly, although not incredibly, you might say, Harker collapses. He just collapses. He falls to the ground in a dead faint. Some sources say he may well have had a heart attack at that point. And he drops to the ground. And the Nazis are...
The Rest Is History
530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
They're actually quite thrown by this because they're terrified that everybody will say they've murdered him, which is very bad PR for them to murder the president. Yeah, it's a very bad look. Of course, Hitler's doctor, Dr. Morell, who's the guy who's always giving him cocktails of amphetamine. Amphetamine. So he gives them some speed. Yeah, he's on hand with an injection.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
They managed to bring Hacher back to life, get him back up. He says, oh, fine, I'll ring Prague. He goes to ring Prague. It's very like the Munich conference. Telephones don't work. The phones aren't working. And the Luftwaffe are heading towards Prague. At this point, Ribbentrop has a massive strop at this point, a massive meltdown. He says, oh my God, the phones never work here.
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It's like Britain in the 1970s. The phones aren't working. Nothing works here. Everything is rubbish. You know, he's kind of ranting and raving. Actually, he's being a bit harsh on his own phone system. It turns out the problem is actually with the exchange in Prague, not with Berlin. So Ribbentrop is being too harsh towards German telephone engineering. He's talking Germany down.
The Rest Is History
530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Why does Wibbentrop hate Germany? It's sad. Shocking. Anyway, finally, Harker does get through to Prague and he says, okay, don't fight, don't fight, don't resist. And at four o'clock in the morning, under tremendous pressure, I mean, it is a really, really tragic scene, he signs a declaration that he is putting his people under the protection of the German Reich.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
So Harker kind of collapses again.
The Rest Is History
530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Pure colonial conquest. And Hitler is probably as excited and happy about this as he's been about anything because he goes in to see his secretaries. They're called Christa Schröder and Gerda Daranowski. And he famously says to them, one of them, I can't remember which one it is, tells the story. He goes in, he says, so children, to the secretaries, and he points to his cheeks of his face.
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He says, I want each one of you to give me a kiss here and here. This is the happiest day of my life. What has been striven for in vain for centuries, I have been fortunate enough to bring about. I will go down as the greatest German in history. He's no longer crippled by self-doubt at this point. No, I think it's fair to say he's not crippled by self-doubt.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
So two hours later, right on time, the first German units crossed the border into their new protectorate. Again, this is the first time that they have not been greeted by cheering crowds. So that, again, is a reminder how different this is from the Rhineland or from Austria or even the Sudetenland. There's nobody cheering. There's nobody with flowers. There's nobody saluting.
The Rest Is History
530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
By and large, the Czech people stay indoors. They are horrified. It's a misty, snowy day. It's a funereal atmosphere. Hitler crosses the border later that day by train. Then he transfers to this kind of fleet of Mercedes cars. And now he can go to Prague, which is...
The Rest Is History
530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
I mean, his ultimate object. He's got his arm outstretched in the salute as he passes all his troops who are columns of troops heading into Czechoslovakia. He reaches Prague. Night has fallen. He goes right up to the castle. If anyone's been to Prague. Amazing. Dominates the city. Dominates the city. The kings of Bohemia, Holy Roman Emperors, Rudolf II had been there. He goes up.
The Rest Is History
530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
The castle is dark and abandoned. To his great displeasure, it's like when Ted Heath became prime minister and arrived at Number 10 Downing Street. There's no food. This was the case, Tom, in 1970. There's no food at the Prague Castle in 1939. And Hitler sends his military escort out to find food. They bring back ham and bread and some Czech beer, lager.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Hitler doesn't like the beer, which is madness, because Czech beer is very good. He says it's too bitter. Not pleased at all. So to add to Hitler's many faults... It's an inability to appreciate Czech beer. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Add that to the charge sheet.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
He issues this proclamation which he says, the Bohemian and Moravian lands have belonged to the living space of the German people for a thousand years, which is not really true. And he says, now they've been reunited with their masters.
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Bohemian Moravia. Yes, exactly.
The Rest Is History
530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
They do indeed. Yes, they do. The Bohemian Moravia becomes part of the Reich. The Slovak state becomes, under Monsignor Tissot, becomes a kind of clerical fascist puppet state of Germany.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
And the last bit of Czechoslovakia, which is over in the east, subcarpathian Ruthenia, is taken initially by Hungary and then it actually ends up being part of Ukraine in the Soviet Union later on and remains Ukrainian to this day. So the Czechs never get it back. And a first in the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, there is a sort of pretense of autonomy.
The Rest Is History
530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
So there's still a Czech president, still a prime minister and so on, the Czech courts. But over time, of course, all this begins to disappear. Jews are repressed. The state's assets are plundered. And it really becomes worse when Heydrich from the SS becomes the deputy protector in 1941. And then he gets shot, doesn't he, in their terrible reprisals. Exactly.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
So Hitler returns to Berlin in triumph. Sort of Roman style, like a conqueror. Great crowds. Goering is there with kind of great tears on his fat face. And now everyone's happy. Everyone in Germany kind of happy, are they? Well, this is the interesting thing, right? So the Nazi high command are happy. Nazi true believers are very happy. They've got a conquest. But...
The Rest Is History
530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
For ordinary Germans, I don't know that they care very much about Bohemia and Moravia. I mean, nobody thinks that these are an integral part of the right. They've never been part of Germany. In his biography of Hitler, Ian Kershaw quotes a teenage girl from Paderborn. Oh, where the Pope went to meet Charlemagne. Right, exactly. I think this is from a girl's diary.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
The girl's mother said, is he never satisfied? Can't he get enough? And the girl herself writes in her diary, she says, I completely understand why we took the Sudetenland because it's full of Germans, but why are we taking over an entirely alien people, those are her words, who cannot possibly be turned into Germans? Because, of course, the 1930s, it is an age of nationalist thinking.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
You know, when ethnic nationalism is so important to people, it constructs the way they view the world. So for Germans who've been brought up on ethnic nationalism, and linguistic nationalism, to suddenly have all these Czechs in the Reich doesn't make any sense. What are they doing there? And I suppose also more Jews.
The Rest Is History
530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
And of course more Jews, exactly, which will be even more the case when we turn to Poland later on. And even Nazi Party reports themselves slightly sort of reluctantly said most people are actually pretty They don't quite understand this. They're grudging. They're even critical. They don't understand why it was necessary.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Richard Evans, in his book on the Third Reich, he quotes a worker who said, we were always winning these days, but we were always winning once before, and that came to a bad end. So in other words, there is a slight sense of foreboding about all this.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
I think this is Hitler's first really, really serious misstep because I think much more than Munich, this is the moment that destroys the case for appeasement. Because if you were massively pro-appeasement, even after Munich, you could say, well, we've avoided war and really the Sudetenland is full of Germans.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
I mean, I think this is what you might say would be the revisionist case for appeasement, which is if you give Hitler every possible chance, then when the crunch comes... You will have a united country where everybody says, look, clearly we gave him every opportunity. Apart from unity, of course. Apart from unity, Medford and Oswald Mosley.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
We gave him every opportunity and he showed himself to be a total and utter shyster. And the same reaction in France. Absolutely the same reaction in France. So in France, Deladier, the prime minister, who had been there in Munich, of course, looking like a snail, looking very miserable, said, He says to his Chamber of Deputies, right, okay, fine. It's very clear now. We have to prepare for war.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
And they vote him emergency powers in the nation's defence after this moment. In Britain, every newspaper, the Observer, which had been a pro-appeasement newspaper, had said this was, and I quote, the most shameful and ominous page in the modern annals of Europe. The brilliant diarist, the Tory MP, Chips Channon, he'd been an ultra-appeaser, a massive admirer of Chamberlain.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
No bolder, bolder departure from the written bond has ever been committed in history. The manner of its surpassed comprehension and Hitler's callous desertion of the prime minister is stupefying. I can never forgive him. So in other words, this business, I think, is not as famous actually as Munich or the attack on Poland. I think really, really matters.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
And Chamberlain at first doesn't quite get it. He gives a speech in the House of Commons that's very perfunctory and doesn't quite match the mood of the moment. But then two days later, which is the 17th of March, he goes to give a speech in Birmingham, of course, the Chamberlain stronghold. And he clearly, by this point, has changed his tune because he strikes his hardest line yet.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
He says, it's very clear now, Hitler intends, and I quote, to dominate the world by force. If that's right, we will stop him. He says, Britain will take part to the utmost of its power in resisting such a challenge if it were made. And I think here, actually, as in 1938, He speaks for the nation. He's reflecting the public mood.
The Rest Is History
530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
You can see it in papers and letters and diaries in Britain and in France. With this attack on Czechoslovakia, Hitler really has crossed the line and there is no going back now. We know what kind of man he is.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Exactly. He's saying, where are we going to draw the line? And the very next day, 18th of March, he meets his cabinet and he says exactly that. Like, okay, we draw the line now. One more step and it is war. Where will Hitler's next challenge come? And Chamberlain is in no doubt the key to the future of Europe, he says, will be Poland.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Yes. So Poland, Polish history 101. Poland had vanished from the map of Europe after 1795 for more than 120 years. It had been partitioned between the empires, as lots of people will know, between the empires of Russia, Prussia and Austria. And Poland got its independence back at the end of the First World War. And it's one of the largest countries in Central Europe. It's 31 million people.
The Rest Is History
530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
But Poland, unlike Czechoslovakia, is very, very rickety. So because it's been carved out of three different empires, nothing is joined up. It doesn't even have a joined up railway network. Because they've all got different gauges. Yeah, exactly. It's very rural by and large. A lot of it is very poor. A lot of the First World War in the East was fought in Poland, so it's scarred by war.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Like a lot of Central European countries, it has an issue with minorities. Basically, it's meant to be an ethnic nation state, but you can't draw the boundaries perfectly. So they don't feel that diversity is their strength. They do not feel the diversity is their strength. Only about two-thirds of the population are ethnic Poles. So if you look at the census, there's about 4 million Ukrainians.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
There are 3 million people who are identified in the census as Jews. There are a million Belarusians. There are almost a million Silesian Germans. And that, I guess, is the key thing for Hitler. Of course. In fact, again, unlike Czechoslovakia or far more than Czechoslovakia, none of Poland's neighbours like it. Everybody thinks it's illegitimate. Everybody contests its borders.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
And it's an extraordinary thing that in the three years after 1918, the Poles fought six separate frontier wars.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Of course it is. They pretty much fight every single one of their neighbours, most famously the Soviet Union. They turn them back in the miracle on the Vistula when they defeat the Bolsheviks. You know, it's a terrible thing for the Poles. They're trapped between two much larger, much richer neighbours, both of whom regard Poland as illegitimate, and they are Germany and the Soviet Union.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
That was how Goering welcomed the New Year, Tom. And of course, we always like to welcome the New Year in the company of these terrible people. So New Year 1939. And Goering there, I think it's fair to say, is speaking for tens of millions of ordinary Germans. They all love their Fuhrer. Well, Hitler is very popular. And of course, there are people who have issues with the regime of various kinds.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
No, it's not. To pick up an analogy that we mentioned in the last week's series about Munich, it's rather like you're on that plane strapped between Goering and Ribbentrop. And actually things don't get any better for the Poles. They suffer massive inflation and unemployment in the 1920s and 30s. A million people emigrate, mostly to the United States. They can't sustain their democracy.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
So there's a coup in 1926 by the great wartime nationalist hero, Marshal Pilsudski. And then they have an authoritarian regime called the Sanatsia regime, which means the kind of healing regime. And this is a kind of nationalist authoritarian regime. The key person in this is probably the foreign minister called Josef Beck. Beck is a Calvinist, very unusually for a Pole.
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And he's a kind of very clever satanized man, but everybody hates him.
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Is that an issue? I don't think it's a massive issue deep down. Because, of course, there are lots of countries at this point that are not democracies. And I think it would have been an easier sell if it was. But actually, the French, for example, the French are very Polonophile and have been for a very long time. Yeah, Chopin.
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They regard themselves as having a kind of special relationship with Poland. And in Britain, do people say, oh, the Poles, really? They're not a democracy? I don't think they do, actually. I don't think they give it that much thought deep down. Don't really know anything about the Poles. I don't think they really care what kind of government they have.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
The interesting thing is what Hitler and the Germans make of the Poles. So most Germans... hold the Poles in very, very low regard. So in the 19th century, when a lot of Poland, of course, had been part of the Wilhelm Ein Reich, the Kaiser's regime, they had looked down on the Poles. Germans had said, well, the Poles are very backward. The Poles are very superstitious. They're very stupid.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
They actually had an expression, Polenwirtschaft, a Polish business, which meant kind of muddle and incompetence. You know, they sort of looked on them, I suppose the analogy would be how people in the late 19th century in Britain talked about Ireland, actually, as a kind of, you know, oh, they can never govern themselves.
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They're so disorganized and they're so backward and primitive and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's how Germans think of the Poles. Even in the 1920s, lots of Germans said, look, in the long run, Poland will have to cease to exist again. There's no way we can live with a country called Poland on our eastern border.
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I mean, the head of the army of the Weimar Republic, General Hans von Siegt in 1922, said Poland's existence is intolerable and incompatible with Germany's vital interests. It must and it will disappear through its own weakness and, with our help, through Russia.
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But even though it's actually, of course, not Russia anymore, it's the Soviet Union. But they think, you know, it's kind of the law of nature and of history. that the Poles never govern themselves. A bit like, you know, the Kurds don't have a state.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Well, this is fascinating. Hitler, who, of course, later on is perceived as incredibly anti-Polish, he doesn't have a strong view about Poland at all before 1938. He barely mentions Poland in Mein Kampf. And the obvious reason for this is that, of course, Hitler is not German.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Yeah. So he never really thinks about the Poles. Why would he? When he's in Vienna, the Galician Poles aren't massively playing on his mind. He doesn't care. Think about Warsaw and all of that kind of stuff. And actually, in January 1934, he had overruled conservatives in the Foreign Office to sign a non-aggression treaty with Poland because he wanted to secure his eastern flank.
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There are things that are wrong with the regime. But a lot of ordinary Germans, I think at the beginning of 1939, would say that Hitler's six years in power have brought a series of great achievements. They've rearmed. The worst hardships of the Depression are over. They've reoccupied the Rhineland. They've unified with Austria.
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No, unless you're Neville Chamberlain, in which case you love a piece of paper. But I think it's fair to say Adolf Hitler is not a man who adheres to a non-aggression pact. I think that's the one lesson we can all take from these three seasons on the Nazis.
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I think if I signed a non-aggression pact with Stalin, I wouldn't necessarily have a great deal of confidence in his word. If I signed a non-aggression pact with Neville Chamberlain or Deladier... Then you would. I would. Wouldn't you?
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They've wasted their time, Tom. I think it's fair to say. Good.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Right. So what does Hitler want to do with Poland? He's absolutely, even at the beginning of 1939, I'm not sure he's thinking about attacking and conquering it. He's thinking that Poland will just be a satellite, basically turn it into a client state, which is what he does with Slovakia and what he does with Hungary. Bind Poland to him as a loyal ally in the crusade against Bolshevism.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
And actually, you can see why he thinks he could do that. They have an authoritarian nationalist regime. The Poles had rather let themselves down at Munich. Yeah, so Hitler's given them a chunk of Czechoslovakia. He has. The old Silesian Duchy of Teschen. Not the Silesian Duchy of Teschen. Yeah. The Czechs and the Poles had fought each other for this in 1919, and the Czechs had got it.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Right. And actually, there's a very famous moment. So two days after Munich, they got it. And the Poles went in. And the Czech general who handed it over to them, he said to the Polish general, well, you better make the most of this because I'll tell you what, you're going to be next. And the Poles said, ha, ha, ha, that will never happen. And how wrong they were.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Anyway, three weeks after that moment... Ribbentrop asks the Polish ambassador, a man called Mr. Lipski, to come and see him. And he says, we actually have a bit of a problem that we need to discuss. You can imagine the blood draining from the Polish ambassador's face. So here is the problem. After the First World War, when Poland had been carved out of these empires, the peacemakers at Versailles
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realized that Poland wasn't going to get any access to the sea at all, because it was on the northern flank of Poland. It was all East Prussia, which is German, and Lithuania. And they realized that they needed to give Poland an outlet to the sea. Otherwise, Germany in particular would have a complete stranglehold over Poland's trade, its exports and imports.
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And now, most recently, they have annexed the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. And they've done all of that without provoking the one thing that most of them fear, which is their a European war. However, against that, it's not all good news, is it?
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
So they'd carved out this Polish corridor, as they called it, which is quite narrow. The narrowest point is about 20 miles across. It went through West Prussia. So basically dividing Germany into two parts, into the main bit of the Reich and then East Prussia. And there's the Polish corridor between them. And that's not the kind of thing that Hitler would approve of, is it? Not at all.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Because the population of the Polish corridor is mixed. It is majority Polish, probably. I mean, this is very contested at the time by kind of rival census takers. But there's a very sizable German minority. And at the north end of this corridor on the coast is the city of Danzig, or Dansk as it is today. And there is no doubt what kind of city Danzig is. It is a Hanseatic League German city.
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It looks kind of German. Now, it had belonged to Poland. It had belonged to the Teutonic Knights. It had belonged to Poland again. And then it had belonged to Prussia. The population of Danzig is definitely majority German-speaking, at least 90%. I mean, you can go to Gdansk today, which I have. It's the most amazing city to visit. It's incredibly rich architecturally and in history and whatnot.
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And it looks like a Hanseatic League city. However... You know, Poland needs its outlet on the sea. So what the Versailles peacemakers did was they made Danzig a free city, an independent city-state under the supervision of the League of Nations. So very Hanseatic. Yeah, very Hanseatic.
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It was governed by a Senate, basically a German Senate, but the Poles had the right to use the harbour and they were given a post office there and customs posts. And on this sort of peninsula across the harbour called the Westerplatte, which we'll be talking about a fair bit in the next couple of episodes, there was a Polish military garrison. And this was a massive running sore.
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This was a massive affront to German nationalist conservatives, especially if you're Prussian or something.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Yeah, absolutely. You're like, this is a Prussian city. These people are Germans. It's not right that it's a free state. You know, it should really be part of the Reich. And who cares about the Poles? That's basically the German position. So this is what Ribbentrop says to this ambassador. He says, right, we've had enough. We want Danzig back.
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We also want to be able to build a motorway and a railway across the Polish corridor, which we control. We'll extend the non-aggression pact for another 25 years. Tom, I know your views on non-aggression pacts. There's a good deal. And we'd like you to join the anti-comintern pact to basically bind you into our alliance, our anti-Bolshevik alliance.
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Well, as we all know, and as is very well chronicled at the time in the newspapers of the world, there is the dark side to the Nazi regime, the concentration camps, the murders, the repression, the persecution above all of the Jews, symbolized by the Nuremberg Laws and the the pogrom, the Kristallnacht at the end of 1938. All of that is very well known.
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The Polish guy says, all right, well, I'll take this back to Warsaw, see what they say. And the Poles reply very quickly and they say, absolutely no way. We can't allow ourselves to be cut off from the sea.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Of course you are. Neville Chamberlain joins us now on the podcast.
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Correct. They are.
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No. And the reason is because if they do this, they turn themselves completely into a satellite of Germany, which they are never, ever, ever going to do. Right. Okay. They think if we give them Danzig, we totally lose control of our trade. Germany will now control everything we export and everything we import because it has to go through this port pretty much.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Or if it's going to go by land, it's got to go through Germany. So we just turn ourselves completely into a puppet. If we join the anti-comintern pact, we are on Germany's side against Russia. Again, we lose control of our foreign policy. Yeah, and they're bordering Russia. We're not going to do that.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
The point is Polish independence, which they fought for, which their forefathers have fought for for more than a century, they're not going to give that away like that. Now, Hitler at first thinks, oh, the Poles, they're being very difficult. But he doesn't immediately think, I'm going to attack them. He thinks they will see sense eventually. He invites Beck to the eagle's nest.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Beck goes along to the eagle's nest where Chamberlain went. And Beck says, look, you know, I can't help you. Polish public opinion will not allow us to give you these concessions. At this point, Hitler hasn't yet entered Prague. So he says to his aides, well, when I crush Czechoslovakia and I enter Prague, that will frighten the Poles and they will be more cooperative. So let's see if it does.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Let's go forward in time to March. Six days after Hitler has entered Prague as a conqueror, Ribbentrop again meets the Polish ambassador. And he says, right, I need Beck to come to Berlin. We're running out of patience. Our newspapers have had enough. They're really putting pressure on us. If you give us Danzig, maybe we'll give you a little bit of Slovakia.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
We'll get a bit of Ukraine for you or something. Tell Beck to come anyway. We'll talk to him about it. And the ambassador five days later says, you know, Beck's not going to come. He doesn't want to come. You're not interested. He says he's not interested in anything that you could possibly offer him. And if you attack us, we'll fight you. Now, you may say, this is your point here, Tom.
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This is reckless. This is incredibly bold. Beck's argument and the polls argument is we saw what happened to Czechoslovakia.
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However, Hitler is genuinely popular at this point. It's a police state, of course, so it's hard to be certain. But all the evidence we have from journalists, from reports by the Social Democratic Party that were sort of smuggled to their leadership in exile, are that people are delighted at Hitler's foreign policy achievements. And had he stopped...
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
The Poles think, look, we saw with the Czechs what happened when you appease Hitler. When you give in to him, he just nibbles more and more and more and eventually he comes back for the lot. The only way to stand up to him is just to draw a red line and to say no, and then maybe he'll back off. And Beck gives this amazing speech, actually, to the Sejm, which is the Polish parliament.
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He says, Peace is a precious and desirable thing. Our generation bloodied in war certainly deserves peace. But peace, like almost all things of this world, has its price, a high but immeasurable one. We in Poland do not know the concept of peace at any price. There is only one thing in the lives of men, nations and countries that is without price. And that thing is honour.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
And that's the attitude that a Prussian nobleman should respect. And it reflects poorly on Prussian noblemen. They don't respect it in this case. Now, Beck is confident that he can back this up because he has sent feelers out to London saying, will you back me up here? Please, will you support me?
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Now, we heard before the break, Chamberlain has already changed his policy and he thinks we need to deter Hitler. And his military chiefs are quite keen on an alliance with Poland because, of course, what they want is if there's a war with Hitler, they want Hitler to be fighting on two fronts, west and east.
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But, of course, there's no real practical possibility of British armed aid reaching Poland. No, and we will come to this in the next couple of episodes, that unfortunately there is a difference of opinion between London and Warsaw about whether or not Britain can actually help Poland. As we shall see, Britain doesn't. Now, the French are also keen on an alliance with Poland.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
They've got a long history of friendship. And Deladier says to London, yeah, we'll fight for Danzig. You know, that's our red line. That's fine. That's the context for Chamberlain going to the House of Commons on the 31st of March, 1939.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
and delivering his famous guarantee that if Polish independence is threatened and if Poland resists, his majesty's government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish government all support in their power. Now, you made this point just a second ago. What does that actually mean? What could the British actually do? Britain is a long way from Poland and Germany is in the way.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
So realistically, what can we do? And actually, even at this point, Chamberlain's military chiefs say to him, if Hitler does attack Poland, we're probably not going to do anything. There's nothing much we can practically do to help the Poles. But I suppose what Chamberlain would say in his defense is he doesn't see this as a last step, but as a first step. So he is thinking...
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We'll get Poland, then we'll maybe get Romania in an alliance, and ideally, maybe the Soviet Union.
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Yes, agreed. Of course, that's a very difficult card for any British government, especially a conservative government, to play. They regard the Soviet Union really as the ideological archenemy and have done for 20 years. You know, the Bolshevik, Stalin's regime, a blood-soaked regime, rumors, reports of the Great Terror coming out. There's been rumors of the famine in Ukraine and the Holodomor.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
If the 1st of January 1939, he dropped dead or he'd stopped right then and said, what we have, we hold, we consolidate. I think Goering's verdict, ludicrously delivered as it was, would have resonated with millions of ordinary Germans.
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You know, there are big obstacles to a deal with the Soviet Union. And one of the biggest, by the way, is the Poles. The Poles, when they hear talk of this, they're like, what? The Russians? We hate the Russians.
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Yeah, they know that. They know that Hitler has ranted and raved about the Soviet Union for, you know, more than a decade.
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Yes, absolutely. Somebody like Neville Chamberlain would have said to you, that's the dream. That basically they'll destroy each other. They're both terrible regimes and I hope they fight and I hope they both lose. That's exactly what a lot of people in Britain and indeed in France would have said, I should say.
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So I think at this point, in March 1939, when they give the guarantee, they realise, of course, the next war is not going to be Hitler versus Stalin. The war that they're trying to avert is Hitler versus Poland. So Hitler versus Stalin is off the table as a war, realistically, at that point.
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No, I don't think they think sitting back is an option at this point because they think they've sat back too much already. There's no appetite for sitting back at all at this point. All the momentum, all the kind of psychological momentum, political momentum is for deterrence. They feel they have to make a stand here and they can't just sit this one out.
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That's the mentality that got them into this mess in the first place would be the argument.
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Do you know who would probably make that argument? John Charmley. The historian John Charmley. Are you familiar with him?
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Mearsheimer. John Mearsheimer. He might make this argument, but I wouldn't make it personally. I think they were right to try to deter Hitler in the States.
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You know who's a big fan of Mearsheimer? The realist Putinophile. Theo.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
He's a massive fan of John Mearsheim. It's one of Theo's worst takes, I think, in my mind. Anyway, that's by the by. Right. Hitler hears about the guarantee to... Don't cut that out, Theo. You're better than that. Hitler hears about the guarantee to Poland and he is stunned. See, this is Hitler misreading things, which he's doing at this point. Hitler can't believe it.
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He can't believe that the Poles would stand up to him and he cannot believe that the British would be so... in his mind, deranged as to give Poland a guarantee. And Admiral Canaris, the intelligence chief, was with him at the Reich Chancellery when he heard the news and he has this description of Hitler. Hitler flew into a passion.
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With features distorted by fury, he stormed up and down his room, pounded his fists on the marble tabletop and spewed forth a series of savage imprecations. Then with his eyes flashing with an uncanny light, he growled the threat, I will brew them a devil's potion. I've always been struck by that because it just seems such a bizarre threat to make. I will brew them adept.
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Must be some German expression, no? Do you think, Tom?
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I mean, it's not an expression that people are bandying around in the 1930s. Hitler's been spending too much time with Wagner. That's what it is, isn't it?
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
So inevitably now he tells his generals to draw up their plans for war. And they present him on the 11th of April with a plan for Fallweiss, Case or Operation White.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
They're always colours, yeah. Green, white and so on. The blueprint for the invasion of Poland, which their plan is to begin in September. And the army chief of staff, General Halder, he briefs the senior officers. He said, we're going to destroy the Polish army at record speed. We're going to stop the British intervening. He says, the Poles are no serious opponents.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
We know we can defeat the Poles. But even at this point, Halder says to the other officers, This is not going to be an ordinary war. We are going to take the SS and we are going to take Nazi paramilitary formations with us. We must ensure that, and I quote, Poland as rapidly as possible is not only defeated, but liquidated. And do we have a sense of what that means?
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Well, we'll come to this in the next couple of episodes, exactly what that means. At this point, it is vague.
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And the short answer is no. Now, first of all, it's because, of course, they haven't assimilated the whole of the Czech economy. They've only taken the Sudetenland, which is, what, about a fifth of Czechoslovakia's industrial capacity. But actually, after they've done that, November 1938, Göring says to the rest of the Nazi high command, do you know what? We're actually in a terrible mess.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
We're going to do it in three weeks, Halder says, and then we will be ready either to confront Bolshevism or to hurl our army against the West. So at this point, there is still a question mark there. After we've finished with Poland, do we go West or do we go East? And now, we had a few twists last week. Here is the biggest.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
One of the most momentous, ominous and extraordinary twists in world diplomatic history.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
It is. Because it's about this point, April 1939, that some of Hitler's courtiers begin kind of quietly to discuss a U-turn that would change everything. And they mention it to Hitler. And when they first mention it to Hitler, he says, I don't know about this. That would be a massive ideological shift. I'm not sure about it.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
And then a couple of weeks later, in early May 1939, the story goes that Ribbentrop shows him footage of another world leader reviewing a military parade. And Hitler watches this footage intently and he's staring at this bloke's face. Like it said, like he had taken a fancy to him. And then at last he says, he looks like a man that you could do business with.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
So exactly as you say, Tom, Goering's four-year plan, as it was called, was predicated on constant conquest, on the constant acquisition of new resources, new labour, all of this. And actually, the wheels are about to come off, and they're only keeping inflation at bay. So the inflation generated by their massive arms spending They're only keeping it at bay with price controls.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
And as lots of people listening to this podcast will know, once you get into that world of kind of price controls to stop inflation, you're often in a bit of a death spiral, a kind of economic death spiral. And actually Goebbels writes in his diary in December 1938 that, The financial situation of the Reich is catastrophic. We must look for new ways. It cannot go on like this.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
And the obvious answer is, well, we just acquire new territory. We acquire new resources. Just take stuff from, if we haven't got enough workers, if we don't have enough currency, enough tungsten or whatever it might be. Or enough factories. We just nick the factories. Everything. Take it from somebody else. And of course, the other thing that is propelling Hitler onwards, Hitler cannot stop.
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I mean, this is the thing. He is not an ordinary dictator. He is not even an ordinary German nationalist. A.J.P. Taylor, very famously and controversially, in his book on the origins of the Second World War, published, I think, in the 1960s, said, well, Hitler was just a common or garden German nationalist. His goals were those of German nationalists down the decades and the centuries.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
No waiting in line with people who are sick with who knows what. Thanks to Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon One Medical, healthcare just got less painful.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
That obviously is wrong, completely wrong. Hitler had said all this stuff in Mein Kampf and all his speeches in the 1920s, all of this stuff about nature, the law of struggle. We talked last time that quotation about people have to fight.
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So there's a thing that clearly separates him from another dictator of the same period, like a Franco or a Salazar or somebody like that in Spain and Portugal.
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Yes, he does. There's like a revolutionary dynamo inside Stalin. But Stalin is clearly much more pragmatic than Hitler is. Stalin doesn't have Hitler's Wagnerian urgency, I suppose, which we know that Hitler has. And this, of course, is one reason that Hitler is so disappointed... when Munich doesn't give him a war. And he's particularly disappointed. We ended last time.
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He's so disappointed with the German people. They've let themselves down because they were against war and they cheered Chamberlain because they thought he was a peacemaker. And for Hitler, that suggests that they're on the road to degeneracy. Yes. So the longer you leave it, of course, the more degenerate they might well become.
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Of course, the longer you leave it, the more likely it is that Britain and France will rearm and it'll make Also, that Germany's economy will fall to pieces. So he really feels like that window is kind of closing all the time and he must move now.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
No, I don't think they do have that sense, Tom. I've never read anything that suggests that they do. Foreign visitors, when they go to Hitler's Germany, are struck by what they think of as his economic miracle, I would say. They're like, oh gosh, he's found the magic trick.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
He's put all these people back to work and Germany is humming again and everybody is happy and the streets are clear and all of that kind of thing. Springtime for Hitler in Germany. Springtime for Hitler, exactly. I think there's much more of a sense of that, actually, and a sense of great self-doubt in the democracies that maybe democracy doesn't really work. Maybe dictatorship is the future.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
So no, I don't think there's anything like that sort of sense. So beginning in 1939, I think it's fair to say that Hitler is determined to get his war sooner or later. The accent very firmly on sooner. And the most obvious unfinished business is in what he would call, what everyone calls at the time, Czechoslovakia. It has been renamed after Munich.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
So to emphasize the fact that it has become a bit unglued and the Czech and Slovak parts have become unglued. So if you remember from last week, Hitler didn't just want the Sudetenland. He wanted the lot, and he feels cheated. That fellow Chamberlain has spoiled my entry into Prague, he said. Is it not passing brave to be a dictator and ride in triumph through Prague? Exactly.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
That's part of his kind of Wagnerian fantasy in a life, isn't it? He sees himself riding up to the castle as a conqueror. So just three weeks after Munich, Hitler says to the Wehrmacht, to the German army, Please draw up plans now for the liquidation of the remainder of the Czech state.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Now, the thing about this, of course, which reminds us how unusual Hitler is, is anybody else would say that this was completely unnecessary. Czechoslovakia is now no threat to you. You can really turn it into your puppet eventually. You don't need to risk everything by swallowing the rest of it. It's just supine at your feet. But he wants to have his conquest as a matter of pride.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Secondly, I think, as we talked about last time, he really, really hates the Czechs. He's hated them ever since his days in Vienna before the First World War. And there is that economic thing that you talked about, Tom. So they have the big Skoda works. They have all this foreign currency. They've got loads of gold. And they've got this massive military arsenal.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
They have enough weapons in Czechoslovakia for 20 divisions. So that is about, if you think there's about 15,000 men in a division, I mean, that's a hell of a lot of guns. It is. And the Czechs have them. And their guns are better than anybody's. They've been made in this, in Pilsen, in this massive factory. And they're brilliant. And Hitler, for Hitler, there was no question in his mind.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
He's going to come back and get a lot. So straight away in the new year, as soon as the Goering's splendid oration, the last echoes are dying away, Hitler starts to lay the groundwork with the army. He does three big speeches, the 18th of January, 25th of January, 10th of February, where he meets groups of officers, starting with the younger ones and then moving up to the senior commanders.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
And he says to them, you know, he's completely explicit to this point. He says, I want to make the German right the dominant power in Europe. I want to ditch the democratic, pacifist, defeatist mentality that I associate with Weimar. At one point, he says to these guys, the German heroes of the past embraced brutality, meaning the sword, if other methods fail.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
It is time for Germany, and I quote, to stake its claim to the domination of Europe. So this isn't the talk of revising the Treaty of Versailles. No, it's not the kind of thing you could discuss with Neville Chamberlain. Yeah, a sympathetic journalist from the Daily Telegraph. You couldn't lay out these plans and hope to get a warm reception in the drawing rooms of Britain.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
And then the final one is at the Kroll Opera House, his senior commanders, and he says to them, Look, I am determined to get this living space in the East. And he says, as long as I live, this thought will dominate my entire being. I will never draw back from the most extreme measures. And I will need you to put your fervent trust in me. So there's no doubt about where all this is leading.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
This sort of slightly apocalyptic thought. you know, teenage boy planning and conquering the world, sort of Alexander the Great style vision.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
I mean, this is the amazing thing, by the way, about Chamberlain's self-delusion. There's that phrase that people say, isn't there? They say it on social media when they're trying to be nasty to somebody. They say, when somebody shows you who they are, believe them. I mean, Hitler had showed people who he was. for 20 years and people continued to underestimate him and to not believe him.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
But it's pretty open. Anyway, 13th of February, he tells his aides, right, we're going to do this. Let's start with Czechoslovakia and let us finish the job. Now, it's going to be easy. The Czechs, we talked about a lot last time, you were very agitated about this, Tom, as I recall. Very agitated.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
But they've abandoned their fortified border positions in the Sudetenland. And Czechoslovakia has federalized itself so he can basically use the Slovaks. He's going to use them as his pawn to kind of pull the whole thing apart. So the Slovak leader is a guy called Monsignor Josef Tiso. And Tiso is a kind of Catholic priest. He's ultra conservative. He's anti-Semitic.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
He's been the prime minister of the autonomous Slovak region since Munich. And he has terrible relations with the government in Prague. And they're always falling out. And on the 9th of March, they have a big row. And the Prague government says, we've had enough of you, mate. And they send their police into Bratislava to dissolve Tiso's cabinet.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
And Hitler's like watching this and he says, oh, this is absolutely brilliant. This is the pretext we need. And he says to his inner circle, well, we'll strike on the Ides of March. Hitler loves a bit of a classical.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
He deliberately phrases that like that. Yes, exactly. He does. He references the Ides of March himself. Isn't that nice? So stabbing the Czechs in the back. Stabbing the Czechs in the back. On the 13th of March, Tiso is flown to Berlin, this Slovak priest. Hitler says to him, right, I want you to declare independence and I want you to put Slovakia under German protection.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
And Tissot actually says, really, German protection? And Hitler says, well, if you don't, I'll give Slovakia to Hungary. The Hungarians can't wait to get Slovakia back. So make up your mind. Tissot goes back to Bratislava and slightly sort of, you know, under duress, he proclaims Slovakian independence. But he doesn't follow through with the next part of it, which is calling for German protection.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
Hitler thinks this is very poor. So he sends German warships down the Danube. They train their guns on Bratislava.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
And basically they say to Tissot, we'll fire on you unless you ask for our protection. Tissot asks for their protection. So the Czechs have been watching all this. Now the Czechs, Benes, he was left after Munich. So they have a new president and he's called Dr. Emil Hacher. And he is not the ideal person to take on Hitler. He's a lawyer, very experienced. He's in his late 60s.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
He's a very clever and gentle and kind of cerebral man.
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530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)
That stuff with the dog and the cheese. Yeah. Brilliant. And the picnic hamper. Yeah. Amazing. And I heartily recommend Three Men and a Boat to our listeners. But, I mean, you don't want an expert on Three Men and a Boat. It doesn't prepare you for confronting the Third Reich. No, it does not. Although you could say all of Britain had read Three Men and a Boat and we defeated the Third Reich, Tom.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
But no, General Kellerman takes off his hat with its trickler cockade and he lifts it up on his sword and he shouts, Vive la nation! And then the French will start singing the Satyra, one of their revolutionary songs.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
Right, exactly. I think the revolutionists would love to rewrite this. This is Sainte-Colotte singing the Marseillaise. And indeed they do in subsequent years, but that's not true at all. So they're blasting away. The Prussians keep coming. The Prussians can't believe the French are so full of vim and vigor.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
And then basically the Prussians waver and Brunswick says, call them back, call them, you know, enough. And the French, against all the odds and all expectations, because they performed so abysmally at the beginning of the war, They have actually, they haven't quite won, but they have survived to fight another day.
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I think it is a bit like that. But after you've, it's the draw that you need that keeps you alive in the group, I think is what it is. But that's because it's come unexpectedly. It's fated as a great victory. It's fated as a great victory. Exactly. That's exactly what it is. The Prussians actually have killed more Frenchmen than the French have killed Prussians.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
Yes, I imagine that is. Well, he's always got Cable Street, hasn't he? So yes, this is a massive moment in French and European history, isn't it? Because the French monarchy, I guess, one of the oldest in Europe. If you take it back to Clovis, who we talked about just before Christmas, didn't we? So yeah, I mean, that's the end of that story. Yes, it is. So it sends shockwaves across Europe.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
But for the first time, the Prussians have been stopped. They haven't been able to dislodge the French. And their reactions to the two sides could not be more different. So the Prussians are absolutely gutted. They can't believe it.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
Something like, gentlemen, you have witnessed the dawning of a new age. I felt you were gearing up to do him as Jeremy Corbyn there, which would have been a shame. So Goethe says, there's a wonderful scene. It's the great vanity of great writers. He says, they all sat alone around this fire. They were all really miserable. They couldn't meet each other's eye.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
And he says, everybody asked me what I thought about the events of the day as, and I quote, my little sayings had often interested or amused our little company. And you think, what an unsufferable bore he must have been to all the other soldiers. So he said to everybody,
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From this place and from this day forth commences a new era in the world's history and you can all say you are present at its birth. Now, shall I tell you something? I don't believe he did say that. I think that's far too good to be true. And he writes this a considerable time afterwards. So I'm suspicious of Goethe here. I think he's playing fast and loose with the facts.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
It is what they do. Anyway, for the French, this is massive. So there's a peasant soldier who writes to his father and he says, I've been electrified with a new courage that will make despots tremble. Oh, liberty. Oh, equality. Oh, my country. What a wonderful transformation.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
I don't know. Yeah, no, fair. That's fair. So lots of people say, gosh, this is a tremendous victory for the new republic, for our revolutionary virtue. And of course, when the news reaches the convention, they're all waving their hats in the air and delighted. And they say, absolutely brilliant. History has begun again. It is a new chapter in the story of the human race.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
Yeah, as soon as we took those blokes into the courtyards of various prisons and dispensed summary justice, and as soon as we locked the king up in the temple fortress, surprise, surprise, we start winning battles. You know, quadrat demonstrandum, the king was a traitor and was undermining the war effort.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
We will be talking about what it means. And of course, we'll be talking about what it means for Louis XVI. And we'll get to his story in our final episode. Nothing good. Nothing good. But before we get to the moment when they actually do abolish the monarchy, we should set the scene a little bit, Tom. We love setting the scene on this podcast. Well, we did in the previous episode.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
Maybe this is an ironclad law of history, Tom. Or maybe it's just a coincidence. Anyway. Well, it is because they actually win the battle before the proclamation of the Republic, right? Yeah. Well, it's not that they don't really win the battle. It's just a draw. So you would think that this would fill them all with great bonhomie, sense of harmony.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
Come on, let's bury that ideological hatchet and work together for the common good. You would be wrong. Because actually, from the beginning, I know you wouldn't be wrong, Tom. I know you know that what's going to happen. The convention is riven by the most unbelievable faction fighting. So basically, there are three blocks.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
And maybe we don't need to spend an eternity discussing them, but a little bit of context. First of all, you have Brissot and the Gironde. So if you remember, these are not really a Parisian party. They're a party of the kind of big provincial cities like Bordeaux. Because that's where Gironde comes from, isn't it? It's the northern bank. Exactly.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
They're all hanging around having dinner with Madame Roland in her apartment and swapping witty aphorisms. And they've basically got about 150 deputies in the convention that will always support them. And they can call on some independents to give them a majority. Then you have the great mass of people who are kind of in the middle.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
They are called, they're either called the Marsh, which seems a very, you know, it's not very, I wouldn't want to be part of the Marsh. Les Pères Centristes. What's that? Centrist Dads. Oh, right. Okay. Very good. Yeah. Well, they're not really centrist dads, are they? Because everybody's now on the left.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
But they are the marsh or the plain, people call them, because they sit in the middle of the hall. And they basically, you know, they can lean one way or the other. But at this point, they are generally swayed by the Girondins. And then you have the radicals on the far left. They're called the Mountain, the Montagnard, and they sit high up in the left of the hall, hence the mountain.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
There's about 200 of them, 150 to 200. They're very Parisian, Robespierre, Danton, Marat. All the famous guys, the ones that people have heard of. They dominate the Jacobin Club now because the Girondins don't bother turning up to it. And they also appeal to two groups. Very young deputies are much more likely to be Montagnard.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
They're likely to be kind of more impatient, more ambitious, more radical.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
I think that's absolutely right. They also appeal to deputies, interestingly, who come from very isolated kind of places, who've basically been the one radical in their village, who therefore feel very embattled. And when they arrive in Paris, they're delighted to find friends. And their being embattled has made them more radical, I guess. That must be very exciting for them.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
Oh yeah, I think there's a definite sense of excitement. And of the Montagnards, basically now we think of them as being a party ruled by the triumvirate of Robespierre, Danton and Marat. I mean, they really are the big three of the French Revolution, aren't they? The triumvirate, you might almost say. But they're not like a triumvirate. They actually don't really get on with each other.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
Rob Spear hates Marat, doesn't he? Rob Spear despises Marat. Won't have anything to do with him. Refuses to have anything to do with him. I think because Rob Spear is so chilly and he's so worried about his wig and... his kind of boniness.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
Right. Both Danton and Mara have terrible skin, don't they? Danton is too busy stuffing himself with chicken legs. Yeah. And also taking brown envelopes of cash. Marat is just shouting about killing everybody and being very over the top and stuff. So actually, they're all quite suspicious of each other, these three. They don't work together as a tight-knit unit.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
What are the lads up to? Let's set it in the context of Prussians and cannons. Oh, Prussians. So the situation in Paris, people will remember from the last episode, but one, Paris is preparing for an attack. There are church bells ringing. There are cannons on the River Seine that are calling people to prepare for war.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
I guess the other question is, are these kind of ideological political parties of the kind that we would recognize today? And the answer, again, I think, no. The Montagnards and the Girondins to outside observers seem to have loads in common. They're all Republicans. They all believe in the war, all of that stuff. There are two things I think that are really important that are differences.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
So one of them is the idea of the people. The Girondins, because they're kind of merchant class from Bordeaux and stuff, They basically think that people like them should be running the revolution. You know, people who go to literary salons and quote poetry to each other. Yeah. Whereas Robespierre and the Montagnards, they think, they're suspicious of that. They are pure populists.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
They're all about the common people, the virtues of the street. You know, the people of Paris know better. Yeah. A poor urchin knows much better than a, you know, it's that kind of. It's Rousseau, isn't it? It's very Rousseau. It's very Rousseau. It's almost very Christian. Is it not? I'm surprised you didn't say that. Of course.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
But I mean, you know, this is what I think about everything in the French Revolution.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
The other thing that's perhaps a little less Christian is the Montagnards are much keener on violence. No, but you see, I think that is pretty Christian.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
Yeah, fair enough. So obviously the most visible sign of violence virtuous violence has been the September massacres, which the Montagnards were all for. But the Girondins are actually a little bit conflicted about the September massacres. Robespierre thought all this was brilliant. He loved the attack on the Tuileries. He loved the September massacres.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
He thinks the fact that the Girondins are being a bit squeamish shows that they are suspects, counter-revolutionary and all that kind of thing. Tom, I can see you're itching to say something.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
Absolutely. You're totally right. That sort of ratchet effect. And in fact, I was just thinking if somebody missed a couple of episodes of this series, you know, if they'd skipped ahead, they'd be like, hold on, those people were on the far left two episodes ago. Now you're describing them as counter-revolutionary reactionaries. Because as you say, the center of gravity is always moving leftwards.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
The streets are packed with volunteers who are streaming towards the gates of the city to the front. People are pulling down the grills of churches. They're digging up their coffins to use as lead for musket shots. There are everyday contingents of troops marching through the National Assembly, singing patriotic songs and shouting slogans and stuff. So it's all excitement.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
What's on the Girondins' mind as well, by the way, is the fact that during the September massacres, there is some evidence that Robespierre and Marat had actually toyed with the idea of killing them too.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
So Robespierre, on the day the massacres had broken out, the 2nd of September, he had been giving a speech in the commune, the sort of city council of Paris, in which he had said that the Girondins were secret agents of the Prussians and perfidious intriguers working against French liberty.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
Now, anyone who's listened to the whole of this series will know how bonkers that is because the Girondins were the key people in getting France into the war in the first place. But of course, at the time, everybody believes in this idea of the mask of patriotism, that the more patriotic you appear to be, the more likely it is that you are in fact a traitor.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
So the commune had issued a warrant for some of the Girondins' arrests, which was never carried out. But Brissot and Roland and these people, they know about this and they say, my God, Robespierre wants to kill us. He wanted to kill us and it's just luck that he didn't. And so they become convinced, well, they are now convinced that basically it's kill or be killed.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
So in that sense, right from the moment the convention meets, which is 21st of September, It's not like a normal parliament that we would know today because there is no sense of pluralism. There's no sense that they're going to be having discussions and you win some, you lose some, all that kind of thing. No sense of a loyal opposition. None.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
So by definition, this is about virtue versus corruption. It's about the Republic versus counter-revolution. To be a dissenter is to be a traitor. And so I think from the very first moment they take their seats, it is obvious there is absolutely going to be a showdown and that whoever loses that will probably end up on the guillotine.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
And if you had to put your money on somebody at this point, September 1792, you would probably put it on the Girondeau. They have a bit more of a majority. They have a bit more self-confidence. They control the presidency of the convention. And so right from the beginning, with the September massacre so fresh in their minds, they say, right, let's settle this once and for all. Let's do this.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
And right away, they go for the Montagnards' throats.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
So they make their move, Tom. Two days after the Battle of Valmy, 22nd of September, the convention's only really been up and running for a day and a bit. And a dozen speakers, one after the other, Jean Rondin, get up and lay into the Montagnard. And their plan is to convince the convention the Montagnards are traitors and they should be arrested and thrown out of the convention.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
They say they are anarchists, they are murderers, they are levelers, interestingly. Oh, right. A word that will be very familiar to people who know about 17th century England.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
They do. They're very promiscuous with their historical analogies, I think it's fair to say. Because Brissot says, on the one hand, he says they're the hydra of anarchy. They want to level everything. And on the other hand, he says Robespierre, Marat, and Danton are the new Crassus, Caesar, and Pompey, exactly as you said. And Rob Spear and Daunton say, oh, this is absolute nonsense.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
Jeremy Corbyn would actually have loved it. But it's not a Sandbrook vibe, is it? Not really a Sandbrook vibe, I would say. Although slightly more Sandbrookian, somewhere out there...
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
You know, I don't even like him. I have no, we're not a Trump vote at all. Mara, he obviously is, this is, he's making his debut effectively in frontline politics. Wow, what a way to do it. And he says, I'm not a traitor, but if you're accusing me of trying to set up a dictatorship, well, I'll be frank with you. I think a dictatorship would be brilliant. I'd love a dictatorship.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
And he then says, he pulls a gun out of his pocket and he holds it to his own head. And he says, if you vote to condemn me, I will blow out my brains in front of you. Better than threatening to blow out the brains of Girondins. I guess so. People are very impressed by this. They say, well, this obviously shows the mayor is a tremendous fellow.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
And the result of this is that they're not kicked out. So the Montagnard have made a bit of a mistake here. I was about to say they've wounded but not killed their opponent. They've barely even wounded them. Yeah, I mean, if you're going to shoot at the king, you better kill him. Exactly. So it is clear from this point that this feud is only ever going to get worse.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
And a few weeks go by, the Girondins basically are sort of constantly niggling at the Montagnard, but never bringing them down. Also, the Girondins, as time goes by, they're actually beginning to lose a bit of support from the plain, from the independent people, because the independent people actually are a bit sick of this. And also, the Girondins are quite corrupt. And they're very overbearing.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
And they're very kind of hungry for power and bossy. They've got all their dinner parties, haven't they? They go to their dinner parties. High-flying dinner parties. Exactly. Not inviting the normal people. Right. And if you're just a bog-standard deputy from provincial France, you're sick of being lectured by Brissot and having him slagging off the Montagnard and stuff.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
You just become very impatient with all this. And I think that Jean don't know this. So towards the end of October, they decide to have another go. And this time they will just go for Robespierre and they'll go for him personally. And they get a newspaper editor called Jean-Baptiste Louvet to stand up and accuse Robespierre of trying to make himself dictator, of having a personality cult.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
Now, again, they reach for a Roman parallel, interestingly. Of course they do. So Louvet deliberately models his speech on Cicero unveiling the Catalan conspiracy. And of course, that's the analogy that everybody knows. They've all grown up with it. They've all done it at school. It's been on their minds. How long will you abuse our patience, Robespierre? All of that stuff. Exactly.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
And Louvet says, come on, France has a choice. There are only two parties and France must choose. There is the party of us, the Girondins. We're the party of philosophers. Exactly.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
and on the other hand there is the mountain they're the party of murderers put like that yeah exactly if i was facing attack from the prussians and i had to choose one of those two parties to represent me i definitely wouldn't choose the philosophers but you know who's there for this well you do know because i know you've got the notes but also i know this uh because i'm a big fan of his um it's the great pert william wordsworth he's basically on his gap year isn't he yeah he is he's on a holiday because
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Well, that would improve your French though, surely. Yes, it would. Give us a bit of poetry, Tom. I know you love a bit of Wordsworth.
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So on the 20th of September, so that's the day before the reading that you began with, the new national convention meets for the first time. Now, some listeners, if they've made it all the way through the series, may be like, I've lost track of all the different assemblies and whatnot. So if you remember, There had been the stormy of the Tuileries in August.
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It is an embarrassment, exactly. Wordsworth, in a very convoluted way, is quite right. And actually, Robespierre completely wins the day. So a week later, Robespierre, he bides his time and then he makes his response. And he says, I have encouraged violence, he says, but I did it because it was the only way to save the country.
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And he says to everybody, do you want to have a revolution without a revolution? I mean, we have to, you know, I did it and I was right to do it.
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And as we discussed in the September massacres episode, a majority clearly agree with that. They think we're at war. We've always executed people. It's not like public executions and the public display of violence is a novelty. It's completely reasonable for us to use violent measures to preserve the republic. And so Robespierre wins the day. He gets torrents of applause in the convention.
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Brissot and the Girondins are kind of fuming. They're sort of like cartoon characters, kind of clenching their fists with braid. You pesky Montagnards, kind of on the benches. And Brissot writes to Dumouriez, and he says, this is absolutely intolerable.
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He says, I spend all my time fighting these miserable anarchists, that's a direct quote, when I should be concentrating on the uprising of the entire planet. I mean, which is a bonkers thing to say, but... Quite Trotsky, isn't it? It's very Trotsky. But you can see why he's saying it, because we're now six weeks after the Battle of Valmy.
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And since then, Tom, there have been some unbelievably dramatic scenes on the battlefield.
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Excitingly, yes. Oh, bless him. So for once, somebody in the story has actually got what he wanted. So basically, here's what's happened. I know you love military history, Tom. The Prussians have been hanging around outside Valmy pouring with rain after this kind of draw. And the Duke of Brunswick eventually says, right, listen, we don't want to be cut off from our supplies.
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We're obviously not going to get to Paris. Let's cut our losses, head back towards Germany for the winter. So in scenes of great sort of degradation and misery, which kind of Goethe writes about, he withdraws all the way back. And he even goes all the way back across the river Rhine. Now that really matters because what that means is that the Prussians
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The western bank of the Rhine is now completely undefended. With German cities and towns on it, it is completely undefended from the French. So by late October, the French, who were on their uppers a bit ago, are now advancing on German cities, places like Mainz, Worms, Frankfurt.
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And out of these German cities, the prince bishops and the electors and all of these bigwigs are kind of fleeing as fast as they can with all their kind of Germanic books and whatever marzipan on carts.
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And since then, France has been in political limbo. And they have basically summoned yet another semi-constituent assembly. This one has unlimited powers to remake the nation. And it is by far the most democratic yet. So all men over the age of 21, except for servants, can vote. Because we talked about that last time and you said that you weren't in favour of it.
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Right. The world lies open before us. By the way, in the long run, this will be a massive moment in European history because it's basically the birth of German identity and German nationalism. Because loads of people couldn't wait for the French Revolution to get to Germany. When the revolution does turn up, they say, oh, God, this is terrible.
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all these French people kind of living in our houses, looting all our stuff and bossing us around. And so you get the German identity, you can argue, to some degree, dates from this moment as a kind of political force. Anyway, the French don't just stop at the Rhine. They're advancing everywhere. So they invade the Swiss Federation. They're heading for Geneva.
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They invade Savoy, and they take all the lands west of the Alps, and they create a new department called Mont Blanc. They also seize the county of Nice. We always think of Nice as, I mean, most people think of it as French. It's actually been part of Savoy since 1388.
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Yeah, Avignon, exactly. But above all, Belgium. So Dumouriez had always dreamed of this. He beats a small Austrian army at a place called Gemap, which is just south of Mons on the 6th of November. And the Austrians have to pull back. He takes Mons. He's in Brussels by the 14th of November. By the end of November, I mean, this is the extraordinary thing, the seesaw momentum.
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He has taken Liege and Antwerp, and he is heading towards the borders of the Dutch Republic.
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I think this is the moment, actually, when you can say that patriotic revolutionary fervour is born, really. Born in victory. This is the point at which you have patriotic festivals across France, sort of fest feasts and bonfires and people singing things like they're singing the Marseillaise in the streets.
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Yeah, absolutely. But here's the thing, right? They're not just winning. They're winning victories now. And because the Prussians and the Austrians had basically not bargained for this, overextended themselves, not properly prepared, the French are now winning victories that are really unprecedented in the last few generations, victories that eclipse even the victories of Louis XIV.
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And so deputies back in Paris are now beginning to ask themselves, Well, where will we stop? Where would the revolution stop? Because, of course, they've always thought of it as not just a French nationalist project, but a universalist one. Again, this is what Brissot's saying. This is a global issue. He's the arbiter of the world. Exactly.
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Some people say, well, our borders, our obvious borders are geographical, the Pyrenees, the River Rhine, etc.
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the the channel the mediterranean song but other people are saying well really i mean if we stand for liberty if we stand for these kind of um uh timeless it's you know eternal values why would we stop at some mountains why wouldn't we go beyond and have they not enrolled as french citizens
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Tom Paine would be the famous example. On the 19th of November, they vote France will assist anybody, anybody who wants to, and I quote, recover their liberty. And a month later, they agree that everywhere French armies go, they will take the revolution with them. So that means they will abolish feudalism. They will attack the privileges of the Catholic Church.
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Yeah, I don't agree with this at all. I mean, I'm with the Duke of Brunswick on this. I think it's a dangerous innovation. Failed experiment. Yes, exactly. So it's a very complicated electoral system, a series of electors and kind of almost like an electoral college, and then they choose the 749 deputies. But as you said, Tom, Their turnout is really poor.
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They will institute a republican system. So it's a war on the monarchies of Europe. So this has never happened before in European history. States have fought wars with each other, of course, and taken each other's territory. But the idea that you would go into somebody's country and completely rewire their system so that it looks like yours. Ideologically reboot them.
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This, to a lot of people, is profoundly, profoundly shocking. So Cromwell hadn't done that? No. I mean, there'd be no sense of, let's export the English Revolution. Exactly. Exactly. And what is more, I mean, I think this is very French. They decide that they will make everybody else pay for this. So there's a guy called Pierre-Jacques Combon, who's a Protestant merchant from Nîmes.
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And he says, listen, there's an obvious way to fund this. When we occupy a given country, they should be so grateful for their liberty that they should pay us a tax to pay for their own occupation. Yeah. And the convention says, this is an absolutely great idea. Now, you might think this sounds very over-the-top and hubristic, but they, I think, really believe in this.
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Brissot is standing there at the convention, November 1792, and he is saying, we will liberate Naples, we will liberate Spain, we will liberate Poland, we will be in Berlin probably this time next year, we can go all the way to Moscow. It's like they're basically drunk on their own rhetoric. His friend Vernieu, remember we had him talk about the – there was a great quote from him.
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He was a great orator talking about the declaration of war in the first place. He now says, this will actually be the last war. This will be the end of history. Men have died, he says, but they have died so that no men will ever die again.
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I swear to you in the name of the universal fraternity which you are creating, that each battle will be a step towards peace, humanity and happiness for all mankind.
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Very good. I mean, the thing is, nobody has ever talked like this in European history before. You know, when France was fighting its wars in Italy in the early 16th century, nobody said this is the war to end all wars. This will bring a new age of happiness. They just said, brilliant, let's pile into Milan and loot and pillage. You know, did Henry V say this in the Hundred Years' War?
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Did Edward III? Of course they didn't.
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We do indeed. But of course, among other things, there's a very obvious problem that they have, which is it's a problem left over from before the Republic. And it's that they have still in their midst, not just any old traitor, but the traitor of traitors. You know, a rallying point for counter-revolution.
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That's tantalizing. Tom, if I wasn't already a member of the Restless History Club, I'd sign up now so that I could have to wait. So just the last sort of five minutes or so before Theo explodes with rage that we're going on too long. Where has Louis been all this time? He's been in the temple in this medieval keep. He's been with Marie Antoinette, his sister Elizabeth and his two children.
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So in some places it might be a fifth, but generally it's probably one in ten. And the reason for that, I think, is there's a war on. So it's, you know, people have got other things in their mind. But it's also harvest time. So in the countryside... People have definitely got other priorities. And actually, a lot of people are now completely confused.
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They've been reading loads of books. They're basically living like a middle class English family during COVID and lockdown. So Louis and Marie Antoinette have been homeschooling the children. They've been teaching them to recite kind of great reams of Racine and Corneille and stuff, great French dramatists. Louis loves his geography.
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So they've been colouring in a map of the new departments of France and tracing and doing all this stuff. It's actually quite sweet. They play badminton in the garden. And at night, Louis, this will please you, Tom, he reads passages of Roman history to them. But presumably not the establishment of the Republic. No, I don't think so.
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But apparently he reads passages that somehow mirror their own predicament. So people who've been locked up but are very noble and long-suffering and all this kind of thing. They are quite tightly restricted. Marion Swinette's not allowed to sew in case she's sewing a code. Louis is not allowed to shave because people are aware that he might kill himself.
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And the guards, it's very like the Romanovs in 1918. The guards were always kind of scribbling graffiti on the wall that shows a fat man being hanged or guillotined or something. So that's a bit ominous for Louis. Now, the convention, you might say, why do they have to take any proceedings against him at all? Because he's just a citizen now. This is the point of Louis Capet.
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He's just like anyone else. But of course, there are two reasons. One is if they really think he's been betraying them to foreign enemies, they really ought to punish him. And number two, they know there are loads of royalists in France. They can't leave such an obvious focus for counter-revolutionary rebellion alive.
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And the sans-culottes on the streets of Paris still blame him, remember, for the fighting at the Tuileries and the Swiss guards and all of that sort of business. So they have a huge discussion about whether constitutionally they are allowed to put him on trial. Because under the old constitution, if the king transgressed, It laid down what you do and you remove him from office.
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But once you do that, it's done. So can they punish him further? And basically, they get a constitutional lawyer, a guy from Toulouse called Jean-Baptiste Mailly. And he says, Louis is clearly guilty of terrible crimes. And the law of nature overrides the constitution. The constitution actually was given by the nation.
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And if the nation gives the constitution, the nation has the right to withdraw it. And the law of nature demands that Louis is punished.
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There again, very Rousseau, very Rousseau. So they have a sort of debate about how this will work. A few people, a very small group of kind of what I suppose you would say people on the right of the convention, on the right of the Girondin group, say, I just think we should leave him alone. Let's not do this at all. But most people say, we should probably have a trial.
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There are some Montagnards, whoever, who say a trial is mad. We should just kill him straight away. He doesn't even deserve a trial. And the most famous one of those, a character who we should now introduce, is a young man, the youngest deputy in the whole convention. He's only 25 years old, and he stands up to make his maiden speech in November. So this guy is called Louis-Antoine Saint-Just.
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They're probably even more confused than listeners to the podcast. They have no idea what's going on. They don't know who anybody is.
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He's from a small town in Picardy. He's basically a massive Robespierre fan. He's been sending him fan mail since 1789. And I kind of think about Saint-Just that here's the point at which Rousseau and romanticism kind of meet. He's got... Long, lank hair. He's got an earring. He's very pale. He's never seen smiling or laughing. He's Shelley with political power. Yes, I guess he is.
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Was it Shelley who was pursued by his classmates around Eton? Yes, the Shelley Hunt. The Shelley Hunt, yeah. I would have loved to have seen that with Sanjus, because I hate Sanjus. He wrote an enormous poem, didn't he, about his sexual frustration. Surprise, surprise! Yes, he did. And he prides himself, he basically loves Rob Spierne, he prides himself on...
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being even more virtuous, more emotionless, more logical. Rationalist.
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He absolutely is. Again, he loves the idea, the very word terror. It's a very Saint-Just word. But his rationalism, his kind of icy rationalism, is the icy rationalism of somebody who is throbbing with suppressed emotion, isn't he? I mean, basically. He's an incel. He is a total, he is a man who just needs to go for a walk, meet some girls. Hang out with Danton. Yeah, exactly.
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Tonton was showing a good time. Anyway, of course, that relationship doesn't end terribly well, does it? No. Perhaps not coincidentally. So Sanchez gets up and he says there was no need for a trial because the point he says is that Louis is not guilty because of anything he's done. He is guilty. And this really brings out your point.
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This absolutely anticipates so much of the revolutionary stuff of the 19th and 20th centuries. Sanchez says he's guilty because of what he is and what he has been. A virtuous republic cannot allow somebody who has been a king to live. And I quote, no one can reign innocently. Every king is a rebel and a usurper. So there's no middle ground. This man must reign or die.
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That's another aspect to it. Of course. Remember we did that episode about mad elections in Britain where people being carried on chairs and whatnot and lots of throwing of cats. Well, similarly in France for the national convention, the voting is public and it is oral. You say who you want to vote for.
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He must die to assure the repose of the people. Right.
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Yeah, I think that's a really good point, Tom. Because it does, it is one of the two or three most famous speeches of the entire revolution. It makes Saint-Just's name and it also, as you say, seems to serve as a kind of departure point, as a punctuation point in kind of France's constitutional journey.
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Anyway, the funny thing about this speech is actually it doesn't work because they decide they will have a trial. So while they're making the plans for the trial, just before we get into that, just as they're finalizing the plans for the trial, there is a really, really important development.
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Monsieur Roland, the husband of Madame Roland, the interior minister who's a Girondin, on the 20th of November is taken into the Tuileries Palace by a locksmith called Gamin. Gamin was the guy who had taught the king all about his locks. And Gamin says to Monsieur Roland, no one knows this, but I'm going to show you something.
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And he takes him and he shows him a secret iron safe hidden behind the paneling. Roland opens it and it's full of confidential papers and documents. And he now makes a terrible mistake, a mistake that I think will kill him. He takes the papers out and he goes through them himself in secret. He doesn't share them with anybody. And then he goes to the convention. He says, well,
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Well, I've made an amazing discovery. I have found all these confidential documents. And they, I can, let me tell you, there's some pretty interesting things in them that will incriminate some of you. And you will, you won't be laughing then. And lots of deputies are really shocked and frightened and outraged at this, especially the Montagnard. They're like, what are these documents?
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How do we know that you haven't, you know, forged them? Exactly. They're absolutely furious. So all this will come back to really haunt Roland and the Girondins. But in the meantime, the documents prove two things. First of all, they prove now beyond any possible doubt that Louis was conspiring against the revolution. He was in touch with the Austrians.
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He was writing to counter-revolutionary groups. He was doing all of this kind of stuff. Because his signatures are all over these papers. His fate is sealed from this point. He is done, I think.
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The second thing, the documents also prove beyond any possible doubt that all that stuff about the mask of patriotism, which we've discussed as though it's so paranoid and such a mad conspiracy theory, is indeed quite accurate.
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Because one of the great heroes of the early revolution, Mirabeau, another man with terrible skin, by the way, there's loads of letters from him showing that he was conspiring against the revolution, taking loads of money from the courts, etc. And his reputation is shredded. They go and take his ashes out of the Pantheon. They take his bust out of the Jacobin Club.
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They're like, well, this proves the point. Can't trust anyone. Can't trust anybody. So a few days after this, the 1st of December, the convention votes, first of all, anyone who calls for the return of the monarchy, anyone who makes any, and I quote, infringement on the sovereignty of the people, which is very satisfyingly vague if you are...
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if you're a big fan of revolutionary terror, will face punishment by death. And two days later, they vote that this man, Louis Capet, we can discuss his name next time, will be brought before the National Convention to answer for his crimes. And Rob Spier gets up at the tribunal and he says, remember, your task is not to pass a sentence for and against a man.
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It is to defend the safety of the public and to take an act of national providence. I pronounce this fatal truth with regret. But Louis must die because the homeland must live.
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Who are like holding clubs and stuff and sort of leering at you in a sinister way. So clearly a lot of people just don't want to turn out. So in Paris... The voting has coincided with the September massacres. That's what we began this little kind of mini series with.
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So the atmosphere is very grim because as people are voting, there is the kind of stepping over corpses, the dull sound of hacking coming from inside the walls of the converted convent just down the road. So what is worse, the second round of voting is held at the Jacobin Club. So if you are a royalist or reactionary, this is not the ideal place to go and to sort of pin your colours to the mast.
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And that round of voting, the Jacobin Club, they've got a lot of kind of electors, but they start by agreeing that they'll purge all electors who are foyant, who are moderates, or who are royalists. So 200 electors are kicked out. There's 800 left. And they vote for 24 deputies. And of those deputies, a lot of those are very big revolutionary names.
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So the top of the list, number one, their top choice for Paris is Robespierre. And then you've got people like Danton, Desmoulins, Santerre, the butcher, the sans-culottes who'd led the attack on the Tuileries. Marat, for the first time, this firebrand radical journalist, he is going to have a seat in the convention. So...
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There will be a place for the most extreme, the most violent, the most paranoid revolutionary sentiments.
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I mean, we've talked about this before. This is Prince Harry calling himself Harry Diversity or something, renaming himself. And actually... No, Harry Equity. Harry Equity, yeah. While living in his palace. Yeah, that's what he'd call himself. Yeah, Harry Equity. Anyway, so everybody goes to the Tuileries on the 20th of September to register, and they do so in an atmosphere of apocalyptic dread.
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Because they know that 140 miles away, the Prussians are there and that their troops, their Francis troops, have basically caught up with the Prussians.
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He has, yeah. A vengeance which will be forever remembered, or words to that effect. So, yes. Now, of these guys who've turned up to register... About half of them are lawyers. We've got a lot of lawyers who are members of Arrested History Club, so they will love all this. They will say this is a very good sign. There's also loads of doctors, loads of civil servants, loads of actors, journalists.
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They're very young by and large. About half of them are under 40. About a quarter of them are under 35. The younger they are, the more committed and more militant they are by and large. So these aren't A lot of them have got experience in kind of local governments and stuff, but these aren't incredibly seasoned people. They are excited and excitable. I think it's fair to say.
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Kind of quite a student union vibe. Definitely. I mean, this is the birth of the student union, really, isn't it? I think it probably is. Yeah. Motions, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, they love it. And they're there all night, you know, just endlessly arguing and showing off in that student union. And drinking. Exactly.
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Next day, 21st of September, they assemble at the riding school, the Manège, for their first proper session. And this is the bit that you started with, Jérôme Pétillon, because they've come straight to the central question. Let's reboot France. And it must be a republic. There's an actor, of course, called Colu de Bois. He ends up on the Committee of Public Safety later on.
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He says, let's just abolish the monarchy right away. No need for referendums and all that stuff. Let's just go for it. Some of the deputies say, really? No, no. You wouldn't let the people have a say on this? Such a massive question. And then the Bishop of Blois.
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So this is an interesting thing, because again, it complicates the slightly sort of stereotypical sense of the French Revolution, because it's a bishop, Henri Gregoire, who says, kings are in the moral world what monsters are in the physical world. Their courts are the workshops of crime and the lairs of tyrants. In other words, No referendum. Let's just get rid. And they vote.
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And then, of course, as so often happens in these kinds of scenarios, very student union, once people work out which way the wind is blowing, they all pile in. Yeah, they all pile in. So they make the vote unanimous. They all start shouting, vive la nation. They're all terribly excited. The world has started again.
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Yeah, I think that's a very fair point, actually, that there is a sense of... There's a sense of historical time beginning again, but they don't really know what they all want. Because I suppose, Tom, they don't all want the same thing, as we shall see in this episode. So if you enjoy political factionalism, this is definitely the rest is history episode for you.
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Anyway, one of the interesting things about the French Revolution that we've talked about so much is the way it faces two ways. On the one hand, they're looking back to the Roman Republic, as you have described so many times. And on the other hand, they're genuinely thinking this is not just a whole new chapter, but it's basically a new volume. world history.
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So they say from September the 20th, all state documents must bear the date year one of the French Republic. So this is where we get the beginning of the sort of French revolutionary calendar, the numbering system, year one, year two, and so on and so forth. But of course, whether they actually get beyond year one, is not in their hands. It depends on events out on the battlefield.
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So let us now, let us leave Paris. Turn the camera. Turn the camera, exactly. You know how my mind works. So remember where we got to. The Prussians have been marching all the way west from the border. They've got to the Argonne Forest. That's 130 or so miles away from Paris. It's pouring with rain. Very Agincourt scenes, Tom. There's only one man who can stop them.
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And that man is a guy called General Charles-Francois Dumouriez. So listeners may remember, he's this kind of grizzled ex-secret agent, ex-Seven Years' War veteran who was foreign minister under the Girondins. He got France into this mess in the first place. Basically, he's in charge of the Eastern Front. He loves fighting Belgians. He loves attacking Belgium. That's his dream.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
He wants to liberate Belgium. But the convention has basically said, forget about Belgium. There are a load of Prussians advancing on Paris. Get to the Valley of the Marne and stop them. There's a lot of maneuvering and faffing around. Do you want to go into detail about that? Do you know what? I could, but I won't because I don't want to try the patience of our less military-minded listeners.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
Exactly. How many divisions are there on both sides? Loads. So to cut a very long story short, the two armies end up faffing around and maneuvering, and basically they end up on the wrong side of each other. So the Prussians are nearest Paris, and Dumouriez is behind them with his back against the Argonne forest. Now, the Duke of Brunswick could just ignore Dumouriez.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
He could have just dashed on, couldn't he, to Paris? He could, but he doesn't want to do that because that would mean Dumouriez could cut his supply lines, basically cut him off from the German states. And his men are very muddy and it's pouring rain. They're knackered. They're short of food. They're ravaged by illness. It feels a little bit Henry V before Agincourt.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
And he says, right, what we'll do is we'll stop here, we'll turn, we'll finish off Dumouriez, and then we can secure our supply lines, and then we can go on to Paris. Dumouriez is massively outnumbered, but very good news for him. So on the 19th, the day before the national convention, they meet to register. He is reinforced by a second French army under General Kellerman. Who has a German name.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
It's a massive moment, Tom, and I think the only voice that really is appropriate to the moment is the one you did there. I mean, because I detected more than a hint of our old friend, Jeremy Corbyn. Is that right?
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
He has a German name. Very confusing. Yeah, that is confusing. So... These troops that they have, by the way, everybody always thinks this is a great victory for people in red bonnets shouting about the revolution. But it's not, is it?
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
They are. These are like regular troops. And they also have a brilliant kind of new canon. They do indeed. They have a very exciting new cannon. We love military technology on this podcast. They have new lightweight cannons that were specially designed after the French had shamed themselves in the Seven Years' War. Gets Britain. Exactly. They'd lost to everybody, hadn't they?
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
It'd been a kind of world war. They'd been fighting the Prussians or whatever. So on the 20th, So this is the day that the National Convention were registering. On the 20th, it's a misty, foggy morning. Kellerman, outside this windmill outside the village of Valmy, he lines up his men on this ridge and he's got his lovely lightweight cannons that he's very keen to show off.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
The Prussians start firing with their cannons. Kellerman fires back with his. There's hundreds of guns blazing away through the fog. Now, do you know who was fighting for the Prussians? I do. It was Goethe, the great German writer, the greatest German writer. Germany's top writer, Goethe. He was fighting with his patron, who was Grand Duke Karl Augustus Sachs Weimar.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
Well, this is the thing. I think there's no evidence, I think, of him actually shooting anybody. I can't imagine him in a uniform. That seems very odd. He must have been wearing uniform, though, because as we will discover, he's exchanging banter with the lads of the battalion and stuff. Goethe said, I mean, you expect great prose from a great writer, don't you? Do you know what he said?
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
The earth literally trembled.
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546. The French Revolution: The Monarchy Falls (Part 3)
What scenes. This goes on for hours and hours and hours. Then the Prussians eventually say, okay, enough. We've definitely softened the French up now. And Brunswick sends his infantry advancing in these kind of long lines, blue uniforms. They're advancing up the hill. They're convinced that the French are about to collapse.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Stanley and Livingstone become international celebrities far beyond Britain and America. So they're making front page news in Belgium. And King Leopold, we know, follows the story very closely and actually kept a sort of scrapbook, including handwritten notes that he was making following Stanley's journey.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
For celebrity and for money are two things which will play a big part in this story. So the question for Leopold is, he wants a colony that will turn a profit. Can he make money from Africa? And the answer is yes. Not through slavery, as you once could, but through something that is extremely fashionable and very lucrative. And that something is ivory. Now, the Victorians are obsessed by ivory.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
It's exotic because, of course, it comes from elephant tusks, but it's also unbelievably useful and malleable because it's really, really easy to carve ivory.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
So if you went into a sort of genteel Victorian household, anywhere in the Western world in the 1870s or 1880s, there would be the handles of cutlery, there would be billiard balls, there would be combs, fans, there would be brooches, there would be chess pieces, piano keys, false teeth. All of these kinds of things are made of ivory.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Exactly, exactly. And you can make so much money from it. So two elephant tusks will give you... hundreds of piano keys or thousands upon thousands of false teeth. And it sounds comical, but there is an awful lot of money to be made here.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And Stanley, after returning from his expedition, has gone around telling people, my God, there is so much ivory in equatorial Africa that the people there use it for their doorposts because it's just so plentiful.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
But the difference between the 16th century and now is that to acquire a colony, I think you have to try much harder to present it as part of a civilising mission.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
So this is the high point of high Victorianism, the belief in kind of moral uplift and Europe's right to the moral leadership of the planet and all these things that we may well think of now as being freighted with hypocrisy or of kind of patronizing condescension. But at the time, people do actually take genuinely seriously.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
So Leopold knows that he will have to, I think, tick three boxes if he wants a colony. First of all, he has to present it as a scientific project, an intellectual project. So literally filling in those blank spaces, mapping what has previously been unknown. Secondly, I think he has to tick the moral uplift box.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
So he has to say, well, I only want a colony because I want to spread the gospel of Christianity. Of course, something that matters tremendously to the Victorians.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Yes, that's the third thing.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
I think you're absolutely right. I think he absolutely sees what's going on with the other empires. I think in Leopold's case, what makes him slightly unusual is that all the evidence we have of his letters and so on is that for him, the profit motive is all and that the rest of it is effectively just a justification for making money. I mean, he's pretty shameless about that, I would say.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
So this is how he proceeds. And I have to say, he's a terrible man, King Leopold, but he really is a cunning and a methodical and a clever man. A vulpine figure. He is. So his first step is to convene a big geographical conference in Brussels at the end of 1876. And he invites all the big celebrities of the Africa industry of the day. So there are explorers from France and Germany.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
He's got a celebrity explorer called Gerhard Rolfs, who had actually had himself circumcised so that he could pass for a Muslim in the Sahara. So, you know, somebody who had suffered for his life. quest, his exploration. He's got the president of the British Anti-Slavery Society, Sir Thomas Fowle Buxton. He's got the president of the Church Missionary Society, Sir John Kenway.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
He's even got the bloke who used to command the Royal Navy's Indian Ocean Anti-Slavery Squadron. So he is ticking all of those boxes. He's inviting a lot of people who are genuinely animated by what we might call humanitarian as well as imperialistic concerns.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And he welcomes them and he says, you know, I dream of a crusade worthy of this century of progress to open to civilization the only part of our globe which has not yet penetrated to pierce the darkness which hangs over entire peoples. That word darkness again, which is going to come up throughout this series. And he says to them, don't think that I want anything for myself, he says.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
I have nothing. I have no idea of it. Shocking. No ambition other than to serve Belgium. Now that, as we've seen, is a lie. He despises Belgium and he, as we will also see, he doesn't want to serve Belgium at all. He only wants to serve himself.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And he says to them, look, I've assembled you because I think it would be nice for us to identify places in the blank spaces of Africa which could be bases, which could be kind of They could be hospitals. They could be scientific research centers. They could be trading stations. With an emphasis on the trading aspect of it. And these will be run.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
I don't want to, I mean, Belgium won't run them, because we don't want to. The last thing we'd want is a colony. He says, we'll set up an international African association. Why not base it in Brussels, actually? And for its first chairman, I mean, if no one else wants to do it, I'd very happily put myself forward. And everybody, you know, they all fall for this. Oh, what a lovely idea.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
It's got to be one of the first, hasn't it? One of the early ones. One of the most eye-catching early ones, definitely. Because it is a brilliant manoeuvre. Of course it is. If you have global ambitions. And all these people believe it. They completely believe it. And here's the thing. The International African Association, which sounds like it's a charity and which they have all endorsed,
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
is actually a private company run by Leopold himself for his benefit, for his benefit. So the only thing he doesn't have actually is the colony. He's got the association, but he doesn't have the colony. And where is he going to get the colony? Well, the answer is from the one person who wasn't there at that meeting in Brussels. And this is the most famous of all African explorers.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
We've already mentioned him, Henry Morton Stanley. Now, we'll just sketch Stanley very briefly because he really is worthy of a Restless History series in himself. He had an amazing life, Stanley. He was born in Wales in 1841, and he was born as John Rowland's bastard. He was the illegitimate son of a housemaid. That's the entry that is in the Book of Births.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
He spends his childhood in a workhouse. He emigrates to New Orleans when he's 18 years old. He fought for the Confederates. Then he fought for the Union. Then he joined the Union Navy. Then he renamed himself Henry Morton Stanley after a New Orleans businessman. And then he became a journalist. He went to the Ottoman Empire. He went to Persia. He went to the Crimea.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
He went to Abyssinia with the British expedition. But most famously, the New York Herald sent him to Central Africa. to find Dr Livingstone, which he did in Lake Tanganyika in 1871. And then he invented, almost certainly invented, this fantastic line. So disappointing. I know, it's disappointing. Let's pretend that he said it.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Dr Livingstone, I presume, when he met Livingstone, which flashed around the world and made him a household name, a genuine international celebrity.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
That's very familiar. Nothing wrong with that, Tom. I commend that kind of behavior. Very familiar. So then he went on another expedition three years later, sent this time by the New York Herald and the Daily Telegraph in London to map the Great Lakes and to look for the source of the Nile. And that's where he's been during Leopold's conference.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Exactly. An incredibly well-publicized journey. One that was followed by newspaper readers across the world, as you would follow reports of great sporting fixtures or something. Tremendous excitement. In August 1877, Stanley reached the trading post of Boma, which is on the right bank of the Congo River near the coast. An extraordinary, extraordinary achievement.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
7,000 miles, Tom, in three years, he did on foot. Now, Leopold has been following this with great interest. And as soon as he hears the news that Stanley has got to the West Coast, he sends him a telegram of congratulations. And then Leopold says to his ambassador in London, this is the man. This is the man I need to get me this colony in the heart of Africa. However,
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
leopold says we have to be careful and i quote if i quite openly charged stanley with the task of taking possession in my name of some part of africa the english will stop me i don't want to risk losing a fine chance to secure for ourselves a slice of this magnificent african cake so i will just give stanley some job of exploration which will defend no one and will give us the bases and headquarters which we can take over later on oh
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Oh, the fox. The fox. So Leopold's intermediaries and emissaries keep offering Stanley. They write to Stanley and they say, you know, the International African Association, this fake charity, would love to offer you a job. Now, Stanley turns it down at first because he wants to go back to England and to see what he could get there.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
But when he gets back to London, although, of course, he's a big celebrity... The establishment are very suspicious of him, the royal family, the foreign office and so on, because they have heard reports that Stanley has treated people extremely brutally. And I think reports that are completely justified.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
About half of Stanley's porters, African porters, had died on his trip of starvation or disease and he had flogged them mercilessly and basically he'd driven them into the ground. And this makes people very anxious.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
It is indeed, Tom. Yeah, absolutely. And we'll get on to Heart of Darkness next week because we'll do an episode about Joseph Conrad and about this book, which is one of the most influential books, I would argue, of the modern age.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Exactly. Because they will often marry somebody else while he's gone. And you can sense he comes back and he pretends to be disappointed, but actually he's quite relieved. Anyway, and there's also a class issue. He says, they despise me because I'm Welsh. You know, the English are not giving me any credence at all. They don't listen to a word I say.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
They make up these lies about me and all this kind of thing. So... In the summer of 1878, Stanley is very disappointed by his reaction and he gets an invitation from Leopold to visit him in Brussels. And he says to himself, why not? Okay, I'll go and see him.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And so on the 10th of June, 1878, Stanley walks into Leopold's office in the Royal Palace in Brussels for the meeting that will seal the fate of the Congo.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And it's a book that I think anticipates so much of the culture of the 20th century in wrestling with kind of man's capacity for evil and the possibilities of violence and brutality that have been opened up by kind of globalization and by history. And so we'll get onto that next week. It's a book rooted in Conrad's own experience.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Yeah, it's a very controversial passage. It's a very evocative passage. The deeper and deeper they go into Africa, the further and further they're going back in time. And for Conrad's critics, sort of post-colonial critics... they say that is so loaded and so dodgy to be basically saying that to visit Africa, the deeper you go, the further backwards you travel to this kind of primeval world.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
But we'll unpack all that next week, Tom. But first of all, the Congo. So when Leopold and Stanley sit down that day in June 1878, which we ended the first half with, what do they actually know about this world that Conrad himself visited, this landscape, the jungle, the river and whatnot? Europeans have known about the existence of the River Congo for 400 years.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
So the first to lay eyes on it was a Portuguese captain called Diogo Cao in 1482. And he had been sailing south along the coast of Africa like so many Portuguese sailors did. Remember, Tom, their caravels with their triangular sails? That's right. And they're putting up little kind of stone markers, aren't they? They're putting up stone markers.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
So he put one on the far bank of the Congo in what's now Angola. that King Zhao II of Portugal did order this land to be discovered and this pillar of stone to be erected by Diogo Cao, a squire of his household. But of course, they weren't really discovering.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
I mean, they were discovering it from their own perspective, but they weren't the first to discover it because, of course, there were a lot of people there already. So when the Portuguese arrived at the end of the 15th century, there were probably about 3 million people who were subjects of the Kingdom of the Congo, with a capital K,
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And that was ruled by a monarch called the Mani Congo, and his capital was probably just over the border in what's now Angola. And the people of the Congo, they were farmers. They raised pigs and yams and stuff. They didn't have wheels. They didn't have writing. But they did have a kind of state system. They had judges. They had a calendar. They had a tax system. They used shells as currency.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
So just to give people a sense, he had visited a specific place at a specific point in time. That place is the Congo Free State under the rule of King Leopold II of Belgium. Conrad had visited it nine years before he wrote the book as a merchant seaman steering a boat, as Marlow does, into the heart of Africa. And we'll talk about his experience, as I said, next week.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And they already had slavery. which was to prove a disaster for the Congo because the Portuguese were delighted to find people, to find chiefs who were happy to sell them human beings that the Portuguese could put to work, particularly in Brazil. So Congo becomes a huge supplier of slaves to the Portuguese.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
By the 17th century, the Portuguese are probably shipping 15,000 slaves a year in horrific conditions, initially to Brazil. Later on, they start selling them to North America as well. So in the American South, About one in four of the slaves in the 19th century had roots in equatorial Africa, which includes the kingdom of the Congo.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
What the Congolese made of this is very, very hard for us to tell because until the modern era, the Congolese had no written language, which is why this episode so far has been from a European perspective. Even in King Leopold's time, in the time of the Congo Free State, there is not a single memoir written by a Congolese African.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
So that's a problem for us as historians, because it means that African voices are silent compared with European ones.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
No, he wrote to the Portuguese king and he said, you're taking too many slaves, there's nobody left. And the Portuguese king actually wrote back to him, sent him a letter and said, I've heard there's loads of people in the Congo. What are you complaining about? Shut up. And that was the extent of this meeting of minds between these two kings.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
In the years that followed, the Congo became prey to all kinds of inroads in the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch. There's lots of factualism, the civil wars, and basically the kingdom falls apart. But much of this is a mystery to Europeans. Europeans can't get into the interior. They know that the Congo River is a vast river.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
It's the second largest river in Africa, third largest by volume in the world. But they can't go up it. Because once you start to go upstream, once you go upriver, Very quickly, the river gives way to 200 miles worth of rapids and gorges and canyons and so on. So you have to get out of your ship and walk. And at that point, it's very rocky terrain, what's called the Crystal Mountains.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And Europeans, as soon as they started to do that, they would get malaria or yellow fever and they'd basically all die.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
But he's a good example. He only gets a little bit of the way, and then they basically have to go back because they all fall horribly ill. So even in the 1870s, the vast basin of the Congo, we're talking about 1.5 million square miles of territory. That's about what, the size of India? Yeah. Thank you for watching. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
But this week, we're going to look at the real history that underpins that story. So the story of the Congo Free State, probably the darkest stain in the history of European colonialism, what Conrad himself called, and I quote, the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience. So to give people a sense, we are in Central Africa between 1885 and 1908.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
It's the country that is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, an enormous country, a country that is as big as Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain put together. Indeed, it's as big as the entire United States, east of the Mississippi, and is actually largely unknown outside its own borders, isn't it, Tom?
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Leopold has enlisted the aid of the former Regis Professor of Law at Oxford University, who rejoices in the name Sir Travers Twiss. That's not a real name. A very Dickensian name. Yeah, that's from a novel. Sir Travers Twiss has provided him with a legal opinion that a private company, i.e.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
I would, absolutely. I would. I think lots of people would say that this is a kind of foundational moment for the Congo from which nothing ever goes right thereafter. In that 23-year period when King Leopold is in charge of the Congo, there's a fair claim that it's one of the worst places to live that has ever existed.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
the International Congo Association, is within its rights to sign treaties with African chiefs just as a sovereign country can. When Leopold has got that opinion, he sends orders to Stanley. He says, right, start signing the treaties, make them as brief as possible. And in a couple of articles, these chiefs have to give us everything.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
So as they go at River, Stanley will stop and he will get out and he will start talking to the local bigwigs. Of course, when he raises the issue of treaties through various interpreters, The local chiefs have no idea what he's talking about. Remember, most of them have never seen writing before.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
So when Danny says, I'd like you to make your X, your cross on this document, they have no idea what they are giving away.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Absolutely. Yeah. But there's a brilliant example in the book King Leopold's Ghost, a terrifying example. On the 1st of April, 1884, the chiefs of Ngombi and Mafela signed a deal with Stanley. Leopold would give them each one piece of cloth per month. So they're very excited at getting this cloth.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
In return, they give him the rights to all their territories, all tax and toll rights, all game, fishing, mining and forest rights for all time. They're giving these rights to the Congo Association. And here is the really crucial thing.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
The treaty that they have signed with their mark says they will assist by labour or otherwise any works, improvements or expeditions which the said association shall cause at any time to be carried out in any part of these territories. And this is the real kicker. And this is what actually makes it different from the treaty signed with, let's say, Native Americans, the Plains Indians or whatever.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Because Stanley and Leopold have not just bought their land, they've bought their labor forever, for all time. Any improvement, any work that the Congo Association wants to be carried out, you have to do for them. And there's no mention of what you'll get in return here. I mean, this is a really kind of... They've given away everything. So as a trade deal, not brilliant.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
There's a brilliant book on this called King Leopold's Ghost by the American writer Adam Hochschild. We'll be borrowing from that book very liberally. So a big shout out to Adam Hochschild's book at the beginning. Not an uncontroversial book itself. And in next week's bonus episode, we'll talk about some of the arguments about that book.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
It's a very poor trade deal, I think it's fair to say. Stanley is great at getting these deals. By June 1884... He has signed contracts with more than 450 different chiefs. He sails home to Europe with the treaties in his pocket, giving these people's land and labour to King Leopold.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Yes, I think it would have made a difference. These treaties are not really, they're not done because Leopold cares what the Africans think. They're done to show to the rest of Europe. So these are publicised? Yes, I've done all these deals with local chiefs. I'm very friendly with the local chiefs. This is going to be for their benefit. Everybody wins. This has been done completely legally.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
It is not 16th century style conquistador conquest. So a bit like the Chinese with their... Belt and Road. Belt and Road, yes. I suppose so, though Chinese listeners might... I might raise an eyebrow in parallel, Tom. But yeah, no. I mean, it's a deal that Leopold is selling as it's a deal that benefits Africa. It benefits me. It's great. Everybody wins. Whether everybody does win, we will see.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
So he's got the treaties. He's got his steamboats going up and down the river. What he needs now is somebody to recognize this as his. Because... There is a problem. While Stanley has been up the Congo, a French explorer has landed on the other side of the river, a guy called Count Pierre Savignon de Brazza. De Brazza has established his own trading post on the North Bank.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And this becomes known as Brazzaville, which today is the capital of the formerly French Republic of the Congo. So a rival Congolese territory. And there's a massive media row between Stanley and Brazza. The Portuguese hear about this and the Portuguese say, what? We were the first to the Congo. What's going on here? Get out.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And the British say, well, if there's any dispute about this, we would really much prefer that the Portuguese have the Congo. So this is a problem for Leopold. He needs somebody to back him. And he does something here very clever. He goes outside Europe to another relatively new country like Belgium and another country that has a history of signing treaties with indigenous peoples.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Slightly one-sided treaties, some people might say, that end up not being worth the paper they're written on. But complemented by a love of liberty. Right. And this country is, of course, the United States of America. And he has the perfect intermediary, another Dickensian character called Henry Shelton Sanford, who had previously been the American ambassador to Brussels.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
But anyway, in King Leopold's Ghost, he says this is one of the great mass killings in human history. A death toll, he says, of Holocaust dimensions. Exactly how many people die in the Congo Free State is disputed. But it's millions, isn't it? It's millions. It's almost certainly millions. And some estimates would go as high as 10 million. It's not just a story about horror.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And Henry Shelton Sanford, if you look him up, he's got a big stovepipe hat. He's got the moustache. He's got the kind of gold pince-nez glasses. And he's got the title General, hasn't he?
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Yeah, and he's lost loads of money in Florida, Florida railroads. So he needs money, which makes him the perfect pawn for Leopold. He needs a rich friend. Leopold sends him to Washington with a personal letter to the Republican president, Chester Arthur. And Leopold says, I'm setting up this colony in the Congo. And really, it's about two things. It's about fighting slavery and about free trade.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And as it happens... Arthur is a Republican, and that's basically what the Republican Party in the 1870s and 1880s stands for. Arthur says, oh my God, this sounds absolutely brilliant. And so in April 1884, the US State Department issues the very first official recognition of Leopold's colony.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And they don't understand what it is, because at this stage... Because they think it's going to be like the United States, only in Africa. They absolutely think it's going to be the United States, and what is worse, in the official statement, they muddle up the International Association of the Congo and the International African Association, they use both names within about three sentences.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And of course, that's exactly what Leopold wanted. That was why he did it, because he wants everybody to be confused. He is cunning, isn't he? He is a fox. He is a fox. Now, at this point, when the Americans have recognised it, The French are the next to get on board. Why?
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Because even though they want it themselves, they become paranoid that Leopold is going to run out of money and sell it to the British. And is that because of Stanley? Exactly. The Stanley would be the intermediary.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
No, I guess not. I guess not. And they kind of are still thinking, well, if the Belgians get it, at least it's not the Germans. Right. Next are the Germans. Now, Bismarck, the Chancellor of Germany, the great statesman of Germany, he sees through Leopold, I think, a little bit. Because on the documents that he gets, he writes the words swindle and fantasies. And he's not wrong, is he?
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
But Bismarck thinks, I don't want the French to get the Congo or Britain. So maybe if little Belgium gets it, yeah, fine.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Even though Belgium is not going to get it. But Leopold himself, that's the great irony of all this. All this comes to a head at the conference in Berlin that opens at the end of 1884. So this is the great conference that marks the sort of high point. The Scramble for Africa. And there are You know, delegates from America, from Russia, from the Ottoman Empire.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Of course, no Africans deciding their own destiny. Nobody thinks that would be remotely appropriate. Now, actually, Stanley is there as an advisor to the American delegation. And it says something that Stanley himself feels a little bit queasy about this spectacle.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
It's a story about celebrity, about international relations, royalty. There's a lot of sex in it. There's loads of politics. It's a story about modernity as well, because this is a new age. It's the age of the camera. So lots of photography. Photography is really important. Newspapers, telegraphs, and so on. And actually, as we'll get into in our third episode...
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
He says that the sight of all the delegates rushing to carve up Africa reminded him of when he was on an expedition and they would kill some sort of beast. And he says, my porters, you know, they would rush with gleaming knives for slaughtered game. And that's what these delegates are like. Well, I suppose to hack off the ivory. Exactly, the tusks. Yeah.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
So by February 1885, the conference has reached an agreement. And for Leopold, it is the perfect result. It's a total triumph. All the powers agree that they will recognize the International Congo Association as the owner of almost all of the Congo Basin. And that's the dodgy one, not the humanitarian one. Exactly, the dodgy one. Leopold's private company.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
So he has got a territory 76 times the size of Belgium, and it will belong not to Belgium, but to Leopold personally. So at last he has the fiefdom he wanted. And three months later, in May 1885, he drops all the fiction. The International Congo Association is allowed to lapse. The only thing that remains of it is its flag, the blue flag with the gold star.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And on the 29th of May, by royal decree, its lands, this huge stretch of territory, is renamed the État indépendant du Congo, the Free State of the Congo, and Leopold is named as its founding sovereign.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Yeah, be very hot. Very sensible wearing. Inappropriate garb. Banks of the Congo. Exactly. But now that the Congo Free State has been set up with Leopold as its monarch, for the people of the Congo, the real horror begins.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
It proves the provocation, the cause, for one of the great human rights campaigns in all history, arguably the foundational human rights campaign of the 20th century.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
It is indeed. Yeah, it's such a rich and interesting story. So it definitely merits a series. And like all good series, it needs a riveting central character. In this case, a villain. And history has absolutely provided us with one.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And this is King Leopold II of Belgium, who Hochschild says is as interesting, as multilayered, as greedy, as cunning, as charming and as untrustworthy as any of Shakespeare's villains. And if he is the villain, the great irony is he never, ever sets foot in the Congo. He never lays eyes on the Congo. His villainy, as it were, is carried out from afar, which makes him a very 20th century figure.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
You think of all these dictators who kill so many millions of people without ever shedding blood themselves.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
He is indeed. He is. And we'll absolutely get into that. This is the classic example, you might say, of the rapacity of corporate capitalism carried to its ultimate murderous extreme. But let's start with Leopold himself. So he was born in 1835, when Belgium had been independent from the Netherlands for five years. So he's the son of the very first king of the Belgians, who's also called Leopold.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
He's brought up at a castle called Lachen, which is outside Brussels, where he spends most of his time. He speaks French and German and English, not interestingly Flemish, which is the language of most of his subjects. Now, Leopold's parents, Leopold and Louise, had a pretty miserable, loveless marriage, and they treated their son very, very coldly.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
So if he wanted to talk to his father, he had to apply through a secretary for an audience. And when his father wanted to tell his son something, he got a secretary to do it for him. To be fair, that is how I communicate with Katie and Eliza. So you know what? When I was reading this, the parallels between you and King Leopold were leaping off the page. Unbelievable.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Yeah, it's chilling. So Leopold, maybe this will ring a bell with you, Tom. He grows up a moody, kind of gangling and humorless boy. That's me. But the thing is, even at the time, his father says of him, he's very cunning. His father compares him with a fox, says Leopold is like a fox. He slowly and stealthily picks out his path. Stalks the chickens. Exactly. And then he makes his move.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
So by the 1850s, Leopold is in his teens. He's becoming, I think it's fair to say, an extremely awkward and unattractive young man. Yeah. People always comment on how unbelievably tall he is. He's a bit like Baron Trump. He's massively tall and awkward looking. But with less knowledge of crypto, presumably. Presumably, yes.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
He's got an enormous beard, and everybody comments on his absolutely enormous nose. So Disraeli said of it, it's such a nose as a young prince has in a fairy tale, thanks to the intervention of a malignant fairy. So he's not a looker, I think it's fair to say, and he's very, very charmless. So he has to compensate for that with his cunning.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
When he's 18 years old, his father takes him to Vienna to get a Habsburg bride. And this is a 16-year-old called Archduchess Marie Henriette. And she's great.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
She's got a great laugh. That echoes around Belgium. And she loves laughing. She loves laughing. And Leopold is shocked by this because he hates laughing. They go to Venice on holiday and he behaves really coldly to her. He won't let it go on a gondola that she's booked and all this. And she bursts into tears. And people see this in public. They say, oh dear, this is an all-starred marriage.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And a month after they got married, she tells one of her friends, if God hears my prayers, I shan't go on living much longer. Which is not what... That's not what you want to hear after honeymoon. So much of Leopold's colonial ambitions, there is an argument that basically it stems from his own insecurity and misery. It's a massive kind of displacement exercise.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Anyway, he doesn't actually become king of Belgium until 1865. So he spends a lot of time waiting for his father to die. And while he's doing that, he has this kind of gnawing insecurity that he's going to be inheriting a country that is just a sort of pathetic minnow on the world stage. Of course, Belgium is kind of squashed between France and an increasingly unified Germany.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And Leopold feels this very keenly. He says of Belgium, petit pays, petit gens, little country, little people. And he thinks, you know, I deserve better than the Belgian people. And what he really wants is is an empire. He wants colonies and he's very aggrieved that he's inheriting a kingdom that doesn't have any.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Three years before he becomes king of the Belgians, he goes on holiday to Spain and he goes to Seville and he spends his time in Seville. He spends weeks at the great archive of the Indies going through the records, looking at just how much money Spain had made from its colonies. So this is the 16th century, isn't it? The conquistadors. The conquistadors.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
How much money they had made from the territories they exploited. And this fires his imagination. He makes trips to Ceylon and to Burma to see how the British make money from their colonies. He reads a book called Java or How to Manage a Colony, which is all about the Dutch in the East Indies. And this is written unbelievably. Have you seen the bloke who wrote this book? Yeah, very funny.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Would you? JWB Money Bank. Yeah. Invest your money in it. Well, you should advertise his book. Money's book is all about how you get a colony to turn a profit. You see, that's what Leopold is interested in. Even more than the prestige and certainly a lot more than any possible civilizing mission aspect of colonialism, what he cares about is cash.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And in this book, JWB Money says the Dutch have turned a profit from Java by using forced labor to have plantations and all this kind of thing.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
The Dutch. Awful. So he looks at the Dutch and he says, yeah, they're very unsentimental. They've used forced labour. And it is clear, he writes, the only way to civilise and uplift these indolent and corrupt peoples is basically by forcing them to work so that we can make money. So here's the great paradox. Other Belgians don't really care about colonists.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
They are very conscious they're only a small and newly independent country. They don't even really have a merchant navy of their own. So how could they possibly maintain a colonial empire? But for Leopold... All of his misery, all of his loneliness and awkwardness, I think he has poured into this great project of acquiring colonies. And he believes this is the only thing that will make him happy.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
He absolutely does indeed. He reminds me, reading the book by Adam Hochschild, I was reminded of Scrooge. So Scrooge who, you know, deep down what Scrooge wants, Scrooge wants love. And he's become a miser and a terrible person. You are a sentimentalist. Well, no, I don't think you can be sentimental about King Leopold II, as we will see.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
But you're saying that all the horrors of the Congo is because he didn't have love as a child. I think his loveless life and his obsessiveness, he's not just an ordinary colonialist, as we will see. Mm-hmm. There is something really weirdly obsessive about him.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And I wonder how much of that, I mean, also the way he behaves, the stuff with, as we will see, his obsession with hygiene is very, very peculiar. And with very young ladies. And with very, very young girls. Exactly. There's a lot of bad things to be said, I think it's fair to say, about King Leopold II. Anyway, 1865, he becomes king at last.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Now, for the next 10 years, he doesn't actually manage to get the empire he wants. He investigates various schemes. He'd like to buy a bit of Argentina. He'd like to buy a bit of the Nile Delta. He even talks about acquiring Fiji, but he doesn't really get anywhere. But not Greenland. They're not Greenland, no. But in 1875, he thinks he might be onto something.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
He's offered Spain cash for the Philippines for the second time. And to his deep disappointment, they turn him down again. And he says to one of his courtiers... Okay, I'm going to have a look at Africa now. Maybe Africa's the place. So now at last in this story, we come to Africa.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
Now the great scramble for Africa, which people think of as a 19th century thing, is actually really only concentrated in the final decades of the 19th century. So at this point, 1875, it hasn't happened. The French are in Algeria. The Portuguese are in what become Mozambique and Angola. The British and the Boers both have footholds in South Africa.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And various countries have kind of trading ports and enclaves on the coast of West Africa. But about three quarters of Africa... really meaning the interior, has not yet been penetrated by European empires.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
People just think, well, it's just impenetrable jungle. What could possibly be there? It's a blank space, as Conrad puts it. But by this point, the mid-1870s, Africa is making the news in a way it hasn't ever done before. There have been a series of very eye-catching expeditions.
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538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
And of course, the most famous one, which lots of listeners will have heard of, is the expedition by the journalist Henry Morton Stanley to find the missionary David Livingstone in modern-day Tanzania in 1871, which was financed by the New York Herald. And thanks to these new innovations of cheap newspapers and the telegraph,
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
So what seems to have happened is that some of the sections, these are the kind of neighbourhood councils in Paris, discussed... how we eliminate these people in the prisons. And there are a lot of people saying it's an unpleasant necessity, but basically somebody has to do it. Now, that's not to say the section's ordered it, but the tone has kind of been set.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
About this point, the chief prison inspector comes to Danton in the Hôtel de Ville in City Hall, and he says, I'm genuinely worried about the safety of the people in the prisons. And Danton says, je me fous bien des prisonniers. I don't give a damn about the prisoners, like basically let them fend for themselves.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Tom, I'm so surprised at this. I think I thought you were going to be on the other side of this equation, but it's very clear to me now from the way you've conducted yourself in this whole episode. That, you know, you're going to take a very Dominic Sandbrook, princes in the tower line on this issue, are you?
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Yeah, fair enough. And also, don't forget, everybody thinks the prisoners are total villains and traitors and all of that stuff. Of course.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Listeners can make up their own minds, can't they? I have to say Theo agrees with you. He's written in the chat, well said, Tom. So that's nice. So let's get into the story. Sometime about 2.30 that afternoon, the 2nd of September, the news has come in from Verdun. There was a group of prisoners being escorted through the city from the Palais de Justice to the Abbey prison.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And they are royal officials, they're courtiers and they're Catholic priests. The streets are obviously packed with people because of the war panic. And a lot of people shout abuse at them as they pass in these kind of carriages. As they get towards the Abbey prison, which is in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, it's a former abbey, hence the name, a group of people stop them.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
These people are National Guardsmen, sans-culottes, a mixture of characters. They stop the carriages, they drag the prisoners out, and they drag them into the nearby section headquarters, which is a convent. And there's a great crowd of people there, and the people are shouting, these are enemies of the people. Why take them to the prison? Why not just get rid of them now?
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Two or three of those prisoners try to break out, try to get away, or fight for their lives or whatever. There's a scuffle, they're beaten up, and they are hacked to death with knives, and their bodies are left in the courtyard. The rest of the prisoners are just... 20 people or so are just standing there absolutely traumatized and shocked, wondering what's going to happen.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
An impromptu tribunal is set up and it declares them guilty. Then one by one, in a very methodical way, they're led down the steps into the garden and there a group of men has assembled with knives, axes, hatchets. There's a guy who's clearly a carpenter because he's brought his saw. And one by one, they are hacked to death.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
It's important to say right from the beginning, this is the first incident. It is not a mad frenzy. It's not an orgy of violence. It is quiet. It's considered. The guys take their time. It takes about half an hour to kill all these men. And then it is done. And upstairs, the people who are still there, the room is absolutely full of people.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And they are debating, now that we've killed these people, why don't we just go into the Abbe prison and do the same with everybody who is in there? But again, not necessarily to kill them, to sit in judgment on them. As we'll see, not everybody is killed. You're absolutely right.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
While that crowd is all debating and arguing about how they're going to do it, a separate group breaks into another prison about a mile away called the Qarm. It's a former Qarmalite convent. So a lot of these prisons are convents and abbeys and religious houses that have been converted. In this prison, there are about 160 priests. This crowd again organises a kind of improvised tribunal.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
They call out the prisoners' names one by one. They take them out into the garden. Some of them are shot. Most of them, though, are hacked to death again. Some of them try to climb over the walls or they even climb trees to get away. But they are dragged back and finished off with knives. Again, just to say, I mean, a quarter of them are spared. Well, hold on.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
115 people out of 160 are killed in this.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Agreed. And by the way, we both get different figures. That's not because one of us is right and the other is wrong. It's because every history book gives different figures on this. So, yeah, there is a lot of confusion about the figures. Now, meanwhile, the death squad has got started in the Abbe prison and also in some of the other prisons. And in all of them, it is the same kind of routine.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
I think actually death squad is better than mob prison. They're often described as mobs, but these are kind of organized teams of men. They almost always hold this kind of tribunal. They bring people out into the courtyard once they've been found guilty, and then they stab them or hack them to death. And we only know one of the names of the people who organized this.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Yeah, it does have a huge resonance in France. So those words in French, il nous faut de l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace. We need daring, more daring, always daring, to dare, to dare, to dare again, or however you translate it. They're very famous. Lots of French school children will know those words.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
a guy called Stanislas Maia, who was a clerk. He'd been at the Bastille. He'd been a big figure in the Women's March on Versailles. And he seems to have been one of those people who's thrown up by these periods of revolution and kind of chaos. So a bit of a bully. You know, you could say he's the kind of person who would be a paramilitary leader.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And he loves all this, and obviously this is his moment.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
I think they're absolutely right, Tom. I think he is being organised. Insofar as there is a sense of organisation, it's at a very, very sort of low level. It's these kind of neighbourhood councils. The commune, we know that they talked about. That's an instructionary council that's taking control of Paris.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
We know they talked about it and they said, your point, there weren't enough men to protect the prisons. We need them on the barricades. One of the communist committees issued a statement signed by Marat, the prisoners are brigands who will slaughter our children and our women. These acts of justice are indispensable to deter through the use of terror these legions of traitors.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Yeah, I think so. I mean, and we'll talk about in the second half about what the population of Paris think of it. But I think you're absolutely right that basically they are pretty representative of the city and of the streets, I guess. It is the vengeance of the streets. That's what historians who are more sympathetic to the September Massacre say. I mean, on the bigwigs...
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
The bigwigs know this is happening, but they don't do anything about it. Danton says to Brissot, Girondin leader, the deaths are an indispensable sacrifice to appease the people of Paris.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
The interior minister, Jean-Marie Roulon, the husband of Madame Roulon, the great sort of linchpin of the Girondin sort of social circle, he says the people terrible in its vengeance is exercising a kind of justice. You know, they're making excuses for it and kind of, I mean, they do nothing about it. That association of terror with a kind of justice, I think, is exactly what's happening.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Yeah, I think that was very French Revolution, isn't it? So that's the first day. But of course, it's just the first several days. The next day, you get to Monday the 3rd. The men at the Abbe prison, the first prison to be targeted. They're there for about 24 hours working away. And meanwhile, other men are moving on to other prisons. There's a seminary called Saint-Femin, which holds priests.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And that, I think, gives you a sense of the position that we're in as we begin season three of the French Revolution. This episode is very, very gory. So listeners should be warned. It is absolutely revolting, particularly if you have children, be warned.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
There's a convent called Saint-Bernard. There's an asylum at Bicetre, which holds petty criminals. Perhaps most shockingly, the Saupetrière women's hospice, which holds prostitutes. And people have been joking, haven't they? We should send Marie-Antoinette to the Saupetrière. So there, we're not talking about priests or courtiers or, you know, royalist journalists.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
These people are actually poor, petty criminals, prostitutes and so on. And this is, I think, where it gets particularly shocking. So be set. They killed probably 150, 160 people. A lot of them are very young. About 40 of them are probably under 18. One of them is 12. Two of them are 13. Three of them are 14 and so on.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Saint Bernard, the people who were killed there, perhaps 70 of them, they're forgers. And the Soncolot hate forgers because of the paper money. They think the paper money is all a plot. They think that the forgers have been working with counter-revolutionaries to undermine it and to drive up grain prices. So if you're a forger, you've got to go.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And not a good time to be a prostitute. So Saul Petriere, probably 40 prostitutes.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
I think actually, Tom, since 1789, maybe I don't know enough about pre-revolutionary Paris, but I think certainly since 1789, we talked about the grand peur, the great fear in the countryside. And that's a huge fear of brigands, isn't it, who are going to ride over the horizon and trample your crops and burn, because they're working with the local aristocrats.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Well, I think in Paris, there has been the same thing with criminals. An anxiety about street crime and a belief that crime in some obscure way is connected with the court.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Because in today's episode, we will be turning to, I would say, perhaps the most horrific episode of the whole revolution, the September massacres. So to give people a sense... This is a moment when mobs are going to storm, basically burst into the prisons. Or are they mobs?
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Yeah, absolutely. Now, actually, you made a really good point earlier on. You were keen to emphasize that not everybody is killed. The single most famous kind of insider account, the one that was best known in 1790s France, came from somebody who did survive. He was an army officer and a royalist journalist called François-Jorniac Saint-Méar. And he was in the Abbey of Saint-Germain, a prisoner.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And he wrote a book afterwards with a brilliant title called My agony of 38 hours. I'd buy that. And he says in that, basically, he was in the prison and he was in his cell and his cell had a little window and he couldn't see into the courtyard, but he could hear. And he said, basically, that was the execution ground.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And for hours, he was just sitting there in his cell, listening to people being murdered. And he said the killers worked in silence and that made him even more terrifying. He could hear people being led out and then the kind of grunting and the hacking of the blows and all that kind of thing.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And he said all that he would hear, the only speech was that basically after everybody was killed, the killers would shout, long live the nation, and then they would move on to the next. Now a guard, he'd made friends with a guard, and the guard said to him, I'll let you watch some of the interrogations before the tribunal so you can work out the right answers.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
So eventually, 4th of September, at 1 o'clock in the morning, it's his turn. Imagine that. I mean, that's terrifying. Somebody shouts out your name and you're led down the corridor. And then you go into this room, which is packed with people, a lot of stubble, a lot of sweat, and a group of men at the end. You have to answer these questions.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And he said the men who took him in had blood all over their shirts. So he goes in, and if his account is remotely true, and of course it may be exaggerated, he did really well. He was very calm. He said, listen, I used to be a royalist, but I'm not anymore. The circumstances have changed, and of course I've changed my mind, as we all have. I've never plotted and conspired with anybody.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
I've never been interested in politics. I was just a journalist, and it's bad luck that I'm here. And they acquitted him. And they sent him home with an escort of sans-culottes. And when he got back to his boarding house, his landlord, who saw him coming with these men covered in blood, got out his pocketbook to give these men money to basically pay them off.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And the men said, oh, we don't do this for money.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
So it depends. I mean, it's so interesting. It depends which book you read. I can tell you've been reading David Andrus's book because he's very much of the glass half full, isn't he? He's like, well, look at all the prisoners who survived. Nobody talks about them. Anyway, so this guy gave the right answers.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
But of course, there are some people who cannot bring themselves to give the right answers. And after the break, let's come to the most celebrated of all of those. And that's somebody you've talked about before, Tom. And I know you have a bit of a tendresse for this unfortunate lady. I do. It's Marie Antoinette's friend, the Princesse de Lamballe.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
So we'll be coming to her story after the break and be warned, things are going to get ugly. And that is a very serious warning.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Mobs or death squads. And they are going to club or hack a thousand people to death. Some of them in very gruesome circumstances. And we'll be debating all that later, but Tom, perhaps first of all, we should remind people where we have got to. Now, obviously, by reminding people, we don't need to do the whole previous two series again. That would be too meta. But, yeah, it would.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Well, Tom, as you know, I am absolutely passionate about NordVPN. One of the things I love about them is their Threat Protection Pro, an absolutely brilliant antivirus tool. It is so effective and so powerful. It is integrated directly into the NordVPN app. So what it does is it protects you from phishing and other cyber threats.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And the brilliant thing about it is it allows you to browse safely and smoothly.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
That's one of the things that make me so passionate about NordVPN. So to stay secure online, you really should take advantage of our exclusive NordVPN discount. You really should, you know. All you need to do is to go to nordvpn.com slash restishistory. When you sign up, you can receive a bonus four months on top of your plan and there is no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
The link is also in the episode description box.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Yeah, that's right, Tom. So just to give people a sense of what is coming, we had a big debate, didn't we, about what reading we would come in with this half. That is actually one of the less bloodthirsty, one of the least horrible of all the potential readings that we could have chosen, because nothing good is going to happen to her. She's 42 years old at this point.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
We'll never get out of it. Okay, to give people a sense, we're in 1792. Tuileries has been stormed. France is at war, and it's been at war since April, and it's gone incredibly badly so far. So France has basically lost those little battles. So politics in Paris is defined by a feud between two rival groups of Jacobins.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
I'd always imagined her as being quite young. But of course, Marion Toinette herself is not terribly young at this point. She's been with Marion Toinette all this time. She'd had a pretty terrible life, the Princesse de Lambelle. Married at 16, widowed at 19. Her husband probably gave her syphilis so she couldn't have children. And her father-in-law had banned her from remarrying.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
So she's sort of stuck there. hanging around Marie Antoinette. And as you say, she is extremely loyal. She's perceived as very haughty, isn't she? I think that's because she's shy. Yeah. She's a nervous person. Sickly. Socially maladroit. Yeah, absolutely.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
But as you've said, and as you brilliantly described in those episodes about Marie Antoinette at the very beginning of the whole French Revolution story, cycle. She has always played a very prominent part in the kind of pornographic demonology of the court.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Yeah. So on the 3rd of September, which is the second day of the massacres, the killers came to a prison called La Force, where she has been taken with the other ladies-in-waiting and with the royal children's former governess, Madame de Tourzel. And there's a tribunal set up. There are seven people. The most famous of them is a radical journalist called Jacques Hébert.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
He basically makes Marat look like a... A columnist for The Guardian. He's kind of very extreme. He's a bit Trump-esque, isn't he? He has nicknames for his opponents. Yes, incredibly aggressive. So this tribunal has been working its way through the prisoners of the force. They have a very strange sort of code. If they say at the end of your hearing, vive la natione, then you are spared.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
You're free to go. If they say you're free to go, you are killed. So it's slightly confusing. Anyway, the process to Lombelle is brought out and it's all actually very quick. They say, did you know anything about the plot to kill the people by the Swiss guards at the Tuileries? So again, harking back to the sense that it's the guards who are at fault and it's a royal conspiracy against the people.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And she says, no, I knew nothing about this. Will you swear to liberty and equality and hatred of the king and queen? She says, yes, I'll happily swear to liberty and equality, but I cannot swear hatred to the king and queen. It's not in my heart. Now, at that point, by some accounts, there was a friend or an agent of her father-in-law or something like this.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
who was in the room, who whispered to her, just said, say you swear it and they'll let you go. And she said, I have nothing more to say. It's indifferent to me if I die earlier or later. I have made the sacrifice of my life. And the tribunal says, very well, let Madame be set at liberty, which means you're for the chop. And then she is led outside into the courtyard.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And now what happens next is the subject of innumerable, undoubtedly sensationalized, exaggerated, and probably entirely fictional accounts. Many of them exaggerated, and many of them, frankly, probably fictional. What do we actually know? What we know is that the same day, the 3rd, a group of Sankulot delivered her body to Sans head to one of the sections.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Later, the head was retrieved and these were buried privately by servants of her family. That's what we actually know.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Correct. So there are a couple of issues and how she was killed, which is the subject of an enormous sort of very prurient, frankly, pornographic speculation in the 1790s and afterwards. And then there is what happens to her head afterwards, which becomes a very, very famous part of the French Revolutionary story.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
So the first faction are called the Girondins, and they're under Brissot, who you really liked, as I recall. I did like Brissot, yeah. Yeah, a do-gooder. That's Brissot, isn't he? He's an abolitionist. He likes a literary salon. He likes dinner with metropolitan people. He's a good man. Yeah, that's Brissot. And then on the other end, another very Tom Holland figure, actually.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
She wasn't actually there at the time. I think she wasn't in the room. There's a story that the governor of the prison's wife sees it and faints. And people thought that was Marion Tournette. I think it's possible they put the head on the pipe, by the way, to the temple prison. I think that sounds like something they might have done. Yeah, I agree.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
One of the worst people who's ever lived. But again, I don't believe this story. There's a story that he's at the Palais Royal and he's having dinner with some English friends, English guests. And somebody brings in the head and he looks at her and he says, oh, that's Lombard. I know her by her long hair. Anyway, let's have dinner. Again, I don't think that happened.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
I think he's such a terrible man that I'd like to believe it did happen.
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It's like the battle for your soul this time. I know. This is why I find it so fascinating. It's the Montagnard, the mountain as they're called, under Maximilien Robespierre, the kind of bony, Rousseau-loving. Another do-gooder. Bewigged. Yeah, bewigged do-gooder. Hates capital punishment. Yeah, like you. The streets of Paris are full of armed young men.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Yeah, like the stuff of a Gilray cartoon. Yes, exactly. So my take on this is these stories are incredibly controversial among historians. And as we will see, because we'll get into that in a little while, my view is a lot of these stories are clearly made up. The stories of the most grotesque torture, the stories of cannibalism, people drinking blood, all of that kind of stuff.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
It's part of a tradition of political invective to invent these stories. But I think it's implausible to imagine that 1,000 people were killed without, as it were, people overstepping the mark, without mutilation, without rape. Because there were suggestions that some of the prostitutes, for example, were abused or raped. Is that inherently implausible?
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
No, I think a lot of these are horrific killing. They're not entirely surgical. However, I do agree with you that a mad frenzy is the wrong way to think about it. that it is pretty clear from a lot of these accounts, like that account that we quoted before the break of that guy who let go, there is a kind of semblance of justice.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
We know that the killers took these tribunals, that they're not all just sort of dancing around wearing people's body parts as hats or whatever, covered in blood, that they are actually trying to take these tribunals quite seriously. We know that the crowds listened to the evidence, And we do know that the killings were carried out in silence because so many people talk about it.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Solemn, yeah, solemn atmosphere. I mean, some people have talked about it. They've said it was almost like they were ritualistic killings, that there was a kind of... I dare I say to him, I don't want to give you a massive gift, but it's kind of sacral dimension to it, that it was a purge. It was a kind of purge of sin.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
So these are the Federés from Marseille and elsewhere. Tom, last time you talked about their importance in bringing the Marseillais.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Oh, I totally agree with that. I think that the people who do it think they're doing the right thing. They think it's a necessary purge.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
I think actually the pornographic kind of mode is the one that people instinctively reach for because Paris is awash with it. I think it's the natural genre to pick.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Okay, let's just sum up the story. So it takes four days. The massacres and the prisons... Lasts for four days. They die down on the morning of the 6th of September. To give you a sense of what Paris looks like, the place is absolutely full of bodies. There are bodies in the streets. There are bodies in the courtyards. There are bodies in the kind of corridors of the prison.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
The rest of the prisoners, of course, have been set free. So the prison's empty. And the commune eventually sends in people and says, please scrub them down and wash them with vinegar. get rid of the stench, get rid of the stains. But in some of the prisons, La Force, for example, there's so much blood, they can't shift the bloodstains.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Of course, a Tom Holland would say, some of the rooms are stained with blood, but some of them are pristine and perfectly clean. Why not talk about those rooms? Anyway. We'll get into this in a second, Tom, because we're going to talk about the historiography. There are copycat killings elsewhere in France. So there are 44 people, for example, that are killed in Versailles.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
A horrendous atrocity, actually. They are lynched, they are beheaded in public, and their heads are stuck on the spikes of the palace gates. So probably about 100 people are killed across France. But then... In the next few weeks, things die down. In the future episodes, we'll talk about why that happens, the political transformation in Paris, and a very dramatic change on the battlefield.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
It was indeed. And people will remember that the episode before that was the story of how these guys, the Federés and the sans-culottes on the streets of Paris, the people who wear trousers, the kind of artisans, the radicals, they stormed the Tuileries Palace. They launched a second revolution. They slaughtered the Swiss guard. They effectively toppled the king and queen who'd been carted off
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Just to move towards a close on the September massacres. One question is, what did people in Paris think of them? And we know people in Paris thought they were fine. They were completely fine. David Andrus, who you've mentioned before, he makes a very good point that Parisians are used to public violence. I mean, you talked about it, Tom, in that excellent episode you did on the guillotine.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
The hideous rituals of the public executions, the idea of humiliating, degrading and destroying somebody in public.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Well, it's interesting that the papers at the time, they're not embarrassed about it at all. This is a moderate paper, the Courrier Francais. The people made it their duty to purge the city of all the criminals, to prevent a prison breakout that would have fallen on the women and children. Moralical paper, Révolution de Paris.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
The people took the extreme measure, but the only appropriate one, of forestalling the horrors that were being prepared against them and of showing no mercy to those who would not have shown any to them.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Of course. I mean, we have diarists, we have letter writers. There's a brilliant example of a guy, a merchant's son, an 18-year-old in Peter McPhee's book on the French Revolution. And he wrote home and he said, there has been a horrible massacre. He says, wherever you go, you see the bloody remains of mutilated bodies in open graves.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And then in the next line, he says, but it was the right thing to do. The prisoners were plotting with the Prussians. We had to do it. And that diarist, Rosalie Julien, she said, again, an atrocious necessity. The people, terrible in their fury, are avenging the crimes of three years of vile treachery. And she talks in her diary. She says people have had their heads cut off.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Priests have been eviscerated. But it's the right thing to do because we had to save France. Now, the thing is, historians have grappled with this ever since. Because, of course, most historians, by and large, I would say, who write about the French Revolution, especially in France, have been sympathetic to the revolution.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And here you have an episode which is, for me, much more shocking than the terror. I mean, the victims in the terror, a lot of them are people involved in politics, players in the games. They're players. These people are often young, very poor, the criminals, the petty thieves, the women, the prostitutes, the prince de Lambat. So...
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From the 21st century perspective, I know Theo says, oh, you're always harder on French exponents of violence than you are when the British do it. But I think even with that said, it's hard to contemplate this and to say, oh, yeah, they had to go, as Theo clearly thinks.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
I mean, I probably would choose the guillotine over being hacked to death by a carpenter with a saw. At one o'clock in the morning? Yeah. So the definitive French historian of this was a guy called Pierre Caron. And he was writing in the 1930s. He was the head of the National Archives in France. And he said, you have to understand it in the context of two things.
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One, the fighting at the Tuileries and the thirst for vengeance. And the other is the mood of panic and hysteria as the Prussians advanced on the capital. And that you have to understand the war, the pressure and all of this kind of thing. And Caron, for years, everybody said, he's the top man in the September Massacres. He knows what's what.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
to a prison called the Temple Fortress. But they also crucially arrested about a thousand people who have since been crammed into the prisons of Paris.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And then 50 years later, our old friend Simon Sharma wrote his book, Citizens. Have you read the passage where he talks about Caron? I have. He says his book is, and I quote, a monument of intellectual cowardice and moral self-delusion. And he said, Caron is being far too kind. This is basically anticipating the genocides of the 20th century.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
The same themes, we have to get them before they get us. The same emphasis on what Sharma calls an armed sanitation, on purging France of crime and sin. And you can see why Sharma, writing in the 1980s, very conscious of what had happened in Europe 40 years earlier. Why he looks at September and says, hey, don't make excuses for this. This is unbelievably horrible and bestial.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And he doesn't deny that there's a kind of efficiency and a clinical nature to it. But he says that's what makes it all the more frightening.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
So in this case, right, I agree with you, it didn't happen. The thing is, do you take all the revolutionary sources on trust and say the counter-revolutionary ones are propagandistic exaggerations? Or do you say that the truth probably lies in between the two and that both of them are party-prey? And actually, the truth is that we'll never really know.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And this is the frustrating thing about this story. It's a classic example of historians projecting onto it their own political preconceptions. We talked about David Andrus. David Andrus is very much a man of the left. In his book on the terror, he says the September massacres are terrible. But then in the next breath, he has a sentence like this.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
This is where he introduces the September massacres. The people in arms exercised their right of self-defence against those they felt were betraying them to the counter-revolution. You cannot imagine Simon Sharma writing that sentence, can you?
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Well, are you not the person who did an episode about how the Nazis thought what they were doing was right, and they were on the right side of history, and on the right side of morality?
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
So there's another brilliant book on the French Revolution, the most recent English language survey published. It's by a guy called Jeremy Popkin, American historian, professor at the University of Kentucky. And he is much more positive about the revolution than Sharma is.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And he says in his section on this, he says, listen, if you think the French Revolution is better than the experiments of the 20th century, for example, communism, or indeed, Nazism, if you think the French Revolution is more progressive... As he clearly does, he says, you should have a massive problem with the September massacres.
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Because he says, the thing that is so frightening about them is that they are so cold-bloodedly political. That they are people sitting down in committee rooms and saying, yeah, these people have got to go. Go ahead and do it. Somebody organised the death squads. I mean, of course, they were bottom-up to some degree.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
but there were people who led them, there were people who condoned it, there were people who didn't intervene, all of that kind of thing. In his version, and indeed in Timothy Tackett and other historians, they say this is a key step towards what we call the reign of terror.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
The idea that maybe you'll make some mistakes and some innocent people will be rounded up and killed accidentally, but it's actually better to purge than to allow...
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Well, because obviously we're going to be talking about this an awful lot when we get the terror itself. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The elections to the National Convention have been happening all this time, and all the big names are standing. Brissot, Robespierre, Danton, Marat.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
This new convention is going to meet on the 20th of September, and it is going to decide the future of France, and in particular, something I know you'll be talking about in a couple of episodes' time. the future of the royal family. But the question is, will this convention even get the chance to do that? Because all this time, the Prussians have been coming closer and closer and closer.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
So Verdun fell. The Duke of Brunswick is coming on. He's got 80,000 men. Every day, he is coming closer to Paris. He is now being pursued by a smaller French army under General Dumouriez, who is the foreign minister who got France into the war in the first place. And by the third week in September, the Prussians reach a place called Valmy, which is in the Argonne forest.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
It's about 120 miles from Paris. And rain is falling, the skies are overcast, and it's against this very kind of turbulent backdrop. that the Duke of Brunswick and the Prussians turn to finish off the French and to clear the battlefield for their final assault on the capital. And Tom, what happens next will change the course of European history.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Exactly right. That's exactly right. So to give people a sense of the politics, with the stormy of the Tuileries, politics have been plunged into total chaos. The king and his family are in the temple. In their place, the Legislative Assembly has set up this executive, which is basically dominated by the Girondins and by Danton, Minister of Justice.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Now, Tom, as you know, I am not just a man of history. I'm also known for my involvement in the performing arts.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
I must confess that early on in my acting career, my stage presence did come under a little scrutiny from Britain's finest newspapers.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Yeah, and I will remind the listeners that in Scotland, they order their reviews in a different way. So one is at the top and five stars is the worst review you could get. So we were very happy with that one-star review. But like a lot of great masters of their craft, Tom, I learned from it. I grew. I evolved. I knew I would bide my time before returning to the boards. And guess what? You're not.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
No. Yes. Tom, I have to tell you, I have returned to the boards. I'm performing once again. And the brilliant news for our listeners is that you can go and you can be transfixed by my performance right now because I am honoured and privileged to appear in the latest Sherlock & Co adventure, The Adventure of the Norwood. Please tell me that you are playing the Norwood Builder.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
I'm playing a much better character. I'm playing Hector McFarlane, a solicitor from Blackheath accused of murder. Goodness, as Lestrade's officers bear down on me, Tom, I have nowhere else to turn but to 221B Baker Street.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Well, very much like this one, we were better acting, I think it's fair to say. It's a stable mate of ours. They are a massive show. They get 10 million downloads. Outside, I believe, The Archers, this is the biggest audio drama in Britain. Well, I have no doubt, Dominic, that it is more interesting than The Archers. It genuinely is brilliant. So My Son is a massive Sherlock and Co. aficionado.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
It basically goes through all the original short stories and the short stories that are often forgotten in modern day adaptations. It transposes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's narratives to the modern day. So Watson himself is making the podcast while they're doing the adventures. You can pick up any adventure you want. You don't have to follow the whole series to get stuck in.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
It is absolutely brilliant. Do you know who else thinks it's brilliant, Tom? The Guardian newspaper. One of those prized one-star reviews? No, a five-star. They said, and I quote, very funny, mildly sweary and hugely popular. Do you want to know what the Times said? It said, a breakneck series that Gen Z, or Gen Z as members of it say, that Gen Z is hooked on. Wow.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And they have said, listen, we are going to have to have yet another constitutional kind of reboot. We're going to call for a national convention. Now, this will be elected for the first time in near universal male suffrage. And everybody knows this is basically going to call for a republic, that the monarchy is finished.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And now that you're appearing on the show, I mean, that will confirm the hook, won't it? It absolutely will. And the Guardian listeners will be beside themselves with joy. So, everybody, please listen to Sherlock & Co. The Adventure of the Norwood Builder. It's multi-part. It's brilliant. Part one is out now. Jump right in wherever you get your podcasts. And here is a clip from that very episode.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Yet, but... Now, listen. You said you would hear me out, didn't you? Do you want to just dial it down a bit, Hector? Would you? Would you dial it down when you're smeared over every paper? Look at this. Look at this. In the Times, here, look. Solicitor suspected for contractor disappearance. The Telegraph. Solicitor faces long arm of law. The Daily Mail. Bully of Blackheath.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Elite London lawyer facing murder charge. I mean, this is just... This is... This is... The Guardian, here, look at this. Old Acre murder. How neoliberal materialism and Kirsty Allsop home renovations are the real killers of the working... Oh, well, that one goes on a bit. Yeah, we get the point. Do you? Do you? I'm not sure you do. The Daily Sport. Big job love.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
McFarlane's wife's steamy romp with missing builder. I mean, look, there's a thought bubble above my wife's head saying, knob the builder, can he fix it? Hector. The speech bubble as well. Here's your extension, love. I mean, this is just... The son. Cannibal Hector. Macfarlane confesses to eating Norwood tradesmen. You confessed to what? Sorry. I didn't confess to a damn thing.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
I said I was hungry for justice. That's all. It is slander. It's disgraceful. It's bloody humiliating.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
But the Girondins who dominate this committee and who really dominate the assembly, it looks like they've got everything their own way, but they don't because now they're having to kind of share power in Paris with this new body that's been set up called the Insurrectionary commune, which is the local council, which is dominated by much more radical people, and in particular by Robespierre.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And if all this isn't confusing enough, Robespierre says the Girondins, who are the people who got us into the war, they're actually much too weak and too soft.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
They'd be much too soft on the royal family and on the enemies within, and they may actually be part of the foreign conspiracy, which sounds bonkers, but that gives you a sense of the kind of the faction fighting, the paranoia that is around in this point in 1792?
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Yeah. Although really, actually, you could argue that the fight is between two left-wing groups.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Yes, I guess you could make that point. And it's really important to say the atmosphere in Paris is haunted by fear and by a sense of coming catastrophe and apocalypse. Because all the time, the Prussians, they've crossed the border, they're coming west. And the Duke of Brunswick, the Prussian commander, has issued a manifesto in which he says...
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
explicitly, there will be an exemplary vengeance against the people of Paris. Paris is in the firing line. I'm coming for you. And, you know, I'm basically going to wipe the floor with you. And so this is hence the Churchillian quality of Danton's defiance, defying the German invasion. Yeah, exactly so. Exactly. And all through Paris, there are these mad rumors.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
People are saying there are loads of noblemen hiding in the sewers. They're poised to strike. They have hidden weapons caches in churches, in the pantheon. And particularly, one of these rumors is that there are criminals in the Paris prisons are going to break out. They're going to launch an uprising. They are in league. with these foreign villains.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And the commune, the assembly, the neighborhood councils, which are called the sections, they are meeting almost permanently around the clock. The city is lit up at night. There are surveillance committees. There are troops in the streets. It is an extraordinary atmosphere. Everybody is waiting for something to happen. And if we pick up the story on the 26th of August.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
So on the 26th of August, 1792, terrible news reaches Paris from the Eastern Front. The Prussians have been advancing for seven days and they have just taken the fortress at Lungi. After barely a fight, Longuier surrendered and there's only one fortress left, which is Verdun. So it looks like treason. It looks like treason, exactly. And it looks like the Prussians can't be stopped.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Some of the Girondins at this point say, listen, you know, effectively it's 1940. We need to evacuate the government to Tours.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Yeah, it looks weak. Well, it looks royalist. It looks like they're not invested, actually, in the defence of Paris. Robespierre says, no way, we should stand and fight in the defence of liberty. And, of course, the Minister of Justice, this sort of big, fleshy, sort of corrupt, but very charismatic revolutionary leader.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
I think it's fair to say of Donzano, he's got terrible skin and he's got a taste for a brown envelope. He likes a backhander that he can spend on a mistress and a massive selection of starters. That's Danton's modus operandi. Danton basically seizes the moment and he says, close the city gates of Paris, put up barricades. I want volunteers. I want recruiting stations everywhere.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And his charisma, his Churchillian charisma is really important, I think. Sort of steadying the nerves. I mean, he really rises to meet the moment. But there is a dark side to all these preparations because the provisional government, with Danton as its kind of leading light, issues an official proclamation at this point. And it says...
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Yeah, watch out for the Prussians, but also watch out for the enemies within. Citizens, you have traitors in your bosom, but for them the fight would already be over. Your active surveillance cannot fail to defeat them. Now, what do they mean by the traitors within? They mean corrupt former advisors to the king, ladies-in-waiting at the court who they say are all lesbians.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
speculators, hoarders, criminals, the old Swiss guards, priests who have defied the civil constitution of the clergy, journalists who have written in defense of the monarchy. All these people, they think, are in the pay, effectively, of the sinister Austrian committee that is masterminded by Marie Antoinette. and her friends in Vienna. I mean, that's pretty much the case, isn't it, Tom?
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
That's the thing. I mean, it's important to say that. So by the 28th of August, two days later, Danton has now ordered raids across the city, raids on people's houses. They're searching for guns. They're searching for enemy agents, stolen documents, letters. So...
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
If you've ever seen documentaries or films about the French Revolution, you've seen this sort of quite stereotypical image of a group of sans-culottes with their kind of red hats and their pikes banging on people's doors. Thick stubble. Right. You've got an aristo hidden in the cellar or something. That's where this is coming from.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Lots of historians at this point cite a diarist called Rosalie Julien. She's a brilliant diarist, actually, on this period because she is married to a Jacobin deputy. Now, she is somebody who really complicates your sense of the French Revolution. She's a very likable character. She's very well-read. She's very educated. She's a big fan of Rousseau, a massive do-gooder and a reformer.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
But she is always writing in her diary, the city is full of traitors and we have to root them out. Still more traitors, still more treason. And I think those words are really important to understand what's going to happen. Because she and so many other people are saying, they're all in the prisons. All of these prisons are stuffed with traitors.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And as soon as our troops, these volunteers, march out to face the Prussians, The traitors will seize their moment. They will break out and massacre the women and children of Paris.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
I think there totally is, Tom. Yeah, I think there's a sense of the stab in the back is coming. And there were all these rumours about breakouts in the prisons. So all through August, actually, there had been rumours, the Paris police had been reporting rumours that people were about to break into the prisons and, I quote, render prompt justice to the people inside them.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And in fact, it's not surprising that the Paris police are reporting that because some newspapers and radical pamphlets and posters and things are very, very explicit about what they think we should do. And I'll just give you two examples.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
So one is a newspaper called The Orator of the People, and it was edited by a guy called Fréron, who's a friend of Camille Desmoulins, who we've talked about before. Fréron wrote this. The first battle we shall fight will be inside the walls of Paris, not outside. All the royal brigands clustering inside this unhappy town will perish in the same day. The prisons are full of conspirators.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Let the world see how we judge them. I mean, that's ominous, but not as ominous as this. This is from a guy called Fabre d'Eglantine, who was a friend, a great friend of Danton, and who was a poet. He's not a great ornament, I think, to the poetic profession when you read his words. Let us clear the ranks of these vile slaves of tyranny. Let the blood of traitors be the first holocaust to liberty.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
I mean, he literally used the phrase, le premier holocaust. So that in advancing to meet the common enemy, we leave nothing behind to disquiet us. And actually Marat, one of the most outspoken of all these journalists. And has the worst skin. Not coincidentally, I think. Marat says, basically, citizens should go to the Abbey prison. get the prisoners, and I quote, run them through with a sword.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
And some of Mara's kind of defenders in the historical profession say, oh, that's just Mara. You know, he talks. He doesn't really mean it. But as Simon Sharma says, you know, how do you know? How are people supposed to tell the difference? So this is the climate. On the 29th of August... The Prussians reach Verdun. And Verdun is the keystone of France's eastern defensive line.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
If you get past Verdun, you're into the Valley of the Marne. And once you go through that, you are heading towards Paris. And Verdun surrenders after three days to this impregnable fortress. Yeah. The garrison commander, who'd said he'd never surrender, either kills himself or is killed by the people of Verdun, who basically don't fancy a siege at all. We're like, yeah, we'll let the Prussians in.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
Fine. So Verdun surrenders and the news arrives in Paris on Sunday, the 2nd of September. The Prussians are broken through. And now you've got, I mean, it's an extraordinary scene. You have kind of church bells ringing. There are cannons on the River Seine sounding the alert. And this is when Danton gives his Churchillian address. Exactly. Danton gives his address.
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544. The French Revolution: The September Massacres (Part 1)
There are posters going up across the city to arms, to arms. The enemy is at the gates. Now, that afternoon, we can be pretty sure that something else happened, but we can't be exactly certain what, because the documents were later destroyed. They were destroyed in the events of 1870-71. It's ironic, isn't it? Another Prussian day trip to Paris.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
Although at that point, if he's the obvious successor, the post of princeps, of emperor, has clearly degenerated into a monarchy, hasn't it? If the obvious successor is the only person left from the dynasty and the only thing that makes him an obvious successor is his bloodline.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
And there's also this stuff about... So Suetonius has obviously painted a picture of Tiberius and Capri that is very... damning, shall we say. And Suetonius also says that Caligula was able to suck up Tiberius because he shared his cruelty and deviant appetites, doesn't he?
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
He likes watching people being tortured and he dresses up in drag and, you know, all of this kind of thing, which I'm guessing you will say is part of the sort of the fake news edifice that has been constructed around Tiberius.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
The enormity of his crimes was all the worse for the outrageous quality of the things he said. When his grandmother Antonia sought to give him some advice, he not only ignored it, but told her, When he exiled his sisters, he warned them that he had swords as well as islands.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
And right from the start, Caligula proves himself a master, doesn't he, of playing to the people, to the gallery. He reminds me a bit of the guy who's the ruler of Chechnya, who's called Ramzan Kadyrov. who also succeeded, you know, he succeeded his father. It's not really a monarchy, but he's always like wrestling bears and trying to hang out with Hollywood film stars and stuff.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
When he had someone killed, it was invariably by means of repeated delicate incisions so that, as he notoriously liked to express it, a man would die knowing that he was being put to the blade. When a case of mistaken identity led to the wrong man being executed, he declared that the person put to death had no less deserved to die.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
And Caligula is very much of that ilk, isn't he? He likes a sensational, melodramatic, crowd-pleasing gesture.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
Those are three people who aren't often bracketed together.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
24, has never held a senior command, has never held a senior office, and they must be thinking, this is mad. I mean, why is this bloke ruling Rome? He's completely out of his depth, but also he's against everything that we stand for, which is tradition, integrity, seriousness, all of these things.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
He liked to quote the proverbial line from the tragedy, "'Let them hate, provided they fear.'" Once, at an elegant banquet, he suddenly burst out laughing, and when the consuls who were reclining nearby politely inquired of him what had prompted such laughter, he answered, Why, only that with a single nod I could have either of your throats cut here and now.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
Angered, when a crowd cheered on contestants who were competing against his own favourites, he cried out, If only the Roman people had a single neck! So that is from the biography by Suetonius of Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, who many listeners will better know as Caligula.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
So the monster is coming and we will be back after the break. This is an ad by BetterHelp Online Therapy. Now, Tom, you and I often hear about the red flags that we should avoid. But what if we focused more on looking for green flags in our friends and in our partners, indeed, in our producers? Now, if people aren't sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify green flags.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
It can allow you to actively wave them and identify them in your own relationships. So, Tom, can I ask you, do you have any relationship green flags? I certainly do.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
Well, Tom, therapy can help you identify red and green flags. It can help you learn positive coping skills, and it can teach you how to set boundaries and enforce them. It can help you work through anything. and empower you to be the very best version of yourself.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
Well, Tom, as you know, I am absolutely passionate about NordVPN. One of the things I love about them is their Threat Protection Pro, an absolutely brilliant antivirus tool. It is so effective and so powerful. It is integrated directly into the NordVPN app. So what it does is it protects you from phishing and other cyber threats.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
And the brilliant thing about it is it allows you to browse safely and smoothly.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
That's one of the things that make me so passionate about NordVPN. So to stay secure online, you really should take advantage of our exclusive NordVPN discount. You really should, you know. All you need to do is to go to nordvpn.com slash restishistory. When you sign up, you can receive a bonus four months on top of your plan and there is no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
The link is also in the episode description box.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
Caligula's name, Tom, is one of the most notorious, not just in Roman history, but in all history, as a byword for sadism, tyranny, depravity and debauchery. And today... we're going to find out how much of this is propaganda and how much of it is rooted in political reality.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
Welcome back to The Rest is History. Enough of the princaps. What remains to be described is the monster. So, Tom, you described this as your favourite line in the history of biography, and we are moving now. Caligula has been clearly... very shocked by the speed with which people move to associate themselves with a potential successor when he fell ill.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
And, you know, politically that makes sense that he would be insecure and he would wish to, you know, he's looking for enemies. But from this point onwards in the biography, Suetonius is really going beyond that. And he is basically saying Caligula is a dyed in the wool, inveterate, debauched, depraved monster. And talk us through some of the examples, Tom, that he gives of this kind of behaviour.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
So let's put into context from the first century AD, Caligula is the third emperor and he succeeds Tiberius, who he did last time, in the year 37. And he only rules for four years, right? That's right.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
So let's dig into this a little bit. So obviously, because we don't have many other sources here, it's pretty hard for us to get a sense of how grounded in reality these accusations are. You make the point, don't you, that Suetonius doesn't present this as a continuous chronological narrative. It's just a sort of bullet-pointed list of the bad things that Killigiller is supposed to have done.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
Crikey. So my question to you, Tom, so I compared him with Ramzan Kadyrov in the first half. You could compare him with Kim Jong-un in North Korea. Again, hereditary, but not in a monarchy, right? So my question is, what's the power base for doing this? So he hasn't had a command. He doesn't have powerful allies yet.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
or before he became emperor, he didn't have powerful allies in the Roman establishment. How can he possibly do this, stand up to these very powerful, prestigious patrician people and boss them around in this way?
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
So this is the moment, really, for the first time since... Really, for the first time since Augustus... inaugurated the empire, it's the first time that somebody has torn away what Augustus had worked so hard to create, which was the veil of legality and tradition. And somebody has just said, that's all rubbish. This is a pure military dictatorship. I am the dictator. And I will humiliate you.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
I will torture you. And I will kill you if you step out of line.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
Yeah. Albert Camus wrote a play about him.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
You do that with Theo.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
So possibility number one, obviously, and this I'm sure is the case for some of the stories, is that they're just not true. That they're either propaganda or they're literary formulae or they are... you know, sort of folk urban myths, rather like there are loads of urban myths about politicians today that people believe, aren't there?
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
I mean, you know, Boris Johnson, David Cameron, you know, Donald Trump, whoever it might be. There are lots of stories that people tell and swap, but we know ourselves that there might be a kind of metaphorical truth to them, but no literal truth.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
Yeah, that makes total sense.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
And that's purely because of the order of Suetonius' biography, is it? That Suetonius basically says it's after that. But I suppose it's more likely, isn't it, that he's politically either emboldened or more insecure after he knows that people have been flirting with a successor.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
Which matches what we know of 20th century dictators. I mean, Hitler, Stalin and so on. They may have been horrendous, but they're not clinically insane. It's too easy to say they're mad, basically.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
A nasty piece of work.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
And part of this is the assault on a series of conventions and taboos, presumably. So you talked before about him, the stuff with the gods or demanding that he's worshipped as a god. Or, most obviously, the story that goes right back to when he was on Capri with Tiberius, that he dresses as a woman.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
And this is about him taking the taboos that mean so much to the established senior, you know, blue-blooded people and ripping them up and presumably delighting the mob, as it were, in doing so.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
In that sense, Nero and Caligula are remarkably similar, aren't they? Because they're basically part of the same political tradition. They're playing to the same audience and they're kicking against the same taboos and the same class, the senatorial class.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
don't need you i'm you know i am this godlike figure i can ride over water if i want to and then the final and most famous thing making his horse a console so i know you have a very actually i've heard you explain before i think it's a very persuasive explanation of exactly what this is because effectively this is just a very very this is a satirical joke it's a joke
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
But for all Caligula's spectacle and his dark humour and his kind of populist touch, I should say. He only lasts four years and he ends up dead in this extraordinary set piece, this great narrative set piece. He's been stabbed and stabbed again by Cassius Caria and his men, abandoned in an alley, And what's going to happen next? Are they going to bring back the Republic?
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
Is the Empire going to continue? If so, who on earth could possibly succeed? Is there anybody left from the Imperial family? And Tom, we will be answering that question next time. But of course, there's only one way that people can hear that right now, isn't there? And that's if they're members of the Restless History Club.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
If they're members of our very own Praetorian Guard, they'll be able to hear it. And if you're not and you'd like to join up... you can go to therestishistory.com and hear right away what happens next after the assassination of Caligula, who comes next, and what kind of emperor he was. So, Tom, thank you very much for that.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
And on that bombshell, we'll be back next time with the story of the Emperor Claudius. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
No waiting in line with people who are sick with who knows what. Thanks to Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon One Medical, healthcare just got less painful.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
Right, exactly. And we are, for Caligula, unusually dependent on one source, aren't we? Because we have Tacitus for Tiberius, but we don't have Tacitus for Caligula. There are fragmentary sources or smaller sources like Seneca or Josephus for Caligula, but Suetonius is the only full one. And it's from Suetonius' biography.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
I mean, it is actually in many ways one of the great biographies in all literature. I think it really is, yes. It is from Suetonius' biography of Caligula, really, arguably even more so than his biography of Nero, that we get the sort of stereotypical image of the demented Roman emperor who has been driven into total depravity by absolute power. I mean, that's what this is, isn't it?
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
It's a model of absolute power corrupting.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
So he's a guy who never gets to become emperor, but Suetonius really goes into his story. So tell us a little bit about Germanicus, because basically Suetonius thinks that Germanicus is the best man who's ever lived, brilliant at everything, top of the class, brilliant speaker, brilliant scholar, all of this kind of stuff.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
I'll tell you, I think Theo, our producer, has a fake Reddit account and I think he goes onto a Reddit and just slags us off. And he would probably say this next thing because Suetonius says of Germanicus that he has very spindly legs. That's his only drawback. Right.
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
Right, yeah. I was going to say, it seems a bit unlikely. If you're really serious about having a mutiny, the sight of a child is unlikely to... They don't have the soul of Hallmark greetings card writers, do they?
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536. Emperors of Rome: Caligula, Incest and Insanity (Part 3)
Right. So going back to his childhood, he and his family, so Germanicus is sent out to the east by Tiberius to be the big man in the east, isn't he? Right.