February 6, 2025 • 10 mins
Justice and victory are today's playground. Although that always depends on what side you're on.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
Defeat it's not something any of us hope to encounter
in life, but for almost all of us it is inevitable. However,
for military commanders, defeat has mortal consequences. Every move, every
choice on the battlefield means some men will die. Commanders
just have to hope that they make enough right choices
so that casualties are limited and victory is secured. In
(00:59):
nineteen oh four, there was one naval commander who unfortunately
made all the wrong choices. His defeat was so total
that it changed the course of history and is still
studied to this day. Admiral Zenovi mad Dog Rosesvensky was
known for his strong command style. As the leader of
Russia's Baltic Fleet, it was on him to oversee a
(01:20):
huge number of ships in the oceans north of Europe.
Everything changed in February of nineteen oh four, though, when
Japanese Admiral togo Hehachiro led an assault on the Russian
Port authority in modern day northeastern China, the Japanese were
tired of the Russians encroaching on land and resources in
the Yellow Sea. The Russians were used to be in
(01:40):
the strongest power in the region, and they paid no
mind to their Chinese and Japanese neighbors. But Japan was
a newly industrialized nation after the Meiji Restoration in eighteen
sixty eight, which brought back imperial rule. The Japanese rolled
over the Russians on land and sea, overwhelming them with
superior tactics and technology. As such, Russia's only hope for
(02:02):
reinforcements was Rososvensky's Baltic Fleet. But the problem is right
there in the name. The Baltic Fleet was in the
Baltic Sea on the other side of Russia, over four
thousand miles away by land and quite a bit farther
by water, and they would have to travel all the
way around the Eastern Hemisphere to reach the Yellow Sea.
The Tsar renamed the Baltic Fleet the Second Pacific Fleet,
(02:24):
and it began its long journey in October of nineteen
oh four. It took seven months for the fleet to
travel around Africa and across the Indian Ocean and South
China Sea to reach their destination, which is why it
wasn't until May of nineteen oh five that the fleet
finally arrived in the Strait of Tsushima, where they were
to engage the enemy. But right away the balance was
(02:46):
not in the russians favor. The sea was incredibly foggy,
and so they could barely see anything or even communicate
from boat to boat with signals. Hey Hachiro meanwhile, had
spent the long month since the Battle of Port Arthur
outfitting his ships with Newtonis telegraph technology that allowed them
to communicate wirelessly. His boats patrolled the straits watching for
(03:06):
any sign of the Russians, and that's when Rosesvensky made
a costly mistake. He kept his hospital ship lit, meaning
that it could be seen through the fog. In the
old ways of war, a hospital ship was lit up
so that the enemy would know not to fire on it.
But this was the dawn of a new age, and
he Hachiro had no knowledge of Western customs. Rosesvensky's next
(03:28):
mistake was to assume that he Hachiro would bring his
ships alongside the Russians for a broadside attack. This was
the traditional attack, but once again he Hachiro was only
interested in new ways of war. Instead, he crossed the tee,
a naval warfare tactic where a commander brings his ship
in front of the enemy column instead of alongside, forming
(03:49):
a tee shape. This allows the attacker to use all
of their cannons, while the enemy can only use the
few cannons on the front of their ships. Once he
Hachiro caught sight of the Hospital ship, he crossed the
tee and opened fire on the Russians. Rosesvensky tried to surrender,
but the Japanese didn't understand the Russian signals. They completely
destroyed the Russian navy, killing ten thousand Russians while only
(04:13):
losing a thousand Japanese sailors. The Russians soon had no
choice but to seede control of the Yellow Sea to Japan.
It was the first time an Eastern power had defeated
a Western power in battle, and it gave the Japanese
the confidence to continue to grow and expand their empire.
Rosesvensky was wounded, but he survived and taken to a
(04:33):
Japanese hospital. While he was recovering, Hehachiro visited him, saying,
defeat is a common fate of a soldier. There is
nothing to be ashamed of in it. The even bigger
lesson for Russia, though, was one of the dangers of hubris.
They were not innately superior to their eastern neighbors. It
was a lesson learned far too late, as Rosesvensky wasted
(04:54):
months of his life and the actual lives of his
men in his vain attempt to save his country's interests
in Asia. Curiously, the Japanese would learn the same lesson
decades later, when they, like the Russians, over extended themselves
and foolishly attacked a different, newly industrialized power across the Pacific.
But that's a curious story for another day. Why do
(05:31):
we put people on trial? It seems like this question
should have an obvious answer, but it doesn't. An idealist
might say that trials exposed truth and hand out justice.
A cynic might say that they exist simply to strike
fear into potential criminals, hopefully preventing crime in the future.
Both would agree, though that, whatever the driving motivation, criminal
(05:52):
proceedings provide closure to the victims of a crime. If
someone has wronged you, there is immense relief in theory,
at least in seeing the wrongdoer condemned by an official
body and punished for their ax. But what if the
perpetrator of a crime has no understanding of the laws.
What if human law was not designed to govern them
at all. Scattered throughout history are a handful of peculiar
(06:15):
cases where judges and juries had to determine the guilt
of not a person but an animal. From the ninth
to the twentieth century, there were at least one hundred
and ninety six cases of animal trials conducted in civilized nations.
The majority of these recorded cases were in mainland Europe France,
to be precise, and while just under two hundred cases
(06:37):
spread across ten centuries doesn't sound like a lot, it
has provoked intense study among historians and has produced some
fascinating stories. For example, in thirteen eighty six, the Norman
city of Falaise conducted a trial for a pig who
was accused of eating an infant. The pig was sentenced
to maiming and death. Once the sentence was delivered, it
(06:58):
was wounded on the head and four lane and then
marched to the gallows before an enormous crowd. On the
way to the rope, it was allegedly dressed in a
new suit, as was customary for prisoners of the time,
and pigs are famously ravenous creatures, so it's not a
surprise that the filet's trial is not the only pig
that has been found guilty of murder. In fourteenth century
(07:19):
seven ye a pig and its six piglets were put
on trial for the death of a five year old boy.
The owner of the animal was also tried for negligence,
and yet by the time the court reached its verdict,
only the animal was punished. The pig was to be
put to death. The piglets, by the way, were spared.
Although they were also found covered in blood on the
scene of the crime, it was impossible to determine whether
(07:41):
they were also guilty. Reasonable doubts cleared the piglets of wrongdoing,
and in some cases these animals on trial would not
face the judge undefended. In the early fifteen hundreds, for example,
a young French attorney named Bartholomew Chessenie successfully defended the
rats of Utun, who had been accused of eating the
bar crop. Overall, you can divide European animal trials into
(08:03):
two categories, secular and ecclesiastical. A secular trial would pertain
to domestic animals under human control, such as dogs, livestock, birds,
and beasts of burden, but animals that were not under
human control, such as rats and insects, would fall under
the jurisdiction of the church, thus ecclesiastical. Oh And on
(08:24):
occasion there would be an overlap with local folklore, as
was the case with a rooster that in fourteen seventy
four laid an egg. The court could not determine whether
the egg had become a basilisk or a cockatrice, but
both carried the same sentence death for the bird in question.
No one seems to have considered that this was a
female chicken that had been misidentified as a rooster. It's
(08:47):
strange to consider that these sorts of trials occurred at all,
and that they were not driven by hysterical mobs, but
by town officials, bishops, and lawyers. From the Middle Ages
into the early Renaissance, animals were considered as much of
their respective communities as the people themselves. So perhaps we
should not be surprised that the Middle Ages were rife
with animal crime. Europe had been ravaged by the Black Death,
(09:11):
and if they could have found the rats guilty of
mass slaughter by spreading plague, they surely would have done so.
After the Dark Ages, the symbolic importance of a trial
mattered more than justice or deterence in a chaotic time.
The trial didn't exist for the victims or the perpetrators.
It was held for the community at large. Proof it
seems that social order mattered, and that no one was
(09:34):
above the law, not even an animal. I hope you've
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
(09:58):
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
learn all about it over at Theworldoflore dot com. And
until next time, stay curious.
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
Defeat it's not something any of us hope to encounter
in life, but for almost all of us it is inevitable. However,
for military commanders, defeat has mortal consequences. Every move, every
choice on the battlefield means some men will die. Commanders
just have to hope that they make enough right choices
so that casualties are limited and victory is secured. In
(00:59):
nineteen oh four, there was one naval commander who unfortunately
made all the wrong choices. His defeat was so total
that it changed the course of history and is still
studied to this day. Admiral Zenovi mad Dog Rosesvensky was
known for his strong command style. As the leader of
Russia's Baltic Fleet, it was on him to oversee a
(01:20):
huge number of ships in the oceans north of Europe.
Everything changed in February of nineteen oh four, though, when
Japanese Admiral togo Hehachiro led an assault on the Russian
Port authority in modern day northeastern China, the Japanese were
tired of the Russians encroaching on land and resources in
the Yellow Sea. The Russians were used to be in
(01:40):
the strongest power in the region, and they paid no
mind to their Chinese and Japanese neighbors. But Japan was
a newly industrialized nation after the Meiji Restoration in eighteen
sixty eight, which brought back imperial rule. The Japanese rolled
over the Russians on land and sea, overwhelming them with
superior tactics and technology. As such, Russia's only hope for
(02:02):
reinforcements was Rososvensky's Baltic Fleet. But the problem is right
there in the name. The Baltic Fleet was in the
Baltic Sea on the other side of Russia, over four
thousand miles away by land and quite a bit farther
by water, and they would have to travel all the
way around the Eastern Hemisphere to reach the Yellow Sea.
The Tsar renamed the Baltic Fleet the Second Pacific Fleet,
(02:24):
and it began its long journey in October of nineteen
oh four. It took seven months for the fleet to
travel around Africa and across the Indian Ocean and South
China Sea to reach their destination, which is why it
wasn't until May of nineteen oh five that the fleet
finally arrived in the Strait of Tsushima, where they were
to engage the enemy. But right away the balance was
(02:46):
not in the russians favor. The sea was incredibly foggy,
and so they could barely see anything or even communicate
from boat to boat with signals. Hey Hachiro meanwhile, had
spent the long month since the Battle of Port Arthur
outfitting his ships with Newtonis telegraph technology that allowed them
to communicate wirelessly. His boats patrolled the straits watching for
(03:06):
any sign of the Russians, and that's when Rosesvensky made
a costly mistake. He kept his hospital ship lit, meaning
that it could be seen through the fog. In the
old ways of war, a hospital ship was lit up
so that the enemy would know not to fire on it.
But this was the dawn of a new age, and
he Hachiro had no knowledge of Western customs. Rosesvensky's next
(03:28):
mistake was to assume that he Hachiro would bring his
ships alongside the Russians for a broadside attack. This was
the traditional attack, but once again he Hachiro was only
interested in new ways of war. Instead, he crossed the tee,
a naval warfare tactic where a commander brings his ship
in front of the enemy column instead of alongside, forming
(03:49):
a tee shape. This allows the attacker to use all
of their cannons, while the enemy can only use the
few cannons on the front of their ships. Once he
Hachiro caught sight of the Hospital ship, he crossed the
tee and opened fire on the Russians. Rosesvensky tried to surrender,
but the Japanese didn't understand the Russian signals. They completely
destroyed the Russian navy, killing ten thousand Russians while only
(04:13):
losing a thousand Japanese sailors. The Russians soon had no
choice but to seede control of the Yellow Sea to Japan.
It was the first time an Eastern power had defeated
a Western power in battle, and it gave the Japanese
the confidence to continue to grow and expand their empire.
Rosesvensky was wounded, but he survived and taken to a
(04:33):
Japanese hospital. While he was recovering, Hehachiro visited him, saying,
defeat is a common fate of a soldier. There is
nothing to be ashamed of in it. The even bigger
lesson for Russia, though, was one of the dangers of hubris.
They were not innately superior to their eastern neighbors. It
was a lesson learned far too late, as Rosesvensky wasted
(04:54):
months of his life and the actual lives of his
men in his vain attempt to save his country's interests
in Asia. Curiously, the Japanese would learn the same lesson
decades later, when they, like the Russians, over extended themselves
and foolishly attacked a different, newly industrialized power across the Pacific.
But that's a curious story for another day. Why do
(05:31):
we put people on trial? It seems like this question
should have an obvious answer, but it doesn't. An idealist
might say that trials exposed truth and hand out justice.
A cynic might say that they exist simply to strike
fear into potential criminals, hopefully preventing crime in the future.
Both would agree, though that, whatever the driving motivation, criminal
(05:52):
proceedings provide closure to the victims of a crime. If
someone has wronged you, there is immense relief in theory,
at least in seeing the wrongdoer condemned by an official
body and punished for their ax. But what if the
perpetrator of a crime has no understanding of the laws.
What if human law was not designed to govern them
at all. Scattered throughout history are a handful of peculiar
(06:15):
cases where judges and juries had to determine the guilt
of not a person but an animal. From the ninth
to the twentieth century, there were at least one hundred
and ninety six cases of animal trials conducted in civilized nations.
The majority of these recorded cases were in mainland Europe France,
to be precise, and while just under two hundred cases
(06:37):
spread across ten centuries doesn't sound like a lot, it
has provoked intense study among historians and has produced some
fascinating stories. For example, in thirteen eighty six, the Norman
city of Falaise conducted a trial for a pig who
was accused of eating an infant. The pig was sentenced
to maiming and death. Once the sentence was delivered, it
(06:58):
was wounded on the head and four lane and then
marched to the gallows before an enormous crowd. On the
way to the rope, it was allegedly dressed in a
new suit, as was customary for prisoners of the time,
and pigs are famously ravenous creatures, so it's not a
surprise that the filet's trial is not the only pig
that has been found guilty of murder. In fourteenth century
(07:19):
seven ye a pig and its six piglets were put
on trial for the death of a five year old boy.
The owner of the animal was also tried for negligence,
and yet by the time the court reached its verdict,
only the animal was punished. The pig was to be
put to death. The piglets, by the way, were spared.
Although they were also found covered in blood on the
scene of the crime, it was impossible to determine whether
(07:41):
they were also guilty. Reasonable doubts cleared the piglets of wrongdoing,
and in some cases these animals on trial would not
face the judge undefended. In the early fifteen hundreds, for example,
a young French attorney named Bartholomew Chessenie successfully defended the
rats of Utun, who had been accused of eating the
bar crop. Overall, you can divide European animal trials into
(08:03):
two categories, secular and ecclesiastical. A secular trial would pertain
to domestic animals under human control, such as dogs, livestock, birds,
and beasts of burden, but animals that were not under
human control, such as rats and insects, would fall under
the jurisdiction of the church, thus ecclesiastical. Oh And on
(08:24):
occasion there would be an overlap with local folklore, as
was the case with a rooster that in fourteen seventy
four laid an egg. The court could not determine whether
the egg had become a basilisk or a cockatrice, but
both carried the same sentence death for the bird in question.
No one seems to have considered that this was a
female chicken that had been misidentified as a rooster. It's
(08:47):
strange to consider that these sorts of trials occurred at all,
and that they were not driven by hysterical mobs, but
by town officials, bishops, and lawyers. From the Middle Ages
into the early Renaissance, animals were considered as much of
their respective communities as the people themselves. So perhaps we
should not be surprised that the Middle Ages were rife
with animal crime. Europe had been ravaged by the Black Death,
(09:11):
and if they could have found the rats guilty of
mass slaughter by spreading plague, they surely would have done so.
After the Dark Ages, the symbolic importance of a trial
mattered more than justice or deterence in a chaotic time.
The trial didn't exist for the victims or the perpetrators.
It was held for the community at large. Proof it
seems that social order mattered, and that no one was
(09:34):
above the law, not even an animal. I hope you've
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
(09:58):
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
learn all about it over at Theworldoflore dot com. And
until next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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