July 23, 2026 • 46 mins
Its a Badass Badass of the Week Week here on Ridiculous History! In the second part of this special two-part series, Ben, Noel and Max welcome Ben Thompson and Dr. Pat Larash, the co-hosts of the legendary Badass of the Week podcast, to learn more about Admiral Louis Antoine de Bougainville and the Battle of the Capes.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you,
as always so much for tuning in. That's our super producer,
mister Max Williams.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Max the Chesapeake Boy Williams Chesapeake.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
Okay, I do want to drop something in here from
that's reference to our previous episode. Sure, it was brought
up the absurd name of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim,
which I one time saw and I've never forgotten. This
translates to the the Angels Angels of Anaheim.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah, it's a real ATM machine. Then number magic there
with the facts.
Speaker 5 (01:04):
That seeking in the phone and PA's fallen knowledge.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
It's just for you right now.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
And that is none other than mister Noel Brown. They
help me, Ben Bulling. In this neck of the Global woods, folks,
we are having what we call a Badass Badass of
the Week week uh with big, big thanks to our
returning guest, none other than the co host of the
(01:36):
Actual Facts Badass of the Week podcast. Please please join
us in welcoming back doctor Pat Larish and Ben Thompson.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
Yeah, thank you guys so much for having us. We're
going to Yeah, yeah, we're gonna do. That's another is
another one. That's a repetition. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
A word for tea. Yeah, just.
Speaker 6 (02:06):
Have like chai gelato. There you go, you know to chi,
you know chai chai.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Yeah, there we go.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Folks. You could get the sense already that you are
now hanging with five big time nerds.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
We were talking about threatening to do a D and
D campaign off Mikes.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
I write professional write D D adventures professionally, so.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
I did know that about you. Well, I'm excited to
h to come into your world of D and D
and dungeon mastery.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Folks. Folks, if you have not tuned into our previous
episode about a guy named George that Noel, Max and
I had no idea about, please hie THEE to thy
podcast platform of.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Choice or a Nunnery depending or if you wish right.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
I think they have WiFi. So we are Ben and Pat.
We are so excited that you all are returning with us,
despite our cavalcade of three out of five puns. You
(03:22):
know in our previous episode, you are returning to us
with another story of a badass. This is something building
on our previous conversation. So for everybody wondering why we're
(03:44):
calling our super producer Max the Chesapeake Cape. We promised
we were going to pay it off. And so the
Chesapeake Boy also the Chesapeake Boy. He's a chesapeaker.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
He's actually a chesapea cheesecake.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
That there we go go. So it bid, Pat, what
is going on in York Town in the seventeen.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
Hundreds, Yes, so let's talk. We were talking before about
George Rogers Clark and that's an interesting story. And you know,
we are at a time where we're celebrating America to
fifty right now, and so we've been doing, at least
on our show, we've been doing a lot of American
history characters, revolutionary war characters, and I think it's worth
mentioning that a lot of America doesn't happen without the
(04:32):
help of the French. As much as we like to
dunk on the French here, Yeah, that is, they played
a very important role in the American Revolution. We talked
about a slightly more passive role in the last episode.
This one is going to be a little bit more
of an active role with direct direct fire engagement. So
(04:55):
I guess in honor of America two fifty and bestial
Day two thirty seven. We'll talk about the Battle of
Chesapeake games and CHESSA games is a weird thing.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Can I just say really quickly, I really appreciate you
referring to it as America two fifty and not the
rebranded Freedom two fifty. We are in America to fifty
household here, So I appreciate.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
I didn't even I haven't even heard of that. So
I don't just better that you haven't.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
It's better than you haven't.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
It's a bag of badgers.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
Liberty two thirty five or thirty seven or whatever.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
This Okay, what's up with the capes though, you guys?
Speaker 5 (05:29):
Okay, yes, let's get into that. So it's an interesting
thing about this is that the most decisive military action
of the Yorktown Campaign did not involve a single American soldier,
sailor or marine. That's the story we're going to tell today.
So we all kind of know the story of Yorktown
the way that we are taught it in school. We
(05:50):
picture the British, they're pinned down on Peninsula and Virginia, Washington, Rochambeau.
The American and French armies link up, they trap Cornwallis
on this eninsula. They marched down there. Cornwallis is locked
into He's got this bunker system at this fort in Yorktown.
He gets surrounded, he gets attacked, he tries to break
out't he's not successful, and then he has to surrender
(06:13):
his army. That's the tale we've been told right.
Speaker 6 (06:15):
Now, here's the thing. Yorktown is a coastal city, right,
so it's a peninsula surrounded by water, and the British, well,
at this point in history, who has the most powerful
navy on the planet. So the Brits, I mean, they
were basically ruling the Atlantic. So why were they stuck?
If the Royal Navy is the undisputed king of the sea,
(06:39):
how in the world did they let Cornwallis get cornered
on a piece of dirt when he couldn't escape by ship?
If you have, you know, the ultimate taxi service, why
are you waiting on the curb to get arrested?
Speaker 5 (06:50):
Yes, So the reasonly revolution ends at Yorktown isn't because
we walked up and demanded them to surrender. It's because
a little bit before the siege there was something that happened.
There was a naval battle that happened off the coast
of Yorktown. That was among the most deadly naval conflicts
(07:10):
of the eighteenth century. It's called the Battle of Chesapeake Capes,
and it's the reason the United States exists. So we're
going to talk about some frenchmen. We're gonna talk about
some cannons. We're going to talk about British admirals, We're
going to talk about gunfire fighting, marines, all kinds of
badass stuff on this episode.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
And in interest of full disclosure, folks, we just want
to get in front of the emails and the scuttle
but we are going to have to acknowledge that not
all bends are great. There is there is one bad
Bed in this story.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Just one bad Ben in the historical bunch and no more.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Well, there's there's Mussolini. I guess he qualifies, but.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
He's a bit of a bend. I wonder if his
friends called I wonder if he was Ben to his friends.
I've always referred to him exclusively as Benito.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
So yes, as Benito has a little ben uh Benedict Arnold,
we got to just I.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Think, really we're really expanding our definition of Ben's here.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
That's true, that's true, that's true, are you, Benjamin, Is
this a legal inquiry?
Speaker 3 (08:17):
We do have that, but.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
Maybe it's not like if you're shortening for something else,
it's bad.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Okay, Okay, Well, I just wanted to get in front
of that for us to make sure that you know, uh, you,
fellow ridiculous historians know as a crew that we do
not I hope we can say this unanimously. We do
not condone Benedict Arnold.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
Arnold's an interesting character that we can. We can do
a whole thing on him, because we did a Badass
the Week on him, actually, because it was so wild,
like he was such a hero, such a brave American hero,
military commander, like so many amazing actions early on.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
The war, but one thing, that one thing, you know.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
Like that decision to find him. But he did a
lot of heroic stuff, but he won Saratoga. He like that.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
I think we might have talked about this in the past.
Ben Yeah, it's not funny, man, how history can remember
you for the one bad thing and then your name
becomes a stand in for being a bad guy.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Well, ethel read the unready you can hear him debated
about at length in Badass of the Week. In the podcast,
ethel read the unready was actually unready multiple times.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
That's true.
Speaker 6 (09:32):
So he.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Okay, he deserved it. But we knows, as you're as
we're saying here, it may be new information to a
lot of us in the audience that when we're saying
Chesapeake capes, we're talking about a specific place, not a
style of cloak.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
Yes, this is off the coast of Virginia, in the
Chesapeake Bay. So okay. So Cornwallis is trapped in. He's
trapped down in. So when the war begins, you have
or at this point in the war where at seventeen
eighty one, the British have an army up north and
they have an army down south. The army down south.
You guys have covered this before. But the army down
(10:14):
south is being beaten, right, They've lost the coalpins, they've
lost the Guildford Courthouse, they're retreating. Cornwallis's guys, he's got
half the British forces in North America, but he's lost
a couple battles. He needs to regroup, so he moves
moves into Yorktown, waiting to get picked up by a
zuber to bring him back to New York to regroup
and refit. Washington is up north. He's like, well, this
(10:36):
is our chance. So when Cornwallis retreats to Yorktown, Washington diverts,
like almost the entire American army in North America to
attack Yorktown, to try to just concentrate on this one thing.
We've gotten this guy, we've got him here. We need
to just attack it and try to knock this one
thing out, divide and conquer. Right, So he marches his
troops a very long distance in a very short period
(10:56):
of time to surround Yorktown. But in order for this
to the British can't, as Pat said, just roll up
with their boats and sail away. Now, this is where
we need to call in the French. And by seventeen
eighty one, the American Revolution is not just the thirteen
colonies in King George. It is a planet wide world war.
(11:19):
France and Spain have jumped in and there's fighting everywhere.
Speaker 6 (11:22):
We've got naval battles in India, skirmishes in Africa, We've
got this huge kerfuffle going on in the Caribbean.
Speaker 5 (11:30):
Yes, yes, so, I mean it's worth mentioning that the
bloodiest battle and longest battle of the War of the
American Revolution was the Siege of Gibraltar. More people died
there than any battle in the American Revolution, and it
was part of that war. So when you know, we
sent Benjamin Franklin, here's a good bend. We sent Benjamin
Franklin over to ed John Adams over to over to
(11:52):
France to negotiate this. And when France joined, like, the
deal we made with France was like, Okay, any territory
we take in North America is American, but I don't
care what you guys do otherwise, and so you just
fight whatever. And so the French and the Spanish start
attacking all of these British colonies all over the world,
like you said, India, Africa, the Caribbean. They try to
take Gibraltar, which was British, which is still British, but
(12:13):
they and they lay sieged for like years, right.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
And also India is really interesting, Pat, I was not
aware of that, Noel, did you know about that.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
I didn't hope.
Speaker 5 (12:28):
France had colonies in India at the time, and they
were trying to take it over. It didn't work out
for them. They lost over there, but they tried. They
were just attacking everywhere that they could, and that really
spreads the English out right. It's not that the British
don't lose because France joins the war, because France sends
us a million soldiers to fight the war. They win
because France attacks places, honestly, places that English cares about more. Gibraltar, India,
(12:51):
the Caribbean. These are very very lucrative places for the
British Empire. And they're like, we don't have the forces,
we don't the resources to garrison all of this, so
we'll just give up on the North America and we'll
worry about the stuff that actually matters. We win because
they pressure them across all fronts and we open up
a you know, not just a second front of the war,
(13:12):
but a whole bunch of them. Now, okay, this is
what's going on here. And but in order to get
corn Wallace and his guys, we've got them trapped on
the peninsula. The British Navy is coming to pick them up,
and h we have to stop them. So this is
where the French fleet comes into play, and they have
(13:37):
to kind of sail in here and block this fleet
of British transport ships from picking up this whole army
and moving up to New York and expanding the extending
the war by probably years.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (13:51):
And this plan it's a gamp like every plan is
a gamble. It has to do with timing. If Washington
and the French General Rochambeau can get there first, we're fine.
But if the British fleet shows up at the same time,
even earlier, then Cornwall sails north and the whole thing
(14:12):
falls apart.
Speaker 5 (14:13):
Right, this is our chance to catch half their army
is in one spot. We got to catch them before
they can escape.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
There's a real ticking time bomb scenario.
Speaker 5 (14:21):
Yes, yes, this is This is a serious fleet that's coming.
They are there. These are you know, think about like
Napoleonic era wooden warships, three decks of cannons. Right, The
American Navy basically does not existent. It's John Paul Jones
(14:41):
and like two guys and like a pirate. And that's it.
There's no fleet. There's no American fleet here. And the
John Paul Jones ship was built by for the French.
And so the British fleet rolls up and they are
coming with the armed escort of war ships and the
(15:01):
Admiral the French admiral is a guy named de Grassi.
He's he gives the order to sail out and meet
these guys. Now, this is where I want to introduce
a character who I think is going to be our
badass for this episode. Commanding the lead ship in the
French formation is the ship's called the August, and the
(15:22):
captain is a guy that you need to know. His
name is Louis Anton de Bougainville. And I'm sure I'm
mispronouncing that, Pat.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Maybe you want to it works on such authority.
Speaker 5 (15:31):
Yeah, that's half of it. It's like karaoke, you just
got to do it. This guy is the captain of
the August, and he has already lived basically like three lifetimes.
He was born in Paris in seventeen twenty nine. His
family was minor nobility, but both his parents died when
he was five, and he was raised by his older brother.
(15:52):
He goes to the University of Paris. He publishes just
for fun, publishes two treatises on integral calculus. He's a
genius just for fun. He's a genius mathematician. He is
a musketeer. He joins the army in seventeen fifty as
a musketeer like d'Artagnan fights against the British in Canada
(16:12):
during the Seven Years War, where he takes part in
the defenses of both Quebec City and Montreal. He's wounded,
he gets knighted for heroism in battle. He takes part
of the diplomatic he's part of a diplomatic team sent
by France to negotiate the Treaty of Paris that ends
the war. And then after that he becomes a famous
explorer and naturalist. So he is the captain of the
(16:34):
expedition that sets up the first European colony on the
Falkland Islands, and then he commands the first French expedition
to circumnavigate the globe. He departs a Nansen seventeen sixty six.
It takes him three years. He lost seven guys out
of his three hundred and forty man crew. And that
was like going the long way around the Straight of Magellan,
so pretty badass stuff here. And along the way they're
(16:57):
doing the stuff that you see from like Captain Cook
and things where they're stopping at uncharted islands and like
doing you know, surveys of botanical surveys and drug pictures
of the animals and things that they.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
See, and the bird and candy.
Speaker 6 (17:10):
Yes, yes, yeah, and among his crew. This is a
fun little sidebar.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (17:17):
There was a naturalist, Philibert Comerson, and his assistant was
a woman named Jean Barrie, and she disguised herself as
a man. But because she was able to get herself
on this expedition, she was the first woman to circumnavigate
the globe.
Speaker 5 (17:35):
Yeah. Yeah, she discussed herself as a man. She went
by Jean or Jean, and then it was Jean and she's, uh,
you could do that better than me, Pat, I think
you're more quick to handle that joke.
Speaker 6 (17:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
But they found out like halfway through the halfway through
the journey that she was like so she was like
a you know, it wasn't like we found out years
and years later, like they found out on the journey
and but nobody really nobody cared, right, And it was
like she becomes the first woman a certain mavate the globe,
which is super cool.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
They were like, oh, okay, everybody's got a backstory. Our
main thing is avoiding scurvy.
Speaker 5 (18:03):
Yes, yes, that's.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
The correct attitude. Yes, So After this Villa comes back,
he becomes a superstar. He's got like a million and
one different skills and experiences. He meets the King and Queen.
He gets a flower named after him. This is the
Bougainville the you know those big kind of flowers that
kind of spill over like purply magenta colors, and now.
Speaker 5 (18:27):
I discovered them on its trip. They named him after him.
Super yeah, and well the botan is named it after him.
He didn't name it after himself.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Okay, good safe, good safe?
Speaker 6 (18:37):
Yeah yeah. So okay, so you know he's not writing
calculus papers and picking the flowers in the South Pacific.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Now.
Speaker 6 (18:45):
His main thing is to be lead captain in the
most important naval battle of the American Revolution. So okay,
who's leading the French charge? A genius, a world famous explorer,
and a combat veteran. This sounds like the right guy
for the job, right.
Speaker 5 (19:02):
Yes, Bougetvillas is a I mean, just a wild story. Right.
This guy's published published books on calculus and is you know,
is a celebrity, Like he's a national celebrity in France
for he's being the first Frenchman to circumnavigate the globe. Now,
he's volunteered to be the tip of the spear here.
This is not the kind of guy you put out
on the front of the battle lines. But when the
French fleet is lining up, he gets in the Augustin
(19:24):
and he's like, I'm in front. He sails right out
to the front. And this is a big warship seventy
four guns right, three decks, bigger than anything that the
Continental Navy could could field.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
So for like current analogy here Ben would or current comparison,
this is kind of like an astronaut saying, yeah, I
did a lot of outer space stuff, but also I
want to lead a.
Speaker 5 (19:51):
Battle, right, yeah, exactly. But he's also like a world
renowned like naturalist right and publish books like although I
guess are good at calculus also, So it's something like that, right,
It's like having somebody you've seen on TV decide that
they're going to like lead the charge and carry the
flag into battle. It's wild, okay. So August is out front.
(20:13):
He's the first one to spot the British, he's the
first one to orders men to run the guns out.
The stage is set for this battle. The British fleet
is coming in. They've got their transport. The troop transports
are lightly armed. They're waiting back to see what happens
in the battle. The British fleet is moving in here.
Nineteen ships, fourteen hundred cannons, and you've got the most
polished professional sailors on the planet. This is the greatest
(20:36):
navy on Earth and everybody knows it. Nineteen ships, each
of them three decks, most of them three decks. Man
of wars. The French have twenty four ships, so they've
got more ships, they've got a little bit more cannon.
They've got seventeen hundred and set up. They've go three
hundred more cannons and they've got five more ships. On paper,
that's an advantage, but in reality, the French navy has
(20:58):
not performed well against the British navy to this point
in the war, and they're going to continue to not
perform well against them as it's the years go by.
Uh Bougainville is out there in front and he's sent out.
He's also realizing that he's kind of dangerously overextended. He's
out there in the front right there, he's facing nineteen
(21:18):
ships by himself. The other guys are behind him, and
this is old style war where you've got to get
the side. You got to get the broadside right, think
about pirate battles things. You've got to get the side
of your ship on the side of their ship. And
if he's sailing out their front, you want to get
the You want your fleets to be an equal sign
to shoot in each other. But if you're doing that,
you're going first, and you're the one that's going to
get shot by all of those That first ship is
the one that gets shot by all those other ships
(21:39):
as it goes down that equal sign.
Speaker 6 (21:41):
This is a This is a bold move. Some might
even call it reckless. Yes, so Bogel, he's got the
Auguste and he's daring the British. He's basically saying nin
or niner, come and get me, Come and get me,
and trying to draw all their fire right while he's
trying to distract them, while the rest of the French
fleet is still getting into position.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
Yes, the august breaks formation and charges ahead by itself
to basically take on the entire British navy alone, which
forces the British admiral to try to react to this.
He's got to do something, right, He can have this
one ship just sailing out there, so he kind of
he ends up coming in at like a weird angle,
which helps the French in the battle. So the ships
(22:23):
kind of they come into line with each other and
the Augusta's out front. It's taking it's you know, they
run out the iron cannons row after a row of muzzles.
Soldiers are opening fire on each other there. The cannons
are shooting, but the ships get so close during the
battle that dudes are like climbing up onto the basts
and like shooting pistols and rifles at each other. Like
(22:45):
you can see the guys across room you. It's not
like a like you picture with a modern naval battle
where you're looking through like a telescope or anything. You
can see the dude in the in the sale across
from you and you're trying to shoot him with your rifle.
That's how close these guys are getting to each other.
And the ships are just devastating each other. They're blasting,
the masts get knocked off of the Augusts lose its masts.
(23:07):
We're talking like shrap and all the size of like
baseball bats like flying flying wildly around the decks here,
old school pirate Napoleonic style naval battle, and it's happening
in Virginia during the American Revolution. And for some reason
we've never heard this story before.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
And we have to mention for a quick interjection here
you read my mind bent Napoleonic tactics, that's what we're
talking about, like the Civil War in the United States. Again,
it's a terrible name. That was an exhibition of Napoleonic
tactics on land where you had a bunch of people
who were largely going to be poor, if we're going
(23:45):
to be honest, and he made them stand in line
and sort of march at each other until they died.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
A little bit of a cannon fought our type situation.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Just so, yes, sir, And so we're saying that at
this time in this maritime conflict, people were still deployed
that Napoleonic philosophy, correct.
Speaker 5 (24:06):
Right, right, because this predates Napoleon, so this would be
twenty years before Napoleon.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
So they didn't call it that. Yeah, he named it
after himself later.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
Right, right guy, our guy who Gunville is going to
meet Napoleon later on. But yeah, so this is right,
before that, and that's the time period, right, This is
it's not common for even at this time. It's not
common for naval battles to take place at this range,
this close to each other, right, because you have so
many cannons and they just blast each other and everything's
(24:37):
on fire, the master getting knockoffs, all these people are
dying left and right. Usually you shoot from a farther
distance away and try to hope that your guy's aim
is better than theirs. Right, these cannons are not super accurate,
they're not rifled boers or anything, so you just kind
of hope that your guy's going to reskill is a
little better than their guys going to reskill, and you
fight from a long ways away until it's time to
like maybe board them with your marines or whatever. But
(25:00):
this doesn't This isn't common, and it is an advantage
actually for the French, who are not as talented at
at gunnery as the British are. So you get close
like that you can't miss, and this just lets them
use their twenty five ships and their seventeen hunder cannons.
It might not be great strategy, like you said, just
kind of march at these dudes, but like, we got
more than they do. They're better shots than us, so
(25:21):
let's just get as close as possible. And the August
and Bougainville, they are able to kind of mess up
the British formation by charging in a really weird way.
He kind of lone wolves it a little bit and
disrupts their formation, which is also an advantage to the
first I mean, it's he pays for it. Him and
his crews get blasted pretty heavily for this, but it
(25:42):
is effective now, you know usually, but like you said,
usually you're looking at somebody through a telescope. You're not
looking the guy in the eye trying to shoot at
him with a handgun in a naval battle in this
time period.
Speaker 6 (25:56):
And Boville in his note in his log, he says
the vanguard was very hotly engaged. The fire was very brisk,
which is this is a.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Very that's understating the case just a little bit. Yes, yeah,
brisk is something you used to refer to like a
breeze or like, yeah, but I appreciate the word.
Speaker 6 (26:21):
But yeah, and speaking of breezes and atmospheric phenomenon, we're
talking about this and we're picturing this, and we can
picture the ship in that ship and the guys who
can see each other without telescopes. But sometimes what gets
lost in uh, the way people tell this is that
this this naval battle, this Titanic history changing struggle, that's
(26:45):
deciding the fate of an entire continent. It's happening right
off the coast of Virginia, Okay. And yet if you
were on the shore, you couldn't see a single thing.
There is so much smoke, and it becomes a literal
fog of war. The cannon smoke is so thick, so heavy,
and so pervasive, like think after a fireworks show, except
(27:07):
like times, I don't know how many orders of magnitude,
there's just this wall of gray. You've got thousands of men,
millions of dollars of pounds or francs or whatever of
naval hardware, and you've got the future of the American
Revolution all just clashing together in this. You know, it's
(27:27):
a hot mess, but it's a hot mess in a
hidden bubble of violence. And then the people, I mean,
I don't know if anyone's actually willing to sit on
the beach in Virginia, but I guess maybe you know,
what would they know, you know, going down to the
beach and then you maybe hear a faint, distant rumble
and maybe you guess that maybe there's some naval activity
(27:50):
going on. I don't know, but you can't see it,
you know, even if you're standing on a pier, you
would not be able to see it. And that's going
on for two hours, these two fleets locked in this
brutal blind engagement, and finally one side realizes, hmm, maybe
(28:13):
we're losing the gamble.
Speaker 5 (28:21):
Yes, So there is this fog of warships are getting separated.
It becomes this like you know, it starts as this
big line and whenever you look at like military tactic stuff,
that's always how they draw it up. But like once
you kind of get into a frenzy, once they kind
of get into a brawl like this, it ends up
like the August is fighting two British ships. They're fighting
the Ajax and the Terrible. So there's two seventy four
gun British ships fighting the fighting the seventy four gun
(28:43):
and August and they're just battling each other and other
stuff is happening. But like you said, the fog of
war is so dense. You can't really see outside of it.
The masts are down on all these ships, so there's
no sailing anymore. You're barely 're barely rowing. They're shooting
at whatever they can shoot at. And like you said,
this is you know, we've got seventeen hundred canons on one side,
fourteen on the other. We're looking at something like thirty
three thousand plus cannons firing as fast as they can
(29:05):
fire multiple like at least I can't remember how far
off the coast it is, but it's miles off the coast,
so it's not visible. And you know, maybe that's why
the story doesn't get talked about as much, because no
Americans were there and they couldn't No Americans could see it.
So but this battle is like defining the American Revolution.
And yes, like you said, you know, when when things
(29:27):
are starting to look kind of bad, after two hours,
darkness is starting to fall. You can't fight in darkness,
and you don't want to because you don't want to
accidentally crash into any of these other ships. So darkness
starts to fall. The British retreat, they've lost almost four
hundred guys. The French have lost two hundred dead and wounded.
The Terrible is sinking. It's unable to be repaired, it
sinks to the bottom of the harbor. Rescue boats terrible.
(29:52):
It's terrible. Yeah, it's terrible for that boat you've got.
You know one thing that we think of, we don't
think about too much with big colonial naval battles, is
you have rescue boats. So there's dudes out in rowboats
rowing around trying to pick up sailors out of the water.
You've got guys kind of hanging on and some of
these sailors can't swim because they're drafted into this service.
They're not These aren't Some of these guys aren't volunteers.
They're just impressed into service, so they can't swim. They're
(30:15):
just holding on to like things that are floating and
holding on, holding on to wreckage. You've got these guys
rowing around on boats trying to pull them out. The
British Admiral Sir Thomas Graves, He's like, I think this
is it. Like, I don't think I can break through
this wall here. I don't have the I don't have
the manpower to do it, and I've taken too many
hits here and his ships are all just smashed. The
(30:35):
French tactic was to shoot down the masts of the
British ships, because that's the thing that you can't really
repair in the field, and it affects your ability to
do anything else if you can't if you have no engine. Basically,
So the British retreat and dawn breaks at Yorktown. Rochambeau
(30:56):
is there, Washington's there, you had mentioned Alexander Hamilton, He's there.
Marquis de Lafayat's there, and you know, they do go
to the beach in Virginia for some reason, and what they.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
See they heard a distant rumbling.
Speaker 5 (31:08):
They heard a distant rumbling in Thunderia. And they come
back and as they're standing on the pier, they can
see twenty four French warships returning to the harbor and
they're like, that's it, we did it. We got them.
Like there's this huge cheer goes up down the line
of the from the soldiers on both sides, and that's it.
Cornwall's is not going to get out. The French and
(31:31):
the Americans surround them, they besiege them, they start firing
cannons at them, and October seventeen seventeen eighty one, Cornwall's
requests a ceasefire. Two days later, he unconditionally surrenders all
British forces under his command, and with that one signature,
half of the British army in North America becomes prisoners
(31:51):
of war.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Wow wow, yeah boy, right, half half.
Speaker 5 (31:57):
The war goes on for two more years because the
guys in New York don't surrender as easily, but they
don't make any real expeditions out of there, and without
these troops that Cornwallis has had, like, they can't they
can't do anything, right, So the United States ends up.
The war ends officially in seventeen eighty three, and all
of the hard work that was done by the colonials
(32:19):
over the many many years of this war results in
a free and independent United States. But it is largely
due to this The Yorktown Campaign, which gets mentioned all
the time, is the end of the war, and it's
not really the end of the war goes on for
two more years, but it's very interesting that like like
oh yeah, roch Bo showed up to he was also there.
(32:40):
It's like there was also twenty four French warships with
seventeen hundred cannons, like lasting the British Navy. We should
probably mention this. I feel like when we talk about.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Yorktown, that's true. I just I love the way we're
portraying it because for a lot of us it will
it will call to mind the big question about all
the people who signed the Declaration of Independence. American school
kids know some of the top names, but I always
love thinking about the other the person who was in
(33:11):
the room for you know, maybe there was there was
a different reason. Maybe they were bringing the snacks in
and they were like, oh yeah, i'll sign it too, man,
I want to be part of the thing this.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Did you say the snacks or the stacks snacks? Snacks? Okay,
you have stacks of snacks, potentially.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Stacks of snacks. Just so and there there's another thing
we we have to mention here in in you all's research.
I'm not sure for the of the best way to
uh to set this up. I think you all did
it perfectly with the title. I did not want to
(33:51):
go to your stupid party anyway. What's that about.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
Have you guys discussed Banisterear Tarleton yet we did a
badass on him. One Bannister Tarleton is the guy who
the bad guy in The Patriot is based off him.
Bash Tartan was like this twenty year old, like cavalry officer.
He's just just the perfect, just bad guy, just everything,
just burning burning stuff. They called him Butcher Tarleton or
(34:17):
Bloody band for Bloody Banister or Tarlton. He's like a
he's an episode by himself. He's just like a he's
the ultimate villain of the American Revolution and you know,
just everything you can think of. His parents were like
so he showed up and he like he claimed to
have like killed more men and ravished more women than
any other British officer in the war. Like he would
(34:37):
go around bragging about that after and like he you know,
he's just this monster of a person. He's burning cities,
he's killing prisoners of war. We can't stop him. And
he's recruiting loyalists to like fight for him, which everybody
hates more than having the actual fight actual British anyway,
we all hate this guy. And when the war ends
at Yorktown, they have a big this is a very
(34:59):
this is very a eighteenth century, right, They have this
big party, so Rochambeau and Washington invite Cornwallace to dinner
and they have this big dinner for all of the
American and British and French officers. I can think of
nothing more eighteenth century. And I don't know, I just
picture it being chill. I pictured just being like, oh,
that's a good war. Good war for you, yeah, good
(35:20):
war for me.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
It's like when we were all playing child sports and
we had to get in a little line and yeah,
it's like that, yeah, oh wow, good.
Speaker 5 (35:30):
Yeah, I think so. But they didn't invite manister Charlton.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Okay, yeah, of his vibe, right.
Speaker 5 (35:40):
Because he's like yeah, because he was just he was
just a miserable, awful person and everybody hated him. And
it doesn't end badly for him either. He goes back,
he becomes like the superstar. He becomes a member of
parliament who advocates for the slave trade. He marries like
like the most famous like a stage performer, Starlett in London.
You know, it's like become super rich. It's just the worst.
(36:04):
Just he's just the worst. He's the worst in like
sometimes in a funny way, he's.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
The worst in a a in a cadre of worst.
Speaker 5 (36:12):
Yes, yeah, he's the worst, but he didn't get invited
to the party.
Speaker 6 (36:15):
And he's ban b A N, not Ben with B
E N.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Pat, thank you so much that that's important. That's an
important detail. I think we buried the lead.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Yes, he is a different, different guy, different different first
name with a b uh. It's also we love the point,
guys that the battle of your town is seen as
a climactic, titular event, obviously right, but it is important
to remember that things continued, as you said, for several years.
(36:50):
And and one of the facts, no, I don't know
about you, man, but one of the facts that's going
to stick with me here is when you Pat portrayed
the Revolutionary War here in the US as a facet
of a larger World war. Is it fair to call
that era of conflict the First World War?
Speaker 5 (37:12):
No, because you have the Austrian Succession, you have the
Seven Years War, you have all kinds of like world
wars like this is a very European thing because they've
been you know, this is kind of a continuation of
the Seven Years War. This one doesn't even get mentioned
that much in some of the other when you're discussing
other you know the secrets of European wars. But yeah,
this was just a mess. It culminated in that, right,
(37:33):
because you have all these alliances. Spain is on France's
side for this war. Spain is with US and France
against England. But then once that war ends, France and
Spain are going to go to war with each other.
It's a mess.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Talk about a bag of badgers, geez.
Speaker 5 (37:49):
Before we end, though, ben I would like to wrap
Bougainville because he is an interesting character and he survives
this battle. He leaves his ship, he loses a lot
of soldiers, he loses a lot of sailors and marines
in his battle, but he survives. He sinks one of
the British wars. He sinks the British Worship. He continues
on fights in a few other battles in the Caribbean
as part of this series of conflicts. Right, he fights
in the Battle of the Saints, which is the French
(38:11):
are like, okay, we'll just take Bermuda because we're here,
We'll just attack Bermuda, and he fights in a battle
there After the war, he goes home. He becomes an
instructor at the French Naval Academy. He joins the French
Academy of Sciences. He's able to not be guillotine during
the reign of Terror, he lives in this really nice
est state in the Normandy coast. And then under the
(38:33):
reign of Napoleon, he's made it. He's made a count.
He's like given an order of nobility and becomes a
count and he serves as a senator for a while
in Napoleon's the government. He dies in eighteen eleven and
he's buried in the Pantheon in Paris, which is like
a huge honor for like the greatest heroes of France,
every part of him except for his heart, which is
buried at his old house, which is interesting.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Why I don't know, home is where your heart is.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
That's just usually that's just like a crochet, you know,
blackerd or something like that.
Speaker 6 (39:08):
Not necessarily, sometimes you take it literally.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
So I imagine, so, yes, home is where the heart is.
This is nominalist to us Pat and Ben because this
is ethics aside. This is a story that is larger
than life. There is more than one badass involved here, right,
(39:33):
So one of the questions we have to ask you
all on behalf of our fellow ridiculous historians? Is this,
how do we define a badass? What constitutes badass ery?
Does it always have to mean a good person?
Speaker 6 (39:48):
Oh? Ben and I've talked about this. Yeah, yeah, it
doesn't always mean a good person. That's not a requirement,
although many badasses are good people or work for the
service of good Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Right, yeah.
Speaker 5 (40:00):
So the thing that came up when I was doing
the first Badass book, I wrote it the whole book, right,
I've been doing the website for five years, six years.
I got the book. I'd written all forty chapters for
the book, and my editor was like, you need to
do an introduction chapter you defind badass. I'm like, I
don't know. I don't know what makes all these guys badass?
What does Leonidas have in common with Genghis Khan? How
(40:21):
is Joan of arc there? But you know for ratio
of Nelson? Like, how all these guys? What is the thing? Like?
Speaker 2 (40:26):
What's our rubric? Right?
Speaker 5 (40:27):
What's the unifying factor here? And I think what it
came down to you was your determination and your perseverance
to accomplish great things?
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Right?
Speaker 5 (40:37):
These are all people who had a goal that they
were going after and they worked really really hard to
get it, and they accomplished it. And sometimes that gold
is criminally insane, but that's I think that still counts, right.
The thing that makes these people inspiring to us is
is that Bougainville was like, I am going to a takeout.
I am a world renowned explorer and international celebrity, but
(40:58):
I am I believe in this, and I believe in
the cause of liberty. And remember that the French fighting
in this battle, they are not They're still a monarchy.
They're not. They're not. This is not they're not flying
the tricolor flag. This is pre French Revolution. A lot
of the ideals of the American Revolution will rub off
onto the French who are here. But this is the
period of the Enlightenment in France. They are still trying
(41:19):
to reconcile. Let's be free thinkers and think for ourselves
and have all this interesting ideas. Let's try to reconcile
that with there's also a monarchy, and God tells us
that we have to do these things because this guy
tells us we have to do them well.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
And also, I mean, the the Enlightenment seems like it
would inherently kind of clash with the idea of warfare
and killing other humans, very enlightened behavior exactly exactly.
Speaker 5 (41:41):
But these guys get out there and they're like, well,
I gotta, you know, you gotta break some eggs, and
they're they're like, we gotta you know, he believes in this.
He's like, I gotta get out here. I'm gonna fight
for These guys are fighting for like freedom and and
you know, their own self determination all this stuff. And
so he's he's a true believer and he goes and
he's like, I'm going to fight for it. I don't
care that like I'm a celebrity or whatever. I don't
care that this is the most dangerous position on the fleet.
I am going to go after this. I'm going to
(42:03):
fight these guys and I'm going to win, and I'm
gonna win help help you know, America win its independence.
I'm going to fight these British who I've been fighting
my whole life. And there's something inspiring about these people
who who you know, get out there and do these
things right. They kind of inspire us to you know,
I'm not badass in my actual life, but you know,
(42:23):
there are days where I feel like I don't want
to answer my emails, and then I try to think
about Ville charging seventeen British warships, and I'm like, maybe
I'll answer my emails this morning.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
So you know, it might be badass to dodge an email,
you know what?
Speaker 3 (42:37):
I Yeah, you rebel.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
Yeah, you're lead. You're the tip of the spear on
that one. Right.
Speaker 5 (42:45):
I handed my emails the way he handled the Terrible
and the AJAX. Just delete, just demolish my eail read
delete doctor's office. What do they want? Delete exactly?
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Spam? Likely not with me. It's a joke earlier about uh, nol.
I think we were talking off air about some phone calls, right,
oh yeah, and we also again, folks, Noel, Max and
I are not blowing smoke. We're not blowing rainbows or
trumpets and angel farts here. Badass of the Week is
(43:25):
one of our favorite favorite explorations of exactly what we
are hanging out with today and indeed the entirety of
this week. Pat, thank you so much for coming and
hanging out with us, Benans.
Speaker 6 (43:42):
For having me.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Oh my gosh, Ben, you know, Nolan, I have to
do the check in. Pat, are you okay with this
Ben Thompson guy. Is he all right?
Speaker 6 (43:53):
Yeah, he's all right.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
He seems pretty cool to me. Cool and thanks for
coming back then, just to check it.
Speaker 5 (44:06):
If you want to exit the.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Podcast, well, thanks as always to our super producer, mister
Max Williams. We usually have a long run of credits.
We're going to save you guys some time here except
for one thing. We have to recommend a good friend
of the show that you all should hang out with
if you haven't already. His name is A. J. Jacobs.
Speaker 5 (44:31):
Oh, we had him on our show. He's awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
Yeah, we call him Bahamas for you can never ask
him why not sure either, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
He's a good guy that makes perfect sense. I got
to check out that episode.
Speaker 5 (44:42):
Yeah, we had a great episode with him. I was
doing for a while. I was doing the drink of
the show, where every show I would have some kind
of beverage that was related to whatever we were talking about.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
Then we were doing history.
Speaker 5 (44:55):
Yeah, we were doing a Mongolian Pat had brought some
Mongolian in mythology the Jingar Epic, and those guys all
drink fermented Mare's milk.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Oh in the story. Yeah, oh, good.
Speaker 5 (45:09):
So I ordered fermented Mayor's milk from Mongolia.
Speaker 6 (45:13):
I did not make him do this. This is own initiative.
Speaker 5 (45:18):
It's boozy. Yeah, it's it's fermented, so it's it's alcohol.
It's like a it's you know, it's like a wine
level of alcohol.
Speaker 6 (45:24):
What'd you take?
Speaker 2 (45:26):
Did you all enjoy it?
Speaker 5 (45:27):
I drank it. We don't, you know, we live in
different cities, so I just did it over zoom and
yeah it was. It was really not good.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
It was yeah, I don't know. I got that seven
League stare first.
Speaker 5 (45:39):
Yeah, but that was the show AJ was on. I
drank it and it was. It tasted like hay and
uh and that was the end of the drink of
the show. We never did it again.
Speaker 6 (45:49):
It was that bad.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
Hey is indeed for horses and good good on you
for taking one for the team.
Speaker 5 (45:55):
Yeah, I think that episode is like eighty percent of
that episode is just me gagging.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Ilad you made it well.
Speaker 3 (46:02):
Note to self on alcoholic beverages, never to try. But
thanks again y'all for coming and we will see you
next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your
(46:22):
favorite shows
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you,
as always so much for tuning in. That's our super producer,
mister Max Williams.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Max the Chesapeake Boy Williams Chesapeake.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
Okay, I do want to drop something in here from
that's reference to our previous episode. Sure, it was brought
up the absurd name of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim,
which I one time saw and I've never forgotten. This
translates to the the Angels Angels of Anaheim.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah, it's a real ATM machine. Then number magic there
with the facts.
Speaker 5 (01:04):
That seeking in the phone and PA's fallen knowledge.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
It's just for you right now.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
And that is none other than mister Noel Brown. They
help me, Ben Bulling. In this neck of the Global woods, folks,
we are having what we call a Badass Badass of
the Week week uh with big, big thanks to our
returning guest, none other than the co host of the
(01:36):
Actual Facts Badass of the Week podcast. Please please join
us in welcoming back doctor Pat Larish and Ben Thompson.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
Yeah, thank you guys so much for having us. We're
going to Yeah, yeah, we're gonna do. That's another is
another one. That's a repetition. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
A word for tea. Yeah, just.
Speaker 6 (02:06):
Have like chai gelato. There you go, you know to chi,
you know chai chai.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Yeah, there we go.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Folks. You could get the sense already that you are
now hanging with five big time nerds.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
We were talking about threatening to do a D and
D campaign off Mikes.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
I write professional write D D adventures professionally, so.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
I did know that about you. Well, I'm excited to
h to come into your world of D and D
and dungeon mastery.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Folks. Folks, if you have not tuned into our previous
episode about a guy named George that Noel, Max and
I had no idea about, please hie THEE to thy
podcast platform of.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Choice or a Nunnery depending or if you wish right.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
I think they have WiFi. So we are Ben and Pat.
We are so excited that you all are returning with us,
despite our cavalcade of three out of five puns. You
(03:22):
know in our previous episode, you are returning to us
with another story of a badass. This is something building
on our previous conversation. So for everybody wondering why we're
(03:44):
calling our super producer Max the Chesapeake Cape. We promised
we were going to pay it off. And so the
Chesapeake Boy also the Chesapeake Boy. He's a chesapeaker.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
He's actually a chesapea cheesecake.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
That there we go go. So it bid, Pat, what
is going on in York Town in the seventeen.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
Hundreds, Yes, so let's talk. We were talking before about
George Rogers Clark and that's an interesting story. And you know,
we are at a time where we're celebrating America to
fifty right now, and so we've been doing, at least
on our show, we've been doing a lot of American
history characters, revolutionary war characters, and I think it's worth
mentioning that a lot of America doesn't happen without the
(04:32):
help of the French. As much as we like to
dunk on the French here, Yeah, that is, they played
a very important role in the American Revolution. We talked
about a slightly more passive role in the last episode.
This one is going to be a little bit more
of an active role with direct direct fire engagement. So
(04:55):
I guess in honor of America two fifty and bestial
Day two thirty seven. We'll talk about the Battle of
Chesapeake games and CHESSA games is a weird thing.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Can I just say really quickly, I really appreciate you
referring to it as America two fifty and not the
rebranded Freedom two fifty. We are in America to fifty
household here, So I appreciate.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
I didn't even I haven't even heard of that. So
I don't just better that you haven't.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
It's better than you haven't.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
It's a bag of badgers.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
Liberty two thirty five or thirty seven or whatever.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
This Okay, what's up with the capes though, you guys?
Speaker 5 (05:29):
Okay, yes, let's get into that. So it's an interesting
thing about this is that the most decisive military action
of the Yorktown Campaign did not involve a single American soldier,
sailor or marine. That's the story we're going to tell today.
So we all kind of know the story of Yorktown
the way that we are taught it in school. We
(05:50):
picture the British, they're pinned down on Peninsula and Virginia, Washington, Rochambeau.
The American and French armies link up, they trap Cornwallis
on this eninsula. They marched down there. Cornwallis is locked
into He's got this bunker system at this fort in Yorktown.
He gets surrounded, he gets attacked, he tries to break
out't he's not successful, and then he has to surrender
(06:13):
his army. That's the tale we've been told right.
Speaker 6 (06:15):
Now, here's the thing. Yorktown is a coastal city, right,
so it's a peninsula surrounded by water, and the British, well,
at this point in history, who has the most powerful
navy on the planet. So the Brits, I mean, they
were basically ruling the Atlantic. So why were they stuck?
If the Royal Navy is the undisputed king of the sea,
(06:39):
how in the world did they let Cornwallis get cornered
on a piece of dirt when he couldn't escape by ship?
If you have, you know, the ultimate taxi service, why
are you waiting on the curb to get arrested?
Speaker 5 (06:50):
Yes, So the reasonly revolution ends at Yorktown isn't because
we walked up and demanded them to surrender. It's because
a little bit before the siege there was something that happened.
There was a naval battle that happened off the coast
of Yorktown. That was among the most deadly naval conflicts
(07:10):
of the eighteenth century. It's called the Battle of Chesapeake Capes,
and it's the reason the United States exists. So we're
going to talk about some frenchmen. We're gonna talk about
some cannons. We're going to talk about British admirals, We're
going to talk about gunfire fighting, marines, all kinds of
badass stuff on this episode.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
And in interest of full disclosure, folks, we just want
to get in front of the emails and the scuttle
but we are going to have to acknowledge that not
all bends are great. There is there is one bad
Bed in this story.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Just one bad Ben in the historical bunch and no more.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Well, there's there's Mussolini. I guess he qualifies, but.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
He's a bit of a bend. I wonder if his
friends called I wonder if he was Ben to his friends.
I've always referred to him exclusively as Benito.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
So yes, as Benito has a little ben uh Benedict Arnold,
we got to just I.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Think, really we're really expanding our definition of Ben's here.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
That's true, that's true, that's true, are you, Benjamin, Is
this a legal inquiry?
Speaker 3 (08:17):
We do have that, but.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
Maybe it's not like if you're shortening for something else,
it's bad.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Okay, Okay, Well, I just wanted to get in front
of that for us to make sure that you know, uh, you,
fellow ridiculous historians know as a crew that we do
not I hope we can say this unanimously. We do
not condone Benedict Arnold.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
Arnold's an interesting character that we can. We can do
a whole thing on him, because we did a Badass
the Week on him, actually, because it was so wild,
like he was such a hero, such a brave American hero,
military commander, like so many amazing actions early on.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
The war, but one thing, that one thing, you know.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
Like that decision to find him. But he did a
lot of heroic stuff, but he won Saratoga. He like that.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
I think we might have talked about this in the past.
Ben Yeah, it's not funny, man, how history can remember
you for the one bad thing and then your name
becomes a stand in for being a bad guy.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Well, ethel read the unready you can hear him debated
about at length in Badass of the Week. In the podcast,
ethel read the unready was actually unready multiple times.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
That's true.
Speaker 6 (09:32):
So he.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Okay, he deserved it. But we knows, as you're as
we're saying here, it may be new information to a
lot of us in the audience that when we're saying
Chesapeake capes, we're talking about a specific place, not a
style of cloak.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
Yes, this is off the coast of Virginia, in the
Chesapeake Bay. So okay. So Cornwallis is trapped in. He's
trapped down in. So when the war begins, you have
or at this point in the war where at seventeen
eighty one, the British have an army up north and
they have an army down south. The army down south.
You guys have covered this before. But the army down
(10:14):
south is being beaten, right, They've lost the coalpins, they've
lost the Guildford Courthouse, they're retreating. Cornwallis's guys, he's got
half the British forces in North America, but he's lost
a couple battles. He needs to regroup, so he moves
moves into Yorktown, waiting to get picked up by a
zuber to bring him back to New York to regroup
and refit. Washington is up north. He's like, well, this
(10:36):
is our chance. So when Cornwallis retreats to Yorktown, Washington diverts,
like almost the entire American army in North America to
attack Yorktown, to try to just concentrate on this one thing.
We've gotten this guy, we've got him here. We need
to just attack it and try to knock this one
thing out, divide and conquer. Right, So he marches his
troops a very long distance in a very short period
(10:56):
of time to surround Yorktown. But in order for this
to the British can't, as Pat said, just roll up
with their boats and sail away. Now, this is where
we need to call in the French. And by seventeen
eighty one, the American Revolution is not just the thirteen
colonies in King George. It is a planet wide world war.
(11:19):
France and Spain have jumped in and there's fighting everywhere.
Speaker 6 (11:22):
We've got naval battles in India, skirmishes in Africa, We've
got this huge kerfuffle going on in the Caribbean.
Speaker 5 (11:30):
Yes, yes, so, I mean it's worth mentioning that the
bloodiest battle and longest battle of the War of the
American Revolution was the Siege of Gibraltar. More people died
there than any battle in the American Revolution, and it
was part of that war. So when you know, we
sent Benjamin Franklin, here's a good bend. We sent Benjamin
Franklin over to ed John Adams over to over to
(11:52):
France to negotiate this. And when France joined, like, the
deal we made with France was like, Okay, any territory
we take in North America is American, but I don't
care what you guys do otherwise, and so you just
fight whatever. And so the French and the Spanish start
attacking all of these British colonies all over the world,
like you said, India, Africa, the Caribbean. They try to
take Gibraltar, which was British, which is still British, but
(12:13):
they and they lay sieged for like years, right.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
And also India is really interesting, Pat, I was not
aware of that, Noel, did you know about that.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
I didn't hope.
Speaker 5 (12:28):
France had colonies in India at the time, and they
were trying to take it over. It didn't work out
for them. They lost over there, but they tried. They
were just attacking everywhere that they could, and that really
spreads the English out right. It's not that the British
don't lose because France joins the war, because France sends
us a million soldiers to fight the war. They win
because France attacks places, honestly, places that English cares about more. Gibraltar, India,
(12:51):
the Caribbean. These are very very lucrative places for the
British Empire. And they're like, we don't have the forces,
we don't the resources to garrison all of this, so
we'll just give up on the North America and we'll
worry about the stuff that actually matters. We win because
they pressure them across all fronts and we open up
a you know, not just a second front of the war,
(13:12):
but a whole bunch of them. Now, okay, this is
what's going on here. And but in order to get
corn Wallace and his guys, we've got them trapped on
the peninsula. The British Navy is coming to pick them up,
and h we have to stop them. So this is
where the French fleet comes into play, and they have
(13:37):
to kind of sail in here and block this fleet
of British transport ships from picking up this whole army
and moving up to New York and expanding the extending
the war by probably years.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (13:51):
And this plan it's a gamp like every plan is
a gamble. It has to do with timing. If Washington
and the French General Rochambeau can get there first, we're fine.
But if the British fleet shows up at the same time,
even earlier, then Cornwall sails north and the whole thing
(14:12):
falls apart.
Speaker 5 (14:13):
Right, this is our chance to catch half their army
is in one spot. We got to catch them before
they can escape.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
There's a real ticking time bomb scenario.
Speaker 5 (14:21):
Yes, yes, this is This is a serious fleet that's coming.
They are there. These are you know, think about like
Napoleonic era wooden warships, three decks of cannons. Right, The
American Navy basically does not existent. It's John Paul Jones
(14:41):
and like two guys and like a pirate. And that's it.
There's no fleet. There's no American fleet here. And the
John Paul Jones ship was built by for the French.
And so the British fleet rolls up and they are
coming with the armed escort of war ships and the
(15:01):
Admiral the French admiral is a guy named de Grassi.
He's he gives the order to sail out and meet
these guys. Now, this is where I want to introduce
a character who I think is going to be our
badass for this episode. Commanding the lead ship in the
French formation is the ship's called the August, and the
(15:22):
captain is a guy that you need to know. His
name is Louis Anton de Bougainville. And I'm sure I'm
mispronouncing that, Pat.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Maybe you want to it works on such authority.
Speaker 5 (15:31):
Yeah, that's half of it. It's like karaoke, you just
got to do it. This guy is the captain of
the August, and he has already lived basically like three lifetimes.
He was born in Paris in seventeen twenty nine. His
family was minor nobility, but both his parents died when
he was five, and he was raised by his older brother.
(15:52):
He goes to the University of Paris. He publishes just
for fun, publishes two treatises on integral calculus. He's a
genius just for fun. He's a genius mathematician. He is
a musketeer. He joins the army in seventeen fifty as
a musketeer like d'Artagnan fights against the British in Canada
(16:12):
during the Seven Years War, where he takes part in
the defenses of both Quebec City and Montreal. He's wounded,
he gets knighted for heroism in battle. He takes part
of the diplomatic he's part of a diplomatic team sent
by France to negotiate the Treaty of Paris that ends
the war. And then after that he becomes a famous
explorer and naturalist. So he is the captain of the
(16:34):
expedition that sets up the first European colony on the
Falkland Islands, and then he commands the first French expedition
to circumnavigate the globe. He departs a Nansen seventeen sixty six.
It takes him three years. He lost seven guys out
of his three hundred and forty man crew. And that
was like going the long way around the Straight of Magellan,
so pretty badass stuff here. And along the way they're
(16:57):
doing the stuff that you see from like Captain Cook
and things where they're stopping at uncharted islands and like
doing you know, surveys of botanical surveys and drug pictures
of the animals and things that they.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
See, and the bird and candy.
Speaker 6 (17:10):
Yes, yes, yeah, and among his crew. This is a
fun little sidebar.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (17:17):
There was a naturalist, Philibert Comerson, and his assistant was
a woman named Jean Barrie, and she disguised herself as
a man. But because she was able to get herself
on this expedition, she was the first woman to circumnavigate
the globe.
Speaker 5 (17:35):
Yeah. Yeah, she discussed herself as a man. She went
by Jean or Jean, and then it was Jean and she's, uh,
you could do that better than me, Pat, I think
you're more quick to handle that joke.
Speaker 6 (17:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
But they found out like halfway through the halfway through
the journey that she was like so she was like
a you know, it wasn't like we found out years
and years later, like they found out on the journey
and but nobody really nobody cared, right, And it was
like she becomes the first woman a certain mavate the globe,
which is super cool.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
They were like, oh, okay, everybody's got a backstory. Our
main thing is avoiding scurvy.
Speaker 5 (18:03):
Yes, yes, that's.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
The correct attitude. Yes, So After this Villa comes back,
he becomes a superstar. He's got like a million and
one different skills and experiences. He meets the King and Queen.
He gets a flower named after him. This is the
Bougainville the you know those big kind of flowers that
kind of spill over like purply magenta colors, and now.
Speaker 5 (18:27):
I discovered them on its trip. They named him after him.
Super yeah, and well the botan is named it after him.
He didn't name it after himself.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Okay, good safe, good safe?
Speaker 6 (18:37):
Yeah yeah. So okay, so you know he's not writing
calculus papers and picking the flowers in the South Pacific.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Now.
Speaker 6 (18:45):
His main thing is to be lead captain in the
most important naval battle of the American Revolution. So okay,
who's leading the French charge? A genius, a world famous explorer,
and a combat veteran. This sounds like the right guy
for the job, right.
Speaker 5 (19:02):
Yes, Bougetvillas is a I mean, just a wild story. Right.
This guy's published published books on calculus and is you know,
is a celebrity, Like he's a national celebrity in France
for he's being the first Frenchman to circumnavigate the globe. Now,
he's volunteered to be the tip of the spear here.
This is not the kind of guy you put out
on the front of the battle lines. But when the
French fleet is lining up, he gets in the Augustin
(19:24):
and he's like, I'm in front. He sails right out
to the front. And this is a big warship seventy
four guns right, three decks, bigger than anything that the
Continental Navy could could field.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
So for like current analogy here Ben would or current comparison,
this is kind of like an astronaut saying, yeah, I
did a lot of outer space stuff, but also I
want to lead a.
Speaker 5 (19:51):
Battle, right, yeah, exactly. But he's also like a world
renowned like naturalist right and publish books like although I
guess are good at calculus also, So it's something like that, right,
It's like having somebody you've seen on TV decide that
they're going to like lead the charge and carry the
flag into battle. It's wild, okay. So August is out front.
(20:13):
He's the first one to spot the British, he's the
first one to orders men to run the guns out.
The stage is set for this battle. The British fleet
is coming in. They've got their transport. The troop transports
are lightly armed. They're waiting back to see what happens
in the battle. The British fleet is moving in here.
Nineteen ships, fourteen hundred cannons, and you've got the most
polished professional sailors on the planet. This is the greatest
(20:36):
navy on Earth and everybody knows it. Nineteen ships, each
of them three decks, most of them three decks. Man
of wars. The French have twenty four ships, so they've
got more ships, they've got a little bit more cannon.
They've got seventeen hundred and set up. They've go three
hundred more cannons and they've got five more ships. On paper,
that's an advantage, but in reality, the French navy has
(20:58):
not performed well against the British navy to this point
in the war, and they're going to continue to not
perform well against them as it's the years go by.
Uh Bougainville is out there in front and he's sent out.
He's also realizing that he's kind of dangerously overextended. He's
out there in the front right there, he's facing nineteen
(21:18):
ships by himself. The other guys are behind him, and
this is old style war where you've got to get
the side. You got to get the broadside right, think
about pirate battles things. You've got to get the side
of your ship on the side of their ship. And
if he's sailing out their front, you want to get
the You want your fleets to be an equal sign
to shoot in each other. But if you're doing that,
you're going first, and you're the one that's going to
get shot by all of those That first ship is
the one that gets shot by all those other ships
(21:39):
as it goes down that equal sign.
Speaker 6 (21:41):
This is a This is a bold move. Some might
even call it reckless. Yes, so Bogel, he's got the
Auguste and he's daring the British. He's basically saying nin
or niner, come and get me, Come and get me,
and trying to draw all their fire right while he's
trying to distract them, while the rest of the French
fleet is still getting into position.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
Yes, the august breaks formation and charges ahead by itself
to basically take on the entire British navy alone, which
forces the British admiral to try to react to this.
He's got to do something, right, He can have this
one ship just sailing out there, so he kind of
he ends up coming in at like a weird angle,
which helps the French in the battle. So the ships
(22:23):
kind of they come into line with each other and
the Augusta's out front. It's taking it's you know, they
run out the iron cannons row after a row of muzzles.
Soldiers are opening fire on each other there. The cannons
are shooting, but the ships get so close during the
battle that dudes are like climbing up onto the basts
and like shooting pistols and rifles at each other. Like
(22:45):
you can see the guys across room you. It's not
like a like you picture with a modern naval battle
where you're looking through like a telescope or anything. You
can see the dude in the in the sale across
from you and you're trying to shoot him with your rifle.
That's how close these guys are getting to each other.
And the ships are just devastating each other. They're blasting,
the masts get knocked off of the Augusts lose its masts.
(23:07):
We're talking like shrap and all the size of like
baseball bats like flying flying wildly around the decks here,
old school pirate Napoleonic style naval battle, and it's happening
in Virginia during the American Revolution. And for some reason
we've never heard this story before.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
And we have to mention for a quick interjection here
you read my mind bent Napoleonic tactics, that's what we're
talking about, like the Civil War in the United States. Again,
it's a terrible name. That was an exhibition of Napoleonic
tactics on land where you had a bunch of people
who were largely going to be poor, if we're going
(23:45):
to be honest, and he made them stand in line
and sort of march at each other until they died.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
A little bit of a cannon fought our type situation.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Just so, yes, sir, And so we're saying that at
this time in this maritime conflict, people were still deployed
that Napoleonic philosophy, correct.
Speaker 5 (24:06):
Right, right, because this predates Napoleon, so this would be
twenty years before Napoleon.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
So they didn't call it that. Yeah, he named it
after himself later.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
Right, right guy, our guy who Gunville is going to
meet Napoleon later on. But yeah, so this is right,
before that, and that's the time period, right, This is
it's not common for even at this time. It's not
common for naval battles to take place at this range,
this close to each other, right, because you have so
many cannons and they just blast each other and everything's
(24:37):
on fire, the master getting knockoffs, all these people are
dying left and right. Usually you shoot from a farther
distance away and try to hope that your guy's aim
is better than theirs. Right, these cannons are not super accurate,
they're not rifled boers or anything, so you just kind
of hope that your guy's going to reskill is a
little better than their guys going to reskill, and you
fight from a long ways away until it's time to
like maybe board them with your marines or whatever. But
(25:00):
this doesn't This isn't common, and it is an advantage
actually for the French, who are not as talented at
at gunnery as the British are. So you get close
like that you can't miss, and this just lets them
use their twenty five ships and their seventeen hunder cannons.
It might not be great strategy, like you said, just
kind of march at these dudes, but like, we got
more than they do. They're better shots than us, so
(25:21):
let's just get as close as possible. And the August
and Bougainville, they are able to kind of mess up
the British formation by charging in a really weird way.
He kind of lone wolves it a little bit and
disrupts their formation, which is also an advantage to the
first I mean, it's he pays for it. Him and
his crews get blasted pretty heavily for this, but it
(25:42):
is effective now, you know usually, but like you said,
usually you're looking at somebody through a telescope. You're not
looking the guy in the eye trying to shoot at
him with a handgun in a naval battle in this
time period.
Speaker 6 (25:56):
And Boville in his note in his log, he says
the vanguard was very hotly engaged. The fire was very brisk,
which is this is a.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Very that's understating the case just a little bit. Yes, yeah,
brisk is something you used to refer to like a
breeze or like, yeah, but I appreciate the word.
Speaker 6 (26:21):
But yeah, and speaking of breezes and atmospheric phenomenon, we're
talking about this and we're picturing this, and we can
picture the ship in that ship and the guys who
can see each other without telescopes. But sometimes what gets
lost in uh, the way people tell this is that
this this naval battle, this Titanic history changing struggle, that's
(26:45):
deciding the fate of an entire continent. It's happening right
off the coast of Virginia, Okay. And yet if you
were on the shore, you couldn't see a single thing.
There is so much smoke, and it becomes a literal
fog of war. The cannon smoke is so thick, so heavy,
and so pervasive, like think after a fireworks show, except
(27:07):
like times, I don't know how many orders of magnitude,
there's just this wall of gray. You've got thousands of men,
millions of dollars of pounds or francs or whatever of
naval hardware, and you've got the future of the American
Revolution all just clashing together in this. You know, it's
(27:27):
a hot mess, but it's a hot mess in a
hidden bubble of violence. And then the people, I mean,
I don't know if anyone's actually willing to sit on
the beach in Virginia, but I guess maybe you know,
what would they know, you know, going down to the
beach and then you maybe hear a faint, distant rumble
and maybe you guess that maybe there's some naval activity
(27:50):
going on. I don't know, but you can't see it,
you know, even if you're standing on a pier, you
would not be able to see it. And that's going
on for two hours, these two fleets locked in this
brutal blind engagement, and finally one side realizes, hmm, maybe
(28:13):
we're losing the gamble.
Speaker 5 (28:21):
Yes, So there is this fog of warships are getting separated.
It becomes this like you know, it starts as this
big line and whenever you look at like military tactic stuff,
that's always how they draw it up. But like once
you kind of get into a frenzy, once they kind
of get into a brawl like this, it ends up
like the August is fighting two British ships. They're fighting
the Ajax and the Terrible. So there's two seventy four
gun British ships fighting the fighting the seventy four gun
(28:43):
and August and they're just battling each other and other
stuff is happening. But like you said, the fog of
war is so dense. You can't really see outside of it.
The masts are down on all these ships, so there's
no sailing anymore. You're barely 're barely rowing. They're shooting
at whatever they can shoot at. And like you said,
this is you know, we've got seventeen hundred canons on one side,
fourteen on the other. We're looking at something like thirty
three thousand plus cannons firing as fast as they can
(29:05):
fire multiple like at least I can't remember how far
off the coast it is, but it's miles off the coast,
so it's not visible. And you know, maybe that's why
the story doesn't get talked about as much, because no
Americans were there and they couldn't No Americans could see it.
So but this battle is like defining the American Revolution.
And yes, like you said, you know, when when things
(29:27):
are starting to look kind of bad, after two hours,
darkness is starting to fall. You can't fight in darkness,
and you don't want to because you don't want to
accidentally crash into any of these other ships. So darkness
starts to fall. The British retreat, they've lost almost four
hundred guys. The French have lost two hundred dead and wounded.
The Terrible is sinking. It's unable to be repaired, it
sinks to the bottom of the harbor. Rescue boats terrible.
(29:52):
It's terrible. Yeah, it's terrible for that boat you've got.
You know one thing that we think of, we don't
think about too much with big colonial naval battles, is
you have rescue boats. So there's dudes out in rowboats
rowing around trying to pick up sailors out of the water.
You've got guys kind of hanging on and some of
these sailors can't swim because they're drafted into this service.
They're not These aren't Some of these guys aren't volunteers.
They're just impressed into service, so they can't swim. They're
(30:15):
just holding on to like things that are floating and
holding on, holding on to wreckage. You've got these guys
rowing around on boats trying to pull them out. The
British Admiral Sir Thomas Graves, He's like, I think this
is it. Like, I don't think I can break through
this wall here. I don't have the I don't have
the manpower to do it, and I've taken too many
hits here and his ships are all just smashed. The
(30:35):
French tactic was to shoot down the masts of the
British ships, because that's the thing that you can't really
repair in the field, and it affects your ability to
do anything else if you can't if you have no engine. Basically,
So the British retreat and dawn breaks at Yorktown. Rochambeau
(30:56):
is there, Washington's there, you had mentioned Alexander Hamilton, He's there.
Marquis de Lafayat's there, and you know, they do go
to the beach in Virginia for some reason, and what they.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
See they heard a distant rumbling.
Speaker 5 (31:08):
They heard a distant rumbling in Thunderia. And they come
back and as they're standing on the pier, they can
see twenty four French warships returning to the harbor and
they're like, that's it, we did it. We got them.
Like there's this huge cheer goes up down the line
of the from the soldiers on both sides, and that's it.
Cornwall's is not going to get out. The French and
(31:31):
the Americans surround them, they besiege them, they start firing
cannons at them, and October seventeen seventeen eighty one, Cornwall's
requests a ceasefire. Two days later, he unconditionally surrenders all
British forces under his command, and with that one signature,
half of the British army in North America becomes prisoners
(31:51):
of war.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Wow wow, yeah boy, right, half half.
Speaker 5 (31:57):
The war goes on for two more years because the
guys in New York don't surrender as easily, but they
don't make any real expeditions out of there, and without
these troops that Cornwallis has had, like, they can't they
can't do anything, right, So the United States ends up.
The war ends officially in seventeen eighty three, and all
of the hard work that was done by the colonials
(32:19):
over the many many years of this war results in
a free and independent United States. But it is largely
due to this The Yorktown Campaign, which gets mentioned all
the time, is the end of the war, and it's
not really the end of the war goes on for
two more years, but it's very interesting that like like
oh yeah, roch Bo showed up to he was also there.
(32:40):
It's like there was also twenty four French warships with
seventeen hundred cannons, like lasting the British Navy. We should
probably mention this. I feel like when we talk about.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Yorktown, that's true. I just I love the way we're
portraying it because for a lot of us it will
it will call to mind the big question about all
the people who signed the Declaration of Independence. American school
kids know some of the top names, but I always
love thinking about the other the person who was in
(33:11):
the room for you know, maybe there was there was
a different reason. Maybe they were bringing the snacks in
and they were like, oh yeah, i'll sign it too, man,
I want to be part of the thing this.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Did you say the snacks or the stacks snacks? Snacks? Okay,
you have stacks of snacks, potentially.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Stacks of snacks. Just so and there there's another thing
we we have to mention here in in you all's research.
I'm not sure for the of the best way to
uh to set this up. I think you all did
it perfectly with the title. I did not want to
(33:51):
go to your stupid party anyway. What's that about.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
Have you guys discussed Banisterear Tarleton yet we did a
badass on him. One Bannister Tarleton is the guy who
the bad guy in The Patriot is based off him.
Bash Tartan was like this twenty year old, like cavalry officer.
He's just just the perfect, just bad guy, just everything,
just burning burning stuff. They called him Butcher Tarleton or
(34:17):
Bloody band for Bloody Banister or Tarlton. He's like a
he's an episode by himself. He's just like a he's
the ultimate villain of the American Revolution and you know,
just everything you can think of. His parents were like
so he showed up and he like he claimed to
have like killed more men and ravished more women than
any other British officer in the war. Like he would
(34:37):
go around bragging about that after and like he you know,
he's just this monster of a person. He's burning cities,
he's killing prisoners of war. We can't stop him. And
he's recruiting loyalists to like fight for him, which everybody
hates more than having the actual fight actual British anyway,
we all hate this guy. And when the war ends
at Yorktown, they have a big this is a very
(34:59):
this is very a eighteenth century, right, They have this
big party, so Rochambeau and Washington invite Cornwallace to dinner
and they have this big dinner for all of the
American and British and French officers. I can think of
nothing more eighteenth century. And I don't know, I just
picture it being chill. I pictured just being like, oh,
that's a good war. Good war for you, yeah, good
(35:20):
war for me.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
It's like when we were all playing child sports and
we had to get in a little line and yeah,
it's like that, yeah, oh wow, good.
Speaker 5 (35:30):
Yeah, I think so. But they didn't invite manister Charlton.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Okay, yeah, of his vibe, right.
Speaker 5 (35:40):
Because he's like yeah, because he was just he was
just a miserable, awful person and everybody hated him. And
it doesn't end badly for him either. He goes back,
he becomes like the superstar. He becomes a member of
parliament who advocates for the slave trade. He marries like
like the most famous like a stage performer, Starlett in London.
You know, it's like become super rich. It's just the worst.
(36:04):
Just he's just the worst. He's the worst in like
sometimes in a funny way, he's.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
The worst in a a in a cadre of worst.
Speaker 5 (36:12):
Yes, yeah, he's the worst, but he didn't get invited
to the party.
Speaker 6 (36:15):
And he's ban b A N, not Ben with B
E N.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Pat, thank you so much that that's important. That's an
important detail. I think we buried the lead.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Yes, he is a different, different guy, different different first
name with a b uh. It's also we love the point,
guys that the battle of your town is seen as
a climactic, titular event, obviously right, but it is important
to remember that things continued, as you said, for several years.
(36:50):
And and one of the facts, no, I don't know
about you, man, but one of the facts that's going
to stick with me here is when you Pat portrayed
the Revolutionary War here in the US as a facet
of a larger World war. Is it fair to call
that era of conflict the First World War?
Speaker 5 (37:12):
No, because you have the Austrian Succession, you have the
Seven Years War, you have all kinds of like world
wars like this is a very European thing because they've
been you know, this is kind of a continuation of
the Seven Years War. This one doesn't even get mentioned
that much in some of the other when you're discussing
other you know the secrets of European wars. But yeah,
this was just a mess. It culminated in that, right,
(37:33):
because you have all these alliances. Spain is on France's
side for this war. Spain is with US and France
against England. But then once that war ends, France and
Spain are going to go to war with each other.
It's a mess.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Talk about a bag of badgers, geez.
Speaker 5 (37:49):
Before we end, though, ben I would like to wrap
Bougainville because he is an interesting character and he survives
this battle. He leaves his ship, he loses a lot
of soldiers, he loses a lot of sailors and marines
in his battle, but he survives. He sinks one of
the British wars. He sinks the British Worship. He continues
on fights in a few other battles in the Caribbean
as part of this series of conflicts. Right, he fights
in the Battle of the Saints, which is the French
(38:11):
are like, okay, we'll just take Bermuda because we're here,
We'll just attack Bermuda, and he fights in a battle
there After the war, he goes home. He becomes an
instructor at the French Naval Academy. He joins the French
Academy of Sciences. He's able to not be guillotine during
the reign of Terror, he lives in this really nice
est state in the Normandy coast. And then under the
(38:33):
reign of Napoleon, he's made it. He's made a count.
He's like given an order of nobility and becomes a
count and he serves as a senator for a while
in Napoleon's the government. He dies in eighteen eleven and
he's buried in the Pantheon in Paris, which is like
a huge honor for like the greatest heroes of France,
every part of him except for his heart, which is
buried at his old house, which is interesting.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Why I don't know, home is where your heart is.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
That's just usually that's just like a crochet, you know,
blackerd or something like that.
Speaker 6 (39:08):
Not necessarily, sometimes you take it literally.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
So I imagine, so, yes, home is where the heart is.
This is nominalist to us Pat and Ben because this
is ethics aside. This is a story that is larger
than life. There is more than one badass involved here, right,
(39:33):
So one of the questions we have to ask you
all on behalf of our fellow ridiculous historians? Is this,
how do we define a badass? What constitutes badass ery?
Does it always have to mean a good person?
Speaker 6 (39:48):
Oh? Ben and I've talked about this. Yeah, yeah, it
doesn't always mean a good person. That's not a requirement,
although many badasses are good people or work for the
service of good Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Right, yeah.
Speaker 5 (40:00):
So the thing that came up when I was doing
the first Badass book, I wrote it the whole book, right,
I've been doing the website for five years, six years.
I got the book. I'd written all forty chapters for
the book, and my editor was like, you need to
do an introduction chapter you defind badass. I'm like, I
don't know. I don't know what makes all these guys badass?
What does Leonidas have in common with Genghis Khan? How
(40:21):
is Joan of arc there? But you know for ratio
of Nelson? Like, how all these guys? What is the thing? Like?
Speaker 2 (40:26):
What's our rubric? Right?
Speaker 5 (40:27):
What's the unifying factor here? And I think what it
came down to you was your determination and your perseverance
to accomplish great things?
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Right?
Speaker 5 (40:37):
These are all people who had a goal that they
were going after and they worked really really hard to
get it, and they accomplished it. And sometimes that gold
is criminally insane, but that's I think that still counts, right.
The thing that makes these people inspiring to us is
is that Bougainville was like, I am going to a takeout.
I am a world renowned explorer and international celebrity, but
(40:58):
I am I believe in this, and I believe in
the cause of liberty. And remember that the French fighting
in this battle, they are not They're still a monarchy.
They're not. They're not. This is not they're not flying
the tricolor flag. This is pre French Revolution. A lot
of the ideals of the American Revolution will rub off
onto the French who are here. But this is the
period of the Enlightenment in France. They are still trying
(41:19):
to reconcile. Let's be free thinkers and think for ourselves
and have all this interesting ideas. Let's try to reconcile
that with there's also a monarchy, and God tells us
that we have to do these things because this guy
tells us we have to do them well.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
And also, I mean, the the Enlightenment seems like it
would inherently kind of clash with the idea of warfare
and killing other humans, very enlightened behavior exactly exactly.
Speaker 5 (41:41):
But these guys get out there and they're like, well,
I gotta, you know, you gotta break some eggs, and
they're they're like, we gotta you know, he believes in this.
He's like, I gotta get out here. I'm gonna fight
for These guys are fighting for like freedom and and
you know, their own self determination all this stuff. And
so he's he's a true believer and he goes and
he's like, I'm going to fight for it. I don't
care that like I'm a celebrity or whatever. I don't
care that this is the most dangerous position on the fleet.
I am going to go after this. I'm going to
(42:03):
fight these guys and I'm going to win, and I'm
gonna win help help you know, America win its independence.
I'm going to fight these British who I've been fighting
my whole life. And there's something inspiring about these people
who who you know, get out there and do these
things right. They kind of inspire us to you know,
I'm not badass in my actual life, but you know,
(42:23):
there are days where I feel like I don't want
to answer my emails, and then I try to think
about Ville charging seventeen British warships, and I'm like, maybe
I'll answer my emails this morning.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
So you know, it might be badass to dodge an email,
you know what?
Speaker 3 (42:37):
I Yeah, you rebel.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
Yeah, you're lead. You're the tip of the spear on
that one. Right.
Speaker 5 (42:45):
I handed my emails the way he handled the Terrible
and the AJAX. Just delete, just demolish my eail read
delete doctor's office. What do they want? Delete exactly?
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Spam? Likely not with me. It's a joke earlier about uh, nol.
I think we were talking off air about some phone calls, right,
oh yeah, and we also again, folks, Noel, Max and
I are not blowing smoke. We're not blowing rainbows or
trumpets and angel farts here. Badass of the Week is
(43:25):
one of our favorite favorite explorations of exactly what we
are hanging out with today and indeed the entirety of
this week. Pat, thank you so much for coming and
hanging out with us, Benans.
Speaker 6 (43:42):
For having me.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Oh my gosh, Ben, you know, Nolan, I have to
do the check in. Pat, are you okay with this
Ben Thompson guy. Is he all right?
Speaker 6 (43:53):
Yeah, he's all right.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
He seems pretty cool to me. Cool and thanks for
coming back then, just to check it.
Speaker 5 (44:06):
If you want to exit the.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Podcast, well, thanks as always to our super producer, mister
Max Williams. We usually have a long run of credits.
We're going to save you guys some time here except
for one thing. We have to recommend a good friend
of the show that you all should hang out with
if you haven't already. His name is A. J. Jacobs.
Speaker 5 (44:31):
Oh, we had him on our show. He's awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
Yeah, we call him Bahamas for you can never ask
him why not sure either, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
He's a good guy that makes perfect sense. I got
to check out that episode.
Speaker 5 (44:42):
Yeah, we had a great episode with him. I was
doing for a while. I was doing the drink of
the show, where every show I would have some kind
of beverage that was related to whatever we were talking about.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
Then we were doing history.
Speaker 5 (44:55):
Yeah, we were doing a Mongolian Pat had brought some
Mongolian in mythology the Jingar Epic, and those guys all
drink fermented Mare's milk.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Oh in the story. Yeah, oh, good.
Speaker 5 (45:09):
So I ordered fermented Mayor's milk from Mongolia.
Speaker 6 (45:13):
I did not make him do this. This is own initiative.
Speaker 5 (45:18):
It's boozy. Yeah, it's it's fermented, so it's it's alcohol.
It's like a it's you know, it's like a wine
level of alcohol.
Speaker 6 (45:24):
What'd you take?
Speaker 2 (45:26):
Did you all enjoy it?
Speaker 5 (45:27):
I drank it. We don't, you know, we live in
different cities, so I just did it over zoom and
yeah it was. It was really not good.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
It was yeah, I don't know. I got that seven
League stare first.
Speaker 5 (45:39):
Yeah, but that was the show AJ was on. I
drank it and it was. It tasted like hay and
uh and that was the end of the drink of
the show. We never did it again.
Speaker 6 (45:49):
It was that bad.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
Hey is indeed for horses and good good on you
for taking one for the team.
Speaker 5 (45:55):
Yeah, I think that episode is like eighty percent of
that episode is just me gagging.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Ilad you made it well.
Speaker 3 (46:02):
Note to self on alcoholic beverages, never to try. But
thanks again y'all for coming and we will see you
next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your
(46:22):
favorite shows
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.