October 17, 2019 • 23 mins
When French General Antoine Lasalle first arrived at the Prussian-held city of Stettin in 1806, his odds of successfully capturing the community seemed laughably low -- Prussian Lieutenant General Friedrich Romberg had over 5,000 heavily-armed troops at his command, while Lasalle had less than 800 French soldiers. So how exactly did Lasalle convinced Romberg to not only surrender, but also cede his troops, arms and the fortress of Stettin overnight?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in. I am Ben. I don't know, And Ben,
what's your favorite Bob Ross paint color? Probably Surrillian blue.
I like Prussian blue. Yeah, did you know? This is
unreally ident anything. This is weird and doesn't have a
lot to do with today's That was titanium white. It's
good too, titanum when it is like a solid classic,
(00:50):
literally a solid color. There was a band, like a
children's band called Prussian Blue. There were these two little
girls and they were neo Nazis. Yes, that took a
left turn. I just now it's ruined the color for
me because when I didn't believe it when I first
heard of this, Prussian Blue is canceled. Now, well, the
(01:12):
color is fine. Are you sure? I think I feel
like the color is fine. I think it's beautiful color.
But yeah, Prussian Blue is a duo of neo Nazi
pop siblings. Do they have any hits? I don't you
know what I gotta tell you, man, I'm not really
into white supremacist stuff. No, but I was thinking maybe
(01:32):
that didn't come out until this was part of their thing.
They were that very much. I think Nazi forward children's
pop group. I think that like songs about it. But
let's let's go back to cooler territory. Much rather explored
Bob Ross, what what what brings Prussian Blue deer mind? Here?
We're talking about Prussians today. Oh that's way. That is
a very very simple association. Uh much like my fond
(01:56):
association with super producer at Casey Pegram. I'm I'm happy
to report that Prussian Blue grew up to be not
neo Nazis. Their parents kind of put them up to
it when they didn't know better. Casey, this is a
very touching and moving case. Yes, thank you so much. Yeah,
I just pulled up some stuff on them. They stopped touring,
(02:19):
and then in two thousand eleven they renounced that those
politics God talk about terrible parents. No show. It makes
me think, I know you not to get too far
and like we're starting to start talking about neo Nazis topic.
But I have a very distinct memory of remember the
daytime talk shows like Mori and Uh, Sally, Jesse, Raphael
(02:39):
who was the guy with the white hair that was
Dr Phil No that was Phil Don might have been
a doctor. Uh. He was a donnic Hue though. And
I remember very distinctly when I was a kid, they
had uh young uh neo Nazi kids on one of
those episodes, and they were saying all of this horrible,
(03:00):
unbridled racist stuff on regular daytime television. And I was
a little kid, and I was shocked. It was disturbing
to seeing seeing these little like twelve year olds like
saying all these horrible racial slurs and their parents backing
them up. In honestly anyway that that is neither here
nor there. Today we're talking about how a guy by
the name of Von Romberg, which reminds me of the
(03:21):
band the Von Bondies We're not Gonna to go there,
was tricked into surrendering during what's called the Capitulation of Stetton,
which is a really cool name for a conflict. It
is a very strange thing. It sounds like it sounds
like a phrase describing some particular move in martial arts
(03:43):
or sword play, like you know, they parried, but he
responded with the capitulation in Steaton two points to blue,
Yes it is true. On October eighteen, o six, Lieutenant
General Friedrich von Romberg. He was in charge of defending
a city called Stettin. Let's set the scene here. So
(04:06):
at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, all the
way mental Floss puts it, Napoleon Bonaparte pretty much declared
war on everybody, especially tall people hated him, and you
can say had a complex about it, you could, you could, uh.
And for twelve years he and his army slashed through Europe,
(04:29):
battling militaries from twenty different countries. By the time he
was defeated in Waterloo in eighteen fifteen, his battles and
all the chaos he'd stirred up claimed somewhere between three
point five and six million lives. Of those casualties, two
point five million where soldiers. How many of them were
tall people? You know, That's that's what it's up to history.
(04:51):
Because we talked about that propaganda right previously, Napoleon upstad
He wasn't incredibly short. Now, if I'm not mistaken, did
when an episode about Prussian soldiers who were super tall
the postum giants? Wasn't that in Prussia? Yeah, that's correct.
Callback So this is the context in which today's story occurs.
(05:12):
It's October eighteen o six. There are five thousand Prussian
soldiers in this town Stetton, in Poland during what was
called the War of the Fourth Coalition, part of the
Napoleonic Wars, and they are being attacked by French soldiers
and eventually are going to surrender to these French soldiers. However,
(05:37):
remember we said there were five thousand Prussian soldiers in
the city, there were fewer than eight hundred French soldiers
launching the attack. And the French forces were led by
a guy named General Antoine Lassalle. This guy is interesting because, uh,
he was like a larger than life kind of flamboyant,
(05:58):
adventurous type, do would right, and he was known for
his hot takes. He once said, any Hussar who wasn't
dead by age thirty was a blackguard, though he himself
made it past age thirty by by a few years.
He had swag, he he had juice, you know, he
was drinking like a fish, swearing like a sailor. And
(06:20):
he was known to be incredibly courageous and brave because
he would sometimes do unorthodox things like sneak past enemy
lines at night to have romantic encounters with women in
areas controlled by the enemy. So he had almost like
a kind of James Bond vibe, I guess, but a
little more Militarists would be a good name for like
(06:42):
an international spy, because yeah, that's a great idea. It's
almost as good as La Bush. Not as good, but almost,
but less all like La Bush was a man for
all seasons. People who met him off the battlefield said,
you know what, this is a charming guy. He's on
me too. He's witty and I like that he cares
about his family, and his family comes into play a
(07:06):
little bit because he had a lot of connections. Yeah,
he grew up the son of a noble. Um. It's
described in this French Empire dot net article as a
minor noble, which so well quite know what that means, um,
But yeah, he also was the great grand nephew of
Marshall Faber um and that that guy's apparently quite important.
(07:27):
I don't know who that is either, but you can't
have a name like that and be some kind of
slouch um. So he was connected, right, um. And he
became what the French referred to as a sioux lieutenant,
which I wonder it's gotta be. It's gotta be. Casey
was a Sioux, like a sioue of anything just means
like an apprentice kind of right, Yeah, exactly, it's like
an understudy kind of thing. Oh, in the French kitchen
(07:50):
hierarchy is in some ways modeled after military. That's right,
they're brigades at that's what Gordon Ramsay called. So we
just only figured out SUSA so many things. What about
suvi different different etymology entirely, I imagine, I would imagine,
so I would imagine. So our pal Ramsey here at
the office just got a Suvie contraption, will swear by them.
(08:12):
And for the longest time I was like, wait a minute.
So it's like boiled meat. No, it cooks the inside,
but then you see her the outside, so it's like
perfectly seared and succulent and then juicy and like tender
on the inside. So I really want to give it
a go. Yeah, I wouldn't give it a try to.
I don't want to do a homemade mcgever contraption though,
I want to have like the actual machine. It is
(08:33):
the same word suvid means like under a vacuum, so
it's literally like sub vacuum gun on the case. Yeah,
let's go back to lasal lassol Is. He's a child soldier,
(08:54):
right because he becomes a Sulu tenant when he's eleven
years old. Geez, we're doing We've got an other theme
that's popping up his child soldiers. Was it only to
the other day about the little drummer boy clam Our
boy clam who said children make the best soldiers. Uh,
you know he said that, like late in life, you
would have thought hindsight would have given them a little
(09:16):
more perspective than that. They're dumb. They can fit around
small spaces, you know that guy. Yeah, but he grew
up into a strapping five ft eight gentleman, very good looking.
He was a huge fan of mustaches. Um. He liked
(09:36):
to wax his mustaches and curl them around. He was
great on horseback, and there's a story on Napoleon guy
dot com about him riding into a ball like like
a dress fancy dress ball where he made his horse
do a little dance. Guy, I knew how to make
an entrance. Um. Then in the theater of battle in
(09:59):
e Jipps, he was known for defeating a very famous
horseback brigade called the Mameluke Horseman, and in one instance
he actually got off his horse, picked up his sword,
and then got back on, which is not something that
people typically would do. I like that we're spending some
(10:19):
time fleshing out the details of this guy because he
has some weird stuff. This is probably one of my
favorite strange facts about him. This comes from steam at
got dot com. The generals of Napoleon h lassalve the devil.
When he is not fighting, apparently, he takes care of
his reputation with a reckless and hell raising lifestyle. The
(10:41):
main pillars of this are womanizing, dueling, gambling, and drinking.
He created something called the Society of Alcoholics with his colleagues.
There was only one crime in the society, and that
was to not be thirsty. This guy was a little wild,
he really was, but he was also a a famed
military man, so he got a pass on some of
(11:01):
these more uh more decadent behaviors. Right. He served for
several years in Italy. Uh Somewhere in there he started
having an affair with the wife of his general, a
guy by the name of Victor Leopold Berthier, who was
also pretty heavily connected Um to Napoleon. He was the
(11:24):
brother of Napoleon's chief of staff. Then after his paramore
shall we say, got divorced from her husband, LaSalle Um
decided to marry her. They got married, So it wasn't
all just just fun and games. December of eighteen oh three,
he kind of flipped his script a little bit and
became a family man. Yeah, he was taking care of
(11:46):
his wife's children from her previous marriage, and he seemed
to have changed his ways, right. He was. He was
in it to win it. This was the love of
his life. And everybody kind of, like the guy said,
everyone that was on his side as long as he
wasn't sleeping with their significant others. And he's a thing.
These these these exploits of his were not a secret. No,
(12:09):
they were very well done, if anything, and not even
an open secret. And they were just he just kind
of trotted him out there. He really was pretty brazen
about it. But again he kind of turned himself around.
But Napoleon was once asked why he never disciplined Lassalle
for any of this, you know, this misbehavior, and he said, uh,
and this again a quote from an article and French
Empire dot net, where he said, quote, it takes the
(12:32):
stroke of a pen to create a prefect, and this
just he was answering the question was posted him by
a prefect. But it takes twenty years to make a Lassal.
And Napoleon thought so highly of LaSalle he would pay
off his debts. People would come to him and be like,
your boy is crazy. He's a raging lunatic, and I
think he's always drunk in. Napoleon would be like, that's
(12:55):
you know, that's Lassal. Let him. Let him do what
he needs to. Let only do what he needs to do.
And part of it, I think part of the reason
Napoleon still unapologetically adored the guy is because despite his rambunctious,
problematic personality off the field, he was brilliant in battle.
His crew became known as the Infernal Brigade during the
(13:20):
eighteen o six campaign for Prussia, and he fell for
a ruse by a general Bluecher that helped the general
give his army and opportunity to escape. But while he
was chasing this Bluecher guy to make up for his mistake,
he stopped at this town, Stetton. Stetton, the town with
five thousand defenders and almost three hundred cannon and he
(13:44):
threatened it into submission to capitulation with only eight hundred
troopers at his back. He had about five d hussars
under his command to light field guns. Let's talk about Steton.
Steton is a well fortif by ports city as a
garrison of nearly ten thousand men. It's got two one cannons.
(14:06):
It's commanded by Fredrich von Romberg. Right, he was a
super super seasoned veteran fifty years in. He had fought
during the Seven Years War under Frederick the Great, and
this city was prepared for siege. The British Royal Navy
was granted pretty much carte blanche entrance and exit through
(14:28):
their port, so they they they had plenty of supplies.
So on October twenty nine, eighteen o six um, as
the sun began to set, LaSalle sent one of his
men to make a truce, waving that white flag and
to demand that the city surrender, the city's forces surrender,
(14:50):
and he made it very clear that he would, you know,
follow the rules of engagement and and and be an honorable,
an honorable man in its respect. Von Romberg he was
not having this, he said he would fight to the death.
Boom rejected. Last man rejected. Yeah. So about an hour
(15:11):
passes Um, this parlay ends and his guy comes back
um and delivers him a very very ominous messages. If
by eight am you have not surrendered, the town will
be bombarded by our artillery and storm by fifty thousand men.
Fifty thousand men like cotton can kill, only killed fitty,
but this fifty thousand. Uh. Then the garrison will be
(15:34):
put to the sword. I love that phrase. And the
town will be plundered for twenty four hours, very specific well,
plundered for twenty four hours in this situation means everything
you could imagine, pillaging, burning, looting, sexual assault, killing livestock,
just to deprive people of meat. Right. So Romberg speaks
(16:03):
with the town leaders and they say, this is LaSalle.
He's the devil incarnate. You have to you have to
play ball with him. Just look at his mustache. The
man means business. And then there's probably somebody in in
the back who's like, he slapped with my wife, because
that's howls rolled. So the garrison marches out the next morning.
(16:24):
They file past the French forces. They throw their arms
down at their feet Romberg, who's at this point he
had fifty years of experience, right, but he was seventy
seven years old at this time. He negotiates with LaSalle
and when the surrenders finalized, they've seeded five thousand, three
(16:45):
D troops, two one guns and the fortress of Stettin
to the French. This is a huge loss for the
Prussians because they could have withstood the siege. Just look
at the numbers, and there's no way that the French
could have actually take in this area. They were demoralized,
they were too disorganized to do anything really to launch
(17:06):
an encounter offensives. I mean, Napoleon had first engaged the
Prussians in battle on October nine. In less than a month,
he had defeated them, like soundly defeated them. At the beginning,
the Prussian army had about two hundred and fifty thousand
people versus a hundred and sixty thousand French soldiers. But
(17:27):
the French killed sixty five thousand Prussian soldiers, took a
hundred and fifty thousand prisoners of war, and they only
lost about fifteen thousand people, which I know sounds cold
to say only fifteen thousand, But look at the numbers
the French were mopping the floor with. Seemed like human
life was pretty expendable in these situations. I mean, guys,
(17:47):
that's war for your worth? What makes war hell? Um?
But yeah, I mean the French absolutely crushed as executives
are wont to say um, and the Prussian generals just
you know, we're left with no option but to surrender.
So that's the larger context of the war, because we
(18:07):
we we have to ask ourselves, well, why did this
guy take? What does Prussian general take? This French army's
word for the number of people they had. That's because
a lot of the generals at this point are hopeless.
They feel helpless. They've been getting mopped left and right
across the area. So we can conjecture a little bit
in this pure speculation, we can conjecture that Romberg thought, well,
(18:33):
the French are here, so this is terrible for us anyway,
we should just surrender and try to save some people's lives,
because he knows the bigger picture. He knows how they
are outclassed and outranked overall. Right, But in this particular situation,
the French forces were inferior to the Prussian forces in
this town exactly, and they could have one. When von
(18:56):
Romberg discovered that he had been had, when he learned
just how tiny the French force actually was, it was
far too late and he had to stick to the
agreement they negotiated. So LaSalle becomes a national hero. Von
Romberg becomes a laughing stock. He's tried by court martial
in eighteen o nine. He's convicted of surrendering without a fight.
(19:18):
Do you know what the sentence for that was? Death? Life, imprisonment.
It was pretty close. I you know, it would take
a philosopher to figure out which one is worse, right,
I agree, honestly, it does strike me as something like
that would be such a dishonorable thing that it would
be like cowardice, you know, or like tantamount to treason.
Surrendering without a fight, that's that's no good, heavy as
(19:41):
the head that wears the crown though exactly. But it's
with with you know, like the French were so wrapped
up in all this hubris, you know, go Napoleon especially,
that'd be a pretty big offense to dislike, not even
put up a fight. Well, the Prussian general too, he
knew what the score was because his first statement was,
no will fight you until every las one of us
is dead. You know what I mean. He came out
(20:02):
of the gate with this kind of expectation. So what
happens to Lasol afterwards? Let's fast forward, because it turns
out that Lassol appears to have correctly predicted his own
death weird in e t o nine in the morning
the battle of Wagram, Lasoul had this feeling of premonition,
(20:24):
a hunch, and so he drew up this petition at
the last minute to the Emperor, and he said, take
care of my children, and he gives it to one
of his friends to give it to Napoleon in case
I die today, pretty much. And towards the end of
the battle, he tries to pursue an Austrian core that's
running away. What Austrian core? Ceo rps, ohh, I got you.
(20:47):
I thought it was some kind of bird like like
like an ostrich so I don't know why. Sorry, please continue, Ben.
He grabs some other forces that are a little bit
slower than his typical hussars that it works with, and
then he appears as a lone figure out in the
front and Austrian grenadier lines up, a shot fires, hits
(21:08):
him in the forehead, kills him instantly. Somehow that morning
he had this idea that he would die. And so
there ends our tail for today. But you know what,
this is not the end of the story of Napoleon's
other generals. Shout out to anyone who enjoyed our our
episode on the rabbits that beat Napoleon back. Uh, and
(21:31):
let us know what other strange, eccentric, larger than life
military figures you'd like to learn more about. Please do
let us know on our Facebook group, the Ridiculous History,
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(21:52):
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Now Noel Brown. You can find me getting kicked into
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my Instagram at ben Bowland. You can also find my
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(22:13):
Twitter where I'm at ben Bowland h s W. Huge
thanks to super producer Casey Pegram, Alex Williams, who composed
our theme, research associate Gabe Losier, Big Things to Eaves,
Jeff Coch, Christopher Hasciodis, the rest of the Ridiculous History family,
even Yes, Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister. If
you did not enjoy this episode or you have a
(22:35):
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We'll see you next time, folks Wow. For more podcasts
(23:01):
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in. I am Ben. I don't know, And Ben,
what's your favorite Bob Ross paint color? Probably Surrillian blue.
I like Prussian blue. Yeah, did you know? This is
unreally ident anything. This is weird and doesn't have a
lot to do with today's That was titanium white. It's
good too, titanum when it is like a solid classic,
(00:50):
literally a solid color. There was a band, like a
children's band called Prussian Blue. There were these two little
girls and they were neo Nazis. Yes, that took a
left turn. I just now it's ruined the color for
me because when I didn't believe it when I first
heard of this, Prussian Blue is canceled. Now, well, the
(01:12):
color is fine. Are you sure? I think I feel
like the color is fine. I think it's beautiful color.
But yeah, Prussian Blue is a duo of neo Nazi
pop siblings. Do they have any hits? I don't you
know what I gotta tell you, man, I'm not really
into white supremacist stuff. No, but I was thinking maybe
(01:32):
that didn't come out until this was part of their thing.
They were that very much. I think Nazi forward children's
pop group. I think that like songs about it. But
let's let's go back to cooler territory. Much rather explored
Bob Ross, what what what brings Prussian Blue deer mind? Here?
We're talking about Prussians today. Oh that's way. That is
a very very simple association. Uh much like my fond
(01:56):
association with super producer at Casey Pegram. I'm I'm happy
to report that Prussian Blue grew up to be not
neo Nazis. Their parents kind of put them up to
it when they didn't know better. Casey, this is a
very touching and moving case. Yes, thank you so much. Yeah,
I just pulled up some stuff on them. They stopped touring,
(02:19):
and then in two thousand eleven they renounced that those
politics God talk about terrible parents. No show. It makes
me think, I know you not to get too far
and like we're starting to start talking about neo Nazis topic.
But I have a very distinct memory of remember the
daytime talk shows like Mori and Uh, Sally, Jesse, Raphael
(02:39):
who was the guy with the white hair that was
Dr Phil No that was Phil Don might have been
a doctor. Uh. He was a donnic Hue though. And
I remember very distinctly when I was a kid, they
had uh young uh neo Nazi kids on one of
those episodes, and they were saying all of this horrible,
(03:00):
unbridled racist stuff on regular daytime television. And I was
a little kid, and I was shocked. It was disturbing
to seeing seeing these little like twelve year olds like
saying all these horrible racial slurs and their parents backing
them up. In honestly anyway that that is neither here
nor there. Today we're talking about how a guy by
the name of Von Romberg, which reminds me of the
(03:21):
band the Von Bondies We're not Gonna to go there,
was tricked into surrendering during what's called the Capitulation of Stetton,
which is a really cool name for a conflict. It
is a very strange thing. It sounds like it sounds
like a phrase describing some particular move in martial arts
(03:43):
or sword play, like you know, they parried, but he
responded with the capitulation in Steaton two points to blue,
Yes it is true. On October eighteen, o six, Lieutenant
General Friedrich von Romberg. He was in charge of defending
a city called Stettin. Let's set the scene here. So
(04:06):
at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, all the
way mental Floss puts it, Napoleon Bonaparte pretty much declared
war on everybody, especially tall people hated him, and you
can say had a complex about it, you could, you could, uh.
And for twelve years he and his army slashed through Europe,
(04:29):
battling militaries from twenty different countries. By the time he
was defeated in Waterloo in eighteen fifteen, his battles and
all the chaos he'd stirred up claimed somewhere between three
point five and six million lives. Of those casualties, two
point five million where soldiers. How many of them were
tall people? You know, That's that's what it's up to history.
(04:51):
Because we talked about that propaganda right previously, Napoleon upstad
He wasn't incredibly short. Now, if I'm not mistaken, did
when an episode about Prussian soldiers who were super tall
the postum giants? Wasn't that in Prussia? Yeah, that's correct.
Callback So this is the context in which today's story occurs.
(05:12):
It's October eighteen o six. There are five thousand Prussian
soldiers in this town Stetton, in Poland during what was
called the War of the Fourth Coalition, part of the
Napoleonic Wars, and they are being attacked by French soldiers
and eventually are going to surrender to these French soldiers. However,
(05:37):
remember we said there were five thousand Prussian soldiers in
the city, there were fewer than eight hundred French soldiers
launching the attack. And the French forces were led by
a guy named General Antoine Lassalle. This guy is interesting because, uh,
he was like a larger than life kind of flamboyant,
(05:58):
adventurous type, do would right, and he was known for
his hot takes. He once said, any Hussar who wasn't
dead by age thirty was a blackguard, though he himself
made it past age thirty by by a few years.
He had swag, he he had juice, you know, he
was drinking like a fish, swearing like a sailor. And
(06:20):
he was known to be incredibly courageous and brave because
he would sometimes do unorthodox things like sneak past enemy
lines at night to have romantic encounters with women in
areas controlled by the enemy. So he had almost like
a kind of James Bond vibe, I guess, but a
little more Militarists would be a good name for like
(06:42):
an international spy, because yeah, that's a great idea. It's
almost as good as La Bush. Not as good, but almost,
but less all like La Bush was a man for
all seasons. People who met him off the battlefield said,
you know what, this is a charming guy. He's on
me too. He's witty and I like that he cares
about his family, and his family comes into play a
(07:06):
little bit because he had a lot of connections. Yeah,
he grew up the son of a noble. Um. It's
described in this French Empire dot net article as a
minor noble, which so well quite know what that means, um,
But yeah, he also was the great grand nephew of
Marshall Faber um and that that guy's apparently quite important.
(07:27):
I don't know who that is either, but you can't
have a name like that and be some kind of
slouch um. So he was connected, right, um. And he
became what the French referred to as a sioux lieutenant,
which I wonder it's gotta be. It's gotta be. Casey
was a Sioux, like a sioue of anything just means
like an apprentice kind of right, Yeah, exactly, it's like
an understudy kind of thing. Oh, in the French kitchen
(07:50):
hierarchy is in some ways modeled after military. That's right,
they're brigades at that's what Gordon Ramsay called. So we
just only figured out SUSA so many things. What about
suvi different different etymology entirely, I imagine, I would imagine,
so I would imagine. So our pal Ramsey here at
the office just got a Suvie contraption, will swear by them.
(08:12):
And for the longest time I was like, wait a minute.
So it's like boiled meat. No, it cooks the inside,
but then you see her the outside, so it's like
perfectly seared and succulent and then juicy and like tender
on the inside. So I really want to give it
a go. Yeah, I wouldn't give it a try to.
I don't want to do a homemade mcgever contraption though,
I want to have like the actual machine. It is
(08:33):
the same word suvid means like under a vacuum, so
it's literally like sub vacuum gun on the case. Yeah,
let's go back to lasal lassol Is. He's a child soldier,
(08:54):
right because he becomes a Sulu tenant when he's eleven
years old. Geez, we're doing We've got an other theme
that's popping up his child soldiers. Was it only to
the other day about the little drummer boy clam Our
boy clam who said children make the best soldiers. Uh,
you know he said that, like late in life, you
would have thought hindsight would have given them a little
(09:16):
more perspective than that. They're dumb. They can fit around
small spaces, you know that guy. Yeah, but he grew
up into a strapping five ft eight gentleman, very good looking.
He was a huge fan of mustaches. Um. He liked
(09:36):
to wax his mustaches and curl them around. He was
great on horseback, and there's a story on Napoleon guy
dot com about him riding into a ball like like
a dress fancy dress ball where he made his horse
do a little dance. Guy, I knew how to make
an entrance. Um. Then in the theater of battle in
(09:59):
e Jipps, he was known for defeating a very famous
horseback brigade called the Mameluke Horseman, and in one instance
he actually got off his horse, picked up his sword,
and then got back on, which is not something that
people typically would do. I like that we're spending some
(10:19):
time fleshing out the details of this guy because he
has some weird stuff. This is probably one of my
favorite strange facts about him. This comes from steam at
got dot com. The generals of Napoleon h lassalve the devil.
When he is not fighting, apparently, he takes care of
his reputation with a reckless and hell raising lifestyle. The
(10:41):
main pillars of this are womanizing, dueling, gambling, and drinking.
He created something called the Society of Alcoholics with his colleagues.
There was only one crime in the society, and that
was to not be thirsty. This guy was a little wild,
he really was, but he was also a a famed
military man, so he got a pass on some of
(11:01):
these more uh more decadent behaviors. Right. He served for
several years in Italy. Uh Somewhere in there he started
having an affair with the wife of his general, a
guy by the name of Victor Leopold Berthier, who was
also pretty heavily connected Um to Napoleon. He was the
(11:24):
brother of Napoleon's chief of staff. Then after his paramore
shall we say, got divorced from her husband, LaSalle Um
decided to marry her. They got married, So it wasn't
all just just fun and games. December of eighteen oh three,
he kind of flipped his script a little bit and
became a family man. Yeah, he was taking care of
(11:46):
his wife's children from her previous marriage, and he seemed
to have changed his ways, right. He was. He was
in it to win it. This was the love of
his life. And everybody kind of, like the guy said,
everyone that was on his side as long as he
wasn't sleeping with their significant others. And he's a thing.
These these these exploits of his were not a secret. No,
(12:09):
they were very well done, if anything, and not even
an open secret. And they were just he just kind
of trotted him out there. He really was pretty brazen
about it. But again he kind of turned himself around.
But Napoleon was once asked why he never disciplined Lassalle
for any of this, you know, this misbehavior, and he said, uh,
and this again a quote from an article and French
Empire dot net, where he said, quote, it takes the
(12:32):
stroke of a pen to create a prefect, and this
just he was answering the question was posted him by
a prefect. But it takes twenty years to make a Lassal.
And Napoleon thought so highly of LaSalle he would pay
off his debts. People would come to him and be like,
your boy is crazy. He's a raging lunatic, and I
think he's always drunk in. Napoleon would be like, that's
(12:55):
you know, that's Lassal. Let him. Let him do what
he needs to. Let only do what he needs to do.
And part of it, I think part of the reason
Napoleon still unapologetically adored the guy is because despite his rambunctious,
problematic personality off the field, he was brilliant in battle.
His crew became known as the Infernal Brigade during the
(13:20):
eighteen o six campaign for Prussia, and he fell for
a ruse by a general Bluecher that helped the general
give his army and opportunity to escape. But while he
was chasing this Bluecher guy to make up for his mistake,
he stopped at this town, Stetton. Stetton, the town with
five thousand defenders and almost three hundred cannon and he
(13:44):
threatened it into submission to capitulation with only eight hundred
troopers at his back. He had about five d hussars
under his command to light field guns. Let's talk about Steton.
Steton is a well fortif by ports city as a
garrison of nearly ten thousand men. It's got two one cannons.
(14:06):
It's commanded by Fredrich von Romberg. Right, he was a
super super seasoned veteran fifty years in. He had fought
during the Seven Years War under Frederick the Great, and
this city was prepared for siege. The British Royal Navy
was granted pretty much carte blanche entrance and exit through
(14:28):
their port, so they they they had plenty of supplies.
So on October twenty nine, eighteen o six um, as
the sun began to set, LaSalle sent one of his
men to make a truce, waving that white flag and
to demand that the city surrender, the city's forces surrender,
(14:50):
and he made it very clear that he would, you know,
follow the rules of engagement and and and be an honorable,
an honorable man in its respect. Von Romberg he was
not having this, he said he would fight to the death.
Boom rejected. Last man rejected. Yeah. So about an hour
(15:11):
passes Um, this parlay ends and his guy comes back
um and delivers him a very very ominous messages. If
by eight am you have not surrendered, the town will
be bombarded by our artillery and storm by fifty thousand men.
Fifty thousand men like cotton can kill, only killed fitty,
but this fifty thousand. Uh. Then the garrison will be
(15:34):
put to the sword. I love that phrase. And the
town will be plundered for twenty four hours, very specific well,
plundered for twenty four hours in this situation means everything
you could imagine, pillaging, burning, looting, sexual assault, killing livestock,
just to deprive people of meat. Right. So Romberg speaks
(16:03):
with the town leaders and they say, this is LaSalle.
He's the devil incarnate. You have to you have to
play ball with him. Just look at his mustache. The
man means business. And then there's probably somebody in in
the back who's like, he slapped with my wife, because
that's howls rolled. So the garrison marches out the next morning.
(16:24):
They file past the French forces. They throw their arms
down at their feet Romberg, who's at this point he
had fifty years of experience, right, but he was seventy
seven years old at this time. He negotiates with LaSalle
and when the surrenders finalized, they've seeded five thousand, three
(16:45):
D troops, two one guns and the fortress of Stettin
to the French. This is a huge loss for the
Prussians because they could have withstood the siege. Just look
at the numbers, and there's no way that the French
could have actually take in this area. They were demoralized,
they were too disorganized to do anything really to launch
(17:06):
an encounter offensives. I mean, Napoleon had first engaged the
Prussians in battle on October nine. In less than a month,
he had defeated them, like soundly defeated them. At the beginning,
the Prussian army had about two hundred and fifty thousand
people versus a hundred and sixty thousand French soldiers. But
(17:27):
the French killed sixty five thousand Prussian soldiers, took a
hundred and fifty thousand prisoners of war, and they only
lost about fifteen thousand people, which I know sounds cold
to say only fifteen thousand, But look at the numbers
the French were mopping the floor with. Seemed like human
life was pretty expendable in these situations. I mean, guys,
(17:47):
that's war for your worth? What makes war hell? Um?
But yeah, I mean the French absolutely crushed as executives
are wont to say um, and the Prussian generals just
you know, we're left with no option but to surrender.
So that's the larger context of the war, because we
(18:07):
we we have to ask ourselves, well, why did this
guy take? What does Prussian general take? This French army's
word for the number of people they had. That's because
a lot of the generals at this point are hopeless.
They feel helpless. They've been getting mopped left and right
across the area. So we can conjecture a little bit
in this pure speculation, we can conjecture that Romberg thought, well,
(18:33):
the French are here, so this is terrible for us anyway,
we should just surrender and try to save some people's lives,
because he knows the bigger picture. He knows how they
are outclassed and outranked overall. Right, But in this particular situation,
the French forces were inferior to the Prussian forces in
this town exactly, and they could have one. When von
(18:56):
Romberg discovered that he had been had, when he learned
just how tiny the French force actually was, it was
far too late and he had to stick to the
agreement they negotiated. So LaSalle becomes a national hero. Von
Romberg becomes a laughing stock. He's tried by court martial
in eighteen o nine. He's convicted of surrendering without a fight.
(19:18):
Do you know what the sentence for that was? Death? Life, imprisonment.
It was pretty close. I you know, it would take
a philosopher to figure out which one is worse, right,
I agree, honestly, it does strike me as something like
that would be such a dishonorable thing that it would
be like cowardice, you know, or like tantamount to treason.
Surrendering without a fight, that's that's no good, heavy as
(19:41):
the head that wears the crown though exactly. But it's
with with you know, like the French were so wrapped
up in all this hubris, you know, go Napoleon especially,
that'd be a pretty big offense to dislike, not even
put up a fight. Well, the Prussian general too, he
knew what the score was because his first statement was,
no will fight you until every las one of us
is dead. You know what I mean. He came out
(20:02):
of the gate with this kind of expectation. So what
happens to Lasol afterwards? Let's fast forward, because it turns
out that Lassol appears to have correctly predicted his own
death weird in e t o nine in the morning
the battle of Wagram, Lasoul had this feeling of premonition,
(20:24):
a hunch, and so he drew up this petition at
the last minute to the Emperor, and he said, take
care of my children, and he gives it to one
of his friends to give it to Napoleon in case
I die today, pretty much. And towards the end of
the battle, he tries to pursue an Austrian core that's
running away. What Austrian core? Ceo rps, ohh, I got you.
(20:47):
I thought it was some kind of bird like like
like an ostrich so I don't know why. Sorry, please continue, Ben.
He grabs some other forces that are a little bit
slower than his typical hussars that it works with, and
then he appears as a lone figure out in the
front and Austrian grenadier lines up, a shot fires, hits
(21:08):
him in the forehead, kills him instantly. Somehow that morning
he had this idea that he would die. And so
there ends our tail for today. But you know what,
this is not the end of the story of Napoleon's
other generals. Shout out to anyone who enjoyed our our
episode on the rabbits that beat Napoleon back. Uh, and
(21:31):
let us know what other strange, eccentric, larger than life
military figures you'd like to learn more about. Please do
let us know on our Facebook group, the Ridiculous History,
and all you have to do to get in is
name me or Ben or give us some point of
reference that makes us know that you're not just some
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find us on social media Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, where we're
(21:52):
Ridiculous History, or you can find us individually on our
personal social accounts. I am only on Instagram at how
Now Noel Brown. You can find me getting kicked into
and out of various countries, communities, places, and adventures on
my Instagram at ben Bowland. You can also find my
hot takes, Terrible Puns, one liners, and shower thoughts on
(22:13):
Twitter where I'm at ben Bowland h s W. Huge
thanks to super producer Casey Pegram, Alex Williams, who composed
our theme, research associate Gabe Losier, Big Things to Eaves,
Jeff Coch, Christopher Hasciodis, the rest of the Ridiculous History family,
even Yes, Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister. If
you did not enjoy this episode or you have a
(22:35):
bone to pick with us, you can right to our
complaint department correctly, that's Jonathan Strickland, no spaces at I
heart radio dot com very true, Or you can write
to us directly at Ridiculous at I heart radio dot com.
We'll see you next time, folks Wow. For more podcasts
(23:01):
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