The Great Northern War

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You. I'm now listening to soft core History.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to softcore History. I'm your
host of the week.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Damnit.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Chester joined us always by Rob Fox.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
What's going on?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
And we have a third band joining us on the
couch in my home, Scott welcome, what's up?

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Yeah, we're couch boys. Scott Lopez big fan of being
couch boys. You guys, you're in the Lucky Pierre seat today. Yeah,
it feels great. Half my butt cheeks spread on the frame.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Like a Lucky Pierre.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
It feels great, very comfy here. Thanks, guys.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
I feel like I have the best position because we're
obviously going that way with the Lucky Pierre.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Is that how we're going?

Speaker 1 (00:48):
So?

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Rob, you're in the front, I'm the cabooz swamp. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
See, it's a Lucky Pierre varies wildly differently from a
human centipede. Human centipede, you want to be in the front,
Lucky Pierre, you want to be in the middle.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Look at me, go.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
I know that Dan thinks he has a bad Scott
has the best.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
I get the best of both worlds, like Hannah Montana.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Mm hm, yeah, I'm just I'm just getting it. I'm
just I just get to enjoy it because I didn't
write it, just like in the show, I didn't write
the show, so I just get to enjoy the show.
And in the Lucky Pierre, I don't have to do
any work. I'm just open holes, open holes open on
the show, it's my ear holes. In this semi hypothetical my.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Hole, you would figure out a way to be a
dead fish in scenario, what do you want me to do?
Just lay there? I guess be a power bottom throw
it back.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
It's hard to do like you can't there's too many
factors in a Lucky Pear one on one. Yeah, you
can go full power bottom, but if we're talking to train,
I mean, there's a lot of other things to consider.
Sometimes it's best to just lead by letting your team play.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
We're going handhelds today. I couldn't figure out how to
do a third mounted mic in the middle without it
being extremely awkward or tipping over a lot of things.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Professional we could have made it work.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
I like the handheld a it goes back to our
original days, and B I just like I feel like
I have more personality.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
It's true we have now celebrated our five year anniversary
as a show. Whoa, and we started with these kind
of handheld mics.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
I didn't even know that. When was the five.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Year end of August?

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Oh cool? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, yeah, it was like late late August. We did
not acknowledge it.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, that's why I had no idea. That's congrats.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
What is the five year anniversary?

Speaker 2 (02:35):
It is officially like August thirty first?

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Oh is it?

Speaker 3 (02:39):
We started right at the end of August.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
M hm. So here we are baby five years later?

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Did you guys start on a couch too?

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Rob's spare bedroom also closet.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
First closet that yeah, yeah yeah, and then and then
my future son's room.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Although we were kind of like all around a boom
mic yep. Yeah. And then we've evolved into handhelds.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yeah, and then then we got mounted. Five year is
the wood anniversary to keep a gay joke going, the
wood wood, and so we need to get each other
a wood gift.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
I got plenty of time.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Maybe I'll just kind of carve me some little butt
plug please say. They're probably pretty easy to whittle too.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
Yeah, that's not a lot of work, to be honest,
that's just a sticky saying let me make.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
A face on it, give it some personality.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah. Well, if you're new to the show, welcome into
the softcore history. I promise we are going to get
to the topic.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
We gotta warm up, we gotta take some VP.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yeah, yep, we do. But it's a long episode today. Boys,
I got a lot of pages.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
How what's your note count? Because usually I feel like,
for me in a normal episodes like.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Five or six, I did thirteen pages. Boy, all right,
this is unemployed Dan.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
I really hoping I was gonna catch the second half
of Sunday Night Football Day. But that's fine.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Let's fucking go, baby, We'll.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Power through this. Today's episode centers around a great and
powerful nation. Can I get a guess? I'll give you
ten guesses and you will not get it. That is
so many guesses.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
So it doesn't exist. It does exist currently, I mean currently.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Is it a great power in the world today? It
could be. I could be tricking you.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Australia.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Not Australia.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
It never has been, all right. I just feels like
a left field twist sort of situation.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
We're talking about the Turks.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
We're not talking about the Ottoman Turks.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
Damn they are a part of the story, of course
they are. All right, that tells me a lot. We're
talking about Austria.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
We're not talking about Austria.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Okay, all right, I'm out. I don't know, man.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
We're talking, of course about the great and powerful nation
of Sweden.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
That was my next guest.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
Damn, it didn't realize the Ottoman Turks played a big
role in that. But I'm gonna learn something today.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
You're going to learn a lot today. I learned so
much doing this episode.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
Sweden had a moment.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
This was their moment.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
And I will say this, So we're talking probably eighteenth century,
a lot of eighth are we going through, like the
whole history?

Speaker 2 (05:07):
It's really sixteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah, that's the eighteenth century.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
The sixteen hundreds are not the eighteenth century.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
The seventeen hundreds is.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yes, but we're also talking about like the entire sixteen
hundreds in the setup.

Speaker 3 (05:18):
Okay, I'm just saying they were bucking in the eighteenth
century a little bit.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
They were.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
They're a great faction to play with an empire total war.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
Is that where Zens came from? Or is that Switzerland?
I think it's Sweden, Right, it feels like a Swiss thing,
the Swiss with the nicotine pouches or something that feels
like a Swiss thing. Actually, no, it feels like Swedish.
Actually it feels like some of my keiass cigarette type shit.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah, everybody I know from Sweden is like very low energy.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
There's a lot of countries that I don't necessarily envy,
but they know that they are beyond their glory years.
They've accepted it and there's no getting it back. Yeah,
there's no getting it back. It's over. So all they
have to do is just cruise control it. That's the difference.

(06:06):
That's one of the hard parts about living in America
is that you're living in a country that's like, oh god,
oh fuck, we run everything.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
We gotta go go go, go, go, go, go, go, go,
go go go.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
And like in you know, Sweden, they're like, eh, it's fed,
that's fine.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
That's a lot of great empires got Greece, Italy. They
don't really participate in the world today.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
No, barely.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
They don't do anything like we had our run.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, we had our run. Flags fly forever now they rest.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
Yeah, yeah, the banners hung and we're good.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
Well. When Christian the Second of Denmark executed much of
the Swedish high nobility at Stockholm's Bloodbath in fifteen twenty
despite promises of amnesty, he ended the century long Swedish
Civil War between the various noble houses, jockey and for
power in the Land of just Enough. Yes, that is

(06:56):
a real Swedish thing. They call it the Land of
justin nihough.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
Yeah, that tracks because it is. It really is like
just enough to live. Like if you go any for
the north, you got Greenland basically, not that Greenland's directly
north of Sweden, but you have like a Greenland situation.
Sweden's like the last place where it's just like there
is just enough resources here that we can make a

(07:20):
nice little life.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
It's also how I live my life. I care just
enough to keep going, you know, very basic. I get money,
I spend it, I care just enough.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
We can adopt some Swedish philosophy here.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yeah, I'm looking forward to this.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
He galvanized resistance and elimined all possible resistance to Gustav Eriksson,
who incited the peasants and mountain men to revolt, allied
with the Hansa, which was a commercial and defensive alliance
of merchant guilds and market towns and crushed King Christian's forces.
Gustav the First was elected king and proved to be

(07:58):
a great diplomat, but also had some luck on his side.
The Hansa was in a state of decline and Denmark
fell into their own civil war.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
God, what's the Danish Civil War?

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Like?

Speaker 1 (08:09):
What are you even fighting over? What do you It's a.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
Lot of civil wars, actually, most civil wars, maybe because
the American Civil War was over something so giant that
I'll see like Sudan and I'll be like, I'll be like,
what are you even fighting over? Like what what are
you trying to accomplish or rule? Like just stop killing
each other. There's nothing.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
Sweden, in fact, has never been a feudal country. It
allowed Gustav to build a centralized state without having to
fight a large class of nobility. Swedish peasants were compared
to continental serfs, well off, motivated, fought for their rights,
and resisted violently any attempt to encroach on their old rights,
including representation in the Swedish Parliament. So they had kind

(08:58):
of like a middle class.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
Yeah, you give him a centimeter they'll take a kilometer.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
Gustaf would ally with the peasants as they were a
real power factor, and use their fear of increased noble
rights to get their support for him to make his
monarchy hereditary instead of elective.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
They're like, man, the last thing I was some noble
rich asshole ruling me.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
Let's look this king up. This guy feels right.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
I feel like everyone's like back then, though, like you're
pretty monarchy brained anyway.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
You're like, well, we have to have a king, right,
It's like this dude's cool. Yeah, he rides for us.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Let's just ride them in.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
Look, it's it's the fifteen hundred, sixteen hundreds. We're gonna
have a king, all right.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
Let's just get a cool one.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
The nobility is not strong enough to resist, as the
land ownership amongst them is concentrated at the top. Most
do not own enough land to live comfortably off of
and have to become administrators and officers in service of
the state rather than states within the state as in
many other nations. Sweden is rich in natural resources. You

(10:05):
had iron, copper, silver wood, tar heroin, which was made
into oil. Access to copper and silver, and most of
the peasants grow some kind of cash crop, allowed for
a coin based economy to replace bartering earlier than in
many other nations, further increasing their effectiveness of their economy.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
What is their cash crop? It ain't coffee or cotton.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
I just imagine it's like wheat.

Speaker 3 (10:32):
Is that a Gues's not even a cash crop though,
that's like a staple crop. I'm just trying to even
imagine what they were growing there. That's like a cat, Like,
it's not tobacco cash crops, Like I feel like cash crops.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
Like you can't eat it.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
Essentially, it's a crop that's like will not sustain you,
like your body. You get money for get good money
for it. But maybe they're just growing harring. I also
like that herring is like such a big part of
their economy because obviously it's like they just pickle it
and eat it for every meal, and then they also
make oil out of it. Herring is like they're buffalo.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah. It says a large portion of Sweden is dedicated
to growing wheat, barley and oats for cereal.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
Interesting awesome, they're the inventors of cereal.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
I mean, barley is like kind of a cash crop.
That makes sense, Like barley can go either way because
you can do bread and stuff with barley, but obviously
you can do like booze and shit too, which is.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
That's why they're a chill place.

Speaker 3 (11:28):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
Sweden got Estonia from the Crumblin Livonian Confederacy and the
important trading city of Ravel in the Ingrain war against
Russia during Russia's time of troubles, a long period of
civil war unrest.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
And you can't call one single time period in Russia
their time of trouble.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
I was gonna say, most of their existence is the
time of trouble.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
Time of Troubles Volume eleven, Like it just fucking never stops.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Sweden captured Ingria and the mouth of the Never River,
which meant that almost all trade to and from Russia
had to go through Swedish tolls, creating a major source
of income for the Swedish state.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Hell yeah, fuck them.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
From sixteen hundred to sixteen twenty nine against polling, Gustav's
second ad off created a mobile light artillery that could
support the infantry directly on the battlefield and flexible and
mobile formations that were much more effective.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
What's their artillery like? Just ballistas and catapults.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
Is so he was kind of like an innovator for
the artillery, where he's like, we're gonna have units that
are dedicated like artillery. They're gonna support directly on the
battlefield and you can kind of like move it along.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
Oh, cannons and shit, yeah, this is sixteen hundreds. I
don't know that they're rocking cannons at that point.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
They wouldn't. It wouldn't surprise me if they had swords
and spears. Yeah, it's fair.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
I think at this point too, Russia controls Finland, so
Russia like abts Sweden. There's no buffer right now.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
Sweden on's Finland.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
Sweden on's Finland. At this point, well, either way, they're
right up next to each other. Good for Sweden though.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
They had excellent generals and started a strategy of endless
war and plunder on foreign soil to keep its military
industrial complex rolling.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Well it's in their blood.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Sweden kept the Hasburgs more than busy and unable to
unite against France, who paid Sweden for their efforts. So
during the kind of sixteen hundreds under Gustav the second
add off, they're constantly just going to war with other
nations to profit. Yeah, which is sick.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
That's so cool.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Their ancestors were Vikings like of course.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
Sweden ravaged, murdered, pillaged, plundered and raped its way through
Germany in the Thirty Years War from sixteen thirty to
sixteen forty eight, Poland from sixteen fifty five to sixteen sixty,
and ravaged Denmark and warsh from sixteen thirty five to
sixteen forty five. Europeans joked that everything nice and cultural
in Sweden was taken from Prague in sixteen four forty

(14:00):
eight and Warsaw in sixteen fifty five.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
Probably two, but that's fine.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
Charles the eleventh or Karl created a citizen soldier part
time army where peasants were freed from tax duties if
they equipped soldiers and provided them acroft or part of
their land. Before this, much of Sweden's army was German
and Scottish mercenaries fighting for the Swedish crown. Seventy percent
of the state budget went into this and created an

(14:25):
actual Swedish army of about sixty seven thousand men and
eight thousand in the navy.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
That's pretty solid, to be honest.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
That sounds he's not a big nation. It's a nation
of about like one point five million at this point.

Speaker 3 (14:38):
Yeah, sixty thousand standing army. It's big in some standing
armies now, like in real countries.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah. They would train and drill two to three months
out of the year outside of war, and by the
late seventeenth century had experienced out the ass in real
battles where they were greatly outnumbered and still pulled out dubs.

Speaker 3 (14:57):
Was a lot of it due to their artillery, Yeah,
because they were kind of like revolutionary in that aspect. Yeah,
because I mean so like was the artillery pieces were
part of like an infantry unit essentially. Yeah, okay, so
instead of it being a separate artillery unit.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
They had those, but they also had like a mobile
right right.

Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah, it's almost like that's almost like honestly like a
proto like German blitzkrieg situation where they just completely revolutionized
mechanized infantry. It was almost like, uh, yeah, I'm just
mobile artillery.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
That's sweet.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
The fact of the matter, though, was they couldn't really
afford to take losses like many other many of their
neighbors with much larger populations, So the rest of Swedish
society was basically rearranged in supported the armed forces. It
was a nation build on more.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
So, that's no pyrrhic victories allowed in Sweden. Like you
got to get that dub and get it real clean.
You can't really lose guys either. Yeah, you've got to
launch artillery until they give up.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
But you know what, dude, that honestly, that's a way
to like revolutionize fighting because now all of a sudden,
you're like, hey boy, we lost a lot of guys
just marching in a line at that other line. We
got to take cover.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
We can't let that many people die, Like, we got
to start shooting from behind fucking fences and shit. It
blows my mind how long it took for people to
realize that.

Speaker 3 (16:17):
Well, yeah, I mean crazy, they wanted to just like
concentrate fire. I guess there's no I don't know. There
had to be so many people just standing there that
were like, there's got to be a better way. There's
got to be a better way than this.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
At this point, their empire nearly encircles the entire Baltic Sea.
They dominate trade, and their army is world class. And
that gets us to today's topic, the Great Northern War.
Hear about this? Know about this?

Speaker 1 (16:45):
No?

Speaker 2 (16:46):
No, you've never heard of the Great Northern War.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
I haven't heard about much, especially not this. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
I didn't hear about this either until I actually researched it,
and uh, wildly fascinated. Sweden took on essentially all of Europe.

Speaker 3 (17:01):
Dude, that was so cool. I'm telling you, this is
all I know about Sweden historically.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
Really, I don't know much.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
They are a good ass faction in Empire total War.
I'm just saying they are fucking great to play as.

Speaker 2 (17:15):
I'm not kidding. Everyone that surrounds them, obviously, because of
how they build up their empire is pissed how they
did it, and they want blood. They want revenge.

Speaker 3 (17:27):
Eventually, the like cause it was they were kind of
like France's like not proto war proxy war ye boy
for a while, and then eventually they just get too
big for their own bridges and everyone's like, fuck these guys.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
It's like, we gotta knock down Sweden.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
I mean, think about it. They're fucking Russia in trade, right.
They got to pay tolls on every fucking ship that goes.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
Through because they took all the Russian cities that were
actually on the coast.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah, they're pillaging Germany, pillaging Poland, which, by the way,
not a slouch at this time period, polling Lithuania not
that bad of a country.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
We're gonna talk about them. Yeah, I don't know, you
might have a different opinion after we talk about Lithuania today.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
They've done so again, another pretty good faction in Empire.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
Total war.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
However you are, you're just surrounded by it sucks.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
So I feel like to take a lot of L's
just because they are geographically lucky Pierre basically. And and
then what was I gonna say? Oh yeah, And then
they were fucking up Germany the whole time too, So
they're fucking up Germany, fucking up Poland, pissing off the
Habsburgs because they were fighting for France, and I assume
they did something to piss off France eventually. And then obviously,

(18:41):
like I said, they're already fucking the Russians. So you've
got five right there, and I just have to guess
the British don't love them either.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Stay tuned. So this takes us to sixteen ninety seven
and King Charles the eleventh Old Carl dies of stomach
cancer at the age of forty one. It's been complaining
for three four years, stomach's been hurting. They find like
a really hard tumor, and he just like suffers and dies.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
That was actually that was actually just a calcilified ball
of pickled fish. Probably died like a true swede eating
horrible food.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
Now, his son, Charlie twelve, takes over at just fourteen,
but was much more prepared for the throne than a
typical teenager. After Carl's wife died in sixteen ninety three,
Carl dealt with the grief by bringing his son to
work all the damn time. So this kid from like

(19:44):
ten on in Turning, Yeah, he's just he's in the meetings,
he's at you know, all the councils.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
Yeah, he sees the inner workings. He knows, he knows
the game.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
So he essentially, yeah, gets on the job. Training for
four years before this, he already learned how to ride
a horse by the age of four and spent a
good portion of his youth physically training to become a soldier.
That's all he ever wanted was to be a troop.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
You know. I was the same way all my life.
Growing up, all I wanted to do was be in
the army. Look at me now, just fat mullet, Like
I did. I did the thing, and now I'm like, yeah,
did it live up to your dreams? No? Not at all.
For like a decade, I was just preparing. I'm like, yeah,
this could be awesome. It sucked. I got out.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
It's funny.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
I'm never working out again.

Speaker 3 (20:37):
It's funny too, because, like you also, I'm sure there
are a lot of people throughout history in the United
States especially who joined the army and were like yeah,
and then like they don't even get a war really,
but you got to, you were you got to. You
joined during a war.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
I did have a cool war. Yeah, but then the
war ended and I'm like, all right, there's no point.
So I kind of that's what's why I really got out.
But over all it just wasn't fun I've heard that
a lot. Yeah, it's like prison. You get paid to
be and yeah, you get paid like nineteen thousand a year. Yeah.
I was like, oh, dude, I'm rich.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Brent's covered. Oh yeah, sick, dude.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
That's about how much well I mean it is, I mean,
how much of it goes into your pocket though, because
you're not paying room board.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
How many meals are you buying a week? All of them? Yeah.
I never used the chow haul because it's just gross. Yeah,
it's just great, just like powdered eggs, stuff, reheated things.
They didn't cook anything. It just they had a plastic
pouch of meat that they put in the oven.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Also, all the barracks are just gross black mold.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Just I think you're worse off actually out of fort
in the US than you are in like Afghanistan.

Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, yeah, dude, I had ac and Afghanistan. It was nice.

Speaker 3 (21:50):
It's all it sounds too. I mean this honestly wildly
identical to my time living in a fraternity house. Food
was terrible, horrible, old, shitty building full of probably every
disease you can imagine. Ye, like black mold as best, ohs,
goddamn everything. I mean. I was a I I didn't

(22:11):
gain like a freshman fifteen in college because the fruit
at the journey house was so bad and I was
on adderall it was almost impossible.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
That's true, Rob, you're a veteran of the Zeta lip sync.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
Same thing as Gwatt it is, Yeah, had my had
my GWAT trials and tribulations amongst both parties.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
Yeah, I had a GWAT Greek week overnight.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
Tight. It was tight.

Speaker 3 (22:39):
Yeah, it was tight.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
I was gonna try to do something lame, but I
couldn't think of it.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yeah. Together, So Friday, we did an episode on the
Patreon pictureon dot com slash softcore History where we went
through the data somebody like plotted the best generals to
ever like live throughout human history.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
That sounds awesome, That sounds so fun.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
Hard sports data wins above replacement on like every general
you can imagine throughout history, like.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
Every general butt naked on there. We did not find
butt naked.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
Oh man.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
But everyone's kind of like lumped together, and it's just
this giant circle except Napoleon. So Napoleon is far and
beyond everyone else and he sticks out. He's the anomaly.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
That's cool.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
However, I would like to after this episode see where
my boy Charlie twelve lands because the fourteen year old,
Yeah I have you're gonna hear about this kid, and
you're gonna be like, all right, like he's one of
the goats. Whoa, he's one of the best to do
it that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
I'm stoked. Damn. I wish I had open I had
my laptop next week, I'd open it up and I just.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
Like, we'll find it after the episode.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yeah, you can look, you can put a graphic on
that's like.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
This is so My man might have been the original
Sigma Mail, as he would much rather spend time grinding
on his fitness, combat skills, and work than entertain the
idea of finding a suitable spouse. Sick candidates were routinely
offered to him, and Charlie would often avoid the proposals

(24:18):
altogether or denied them from the jump. He declined Duchess
Marie Elizabeth of Hamburg and her offer, saying he could
never wed somebody as ugly as Satan and with such
a devilishly big mouth, what a guy.

Speaker 3 (24:33):
Look if she wasn't attractive, and also Hamburg was at
its own principality back then.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
No, it was just like where she wasn't like a
major royal.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
That's what I'm saying. Is it so like if it
was like a small German nation, because Germany wasn't unified
at this point. So he had Prussia, which is huge,
and you've got like one or two other like okay, Germany,
he ends.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
Up becoming like a duchess of something I've never heard of,
so right, not that Hamburg.

Speaker 3 (24:58):
So like a lot of those German nations like pointless.
It's pointless, like you need you need a wife from
like France or Austria or England, like you need a
big boy wife.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
In a conversation with Swedish knight Axel Loewen, Charlie alluded
to the idea that he was married to the game,
and the game, of course, being the military. I love
this guy so much.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
This dude sounds like me. I broke up with my
girlfriend in high school because I'm going to war, and
so like junior year, I broke up with my like
long term girlfriend. I have to because I was like,
I gotta go do army shit, there's no point. There's
a fight coming to babe. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Same thing with college. You got to break up with
your high school sweetie.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
Yeah yeah, I have to again war college. Same thing.

Speaker 3 (25:45):
I mean, your only other option as a as a
member of the military was to get your high school
girl from pregnant.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
Yeah, well then she would have cheated on me immediately anyways.

Speaker 3 (25:53):
Oh yeah, you would have been you'd be divorced now.
You would not have been with her throughout. I'm just
saying there was There would have been a time, a
small period where you were in a doomed marriage with
one to two little rascals running around like you'd have
been a father of three by twenty four.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
Yeah, that would have sucked.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, but you look way more like a Jody than
a gi.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
I actually I accidentally did Jody once. Me and my
friend were hanging out at a bar and he goes, Lopez,
am I a bad guy? And I said, no, dude,
you're great and he's like, man, I had sex with
a girl whose wife is in Korea or whose husband's
in Korea, And I go did she have a Siberian Husky?
He goes yes, and I'm like, dude, I also hooked

(26:33):
up with that same chick and found out after the
fact that her husband was in Korea. Oh, but the
fact that I was like, dude, did she have a husky?
And he looks at me, eyes get all big. He goes, yeah, dude,
and we pulled up tender and I matched with her
like a week prior. He matched with her a week after.

Speaker 3 (26:50):
She is just getting after it.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
Yeah, Yeah, that was bad.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
Did she have a thing for soldiers that came back home?
She's like, you served, he's in.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Care probably, dude. Yeah, he's only in Korea. That's lame.

Speaker 3 (27:02):
I just liked that she had a husky and made
you and your bro Eskimo brothers.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
Yeah, it was the coolest way to find out your
Eskimo bros.

Speaker 3 (27:08):
Yeah, you had just like there was a mascot for it.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, literally, Lopez, Am I a bad guy? Dude? You're awesome?
What are you talking about? In DD sweet we both
found out that way.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
Did you even feel bad after it?

Speaker 1 (27:20):
I didn't know. Fuck it, No, I didn't really feel bad.
I was kind of like, oh that sucks, dude, but
it happens. And I was still like, obviously in the army.
I'm like, I Jodie a guy in the army as
I was in the army. That was kind of weird,
but I immediately just didn't care. Yeah yeah, yeah, not
really your problem. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
In the same talks with Loewen, Charlie also stated that
he did not lack taste for beautiful women, but that
he held in his sexual desires for the fear that
they would get out of control if unchecked. He also
abstained from booze for the same reason.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
Wait, so he wasn't banging like at all and bang
you got a hold in that nut for war, dude,
the way he build it up, he must have released
on the battlefield, That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
Yeah, he was noted for having an insane tolerance for pain,
a lack of emotional intelligence, and an autistic grasp for
military tactics rules. Kind of. He has kind of the
same problem that Teddy Roosevelt, I imagine did, where when
you first hear about him, it's awesome, but then when

(28:26):
you actually think about the day to day with him,
it's a little much.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
Horrible, horrible.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
I still love this guy, though, Charlie towelves the man now.
Around the same time, Peter the Great becomes Czar of
Russia in sixteen eighty two upon the death of his
elder brother Fador, but did not become the actual ruler
until sixteen eighty nine. He loved Europe and knew the
future of Russia was to expand west and become entrenched

(28:52):
in their economic system. The key was to get back
ports on the Baltic or what Sweden gobbled up or
in their glow up in the sixteen hundreds. Obviously, Sweden's
expansion during the century meant they pissed off all their
neighbors and conquered citizens who are now under Swedish rule.
The angry neighbors being Frederick the fourth of Denmark, who

(29:15):
was actually cousins with Charlie twelve, and Augustus the second,
the not so powerful king of Poland Lithuania.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
Womp wamp.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
It is also like, well, of course their cousins, first off,
why wouldn't they be, But it is also like I
just being conquered by Sweden like of all the like
any country that has an annoying language and now rules
you is just a fucking nightmare. Like like if you
get conquered by like an Arab country, you don't speak Arabic.

(29:47):
You're conquered by Swedes, right, and you're just like living
your normal life. You're a German or something, and some
fucking dude just like yo, but over give me your
money home'n noman Over're no more taxes, you oh pronomenal.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
He just's like, God damn it. I was just going
to ask if that was their accident.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
We're all going to do the same impression, because that's
all we have. That's the low hanging fruit this whole time.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
Like, are these the guys that sound like that?

Speaker 3 (30:11):
They they all smell like pickled fish and their seals
they eat fish and bark at you and you put
a fish in their mouth.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
And the dude, some of my favorite athletes are Swedish.
Augustus had other motivating factors as well. Loovania nobles promised
to recognize him as a true monarch if he liberated
them from Swedish rule with the expansion of his country,

(30:44):
and more legitimacy to his crown in Poland. If he
was able to pull this off, Augustus decided it was
time to get in talks with Peter the Great and
Freddy four to form an anti Swedish alliance.

Speaker 3 (30:58):
Hilarious that that even new to be a thing. Yeah, like,
how did you let them take so much?

Speaker 2 (31:06):
They tried to do this in secrecy, as Peter pretended
to remain allies with the Swedes at least until his
current conflict with the Ottoman Empire was over. That was
until seventeen hundred, when Augustus just went Yolo, I needed
to get this territory and I need it now. He
marches fourteen thousand troops Intova and laid siege to the

(31:28):
capital of Riga. Swedes counterattacked, wrecked the Polish invasion, and
forced them to retreat back to Augustus. Meanwhile, the Danes
decided to get in the action and go after Swedish
client state Holstein gottarup is that in Germany it's closer,
I think to Denmark. Okay, it's like right there.

Speaker 3 (31:51):
I'm just wondering if it's named for the cows Holstein's
maybe yeah, or the cows are name for it, brue I.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
I didn't look into this shit. They's so unimportant.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
I just, I just, I would like you to double
check any cowfax if something's named after a cow.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Okay, good point, that's true. Well I'm not Fidel Castro,
all right, Castro would do that. The now eighteen year
old Charlie twelve rallies the banners and finances against his
cousin's aggression, pays the Dutch and English navies to deal
with the Danes blockade, and leads troops himself to assault

(32:27):
the greater Copenhagen area in late July of seventeen hundred.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
I mean he's got to just be hyped.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
Honestly, he's eighteen, and he's like, yeah, I'm gonna get something.
You like, been doing this for like at least eight years.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
Of just training.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
We have been waiting four years to have a real
proper war, and now I am like, just get some.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
In just over a week's time, he breaks Denmark Norway,
forcing them to call for peace in August and leaving
the anti Sweden aligance entirely a week. He beats their
ass so bad in a week they quit.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
That is so that means Denmark has lost at least
two wars in a week. Because Germany in World War
Two it did not take long to get through fucking Denmark.
That's that's not the best record, not what you want. Yeah, Like,
if any Dane never tries to talk to you, just
be like, how many wars have you lost in one week?

(33:25):
It's more than zero, but even worse, it's more than one,
So shut up.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
The Russo Turkish War ends roughly around the same time,
allowing Peter the Great the ability to put his focus
on Sweden and surprise the country who believed Russia was
an ally. He raises as an army of over forty
thousand to help the Polish with Loovenia, with a focus
on a Russian border town called Narva. But it was

(33:54):
November by this time and the ground was rock hard.
The elements were harsh, so they just chilled in a
winnery camp, laying siege to a city, hoping to starve
out their enemy. Charlie twelve gets word of this decides
to go against the advice of his counsel, braves the
Baltic Sea marchis troops one hundred and fifty miles across

(34:16):
the frozen tundra. After they land and face an enemy
head on that was four times.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
His size, he attacks. Yeah, oh, let's go.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
In an open field. It's like, let's go.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
I mean, dude, I guess the canyons are just bouncing
off the tundra once they go through something. Uh, you're
getting more kills out of that. That was the point
of the cannonballs back then. They're supposed to bounce. Yeah,
and these things are bouncing a lot.

Speaker 3 (34:41):
Although I wonder actually if the hard ground made them
less effective because it hits the ground like the other
things just to bounce and then go into units but
if the ground's too hard.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
Might go over the line, a big line. Yeah, yeah,
you're shooting their guys in the back and they're like
what scary.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
Was so confused by this move, he actually just leaves
to attend business back in Russia, thinking it was an
easy win, and he leaves a French general in charge
that doesn't speak much Russian at all. Because for those
who are unfamiliar, Peter the Gray gets obsessed with like
Western European culture tries to ingrain it as much as
possible into Russia.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
Was he the guy who was like, everyone cut off
your beard, shaved the beards. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was like,
it's like a beard tax. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:27):
He was like, we look like fucking hillbilly.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
He's like, where the West Virginia of Europe? We need
to get with the times.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
Yeah, like this stops now. It is embarrassing to take
you people west shave it.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
Beards are way more intimidating than non beards.

Speaker 3 (35:45):
Not back then, you look like a fucking ape.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yeah. You would look at you and be like that's scary.
They would look at.

Speaker 3 (35:49):
You and be like, he can't read.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
It's fine, I'm not worried about a guy reading if
he has an ax to my face, you know' his
GPA sucks.

Speaker 3 (35:59):
You know what, though, we are a soft ass, fucking
baby hands country.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yeah and we will.

Speaker 3 (36:09):
We could glass at anyone.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
And that's the same thing with like France and England
ship back then, right, their western they're soft, they're cultured,
but you line up with them and you're fucked.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah, true, all right.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
A huge snowstorm rolls through and when snow and sleep
just start blasting the Russians direction, allowing Charles an opportunity
to strike. The enemy is blinded by nature, and suddenly
these incredibly well trained Swedish troops appear like ghosts out
of nowhere, right up in the Russian trenches with bayonets
and sabers.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
That's cool, came out of the fucking snow.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
The not so experienced Russians break hard and break fast
under the leadership of a foreign speaking commander who again
just a fucking French dude, yell a m yeah, not Russian.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
Well d For even for Sweden to train two to
three months out of the year is a lot. That's
a lot for like nowadays, how much.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
Once you were in the military, how many training exercises.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
Did you do a year? Maybe two or three, But
it was like it depending on what unit I was
in and how the funding worked. In Korea, we had
a thirty day winter than a forty five day summer,
and then every other two weeks we were doing something.
So we had like six months out of that year
we were training at Fort Hood. It was maybe two
months total. The rest of it was just you're doing nothing,

(37:34):
cleaning guns and mowing the lawn.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yeah, So for half of these guys doing two to
three months outside of their combat, they've already been in war.
That's probably a lot. So these theads are locked in. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
Many of the Russians try to bolt out of town
on a bridge out of Narva, men fall and are
stampeded over by their own guys. Eventually, the weight of
the retreating Russians is too much and the bridge collapses
auto together with bodies plunging into the icy cold waters. No,
it was a crushing defeat for Peter in a legend

(38:07):
making win for the teen King Charles, But rather than
chase the Russian army back to the Motherland, Charles set
up shop Inlovenia and had his sights on Augustus and Poland.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
I mean, Russia is not going to do anything to
you for a little while. He just broke their fuck it.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
Also, forty thousand is such a weak ass army rays
for Russia. I guess they came in too confident. Yeah,
bringing forty thousand, Sweden brought ten. Yeah, that's that is
fair enough.

Speaker 3 (38:44):
For some reason, I was picturing sixty just because that
was their sole standing army. But obviously not every single
one would be there.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah, it depends on how you allocate where the troops
go at one point and how fast you can get
them there.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Some of the best though, it's with the king, so yeah,
his top guys.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
Yeah yeah, yeah, and you always want to look cool
in front of the king. Oh way, Like dude, check
this out backflip stab you know what I mean, Like, dude,
that was sick, Like I would do dumb things in
front of the king in war, Yeah, I know.

Speaker 2 (39:11):
Yeah, this all goes down as the rest of Europe
is going through the War of Spanish Succession. They may
have otherwise stepped in and tried to broke her peace
in the East, but Charles was out for blood and
had no intentions of negotiating with the nations he had
on the run. Pulling at the time is cash poor,
totally fractured internally, and the Danes in Russia have essentially

(39:36):
taken an indefinite time out as their ally in the conflict.
Russia would still provide some troops, but Peter was a
bit shell shocked by the loss in Narva.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
He just was like, dude, what he's like what because he.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
Left he left thinking, oh, dude, you got this. Don't
worry like we out number them four to one. Yeah,
that's such an embarrassing.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
You're just playing and you just you're just playing. You know,
usf at home and you got to take a dump.
You're like, this will be fine and come back. You've
taken a very long dump and all of a sudden, yeah,
things are not what you thought they were.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
Augustus didn't see a way out with peace. His ass
wasn't secure in his own country, so admitted defeat would
only delegitimize his power even more, if not have him
removed altogether. He prepares the Polish and Russian troops that
were provided by Peter to defend against the Swedes crossing
the Dueny River. The force outnumbered Charles three to one,

(40:35):
and they were dug in as the Swedes would have
to manage a landing for their assault on off boats.
As the sun began to rise on the horizon, the
Swedes sent small boats of straw lit on fire, causing
huge clouds of smoke to fill the air and screen
their approach to the shores.

Speaker 1 (40:53):
That is genius. That is so cool, a literal smoke
screens man. That is clutch.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
On the very first boat with some of his best
troops was King Charles. And once they land, they come
out of the smoke and just murk. These Polish and
Russian troops just totally cool. Destroy them.

Speaker 3 (41:17):
I liked that these troops just always like to pop
out of a haze.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
The blizzard.

Speaker 3 (41:21):
Yeah and now yeah, smoke some screens a magic trick.

Speaker 2 (41:27):
They force another retreat and get a clutch amount of
supplies and food that they were in desperate need of,
as Charlie did not restock before the assault. Has kind
of an issue with that. He uh, he's a foot
on the gas kind of guy. He doesn't like stopping.
You know, he's not changing the tires as well.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
I'll tell you what the real problem is, right, this
guy loves riding horses, swinging his fucking sword, shooting fucking cannons. Right,
but what's the boring shit that wins wars?

Speaker 1 (42:00):
Logistics? This guy doesn't want to talk about wagons and spreadsheets. Yeah,
you don't want to do that. No, that's not that's
not riding on a horse and cutting a guy's head off.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
He's down with tactics, certainly.

Speaker 3 (42:15):
Yeah, but that's the thing, that's the that's literally the
saying is amateurs study tactics, professional study logistics. I forget
which general said that, but a general said that. It's
like my favorite quote, one of my favorite quotes of
all time. It's like, dude, you win on the boring shit.
You don't win on on like flashy bullshit like you.
It's the boring shit. The whole reason we won World

(42:36):
War two, God bless my grandfather's and everything else, it's
because the whole country was a fucking factory with a
lot of money. We were Do you know how many
I want to say in World War Two there was
something like five hundred Tiger tanks or something like that
and fifty thousand Shermans.

Speaker 1 (42:59):
Yeah, hey, this tank isn't as good, but there's another
tank right behind it. You know what's better than a
one tiger tank? Forty sherman's shooting at it simultaneously.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
What's the bill bar joke? Right? We McDonald's them to death.

Speaker 3 (43:13):
Literally.

Speaker 1 (43:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
They then had a battle in a Polish swamp where
they once again outnumbered Charles two to one. But the
Swedes had this fun little tactic where they just took
the Polish artillery, like just slaughtered them from the back,
took over their artillery, had their own, and then just
started blasting the Polish with two artillery from both sides.

Speaker 3 (43:39):
Another Lucky Pierre situation, to be honest, just get.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
It full circle.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
Yeah, Charlie was stacking dub after dub, and it's because
he was so young, relentless, and he didn't have the
scar tissue built up that would cause him to second
guess himself. He's just like I only went what are
you talking about? Right? Keep doing this. He's a gun slinger, fearless.

(44:06):
His methods were at points just downright so insane they worked.
When he took the Polish city of Krackow, he personally
just marched up to the gate and screened opened the
door before rushing the gate and holding it for his
three hundred men, who were only armed with unloaded guns
and canes. The guards and city soldiers were so confused

(44:27):
they that by the time they came to their senses
the Swedish flag was being raised for a victory.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
I liked it.

Speaker 3 (44:33):
He's just at the gates, like.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
He wants in on the action. Dude.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Yeah, he's Brad Pitt from Troy.

Speaker 2 (44:41):
He's a player by himself.

Speaker 1 (44:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
Augustus eventually gets deposed by Charlie and the Warsaw Conference
replaces him with a hand picked Swedish puppet king. He
doesn't really face any repercussions and starts to build up
a resistance to start a civil war against the new
Polish leader Augustus. That is so he's Augustus kind of
gets he gets outed, and he's already plotting. He's already

(45:10):
planning to get his thrown back.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
I mean, was he at the conference. I assume he
just got out of dodge.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
And was like, all right, yeah, he just retreated, yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
Meanwhile, Peter gets involved again by attacking the Baltic provinces
of Sweden. Charles was in too deep with his polling
campaign to pay much mind to Russia. Though he lays
siege to the ancient fortress of the Thorn, he does
so in a very respectful way, being mindful of its
importance to the region, and even shares livestock with the

(45:42):
city's population so they wouldn't starve. Oh Augustus takes back
Warsaw and regains power as Charlie's busy with the Fortress
of Thorn. But you know, after he takes care of business,
goes right back to Saw and it's just like swoops

(46:02):
in kicks Augustus out for a time.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
This feels like a situation. I don't know how it ends.
Actually I sort of do, because I'm reminded of a.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
Thing, but I won't don't spoil it.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
I won't spoil it. But this reminds me of that video.
I don't know if you guys already seen it, but
there's like a video where there's like six lions around
this baboon and this baboon is just going crazy and
scaring the shit out of them and they're like, oh
my God, and they don't know what to do, and
this baboon's just being a psycho and he's kind of

(46:34):
like got him backing off, and then finally one of
the lions is like, wait.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
We're lions, and they just.

Speaker 3 (46:42):
Rip that baboon to pieces. That's the vibe I'm getting.
I don't know if it's gonna go that way.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
The bystander effect or whatever. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
In seventeen oh five, Augustus was just outside the capitol
with ten thousand of his own men. They ran into
a small Swedish cavalry unit of nineteen hundred and six
sixty infantrymen. Eager to slaughter the greatly outnumbered Swedes, Augustus
rushed his attack without much thought, figuring that if they
encircled the small Swedish band it would be more than enough.

(47:15):
But once again, the Swedes held strong and the battle
was a diabolical beat down.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
God damn.

Speaker 2 (47:23):
And this is just a story of the Great Northern
War for a lot of it, especially in the beginning.
Sweden's outnumbered and they just kick everyone's ass.

Speaker 3 (47:34):
Did they encircle them?

Speaker 1 (47:36):
They? How do they even get away?

Speaker 2 (47:37):
How they even handle that they're sixty infantrymen or just
like chilling in long grass and just pop out like
ghosts again? Hell yeah, they love surprising people.

Speaker 4 (47:46):
Hey, terrifying Really they are the Swedes, despite the odds,
prevail over and over again in battle and siege.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
Augustus has to call for peace and they sign a treaty.
In seventeen oh six. Johann Potkol, who was the nobleman
that put the idea of Lavinia into Augustus's head, is
given over to the Swedes and executed by breaking wheel.

Speaker 3 (48:13):
Oh damn, that's not a sweet way to go.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
And this was after pack Hole was initially received immunity,
and this was maybe the first misstep of Charlie twelve.
So he kills this nobleman on the breaking wheel, and
a lot of nobles in other countries are not thrilled
with that.

Speaker 3 (48:35):
You don't do that. You don't do that. You can
kill as many hobos as you want on a breaking wheel, whatever,
mud person you feel like ripping to pieces, breaking all
their bones whatever. They're not even human beings anyway.

Speaker 1 (48:50):
But yeah, noble guy.

Speaker 3 (48:52):
That's people aren't gonna be thrilled with that.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
Like that could be us. Yeah, I mean that's why.

Speaker 3 (48:57):
Look at what happened in the French Revolution, right, Like
all the other monarchies were like, oh boy, that is
not cool. We gotta fight France.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
Now, yeah, Augustus himself has to renounce the crown. But
they keep letting this dude face virtually no consequences for
his actions, So he'll pop again, he'll pop back up again. Later,
Peter and the Russians had begun making ground into the
Baltic territories. While this is all happening, they get to

(49:28):
the Swedish fortress of Nians, guns, level it and erect
the city of Saint Petersburg from its ashes. Oh okay,
now that Charles could fully put his attention onto Russia.
Now that both the Dane and Polish were out of
the war, he attempted to blockade this new gateway to

(49:48):
the west for Russia. As he began marching his army
towards Saint Petersburg, peace offerings were sent his way by
Peter the Great. The Russians offered to give back everything
they had taken so long as they would keep the
new city of Russia, Saint Petersburg. They're like, all right,
we'll give you back everything, but we're keeping this. This
is our jewel. We love Saint Petersburg. Pere the Great

(50:12):
in the city after himself. This is like, this is
his project this is what he's obsessed with. Let him
keep it. Charles says, no, man, Charles said, give us
our city bag, piece of shit.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
You had to think that was coming.

Speaker 3 (50:29):
I mean, has he taken a loss yet even No, Yeah,
he's on a winning streak.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
You don't fuck with that.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
The only problem with Saint Petersburg is it's heavily reinforced,
like the Russians put a lot of resources and money
into it. It's gonna be really hard to take back.
Charlie rejects the offering, not knowing what losing was. At
this point, he devises a plan, but not to attack
Saint Petersburg. No, this was a true heat check moment.

(51:01):
Charlie and the Swedes were making their way to Moscow.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
Oh no, yes, you can't march on Moscow.

Speaker 3 (51:10):
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Speaker 2 (53:59):
The meg good time the Russian countryside, despite most bridges
being burned by retreating Russian troops, an occasional Tartar Mongol
horsemen would be a speed bump here and there, but
they faced no real opposition until they got to the
Raabbits River. Charlie didn't see this as a no go, though,
he saw an opening.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
He's won a battle in a swamp before.

Speaker 2 (54:24):
It required his guys to be shouldered deep in water,
but they found a lane and overcame the odds once again,
pushing the Russian troops into retreat.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
Fuck that, how do their guns even work at that point?
You're not getting the cannons through that.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
They have the sabers though, man, yeah, they just I
don't know. They were one of them.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
Really good with swords, yeah, fixed banets, dudes.

Speaker 3 (54:47):
You're fighting with spears today. All your powder's wet, but
you're just gonna be stabbing.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
At this point, the Swedes are physically spent. They took
a month at that marsh to rest and to try
to find the energy to keep pushing on to the capitol.
As they took a break, Peter made short to lay
waste to his own land that the Swedes would have
to eventually cross. Crops were carted off, pastures were burned
and salted, and a Russian wastelam was created to deter

(55:17):
Charles and his unstoppable unit, who was who have yet
to take an l They haven't lost yet. And Peter's like,
you know what, I don't really give a shit about
my people in the countryside. They can starve gota. We
gotta stopped this moment, dude.

Speaker 3 (55:31):
I don't know if this is the first time the
Russians did this, but it's really this is the I
wonder if Charles gave them the blueprint for how to
uh you know, that's because that's what they did in
Napoleon and what they did to Hitler. They were just like,
just keep retreating, burn everything, keep retreating. They will get
they'll get overstretched.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
It's fine.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
This totally burned Peter's own people, but it did work
as intended. Once the Swedes marched on, food was scarce,
disease popped off, and morale was starting to decline. Charles
commanders pleaded for them to turn back to de Nieper
to get supplies from a relief force, but doing so

(56:13):
would essentially kill their campaign altogether. He asked for another option,
where they came up with the idea to try and
rally the Cusick troops in the Ukraine and take advantage
of the bread basket of Europe that Peter had not
totally torched. Got to go to Ukraine.

Speaker 3 (56:33):
Ukraine is dude, people, I mean, there's a reason that
Russia wanted to conquer Ukraine again. That was like there,
that was like the best part of Russia. Like, by far,
I swear to god, it's like Russia's California, Like it's
just like everything's there, everything he possibly wants in Ukraine.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
Doing so would completely cut them off from the Swedish
Empire and they'd essentially be on their own. Charles of
course was down.

Speaker 1 (56:54):
Yeah whatever that he does give a fucking.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
On their way to Ukraine, something called the Great Frost hits.
It was Europe's coldest winter in over five hundred years
in both seventeen oh seven and seventeen oh eight. By
the end of this supernatural cold, Charles loses half of his.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
Army just from death.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
Yeah, just from the the winter he died from cold.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
They already were shortened supplies there were short and supplies.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
Man a Swede freezing to death is it's a cold winter.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
A Swedish relief unit was intercepted by Peter. The Swedes
once again held their own As darkness set, both groups
withdrew to get rest at night. The Swedish commander of
this relief unit decided it was best to withdraw and
carry the little supplies they could, as wagons were starting
to get stuck in the land. Part of the supplies

(57:49):
were weeks worth of booze for Charles men obviously not Charles.
Charles doesn't drink right, but he's He's like, yeah, I'm
not gonna make my men unhappy.

Speaker 3 (58:00):
No, you need to move down here if morale's bad.

Speaker 2 (58:02):
Also it uh will help with the winter. Yeah, he
guys survived, uh the Titanic because.

Speaker 3 (58:10):
He was just all boozed there drank brandy.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
Yeah. The relief unit figured it would be a waste
to leave it behind or burn the alcohol, and decided
to partake in a few beverages before they high tail
out of the area and Russia attacked again. A lot
of these soldiers get hammered and it becomes a chaotic
mess of a retreat, and no supplies from the caravan

(58:34):
ever make it to Charles and his men because they
get fucked up.

Speaker 1 (58:38):
That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
Charles's only other hope was the Coosack leader, who ironically
was an old Polish noble that was tarred and feathered
and left for dead in the Ukrainian step after sleeping
with another Polish man's wife. You got anything to say.

Speaker 3 (58:58):
About that, Jodi, me, Not only to say about that?

Speaker 1 (59:03):
Yeah, well, you know, I don't think I should have
been tard and feathered.

Speaker 3 (59:07):
How many wives have you slept with?

Speaker 1 (59:10):
I think that one just the one.

Speaker 2 (59:12):
I'm pretty shown sleep with wives. Not a bad guy.

Speaker 3 (59:15):
Yeah, I didn't say he knowingly slept with wives, but
there's still a number.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
Well, I mean so pre marital sex is a sin.
Having sex with someone's wife not a sin, correct, because
they're married, so she's good to go. Yeah, I think
I've been pretty good. Yeah, but no, just that one
that I know of.

Speaker 3 (59:35):
You should only sleep with wives, Yeah, doesn't not be yours,
just you needed wives. They are the only women that
are legally allowed by religion to have sex.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
It makes sense to me.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
Yeah, so this guy was Ivan Mazeppa finds his way
out to the Ukrainian step, being tired and feathered. The
Cossacks find him on this horse on tie him, offer
him the you're one of us now, yeah. They take
them in. He becomes part of their tribe and actually

(01:00:07):
just rises through their ranks until he's the leader. Years later,
whoa what a guy? Yeah, so he's elected leader of
this Ukrainian group.

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):
Yeah, no regrets. Look when God closes the door, he
open his window. You think you're down, Like, He's like, man,
this is the worst day of my life. He's tired
and feathered on a horse, just wandering through the countryside,
and then a group of hill people come out and
they're like.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
Will you'd be our king please? He's like cool, yeah,
you are God.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
Ivan was of course interested in independence from Peter and
the Russians, and Charles was desperate, and it seemed to
be a perfect marriage.

Speaker 3 (01:00:47):
I mean, Charles isn't gonna keep Ukraine, you know, no,
not keeping it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
In exchange for thirty thousand costs, Charles offered up protection,
an alliance to the Ukraine and total independence. Turns out,
though Ivan may have overpromised and underdelivered.

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
Under the amount of men.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
Thirty you promised thirty thousand men, here's seven. He also
might have wildly overestimated how much power he had in
the group. Though he was the leader, he didn't speak
for anyone. Only fifteen hundred troops show up. Oh, of
the thirty thousand.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
It's not ideal.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
In fact, the other twenty eight thousand, five hundred go
to Peter.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
Oh, so there were thirty though, Yeah, okay, yea, yeah,
but he doesn't control.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
He just doesn't.

Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
He doesn't deliver all thirty. He wasn't lying there was thirty.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
Oh. In fact, he essentially delivers thirty thousand troops to me.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
I feel like that was a huge argument for the
start of the Ukrainian Russia War. This time around, they're like, oh,
the Ukrainians want to be a part of Russia.

Speaker 3 (01:01:58):
Yeah, yeah, look it before.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
Maybe in the seventeen hundreds, but I don't know about now.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
I think they might be over it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
As a further deterrent, Peter started to burn down Ivan's
capital and sent rebellious Cossack bodies tied to crosses down
the river so Charles and Ivan could see them personally.
So any rebels in that area. That kind of spoke
out or went against Peter to the great just mrks

(01:02:25):
them and sends their bodies on.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
You're just crossed up on a.

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
I thought they were alive. I thought it was a
floating crucifixion.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
Maybe some of them were still alive, but I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:02:33):
I think what's funny is you put them on there,
alive and float them right side up, and they're like, oh,
this isn't so bad, I mean, and then like but
the problem is like they eventually they'll flip over and
they're like.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
Oh you hit like a little water yet rocket.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Oh fuck. Cut off from their own country, Stuck in Ukraine,
virtually no supplies in artillery or men, Charles makes a
last ditch effort to take the city of Patalva by
tunneling under the fort. This was a slow and painful process.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
Who's left a dig Even at this you're just just
like there's just like, what five thousand guys that a
lot that have been on the march for like two years,
and they're like it's.

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
I think it's closer to like he's got like twenty
thousand then okay, but still like he's overseeing everything and
it's not going great.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
They're like like you just like wake up one day
and they're like, what's going on there with marching. You're like, dude, no.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
My man still hasn't lost the battle even.

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
Worse, Like god, you wouldn't. You won't even fucking believe it. Like,
just tell me, man, just tell me anything. Everything's been crazy.
He wants us to dig a huge fucking tunnel. He's like,
dig I barely eaten. Dig the ground is so hard.
Ah fuck, dude, all right, give me some fish.

Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
Peter gets weird and he races down to Patava with
a much larger and fresher force. Charles, overlooking the siege effort,
is struck in his heel by a stray bullet that
gets lodged in his big toe. So somebody at the
force just like firing down at the guy's digging. Hits

(01:04:16):
the king, Yeah, because he's he's just kind of like,
you know, overseeing guys digging.

Speaker 3 (01:04:21):
Yeah, just pointing at him and close.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:25):
He's just like like waving his sword around.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
He's like, that's a dag good.

Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
He's just too big of a micromanager and catches a
bullet in the foot for it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:32):
There's like a lieutenant that's like, we got it, your majesty,
Like they're digging.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Yeah, if you're in charge, don't make pointing gestures in conflict. Yeah,
Like it's fine, go do something else. We got the
first person who's gonna get shot. Other guy's pointing at
something he's probably important.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
So he tries to walk it off and remain with
his men until they eventually see he's like starting to
just turn ghostly white.

Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
He loves that much blood from a foot bullet.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
Yeah, So they sit him down, take off his boot,
and his foot is just a total wreck. It's a
total unusable really, and he'd have to be carried in
just kind of like a little chair for the rest
of the campaign.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
That's pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
He's a little Lord Fontleroy. Yeah, he's not doing his
not doing his cool kingshit anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
He's like deploy the cavalry.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Now. As he's getting the diagnosis. Peter and his army
of now eighty thousand right arrive at Poltava, dwarfing Charles's
army of about eighteen thousand men.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
Yeah, this one might not be good.

Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
Charles, knowing nothing but ramming his forces head on, did
just that. He was like, all right, yo, let's go get.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Me my horse, take our little speedy cannons.

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
They get smashed, Peter and the Russians just absolutely wreck.
He finally takes an l on the battlefield. Yeah, Charles
makes his escape on horse after one of his commanders
sacrifices himself to let the king get out of dodge
and Charles in only about five hundred of his men
make it back to the Black Sea, where they try

(01:06:24):
to get passage into the Ottoman Empire.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
Oh, he's to go all the way around at this point,
there's no going back up. He has to go into
the Ottoman Empire.

Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
And then just he just wants save passage to the
Ottoman Empire because like Russia can't go into the Ottomans
right right, right territory because they just had a war.
And he knows that, like they're not down with the Russians.
They kind of know they know who he is. Yeah,
they're respectful Ottoman Empire. At least two nobles and royals.

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):
Oh, they won't break him on a wheel like Charles.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
The Ottoman Empire actually just rolls out their oriental rugs
for the king, even establishing a temporary autonomous Swedish colony
for his five hundred men.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
Sweet hey, if you wanted the five hundred that made it,
you're having a good time.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
Peter then goes to the border of the Ottoman Empire
and demands Charles be arrested and handed over to the Russians.
The Sultan refuses, so Peter just went, fuck it, I'm
coming in. They immediately get confronted by the Ottoman army
and it becomes a big Holby back row standoff until

(01:07:40):
an agreement to let Peter and his army go back
to Russia without issue is agreed upon in exchange for
Charles being granted safe passage back to Sweden and the
Turks getting some territorial concessions.

Speaker 1 (01:07:52):
What a dub for the Turks.

Speaker 2 (01:07:54):
Yeah, Russia just comes in into their land and they're like,
we don't think so.

Speaker 1 (01:07:58):
Yeah, here's a giant army.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
Charles is pissed and tries to get the Sultan to
wage war on the Russians. The Sultan tells him to
chill out and appreciate the fact that you're gonna get
out of this alive.

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
Yeah, you can't go demanding shit, like come on, let's
fight him.

Speaker 3 (01:08:14):
It's like, hey, man, we got we just did that,
and we're like, it's like going It's like getting in
a drunken bar fight and then going back to the
hotel you're staying at and like whipping up the staff
to come fight.

Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
Well, they're staying here here, let's go fuck them up.
Bell boys like, sir, just go to your room, please.

Speaker 2 (01:08:37):
So Charles doubles down and says, you know what, I
live here now.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
Then, sweet, this guy fucking rules.

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
It's a pretty sweet move. But I think the Sultan
might actually be the guy that rules. He's like, you
know what, I'm gonna respect your wishes, arrest Charles and
the few remaining men and throws them in an Ottoman prison.
He's like, you do fear now?

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
Yeah, no, my boy.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
So this all goes down in seventeen thirteen, and as
this is happening, Old Augustus starts bucking and he's poking
his little head out, and Poland finally starts having success
against Swedish troops and pushes them out of pulling all together.

(01:09:25):
Obviously not Charles troops, different unit, but right, but Augusta
starts to have finally half success.

Speaker 3 (01:09:30):
They don't know their little psycho fucking lucky horseshoe anymore.
The command in the battles, it's just normis now.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
Eventually the Sultan allows Charles back to Sweden. He's like,
I don't want to deal with you anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
It feels like it just get out situation.

Speaker 2 (01:09:50):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:09:50):
And like he probably I think Charles probably overestimated how
somehow how much power the Sultan had at first, like
go you get me his calling man. But after like
being in jail for a little while, he's finally like, okay,
all right, I get it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:04):
Yea, I'll go. Yeah, I think it starts to hit.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
Do you think Charles ran any prison gangs while he
was there?

Speaker 2 (01:10:11):
You have to think, with like his mangled foot, yeah,
he's just limping.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
Along war fighting.

Speaker 3 (01:10:18):
Yeah, like he still needs to get some he's running
that prison pretty quickly.

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
At this point, though, Russia, Denmark, and Poland are all
fully back in on their fuck Sweden mission, and even
England and Prussia get in on the action. They're like, ooh,
Sweden's down, huh, let's get some kicks.

Speaker 3 (01:10:36):
Yeah, there's stuff, there's stuff, let's go.

Speaker 2 (01:10:41):
They were at war with all of northern Europe, the
Swedes a shell of themselves, but Charles. Charles doesn't know
how to go down without swinging my man. He launches
a new campaign back in Denmark and they have early success,
but then the Norwegian navy almost wipes out the Swedish fleet.

(01:11:03):
This is a pivotal moment. Charles could no longer resupply
his troops and his forces are you know, have to
retreat again. And now he doesn't really have a navy.

Speaker 1 (01:11:14):
Does he even have a way home?

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
At this point hard to say.

Speaker 3 (01:11:19):
Yeah, what year is this at this point?

Speaker 2 (01:11:21):
So this is all like seventeen fifteen, Okay, I was I.

Speaker 3 (01:11:27):
Was wondering if when they were fighting Prussia, if he
had to deal with Frederick the Great. But Frederick the
Great was born in seventeen fourteen. I just looked it
up because I wanted to see. I was like, man,
imagine you're fighting this war against twelve different people, and
then Prussia just enters with one of the greatest generals
of all time.

Speaker 2 (01:11:44):
I mean, Peter the Great snow slouch.

Speaker 3 (01:11:46):
He's he did, he was, he got the name the Great.

Speaker 2 (01:11:49):
Yeah, you get the Great. You're gonna be fine.

Speaker 1 (01:11:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
The Russians invaded then Swedish on Finland, and the Finnish
troops crushed, Charles has one more move, trying to take
the Norwegian city of fedder Reekston. Non'm, what the fuck it?

Speaker 1 (01:12:11):
Who cares? Yeah, it doesn't matter. Ifjord to rock then
it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
But unfortunately, during the siege is where the story for
our sweet boy ends.

Speaker 1 (01:12:23):
No, yeah, this other foot get shot.

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
Off, hovering out of a trench to get a look
at the fortress. All of a sudden, Charles laid in
the pool of his own blood, dead on December eleventh,
seventeen eighteen, at just the age of thirty six. Now
there are many theories. Some believe he you know, standing

(01:12:46):
out of the trench, just popping his head out like
a gopher. But many believe that maybe his own men
just took him out. They just had enough.

Speaker 1 (01:12:53):
That's where I was going next. Yeah, like dude, we
just want to go home.

Speaker 3 (01:12:58):
So they still have this is how I remember this,
that he was what happened happened because they still have
the uniform he was wearing on display.

Speaker 2 (01:13:07):
He's been exhumed like three times. Yeah, they've tried to
figure it out. They still have. You know, there are
no leads right now.

Speaker 3 (01:13:14):
This is this is literally what he died in, Like
you can see the mud on his cloak.

Speaker 1 (01:13:17):
That's insane. Yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
With no kids or wife to speak of, his sister
is given the crown. The Russians waste no time and
rated Sweden from seventeen nineteen to seventeen twenty one until
they were forced to make peace. Sweden has to see
all of its territory outside of Sweden and Finland. So

(01:13:42):
anything they gained during the sixteen hundreds early seventeen hundreds
and Russia becomes this kind of puts them on the map,
makes them a major power, and Sweden's never the same again.
So that is the story of the Great Northern War.

Speaker 3 (01:13:58):
They had a moment, and that's that's the important thing.
Every country had a moment. Like it's again, I know
we overdo college football on this and stuff like that,
but like you got your blue bloods who have a
million moments, but it's nice for the little programs to
have their one moment, their one and that was Sweden's one.

Speaker 1 (01:14:17):
Little like we.

Speaker 3 (01:14:17):
Finished top five one year, you know what I mean, Like.

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
That was their thing two thousand and seven. Man, that
was we were ranked.

Speaker 3 (01:14:24):
We were ranked number one in two thousand and seven.

Speaker 1 (01:14:27):
Might say you never forget.

Speaker 2 (01:14:29):
I mean so many teams. Kansas was two, USF was two.

Speaker 3 (01:14:33):
Two, but not not one.

Speaker 2 (01:14:36):
Yeah, they'll always have that, rub I will.

Speaker 1 (01:14:38):
I will, just like I'll.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
Always have being number one in the Koli Matrix twenty seventeen,
twenty eighteen.

Speaker 3 (01:14:45):
I'm just telling you countries are like college football programs,
like bat there's blue bloods, and then you have your
your little guys who have some fun seasons every once
in a while. That one memorable year, and that was Sweden.
That was Sweden went off build that man of statue.
I'm sure he has several, but.

Speaker 1 (01:15:03):
I hope so I want to go see it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:05):
Oh, I'm sure he has. Like actually, let's see if he
has a rad statue. There's no way he doesn't. In Sweden,
he's got to be their most beloved king, at least retroact.

Speaker 2 (01:15:14):
I think his dad's pretty beloved as well. Also Young Dolph,
Young Dolph before him, also Gustaf. It was just a
good run. It was just you know, hit her after
hit her. They didn't miss for like one hundred and
fifty years.

Speaker 1 (01:15:29):
And then they became like the chill guys.

Speaker 2 (01:15:31):
Yeah, they got humbled. Yeah, and they're like, you know what,
why are we chasing the money and the riches?

Speaker 1 (01:15:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:15:38):
Why are we chasing the fame?

Speaker 1 (01:15:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:15:42):
They went so far as to I think they were
people forget this because people think about other countries. But
Sweden was neutral in World War Two the whole time, right, yep, yeah, yep.

Speaker 2 (01:15:55):
They learned their lesson that. Yeah. Yeah, they're like, oh,
I'm not gonna choose this. We get kind of boned.

Speaker 3 (01:16:01):
You're doing this war where you fight everybody.

Speaker 1 (01:16:04):
We've done that.

Speaker 3 (01:16:07):
Yeah, it's not sweet.

Speaker 1 (01:16:09):
Been there.

Speaker 3 (01:16:09):
Started with invading Poland. Yeah, we've done that. I just oh,
and then you're gonna march on mosque. We've done that.
We've done it. I don't recommend it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:21):
If only the Germans knew this Swedish history, I right, like,
what's another turn?

Speaker 3 (01:16:27):
Differently, lunatic obsessed with the military who invaded Poland and
then marched on.

Speaker 2 (01:16:31):
To be fair, they got attacked first, so.

Speaker 1 (01:16:34):
Oh they were the victim. You know who else thought
they were the victim? The Nazis?

Speaker 2 (01:16:38):
Oh, I thought you're going to say another country that
is a little bit you know, more applicable for today.
What Russia who's like, no, no, it's another we won't
say it thought, don't want to get demonetized.

Speaker 3 (01:16:50):
Oh oh that is another one, certainly, yep, although there
is a very clear situation there. Uh, say whatever you
want about what happened afterwards. But I mean they had
a point where they were like where they were like, hey,
they did that, so we're gonna do this. Sweden same, Yeah,
Sweden was at tack tooo but like, yeah, the Nazis were.

Speaker 1 (01:17:09):
Like, we're victims, but you gotta like swain it.

Speaker 2 (01:17:12):
Sweden had their October seventh.

Speaker 3 (01:17:13):
Yeah they did the Nazis. The Nazis were just like, well,
I mean, they weren't wrong that Germany got asked fucked
by the Treaty of Versailles. And then somehow Hitler was
like and the Jews wrote it or.

Speaker 1 (01:17:26):
Something like jew we gotta be upset at someone or something,
so yeah, we might as well.

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
Who's today's Hitler speaking of.

Speaker 3 (01:17:40):
Honestly, Charlie twelve's pretty sweet, but he made his own luck,
both good and bad.

Speaker 2 (01:17:47):
It sounds like, so, I mean, there's a clear answer here, Peter.
I was gonna say the Danes bro they lose wars
in a week all the time that.

Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
Ah fuck yeah, good point, they stink it war. That's
not there. That's not even the Hitler though, that's like
who's today is France? Like it's just pathetic.

Speaker 3 (01:18:10):
I don't know, man, Charlie got a lot of people
killed because he was just a fucking It's one of
those things where it's like Teddy Roosevelt, like you said earlier,
where they're sweet to hear about from a distance, but
up close when you're dealing with them every day, whether
you're in the court or one of their soldiers, at
some point you got to be like, like to your point,
you're like, we don't actually know who shot him. Like

(01:18:31):
at some point you're just.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
Like, I can't take this anymore. I have had my
feel of this fucking guy. It makes more sense that
he got killed by his own guys.

Speaker 3 (01:18:43):
Yeah, it's like again like just because we're bros here,
you know, like the libros, the lot, I mean, like
we're dudes. Yeah, we're not that close. Yeah, uh, we're
like the law. Like at first, like a screaming angry
coach like motivates guys, but eventually the locker room gets
tired of his bullshit. Yeah, you know, what I mean,

(01:19:05):
probably the same way in the military, where like some
officer or NCO might be a hard ass and like
get everyone like good to go at first, but eventually,
like once you're in shape, you're like he doesn't change
his ways, you know what I mean, And he's still
on you, like you're all fucking slobs, and you're like,
fuck off.

Speaker 1 (01:19:25):
Those are the guys you hated the most, right, dude,
We're all really good at what we're doing. Yeah, fucking relax. Yeah, yeah,
you don't got to be on all the time. Yeah,
we're literally doing nothing all day, and like we're going
to a shipping container removing everything in there and then
putting it back in. You don't got to yell at us,

(01:19:46):
like we're gonna do it.

Speaker 3 (01:19:47):
How how many times did you get yelled at for
mowing a lawn?

Speaker 1 (01:19:52):
Wrong? Never actually never mowed a lawn really? Yeah? Yeah,
I was good enough to not do the dumb things
like that. Okay, like the guys that mop the rain
when it's outside, Like I was never dumb or bad
enough to do that. I didn't make guys do that
because that was funny. But what was your final rank?
E four? So I get a specialist. But I was

(01:20:13):
a team leader. Okay, so usually team leaders are reserved
for sergeants, so like a E five. Yeah, but I
was like good enough, like skilled enough to where they're
you know what, Lopez, you take a fire team. So
the fire team's like four of us, And so I
was in charge of a team and that gave me
like some sort of holding over like other guys that
aren't in even in my squad. Yeah, I'm still a

(01:20:34):
team leader, so I can make other dudes do things
if I had to, But I didn't do a whole
lot of really dumb things or punishments.

Speaker 2 (01:20:41):
Now, one of the appeals I have taken away from
TV and film of being Special Forces is you don't
have to shave and you can kind of have whatever
hair you want.

Speaker 1 (01:20:52):
Yeah, is that true?

Speaker 2 (01:20:53):
Could you rock what you currently what you currently have
right now?

Speaker 1 (01:20:57):
Yeah? I've seen some dudes if you were have here
like this seals not as long. I don't think I
have seen them with relatively long hair, like it kind
of touches the shoulders a little bit. Delta Guy's same thing.
All of them have beards. But my hair was so
long up top that it did touch my nose. Uh.
It's like that because I was like, hey, what are

(01:21:18):
you gonna do? Kick me out? And the regulation I
used to have the whole article memorized of like AR
six seventy dash one, Chapter three, paragraph two, Section A,
and I would state what it said when people called
me out for it. Yeah, and nothing said the length
has to be a certain length. It has to be
like neat and groomed, and the back of your hair

(01:21:38):
can't touch the collar of her uniform, so.

Speaker 3 (01:21:41):
Any other part.

Speaker 1 (01:21:42):
And so for like a year and a half, I
just got a loafade and let the top just go
my Actually, my captain called me the menindaz brother nice.
That's how long my hair was up top nice. And
I'm like, yeah, what are you gonna do? He's like nothing.
I'm like, yeah, exactly, dude.

Speaker 2 (01:21:58):
What did you guys learn today?

Speaker 3 (01:22:01):
Pretty much all of this. The only thing I knew
about him, and I didn't remember it was him until
halfway through the episode, was that he got clipped in battle.

Speaker 1 (01:22:10):
Yeah. I learned that me and him have a lot
in common. He ruled and his pre ruling days of
like no women, just training and stuff. That was kind
of me in high school.

Speaker 2 (01:22:23):
Yeah, training education, you know, get the ladies out of here.

Speaker 1 (01:22:27):
Yeah, you know what else time for him? When he
got time for war?

Speaker 3 (01:22:30):
You know what else I learned today what old Charlie
never learned. Logistics are for professionals.

Speaker 2 (01:22:39):
Where do you think he maps on the little chart
we had.

Speaker 3 (01:22:44):
Top twenty bro he won a lot of battles, and
he won a lot of battles at long odds, and
that chart is specifically So this was the thing about
that chart that we talked about on the Patreon patrion
dot Comsolar software history is that it only measured tactical success.
So like General Sherman didn't rank that high. I mean
he was positive, like he was in the positive wins

(01:23:06):
above replacement, but he didn't rank super high because his
biggest success was a strategic move. It wasn't like a
specific on battlefield situation. And actually, hilariously, uh, I think
the worst or one of the worst rated generals was
Georgeorge Washington. He was negative nine wins above replacement.

Speaker 1 (01:23:27):
Because he was technically just losing a bunch.

Speaker 3 (01:23:29):
He lost battles constantly, but it was strategically Yeah, he
knew what he had to do strategically, which is I
live I live here, Yeah, I live here. Bro keep coming. Yeah,
we joked that George Washington is just ho chi minh. Yeah,
like it's the same fucking thing.

Speaker 1 (01:23:47):
That's great.

Speaker 2 (01:23:48):
I bet Charlie ranks pretty high.

Speaker 3 (01:23:51):
Which the battles won? And how many battles did you
say he was in? Like five or six?

Speaker 1 (01:23:55):
At least a ton?

Speaker 2 (01:23:56):
I think more than that.

Speaker 1 (01:23:57):
Okay, Yeah, we'll look it up after.

Speaker 3 (01:23:59):
I'm actually gonna crack my laptop and look it up
immediately because I am curious.

Speaker 2 (01:24:03):
I can't believe you only got shot twice. Yeah, once
in the foot and once he got domed. But yeah,
it was our episode for today. Check out our picture
on that, as we said earlier picture on dot com
slash softcore History. Two additional episodes of Drop every Wednesday
and Friday for the five dollars tier. We're doing a
sports show on the twenty dollars tiers, just as like

(01:24:24):
an extra along with additional content for all the people
that are supporting us that way in such a big manner.
We love you guys for everything. Thank you for listening, Scott,
thanks for coming to my house.

Speaker 1 (01:24:38):
Yeah, thanks for the invite. It's a great spot.

Speaker 2 (01:24:41):
It's not bad, right.

Speaker 1 (01:24:41):
I love being a couch bro. I prefer the couch.
Genuinely prefer the couch.

Speaker 2 (01:24:48):
Where can the good people find you?

Speaker 1 (01:24:49):
Scott Yeah, Instagram, last ro Lopez and that's about it.
Thanks guys, Sweet

Speaker 2 (01:24:56):
Scott Lopez, rough Fox, I'm damn jest and he just
got soft serruved

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