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