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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome

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Speaker 1: to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for

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Speaker 1: tuning in. I am Ben. I don't know, And Ben,

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Speaker 1: what's your favorite Bob Ross paint color? Probably Surrillian blue.

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Speaker 1: I like Prussian blue. Yeah, did you know? This is

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Speaker 1: unreally ident anything. This is weird and doesn't have a

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Speaker 1: lot to do with today's That was titanium white. It's

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Speaker 1: good too, titanum when it is like a solid classic,

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Speaker 1: literally a solid color. There was a band, like a

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Speaker 1: children's band called Prussian Blue. There were these two little

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Speaker 1: girls and they were neo Nazis. Yes, that took a

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Speaker 1: left turn. I just now it's ruined the color for

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Speaker 1: me because when I didn't believe it when I first

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Speaker 1: heard of this, Prussian Blue is canceled. Now, well, the

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Speaker 1: color is fine. Are you sure? I think I feel

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Speaker 1: like the color is fine. I think it's beautiful color.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, Prussian Blue is a duo of neo Nazi

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Speaker 1: pop siblings. Do they have any hits? I don't you

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Speaker 1: know what I gotta tell you, man, I'm not really

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Speaker 1: into white supremacist stuff. No, but I was thinking maybe

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Speaker 1: that didn't come out until this was part of their thing.

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Speaker 1: They were that very much. I think Nazi forward children's

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Speaker 1: pop group. I think that like songs about it. But

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Speaker 1: let's let's go back to cooler territory. Much rather explored

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Speaker 1: Bob Ross, what what what brings Prussian Blue deer mind? Here?

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Speaker 1: We're talking about Prussians today. Oh that's way. That is

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Speaker 1: a very very simple association. Uh much like my fond

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Speaker 1: association with super producer at Casey Pegram. I'm I'm happy

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Speaker 1: to report that Prussian Blue grew up to be not

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Speaker 1: neo Nazis. Their parents kind of put them up to

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Speaker 1: it when they didn't know better. Casey, this is a

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Speaker 1: very touching and moving case. Yes, thank you so much. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I just pulled up some stuff on them. They stopped touring,

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Speaker 1: and then in two thousand eleven they renounced that those

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Speaker 1: politics God talk about terrible parents. No show. It makes

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Speaker 1: me think, I know you not to get too far

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Speaker 1: and like we're starting to start talking about neo Nazis topic.

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Speaker 1: But I have a very distinct memory of remember the

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Speaker 1: daytime talk shows like Mori and Uh, Sally, Jesse, Raphael

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Speaker 1: who was the guy with the white hair that was

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Speaker 1: Dr Phil No that was Phil Don might have been

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Speaker 1: a doctor. Uh. He was a donnic Hue though. And

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Speaker 1: I remember very distinctly when I was a kid, they

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Speaker 1: had uh young uh neo Nazi kids on one of

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Speaker 1: those episodes, and they were saying all of this horrible,

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Speaker 1: unbridled racist stuff on regular daytime television. And I was

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Speaker 1: a little kid, and I was shocked. It was disturbing

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Speaker 1: to seeing seeing these little like twelve year olds like

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Speaker 1: saying all these horrible racial slurs and their parents backing

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Speaker 1: them up. In honestly anyway that that is neither here

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Speaker 1: nor there. Today we're talking about how a guy by

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Speaker 1: the name of Von Romberg, which reminds me of the

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Speaker 1: band the Von Bondies We're not Gonna to go there,

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Speaker 1: was tricked into surrendering during what's called the Capitulation of Stetton,

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Speaker 1: which is a really cool name for a conflict. It

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Speaker 1: is a very strange thing. It sounds like it sounds

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Speaker 1: like a phrase describing some particular move in martial arts

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Speaker 1: or sword play, like you know, they parried, but he

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Speaker 1: responded with the capitulation in Steaton two points to blue,

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Speaker 1: Yes it is true. On October eighteen, o six, Lieutenant

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Speaker 1: General Friedrich von Romberg. He was in charge of defending

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Speaker 1: a city called Stettin. Let's set the scene here. So

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Speaker 1: at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, all the

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Speaker 1: way mental Floss puts it, Napoleon Bonaparte pretty much declared

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Speaker 1: war on everybody, especially tall people hated him, and you

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Speaker 1: can say had a complex about it, you could, you could, uh.

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Speaker 1: And for twelve years he and his army slashed through Europe,

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Speaker 1: battling militaries from twenty different countries. By the time he

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Speaker 1: was defeated in Waterloo in eighteen fifteen, his battles and

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Speaker 1: all the chaos he'd stirred up claimed somewhere between three

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Speaker 1: point five and six million lives. Of those casualties, two

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Speaker 1: point five million where soldiers. How many of them were

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Speaker 1: tall people? You know, That's that's what it's up to history.

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Speaker 1: Because we talked about that propaganda right previously, Napoleon upstad

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Speaker 1: He wasn't incredibly short. Now, if I'm not mistaken, did

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Speaker 1: when an episode about Prussian soldiers who were super tall

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Speaker 1: the postum giants? Wasn't that in Prussia? Yeah, that's correct.

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Speaker 1: Callback So this is the context in which today's story occurs.

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Speaker 1: It's October eighteen o six. There are five thousand Prussian

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Speaker 1: soldiers in this town Stetton, in Poland during what was

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Speaker 1: called the War of the Fourth Coalition, part of the

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Speaker 1: Napoleonic Wars, and they are being attacked by French soldiers

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Speaker 1: and eventually are going to surrender to these French soldiers. However,

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Speaker 1: remember we said there were five thousand Prussian soldiers in

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Speaker 1: the city, there were fewer than eight hundred French soldiers

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Speaker 1: launching the attack. And the French forces were led by

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Speaker 1: a guy named General Antoine Lassalle. This guy is interesting because, uh,

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Speaker 1: he was like a larger than life kind of flamboyant,

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Speaker 1: adventurous type, do would right, and he was known for

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Speaker 1: his hot takes. He once said, any Hussar who wasn't

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Speaker 1: dead by age thirty was a blackguard, though he himself

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Speaker 1: made it past age thirty by by a few years.

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Speaker 1: He had swag, he he had juice, you know, he

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Speaker 1: was drinking like a fish, swearing like a sailor. And

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Speaker 1: he was known to be incredibly courageous and brave because

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Speaker 1: he would sometimes do unorthodox things like sneak past enemy

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Speaker 1: lines at night to have romantic encounters with women in

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Speaker 1: areas controlled by the enemy. So he had almost like

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Speaker 1: a kind of James Bond vibe, I guess, but a

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Speaker 1: little more Militarists would be a good name for like

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Speaker 1: an international spy, because yeah, that's a great idea. It's

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Speaker 1: almost as good as La Bush. Not as good, but almost,

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Speaker 1: but less all like La Bush was a man for

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Speaker 1: all seasons. People who met him off the battlefield said,

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Speaker 1: you know what, this is a charming guy. He's on

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Speaker 1: me too. He's witty and I like that he cares

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Speaker 1: about his family, and his family comes into play a

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Speaker 1: little bit because he had a lot of connections. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he grew up the son of a noble. Um. It's

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Speaker 1: described in this French Empire dot net article as a

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Speaker 1: minor noble, which so well quite know what that means, um,

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Speaker 1: But yeah, he also was the great grand nephew of

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Speaker 1: Marshall Faber um and that that guy's apparently quite important.

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Speaker 1: I don't know who that is either, but you can't

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Speaker 1: have a name like that and be some kind of

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Speaker 1: slouch um. So he was connected, right, um. And he

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Speaker 1: became what the French referred to as a sioux lieutenant,

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Speaker 1: which I wonder it's gotta be. It's gotta be. Casey

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Speaker 1: was a Sioux, like a sioue of anything just means

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Speaker 1: like an apprentice kind of right, Yeah, exactly, it's like

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Speaker 1: an understudy kind of thing. Oh, in the French kitchen

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Speaker 1: hierarchy is in some ways modeled after military. That's right,

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Speaker 1: they're brigades at that's what Gordon Ramsay called. So we

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Speaker 1: just only figured out SUSA so many things. What about

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Speaker 1: suvi different different etymology entirely, I imagine, I would imagine,

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Speaker 1: so I would imagine. So our pal Ramsey here at

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Speaker 1: the office just got a Suvie contraption, will swear by them.

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Speaker 1: And for the longest time I was like, wait a minute.

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Speaker 1: So it's like boiled meat. No, it cooks the inside,

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Speaker 1: but then you see her the outside, so it's like

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Speaker 1: perfectly seared and succulent and then juicy and like tender

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Speaker 1: on the inside. So I really want to give it

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Speaker 1: a go. Yeah, I wouldn't give it a try to.

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Speaker 1: I don't want to do a homemade mcgever contraption though,

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Speaker 1: I want to have like the actual machine. It is

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Speaker 1: the same word suvid means like under a vacuum, so

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Speaker 1: it's literally like sub vacuum gun on the case. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: let's go back to lasal lassol Is. He's a child soldier,

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Speaker 1: right because he becomes a Sulu tenant when he's eleven

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Speaker 1: years old. Geez, we're doing We've got an other theme

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Speaker 1: that's popping up his child soldiers. Was it only to

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Speaker 1: the other day about the little drummer boy clam Our

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Speaker 1: boy clam who said children make the best soldiers. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know he said that, like late in life, you

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Speaker 1: would have thought hindsight would have given them a little

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Speaker 1: more perspective than that. They're dumb. They can fit around

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Speaker 1: small spaces, you know that guy. Yeah, but he grew

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Speaker 1: up into a strapping five ft eight gentleman, very good looking.

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Speaker 1: He was a huge fan of mustaches. Um. He liked

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Speaker 1: to wax his mustaches and curl them around. He was

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Speaker 1: great on horseback, and there's a story on Napoleon guy

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Speaker 1: dot com about him riding into a ball like like

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Speaker 1: a dress fancy dress ball where he made his horse

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Speaker 1: do a little dance. Guy, I knew how to make

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Speaker 1: an entrance. Um. Then in the theater of battle in

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Speaker 1: e Jipps, he was known for defeating a very famous

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Speaker 1: horseback brigade called the Mameluke Horseman, and in one instance

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Speaker 1: he actually got off his horse, picked up his sword,

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Speaker 1: and then got back on, which is not something that

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Speaker 1: people typically would do. I like that we're spending some

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Speaker 1: time fleshing out the details of this guy because he

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Speaker 1: has some weird stuff. This is probably one of my

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Speaker 1: favorite strange facts about him. This comes from steam at

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Speaker 1: got dot com. The generals of Napoleon h lassalve the devil.

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Speaker 1: When he is not fighting, apparently, he takes care of

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Speaker 1: his reputation with a reckless and hell raising lifestyle. The

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Speaker 1: main pillars of this are womanizing, dueling, gambling, and drinking.

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Speaker 1: He created something called the Society of Alcoholics with his colleagues.

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Speaker 1: There was only one crime in the society, and that

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Speaker 1: was to not be thirsty. This guy was a little wild,

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Speaker 1: he really was, but he was also a a famed

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Speaker 1: military man, so he got a pass on some of

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Speaker 1: these more uh more decadent behaviors. Right. He served for

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Speaker 1: several years in Italy. Uh Somewhere in there he started

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Speaker 1: having an affair with the wife of his general, a

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Speaker 1: guy by the name of Victor Leopold Berthier, who was

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Speaker 1: also pretty heavily connected Um to Napoleon. He was the

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Speaker 1: brother of Napoleon's chief of staff. Then after his paramore

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Speaker 1: shall we say, got divorced from her husband, LaSalle Um

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Speaker 1: decided to marry her. They got married, So it wasn't

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Speaker 1: all just just fun and games. December of eighteen oh three,

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Speaker 1: he kind of flipped his script a little bit and

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Speaker 1: became a family man. Yeah, he was taking care of

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Speaker 1: his wife's children from her previous marriage, and he seemed

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Speaker 1: to have changed his ways, right. He was. He was

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Speaker 1: in it to win it. This was the love of

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Speaker 1: his life. And everybody kind of, like the guy said,

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Speaker 1: everyone that was on his side as long as he

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Speaker 1: wasn't sleeping with their significant others. And he's a thing.

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Speaker 1: These these these exploits of his were not a secret. No,

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Speaker 1: they were very well done, if anything, and not even

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Speaker 1: an open secret. And they were just he just kind

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Speaker 1: of trotted him out there. He really was pretty brazen

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Speaker 1: about it. But again he kind of turned himself around.

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Speaker 1: But Napoleon was once asked why he never disciplined Lassalle

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Speaker 1: for any of this, you know, this misbehavior, and he said, uh,

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Speaker 1: and this again a quote from an article and French

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Speaker 1: Empire dot net, where he said, quote, it takes the

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Speaker 1: stroke of a pen to create a prefect, and this

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Speaker 1: just he was answering the question was posted him by

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Speaker 1: a prefect. But it takes twenty years to make a Lassal.

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Speaker 1: And Napoleon thought so highly of LaSalle he would pay

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Speaker 1: off his debts. People would come to him and be like,

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Speaker 1: your boy is crazy. He's a raging lunatic, and I

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Speaker 1: think he's always drunk in. Napoleon would be like, that's

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Speaker 1: you know, that's Lassal. Let him. Let him do what

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Speaker 1: he needs to. Let only do what he needs to do.

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Speaker 1: And part of it, I think part of the reason

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Speaker 1: Napoleon still unapologetically adored the guy is because despite his rambunctious,

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Speaker 1: problematic personality off the field, he was brilliant in battle.

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Speaker 1: His crew became known as the Infernal Brigade during the

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Speaker 1: eighteen o six campaign for Prussia, and he fell for

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Speaker 1: a ruse by a general Bluecher that helped the general

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Speaker 1: give his army and opportunity to escape. But while he

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Speaker 1: was chasing this Bluecher guy to make up for his mistake,

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Speaker 1: he stopped at this town, Stetton. Stetton, the town with

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Speaker 1: five thousand defenders and almost three hundred cannon and he

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Speaker 1: threatened it into submission to capitulation with only eight hundred

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Speaker 1: troopers at his back. He had about five d hussars

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Speaker 1: under his command to light field guns. Let's talk about Steton.

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Speaker 1: Steton is a well fortif by ports city as a

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Speaker 1: garrison of nearly ten thousand men. It's got two one cannons.

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Speaker 1: It's commanded by Fredrich von Romberg. Right, he was a

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Speaker 1: super super seasoned veteran fifty years in. He had fought

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Speaker 1: during the Seven Years War under Frederick the Great, and

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Speaker 1: this city was prepared for siege. The British Royal Navy

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Speaker 1: was granted pretty much carte blanche entrance and exit through

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Speaker 1: their port, so they they they had plenty of supplies.

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Speaker 1: So on October twenty nine, eighteen o six um, as

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Speaker 1: the sun began to set, LaSalle sent one of his

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Speaker 1: men to make a truce, waving that white flag and

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Speaker 1: to demand that the city surrender, the city's forces surrender,

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Speaker 1: and he made it very clear that he would, you know,

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Speaker 1: follow the rules of engagement and and and be an honorable,

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Speaker 1: an honorable man in its respect. Von Romberg he was

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Speaker 1: not having this, he said he would fight to the death.

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Speaker 1: Boom rejected. Last man rejected. Yeah. So about an hour

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Speaker 1: passes Um, this parlay ends and his guy comes back

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Speaker 1: um and delivers him a very very ominous messages. If

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Speaker 1: by eight am you have not surrendered, the town will

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Speaker 1: be bombarded by our artillery and storm by fifty thousand men.

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Speaker 1: Fifty thousand men like cotton can kill, only killed fitty,

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Speaker 1: but this fifty thousand. Uh. Then the garrison will be

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Speaker 1: put to the sword. I love that phrase. And the

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Speaker 1: town will be plundered for twenty four hours, very specific well,

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Speaker 1: plundered for twenty four hours in this situation means everything

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Speaker 1: you could imagine, pillaging, burning, looting, sexual assault, killing livestock,

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Speaker 1: just to deprive people of meat. Right. So Romberg speaks

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Speaker 1: with the town leaders and they say, this is LaSalle.

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Speaker 1: He's the devil incarnate. You have to you have to

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Speaker 1: play ball with him. Just look at his mustache. The

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Speaker 1: man means business. And then there's probably somebody in in

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Speaker 1: the back who's like, he slapped with my wife, because

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Speaker 1: that's howls rolled. So the garrison marches out the next morning.

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Speaker 1: They file past the French forces. They throw their arms

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Speaker 1: down at their feet Romberg, who's at this point he

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Speaker 1: had fifty years of experience, right, but he was seventy

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Speaker 1: seven years old at this time. He negotiates with LaSalle

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Speaker 1: and when the surrenders finalized, they've seeded five thousand, three

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Speaker 1: D troops, two one guns and the fortress of Stettin

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Speaker 1: to the French. This is a huge loss for the

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Speaker 1: Prussians because they could have withstood the siege. Just look

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Speaker 1: at the numbers, and there's no way that the French

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Speaker 1: could have actually take in this area. They were demoralized,

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Speaker 1: they were too disorganized to do anything really to launch

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Speaker 1: an encounter offensives. I mean, Napoleon had first engaged the

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Speaker 1: Prussians in battle on October nine. In less than a month,

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Speaker 1: he had defeated them, like soundly defeated them. At the beginning,

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Speaker 1: the Prussian army had about two hundred and fifty thousand

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Speaker 1: people versus a hundred and sixty thousand French soldiers. But

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Speaker 1: the French killed sixty five thousand Prussian soldiers, took a

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand prisoners of war, and they only

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Speaker 1: lost about fifteen thousand people, which I know sounds cold

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Speaker 1: to say only fifteen thousand, But look at the numbers

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Speaker 1: the French were mopping the floor with. Seemed like human

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Speaker 1: life was pretty expendable in these situations. I mean, guys,

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Speaker 1: that's war for your worth? What makes war hell? Um?

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Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean the French absolutely crushed as executives

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Speaker 1: are wont to say um, and the Prussian generals just

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Speaker 1: you know, we're left with no option but to surrender.

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Speaker 1: So that's the larger context of the war, because we

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Speaker 1: we we have to ask ourselves, well, why did this

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Speaker 1: guy take? What does Prussian general take? This French army's

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Speaker 1: word for the number of people they had. That's because

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Speaker 1: a lot of the generals at this point are hopeless.

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Speaker 1: They feel helpless. They've been getting mopped left and right

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Speaker 1: across the area. So we can conjecture a little bit

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Speaker 1: in this pure speculation, we can conjecture that Romberg thought, well,

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Speaker 1: the French are here, so this is terrible for us anyway,

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Speaker 1: we should just surrender and try to save some people's lives,

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Speaker 1: because he knows the bigger picture. He knows how they

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Speaker 1: are outclassed and outranked overall. Right, But in this particular situation,

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Speaker 1: the French forces were inferior to the Prussian forces in

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Speaker 1: this town exactly, and they could have one. When von

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Speaker 1: Romberg discovered that he had been had, when he learned

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Speaker 1: just how tiny the French force actually was, it was

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Speaker 1: far too late and he had to stick to the

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Speaker 1: agreement they negotiated. So LaSalle becomes a national hero. Von

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Speaker 1: Romberg becomes a laughing stock. He's tried by court martial

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Speaker 1: in eighteen o nine. He's convicted of surrendering without a fight.

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Speaker 1: Do you know what the sentence for that was? Death? Life, imprisonment.

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Speaker 1: It was pretty close. I you know, it would take

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Speaker 1: a philosopher to figure out which one is worse, right,

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Speaker 1: I agree, honestly, it does strike me as something like

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Speaker 1: that would be such a dishonorable thing that it would

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Speaker 1: be like cowardice, you know, or like tantamount to treason.

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Speaker 1: Surrendering without a fight, that's that's no good, heavy as

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Speaker 1: the head that wears the crown though exactly. But it's

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Speaker 1: with with you know, like the French were so wrapped

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Speaker 1: up in all this hubris, you know, go Napoleon especially,

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Speaker 1: that'd be a pretty big offense to dislike, not even

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Speaker 1: put up a fight. Well, the Prussian general too, he

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Speaker 1: knew what the score was because his first statement was,

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Speaker 1: no will fight you until every las one of us

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Speaker 1: is dead. You know what I mean. He came out

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Speaker 1: of the gate with this kind of expectation. So what

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Speaker 1: happens to Lasol afterwards? Let's fast forward, because it turns

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Speaker 1: out that Lassol appears to have correctly predicted his own

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Speaker 1: death weird in e t o nine in the morning

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Speaker 1: the battle of Wagram, Lasoul had this feeling of premonition,

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Speaker 1: a hunch, and so he drew up this petition at

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Speaker 1: the last minute to the Emperor, and he said, take

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Speaker 1: care of my children, and he gives it to one

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Speaker 1: of his friends to give it to Napoleon in case

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Speaker 1: I die today, pretty much. And towards the end of

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Speaker 1: the battle, he tries to pursue an Austrian core that's

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Speaker 1: running away. What Austrian core? Ceo rps, ohh, I got you.

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Speaker 1: I thought it was some kind of bird like like

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Speaker 1: like an ostrich so I don't know why. Sorry, please continue, Ben.

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Speaker 1: He grabs some other forces that are a little bit

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Speaker 1: slower than his typical hussars that it works with, and

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Speaker 1: then he appears as a lone figure out in the

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Speaker 1: front and Austrian grenadier lines up, a shot fires, hits

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Speaker 1: him in the forehead, kills him instantly. Somehow that morning

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Speaker 1: he had this idea that he would die. And so

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Speaker 1: there ends our tail for today. But you know what,

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Speaker 1: this is not the end of the story of Napoleon's

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Speaker 1: other generals. Shout out to anyone who enjoyed our our

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Speaker 1: episode on the rabbits that beat Napoleon back. Uh, and

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Speaker 1: let us know what other strange, eccentric, larger than life

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Speaker 1: military figures you'd like to learn more about. Please do

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Speaker 1: let us know on our Facebook group, the Ridiculous History,

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History, or you can find us individually on our

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Speaker 1: Now Noel Brown. You can find me getting kicked into

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Speaker 1: and out of various countries, communities, places, and adventures on

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