Episode 385 - The Texas Revolution: Part 4

Speaker 1 Hello and welcome to the Lions That by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me is Tom and Nate.
The Buckies Revolutionary Committee has broken down.

Speaker 1 Ever since that man was raptured out of the bathroom, leaving only his shoes, a powerful spell, a cult has formed in his wake.

Speaker 1 The dissidents in the snack isle have put down their arms, but only thanks to another man who has proclaimed himself the one true pastor of the holy ass, and he claims he speaks to the missing man, who they believe has ascended to a higher plane of being.

Speaker 1 We aren't entirely sure what to do, but we see which way the wind is blowing. We daub our face in the holy sacrament and join in an evening chanting.
Fellas, how are you doing?

Speaker 1 I love that

Speaker 1 my shoes have become a venerated object.

Speaker 1 It's like a saint's finger

Speaker 1 or like a

Speaker 1 saint's finger, Mary Magdalene's bones that is like contained in that absolutely insane sarcophagus in Spain, I think. Yeah,

Speaker 1 when they say people on a tour of it, they're like, you know, this is the place where he heed his last haw.

Speaker 1 Sometimes, if you come to pay pilgrimage and pay homage to the objects at a certain time of the day, you can get the faint humid smell. The last thing they'll came here is, yee-haw!

Speaker 1 Just feel

Speaker 1 it. I know me and Joe have talked about it on a previous episode.

Speaker 1 Can't remember, Nate, if you were on it or not, but like whenever you go into like a public toilet, you can always tell someone has just eviscerated the porcelain, but there's just a faint humidity in the air.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I've got a really good one for you. Once time I had an appointment and I needed to eat lunch and there was this restaurant.
It was a, I mean, I feel a little worse about it now.

Speaker 1 Back in the day, it was in New York. It was an Israeli restaurant, but I'm not going to lie.
Fucking, they stole a lot of food that's good.

Speaker 1 Anyway, so I got lunch and I got, but it was like, but the problem is an Israeli restaurant in

Speaker 1 the East Village is that like, it's primarily just like Jewish boomers who have zero fucking manners. And I know this because I know this from my family.

Speaker 1 And basically I got asked by like some insane lady to leave my table because she wanted to take my seat. So it really was an Israeli restaurant.
And I

Speaker 1 went to, and I was like, fuck, when are we going to do? I need to eat this. It's the fucking East Village.
There's like basically nowhere.

Speaker 1 And this can get, I want to be able to sit and eat this before I have this appointment. And I go in, and I'm like, fuck, there's nowhere.
It's so crowded. It's raining outside.
It's shit.

Speaker 1 And so I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to do it. Do the sad high school remove.
I never did this in high school, but I have friends who did an eat my lunch in the bathroom.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, I know there's a bathroom on the floor of this office and like no one's ever in it. And then I went in and someone had taken the raunchy shit.

Speaker 1 And I sat there eating my tuna salad sandwich with harissa and slices of hard-boiled eggs and we're like god hates me

Speaker 1 and this vapors

Speaker 1 god fucking hates me so much for being god's chosen people

Speaker 1 this is just yeah we are this is what he chose for us

Speaker 1 you were driven across the restaurant into the bathroom and when we left you last time the alamo fell nearly 400 texan volunteers outside of the saledo creek surrendered to mexican forces only to get massacred the texan government was newly independent under the turbo-racist interim president, David Burnett, but also collapsing as soon as it was formed as Sam Houston attempted to slap together something resembling an army to counter the Mexican advance towards Gonzales.

Speaker 1 Sam Houston's ranks are sold by over a thousand men, all following the rallying cry of remember the Alamo and remember Goliad.

Speaker 1 Though at the same time, Houston was coming to the conclusion that he and his army were the last Texan volunteer force still in the field, even if that force was still in retreat.

Speaker 1 By mid-March, Houston and his army of around 1,400 men camped outside of Beeson's crossing on the Colorado River.

Speaker 1 The river was swollen by spring rains and was completely impassable to Mexican forces, as the Texans had wrecked the only local ferry to make any crossing.

Speaker 1 This finally gave Houston time to put his army of largely untrained Randos through their paces, teaching them how to march, fire, and service their weapons.

Speaker 1 Though the respite wasn't long enough, only a few days, because before long, Texan scouts reported that Santa Ana's army had split in half with 600 men under Ramirez Sesma marching right for them at Beeson's.

Speaker 1 Instead of waiting though, the agitated revenge-seeking volunteers demanded that Houston go on the attack, and he damn near had a mutiny on his hands when he refused to do so, because he was in a tactically stronger position on the other side of the river, and they sat there for six days as Ramirez Sesma's forces were virtually within eyeshot.

Speaker 1 Houston may have stanked like a dumpster fire and had been shit face drunk, but he wasn't stupid.

Speaker 1 An attack on the Mexican army army would have required him to cross the same river, not to mention he had no artillery, while Ramirez Sesma had several cannons.

Speaker 1 Then, on the sixth day of waiting, he pissed his men off even further by ordering another retreat towards Saint-Philippe, with the river acting as a perfect barricade between the two armies, so the Mexican forces lost track of him.

Speaker 1 He's making all of the right decisions, and everybody's pissed at him.

Speaker 1 Though his retreat was so wildly unpopular amongst men, he nearly lost control of his army, even though it was absolutely the correct thing to do.

Speaker 1 Men began spreading pamphlets and posters in the camp demanding that he turn around and attack. One of these famously said, Quote, the enemy are laughing you to scorn.
You must fight them.

Speaker 1 You must retreat no further. The country expects you to fight.
Houston was convinced he was about to be the victim of some kind of internal coup or maybe even murdered.

Speaker 1 So he ordered that anyone who kept talking shit about him be taken out back and shot.

Speaker 1 This seemed to calm things down, at least for the time being. But there's always like a bitter fucking hatred for Sam Houston.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to talk about it throughout the whole episode, but there's like a hardcore anti-Houston camp.

Speaker 1 And this hatred for him pretty much continues on until the end of the war because spoiler, the Texans win. So there's a lot of immediate like, I always like Sam Houston.

Speaker 1 He's always been a good friend of mine. But up until that point, people fucking hated him.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, Santa Ana's forces advanced all across Texas, capturing every port other than Galveston and requiring supplies from from the U.S.

Speaker 1 to support the Texans to take a very strange overland route and then down the Sabine River. It slowed them down considerably.

Speaker 1 Santa Ana's main force, still camped out in San Antonio after the Alamo, finally left and met up with Ramirez Sesma and another force under the command of General Tulsa at the beginning of April.

Speaker 1 Though Santa Ana was very nearly not there at all.

Speaker 1 Okay, for more Mexican political background here, when Santa Ana marched off into Texas, he just handed off the office of the presidency to his political ally, again named Miguel Barragon.

Speaker 1 Barragon was, however, pretty much on death's door when Santa Ana left. He was very, very sickly.

Speaker 1 And then on the 1st of March, 1836, he died, sending Mexico to yet another political crisis, thanks to Santa Ana.

Speaker 1 However, one of his aides pointed out that General de Irea, the guy who had done most of the fighting and the one that constantly told Santa Ana, like, maybe don't do that, was in a better position to become president.

Speaker 1 And if Santa Ana wanted to retain his aura, so to speak, and ride home and take the presidency, because Santa Ana very nearly just dropped all of this and ran back to Mexico City to become president again.

Speaker 1 And like, no, no, if you do that, De Rea

Speaker 1 has more clout than you at the moment. So you need to stay in Texas to destroy the rebellion once and for all.
Hence why he packed up his army and marched up to meet with Ramira Sesma and Tulsa.

Speaker 1 There's a very good, like different branch in reality here where Santa Ana drops everything, goes back to Mexico City, and leaves the campaign in the hands of Dury Rea, who could have won. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But alas, he does not. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, Santa Ana has like the level of loyalty where like being the president is his side chick.

Speaker 1 Kind of.

Speaker 1 And that like he

Speaker 1 just cycles through the presidency constantly. And once he has it, he doesn't actually care too much about it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he comes back to, you know, the presidential seat and he's just like, I'm sorry, baby, I've changed this time.

Speaker 1 Now I'm a federalist. Oh, now I'm a centralist.
I need

Speaker 1 another seat. I'll be back.
There's another rebellion against me. I'm going to go join.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, back with Houston, he pissed more people off. The Texan government had moved as far east as they could go, eventually landing in the town of Harrisburg.

Speaker 1 So there's no point of trying to defend Saint-Philippe. Saint-Philippe is the first Texan settlement.
It's like this very important position to people who care about that kind of things.

Speaker 1 It's not tactically important anymore. The government's gone.
Most of the town is gone at this point. Houston orders it completely abandoned.
And for a lot of men, that was a step too far.

Speaker 1 Two companies flatly refused to leave it. So Houston was pretty sick of these constant arguments at this point.
So he kind of shrugged and said, okay, stay if you want.

Speaker 1 Just try to hold the town and the nearby crossings of the Brazos River for as long as you could to help me out.

Speaker 1 And then he just leaves.

Speaker 1 When the combined Mexican force ran into the two companies' men and the scouts reported it was just a rear guard action, Santa Ana was furious he was being held up and wanted to close this whole thing out.

Speaker 1 He told Namira Sesma to handle it and then took a different detachment of a few hundred men and made for Thompson's ferry downriver.

Speaker 1 The ferry hadn't been destroyed, rather been pulled across and held there.

Speaker 1 And using one of his men who spoke fluent, unaccented English, he simply sat on the bank of the river and called out to the ferrymen to bring it over.

Speaker 1 And he did, because the ferrymen thought they were Texans. So he paddles across and then the 600-man detacher just springs out from the woods and captures the ferry at gunpoint.

Speaker 1 But they still only have one ferry. So it takes all day to slowly bring these guys across.
But this outflanks the defenders of Saint-Philippe, who decide to retreat.

Speaker 1 And someone, we aren't sure who, orders Saint-Philippe to be burned to the ground. The Texans at first blame the Mexicans for this, but the Mexicans did not burn the town.

Speaker 1 It generally comes down now if it was an argument over which Texan set it on fire. Okay.
The dudes holding the town later said Sam Houston ordered them to do it, which isn't true.

Speaker 1 He wasn't even there. Sam Houston.

Speaker 1 trying to not blame anybody specifically for it said well the the citizens of the town seeing that the mexicans were coming burned their own town it was probably the militia but we have no idea meanwhile houston and his army hid out in the brazos swamps resting a place so thick and nasty that they knew that if Santa Ana attacked, they would be able to hold them off.

Speaker 1 The swamps are quite literally, like for once, their backyard. Yeah.
Like,

Speaker 1 I said before, a lot of people say, like, oh, the Texans are fighting on their home turf when they weren't.

Speaker 1 Most of those dudes had only been in Texas for as long as Tom has been in the Netherlands recording this podcast.

Speaker 1 But the swamps, the swamps where these dudes made home. Because remember, a lot of these guys are from the southern southern United States.
They're fucking swamp people. Yeah, so they're doing like

Speaker 1 the Iron Sports Nigger and Predator cover themselves in mud. It also is kind of a nice like spa retreat for these guys.
Like, you know, get a mud mask. You can go like float on your back in the swamp.

Speaker 1 Yeah, go swim around some putrid swamp water. Mm-hmm.
Yell at any nearby donkeys that are coming into your swamp. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The problem is, is despite a lot of these guys being very comfortable in a swamp, a swamp is still a giant vector for disease. Yes.
Yes, and as we know

Speaker 1 so far, these guys are not the cleanest. No.
And it's made worse by the fact that they had no drinking water, so they just start drinking the swamp water.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's gonna like elevate a level of swamp ass to like a whole new echelon.

Speaker 1 You're just discovering out of boredom new ways to get horrifically ill.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're basically like

Speaker 1 you're kind of like removing the process of osmosis by making sure you have as much pollution and disease inside you as it's outside of you. Like you harmonize it.

Speaker 1 This is only made worse by a mass outbreak of measles, whooping cough, the mumps, dysentery, the flu, and of course, pink eye because they're shitting out their ass at a swamp and not washing their hands.

Speaker 1 This is now just like a normal occurrence in like a Texas suburb because nobody's getting vaccinated anymore.

Speaker 1 RFK Jr. is the surgeon general of this army.
Have you tried drinking the swamp water?

Speaker 1 It's the swamp version of balancing the humors.

Speaker 1 Yeah, back in those days, where it's like all of the things that we've discovered that can make medicine and sanitation just a little bit easier hadn't been discovered yet.

Speaker 1 And so they were like, yeah, what's, you know, what's the downside to going into like it, the disease vector?

Speaker 1 What's the downside to going into the place where people come out of it looking like the thing, looking like, you know,

Speaker 1 fucked up clay sculptures? Like, it's just going to melt your skin and turn you into like a vat of filth but like that's kind of what we are already so

Speaker 1 sam houston was probably trying to create vodka the swamp water oh

Speaker 1 no he just needed his guys to get so gross that they would ferment all of the water and you just drink it got a buzz you know bring me another soldier and he's just like rigging like wringing out their uniform into a cup yeah creating a texan kimchi warriors

Speaker 1 however there was one bright spot this wasn't entirely a hopeless situation They camped outside of an old plantation that happened to have several doctors in it.

Speaker 1 And for a lot of Texan volunteers, this is the first time they got medical care during the entire campaign. These guys in this plantation are definitely like,

Speaker 1 to bring it back to King of the Hill again, the episode where Bill goes to visit his cousins and it's like, oh, William Dotrve, it's so good to see you.

Speaker 1 They come out in pristine white suits

Speaker 1 swinging a cane. Once Once the soldiers recovered from blasting shit and blood out of themselves, they got badly needed rest, supplies, and training.
Again, all while living in a swamp.

Speaker 1 So by like getting healthy, I mean, they weren't like actively dying from the measles anymore. But most of them still have an underlying foundational amount of flu and dysentery.

Speaker 1 This whole situation, and I know Nate's going to correct me because it is a different state, but this is just like the setup for a William Faulkner novel. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, that's fair.

Speaker 1 A swamp is a swamp. Yeah.
All swamps are created equal. Like

Speaker 1 an old plantation house filled with doctors, suddenly beset upon by swamp warriors is like a William Faulkner novel. Right.

Speaker 1 And it cuts forward to descendants of one of the swamp warriors trying to convince his college roommate that actually like the swamp warriors were, well, they were decent guys deep down, you know, like it wasn't that bad.

Speaker 1 I don't hate the swamp warriors. I do say these swamp warriors are awfully uncouth.
Well, I believe believe that man should be living not in contention with nature. We should embrace the swamp.

Speaker 1 If we did not crawl out of the primordial slime, if that is not a swamp, I do not know.

Speaker 1 I mean, I will say that it's not an easy book to read, but Absalom Absalom will absolutely explain the entirety of America because a white dude is so mad that because he's poor, he gets told to use the side door in like plantation country of Virginia that he decides to get revenge by going to Haiti and amassing an army of slaves and getting wealthy.

Speaker 1 But he commits miscegenation and the shame of this causes him to like basically set his own house on fire and destroy his entire family. Nothing could be more fucking American than that.

Speaker 1 So I'm just saying. William Faulkner, actually, huge, huge, huge respect, but you know, it's one of those things where he was talking, he was speaking some truth.
And you're right.

Speaker 1 I call that the Texan Gambit.

Speaker 1 Mississippi, but it's all right, though. Same thing.
The vibe, the vibe's the same. Well, but slightly different.
Mississippi is worse. Let's be fucking real here.
All swamps created.

Speaker 1 That's like unify all swamps. That's my political idea.

Speaker 1 We're creating a new equitable society in the swamp. That's right.
It's the more equitable swamp.

Speaker 1 Now, all of this lasts until April 12th, when Houston loads his men into some river boats and moves them across the Brazos and back on the march.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, Santa Ana had stopped trying to pursue Houston's army, thinking them broken and cowardly for hiding behind the river and therefore no longer a threat.

Speaker 1 Instead, he decides he's going to close out this campaign by marching as hard as possible, day and night, through rainstorms and like fields of mud so deep they swallow cannons to try to catch up to the rapidly displacing Texan government.

Speaker 1 By the time Santana gets to Harrisburg on April 15th, where he thinks the government is still hiding, they had already run again.

Speaker 1 They actually had run only like 30 minutes before he got there to the point they see them on boats escaping down the river and they just kind of go to the riverbank and do the shaking fists.

Speaker 1 Shake harder, boy. The Texas government can't see you.

Speaker 1 So he burns the town and carry on. This time they're going towards New Washington on the east coast.

Speaker 1 He begins marching for New Washington, only again when he gets there, he sees the government once again, still in eyesight, slowly escaping down the river in a boat, shaking his fist once again.

Speaker 1 Damn you, Texans!

Speaker 1 Santana decided, fuck it, that's good enough. The government's on the run.
They're completely unable to govern.

Speaker 1 And assuming that Houston was now retreating towards Necogoches and wanting to cut him off, he marches for Lynchburg, a town that nowhere in the south should be named after.

Speaker 1 However, that is when Erastus Smith, remember his nickname is Def, working as a scout for Houston, captures a Mexican messenger.

Speaker 1 And on the messenger is a detailed map that has every Mexican troop position on it.

Speaker 1 The one thing we didn't want to happen.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 1 we are slowly collecting the military history version of see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil. We have deaf, we've misislaved the mute, we just need a blind guy now.
Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 1 This is how Houston discovered that the entire Mexican army was not marching with Santa Ana.

Speaker 1 Prior to this, he thought that they were all on his ass, but instead, Santa Anna only had 600 men, which meant for the first time, Houston had a numerical numerical advantage.

Speaker 1 Imagine being the guy who dropped the map, realizing you dropped it. That guy is so fired.
So fired. He's so dead.

Speaker 1 We're going to have you just get knifed by Eurastimus over there. What happened next is up for debate.
So Houston's army is on the march.

Speaker 1 And the way that this plays out is they're marching down a road. In this case, it's Texas in the 1800s.
So it's more of a dusty, a literal dusty trail. And they come to a fork in said dusty trail.

Speaker 1 One heads for Harrisburg, and the other one heads closer to the east coast.

Speaker 1 Houston is marching towards the back of his army, and his men let out a whoop and simply bust left towards Harrisburg, deciding fuck it, they're going on the attack.

Speaker 1 The military formation. Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop.
Again, you're going to have a civil war between the whoop whoops and the yeehaws. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And as the story goes, Houston just kind of said, God damn it, and decides to march with them, despite the fact the army itself has decided we're not retreating anymore.

Speaker 1 Other parts of the story say that this was always Houston's plan.

Speaker 1 It does make sense. He does now have all of the Mexican military plans in his hands, but he's not someone who really shares his plans with anybody.

Speaker 1 So nobody was entirely sure what his plan was at the time. I do like the idea of the army just forcing the commander to do what they wanted to do, though.

Speaker 1 Once there, Houston, a man mostly known for getting drunk, smelling like death, and sleeping it off until like 10 a.m.

Speaker 1 the next morning, long after the rest of his army has woken up, gave his only speech during this entire campaign because he was not a man for motivational speeches or words.

Speaker 1 I couldn't imagine he was very eloquent, more so communicating in a series of grumbles.

Speaker 1 He shouts at his men, remember the Alamo and remember Goliad, before, I assume, promptly doubling over and vomiting in his own mouth. or just like farting really loudly his visible stink lines

Speaker 1 yeah it feels like a lot of these sort of historic reminiscences and sort of like you know invocations of heroism we've come a little come across a little different if like they were periodically interrupted by people just shouting really loud

Speaker 1 it's just like making this heroic speech about etc etc etc just fucking massive brown stain spreading you just see like a little bit of shit coming out the pantaloons he holds up a finger he's like oh, hold on.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. I'm done and gone and shat myself again.
The first fucking gladiator scene in Gladiator where the dude is pissing and you see the camera season dripping down his leg.

Speaker 1 There's every single person shitting themselves. They all have dysentery.
They're all drunk as shit off of swamp liquor. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You're just like, god damn, my boots are squelchy again.

Speaker 1 Creating your own trench in Texas.

Speaker 1 That's how they actually keep cadence, keep marching in times. Everyone squelches under the water at the same time.

Speaker 1 Together they marched on, crossed the Buffalo Bayou on a series of log rafts, which sounds fun, but it was probably quite terrifying.

Speaker 1 I love the idea of the one guy who doesn't have dysentery and has to intentionally try and shit himself just to keep Kayfa. Maybe he needs to be like, he can't be thought of as the outcast.

Speaker 1 He won't be popular if he's still shitting solid. So he's sitting there like straining like a toddler.
He's the one who's calling cadence.

Speaker 1 He's singing army cadences but about this stuff, he's like, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, cow wife spinning, running down the street.

Speaker 1 Shit running down on my feet.

Speaker 1 Remember Francis and his cow wife.

Speaker 1 And there's just the one Polish guy who's like really confused.

Speaker 1 They march on towards Lynchburg, and Houston forces his army on the hardest marching the Texans had experienced thus far, not stopping for anything day day or night.

Speaker 1 And remember, a lot of these guys are still really, really, really sick. And several men simply drop dead on the way.
I assume mid-ye, huh? Meh. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Quick, boys. He got extra shit in his ass.
Steal it.

Speaker 1 Get that shit. It's like sourdough starter culture for the next swamp.

Speaker 1 The ship of Theseus accepted the amount of shit in your booth. Like, when's the stop being yours? It's the collective shit you've stolen off fallen soldiers.

Speaker 1 He had to leave 200 men behind at the burnt remains of Harrisburg because they're simply too sick to go on. But his plan worked.
The Texans managed to cross the ferry before Santa Ana.

Speaker 1 Santa Ana, still assuming that Houston was in retreat, was furious to find him suddenly at his rear. Word of the Texans' position, I assume, spread through the stink lines.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you catch him by the rear. You can definitely, they were coming from downwind.
You don't even need scouts. You're just sitting there in your horse, like

Speaker 1 Texans.

Speaker 1 No, I love the dedication to historical accuracy that Nate is currently suffering from what we have coined the Texan disease.

Speaker 1 That sounds like what people in Oklahoma would call being gay.

Speaker 1 The Texan disease is when your cow gets chlamydia.

Speaker 1 Not my cow wife.

Speaker 1 Oh, no, not my cow wife. Sad yee-haw.
Yee-haw.

Speaker 1 Yee-haw. Yee-haw.

Speaker 1 Word of the Texans' Texans' position spread through Santa Ana's ranks, and according to Colonel Delgado, the hungry, sick, and miserable conscripts that made up the detachment started talking about running before they were even ordered to march towards Houston's men.

Speaker 1 Santa Ana didn't make things better because then he mounted his horse and like pulled his sword out in an attempt to rally his men. And then he just stamped over two of his own dudes.

Speaker 1 That's gonna be the most demotivating speech in human history. Like, I think the general just murdered Phil.
That's like a cutaway bit from like family guy.

Speaker 1 That's full honest, like, it's like, get General Patton giving a speech in in chief, and he forgets to not put it in, he doesn't put it in park, and it just lurches forward, just knocks half the formation out.

Speaker 1 So he eventually got his men together and marched them for the junction at Buffalo Bayou, and most importantly, the San Jacinto River. Getting there about 2 p.m.
on April 20th.

Speaker 1 This was the ground that favored the Texans. It was marshland.
There's thick groves of trees, all that served their Texan way of war of long-distance rifle shooting.

Speaker 1 They lacked trained horsemen still, and the marshes and the trees would slow down any mounted Mexican attack, which of course they favored, while the trees would provide cover for the riflemen.

Speaker 1 Not to mention, since most Texans were from the American South, like I said, they're more than happy to fight the swamp.

Speaker 1 Santa Ana was just outside that looking in and decided his men should build a camp and rest, much to the surprise surprise of every other officer in Santa Ana's camp.

Speaker 1 The Texan forces in the muddy tree line were so well concealed that there's certainly no way that Santa Ana could actually see them.

Speaker 1 Once again, I am right in making a joke about Arnold Sporsteninger in Predator. You just see like two white globes rising out of the swamp.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you see a soldier with a Kentucky long rifle coated head to toe in mud, his cow wife slowly rising from the swamp behind him.

Speaker 1 Or for a more contemporary example, for anyone who's played Death Stranding, the scene where you fight Clifford Unger for the first time and he rises out of the goop with his goop soldiers.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you gotta look out for the goop men.

Speaker 1 He then sent soldiers towards the tree line, hoping to goad Houston into deploying his men away from his position of advantage, and so he could counter with his dragoons.

Speaker 1 That is when Santana discovered hidden in the swamp was two Texas cannons, nicknamed the Twin Sisters, that they opened fire with with a canister round on the Mexican soldiers.

Speaker 1 They're the twin sisters, and they're both mine, and I'm gonna marry them both. My cannon wife.

Speaker 1 These are my cannon wives. They share a bed with my cow wife.

Speaker 1 My cow wife isn't too happy about it. This sends the Mexican soldiers running.

Speaker 1 And the Texans, excited to see Santa Ana's men running for once, demanded that Houston let them go on the counterattack immediately.

Speaker 1 But Houston refused, knowing that's exactly what Santa Ana was trying to do. But he, again, feared a kind of general revolt against his command.

Speaker 1 So he allowed one man, Sidney Sherman, to take a group of horsemen forward on a scouting mission to get a better look at Santa Ana's disposition, but gave strict orders to not engage.

Speaker 1 Of course, Sherman ignored those orders as soon as he got them. He ordered his 61 horsemen, among them the Texan Secretary of War Thomas Rusk, to charge right at the enemy.
But here's the thing.

Speaker 1 These guys were not kidded out for mounted warfare in any capacity.

Speaker 1 They were carrying their long rifles, which were so long that after they fired, they could only be reloaded by dismounting off of the horse.

Speaker 1 Of course, as soon as they did this, Mexican dragoons armed with their own weapons, namely lances and swords, closed in for their kind of fighting.

Speaker 1 Secretary Rusk was immediately surrounded and nearly killed, but was saved at the last second by a Texan private name, Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar.

Speaker 1 What a fucking name. Say it again.
Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar. Once again, Nate, that is a William Faulkner character ass name.
Yeah, man, man.

Speaker 1 At first, I thought it was like Mirabeau or something kind of like weird Anglo-Saxon, but Mirabeau, like in French, like, oh my goodness gracious.

Speaker 1 You would assume this is another one of those weird Europeans that showed up, but no, this is just a guy from Georgia. Yep.
Yep. It works out.
His parents, also, interestingly, first cousins.

Speaker 1 He was a self-trade lawyer and failed candidate for Congress before washing up in Texas. Once again, another self-taught lawyer.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, and also, it's like you have names like this, and then you also have another guy who's like extremely not any kind of southern European background, whose last name, whose name is basically Alejandro Blump.

Speaker 1 Like, those are just 19th-century guys.

Speaker 1 I was going to say, like, you have Mirabeau, and beside him, you have just a guy, a disgusting, dirty Texan guy called John Gunt.

Speaker 1 I'm of the proud Gunt clan.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. It's like John Gunt, Dick Hitler, Mirabeau, Lamar,

Speaker 1 Augustus Klump.

Speaker 1 No, John Gunt would have definitely been on the Mexican side. Just somehow ends up there.
Well, it was like Bradburn in our first part of the series.

Speaker 1 Sherman then requested infantry support, which Houston refused because, again, this is turning into what he was worried about. So one of his captains said, fuck it, and led his men forward anyway.

Speaker 1 Other men saw this and charged forward. It's the classic domino effect we always have talked about on here.
And before long, an entire regiment of Texans is running off without orders.

Speaker 1 And there's no order or discipline. There's no ranks.
Nobody's beating drums for these guys to keep cadence.

Speaker 1 It's just random dudes and buckskins running in from the swamp in various forms of horrible filth. With choruses of yee-ho!

Speaker 1 Oh no, they shot Augustus,

Speaker 1 they shot John Gold.

Speaker 1 Remember the Alamo. Remember Dick Hitler.

Speaker 1 My sweet, sweet boy, Mirabo, has died.

Speaker 1 What followed was more of an unorganized fistfight cluster fuck than a military battle. Texans on horseback and on foot fired wildly.

Speaker 1 People just upended their rifles and swung at Mexican dragoons with clubs.

Speaker 1 Mexicans impaled mid with lances. Lamar rode around firing guns akimbo.

Speaker 1 But eventually the dragoons were driven back and the Texans were saved from accidentally wiping themselves out.

Speaker 1 But before he left the battlefield, Lamar reportedly stood up in his saddle, took his top hat off, and politely bowed to the Mexicans in a gracious gesture, who then clapped for him.

Speaker 1 Yes. The Mexicans are like, we fucking love that weird bastard.

Speaker 1 And before this, remember, okay, guy named Biribo Bonaparte Lamar from Georgia in a top hat is just firing guns in both hands dude this is like i i can only imagine a character nate you would create in like an rpg

Speaker 1 like nate's duchess and dragons character where like all of the outfit that he's wearing is just accumulated items from across the game that don't actually fit together

Speaker 1 it's like firing like musket pistols top hat he's not wearing any pants well yeah i mean it's like when we're talking about uh the soldiers in Burba who just took their pants off because they were shitting so much.

Speaker 1 And it want to ruin their pants. Houston was stuck dealing with the aftermath of not really being able to reprimand people because so many soldiers had ignored his orders.
He couldn't punish them all.

Speaker 1 Exasperated by the entire situation, Houston retired to his tent and got hammered for the rest of the night. Hell yeah.

Speaker 1 And then he pissed off his men even further because he just slept in the next day.

Speaker 1 Like, he slept until like 10, 11 a.m. while at a military camp.
I assume it's because he was sleeping it off, you know? Now, the Mexicans stayed where they were.

Speaker 1 And that night, Santa Ana ordered his men to dig in. The next morning, the 21st, General Kos pulled into the camp, bringing another 500 men with him, canceling out the Texans' numerical superiority.

Speaker 1 Though Houston did then promote Lamar on the spot from private to commander of all of his cavalry.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Yes. Also, a bit of a behind the scenes for anyone listening.

Speaker 1 We're in the studio in The Hague and the room is so filled with vape smoke that like I saw myself on the camera and I was like, am I on fire? Because I thought there was like vapor coming off me.

Speaker 1 No, the room is just so filled with vape smoke. It's the stink lines because you believe in method acting.

Speaker 1 I forgot that you were in The Hague and I thought you were back in your apartment in London and you just lit up a cigarette while we were podcasting. That's genuinely what I saw.

Speaker 1 I have done that before, but not today. No, the room is just so filled with vape smoke.
I may have something to do with that. Meanwhile, Houston was planning out what to do next.

Speaker 1 With his advantage now gone, he ordered a small team of riders to go around the Mexican camp and destroy a bridge. Now, this made sure they couldn't get any more reinforcements,

Speaker 1 but it also meant that the Texans had no clear route of withdrawal either. As Houston wrote, it's either we win or we die.

Speaker 1 As this was happening, the volunteers in the camp were getting angrier and drunker because to them it looked as though Houston was too afraid to fight.

Speaker 1 It It is like noon now, and Houston has not left his tent.

Speaker 1 A group of officers, as well as Secretary Rusk, walked into his tent, which you know would smell crazy in there, to have a council of war and to try to calm the men down.

Speaker 1 This meeting was solidly split between people who were anti-Houston and pro-Houston.

Speaker 1 The Secretary of War is very pro-Houston, but also the conduct of this meeting, the story goes in wildly different directions depending on who's telling it.

Speaker 1 According to the anti-Houston faction, they effectively shouted him down into committing to an attack.

Speaker 1 But according to the pro-Houston faction and those with more of a grasp on reality, because this also includes Secretary Rusk, was that Houston was calmly trying to explain to them what his plan was.

Speaker 1 And, but either way, it was a screaming match that went on for hours. It was four hours until they finally left his tent.

Speaker 1 Houston finally leaves his tent for the first time of the day and orders the men to line up to attack. Stinking like alcohol, probably also solidly sauced.

Speaker 1 The Texan advance was covered by a slight hill, and it was covered by tall grass.

Speaker 1 And they marched through that, which concealed them pretty effectively in two lines, with their cannons, the twin sisters, in the middle.

Speaker 1 Just so you can picture what this army looked like in your head, this is a line from the Texian Iliad. Quote: It was a splendid army of Napoleonic proportions.

Speaker 1 The men composed every frontier variety, from backwoodsmen in greasy buckskins to townsfolk in frock coats and top hats, to U.S.

Speaker 1 Army uniforms, to a southern man in a planter's hat, waistcoat, and cravat.

Speaker 1 Oh, I love being assaulted by the Bloodborne Army.

Speaker 1 Just like

Speaker 1 the cue for your average, like, cosplay convention

Speaker 1 running you down with two big cannons. Behold, it's the world's worst version of the village people.

Speaker 1 the society for creative anachronisms shows up and there's like but why are they forming up in a regimental line here what the fuck's going on joe i gotta ask how big are these cannons they're i think they're 18 pounders okay so they're normal field pieces

Speaker 1 being pulled by hand not a fun job to have and then juan seguin and his detachment of tejano cowboys was still there which is interesting as tejanos were the only part of the army that was free to just go home at this point.

Speaker 1 After the massacres at the Almo and Goliad, Houston was worried that so many of his men had like some kind of blood hatred for Mexicans that they might shoot them.

Speaker 1 So before the march, Houston had ordered them to remain with the baggage or go home. To that, Juan Seguin was so outrageously offended, he nearly challenged Sam Houston for a duel on the spot.

Speaker 1 And then he's like, no, me and my vaqueros are fucking staying.

Speaker 1 But they put a small cardboard square in the brim of their hats so people knew they were on their side. Meanwhile, in the Mexican camp, the defenders were taking a nap.
I mean, good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You gotta honor the time

Speaker 1 immemorial tradition of a siesta. And it does make sense.
Okay.

Speaker 1 This is often like, oh, the Santa Ana is so undisciplined and whatever. He just had all of his soldiers go to sleep, which is partially true.
But the reason for this does make sense.

Speaker 1 Santa Ana's men had spent all night digging in, while Cosa's men had spent all night marching in.

Speaker 1 Then, Santana woke his men up in the morning expecting a Texan attack, because that's when he would have launched it.

Speaker 1 But it never came, since remember, Houston and his boys are locked in his tent screaming at one another. So, assuming no attack is coming that day, Santa Ana allowed his men to get rest.

Speaker 1 However, he did not post enough guards. So, General Castillon and Colonel Delgado were like, shouldn't we have at least one half of the army stay awake?

Speaker 1 Like 90% of the force was allowed allowed to nap just on the houston tent i just gotta say you know it smelled crazy in there yeah it's it's nasty going down to 10 security because there's just a ton of saguaro cacae around and everyone's got huge hats in a sense it's stereotypical on this listen man just gonna say it okay shouts out to my my my my fallen brother paco gambo i love you to death unfortunately he whipped shitties too hard in a helicopter on the texas mexico border doing fucking you know hunting tours and crash and died love him to death but he went out the way he wanted to which is whipping shitties and fucking just probably playing credence and sometimes from Sonora State, moved to America as a kid, joined the army.

Speaker 1 We met that way. We stayed great friends.
He introduced me to Sonoran Food, one of the realest people I've ever met. As he said to me one time, I don't care about the stereotypes.

Speaker 1 When you see one of those big-ass cactuses, you just want to take a nap.

Speaker 1 And like General Castillion was like prodding Colonel Delgado. I was like, you need to go tell him, like, go wake him up and tell him, like, this is a bad idea.

Speaker 1 But they were both kind of too afraid to wake up Santa Anna and face his wrath because

Speaker 1 he also just trampled like two soldiers the other day. Yeah.
You know,

Speaker 1 maybe we need to let him rest. He's kind of a dick when he's tired.
Yeah, he gets, he gets grumpy if you wake him up from his nap. Yeah.
It is very funny to imagine this.

Speaker 1 So like, you know, the sort of weird military class structure bullshit aside with your leaders.

Speaker 1 Like if one of your leaders, like, if he got really mad, just like unhinged his jaw like a snake and swallowed people whole. You're sort of like, well, I don't want to get on his bad side.

Speaker 1 I mean, now is the time. He isn't finished digesting the last colonel.
He was madass.

Speaker 1 Santana's just laying on the floor with like an officer-shaped lump in his stomach under a heat lamp. That's why he had to lie down and go for sleep.
Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 1 Be careful though.

Speaker 1 If you spook him too much, when people come in to give him an announcement, he'll just coil around you and he won't let go. He'll rattle his boots together.

Speaker 1 You just hear the rattling of the spurs. Then at 4:30 p.m., the twin sisters opened fire into the Mexican camp.

Speaker 1 Lamar charged with his horsemen towards the left flank of the Mexican position, and a Texan band struck up a jaunty tune, which I assumed was pretty much only fiddles and dudes blowing on jugs.

Speaker 1 That would be haunting. Like, you've heard of the Aztec death whistle.
This is the Texan death whistle. Just like a dude named fucking Mirabo blowing at a jug.

Speaker 1 Mirabo has the jug. He's playing like kind of a free, well, proto-free jazz on a jug.

Speaker 1 And it's the jug is empty because your commander drank everything that was inside of it. Houston rode on his horse, which he had nicknamed weirdly Saracen.

Speaker 1 Interesting name choice. And he ordered the men to open fire.
Now, the attack that Houston had in mind was the normal infantry attack for the day, like ranked volleying fires slowly advancing forward.

Speaker 1 But the Texans Texans fire one volley and then he orders them to stop to reload.

Speaker 1 That's when Secretary Rusk sprints forward, sword in his hand, screaming at everybody to keep charging because if they stop now, they'd be ripped apart by Mexican gunfire.

Speaker 1 Once again, losing command of his army, Sam Houston could do nothing but try to keep up as the Texans broke ranks, left all military discipline in the wind, and rushed forward.

Speaker 1 And to his credit, Rusk was probably right. This first volley didn't do much of anything other than wake the Mexicans up.

Speaker 1 And if they just stood out there, they probably would have gotten in more of like a slugging match with a trained army, which they would have lost.

Speaker 1 So Rusk accidentally turned the Battle of San Jacinto into a legendary victory. The Mexican camp was caught completely by surprise.

Speaker 1 Officers woke up trying to get their men together, but it was completely hopeless. Most men, suddenly awake due to cannon fire and musketry, just ran for the hills, not even attempting to fight.

Speaker 1 Some small groups of men, not entire units, did follow orders and tried to man the line. Santa Ana was powerless to get his force back in order.
Texans poured over the barricades and earthworks.

Speaker 1 Castilleon was about the only commander to assemble anything that looked remotely like an organized defense, manning a cannon line until his men finally broke and ran, telling their general, who they did love dearly, to come with them.

Speaker 1 To that, he turned to them, doffed his hat, and said, quote, I've been in 40 battles and I've never shown my back. back.
I'm too old to do so now. Go on without me.

Speaker 1 And he turned to face the Texans, sword in hand, ready to die. Seeing this, Secretary Rusk ran forward and tried to get his men to not fire on the old general.

Speaker 1 I assume because Rusk hadn't learned anything from all of the men just ignoring orders constantly, and General Castillion was cut down by about a hundred musketballs. Oh,

Speaker 1 all of this took less than 20 minutes. However, the Texans were determined to get their revenge and shot and and stabbed their way through the wounded or the fleeing.

Speaker 1 General Moses Bryant came across a drummer boy who had a leg broken in the retreat, who shouted up to him in Spanish, begging for mercy, a language that Moses spoke. He shot the kid in the face.

Speaker 1 Mexican soldiers ran to the Tejanos for safety, begging them, calling them their Mexican brothers.

Speaker 1 The Tejanos, the hardened-ass vaqueros, cowboys, screamed that, we're not Mexican, we're Texan, and shot them dead. Other Mexican soldiers, desperate to escape, attempted to swim across a nearby lake.

Speaker 1 Texas riflemen simply posted up on the lake shore and picked them off one by one like they were hunting. Other men pinned down Mexican soldiers and scalped them.
Oh,

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 dozens, dozens of Mexican corpses are found scalped. Jesus Christ.
Looking how, man.

Speaker 1 A Texan doctor gathered several wounded men together in an attempt to create a field hospital only for Texan volunteers to simply walk through and murder all of his patients.

Speaker 1 Several Texan leaders, Houston included, who had broken an ankle in the battle, attempted to stop the killing, but nobody was listening to them.

Speaker 1 You might be wondering, where's Santa Ana in all of this? Well, he saw how hopeless the battle was within the first like five minutes and just got the fuck out of there.

Speaker 1 He ran into a nearby swamp, escaping the slaughter and saving his life. And he ended up spending the night there, but was captured by some Texan scouts the next morning.

Speaker 1 By the time Santa Ana was captured and the slaughter stopped, 650 Mexican soldiers were dead, the vast majority of which were executed. The Texans had gotten their revenge.

Speaker 1 Now, Santa Ana may have been captured and his column defeated, but remember the Mexican army was far from defeated in Texas in general.

Speaker 1 This was a fact that Houston and Santa Ana both knew. So Santa Ana did what he did best.
Went back to be president? He switched sides.

Speaker 1 He was brought before Sam Houston and immediately went about saving his own life and also working on behalf of the Texan state.

Speaker 1 He told Houston, look, there's another general, De Urea, that's out there and he's not going to surrender. You're going to have to beat him.

Speaker 1 And I don't think you can, but he'll go home if I tell him to. But you have to let me send an order.
So he does. And he does.
They retreat back to San Antonio.

Speaker 1 There's one general named General Philosola. He just picks up stakes and marches all the way back to Mexico.
Di Urrea is like, I'm not following these orders because they're obviously under duress.

Speaker 1 But he doesn't march anywhere either. He just kind of hangs out.
But he does stop. Word eventually gets to Mexico about Santa Ana's defeat, and the whole nation flew flags at half mass.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, Santa Ana spent weeks negotiating in captivity with Houston, Rusk, and Texan president Burnett. This eventually led to the Treaty of Velasco.
But there's actually two treaties of Velasco.

Speaker 1 One, for public consumption, and one, a personal agreement between the Texan government and Santa Ana, which was kept completely secret. Okay, so please inform me of the difference between the two.

Speaker 1 So the public one was the full withdrawal of Mexican troops across the Rio Grande River, POWs to be released, private property to be restored to its former owners, and of course, Santa Ana to be released safety.

Speaker 1 It should be pointed out here that the Texans and in the treaty, slaves counted as personal property, and the Mexican army was freeing slaves from Texans wherever they went.

Speaker 1 And part of the agreement was you have to give them back.

Speaker 1 To their credit, at least General Di Urrea refused to do that and told all of the slaves he freed to come back to Mexico with him. And they did.

Speaker 1 The second secret treaty was that Santa Ana was to become a Texan agent in the Mexican government.

Speaker 1 His whole job was to go back to Mexico and through politicking and backdoor agreements, get the Mexican state to recognize the independent Republic of Texas.

Speaker 1 This never happens, but Texans assumed that until this day came, the Mexican army would be back in force.

Speaker 1 And soon thousands more American volunteers were flooding in at a level that nobody could even keep count of them anymore.

Speaker 1 And then, because of course this is going to happen, President Burnett forcefully displaced all Tejanos living near the Guadalupe River and gave their land to the new settlers.

Speaker 1 Over the next several years, most of the original Tejano population of Texas would be forcefully displaced by the Texan state.

Speaker 1 And that is even to go into what they did to the native population. Yeah.
Because it's the same thing America does. When Santa Ana returned home, he was arrested immediately.

Speaker 1 Most of the blame for the whole cluster fuck was laid at his feet, and he fell out of power, at least for a couple of years, because he pops back up during the pastry war, which we did a bonus episode on.

Speaker 1 It's also where he gets his leg blown off. So go listen to that.
Santa Ana is a man that's never out of power for long, and Mexico would never end up recognizing the Republic of Texas.

Speaker 1 But as it turns turns out, that wouldn't really matter all that much. It became what you would call now de facto independent.

Speaker 1 Texas went ahead, scheduling the first elections for Congress and president. Texans overwhelmingly voted for Sam Houston to be their first president.

Speaker 1 And then the Texas Congress canceled all agreements that Sam Houston made with any native people within the country, saying he lacked any legal authority to do so when he did.

Speaker 1 And then they refused to make any other new agreements.

Speaker 1 The newly ratified Texan Constitution had significantly fewer rights for everybody that had previously existed under the Mexican Constitution. No free black person could live in Texas, period.

Speaker 1 Women could own nothing and could not legally act as their own person. Slavery was not only legal, but a slave could only be freed by an act of the Texan Congress.

Speaker 1 At which point they would have to leave the country. Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 Texan politics post-independence were as insane and factionalized as they were during the Revolution, with one faction eventually led by Lamar advocating for a total genocide against the native population and conquering more Mexican land all the way to California.

Speaker 1 So we almost got even bigger Texas. While Houston generally led the other faction that wanted to govern Texas in, let's say, a slightly more normal manner.
He wanted to get international recognition.

Speaker 1 recognition and that recognition largely failed. The reason for this was Mexico was a much more important trade partner for everyone.
And by recognizing Texas, it could harm relations with Mexico.

Speaker 1 And there was also the small fact that Texas was a brand new country and an avowed slave state boiled into their constitution, much the same way the Confederacy would do in their constitution later.

Speaker 1 So that was troubling for a lot of internet. Like, obviously, there's a lot of slave countries still around, the United States for one,

Speaker 1 that people are still doing business with. But it's more of like, like, well, they're grandfathered in because they own slaves when we own slaves.
Texas is new. That's different.

Speaker 1 Also, there's a lot of talk about just having Texas be annexed by the United States, which is something that Sam Hewson comes to the conclusion: it's the only way for us to remain independent from Mexico.

Speaker 1 But at the time, there's an argument about Texas joining the Union because they're a slave state. It would throw the balance off.

Speaker 1 But by the end, the only countries that recognized the Republic of Texas was the U.S., the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, and Belgium.

Speaker 1 The foreign policy was such a failure that that's when Sam Hewson just said, I guess we need to, our true end point is joining the United States.

Speaker 1 There was even bitter battles over where the Capitol should be, and it switched several times in only a semi-legal matter. Sometimes people just stole the capital effectively.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Like they stole like legal archives and like money and tried to move it around.

Speaker 1 Sometimes people in that state capital stopped them from stealing the state archives by just just like beating their ass on the street. And meanwhile, the Texan economy was absolutely in shambles.

Speaker 1 It never fully recovered from the war, and it would remain that way for its entire existence. This was owing to the fact that they used their own incredibly unstable currency, the Texan dollar.

Speaker 1 And they decided that they did not need a central bank to manage that currency. All of this is made worse by their number one economic driver, slavery-driven cotton plantations.

Speaker 1 Cotton crashed out, which made it even worse.

Speaker 1 The lack of recognition and the constant threat of war with Mexico, not to mention their tanking currency and completely wild economic structure, made everyone kind of think investing in Texas was a really bad idea.

Speaker 1 So people stopped. Even the constant coming of American colonists stopped, even though land was still virtually free.

Speaker 1 It didn't take long for the majority of Texans who are living in a collapsing slave state ran by monopoly money to start believing that, hey, maybe Sam Houston's annexation thing was a good idea.

Speaker 1 And eventually, just shy of a decade after independence, the Republic of Texas comes to an end and is annexed by the United States, starting the Mexican-American War, which we'll talk about in a future series.

Speaker 1 It's actually funny, right before the Mexican-American War starts, Mexico offers. Texas recognition, but only upon the legal promise they'll never join the United States.

Speaker 1 So yeah, very interesting. We'll eventually cover the the Mexican-American War at some point.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I've wanted to cover it for some time, but you really can't talk about it without having this as a foundation. So we had to do the Texas Revolution first.
Okay. But that is the Texas Revolution.

Speaker 1 Yee-haw!

Speaker 1 Yee-haw. And I will not have to make that noise for quite some time.
Yeah, until we eventually do the Mexican-American War. And then it's like...
The E-Haws are back. The E-Haws are back.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're going to Yee my haul. So fellas, how are you feeling?

Speaker 1 I am once again delighted to learn more about just the like guys that showed up in America around this time, like with insane names.

Speaker 1 It's like when you leave an internet site open and like Nazis and freaks show up and start fucking just graffiti it and taking it over. It's sort of like that.

Speaker 1 What if that's a country and you could make money? Like, that's kind of the vibe that I get sometimes.

Speaker 1 I mean, I feel as though I have a spiritual communion with the guys we've described because I am also riddled with pestilence at this moment.

Speaker 1 So it's been, it's been interesting reading about that.

Speaker 1 I mean, like, yeah, but there are so many things that you take for granted that they didn't have, and they still managed to become one with the swamp.

Speaker 1 They still managed to do all kinds of feats of daring do. And yeah, this was great, Joe.
This is a really, really interesting story.

Speaker 1 And I feel like I learned a lot and also learned, I discovered a lot of things I'm glad I'm not old enough to have experienced.

Speaker 1 Unless I was the world's oldest podcaster and I just was really good with my fucking skincare routine. Yeah, that's the fate of all of us.

Speaker 1 I'm going to be podcasting like the fucking god emperor of 40k grafted to a podcasting chair that keeps me alive so I can report about the weird shit that's happening 200 years from now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, for anyone who's listening at home, uh, Nate, much like the end in Metal Gear Solid 3, if you sneak up on him three times, you get to take his spot on the podcast. That's true.

Speaker 1 We still do that.

Speaker 1 You sneak up close to him, and if the exclamation point appears over his head, you have to start over. Yeah, you have to save scum Nate.

Speaker 1 If you don't save me, then you have to ride on the fucking skeetu with Tom at the end of the game.

Speaker 1 He's full of post-workout, so he's going to be smelling fucking terrible. Oh, yeah.
Just leaking shit gas right on your lap. I mean, the other day,

Speaker 1 me and Joe went to the gym and he gave me some of his illegal in the EU pre-workout. And I got about like 20 minutes in.
I was like, why are my shins tingling? I'm working out my shoulders.

Speaker 1 That's my personal promise to everybody that comes and works to me. I'll take you to the gym and I'll make you see God.

Speaker 1 I remember I was taking some kind of thing and I think we were going to do like high-intensity repetition like interval workouts for Army PT and I never took a supplement before Army PT ever came after that.

Speaker 1 Because the best way I could describe it was sort of like, I think my heart rate's normally supposed to calm down, but it kind of isn't right now mods. Like it was really bad.

Speaker 1 Heart racing, like the first time Lamar laid eyes on his cow wife.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like there's a there's a level you reach of like supplementation where your heart is beating so fast you actually can't feel it anymore. That's what we call the sweet spot.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But, fellas, that is a series. But we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion.
And today's question is: What is your favorite episode you've done this year? Oh, that one's hard.

Speaker 1 That one's very hard.

Speaker 1 I mean, I did really like this series. I think we did a good job.
Shouts out to Ani, who's going to have to edit out all the things that we fucked up. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Honestly, I think one of my favorite was Yardi Murphy from from the other day.

Speaker 1 That was a good one. That's very kind of you.

Speaker 1 I think my favorite was watching you guys.

Speaker 1 So cards on the table, just people are aware. My daughter became really ill.
It's nothing terminal, nothing serious. It's a regular childhood illness, but it can be very serious.

Speaker 1 And so she was hospitalized for eight days. And she went to the hospital the night, basically two nights before our live show was supposed to happen in London.
And Joe and Tom covered down for me.

Speaker 1 And I basically monitored the live stream. My friend Sophine came down to handle sound.
And so I was actually, my wife handled the overnight that night.

Speaker 1 And I was watching you guys perform on the live stream, just making sure the live stream was going okay. Man, monitoring comments and, you know, relaying stuff to the tech team.

Speaker 1 And I was, the whole thing with the guy who just will not stop fucking like old-timey pump cart Confederate shit chasing down the trains. You guys,

Speaker 1 I loved that episode. I loved that episode.
I was proud of you. Like, not that I am in a position to be proud of you.
I'm not like your fucking dad or whatever, but you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Like, seeing you guys.

Speaker 1 I'm open in the market for one, to be fair.

Speaker 1 But seeing you guys run with it and the fact that, like, you know, anybody who watched that show came into it blind. We just think that there wasn't a third co-host.
You guys handled it so well.

Speaker 1 That, to me, has been a huge highlight, like a huge, like high watermark. So I would say that.
I do think that was one of my favorite live shows that we've done. I think the episode was really good.

Speaker 1 The crowd was great. And it was the first time we had a confirmed case of someone who thought we were led by donkeys coming into.
the show and sitting down. It was an older couple.

Speaker 1 Obviously, immediately they had to know that we weren't them, but they stayed for the whole show

Speaker 1 and immediately got up and left. So at least they were very polite.
I hope you laughed at least once.

Speaker 1 But I really enjoyed that one.

Speaker 1 Also, it's not an episode, but I love the miniature. Yeah, absolutely.
I know that technically was probably last year. It was, but it took a while to get.

Speaker 1 I think I think we didn't actually manage to launch sales on it until

Speaker 1 January.

Speaker 1 I recall that being a thing. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 So my friend Ari Nielsen, who is helping us out with designing designing social media stuff and posters, etc., he uh is a sculptor, he's a professional sculptor, he does like his makes his living with figurine work.

Speaker 1 Um, and he we talked about it, and he designed the Doug the Donkey/slash haunts your uh figurine for us.

Speaker 1 And I mean, like, shouts out because our is great, but like, you know, figurines doesn't, just because someone who does it professionally doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be like fucking life-changing.

Speaker 1 But when I saw his work, I was like, Jesus Christ, dude, you're so good at this. I was so, so happy with the rewards.
And the fans with their paint jobs on them have been wonderful.

Speaker 1 One person got third place. When I was in D.C., so I went to D.C.
for this convention during which time the Capital Open painting contest was going on.

Speaker 1 I was so desperately trying to get into that hall so I could see because I knew their figurine was in the finals. It was our Doug figurine.
They painted wonderfully.

Speaker 1 And there was like 20 people lined up outside. I was like, okay, this must be the line to get in.
And they were like, like, no, it's full. I'm like, it doesn't start for 30 minutes.

Speaker 1 Like, oh, it's full. Like, okay, but like, I tried to explain to the, I don't want to call him a bouncer because it's the tabletop convention.
They don't have bouncers.

Speaker 1 I tried to explain to him, like, look, I host this show, and someone in there painted one of our miniatures. And it's in the finals.
I really want to be there for it.

Speaker 1 And he's looking at me with like eyes completely glazed over because this is an insane thing to try to explain to someone.

Speaker 1 And I couldn't get in to see, but the figurine did get third and it's fucking outstanding. I say R Fonder.
I went to some competition. I think it was in Italy.
I can't remember where.

Speaker 1 I want to say it might have been in Milan, but it was for this kind of thing, basically for miniatures, artists, basically competition.

Speaker 1 And the work he was showing pictures to me of people who were in it was unbelievable. But he placed second, I think.
I think he got a silver medal for our figurine, which is

Speaker 1 that would never happen to me because I can't paint for shit. I love miniatures.
Ever since I've gotten into them, I'm painting a lot. I'm playing a lot, but...

Speaker 1 I'm never getting a podium on that shit. That's for sure.
I just do it for fun and stress relief, and it's wonderful. I

Speaker 1 also got to say, maybe a bit of a selfish one, doing the order was so, like, so fun. It was because it was just like so insane looking at all the stuff and trying to like hold it in contention.

Speaker 1 And just like the Robert Matthews voice was just such. Oh, the ro that, that series was outstanding.
I think that was probably my favorite series we've done all year. We've had so much fun.

Speaker 1 People either love the Mickey Mouse voice or they didn't. We loved it.
So that's why, because we're here to make each other laugh. Robert Matthew's Living in a Shoe, The Electric Jew.

Speaker 1 That series is outstanding. I mean,

Speaker 1 I would say somebody once reached out and said, I got my partner to listen to Lions by telling them that this is the only show I've ever heard where it's, it's, I mean, they thought we were all straight, but they were correct.

Speaker 1 All three of all of us are cisgender and they just have some kind of chaotic trans energy.

Speaker 1 And I was like, I appreciate that that's how people feel because to me, working with kill james bond it feels like everything i've ever done with from with trans people in general with work always feels like the quality of work is insanely high like the workmanship like the professionalism is insanely high and the complete fucking batshit nutsness is also high but everything is like it so to me that's like our life goal it's not to become trans but my life goal here is because if i wanted to do that at this point in my life it's like fucking what would i have to lose man hey more power to you guys man i'm here to support you what i'm trying to say though is that like to me it's more it's more that i want the show to sound as good as it can i want the research to be as good as it it can.

Speaker 1 I want our ability to communicate, perform, do everything to be as professional as it can, but I also want it to go as fucking nuts as it can and be still be funny and not become distracting.

Speaker 1 Like, I want to blade run it. You know what I mean? I want to, like,

Speaker 1 it's not enough to have a reliable family car that gets you from point A to point B when you do what we do. I want to redline that shit and I want to fucking Akira slide the horse, okay?

Speaker 1 I won't rest until I'm doing that shit. And I'm just so grateful that you two are also fully on board for that.

Speaker 1 You understand that vision because, like, it's, you know, it's, it's been amazing to see it like get fleshed out, get, get, kind of mature and become, you know, everything builds on top of itself.

Speaker 1 So that's how I feel. I feel like the order was, yeah, I had totally forgotten because I, my brain dumps every episode.
They're like, oh, you must know so much about history.

Speaker 1 Like, no, I don't have shit. I forget everything.

Speaker 1 But Tom, shouts out to you for researching that. And yeah, I think as a piece, that whole thing, that was really great.
Yeah, the next terrorism series is not going to be fun at all. Nope.

Speaker 1 Well, if you remember, I was also really ill during the recording of The Order. Orderer.
And I was still able to tell you, fucking guys, you better get inside that shoe right now. So, you know.

Speaker 1 I can fit my family of seven and my cow wife in a shoe.

Speaker 1 Hold on, relax and listen to the doors.

Speaker 1 Guys, thank you so much for joining me on this four-week-long Texan venture. But you host other podcasts.
Plug those other podcasts. What a hella way to dad.

Speaker 1 Trash Future, Kill James Bond, No Gods, No Mayors. I am in some capacity either involved or I'm a co-host.

Speaker 1 And both of all those shows have free feeds and Patreon feeds if you want to subscribe and get bonus content. So check those out, please.

Speaker 1 We need to skin the show with the history of everything told through the history of tattooing.

Speaker 1 My books are available on boneskinshop.com and I am producing a new show hosted by Greg Foley called Bloodwork, which is about the economies of violence.

Speaker 1 This is still the only show that I work on and you can support it by supporting us on Patreon. Just five bucks a month gets you absolutely everything.

Speaker 1 It is a very long list from Discord access to every show early to years and years of bonus content to include one rotating cow wife while supplies last. And until next time.