Let Them Fight: A Comedy History Podcast · Jacob Trimmer and Tim Groeschel

Ep. 585 Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

·2 hr 30 min·8 clips

Let Them Fight opens with filthy jokes about a shoulder that hurts to use and a non-porn hand that still has to carry the load. The pain bit becomes a running gag, and the hosts squeeze every last drop out of bodily misery. From there, the episode pivots hard into Arthur Wellesley and the Spanish campaign. Burgos comes first, where Wellesley goes after the fortress and fails to take it. While that is happening, Napoleon is in Russia and that campaign goes badly for him. The Russians beat him back, and the Prussians and Austrians decide he can be beaten too, so they join the allied forces. Suddenly Napoleon is looking at all of Europe coming at him. He pulls troops out of Spain to defend France proper, and Wellesley, now reinforced, goes back on the attack. Instead of driving straight in, he flanks the French and keeps forcing them to fall back closer and closer to France so they do not get surrounded. The two sides finally meet at Victoria. Both armies take brutal casualties, but the French get wrecked and flee, leaving 150 artillery pieces behind. The hosts play that number for laughs because it is such a humiliating loss. The victory is so big that Beethoven writes a piece called Wellington's Victory. Even after all that, Wellington is not happy. His men break discipline, loot, and harass locals, and he writes them off as the scum of the earth as common soldiers. The episode keeps rolling through the later push at Pamplona and Bittassoa before heading into the usual Patreon and social plugs with a bleak little sign-off.

As heard by us

A coarse, fast-moving Wellington episode that keeps the campaign legible.

The episode gives Arthur Wellesley a rough, lively treatment, moving from Burgos to Victoria and then into the spillover from Napoleon's failed Russian campaign.

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Why you'd press play

You want Wellington's run from Burgos to Victoria, with the ugly parts left in.

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