Latest / Ridiculous History / John of Bohemia, the Blind King Who Charged Into Battle

Transcript

John of Bohemia, the Blind King Who Charged Into Battle · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: tuning in. My name is Ben, my name is Noel uh.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I wanted to work in a Fred Durst reference in here,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: some kind of limp biscuit nod because of what was
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: happening off my good I thought was delightful. Yes, super
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: producer Casey Pegram actually does most of our intros. They're
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: just off air and Casey you you you cued us
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: up when we asked if we were rolling with a
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: specific reference? Is that correct? That is true? And I
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: leave it to the list there to deduce what what
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: the connection there would have been with the concept of rolling.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: But I will say that Fred Durst um back behind
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: the camera in the director's chair. She had a new
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: movie coming out. What is it? I don't know what
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: it's called. It's called The Obsesso. Yeah, and it's got
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: John Travolta in some very interesting He's making some interesting choices,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: both hair wise, accessory wise, and um let's say what's that.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I don't I don't want to say it on the show,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: but you might remember in the movie Tropic Thunder, Tom
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Cruise plays a character makes a certain choice, and it
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: makes a certain choice, and it's recommended that you don't
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: go full that thing. Um In this film, John Travolta
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: seems to be making that choice. I agree. I agree.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: So maybe something to catch like on video or something
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: curiosity that's not actually what it's called. It's it's just
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: it's called like the nut job kind of It sort
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: of looks like a rip off a big fan right,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: that Patton Oswald movie. I think it might be called
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: the finn attic. Are you whoa? Whoa? Whoa? Are you Casey?
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Are you accusing fred Durst of being unoriginal? Well, I
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: would never say that. I hope not having you know,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: invented the irresistible blend of rap and rock music. I
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: saw a great meme where it said fred Durst explaining
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: rap metal to executives and it was that like always
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: sunny like conspiracy peg board, but with fred Durst's face
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: with the backwards red ball cap super imposed on it. Well,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: just just back to the reference. This is something that
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: fred Durst would do in perpetuity. He rolls. It is true.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: That's the philosophy of Durst. And while we are talking
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: about the philosophy of Durst. While we're talking about this film,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: which none of us have seen to be fair, we
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: also find that Fred Durst has something in common with
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: the subject of today's story, which is the historically he,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: like many other people in positions of power, has He's
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: done some dumb things, were ill advice things because there
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: was no one around to be anything less than a
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: syncophant or a yes man. Today's story takes place, uh,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: not in the wild frontiers of rap Rock, but back
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: in the thirteen hundreds on August six, and English and
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Welsh army met a French force. In case you can
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: help me out with this, when it's spelled c r
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: E c y, I'm gonna say clessy something like that
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: sounds so good when he says it, casey on the case,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: on the absolute case. Yeah, Clessie, he's got it, he
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: got it. Yeah. No, I mean, it's definitely not on
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: the wilds of of rap Rock, that that undiscovered country,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: but it is in something of of a of a
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: of a wild West kind of frontier because we had
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: the King of Bohemia, King John, who joined this conflict
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: when the English and the Welsh at the French forces
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: at Clacy. But here's the thing. Back in thirteen forty
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: John had been on a mission, a crusade where he
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: had lost his sight completely. Yeah, the conflict here in
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: thirteen forty six had some twists that no one saw coming,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: especially not John. He had been a warrior for most
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: of his life and he did not let being blinded
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: slow his role. You see, John of Bohemia was born
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: in twelve ninety six, member of the Luxembourg dynasty, and
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: he became the Count of Luxembourg in thirteen ten, and
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: he married a woman named Elisa of the ruling dynasty
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: of Bohemia. Her father died without a male heir, and
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: so John inherited the kingdom and was crowned in thirteen eleven.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: But he he had really close bonds with France, such
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: that he had sent his son to be raised in
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: the Parisian court rather than in Prague. And you know
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Nol As you mentioned, he was on a crusade when
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: he lost his sight completely, but he wasn't blinded by
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: enemy forces. It turns out that he had a genetic condition.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: This caused him to go blind on crusade in Lithuania.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: But his reputation seemed to bear the hit just fine.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: There were no challenges to his rule. He was still king,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: he was still considered a night, he was still considered
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: a warrior. And so when the battle there At occurred,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: John was dead set on going to the conflict. But
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: how how exactly did he wind up there? What? What
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: led to him joining the fray? Okay, so here's the thing,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Edward the Third's what team? Crew? Band and crew? Yeah, band,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: band of Brethren, Knighted Brethren, uh, swordid gilded Knighted Brethren.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Had absolutely obliterated one of the most well equipped UM
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: armies in all of Europe, which belonged to King Philip
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: the sixth of France. Um and he did this remarkably effectively,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: um without losing too many men. But the ones that
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: died on the French side of things were pretty well
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: regarded UM and and they kind of bore the brunt
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: of this, which is unfortunate. Yeah, there were the French
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: for the French, there were a lot of casualties on
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: that side, and the subject of today's story is probably
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: the most well known, most famous of those fatalities, that
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: is blind King John of Bohemia. And it's weird because
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: he's the King of Bohemia, so how has he involved
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: in this conflict between the French King Philip and between
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Edward of England. Here's how it went down. So Philip
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: reaches out to blind John from Luxembourg and says, uh,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: join me in this fight against this guy Edward in England.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: And John at the time was hanging out with his
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: son Charles, who had just been uh just been crowned
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: as the king of Germany. So John goes to meet
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Philip in Paris on the August, and you know, they
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: crew up their forces and they go after Edward and
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: they ride towards the coast. So he really is pulled
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: into the battle because of his friendship with the French
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: King Philip, who, as he said earlier, knowl his forces
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: are just getting waxed left and right. So he needs
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: all the help he can get. But historians only no
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: one popular tale about any of Bohemian involvement in this battle.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: And that is what John of Bohemian did when he
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: finally got to the battlefield, because look, he's he's got experience,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: he's a smart guy, he's got moxie more than a little.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: He's got he's got what we would call hutzpah. But
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: he also literally cannot see, which is a you know,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: for many people that would mean that they absolutely couldn't
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: participate in riding a horse, much less riding one into
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: a fight. But he would have none of that. He
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: would not be cow towed. Two, he would not be
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: treated with any kind of special consideration. Um, he wielded
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: his sword with a plum, often swinging wide and and
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: having his his men kind of have to duck and
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: cover u and again at the risk, not at the risk,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: just just very very quickly and importantly, not to sound
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: ablest in any way. I mean, having no site is
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: is obviously a very serious condition that requires a lot
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: of life changes. The thing that's interesting about this is
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: that John refused to make those changes and operated in
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: the manner of sort of a megalomaniacal monarch, existing in
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: a bubble and refusing to do anything outside of what
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: he believes he should be doing. Right. And at this
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: point he's used to not having sight. He was, you know,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: he was blinded years ago. By the time rolls around.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: What I'm saying is he's expecting others to make concessions
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: to him, rather than you know, maybe thinking it wise
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: not to participate in certain activities that might be best,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: you know, afforded to the sighted. Very I mean very
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: much so. And it leads to what is romanticized as
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: this um as this heroic battle field moment. The story
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: goes like this. Here's the story that we know from
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: a couple of different sources. Apparently King John had his
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: nights tie their horses, physically tie their horses to his
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: and ride forward toward the English altogether, so these guys
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: could kind of help him steer. And he said that
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: no Bohemian, even one who was blind, could be said
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: to have ever run from a fight. We have a
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: couple of medieval sources. One, the Chronicle of Prague, specifically
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: quotes John as saying, far be it that the king
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: of Bohemia should run away. Instead, take me to the
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: place where the noise of the battle is the loudest.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: The Lord will be with us, nothing to fear. Just
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: take good care of my son. Beautiful oscar moment. So yeah,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we've we've got this image of
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: of these uh, these nights riding alongside John kind of
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: helping steer his his his his steed. A bit We
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: have several different accounts. We have check sources that say
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: that there were only two that were tethered to to
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: this horse, and then we have English folks, uh, citing
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: many many more. What we can say for certain, and
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: this comes from a fantastic article on historical Honey. Does
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: really say articles are fantastic? Does it mean some of
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: them aren't fantastic? I don't know why. I always say that,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: you know, the ones that aren't fantastic shouldn't make it
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: to the air. That's probably a good point. Then that's
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: a very good point. This one is in fact fantastic,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: coming from historical honey dot com and saying that what
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: we do know, despite the differences and accounts, is that
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: he did head directly into the fray. Yeah. You'll hear
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: some differences in an English source versus check source. Uh.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Those differences are primarily going to be about how many
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: nights were tethered to King John, Was it a bunch
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: or was it only two? And you will also hear
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: about when this famous charge occurred. The English sources say
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: that the charge came in the climactic moments of the fighting,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: but the check chronicle says that he charged pretty much
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: after the French had run away. The thing here is
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: the English source for Starr got his information directly from
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: the English court, and the Czech chronicler got their information
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: directly from the check court, maybe even John's son Charles directly.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: And so the big questionnaire is which side can we believe?
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Does either source have kind of an ulterior motive? Did
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: the English writer want John O Bohemia's death to seem
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: like it was justified so that nobody on the English
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: side was charged with the unethical act of killing a
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: blind man? You know what I mean? I do know
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: what you mean. And it's not clear from the record
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: which which one of those is more accurate? And yeah,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: and would would John have deliberately written to certain death?
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: It's weird because here's what we here's what we learned
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: that there were already a bunch of dead and dying
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: horses on the ground because they had practiced, you know,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: early forms of trench ward. Here, there were pits dug
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: in the ground, there were people shooting arrows well beforehand. Still,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: even with that kind of littering the battlefield, they probably
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: could have made the charge. So we know it actually
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: happened for sure, for sure. We do have a lot
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: of other fun historical accounts of this. Uh, this deed,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: this charge. One of my personal favorites is by the
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: medieval chronicler. That's that's a great job title. It seems
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: much more important than the historian. Uh, Ben, you you
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: branced this earlier. I believe it's frost Are. Yeah, that's
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: what we were like. Yeah, that's right. And he wrote
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: around thirteen seventy um in great detail about this event,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: and I don't know, it sounds pretty poetic and larger
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: than life. But I want to read another one. Ben,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: you didn't want earlier and did a great job. So
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: here's my attempt. When he understood the order of the battle,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: he said to them about him, where is the Lord
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Charles my son? His men said, sir, we cannot tell.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: We think he'd be fighting. Then he said, sirs, you
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: are my men companion, and said, friends, in this journey,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: I require you to bring me so far forward that
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I may strike one stroke with my sword. They said
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: they would do his commandment, and to the intent that
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: they should not lose him in the press. They tied
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: all their reins of their bridles around to other and
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: set the king before to accomplish his desire boom. And so,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: as we can tell, both of these accounts are written,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: you know, just a couple of decades after the actual charge,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: so there still would have been living people around with
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: firsthand knowledge of this. And this is one of the
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: crowning achievements of this guy's life. This is the kind
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: of death at least the way it's depicted that many
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: warriors would envy absolutely and the way it's the scene
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: is set by Frostar. It sounds to me like the
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: men are acting in like pure solidarity and they respect
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: this kid. You know, I don't know. I hope I
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: didn't make him a sound buffoonish earlier. I mean, this
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: is absolutely not just the work of a of a
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: megalomaniacal madman who's totally out of touch. I think he
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: very much wants to go into battle with his with
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: his men, right. He didn't have to do that. He
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: could have stayed in like his in his tent, you know,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: be carried around in a litter or something like that,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: but instead he wanted to you know, dive in. Also,
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: we have to ask ourselves, could they have refused him,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: because he is, after all, the king you know. It
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: reminds me of that scene in Lord of the Rings
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: in the film adaptation when Eric Gordon is giving that
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: speech at the Black Gate and he's like, a day
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: may come when the courage of men fails. Cedra etceed
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: tastes not this day, No, it is not. Makes me
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: think of the Brave Heart speech exactly exactly. It's like
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: its own genre of speech is and this this is
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: a real version of one. Uh. The weird thing about
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: John though, is that his story doesn't stop when he
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: physically passes away. His remains get moved around a lot.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: He was first interred in the old Abbey in Luxembourg City,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: and then the monastery where he was interred was destroyed
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: in fifty three, and so they moved his body to
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: what they called the new Abbey, then dug up again
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: during the hellish time that was the French Revolution, and
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: given to the Book family, who I believe we're partners
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: in a in a in a pretty well known company
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: at the time called Villa Roy and Bok. What did
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: they do, Ben, I'm interested just for the sake of
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: our audience here, who wants to know things? They could
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: just google it. Um, let's see they sell flatwear. Uh,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: they sell you know, plates, cutlery, dining collections, ceramics. Oh,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: it's very much still around though. Yeah. Yeah, it's like
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: very fine, well maybe not fine, but it's it's certainly
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: you can buy it at Macy's. It's not like you know,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: fine shina. But it ain't cheap. Let's see a set
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: of Villeroy and Bok French garden plates. Is it was
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty bucks. That's you know, the middle,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: middle of the road. But I bet back in the
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: day it was it was more pricey. But they hid
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: these remains in their attic, the Bok family family did,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: and uh there they stayed in the attic or in
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: the area until eighteen thirty three, when the Prussian King
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: Frederick William the third visited the Rhineland and a member
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: of the Bouk family, Jean Francois, gave him the relics.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: And this this wasn't just like a weird gift. There
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: was a reason that Frederick William would be interested in these,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: and that's because he claimed that he was descended from
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: John of Bohemia, so this felt personal to him and
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: he took them. Uh, he took them back to Germany.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Was he cremated or like, I'm sorry I pronounced that
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: like a like a real jerk. Fine, I'm fine with
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: it though, lean into it. Um so if if you
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: you know, presumably he was cremated, because they would have
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: had to store his his remains and some easy, easily
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: transportable form. I guess it could have been his decomposed bones,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: but that doesn't that would have taken time. I think
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: maybe they put his bones in a container, you know,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: because so much time has past eighteen thirty three, there's
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: not gonna be any flesh left. That's true. They must
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: have just dug him up. You're right, he was buried properly,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: and then they dug him up and then just try,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: you know, put his bones in a pile and and
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: and just carter to them around side. Note, I have
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: to say, uh, we've been we've been doing this show
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: for a couple of years now, and uh, actually it's
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: our anniversary. Is it today? I don't know if it's today,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: but we're very close. Christopher Hasciotis pointed it out to
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: us earlier, so off air, we we just looked it
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: up because Christopher is uh way more on top of
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: it than the three of us. And it is actually
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: the two year anniversary of this show sometime this week,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: so you believe it. Happy anniversary, man, Happy anniversary too.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Would you give me? I you know, I got you
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: a hat the last time I always travel the last
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: two times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm making it a thing.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: I love it. I love I love hats. H Speaking
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: of which, just the hat that I'm wearing right now
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: from Fort mount Hood the uh timber Line Lodge. That's
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: where the Overlook Hotel. That's where she saw that that
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: shining shirt. I was right the other day, case he
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: got that there too, at the timber Line Lodge gift
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: shop at the Portland Airport, which is one of the
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: best airports for gift shopping I've ever been to in
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: my life. Thanks. Man. That's the one that used for
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: the exterior shot in the movie, I think so. Yeah. Yeah,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: it does not have the hedgemads. That's right. The interior
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: is different the Stanley Hotel. Also, Happy anniversary to you, Casey. Yes,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: I'm just spread spreading the cheers for the show. For
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: the show, he was like, I have no personal anniversaries
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: of which to speak, No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't call
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: you out on the air like that. It's a show versary.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Uh So, Also thanks to every one who has been
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: lending us an ear these past two years. Here's what happened.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: They took John's bones, his remains, and they built a
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: chapel just the house those bones, and everything seemed fine
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: and seem to have found his final resting place. Until
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: that is nineteen five. The Nazi party in Germany is
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: just about to lose the war. Uh The government of Luxembourg.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: The way history Naked dot Com, in a fantastic article
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: describes it, is that Luxembourg quietly liberated John of Bohemia.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: I love quiet liberation the best kind. They robbed his grave,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: that's what they did. They they they took his remains,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: and they brought him back to Luxembourg cities, Notre Dame Cathedral,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: and that's where they are now. But how did he
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: actually die? I have a question for you. Do you
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: think it were choirs religious belief to be at all
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: concerned with how people's remains are treated? No, not at all.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: You don't think so? No? So you so so you
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: think you would be concerned for how someone else's remains
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: are treated based on respect for their religious beliefs. Is
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: that kind of what you're getting out, That's part of it.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: But also if they have any living relatives, I would
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: I would want to avoid that. Oh and that's the
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: that's the threat I almost lost. Thanks for bringing that
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: horse got lost. Got sidetracked a little in the in
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: the anniversary thing. Uh. Over the course of this show,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: we've run into several cases where people just keep playing
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: with or attempting to possess the physical remains of famous folks,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: like that one guy whose head disappeared, What was it,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: Lord Nelson, Lord Nelson, Horatio Nelson, Yeah, forgetting He was
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: a sea captain and what happened? His head disappeared? You know, man,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: I just remember he was pickled in brandy. That's right.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: They transported his body. He died in a in a
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: very very similar fashion to uh, to our our hero today.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Only he he could see and he um was shot
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: on the deck of his shop. But he was their
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: neck and neck with his men in the fray of battle,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: knowing full well that he he might well take a bullet,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: and he did and he died, and then they pickled
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: his body in a keg of It was rum. Actually
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: it wasn't very rum, but then there were all these
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: spooky tails about maybe they drank the rum. Yeah, yeah,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: I leave a drink is named after a rum based
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: drink is named after him or something like that. But
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: it's you know, it's is it really that different from
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: drinking the tequila with the worm and it, I mean,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: other than it's a human body. This is getting dark,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: never mind of getting the Halloween effect. As we can
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: rightly assume, back in the thirteen hundreds, there wasn't too
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: much in the way of what we would call forensic science,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: So it wasn't until nineteen that someone examined the skeleton
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: of the Blind King of Bohemia and they were able
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: to discern more details about how he died on that
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: day in August. And the details, they gotta tell you,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: they're they're pretty graphic. If you are a person who
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: is averse two descriptions of violence or blood and gore
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: and so on, you may want to skip the next
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: couple of seconds. Okay, here's what happened. The examination found
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: that someone had stabbed him in one of his eyes,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: someone had pushed some kind of weapon directly into his skull.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: They could see a kind of a triangular cross section.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: So there was this void, this triangle shape void in
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: his skull. Jesus, and that wasn't he he had other
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: stabs as well, right, Yeah, no, he very much did
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: get get dog piled on. Um. He had one to
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: his left shoulder blade that went into his chest. Probably
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: had some sear his uh important guts in their uh
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: of vital organs. Um. But that might have been the
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: killed shot. Right. It wouldn't have been a super protracted death,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: but probably wouldn't have been instant either. Um. And then
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: we've got uh the final insult to injury kind of wound,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: don't we Yeah. It turns out his right hand had
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: been severed and they could see three different blows from
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: a blade. Somebody completely cut off his right hand, most
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: likely to make it more convenient to steal his rings,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: so instead of working them off the finger, they just
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: cut off his hands. He kept going, and this could
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: probably be this sort of practice could probably be an
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: episode all its own, because wartime scavenging, up to and
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: including the looting of cadavers was very common at this time.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean it continues to be continue to
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: be common, and like you know, world War One and
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: World War Two, bodies were often looted. We even did
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: a story about dental work that was done exclusively with
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: looted teeth and fillings and things like that from from
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: falling soldiers during the Civil War. During the Civil War
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: and from other countries during that time. It's where we
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: originated that world famous, ridiculous historian phrase straight sea horse teeth. Yeah,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: that's true. That episode was absolutely straight seahorse teeth. And
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: I love seeing that one catch on, if even in
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: a small way on the internet. Um so, yeah, I'm
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: picturing this scene, Ben, I'd like to see this dramatize, uh,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: full guts and glory and all. I mean it's you know,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: because there's that moment where he topples off his horse
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: and then the horde swarms him. You know, I mean
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: it would a melee, you know, that would be an
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: absolute uh horror show. Slow motion as the music swells
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: and then maybe we hear this so common in action films,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: historical action films. Maybe we're here in the distance, uh
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: the song like his wife softly singing a love song.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of the slow motion scream that
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: has the audios almost in the slow motion too. It's
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: like and in the background, there's something right exactly back
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: to Lord of the Rings. It reminds me of that
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: one where Pipping the singing that delightful song and are
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: being slaughtered and the weird kings eating his gross chicken
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: and grapes or yeah, god, and as the missophonia that
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: I have just drives me insane watching him suck on
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: those tiny tomatoes. So they were grapes, they were grape tomatoes,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: oh man. And then do you remember, also in Game
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: of Thrones when Padrick starts singing that weird song about
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Jenny dancing with her ghosts. Yeah, see, it's kind of
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: It's got that vibe very right. There's this could be
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: uh and this could be excellent fodder for an historical drama.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: And you know what, if there already is one, go ahead,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: feel free to hit us to it. And so pending
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: messages from studio producers the world over. This concludes our
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: episode on the Strange, heroic, larger than life and of
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Blind John, the King of Bohemia, But it does not
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: mean the end of the show. We will be back
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: very soon with more you guessed it, ridiculous people, places,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: and events from the span of human history. In the meantime,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: we'd like to hear your stories about these larger than
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: life deaths. You know, you know what I've been really into.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: I think maybe we talked about it earlier. I have
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: always been fascinated with the stories of someone's famous last words.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: Often I feel like they're made up, you know, Like
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: there's with Oscar Wilde where this one I always thought
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: it was true where he says either the wallpaper goes
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: or I do, because he hated the wall paper when
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: he was expiring and then he died. Chega Vena said, uh,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: shoot full your only killing a man. My personal favorite
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: is Ronald Reagan's deathbed uh final words, which is when
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: one for the kipper. Remember when Reagan said that when
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: he died. I'm sure you know. I feel like most
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: people's famous last words are probably so I feel like
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: we should just count the thing before they had that
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: death rattle. Uh. There was another one. I can't remember
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: who said it, but someone said I should have never
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: switched from Scotch to Martini's. That sounds like something someone
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: would say in a voice like this, It does. Whoever
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: has got that voice? It was him ripped torn. Yeah.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Probably so if you want to let us know some
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: of your favorite noble death, some of you were favorite
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: famous last words, reach out. We're all over the internet.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook, you can find us
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: on Twitter. You can find us on Instagram. Not just
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: as a show, but as a as people are ourselves. Yeah,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: we're actually human people that do things outside of this
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: podcast shipping container that we find ourselves in so often.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: You can find me on Instagram exclusively. I occupy no
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: other social media real estate on the Internet. Accept occasional
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Facebook feed trolling for for fake news. Um. You can
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: find me on Instagram at how Now Noel Brown, and
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: you can find me on Various Adventures and Misadventures here
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: and abroad on Instagram at ben Bowland. You can also
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: find me on Twitter where I am at ben Bowling,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: hs W. My office hours are weird. They're pretty much seven.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Always feel free to drop by and say hello. I
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: can't wait to hear what people said. They can't wait
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: to hear what kind of famous last words people said?
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: And you know what, you guys, casey, No, we should
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: have a party at some point, you know, like a
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: little little sare kind of thing. I'm gonna go grab
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: a beer after work today if you guys want to
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: come and we can pour one out for the gipperh
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: I have to have to catch a flight. Boo next time,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Next time. Big Thanks to super producer Casey Pegroom, Christopher
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: Haciots here in Spirit Out. It's Williams who composed our theme.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Also thanks of course to Gabe Lozier. Thanks to Eve's
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Jeff Coat. Thanks to Jonathan Strickland, the quister who isn't
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: here for the anniversary. I know, and he's he's been
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: hot taken on Facebook, though, I feel like he's still here.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: Have you seen ridiculous historians? He says some things, some
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: very choice things about you and your vocal warm up
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: regiment and you as well. Yeah, yeah, he's uh, he
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: went off. He feels ways about things he does feel
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: ways about. I think he's getting a little punchy. Since
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: we haven't been including him, he might be feeling a
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: little left out. So I think we should bring him
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: back into the fold. Absolutely, We'll see you next time,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: folx H. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.