Welcome to the Delling Pod, with me, James Delling Poll, and I know I always say I'm excited
about this week's special guest, but before we meet him, let's have a quick word from
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James, J-A-M-E-S, that's me, for 15% off your order. Welcome to the Delling Pod, Chris
Dobson. Chris, your mission today, one of them anyway, is to be even better than you
were on the germ warfare pod, which I haven't listened to because I thought it would
cramp my style, but I know you've been on it, and Jeremy said you were very entertaining.
And in fact, that is the reason that I even remembered to ask you, because you contacted
me a while back, and you sent me some very weird and interesting letters,
the contents of which perhaps we're going to talk about. But just tell us a bit about yourself
to where everyone's appetite. Okay, formerly a master armourer,
and master armour to the Royal Armouries in the UK, and that is armour as in suits of armour
instead of guns. So I used to make and then restore that early armour, anything from
early Middle Ages up to Baroque 17th century. And my clients were all over the world,
top line museums, I worked on absolutely the finest stuff there is. And that was there.
That's a good start.
Right. Actually, let's not let's not let's not hear about any more with your with your
self intro, because I think that's an interesting starting point. I mean,
armour. I've been to places like the Wallace Collection, which has presumably one of the
better collections of armour in the world. It's not big, but it's very good.
And of course, I've been to the Tower of London a long time ago. And I'll tell you my frustration,
which I'm sure you can explain, which is I love armour, but most of the extant
suits of armour, or do you call them armours? Is that right? A suit of armour is basically an armour.
Is that the correct term?
It called it an armour. The period term was harness.
Okay. But when you were, you're going to tell me, aren't you that the phrase a suit of armour
is just a kind of, it's not the correct one. Is that right? No, that's just a modern expression.
Expression. So if you were going to say, I'm going to put on my armour, I'm going to put on my harness,
would you say? That's what they said at the time. That's that's where the expression dying in harness
comes from. It doesn't mean a horse that drops dead while it's pulling a cart. It means somebody
killed on the battlefield. Okay. And presumably actually that would have been quite a that
would have been the way they wanted to go, wouldn't it? Well, I don't know. Ideally,
they wouldn't have wanted to go at all. But I don't know, dying in harness, I quite fancied the idea of
dying in a hunting accident. I mean, I'm obviously I'd rather not die in like, like there's knights
would rather not die in battle. But I was thinking, if you had to go in a kind of
well, we've got to go somewhere or other. I just think dying in battle or dying in a
in a hunting accident is quite a quite a good way to go. You haven't you've had a few of those,
haven't you? I have. I have. It's really annoying. And I say, so yeah, I mean, this is very close
to the bone, literally, literally. Yeah. So, but when I was a normie, when I was really into war,
which I'm not so much now, because I see war as one of the ways that the enemy uses to
colors, basically. But it doesn't mean I can't still watch Game of Thrones or that Game of
Thrones spin off the one about the tall Irish knight, whatever his name is, I don't know whether you
saw it. Quite good. Quite good medieval combat. I'm going to ask you about in a bit. Anyway,
let me get back to my beef about armor. So you go to these places where these harnesses,
as I've learned to call them, are. And you look at the dates. And the dates tend to be
from the period where armor wasn't really being used for battles anymore. It was being used for,
well, ornament really, that the period I would love to see armor from is from,
say, Battle of Cressy, so 1346 or Agincourt 1415 or just anything pre 1500 when armor really was
important. And it doesn't, it virtually doesn't exist, does it? I've found somebody who's even
shitter at tech than I am. I was sitting there thinking, what is it going to do? Come on,
no, it is that bad. It is that bad. The annoying thing is I have to go because my bloody proton
mail account is in a different room. So I have to go down, I can't get it on this computer.
I have to go downstairs, send you the message. Anyway, you were going to tell me why there is no
old armor. Right. Well, there is. You're just not looking in the right places.
But there's not much of it. Yeah. If you want to see armor, you need to go to the really
important collections. That is, for example, the Imperial Armoury in Vienna. That's the best
collection of armor in the world. And its sister collection is in Madrid. Although that's, that
tends to be slightly later stuff. You could go to a museum in Mantua, the Dionysus and Museum
Francesco Gonzaga. That's the best collection of Italian 15th century armor in the world,
small, but very, very good. And finally the castle of Kurburg owned by the famous Fontrap
family. I didn't get that, but I'm hoping that, because it's recorded locally,
other people will have got. So tell that again, just in case. The castle of where?
The, owned by the famous Fontrap family of the sound of music fame.
Really? So, yeah, so the Italian stuff, I imagine would have been actually used in that period where,
well, it was just sort of constant civil war, wasn't it? In Italy, the sort of
gulfs and guelphs and the gibbalines and the, whatever, they're a bit earlier,
they tend to be more late 13th and then 14th century. But Italy was, obviously it's a very new
country. It was a patchwork quilt of city states before that. It's only about 160 years old.
So yeah, there was incessant warfare in the peninsula. And they did use what you might
call homegrown product. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose what I'm saying is, when I go and see a suit of armor,
or a harness, wearing my normie hat for a moment, I really want to see stuff that's actually been
used in battle. Because I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? That people actually
fought in this stuff. And what was it like? And what did it look like? You're going to tell me
what it looked like. But can I go to those museums you've mentioned? Do they, what's
the oldest armor they have? It goes back to the classical world. You go to the British
museum, you'll find ancient Greek and Roman stuff, even an ancient Egyptian armor made of
crocodile hide, they've gone. But in terms of medieval stage, you'll find the Royal Armouries
Museum in Leeds. They've got some early helmets and mail. Likewise, Vienna and Kerberg has the
earliest proper 14th century harness. It dates to the 1390s. And that's got the sort of recognizable
helmet you might see in or know from manuscripts with the really big pointy, snouty visor called a
Hound School. So go to Kerberg for that sort of thing. Okay. And so they did actually wear
this stuff and the stuff you're seeing in museums was used. Because during four decades of restoring
the stuff, I came across marks and weapons all over pieces, you know, so you can see these
things have gone through battles. That's exciting. That is exciting. I mean, there is a sort of
romance and excitement, isn't there about about night's in armor?
From things we're going to come on to later. I'm like you. When I had my normie head on,
I used to love the whole romance of the thing. I now look at this stuff very, very differently,
despite having worked on it and with it for decades. You couldn't pay me to touch it now.
And people have to this sort of romance idea of shivery nights and people shooting long bows at
each other. From the moment pretty much plate armor comes into use late 14th century, then into the
beginning of the 15th century, firearms are starting to come in at the same time. So when
you see a full what was called a harness of plate, what you you know, the normie name
would be a suit of armor. You got to remember that that's pretty much contemporary with firearms.
So on a 15th century battlefield and the 15th century is called by armor scholars the great
period because it is the when the full plate harness is there before it begins to change
radically in the 16th century because firearms get much better. Firearms as in hand guns
and then archibuses and artillery are contemporary with the use of plate armor.
So I mean, in the later 15th century, for example, in Italian general complained,
you couldn't see from one side of the battlefield to the other anymore because of all the gun
smoke. So they're wearing full plate armor when they're being shot at with bullets.
Right, I hadn't realized that sort of guns were being used
significantly quite so early. What was that battle? Was it a battle I heard of?
Well, the way the guy complained, I can't honestly remember, but there's one battle
called Angiari 14 14 40. And you can there's a beautiful depiction of it on two painted
Florentine chests called Cassoni by the Angiari master. And you can see guys carrying around
handguns there. And that's the 14 40s. Right. Okay. And so that presumably
means that in the wars of the roses, were they using guns then? Yeah. And I'll do another little
change, change some terminology. People think of things like Bosworth and as you can call as medieval
battles. And I can test that I call them Renaissance battles. Yeah. Because
art history scholars followed the first art historian Vasari. And it's generally
accepted when Vasari was the first person in 1550 to use the term renashita, which is now
renashimental or renaissance. He was talking about artists in the early 15th century.
So absolutely contemporary with Agincourt. And so art historians tend to call that period
Renaissance, whereas military historians are behind them, they're still stuck calling it
medieval. And there's a sort of joke that the renaissance begins at midnight, December 31st,
1499. You know, magically you move from one century to the other and it becomes the renaissance.
Not so. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, of course, as we now both know, as to most of our listeners,
Chris, that all these terms of fake anyway, because all history is fake, it's all light,
it's all a scam. On a previous German warfare podcast, I did trash the mudflod thing entirely
and the missing thousand years. I didn't...
Can it... Well, if you can do that succinctly, I don't mind you trashing it again. I've never
been... I've never been swayed by mudflods. Is it bollocks? Absolutely bollocks, yeah.
Because basically people are being shown basement rooms with little windows at street level to let
light in and they're being told that's because the ground level has risen massively over the,
you know, because of the mudflod. So they had to build the houses up again. You can trash that
very, very simply two ways. One, houses built on hills. Right. If there was a massive mudflod,
why aren't the houses at the bottom of the hill completely submerged? And the ones at the
top of the hill do not have the basement seat. It just, it doesn't work. You just have to apply
common sense. But the other thing is these massive mudflods that are meant to have occurred.
I live in a town called Fosano, and that's on top of a promontory. We're a rock, we're 100 feet
above the plain below. And there are medieval buildings down on the plain. You know,
hello. Why aren't they completely submerged under 100 feet of mud?
Maybe the mudflods, maybe they passed you by. Maybe they're the mudflods that they
fought around your town and took all the other ones. I don't know. I wouldn't,
I wouldn't go to the wall for mudflods. I have to say it's, it's one of my least,
well, I, not that I've really looked into it, but I, you know, it's one of them,
that Australian guy who now lives in Mexico, he, he, he quite likes the mudflugs, but
I haven't, I haven't heard it. It doesn't seem to be common currency.
And if you've worked with period documents as much as I have,
I'll spat you crazy. Yeah. If you've worked with period documents like I have,
you also know the missing thousand year idea is nonsense as well. There's, you know,
that we've had the thousand year reign of Christ has, has this.
Is it? Yeah. It's nonsense.
But if you, I've worked a lot in Florence.
Yeah. Um, what you mean about sort of, I mean, I, the problem with Fomenco is that he's, he's.
This is getting tedious now.
Well, it is. Um, it's, it's not as tedious for us as it is for Andrew who's going to have to edit
all this. Um, have you got really, no, but I'll tell you something at the point where
this is happening. My computer is throwing a fit. Um, so I, I think a little demonic interference
going on here. Well, but yes, I know. I, you mentioned demons, um, in our correspondence.
I mean, it is odd that because of course, the, the, the devil controls the pat that
controls the air, um, is a prince of the air, isn't he? Among other things. And, um,
I think he does, he does like to interfere. I've, I've, I've had this a few times on my podcast,
particularly on the ones to do with anything, anything to do with supernatural. I get,
I get interference and it's not just crap internet. Well, you're telling me you've
got good internet and this is, this is annoying. So we're not even talking about them. We haven't
even gone on to the, uh, the, the exciting stuff yet. We're just, we're just having an,
an interesting debate about history. Um, what a discussion. Um, you were saying, uh,
what were you saying about how, oh, I couldn't hear what you were saying. So I was possibly
talking over you, but I was, I mess up and make my point while, while we were still able to
communicate. Um, for Menko, if that's how pronounced it, maybe it's family Enko. I'm,
I'm learning Russian at the moment. So I'm, I'm, I'm re, really learning how to pronounce
Russian words. Um, for Menko, family Enko, whatever he talks about, about how, um, dating
systems are extremely unreliable and, and there's no, there was no sort of cohesive
form of, of, of date keeping and timekeeping and stuff. So we can't trust the historical record
yada, yada, yada. But you say generally from your experience, looking at manuscripts,
we're not missing a thousand years. Is that right?
That's right. Yeah. And it's, we're back to common sense again. The documents I've worked with
relate to things like buildings, paintings, events, and we've got those buildings.
And we've then got things like paintings of those buildings. And if you're telling me
that as, as some people imply that basically the contents of public archives are all fake,
or they've been changed, no, if you work with them, you understand how they all interlock
with each other. One document will reference another. Then you get compilations of documents.
Then there are the documents reference each other from libraries in different countries.
And there are lots of private archives as well. So the idea that somebody, you would need an army
of forgers working constantly to build up this corpus of fake material. And to give you an idea,
just in Florence, the State Archive and the National Library contain literally tons of documents.
I mean, literally, that's not an exaggeration. So the, the quantity is vast.
And I'm not in the history on that. Has it been read a lot of this stuff since it was written?
Has it, has it been read? No. And if you go to the State Archive in Florence as an example,
I was expecting to be given microfiche or, you know, maybe even copies. And I was reading wills
from the 1420s, and they brought me out all the ridges, this huge stack of books to go through.
So you then have to go through them page by page by page. Because even digitizing these
documents takes forever. So it's an absolutely huge privilege to go through these things.
And you find little gems. Here's one for your brother. I was going through some documents relating
to what are called the Ten of War. That's the counts of the Florentine government who were
responsible for waging war. And these were the minutes of a meeting from the late 14th century.
And someone in the margin had doodled a guy. It was, it was a brilliant little drawing
of a guy badly unshaven with his sort of ass hanging out the back of his hose.
It was just a brilliant little cartoon. And when I saw it, I thought, who, who else has ever seen
that since the guy drew it? Just amazing. That is amazing. I'd love to, I'd love to have seen
that. Oh, before I forget, I wanted to ask you about you, you mentioned in one of your books,
which we can talk about in a bit, how you found some armor with somebody still in it,
some bits of, with bits of the, the owner still in it, or?
No, not me. No, no, well, okay. But yeah, okay. Well, yes.
No, from the battlefield at Visby, which was fought in Gotland in what is now Denmark,
in the 14th century. Yes, they've got bits of the owners still in them skulls. Yeah.
In male hoods. Who was fighting whom at Visby?
Pass. The Danes were fighting somebody. I don't know, as I've, again, we'll come on to this,
as I've moved away from this, as it's no longer the, the, you know, the, the all consuming
interest it once was, mercifully, I'm starting to forget.
Well, so you've gone off this stuff because basically, a bit like me, you think that war is no longer a
fun thing. It's an instrument of control and of, of worse.
No. Well, yeah, yes. But no, you're, you're, you're alluding to something else, aren't you?
Oh, no, I wasn't trying to establish a link here because I've gone off war because I think war,
what is it good for? The people who plan and execute wars are not my friends. They're not,
they're not the friends of people like me and probably you, that's all. That's,
that's why I'm off war. But you've got another, we can talk about your other
demonic, dark, masonic evil stuff, whatever you want. I'm just, I'm just exhausting the medieval
warfare scene first, because I'm, because I'm quite interested in it. So one of the things I
learned from reading one of your books, the one with black and blue in the title,
is it called Beaten Black and Blue? Beaten Black and Blue, yeah.
Um, is that armor was not shiny that actually it was all, it was all elaborately painted?
No, it's not painted. There were some painted examples, but it is what are called color oxide
finishes. That means when you are heat, heat treating armor in the forge, or maybe even in
an oven, or bards of sand were also used, very hot sand. Um, an oxide forms on the surface of
the iron or steel, and you can freeze that in place by quenching the metal in oil or water.
So most armor, vast, vast majority of armor, had a dark gray finish. And I used,
um, my interest in art. I was seeing in paintings, which I originally used as reference for
armors, for reconstructing how they should look at given periods. Um, you see color finishes
in paintings. You see sometimes bright blue, sometimes dark blue, gray, black, and even
purple. And I was seeing that in paintings and a lot of armor enthusiasts just say,
well that's just how they depicted polished steel. But then if you look at other paintings,
you see people in the same painting with different colored armors. So that can't be true. Also,
the argument given is that the, the paint is discolored over time and they were, what looks
black now was originally a very bright, what's called white armor. And no, no, because you see
these different colors within the same painting and sometimes different colors of different parts
of armor on the same person. Now what I then did was when I was working on armor and taking it
apart and restoring it, if you remove a rivet, you will find underneath the head of the rivet
a little halo of the original color surface finish. And I began to find the same colors
I was seeing in paintings to dark gray most of the time, but also pale blue,
purple, dark blue. And then I put that together with period documents because there are period
documents that actually describe these color finishes. And one from the 17th century by a guy
called Gervais Marcum actually states specifically that if they're finished like that, they will
keep the longer from rust. So it was, I mean, it's weatherproofing for the, for the vast majority,
it's simply weatherproofing. Can you imagine, imagine going out on the battlefield now in a
polished tank? Well, you dazzle, you dazzle the enemy into, into surrender, maybe into,
into fear or you'd impress them with your majesty. Well, there were, I mean,
white armor did, yeah, possibly white armor did exist. There's no doubt it did. And
there are references to white armor in archives. So we know it existed. But what I did was I went
back through period documents starting in the 17th century. And the vast majority of armor
that actually survives dates from the civil war period 30 years war period in 17th century.
And I just went back and back and back through documents right back into the 14th century.
And you find the mentions of white armor just get, you'd expect them to get more,
you'd expect the quantity mentioned in an arsenal to go up and up and up. And in fact,
it goes down. And to the point where in some periods it is vanishingly, it's just not there.
For example, a document from 1478 from the castle of Pavia outside it's in Milanese territory.
And the Milanese were the big armor producers. That was the center of the European industry.
And out of something like 2,700 pieces or pieces of armor or whole
armors. There's some white armor for horses, a few pieces, but there is one white helmet
out of about 2,700 pieces. That's it. And by white do you mean shining armor?
Polished, yeah. Polished. And what's interesting is when you go through archives,
what's really obvious is you get mentions of purple armor, blue armor, and black armor.
And then these mentions of white armor. And then you get the vast majority on nondescript.
So what that tells you is the notary who was drawing up the document understood there was
a standard finish that he didn't actually have to describe. It would be like an inventory of
Ford Model T's. You don't have to list the ones that are black because they were almost always black.
You would only list a white one or a red one. See, and that's what these documents do.
So that standard finish was a color called russet, russet gray. It doesn't mean red, it means gray.
Okay, but there was a, there was a black knight like in Monty Python.
Oh, they did a black armor, yeah.
And do you reckon they did it because it was kind of like Captain Black and Captain Scarlet, you know?
Well, we know on one occasion it was definitely done as a sign of mourning
because when Henry V died, the knights who rode along beside the catapult carrying the body
are recorded as all wearing black armor.
And how much would this kit of cost in modern terms?
Right. Well, depends on the level of quality. You had everything from, if we compare it to a car,
you had everything from the beaten up fiat panda with one door missing
right the way up to the, right the way up to a Maserati.
And the expensive stuff was expensive, very, very expensive.
And this, in terms of warfare in history, there was a military industrial complex already,
certainly regarding plate armor in the 14th century. If you look at a city like Milan,
that basically was one vast munitions plant. You had specialist makers of armor, of bows,
of crossbows, even of spurs, lances, saddles, you name it. And they churned out thousands
of armors per year, absolutely thousands. And how much of an advantage did it give you
having the Maserati armor rather than the fiat panda armor?
Yeah. Well, first off, let's, let's, I don't know, let's go from the, what can we say?
Let's go from the Range Rover level, something like that. The decent plate harness did work.
It did stop weapons because you've got those examples I mentioned where I found
marks and weapons all over armors. But also there was something called armor of proof.
It was proved by being shot at using the most powerful ballistic weapons they had from about 30
paces. So in the 15th century, the surviving pieces, you find marks from crossbow bolts on them.
That's not necessarily because they've been in action, it's because they've been proved.
And then later, on 16th and 17th century armor, they were shot at with guns. And they left
the marks from the bullets on the surface of the armor, just to show it had worked.
Yeah. So, sorry, Caroline.
No, it's good to say. But it had to work. It was expensive. These are professional warriors.
And they're not going to lumber around the battlefield in something which is going to be
too heavy. It's going to slow them down. It's going to stop them fighting. And if it
doesn't stop projectiles or aged weapons, what on earth is the point in having it?
So it did work. Yes. I can see that. It's actually a bit like tanks,
isn't it? That you want the armor thick enough to be able to protect you from an 88 ideally.
But at the same time, you don't want your tank to be weighed down and sink in the bog
or not be able to go very far because the engine burns out or there's not enough fuel
like the Tiger tank had all the time. So, yeah, it must have been similar. You don't want armor
so cumbersome that you can't fight. No. And I mean, armor is always a trade-off.
It's always got to be a compromise between mobility and protection. Always. Yes.
But to give you an idea of how flexible it was, we've got this idea of knights being
craned into the saddle, which is absolute bollocks. In fact, they were expected to be able to vault
into the saddle without using their stirrups. And you ride.
Okay. Now imagine, now you're used to English hunting saddles.
Yes. Now imagine a saddle, which is more like an armchair with a built up at the front,
back with a pommel and cantal set by American in place. Even higher than that.
And so they were expected to be able to vault into the saddle over a cantal like that.
Over a cantal. And their horses were called destrias, weren't they? Is that how you pronounce it?
Destria. Destria is a war horse. So how many hounds would they be? How big?
They'd be like big hunters, but they'd have short backs. Because you know the condition saddleback.
If a horse has a long back, it gives over time. Yes. Right. Well, they wanted to avoid that.
So they bred horses, which had short spines. So they're very compact animals.
And very strong and fast. I apologize to listeners who aren't as interested in this
horse saddle, but as I am. But I think this is really, really interesting. So I'm going to
ask some more questions. Because I don't think, do people realize how difficult it is to
vault onto a horse? I mean, when you're out hunting, for example, and you need to have,
you're bursting for a pee. It's one of the great challenges when you're hunting,
because you're in the saddle for several hours and you've got to decide,
am I going to not drink anything apart from booze? Or am I going to get
parched? Or am I going to have the risk of having to get off and have a pee? And you don't want to,
because you get left behind and you can't get back on the horse. Particularly if it's,
I mean, some of the bigger hunters are about 18 hands. So that would be about the same
height as a destria, same size. Somewhere 16 to 18 hands. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well,
16 hands you get on fairly easily. But 18 hands is very, very hard without somebody
giving you a leg up or standing on a, on a five bar gate or something. And if you've got a,
if you've got a vault over how many, many extra inches of the, what's the, the pommel thing called
the, the camera would be about, you're talking about, oh, I don't know, 10 inches.
So these nights, it goes without saying would have been young men mostly, and super fit.
I mean, they did little else but train for this kind of stuff. Is that right?
Yep. And also they were expected to be able to, without their helmet on, they were expected
to be able to turn a cartwheel in their armor. Just to show, right? No. Yes. And also,
also while we're on the subject, they trained, yeah, and they were trained in
martial arts as well. Again, they didn't lumber around just walloping each other with
big, heavy swords. We know there were, there, there are surviving fencing manuals. The most
famous is called the flower of battle by a fellow called Fiori de Libri, who lived in the north
of Italy, late 14th, early 15th century, and several copies of the flower of battle survive.
And they're just like oriental martial arts. They show you it's everything from grappling,
wrestling, unarmed, then combat with the dagger, then combat with the sword,
then combat with staff weapons, then mounted combat. So when you say they trained to do this,
they really did. Absolutely. And so we think that you talk about the 20-somethings today.
They think that they basically invented fitness culture. They think that their generation has
access to this understanding about physical exercise, which no generation before was understood because
they didn't have access to all these, the kind of technology and science that modern scientific
training has given us. But I imagine that their fitness has nothing to what these young men from
the 14th century. And also... Global warming is a massive con. There is no evidence whatsoever
that man-made climate change is a problem that is going to kill us, that we need to amend our
lifestyle in order to deal with it. It's a non-existent problem. But how do you explain
this stuff to your normie friends? Well, I've just brought out the revised edition of my 2012
classic book, Watermelons, which captures the story of how some really nasty people
decided to invent the global warming scare in order to fleece you, to take away your freedoms,
to take away your land. It's a shocking story. I wrote it, as I say, well, 2011 actually,
the first edition came out. And it's a snapshot of a particular era. The era when the people
behind the climate change scan got caught red-handed, tinkering with the data,
torturing till it screamed in a scandal that I helped christen Climategate. So I give you the
background to the sculled jugglery that went on in these seats of learning where these supposed
experts were informing us, we've got to act now. I rumbled their scan. I then asked the question,
okay, if it is a scan, who's doing this and why? It's a good story. I've kept the original
book pretty much as is, but I've written two new chapters, one at the beginning and one at
the end, explaining how it's even worse than we thought. I think it's a good, I think it still
stands out. I think it's a good read. Obviously, I'm biased, but I'd recommend it. You can buy it
from JamesDellingPoll.co.uk forward slash shop. You'll probably find that, just go to my website
and look for it, JamesDellingPoll.co.uk. And I hope it helps keep you informed and gives you
the material you need to bring around all those people who are still persuaded that, oh, it's a
disaster, we must amend our ways and appease the gods, appease Mother God. Merry day. It's a scan.
Their fitness has nothing to what these young men from the 14th century.
And also, I mean, this would set them up for life for a good constitution. There's a famous
English mercenary called Sir John Hawkewood. Yes. Okay. And he came from Suffolk, no, Essex Boy,
just on the border and near where I used to live. And he won his last battle fighting in the
front rank. Again, my memory is going to stretch. He was either 72 or 74. And he was still fighting
in the front rank. And I bet he was shagging as well, like a shagger. He must have been a tough
bastard. Really? But he must have been a bastard as well. I mean, was he with the white company
or something? There we go. Now, briefly, I'll touch on that. It takes us back to white armor.
The idea was Arthur Conan Doyle came up with the idea in his book that they were called the
white company because they had polished white armor. No. The period description of them by
a chap called Villani says they had bright armor. And that when they came in from their raids,
or combat, that their squires would get the armor immediately and clean it. So it would
remain this bright. And as you said, it was done to fill the enemy with fear and awe when they saw
this glittering armor. But that doesn't mean to say it was white. I think it was pale blue.
So it would shine like a mirror in the sun, but it just wouldn't be white.
Would I be right in thinking that you didn't advance in the world of chivalry by being nice?
These were nasty pieces of work. They were thugs. Yes, absolutely.
So Hortz would have gone around raping people and just killing?
And not personally. I don't think so. He certainly, there was a siege he was involved in where the
townspeople got slaughtered. And he stopped working for the church after that. And it's
been suggested that even that was too much to stomach for him. And he didn't want to
was responsible for the massacre. He was fighting, he was the commander,
fighting for the church that seized Chizena. I think it was the siege of Chizena.
And one of the problems with medieval Renaissance warfare is when a siege is a closed siege, when
you seal off a town, then there are certain customs or were certain customs that if you
refused to surrender and the enemy then fought their way in, if they got in, you couldn't really
expect to be spared. I mean, yes, some people were, but it was better to come to terms with the
enemy while they were still outside your gates, because you weren't going to be able to negotiate
with them once they fought their way in. And Chizena, if my memory serves correctly,
was a particularly bad example. They got in and they killed a huge number.
Right. Okay. Was, on the battlefield, was
chivalry a myth or did it actually happen? Was the sort of honor in the battlefield?
Yes and no. You did get people calling each other out for personal combat. Yes, that happened.
But equally, you got, you know, people were being murdered. I mean,
sounds odd to say murdered on the battlefield, but instead of sort of fighting sort of face on,
people would simply be grabbed, held down and slaughtered, you know, the battlefield
executions. So that's hardly very chivalrous. You mean people would surround a knight on
his horse, pull him off, and then stab him to death kind of thing.
Well, here's a, we can debunk another couple of myths you'll like this. You mentioned Agincourt
earlier. Yeah. Okay. Well, firstly, and I know a lot of Longbow fans out there will not agree with
me, but the English archers did not mow down the French cavalry at Agincourt. They didn't,
the French fought their way right up into the English lines, but they did it on foot
because the ground was completely poached. It had been raining for days. It was just not ground for
a cavalry charge. So what happened was the French formed a large column and attacked the English
lines on foot. And Henry V was in combat himself in the front rank. His brother Gloucester was
knocked down and Henry stood over him and defended him. And he had a crown on his helmet.
And one of the flirts of the crown was cut off by a French battle axe. So that's an example
of really standing in the front rank. But what happened was at a certain point that the
archers were firing into the flanks of this column, and they began to bunch in together.
And then after a while, because they, they, the French men and arms didn't want to fight
English archers. They wanted the honor of the King. So what happened was the archers
after a while just ditched the bows came out, they defended the position with sharpened
stakes. So they ran forward from that, or I don't know, struggled forward through the mud.
And what they did was they had large mallets with them for driving the stakes into the ground
before they sharpened the ends. Okay. So you had groups of English archers would find a French
knight, dodge around him. And sooner or later, somebody would land a blow with one of those
mallets, knock him down. And then they'd stick a dagger in through the visor of the helmet
finishing off that way, or up under up in the armpit. So it's a horrible way to die.
So and in fact, when the French broke at Agincourt, it's thought that they probably that column began
to break from the back, because the men and arms could see down the sides of the column,
and they could see what the English were doing. You know, they didn't want to get
finished off by a bunch of archers in the mud. No. So it actually broke from the back.
For your audience, there is an absolutely brilliant book called The Face of Battle
by Sir John Keegan. And he compares Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme in one book,
as the basic experience of battle. It's absolutely superb. People should buy that and read it.
Keegan, I've read it, actually, a long, long time ago in my worry days. But of course,
you probably know. I mean, I knew John. I didn't know. Yeah, because he worked on the telegraph.
We'd be on very friendly terms. I was forgetting, you're controlled opposition, aren't you?
Yeah. So I used to like John, and he wasn't my go-to because he taught at
Anturst and because he was a handy historian. Whenever I had a question to ask him about what
I remember, I remember, for example, when Saving Private Ryan came out, I said, well,
John, he actually went to the first screening of it. I went to the and I went with him.
And I was asking, you know, is that accurate? Was it was it like that? And he'd give me
whatever. But the problem with John Keegan, I've learned, now I've gone down the rabbit hole,
is that like all of them, he was a court historian. And he was he was propping up official lie narratives.
I mean, inevitably, if he taught it, you don't get to teach at Santerst if you're not,
if you're not massively establishment. So for example, I think in one of his books,
he questions he pooh pooh's the notion that the Americans knew that the Japanese were coming at
Pearl Harbor. I mean, of course they were. And I'm sure, of course, they were aware of it. And
I'm sure he he's never kind of written in any of his books about how the First and Second
World Wars were were planned by an Anglo-American alliance called the Milner Group. And that,
you know, that's the thing. So so I liked him. But he was part of a part of an establishment,
which I now despise because I because I know it to be evil.
Yeah, I understand. Well, if we just knit back to Ashing Corps itself for a moment. And I said
that, you know, there is this myth of the French mowing down the English archers mowing
down the French like medieval machine gunners with their bows. Right. Well, a few years later,
there was another battle, which is rather less known, called the Battle of Veranoi,
fought in Normandy in 1424. And that time, the cavalry who charged the ground was hard.
Okay. And firm going. It was firm going. It was so firm that the English were unable
to drive the stakes in effectively this time. And this time, they found themselves faced by
lombard heavy cavalry. So that means people wearing good armor, well mounted. And the
lombards went through them like a knife through butter. They just rode them down straight through.
That was so good after, because the French must have been itching to get their their
revenge after. I mean, it was a Franco-Scottish army, in fact, but they had a contingent of
Italian heavy cavalry, about 2000 of them. And they knocked them down like nine pins, apparently.
So the idea that the longbow was this super weapon, and the fact that in every English village,
longbow practice was compulsory. And that this dated back to whenever, when was the when
when did the longbow training start? It's where you're talking about, it must have been common
practice before the 14th century. But it's classically known about from the 14th and
early 15th centuries. And the English went up went on using the longbow into the 16th century.
Okay. But it's part of our national myth that this was our super weapon, and that we were uniquely
capable of using it because we had this training. And it was, and you're saying this is all bollocks,
that actually it was just weather conditions in adjunct core that gave us that. Hang on,
Cressy as well, wasn't the longbow effective at Cressy? Longbow was effective at Cressy,
and in the Wars of the Roses, they were effective. What I'm saying is it's not as effective as people
think there are there are bow enthusiasts who think you can put a, you know, that the famous
armor piercing arrowhead called a bodkin, yeah, that you could put that through anything. No,
you couldn't. I've seen quite light armor with a bodkin strike on it, an Italian shoulder
defense. And in fact, crossbows had a had a higher pool rate as in they were, they were stronger bows.
But like early firearms, now what is true is it took a lot of training to fire the longbow
and a lot of physical strength. And that's why in Italy, you have the popularity of the crossbow.
And then when firearms come in, because they're quite inaccurate when they come in,
I mean, anyone can be taught to point what is effectively a metal tube on a wooden stick.
And the enemy and fire a ball out of it. So one of the reasons that crossbows are
used and then firearms come in so readily is because you could be trained to use them
very quickly. And you don't need body strength to do it. But the idea is that
that if you've got a body of men in armor on horses advancing on longbow, well,
towards longbowmen, this idea that that all it would take is a shower of arrows to take
them all out. That's that's nonsense. Yes, nonsense. Yeah. And what about how how protected
with how well protected with the horses? Very well. I thought we'd probably come
back to horses. Of course. Of course. Okay. Early on, they use a lot of hardened leather.
The French term is quiboui, or the Italians called it quaiocotto cooked leather, because heated up.
And it's a form of armor made from, I mean, I also think of as animal glue armor,
because what they would do is they would take partially tanned hides, fully tanned hides,
you can't do this. You take a partially tanned hide and make a sandwich with another piece with
animal glue in the middle and then put it over a mold, a last, like making a pair of shoes,
and you heat it up. So the glue liquefies the leather, the collagen fibers in the leather
tighten up and you wind up with a very light, strong form of armor. But
we know there were people specialized, not just in making leather horse armor,
their Italian armor is specialized in making steel horse armor.
A fellow called Pierre Inochens of the Fianna is a famous example from Milan. And
German armorers, the Helmschmidt family, they armored horses right down to the feet.
They made a leg armor for horses as well. That's very special. You're talking about
the Emperor Maximilian, but some pieces survive. I'm glad the horses were protected because I
always get very upset when the horses get hurt because it's not really their fault that they're,
although they were, gesturers were trained, weren't they, to, to, to act as weapons as well.
They, they were trained to lash out at the, uh. Yes. And bite and kick. And bite. Yes.
That's extraordinary. You wouldn't, you wouldn't want, I mean, the whole idea,
the idea which is true is if you imagine a fully armored man at arms,
he could, they're not necessarily a knight. They were called men at arms. Yeah.
If you have a fully armored man at arms up on a big strong horse and that horse is armored,
that's going to be one hell of an imposing thing. If that's bearing down on you,
with a lance pointed straight at you, coming towards you and you would feel the ground
shake when they charged, that's an imposing thing. Because you could remember that they're
high up as well. They're much higher than infantry. What? I'm not, I'm not just thinking about
battles here, but I'm thinking about jousting. I mean, I've come off a horse a few times
and it's really not pleasant. Me too. You hit the ground with a tremendous thump and
the idea, jousting, I mean, how did they not all die of internal bleeding? I mean, how did
they survive? How can you go jousting and not die almost every time?
Well, they had different types of jousts. They had jousts of war and jousts of peace.
In the jousts of peace, instead of a single point on the lance, you had a sort of
grapple head, three points like that. And the idea is it could get a purchase on the armour,
so I could knock the horse down. I mean, horses did get knocked right over along with their riders
because of the force of the impact. But the idea of the three points means it wouldn't pierce the
armour. But there is an example from the 1430s in Spain called the Pusso Onorosa of Suerodi
Quinones, I think that's the name. And that was fought over several days,
and they stopped eventually when they'd either killed or wounded just about everybody.
And because we have descriptions of the injuries, very precise descriptions because
the heralds who were there to record the score, also documented what went on in the lists.
And so we get this whole load of horrible descriptions of the injuries that people suffered,
and really horrible. You want me to give you some, don't you?
Yeah, okay. Tell me. Well, on Italian or Italian 815th century armour,
there was often underneath the bicep, where the tricep is, the underside of the arm,
or the inside of the upper arm. There was often a slot left open down there. They weren't
what they call fully enclosed cannons. And one guy got lanced right through his arm there.
It's struck him. And the lance broke because they talk about breaking lances.
And I know this is another complete rabbit hole, but hence the name Shakespeare.
Shake breaks beer means breaking a lance. And no, I don't believe he existed either.
Anyway, this guy got hit under the arm, lance broke, and he somehow dismounted and walked towards the
judge's stand with his thing through his arm. And apparently he's basically saying,
no, I'm fine, I'm fine. And then they removed it. And it said that blood shot out of the wounds
like fresh wine from a cask, at which point he fainted, unsurprisingly.
Another guy got a lance point in through the visor of his helmet. It threw up, not the visor,
what's called the sight. It went in between the visor proper and the reinforce over his brow.
And it went straight through one eye, straight into the brain, and his other eyes shot out
because of the pressure. Not very nice. No. Another guy, he got somehow a lance point
went in through the the sight of his helmet and was stuck in his forehead. And again,
it was like the black knight in Monty Python. It's just a flesh wound. And he was you saying,
I'm okay, I'm okay. No, you're not. You got a lance in your head. So, you know, and do you know,
we talked about Henry the Fifth. Henry the Fifth, at the Battle of Shrewsbury, he got a
bodkin arrowhead in the face, got in the cheek there. And it was embedded in so far,
his surgeon had to invent a special tool to screw into the base of the arrowhead to remove it,
to get it out. So, you know, nicely apparently he left him with a nice scar for the rest of
his life. They were tough bastards. So, so they would accumulate the most tremendous scars.
And here's a good example then for you of a real bar steward, this guy called Federico de
Montefeltero. He was a mercenary commander. He was partly behind the the Patsy conspiracy
in Florence to wipe out the Medici. He only didn't participate because he got injured falling
through a wooden floor. But he was around 1450 he was injured in the same way he got a lance
through the the side of his helmet in a joust. And that blow took out part of the bridge of his nose,
took out the eye and then took out the orbit that the socket as we're just went bang
straight through and wait for it. So, he lost the eye. But not only that, because he'd lost
the eye, he then got surgeons to take out more of the bridge of his nose so he could see a cross.
And that's why I mean people couldn't look him up online Federico de Montefeltero
in every portrait after that he's only ever shown from the left hand side.
But I'm still I'm sure the ladies can see both sides weren't quite so attracted to him.
Well, so this is horrible. This is horrible. And they were into that Spanish. What were they
thinking? Why would you have everyone killing each other at a at a kind of a non war type?
Matter of honor. It was called the pass of honor. They were showing that they were
chivalrous nights. Yeah. And it does show you that I mean, I've talked about martial arts before.
And you do get I heard you mentioning Machiavelli on a podcast, I think, some while ago. Yeah. And
you thought he might have been misjudged in some way. And no, he was a political spin doctor.
And at the but he describes the battle of Angiari in 1440. He said it went on for four
hours. And it was only one man killed not because of any honorable wound, but because he fell off
his horse. And as a result was trampled to death. No, hundreds killed Angiari. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. Another wrong. And yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um,
how I was quite you I you presumably haven't seen that that that Game of Thrones spin off
series a night of the seven kingdoms. I think it's cool. No, I haven't. I don't think I've seen
any of the Game of Thrones either. The justing scenes are really quite good. Um, and
they give you a give you a sense of the kind of just the grinding brutality at all. So,
so what once you unseat your the rider, do you then get off? Do you get off your horse? What's
the etiquette when you when you've there was a certain number of courses fought, you know,
either fighting with the lance or then fighting with other weapons. There were there were club
tournaments where they were a bit like a demolition derby where they had helmets which
had elaborate crests on them. And the idea was you had to literally smash the crest off
the other guy's helmet. And they would sometimes fight in teams or individually. And yeah,
there were also courses fought on foot. There was a tournament 14 Smithfield. And that was a
that was a grudge match. That wasn't a fun. I can't remember the names of both the combatants.
It was in the I think it was in the 15th century. And one of them was had the
fantastic name of the great bastard of Burgundy. And he was fighting an English man at arms.
What happened was the Englishman got him down on the ground, forced his visor open,
and there's a nice euphemistic expression for what happened next. He then went on punching
him in the face with his gauntlet until he was quote unable to continue. So in other words,
until he smashed his face in, literally. So no, not very gentlemanly. No, not really,
really not. Could they I mean, how can you fight anywhere with with this narrow
slit? Yeah, I heard you mentioned on another podcast. Right. Now, obviously, I've,
I've worn armor myself. And what happens is early on, when armor isn't modeled very well to the
head, if you think of those what are called Great Helms, those basically look like a bucket
on your head, the the early ones from the 13th century. It's the front of the helmet is further
away from the face. So the further away from the eye, the sight of the helmet is the more
restricted your vision is going to be. So then you had that type of helmet I call the the
hound skull bassinet with the great piggy faced or pig face bassinet also.
And although they're becoming shaped and you have this quite conical visor,
the sights in that visor are still quite a long way away from the eye.
So that does restrict your vision a great deal. The invention of the Italians was to create
something called an armette, the little helmet. And what that did was it had a much smaller
visor called a sparrows beak visor. And the helmet itself was modeled very closely to the head.
So the site was very, very close to your eyes. And it's a bit like wearing a pair of glasses,
as I'm doing you your eyes adjust to it. And you can see out of the helmet much more easily.
Yes. If you're wearing one of those helmets, but it sounds like the common experience was
was was not that it was just like these
Well, that was earlier on also people didn't always wear their visors when fighting because
they're not there. No visors visors were often held on with pins. And so you could
just remove the two pins and take the visor off and fight without it.
Yeah. And that's probably how Henry the fifth got his arrow in the face.
But I think that's what you do, isn't it? Surely you want to be able to see what's going on?
Well, also commanders, because they had to give orders and hear
what their subordinates were telling you, they tended to wear open faced helmets as well.
An Italian type of helmet called a cellata, a salad. And that would either have a completely open
facial aperture, or it would be a sort of T shape a bit. Some of them even look like what are called
Greek Corinthian helmets. If people know from Greek vases, those helmets which have got the two eyes
and then a narrow and a nasal, and then they're open down to the chin.
They were making helmets like that in the 15th century as well.
So sometimes it was a calculated risk that they had to have these open faced helmets.
And it would make them recognizable as well.
So, so far this has been, this has been the kind of podcast that
even normally world could appreciate. I mean, it could almost be an episode of
The Rest is Court History. The Rest is Court History. But, but I was just funny. I had the
same thought about that podcast myself. Yes, Insert the Word Court.
Yes. I've just been, I've just been doing, because one of them, one of them's a friend of mine,
or I haven't seen it for a while, but I kind of think it's great that he's doing so well.
But at the same time, when you realize that they did an episode on the Titanic,
six episodes from the Titanic, without one, once mentioning the QGHRs that A was an
insurance job by JP Morgan, B, the ship that actually sank wasn't the Titanic. It had its
nameplate changed. C, that Morgan's henchmen used this as an opportunity to bump off that,
that, what, Aster who, these various, various rivals that he had installed on the ship and
mysteriously failed to turn up at the docks because he had a pressing engagement, right?
All the stuff that's really interesting that matters, they didn't mention,
or at least countenance seriously in these six episodes. And they did an episode of the
moon landings with, with, with Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks. I mean, and they didn't, they didn't
mention the fact that we haven't actually been to the moon. So anyway, how did I get there?
Yeah, we've been, we've been quite normie friendly so far, but do you want to tell me,
how much do you want to tell me about your demonic, weird shit experiences that,
and your, your, your, your, the masons and stuff like that?
Okay, we can lead into it going from normie world. I said, I don't like this
stuff in meaning arms and armor that I don't, I really don't like it anymore for a reason that
we're coming to. But also you once interviewed an exorcist, did you not? An American gentleman.
Yeah.
Which was fabulous. And he was talking about demonic infestation. He was saying that basically
places can wind up playing host to these entities. And I found twice in my life that I've
handled weapons and it's not been a happy experience.
Really?
Yeah. One was a Japanese arrowhead, a ceremonial, beautiful Japanese arrowhead. It was cut out,
had fret work in Japanese kanji characters. And apparently these arrowheads were shot at
religious festivals as of act of opening or closing. I don't, I can't remember the details of that.
But anyway, there we are. And I went to see a friend of mine who had the finest collection
of Japanese armor in Britain, sold now, gone back to Japan. And he was at the room and
there were a series of arrowheads on the mantle piece over the fireplace. And I saw
this one. And I thought, Oh, that's lovely. And I picked it up. And it was like I just stuck
my fingers in the mains. I got a belt off it. Absolutely bang, I had to drop it.
So there's something attached to that arrowhead. Very, you know, that's that was a hell of a
shock. So I had this demon attachment.
Well, it had something attached to it. But there was a very clear example I had once somebody
showed me an Italian type of dagger called a stiletto. That's a name most people will know.
Yeah. And they associate them with assassins, but they were carried by all men and soldiers.
And the guy showed it to me. And this guy was divorced by this stage. And he said,
I used to keep it by the bed. My wife didn't like it.
Well, no. And when he handed it to me, it felt revolting. It just felt horrible. And
when I put it down, I, you know, that feeling like you want to wash your hands. It was just
absolutely vile what came off that thing. So what I mean, think of the situations these
objects have been through. They've been used to kill. They've been used in battle. So,
you know, whatever is getting attached to them, whether people might call it frequency or energy
or demonic, something can get attached to these objects for sure. And in my experience,
they also attract a certain not very nice people because of those associations.
Isn't it weird? This gives me the opportunity to retell my Alistair Crowley's wand story.
Oh, yes.
Where I went to the house where the owner has Alistair Crowley's wand, or Alistair Crowley.
And he said, do you want to hold it? I said, yeah. I mean, I don't want to be able to tell
people I've held the Alistair Crowley's wand. And I got nothing off it. I mean, I wonder, I wonder
how it would be now. I wonder what the reaction would be now, whether whether now I'm sort of
proper Christian and kind of a tune to these things maybe. But I just remember thinking,
expecting something, some sort of to have some sort of feel some dark power there and be be
repelled by it. But it didn't really happen. It just felt sort of nothing.
So well, I got those feelings off those objects while I was still in normie world.
Although I've always got atmospheres being around some people, you just want to get out
the room fast. So there was always some level of sensitivity anyway. But while you're just
mentioning Christianity anyway, thank you to you because you're one of the people responsible
for white billing me. I always love hearing that. Because I do sometimes feel like I'm a really
rubbish Christian. And it's nice to feel that I'm serving some useful purpose. So thank you.
I'm glad to be of service. And over there on top of the wardrobe is my
Coverdale copy of the Psalms as well. Oh, is it? And that that's specifically down to you. Yeah.
Yeah, don't don't ask me for my favorite because I'm still working my way in very slowly. But thanks.
It is given to very few Chris to know the Psalms as well as I now do. I mean, I am approaching
monk level. Although I exaggerate. I mean, I've still only gone about 35 under my belt. But
yeah, I mean, if you read them every day, you do get you do you get a working knowledge of them.
Put it that way. So but but yeah, everyone, I if you can do the Psalms, I recommend the
Coverdale version. It's better than the KJV. It's the one that gets used in the Book of
Common Prayer. Do you do you want to tell me about the the guy that puts you off armor forever?
Well, yeah, what I'll do is I'll just say quickly as a preface to this because I know
you sometimes ask people what it was that first, you know, precipitated their their fall down
and tumble down the rabbit hole. My the very, very first beginnings of that were when
Britain pulled out of Afghanistan. When when the British left Kabul a few years ago,
I was listening to a radio foreshow called Broadcasting House on Sunday morning.
Sort of magazine show, which I used to really enjoy. And this was timed to be on on the
pullout on a Sunday morning. They did a report from the courtyard of a house in Kabul. And
they were going on about birdsong, how quiet and peaceful it was and wonderful. And lovely. Yeah,
fine. Yeah, listen to the show. And then later on that day, I was watching Italian TV.
And the Italian TV covered the stories of the car bombings that took place in Kabul on the
same day. And Italian TV doesn't spare you. You know, if there's a mafia killing here,
you see the bullet holes all over the car, you see the blood running down the stretch,
you know, they don't spare you, not like British TV. And so anyway,
car bombings, lots of dead. And I thought, Oh, that must have happened after the BBC
report. I know. And because I still foolishly looked at the BBC News website in those days,
in the following days, I thought, Oh, it's going to show up, you know, there'll be
a report on the BBC website. Nothing. Not a thing. So that was the first little chink
of light where I realized that that was pure propaganda. That Sunday morning radio show
was just pure propaganda. And then they buried the violence that happened afterwards. So
then my proper tumble down the rabbit hole. And it precipitated me finding
things like I stopped listening to BBC radio began listening to talk, talk radio, then talk TV,
then realized, no, no, no, you know how it is, you keep tumbling further down. Yeah.
Then then I found you, you were a guest on some show, whatever, I was reading Breitbart.
So I found you. And then the UK column, German warfare, and these various other,
you know, a week, if that's the word to use, folk. And when I first, for examples,
watching videos like yours on Odyssey, I've really had that. Should I even be on this website?
You know, no, I might wind up on a government list if I look at these things, not knowing that
I already was so that he really made no difference at all. So tumbling down the rabbit
hole started because I used to restore armor for people, not just for museums, but for people in
the antiques trade. And you get a lot of Freemasons in the antiques trade. And why?
Money, power. That's how that's, that's what draws them always money and power.
And are they also after kind of stuff with occult significance,
like grimoires or stuff like that. Not in my experience. I mean, full disclosure,
I nearly went in myself. I made some swords for them. I got to know some Freemasons around Cambridge
and places like Sudbury and Claire, because I used to live in East Anglia.
And after a lifetime of being an outsider, he said, these are nice guys, I thought.
And I thought, why not? Because they were making it very clear I'd be welcome.
They don't technically speaking, they don't ask you, you have to ask to go in. And there's a
karmic thing there going on. Because if you go to them and you say, I wish to go in, then it's
on you. See? So I've been making some swords for these people, ceremonial swords. And they
showed me some of their swords. And they've got skulls and crossbones on them. And I was still
in Normie World then and I thought, it's a bit odd. But you know, but no, these are symbols of death.
And they certainly are into the occult, of course. I see the way it worked. The way it worked
is you go in and a lot of people on the low levels are nice guys. And they're, and I'm
sorry to have to say it, but they are the useful idiots. You know, you go in at the low level,
and then they gradually start to reveal more and more and more to you. And by the time you start
to find out just who their great architect is, and it's certainly not God, it's you're in. It's
too late. And from the masons I met, they just like the party whips in the in the British
political system. They like someone who's compromised. Because then if they help you out,
they own you. And as one Mason put it to me very bluntly, he said, when they ask you for help,
you do not say no. So anyway, my, my going in was stymied by a guy I had been working for
in the antiques trade. And he treated me so horribly. I was very well paid, but it was
just unbearable. The rudeness, the manipulation, the mind games. And I just thought, so did no.
And I didn't tell him to f off. I was quite polite about it. And I said, we're done.
I'm not I'm not doing this for you anymore. We're done. And I didn't realize he'd already
been he knew this was coming. And he'd already set me up with a new friend. You know, he was
he was then having work passed on to me from other people. And basically what started
then was a steady destruction of my work as a restorer in the trade and not to drive me out
completely. That's quite important to say. But it was simply to drive away any other clients.
So there would only be one person for me to go back to if I wanted to have that good
living that I had before. So that was going on steadily. And I didn't know.
But I but joining the dots afterwards, the local lodge in Clare will have been keeping tabs on me.
And it made sense to me of why I got some very funny looks off people who I knew were members
at the time, local pharmacist, for example. And when I was due to go in, it was firmly blocked.
And one of the people who wanted me to go in, they did want to help. But the very apologetic
said to me, I'm sorry, they are too powerful with the words he used. So we're talking about
it. You were trying to get into what you were trying to get into?
No, I was I was supposed to go in as a member of to become a Freemason.
And I was sorry. Yeah. And I literally thank God I didn't because it's not an exaggeration
to say that that will have saved my soul. But they but they turn you down.
No, they wanted they wanted me in. What happened was
my principal antagonist intervened. Yes. And so because these are all different lodges.
So the local lodging Clare was keeping tabs on me. But these fellas were members of lodges
in Cambridge and in Sudbury. So that it wasn't until now what really brought this
out of the woodwork was, and here's another little little nugget for you.
I lectured to the Freemasons in a lodge in Cambridge one night, they asked me to give
a lecture about symbolism on of the the Knights of Malta on armor, which I did.
And some of them were Templars. And yes, they do wear the robes. Yep, they get up in the
robes. And they were there. And it was when I gave that lecture, the members of the different
lodges all came together in the same room. And at that point, that sent up a red flag for
my principal antagonist, because then he knew that other Masons were inviting me to go in
or wanted me to go in. And at that point, it was firmly blocked. Good. Good. I'm grateful.
It's unusual incident. Yeah. Incidentally,
I think you mentioned you had someone who was a family member, perhaps it was amazing. And
these people, yeah, they can be very nice or very hail and well met. And it's a great boozing
and eating club at the lower levels. As one guy said to me, you have to forgive us. We're
but when that block came down, people who I had known as, you know, becoming real friends with them
that really I thought nice guys. That was it. I had one guy I saw in the local Sainsbury's
and I went over to I said hi, hi, hi. And he literally turned his back on me physically.
And I had to stand within each of him saying hello, hello. And then he was incredibly
embarrassed. Only then would he actually turn and speak to me because he had been told you stay away
from this person. Dear, dear, so this is the whole point when push comes to shove, they will do as
they're told. Yeah. So anyway, you won that anyway. So anyway, as time goes on,
two Masons independently, I'd known for years that something was wrong. Problems with the
bank problems with my phone company, you name it. And two people independently confirmed that no,
I wasn't seeing things or imagining things. No, it really was going on. And then that was
laterally confirmed by a third person Mason from the USA. So fast forward to me moving to Italy
in 2017, something I'd always wanted to do and had been stymied several times. And I now know who
was doing the stymie. And once I got here, there was one Mason from a will say a major city near
here. And I was doing some work for him. And I know he was a Mason, he never told me,
but I know he was because he used the formula of words to introduce himself to someone
who I knew here. And the words he used in Italian were exactly the same as the formula
of words used in English by one of the Masons I knew in the UK. They have certain phrases they
used to introduce themselves to each other. So they'll they will know if they're dealing with a
brother, if you if you like. Yes. So he gave me restoration work to do on six armours. And
this this was by now we're in 2019. And this is an antiques dealer. And he previously treated
me very well. But from the moment I accepted the commission, every single trick in the book
came out to screw me around. And I'll try and romp through this quite briefly. But essentially,
he was trying to put me in a position where I could be blackmailed. Firstly, by paying
me an awful lot of cash off the books, which I didn't want, but doing it in such a way with
very large denomination bank notes that can only be paid into banks here 500 euro notes.
So he was trying to pay me in a way which would be visible. And I once said to him,
I suppose I could pay the rent with one of these. And he jumped in and said, no, no,
it's illegal to pay the rent in cash in Italy. No, it isn't. What he was trying to do was
compromise me by paying me 15,000 euros in cash. And which was the amount for the whole
commission and not get any invoices for it. And I smelled a rat and so did my accountant.
I have a guy called, he's a commercialista that's a cross between an accountant and a lawyer.
And he looks after me very well. And I discussed it at length with him and he said, no, no,
you're going to invoice for this, which is what I wanted to do anyway.
And so the guy was trying to pay me cash in such a way it would be visible.
Okay. Couldn't be hidden. I confronted him over that, slapped the invoices down in front of him
next time he came to see me and told him I knew who his business partner was in this venture,
that it was my old antagonist in the UK. And what followed was a masterclass in body language
of somebody caught out lying through their teeth. So I knew my old antagonist in the UK was
involved. When that failed, I was then offered work on some swords. Swords in Italy are treated
like firearms. You can't work on them without an armor as permit. Okay, that's a modern gunsmith's
permit. And this antique dealer had already asked me if I possessed such a permit. And I said, no,
I didn't realize he was checking the ground first, just seeing whether it could be compromised that
way. So then a guy from another Italian city on the other side of Italy offered me some work
on some swords. And I'm okay. But I did a very sensible thing. I went to the police first and I
checked. I said, can I do this? And the police officer said, absolutely not. No, it would be
like unless it's work on firearms, serious offense. And the first Italian dealer I mentioned,
he dropped something into a subsequent conversation. So he knew he was part of it.
So when the cash didn't work, they tried to set me up with working on basically illegal work on
what would have been classed as firearms. Serious. Then when that didn't work, I was offered work
on an excavated helmet, medieval helmet from somewhere in another European country. Yeah.
And they wanted to, they came down to Italy a lot. So they said, right, I'll stop by
and leave this thing with you. And I said, no, you won't. I will send you a document of provenance
for you to fill in, because antiques here have their own passports attached to them.
It's called a documento di trasporto. And it's because so many things get excavated here and
then sold. Again, you can't be in possession of an excavated piece without it ringing alarm
bells. And I said, absolutely not. No, you will fill this document in, you will tell me
when you're coming, you'll make an appointment. And he just, he just vanished. So firstly, the money,
then the swords, then an excavated piece. And I was telling these stories to my friends here.
And one of them just said, as if it was completely normal, they said, oh, they're
trying to blackmail you. So I was being set up at that point. So the, the, the restoration
of the six armours had to be enough. I'm willing to bet, I haven't checked, but I'm willing
to bet the amount of money had to be enough for it not to be a simple fine and a slap on
the wrist for not declaring some earnings. It would have to be something with a prison
centre is attached to it. Yeah. And then undoubtedly the plan was going to be
get me in a compromising position. And then I go screaming to my contacts here saying,
what do I do? What do I do? And it's, well, we could help you. But we'd need a favour.
You know, it was like that. What was it going to be?
Really, I couldn't give two shits. It's very less door than devil. It must devil's own harness.
That could be the thing. Something, something. Oh, well, as a brief aside,
as a brief aside, there is the devil's armour in ordinate in the north of Italy,
because it had a two part base for the crest, which looks like two horns.
So that's that is nicknamed the devil's armour. Anyway, I found out from a Freemason in the USA.
We're now in 2020. And I was telling him about all this. And he said it would appear
that somebody had sold a very valuable antique to a wealthy collector.
And that included your input. But the client had grown tired of waiting
and wanted his money back. And it was a considerable amount of money,
which the dealer was then having trouble repaying. Now that may or may not be true.
But the the essential truth at the base of this is a group, a little cabal within the
antiques trade, I'm sure bought something and they did it knowing the only way they could make
the money they wanted to make out of it. And that would not be inconsiderable was by having me work
on it. But from the off, they knew I would say no. So it can't be anything legal. And
you know that they tried the game with the cash from the word go. And that was when I
was still working for that dealer in that city not far from here. So that means they were
planning to blackmail me from the word go. Nice like that. So now with regard to what it is,
I don't, regardless of what I might think, regardless of things I've been told,
I don't want to know. And now we're going to get to why I feel different about this stuff now.
Ever since now, this whole vendetta thing has worked at two levels. We've had what you
might call the foot soldiers down at the bottom, these people in the trade. And then you have right
at the top, the freemason element, because I have been completely disappeared. You know,
and this I know when it happened, it happened in 2020, because my website
suddenly got massive amounts of visits. It went up from a few hundred a month to nearly 3000.
And first I thought, Oh, well, great. But although I sell ebooks things online,
I should have expected my sales to go up, not necessarily by the same amount, but the internet
is a numbers game. And if you're the traffic on your website goes up by the power of 10,
you would expect your sales to at least go up to an extent. And they flatlined the opposite
happened. They died. And then the traffic on the website came down over three months. And I now
realized that by the time it had come back down to what I thought was normal, it was gone. By then
Google had disappeared me. And so I've been I've been censored by Google, I've been censored by
Amazon, YouTube as well for the videos I put on there. I know my websites have been
attacked with bot traffic. Some some of the people visiting were real. But here's the thing.
Now, these people didn't want to drive me out of the field because they want me to do that work
clearly. And they still want me to do it. I know whatever it is, whatever it is.
Must be really good.
These things could be worth millions. Right. And the amount of money they've they've dropped on
this already was sort of pissed away down the loo. What they did was this, you may remember the
television show Lovejoy back in the 90s about the lovable rogue. Ian McShane. Yeah. Well,
I can't even bear to watch those anymore now. Because the sort of lovable rogue thing about
antiques dealers. Oh, the book spy, the author is called Jonathan Gash is a doctor who's a real
name is John Grant. And in the books Lovejoy kills people, not infrequently. So the books are
somewhat the other books are somewhat closer to real antiques world. But anyway, what happened
was I'd been disappeared off the internet. But now if you think screw this, it's not
worth it. I'll just go and do something else. Instead, I found myself in a version of the Truman
show. I think the Lovejoy show in this case, they then provided me with a whole raft of new
clients who were buying the books I was writing, like the ones I sent for you and Dick. And so
this included, and I won't say they're people, hundreds of identities. I know some of them
are real. Some of them weren't. They for effect, they even killed one of them off once. I apparently
had this guy's widow writing to me. It's just bizarre. And what they've always tried to do is
block my work with art, you know, which we'll mention at the end, and try and drag me back
into the world of arms and armor. So hence the trouble they've gone to, the money they've
spent, whatever it is, and truly I couldn't give two shits what it is I'm supposed to do
or supposed to work on. The money they think they're going to make out of this has got to have six
zeros at the end of it. And I suspect they've lost a lot already because they must have bought this
thing or things, whatever they are. So they're out of pocket to a huge amount, I would think.
And they expected to be able to make that back and make a vast profit
at the end of it. And I have news for them. It's never going to happen.
No, and this is where we come to how I feel about the stuff now. Truly. This may come as a surprise,
but knowing what I know now, I would happily see every piece of armor and every weapon in every
museum go into a car crusher tomorrow. Happily. That's the way I feel about that stuff now.
I can take a detached academic view of it now with regard to the history side,
with regard to military history, but you could not pay me to touch that stuff ever again.
And here's a word to the wise, if someone actually did sidle up to me now and say,
look, it's this, you know, would you would you please work on this and they put let's say
some fabulous helmet down on the bench in front of me. If I had a hammer in my hand,
I would reduce it to manage a minute. Yes, I would. I would. I won't use the language I was going to
use. Just isn't that slightly you're taking out your your personal experiences on the whole of
the whole of armor? I mean, surely the armor doesn't deserve that.
Yes, in in my humble opinion, yes. I give it I'll give you an idea. Again, this will come as
another surprise. And there's another little another little anecdote in here, which I haven't
mentioned to you yet. I was top drawer restorer for a long time. And I had tools which were
original armorers tools, which went back to the 16th century. And I'd sort of pick them up from here
and there. And I also had 19th century sort of tinsmiths and coppersmiths tools, which was
similar and some I had made when I set up my business in 1985. And so I was fully equipped
armor as workshop, you know, very particular tooling. And I got to a point last year
where I realized these tools are going to have to go. Because as long as I've got a workshop,
these jokers are going to keep coming back and back and back because they'll think they've got
a chance at tricking me into getting me into a position where finally they can do it. Yeah.
And bearing in mind for your audience, this has been going on since 2019. So this is seven years
and counting. And not only that, they must have been planning it before 2019. So this is a long
time this has been going on already. And at first you might think, I mean, imagine, same with you,
that you have to decide to never ride again. That you can't have anything to do with horses ever
again. And people will think that for a craftsman, and then any other artisans out there,
in your audience, will probably be thinking, how the hell could you do that? If that was
your life for 40 years, you know, for a craftsman, the tools become a part of you. And I just thought,
no, these, these bloody things are a curse. As long as I've got them, this is never going to stop.
So I got rid of them. And, and, and here comes the anecdote.
I had to make it absolutely public, because I thought these, if I just say I've got rid
of them, they're not going to believe me. These people lie as easily as breathe. So they'll
assume I'm lying as well. So I publicly put on my website, knowing if no one else would see it,
they would, because, you know, being heavily monitored. And I began emailing people who I
knew were other armors who just make armor for reenactment purposes, you know, like, like Dick.
And I got a panicked email from a museum, which is going to remain nameless to save their
blushes. And the curator saying, who bought my books, who said, don't, don't, don't, don't,
don't, don't, do not put any more of this online. We'll have the lot. Okay, we'll buy the lot.
And I thought, oh, good, jolly good. So we arrived at a price and the museum in question
paid. And I thought, Oh, well, at least they're going to have a good home. You know, that's
good. And, and I'm now completely emotionally divorced from them. I'm glad they've gone. That's
fine. I don't feel bad about it. But then what happened was this, then I said, right, when are
you going to come and take these things away? And the curator said, Oh, well,
we're dealing just by chance. We're dealing with here we go. We're dealing with another
business in your area. In fact, the town, the next town over. What a coincidence. He said,
that we haven't, we haven't come to terms with them yet about what we want to buy.
We hope to be able to conclude our dealings with that business and come over there to
collect everything in the first half of next year. We hope this was October last year.
So this guy is saying, having just dropped nearly 9000 euros in public funds, he's saying,
Ah, hang on to the tools. Okay, we'll come and get them sometime next year, hopefully in the first
half. And that was a huge red flag for me. I thought, hang on a minute. This is a guy who
was desperate to stop me selling them to anybody else. Then they come up with the money
for their museum. And then they want to leave me with the damn things.
So at first I thought, well, I'll have to go into storage. And then I thought, no, no, no,
no, no, I would still have access to them. So I could see how this could then be a temptation.
If I were placed in that position of difficulty, where the way out would be to do that work,
then I'd still have access to them. And I also had a word with a friend of mine who
was used to procurement purposes from a European government. And they said, this stinks.
There's no way a public body are going to drop nearly 9000 euros and then say,
Ah, about sometime next year, maybe. So I wrote a long and detailed email to the civil servant
in charge of the government body that runs that museum. And I said, you know, this is
going to sound absurd, I know, but it's almost as if somebody bought those tools or paid me the money
with the explicit intention of then leaving them with me, but in the process, stopping
anyone else from buying them. Isn't that isn't that odd? Yeah. Yeah. And I said, look,
if it turns out that let's say a sponsor, you know, a philanthropath, shall we say,
if a sponsor came up with the money for your museum, and it's because of that as no hurry,
you know, leaving with him for the moment, we'll sort it out when you like. I said,
I am not going to babysit these tools to suit your sponsor. You are going to come and take
them away now. And I got a very polite email back within 24 hours. And it was really quite to the
point considering he was obviously not going to crap all over his subordinate publicly.
But he said he had no right to buy anything. He's not competent to make acquisitions for
this museum. End of story. And then he said, of course, we will arrange shipping immediately.
So that it confirmed absolutely. They weren't being bought by that museum.
But yes, but that's I suppose that's that's that's interesting to get a glimpse of how the
network because presumably he was amazing as well. Exactly. Yeah. And all I will say about
that museum is it's in a place with heavy connections to the Mason's. I'll just leave it at that.
People can work that out for themselves. But yeah, yeah, exactly. So
you see, I was trying to get rid of those tools. And the first thing they did was we got to
stop this. Because if he gets rid of those, we're away, you know. And now a last little
thing on that story is you know, I did germs podcast for the UK column recently. And
few days later, I got a phone call. Now, the sort of let's let's face it, the sort of people I'm
having trouble with will not be avid viewers of the UK column far far from it, I think.
So but the UK column will of course be heavily monitored by the powers that shouldn't be
obvious. And what must have happened was when Brian Garrish uttered the words, and tonight on UK,
you know, Jim warfare podcast, we'll have Chris Dobson that will have sent up a red flag
straight away. And so a few days later, this guy phones me. And he says he was in France.
And he said, Well, after what you were talking about on the on the podcast, I thought you sound
like an approachable guy. So I thought I'd phone you up. Yes, never explained where he got my phone
number from. It's not on the website. So, you know, you get these these constant giveaways
the whole time, because they're not very good actors. And he said, after what you were talking
about on the podcast, you're probably going to view a phone call like this out of the blue
was a bit suspicious. And I said, Yeah, absolutely. But he he plowed on bless him, he kept going.
And he claimed to be an artist, he claimed to just want some some are some questions about
Renaissance art. And then he just went straight on talking about Alma. And then at a certain
point, he said, Oh, I used to collect a German pickle, how about you know, the helmets with the
spike on the top. And I, right, exactly. And I thought, Sir, all right, so you're now telling
me you're you're a collector. And you know, when it's coming, he was nervous from the beginning
of the call. And then at a certain point, and I thought, here it comes. So he said,
you know, still run a workshop to you. And I just just couldn't get him off the phone fast enough
after that. There's a movie in this. It's got a shit ending, of course, because you don't,
you don't get to see what the what this armor is that that, and you need to get to the
same way where you pay the terrible price. See, yeah. Well, well done. And thank you.
Um, but and I mean, I have no doubt they'll be watching this podcast as well. I mean,
you'll be monitored for sure. Unless you're controlled up.
Uh, fine. Unless you're controlled opposition, of course, in, in, in which case, they don't
bother. How would that work? What use would I be? Give me, give me, give me one possible
way I could be helping the enemy. I mean, well, not, not, not really. Oh, I'm shilling.
You're shilling for Russia. No, no, no, you're. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm shilling for Russia.
No, sir. So you're shilling for Russia. German shilling for China.
Um, you know, Patrick Henningson is shilling for Iran, you know, and so on and so forth.
Yeah. So anyway, Putin. Yes, I think that means I love Putin. I think I haven't got my pronunciation
right yet, but okay. So anyway, so that, that brings us to the end of my sort of Masonic
saga. So they're still at it. They still haven't learned their lesson.
And it is, it's awfully sad, Chris, that, that this was your life. No, it's not your life. I hope it,
I hope that I hope that you're sort of the warm glow you get of having not engaged with evil as
sort of compensated in some way. Well, one of the, one of the disadvantages of getting white
pilled is it does tend to get you asking questions about what is the point of all this,
please? Why, why am I going through this? And I'm sure as, as they've been monitoring my
communications, thanks to Google, someone locally confirmed for me that, yeah,
Google have tier one access when you have a website parked on their servers.
And that explained a great deal about how they seem to be reading my thoughts recently.
No, they weren't reading my thoughts. They were reading your emails.
Yeah, exactly. Well, it's, it's, look, it's, it's a, it's espionage 101. You have to have a feedback
loop. You have to know that what you're doing is actually taking you where you want to go.
So, and you, you will know that from the enemy's communications.
Interesting. I will be, yeah.
You've sparked a thought. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. I've experienced this.
They do actually have people saying, you know, so how's, how's James coping with this or that?
And you think, oh, hang on a second. This is all orchestrated.
Anyway, I won't go there now. Chris, it's been great. I've actually got to go now because I,
because I do fascinating podcasts and thank you. What tell us, is there anything you want
to sell? Do you want to sell your books? What do you want to talk about in terms of
working? Absolutely. Absolutely. Right.
For people interested in military history and Renaissance art history, which is what I now do,
I fell in love with the, after studying paintings to look at armor, I fell in love with the art
itself. And that's what I write about now. And I've got a book coming out very shortly about
three paintings by the artist Paolo Cello, which are thought to be the Battle of San Romano,
which was 1432. And what I've done is I've used my experience of unpicking layers of mystery in
my own life and my experience with real armor. And I show what the paintings actually show.
And it's called San Romano, The Art of War. And it's on my website at, and here it is,
it's Christobson. That's all one word, Christobson.it for Italy. So Christobson.it.
And if people want to head over there, they can find my, you went to Florence recently,
didn't you? Yeah, I loved you. You can find my book on the Ponte Vecchio of Florence,
3000 years of history in that one. Another one about the medieval towers that used to,
you know, loom over the city in the Middle Ages, and you'll find a new one about San Romano.
And you can find my podcast there as well. So if people want to help break this damn of
silence that's been put around me, come over to my website, you know, spend a little bit of
money. And also, as that website is pretty much tailored for normies, if you have friends
who are into history, tell your normie friends as well. So I just, I just say briefly, I looked at
your book this morning, I cut several of the whole thing, but I gave it a kind of a thorough
skim read. And it's fascinating. I mean, the detail that your knowledge of materials,
artistic materials of obviously armor of technique, and you've got the burns to show it,
the burn scars, you've got, you've done all this stuff, you've lived all this stuff.
So I'm sure that your book about Uccello would be very, very interesting. Thank you,
Chris Dobson, I'll put the details below. And everyone else, thank you for, thank you for
watching my stuff. And do please continue to support me, you can actually support
me direct now on my website, which is jamestandingpole.co.uk. Or you can buy me a coffee,
support my sponsors, obviously, and keep listening. And yeah, thank you. Thank you for,
thank you for enjoying my stuff. Bye bye.
Good. Right, I've got to go. Chris, great talking to you.
Okay, you're only 73% uploaded. So you've you've you can please can you leave your computer on
until it's uploaded. Okay, thank you very much.
Just just before you do disappear completely. Yeah.