WEBVTT 1 00:00:20.839 --> 00:00:24.960 Hello, and welcome to Western SEV Episode four hundred and 2 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:30.879 seventy seven. Prussia. So many of us know Prussia from 3 00:00:31.519 --> 00:00:36.079 the Franco Prussian War, from the Unification of Germany, from 4 00:00:36.119 --> 00:00:39.640 all the machinations that the little kingdom that punches way 5 00:00:39.640 --> 00:00:41.840 above its weight class is going to play during the 6 00:00:41.840 --> 00:00:46.520 French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. But the story of 7 00:00:46.600 --> 00:00:50.560 Prussia begins not in the great capitals of Europe, but 8 00:00:50.640 --> 00:00:54.960 in the frozen marshlands around Brandenburg and the distant duchy 9 00:00:55.280 --> 00:00:58.840 of At the time it was called East Prussia, which 10 00:00:58.880 --> 00:01:03.280 was nothing more than a scattered realm of modest cities, 11 00:01:03.759 --> 00:01:09.719 sandy fields, dense forests full of charring old legionary bones 12 00:01:10.400 --> 00:01:13.319 that no one in the seventeenth century mistook for a 13 00:01:13.400 --> 00:01:20.040 great power. But within a single lifetime, one family, the Hausenhollerans, 14 00:01:20.599 --> 00:01:24.799 would transform the territory into a kingdom, and its ruler, 15 00:01:25.239 --> 00:01:29.319 Frederick the First, would wear a crown forged not through 16 00:01:29.400 --> 00:01:37.120 war and conquest, but through calculation, diplomacy, and ambition. To 17 00:01:37.239 --> 00:01:41.200 understand how Frederick became the first King of Prussia, we 18 00:01:41.280 --> 00:01:46.920 have to start a generation earlier with his fader, Frederick William, 19 00:01:47.400 --> 00:01:53.159 known to history as the Great Elector. When the Thirty 20 00:01:53.280 --> 00:01:57.799 Years War ended in sixteen forty eight, Brandenburg Prussia was 21 00:01:57.840 --> 00:02:01.280 a broken shell of a state. Its cities had been burnt, 22 00:02:01.280 --> 00:02:08.280 its population absolutely decimated, its economy stood in ruins. But 23 00:02:08.479 --> 00:02:13.800 Frederick William, a Calvinist prince of Iron Resolve, spent decades 24 00:02:14.360 --> 00:02:19.000 rebuilding his state, sometimes almost literally brick by brick. He 25 00:02:19.120 --> 00:02:24.719 centralized the administration, crushed the rebellious estates, and created this 26 00:02:24.759 --> 00:02:31.199 is the important part, the most efficient militarized bureaucracy in Europe. 27 00:02:31.280 --> 00:02:34.080 He forged an army not just to fight the wars, 28 00:02:34.280 --> 00:02:38.360 but as the glue that would actually hold his state together. 29 00:02:39.719 --> 00:02:42.840 He wrote once, where the sword is not drawn, the 30 00:02:42.879 --> 00:02:48.759 pen may be ignored. Frederick William had no intention of 31 00:02:48.800 --> 00:02:53.240 having his pen ignored. By the time of his death 32 00:02:53.240 --> 00:02:57.080 in sixteen eighty eight, the Hosenhaller in territories, though still 33 00:02:57.120 --> 00:03:00.680 scattered across the Holy Roman Empire and some outside it, 34 00:03:00.719 --> 00:03:04.960 had become a force to be reckoned with his son. 35 00:03:05.120 --> 00:03:08.120 At the time, Frederick the Third inherited an empire that 36 00:03:08.120 --> 00:03:10.919 had a huge amount of potential, not much else. He 37 00:03:11.039 --> 00:03:15.639 was cultured, vain and exsessed with prestige. If his father 38 00:03:15.759 --> 00:03:18.759 had been a hammer, Frederick would be a gilded frame. 39 00:03:19.400 --> 00:03:21.879 But he had a vision that his father did not. 40 00:03:22.520 --> 00:03:26.199 He wanted to turn the Electorate of Brandenburg into its 41 00:03:26.319 --> 00:03:31.759 own kingdom. But here lay the problem. Brandedberg was a 42 00:03:31.759 --> 00:03:34.400 part of the Holy Roman Empire, where the Emperor, by 43 00:03:34.439 --> 00:03:38.319 ancient custom and papal sanction, was the only one allowed 44 00:03:38.319 --> 00:03:42.199 to grant royal dignity to vassals. No one within the 45 00:03:42.280 --> 00:03:47.599 Empire could declare themselves king without permission, and both Habsburg 46 00:03:47.680 --> 00:03:53.000 emperors were loath to allow new crowns to bloom. But 47 00:03:53.159 --> 00:03:56.400 Frederick he knew of a legal loophole, and he was 48 00:03:56.439 --> 00:04:02.039 determined to use it. While Brandenburg within the Empire, the 49 00:04:02.120 --> 00:04:05.439 Duchy of Prussia, which had once been a fief of Poland, 50 00:04:06.280 --> 00:04:11.120 was not. Since the Treaty of Weilau in sixteen fifty seven, 51 00:04:11.599 --> 00:04:14.919 the Duchy had been a fully sovereign territory, owing no 52 00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:19.399 allegiance whatsoever to the Holy Roman Emperor. And so Frederick figured, 53 00:04:19.839 --> 00:04:22.759 if he could not be crowned King of Brandenburg, he 54 00:04:22.800 --> 00:04:26.839 could still become King of Prussia, a carefully worded title 55 00:04:27.279 --> 00:04:32.480 that avoided any direct offense to imperial dignity. Still, such 56 00:04:32.519 --> 00:04:37.600 a transformation would require imperial blessing that meant to diplomacy, flattery, and, 57 00:04:37.759 --> 00:04:40.439 of course, because it's the Holy Roman Empire more than 58 00:04:40.480 --> 00:04:45.279 anything else, a big, heaping cash pile. And in the 59 00:04:45.319 --> 00:04:48.439 winter of seventeen hundred, as Europe teetered on the edge 60 00:04:48.439 --> 00:04:51.519 of the War of Spanish Succession, Frederick made his move. 61 00:04:52.240 --> 00:04:55.759 The Holy Roman Emperor Leopold the first desperately needed allies. 62 00:04:56.399 --> 00:05:01.040 France under Louis the fourteenth threatened to expand its once again, 63 00:05:01.319 --> 00:05:05.759 and the balance of Europe hong. Frederick offered troops eight 64 00:05:05.800 --> 00:05:10.319 thousand disciplined brandenburg soldiers for the coming war, and in return, 65 00:05:10.519 --> 00:05:14.879 he demanded the Emperor's approval for his royal coronation. After 66 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:19.759 months of negotiation, Leopold relented in a secret treaty signed 67 00:05:19.959 --> 00:05:23.759 in November seventeen hundred. The Emperor agreed that Frederick could 68 00:05:23.759 --> 00:05:26.759 assume the title of King of Prussia, provided he did 69 00:05:26.759 --> 00:05:30.319 so only in the lands outside the Empire. It was 70 00:05:30.360 --> 00:05:34.519 a weird and awkward compromise, but Frederick accepted it. He 71 00:05:34.600 --> 00:05:36.920 knew his foot was in the door and now would 72 00:05:36.920 --> 00:05:39.920 be impossible to close it. He had paid for his 73 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:43.839 crown not in blood, but in soldiers, coin and diplomacy. 74 00:05:45.319 --> 00:05:49.199 On January eighteenth, seventeen oh one, in the icy chapel 75 00:05:49.199 --> 00:05:54.319 of Kannisburg Castle, Frederick crowned himself King of Prussia. The 76 00:05:54.360 --> 00:05:58.279 scene was a spectacle of gold and velvet, with foreign diplomats, 77 00:05:58.600 --> 00:06:01.720 Lavish banquets, and sarah ammonial finery imported all the way 78 00:06:02.160 --> 00:06:07.399 from Versailles and some from Vienna. Frederic's wife, Sophia Charlotte 79 00:06:07.399 --> 00:06:11.160 of Hanover, knelt beside him, radiant and jewels. As he 80 00:06:11.240 --> 00:06:14.879 placed the crown on her head. The new king declared 81 00:06:14.920 --> 00:06:19.199 that God himself had raised him from elector to sovereign. 82 00:06:20.680 --> 00:06:23.720 He had no intention of ruling as a provincial monarch. However, 83 00:06:24.319 --> 00:06:28.920 his new court in Berlin, styled after Louis the fourteenth Versailles, 84 00:06:29.319 --> 00:06:33.120 was filled with opera, architecture, and philosophy. He founded the 85 00:06:33.120 --> 00:06:38.079 Berlin Academy of Sciences, employed foreign artists and scholars, and 86 00:06:38.199 --> 00:06:43.560 transformed Charlottenburg Palace into a symbol of royal culture. But 87 00:06:43.680 --> 00:06:46.680 even as he reveled in ceremony, Frederick never forgot the 88 00:06:46.720 --> 00:06:51.360 reality of his kingdom's birth. He ruled in king in Prussia. 89 00:06:52.279 --> 00:06:55.519 Lest he insult the Empire. He refrained from using King 90 00:06:55.600 --> 00:06:58.879 of Prussia as much as humanly possible, and he continued, 91 00:06:58.879 --> 00:07:03.000 of course, to of the Holy Roman Emperor loyally in 92 00:07:03.040 --> 00:07:07.040 all his wars. The title may have been awkward, but 93 00:07:07.079 --> 00:07:11.399 it held power in foreign courts. Frederick was now treated 94 00:07:11.439 --> 00:07:15.079 as an equal, at least of the kings of Denmark, Sweden, 95 00:07:15.199 --> 00:07:18.720 and England. The Hosenhollerins had stepped out of the shadow 96 00:07:18.800 --> 00:07:22.759 of the Habsburgs, and the long path towards Prussia and 97 00:07:22.800 --> 00:07:29.319 then ultimately Germany becoming a European power had begun. Frederick 98 00:07:29.680 --> 00:07:33.199 died in seventeen thirteen. He had ruled as king for 99 00:07:33.319 --> 00:07:36.279 just over a decade, and though he left behind debts 100 00:07:36.319 --> 00:07:40.480 in an ornate court, he also left a title, one 101 00:07:40.519 --> 00:07:44.160 that would be inherited by his son, Frederick William the First, 102 00:07:44.319 --> 00:07:48.800 the Soldier King, and eventually by his grandson Frederic the 103 00:07:48.879 --> 00:07:53.240 second Frederick the Great, and he would forge that title 104 00:07:53.839 --> 00:07:58.120 into empire. Prussia was no longer a duchy or some 105 00:07:58.480 --> 00:08:02.839 bizarre electoral creerosity in the Holy Roman Empire. It was 106 00:08:02.839 --> 00:08:05.279 a kingdom, a peculiar one, but it was still a kingdom, 107 00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:08.680 and its foundations were not laid by conquest honestly, but 108 00:08:08.720 --> 00:08:13.920 by illegal fiction, some imperial politics, and the unrelenting ambition 109 00:08:14.040 --> 00:08:18.680 of a man who desperately wanted a crown. Voltaire, writing 110 00:08:18.759 --> 00:08:22.000 later of the Hosenhollerance, observed quote, they stole their kingdom 111 00:08:22.000 --> 00:08:25.519 with a quill and kept it with a sword. We'll 112 00:08:25.519 --> 00:08:28.839 see just how right that is. And so it was. 113 00:08:28.879 --> 00:08:30.839 The Kingdom of Prussia had been born not in battle, 114 00:08:31.199 --> 00:08:35.399 but in back rooms, embassies and snowy chapels. Its age 115 00:08:35.399 --> 00:08:49.559 of kings had begun. But while in Prussia Frederick might 116 00:08:49.720 --> 00:08:53.840 bask in the glow of his new beautiful palace, the 117 00:08:53.919 --> 00:08:58.879 realities were very different for a lot of Europe, because 118 00:08:59.639 --> 00:09:03.519 in the opening days of January seventeen oh nine, a 119 00:09:03.600 --> 00:09:09.279 strange and sudden stillness swept the continent. Across the plains 120 00:09:09.279 --> 00:09:12.919 of northern France, in the valleys of the Rhineland, along 121 00:09:12.960 --> 00:09:17.840 the rivers of Bohemia and Poland, the air suddenly turned sharp, 122 00:09:17.879 --> 00:09:23.399 and bitter winds stilled, clouds vanished, the stars burned in 123 00:09:23.440 --> 00:09:26.240 a sky that were so clear, according to some it 124 00:09:26.279 --> 00:09:31.000 seemed painted by ice itself. And then the cold descended, 125 00:09:31.039 --> 00:09:35.799 not in days, but in hours. This, ladies and gentlemen, 126 00:09:36.559 --> 00:09:41.000 was no ordinary winter. By dawn of January sixth, seventeen 127 00:09:41.039 --> 00:09:45.799 oh nine, temperatures had plummeted across the continent. Church bells 128 00:09:45.840 --> 00:09:51.000 cracked in their towers, wine froze, and bottles. Trees burst 129 00:09:51.080 --> 00:09:54.320 apart from the cold with a sound that reminded some 130 00:09:54.399 --> 00:09:59.679 of musket fire. Birds dropped mid flight. In Paris, it 131 00:09:59.720 --> 00:10:03.279 was so so cold that wolves crept into the suburbs, 132 00:10:03.679 --> 00:10:07.320 drawn by the scent of rotting meat. It was, as 133 00:10:07.399 --> 00:10:11.240 one French observer wrote, a cold so harsh the earth 134 00:10:11.279 --> 00:10:17.200 itself seemed dead. This was the Great Frost of seventeen 135 00:10:17.480 --> 00:10:21.440 o nine, the harshest winter in Europe in over five 136 00:10:21.840 --> 00:10:26.919 hundred years, and its effects would haunt the continent for 137 00:10:27.080 --> 00:10:33.120 years to come. The cold was immediate and unrelenting. In Paris, 138 00:10:33.159 --> 00:10:36.799 the thermometer dropped to as low as minus fifteen degrees 139 00:10:36.840 --> 00:10:42.919 celsiuss five degrees fahrenheit, a low that was basically unheard of. 140 00:10:42.960 --> 00:10:48.120 The Sen River froze solid, halting trade and stranding barges 141 00:10:48.159 --> 00:10:52.600 in massive sheets of ice. In Geneva, the snow stood 142 00:10:52.720 --> 00:10:56.919 chest high by the end of January. In Italy, citrus 143 00:10:56.960 --> 00:11:01.200 groves dyed in moss, their roots split from the freeze, 144 00:11:01.960 --> 00:11:04.600 even the warm waters of the Venetian Lagoon. For those 145 00:11:04.600 --> 00:11:06.720 who have been to Venice, this is almost unbelievable. But 146 00:11:06.759 --> 00:11:13.919 they turned to ice. The German writer Zecharias Conrad von 147 00:11:13.960 --> 00:11:17.879 Offenbach recorded quote, we are in the grip of a 148 00:11:17.919 --> 00:11:22.080 monstrous winter. No man remembers the like The elb is 149 00:11:22.080 --> 00:11:26.360 frozen so hard that wagons cross it. The poor die 150 00:11:26.399 --> 00:11:32.360 in the streets like flies. Peasants were the first to suffer. 151 00:11:32.960 --> 00:11:36.559 Whole villages perished. Europe hadn't seen death like this since 152 00:11:36.600 --> 00:11:41.679 the Bubonic plague three hundred and some years earlier. In 153 00:11:41.720 --> 00:11:46.639 the countryside, grain stores were frozen or spoiled. Firewood ran out, 154 00:11:47.279 --> 00:11:50.200 Farmers slotted live stock rather than watch them die in 155 00:11:50.240 --> 00:11:53.480 the fields. In the city is the price of bread sword, 156 00:11:54.159 --> 00:11:58.440 and those without means starved to death. Even the well 157 00:11:58.480 --> 00:12:02.879 off struggled. These cracked from the cold, stoves burst, and 158 00:12:02.919 --> 00:12:06.279 food supplies dwindled. But the worst thing of all was 159 00:12:06.320 --> 00:12:10.399 that this wasn't a short frost, not at all. The 160 00:12:10.440 --> 00:12:15.279 brutal temperatures continued throughout January and February. Even in March 161 00:12:15.320 --> 00:12:19.679 and April. The thaw was sluggish and cruel. When the 162 00:12:19.720 --> 00:12:25.919 snows finally melted, they revealed the devastation flooded fields, dead crops, 163 00:12:26.159 --> 00:12:30.200 drowned animals, and the stinking of corpses of thousands who 164 00:12:30.240 --> 00:12:34.759 had simply died where they lay. Now, the spring of 165 00:12:34.799 --> 00:12:37.679 seventeen oh nine should have been a season of hope. 166 00:12:37.720 --> 00:12:40.559 But I'm sure you realize this now. The land was 167 00:12:40.919 --> 00:12:46.000 simply too devastated to give. Crop failures were everywhere France, 168 00:12:46.360 --> 00:12:51.120 the Holy Roman Empire, the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. The harvest 169 00:12:51.120 --> 00:12:54.759 of seventeen oh nine was disastrously bad, and what little 170 00:12:54.799 --> 00:12:59.039 food remained was often moldy, frostbitten or rotting from the fields. 171 00:13:00.279 --> 00:13:04.279 Prices doubled, then they tripled. In some towns, a loaf 172 00:13:04.320 --> 00:13:09.159 of bread cost a full day's wages. In the French countryside, 173 00:13:09.320 --> 00:13:12.960 where years of war and taxation under Louis the fourteenth 174 00:13:13.000 --> 00:13:15.919 had already brought the people to the very edge, the 175 00:13:15.960 --> 00:13:20.399 frost tipped them into catastrophe. One report from Burgundy stated 176 00:13:20.960 --> 00:13:24.200 the people eat the bark from the trees. Mothers abandoned 177 00:13:24.240 --> 00:13:27.360 their infants on the road. The dead are buried in 178 00:13:27.440 --> 00:13:32.639 shallow pits, if at all. Now, the death toll is 179 00:13:32.799 --> 00:13:36.600 difficult to estimate but historians now believe over six hundred 180 00:13:36.639 --> 00:13:42.200 thousand people died just in France that was from starvation, exposure, 181 00:13:42.840 --> 00:13:48.000 or disease related to frost and famine. In Sweden, where 182 00:13:48.039 --> 00:13:51.720 winter coincided with the catastrophic defeat of Charles the Twelfth 183 00:13:51.799 --> 00:13:55.120 Army in that Great Northern War I mentioned before, thousands 184 00:13:55.120 --> 00:13:58.399 of soldiers froze to death in the March. The cold 185 00:13:58.519 --> 00:14:03.399 ravage not only homes and harvests, but full nations. Russia 186 00:14:03.440 --> 00:14:07.000 too felt the bait of the frost. Peter the Greats 187 00:14:07.000 --> 00:14:10.240 and Armies campaigning in Poland lost untold thousands of men 188 00:14:10.279 --> 00:14:14.200 to the cold. Even his newly built city of Saint Petersburg, 189 00:14:14.519 --> 00:14:18.240 still struggling to survive in its swampy cradle, saw entire 190 00:14:18.320 --> 00:14:23.000 work gangs perish in the frozen mud. One French envoy 191 00:14:23.000 --> 00:14:26.200 in Moscow wrote, and just total disbelief. The cold is 192 00:14:26.200 --> 00:14:28.639 so severe that even the beards of men freeze. It 193 00:14:28.720 --> 00:14:31.919 must be broken off with their hands. I've seen dead 194 00:14:31.960 --> 00:14:38.480 men standing upright in the snow. Malnutrition and poor sanitation 195 00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:44.759 sparked typhus outbreaks from Ireland to Transylvania. Entire towns withered away, 196 00:14:45.399 --> 00:14:49.519 the peasantry of Central and Eastern Europe, already burdened by serfdom, taxation, 197 00:14:49.639 --> 00:14:54.279 and war, sank into a state of almost medieval suffering. 198 00:14:55.679 --> 00:14:59.159 And the Great Frost of seventeen o nine didn't just 199 00:14:59.240 --> 00:15:03.480 kill it actually changed the course of European history. In France, 200 00:15:03.919 --> 00:15:08.519 disaster accelerated the decline of Louis the fourteenth reign. Already 201 00:15:08.559 --> 00:15:11.799 bankrupt from decades of war, the French state could barely 202 00:15:11.840 --> 00:15:16.759 respond to the emergency. Royal grain depots were quickly exhausted. 203 00:15:17.240 --> 00:15:21.279 The king's reputation, once shining from Versailles, was now dimmed 204 00:15:21.320 --> 00:15:24.399 by hunger and death. In the words of a Norman 205 00:15:24.440 --> 00:15:29.200 priest quote, the sun no longer warms his people end quote. 206 00:15:29.559 --> 00:15:32.759 In Sweden, the frost compounded the disaster from the Battle 207 00:15:32.799 --> 00:15:37.039 of Patava. That same year, Charles the Twelfth's once fearsome 208 00:15:37.080 --> 00:15:41.000 empire quickly began to crumble. The winter had weakened his 209 00:15:41.120 --> 00:15:44.960 army before the Russian Spring campaign began, and it would 210 00:15:44.960 --> 00:15:49.480 never fully recover. In the longer term. The frost helped 211 00:15:49.480 --> 00:15:53.960 triggered a wave of migration and agricultural reform. Peasants abandoned 212 00:15:53.960 --> 00:15:58.759 marginal lands, some fled west to the Americas, others turned 213 00:15:58.759 --> 00:16:04.000 to new Cropsticularly, potatoes, once viewed with suspicion, were now 214 00:16:04.120 --> 00:16:07.919 prized for their hardiness. Scientific agriculture for the first time 215 00:16:07.960 --> 00:16:11.120 began to gain ground, especially in England and the Netherlands. 216 00:16:11.960 --> 00:16:16.639 But the frost also left a spiritual scar. In sermons 217 00:16:16.639 --> 00:16:20.440 and pamphlets across the continent, preachers declared that God was 218 00:16:20.519 --> 00:16:26.120 punishing Europe for its sins. In Catholic France and Orthodox Russia. 219 00:16:26.559 --> 00:16:31.000 In Protestant Prussia and Calvinist Geneva, the faithful sought divine 220 00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:36.200 meaning in a winter that seemed to defy understanding. Now 221 00:16:36.240 --> 00:16:40.120 modern cleomenttologists have always debated the cause of the Great Frost. 222 00:16:40.879 --> 00:16:45.840 Some link it to a volcanic eruption, possibly Helka in 223 00:16:46.080 --> 00:16:50.000 Iceland in seventeen oh seven, or an unrecorded eruption elsewhere. 224 00:16:50.960 --> 00:16:54.360 Others point to the monitor Minimum, a period of low 225 00:16:54.399 --> 00:16:58.840 solar activity from roughly sixteen forty five to seventeen fifteen, 226 00:16:59.279 --> 00:17:01.960 part of the socol called Little Ice Age that gripped 227 00:17:01.960 --> 00:17:06.680 Europe with cooler, wetter seasons. Whatever the cause, the impact 228 00:17:06.720 --> 00:17:10.079 of the frost was undeniable. It was a turning point, 229 00:17:10.480 --> 00:17:12.720 a reminder that even in the age of the Enlightenment, 230 00:17:13.279 --> 00:17:16.559 reason and empire could be humbled by the sky itself. 231 00:17:18.119 --> 00:17:21.119 For decades afterward, the year seventeen o nine was remembered 232 00:17:21.160 --> 00:17:25.279 with dread in villages chronicles. It was written as the 233 00:17:25.519 --> 00:17:30.279 Linney terry Bell. The Terrible Period survivors told tales of 234 00:17:30.279 --> 00:17:33.920 birds that froze mid air, a bread that would crack 235 00:17:34.039 --> 00:17:40.200 like glass, of funeral bells silenced by frost. In the 236 00:17:40.240 --> 00:17:44.480 words of one French peasant recorded in seventeen twenty, we 237 00:17:44.519 --> 00:17:47.480 lived through a winter not made for men, but for 238 00:17:47.559 --> 00:17:52.039 beasts of ice, and we prayed not for warmth, but 239 00:17:52.079 --> 00:17:56.799 for mercy. A great frost was not merely a weather event. 240 00:17:57.880 --> 00:18:01.759 It was a catastrophe a biblical scale. It was the 241 00:18:01.759 --> 00:18:07.599 winter when Europe shivered all the way to its knees. Now, 242 00:18:07.599 --> 00:18:10.480 if you've enjoyed this episode and you'd like additional content, 243 00:18:10.599 --> 00:18:13.200 this is just one of my few reminders at this 244 00:18:13.279 --> 00:18:17.640 point that as we wrap up the main show, Western CIV. 245 00:18:17.720 --> 00:18:20.400 Two point zero is still humming. We're deep in the 246 00:18:20.480 --> 00:18:23.839 Roman Empire, in the reigns of the Julio Claudians at 247 00:18:23.839 --> 00:18:26.119 this point, So if you'd like to go back to 248 00:18:26.200 --> 00:18:28.839 Rome and who doesn't with a lot more depth and 249 00:18:28.920 --> 00:18:31.519 better audio quality. Check it out. You can click the 250 00:18:31.519 --> 00:18:33.759 link in the show notes and get a free seven 251 00:18:33.839 --> 00:18:35.519 day trial. You can probably listen to the whole thing 252 00:18:35.519 --> 00:18:37.599 in seven days if you want to, but if you 253 00:18:37.640 --> 00:18:40.359 want to stick around for a few shekels a month 254 00:18:40.400 --> 00:18:43.240 and help me out, I'd certainly appreciate it.