by Ben Thompson
Badass
Ben Thompson
A Relentless Onslaught of the Toughest Warlords, Vikings, Samurai, Pirates, Gunfighters, and Military Commanders to Ever Live
Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, But let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.
—HECTOR OF TROY, ILIAD XVII, LINES 304–5
Contents
Epigraph
The Bone-Crushing Principles of Complete and Utter Badassitude
Section I: Antiquity
Destroying your enemies from the beginning of human history to the fall of Rome in 476 CE
1. Ramses II
Egyptian pharaoh who built an empire through propaganda, war, and giant sculptures of his grimacing face
2. Leonidas
His 300 Spartans fought the most famous last stand in history
3. Xenophon
Trapped deep behind enemy lines, he led a small band of mercenaries on an epic odyssey worthy of Homer himself
4. Alexander the Great
Conquered most of the known world before his thirty-third birthday
5. Chandragupta Maurya
Indian warlord who commanded an army of war elephants and an elite detachment of highly trained female bodyguards
6. Liu Ji
This impoverished peasant clawed his way from nothing to become the emperor of China’s most powerful dynasty
7. Gaius Julius Caesar
Rome’s most daring general was a military genius who laid the foundation for an empire that would last centuries
8. The Surena
Parthian warlord who inflicted one of the worst defeats the Romans ever suffered
9. Julia Agrippina
The cunning black widow of Rome was the real power behind the throne of three emperors
10. Alaric the Bold
Ruthless ruler of the Visigoths and the first barbarian king to sack Rome in nearly a millennium
Section II: The Middle Ages
Getting medieval on their asses: the fall of Rome to the destruction of Constantinople in 1453
11. Khalid bin Walid
The “Sword of Allah” crushed the Persian and Byzantine Empires with just a handful of battle-hardened warriors
12. Justinian II
Brutal Byzantine emperor who let nothing stand in the way of his quest for vengeance
13. Charles Martel
The Hammer of Christendom won the battle that would forever keep the Moors out of Western Europe
14. Wolf the Quarrelsome
Mysterious barbarian leader who only appears in history twice—and both times he’s kicking someone’s ass
15. William the Conqueror
This crazy bastard’s ruthless invasion of England would change the course of history for centuries to come
16. Harald Hardrada
The last of the great Viking sea kings decapitated fools up and down the Mediterranean
17. El Cid Campeador
Spain’s most legendary knight, this hero of the Reconquista never tasted defeat on the field of battle
18. Tomoe Gozen
Tough female samurai distinguished herself in countless battles, fighting with the ferocity of ten men
19. Genghis Khan
The tyrannical khan of khans forged history’s most expansive empire—one giant pile of human skulls at a time
20. Vlad the lmpaler
The real Count Dracula wasn’t actually a vampire, but he wasn’t exactly a nice guy, either
Section III: The Age of Gunpowder
Blowing crap up from 1453 to the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914
21. Miyamoto Musashi
Wandering samurai swordsman won sixty duels between the ages of thirteen and thirty
22. Peter the Great
The almighty tsar of imperial Russia crushed his enemies and partied like a seventeenth-century rock star
23. Blackbeard
Many sailors believed this fearsome cutthroat was the devil incarnate—they may have been right
24. Anne Bonny
One of the only documented female pirates was also one of history’s most dangerous
25. Peter Francisco
Unsung hero of the American Revolution who fought the redcoats with a massive five-foot-long broadsword
26. Horatio Nelson
One-eyed, one-armed British admiral who spent his life blasting French warships into driftwood
27. Napoleon Bonaparte
Corsican commoner seized control of France and repeatedly beat the crap out of Europe’s most powerful empires
28. Agustina of Aragon
The Maid of Saragossa fearlessly defended her city against a rampaging French army
29. Bass Reeves
Runaway slave who became one of most successful lawmen and gunfighters of the American West
30. Nikola Tesla
The greatest mad scientist of all time spent his final days developing a massive atomic death ray
Section IV: The Modern Era
Mechanized chaos and full-auto destruction: World War I to 2009
31. Manfred von Richthofen
The Red Baron struck fear into the hearts of everything over the skies of Europe, except maybe a few species of birds
32. Henry Lincoln Johnson
From humble beginnings to American war hero, he took on the Germans in hand-to-hand combat to rescue his comrade
33. Eliot Ness
His small group of hard-boiled “Untouchables” took down the most notorious crime lord in American history
34. Jack Churchill
Swashbuckling British officer fought World War II with a longbow, a broadsword, and a set of bagpipes
35. Irina Sebrova
Soviet pilot flew daring raids over German airspace at the head of an all-female bomber unit known as the “Night Witches”
36. Bhanbhagta Gurung
Gurkha soldier cleared out six enemy bunkers with grenades, a knife, a rock, and anything else he managed to get his hands on
37. George S. Patton
The toughest military commander in American history tossed out traditional military tactics in favor of all-out assaults
38. Carlos Hathcock
Operating deep behind enemy lines in North Vietnam, this Marine sniper earned a reputation as the deadliest man alive
39. Bruce Lee
The legendary martial arts master honed his body to become the ultimate killing machine
40. Jonathan Netanyahu
Israeli Special Forces commander personally led one of the world’s most successful counterterrorist operations
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Illustration Credits
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
There’s no one that can match me.
My style is impetuous.
My defense is impregnable, and I’m just ferocious.
I want your heart.
I want to eat his children.
—MIKE TYSON
THE BONE-CRUSHING PRINCIPLES OF COMPLETE AND UTTER BADASSITUDE
The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.
—VINCE LOMBARDI
THIS BOOK FEATURES THE GREAT ASS-KICKERS OF WORLD DOMINATION. From those who rule the textbooks, such as Alexander the Great, William the Conqueror, and George S. Patton, to more mysterious and obscure characters including Wolf the Quarrelsome, Bass Reeves, and Irina Sebrova, these men and women routinely overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles, wrecked the asses of their enemies in an exceedingly violent manner, and ultimately altered the course o
f history through their actions. While vicious conquerors such as Genghis Khan and Vlad the Impaler took great satisfaction in parading around the severed heads of their vanquished enemies, others, including Leonidas and Horatio Nelson, were noble heroes who fought to defend their homelands from tyranny and oppression at the hands of foreign invaders.
The historical figures in this book span every era of history, every corner of the globe, and every spectrum of human morality, but they all share certain qualities that define them as “badasses,” and there are many lessons to be learned from them:
1. DESTROY ALL WHO OPPOSE YOU
At some point, all aspiring badasses come across some complete raging dickbrain who stands in the way of your manifest destiny. It is your moral obligation to destroy that person and everything he cares about.
There are several methods of properly obliterating the enemy, and you really should be familiar with as many as possible. For ranged weaponry, you should learn to use a handgun, reload a howitzer, accurately throw a tomahawk, work a two-man T-shirt cannon, and operate a sixteenth-century English crossbow. You’ll also want to familiarize yourself with a wide variety of hand-to-hand combat implements such as broken bottles, baseball bats, chair legs, frying pans, circular saws, fire extinguishers, Phillips-head screwdrivers, pruning shears, weed whackers, nunchucks, ice picks, and dental drills. There’s no way to know what will be available in a critical situation, so it’s always best to be prepared. If it helps, just think of badasses as Boy Scouts with switchblades and assault rifles who can knock someone’s head off with a flying side kick and send it bouncing down the street into a drainage ditch.
Badasses also have no time for telemarketers, cooking shows, or micromanaging bosses. For instance, when your boss goes off on you to do some actual work and stop wasting company resources on endless rounds of computer solitaire, if you’re a true bone crusher, you’ll grab your stapler, smash your boss in the forehead, and inform him (in a loud and threatening manner) that nothing can stand in the way of your epic quest to uncover the elusive ace of spades. To drive home the point, leave work fifteen minutes early (ostensibly out of protest), go out to the parking lot, and torch his stupid expensive midlife-crisis sports car with a homemade flamethrower.
2. DRIVE IT LIKE IT’S STOLEN
Whether it’s Jason Bourne, Ellen Ripley, or Han Solo behind the wheel, almost every action movie hero out there is proficient in the operation and maintenance of most types of motor vehicle. In order to escape from zany anarcho-terrorist cyborg genetic clone scumbags that may attempt to kidnap and/or assassinate you and steal your identity, you’ll need to utilize all of the resources at your disposal. This means being able to drive the hell out of a wide variety of automobiles, motorcycles, airplanes, spacecraft, jetpacks, hovercraft, and speedboats. If you want to take this one step further in the direction of being completely gonzo Xtreme to the max, you should also learn how to ride animals such as horses, camels, llamas, and zebras, as well as how to parachute out of a cargo plane, perform an ollie on a skateboard, properly harness yourself into a rickshaw, and hit a ramp in a rocket-powered wheelchair doing at least sixty miles per hour.
3. CONQUER THE ELEMENTS
Nothing screams “I am awesome” quite like camping in the wilderness for a week without dying of exposure or getting eaten by angry bears. This really kicks Mother Nature in the ovaries with a steel-toed boot. Outdoor skills like mountaineering, starting a fire with sticks, digging an ice cave with your bare hands, and eating a vast assortment of disgusting forest creatures will help you evade capture and survive when you’re stranded deep behind enemy lines. Plus, your ability to club a yeti unconscious by hitting it in the face with a broken-off tree branch could someday prove to be the difference between life and death. In the unforgiving wilderness you must constantly struggle to survive, no matter what the situation, because coming home intact is always the first part of living for revenge.
4. LIVE FOR REVENGE
From Shaolin temples to your own death, there are tons of things out there that need to be avenged, and a true badass should never think twice about serving up a piping hot vengeance omelet to anyone who even halfheartedly tries to dick him over. While the desire for revenge is pretty much the oldest emotion humankind has ever experienced, it is important to remember that the vengeance does not necessarily need to be proportional to the crime committed. For instance, when some Mafia jerk had Frank Castle’s family whacked, Frank turned himself into the Punisher and spent the next twenty years shooting criminals in the face with a gigantic bazooka. Whereas the ancient Babylonians might have suggested some kind of middle-of-the-road, eye-for-an-eye crap, Mr. Castle understood that every ass-kicking vigilante worthy of his aviator sunglasses always pushes everything well beyond the limits of logic and reason and goes full throttle all the damn time—no matter what the police or any other authority figures/rational human beings might say.
5. NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER SURRENDER
Badasses, much like Goonies, never say die. To that end, they also never say diet, and their color recognition vocabulary is limited to just six words. They don’t flinch, cry, hesitate, show fear, or act like they notice when it’s raining. Even if it’s raining really, really hard. Nothing bothers them, nobody stands in their way, and they refuse to yield even when the situation seems ten light-years beyond hopeless. No matter what the odds are, they won’t accept anything less than victory at all costs.
While all of the other principles in this list may be negotiable, this axiom is the single most important rule of ultimate face-beatery. In fact, steadfast, unwavering determination is the one thing that all of the characters in this book have in common. These men and women were all aspiring to different things, but every character highlighted in these pages went balls-out after what they wanted, never backed down, and didn’t stop until they’d achieved their goals, however honorable or nefarious they may have been. In the end, that kind of determination, drive, and will is what really forges true badasses.
Section I
Antiquity
1
RAMSES II
(1303–1213 BCE)
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!
—PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, OZYMANDIAS
RAMSES II ASCENDED TO THE THRONE OF EGYPT AT THE AGE OF TWENTY AND WOULD GO ON TO RULE THE NEW KINGDOM AS ITS MOST EFFICIENT AND POWERFUL PHARAOH FOR SIXTY-SIX YEARS, BY FAR THE LONGEST REIGN OF ANY OF THE GOD-KINGS. The guy was blessed with such longevity that he actually outlived his twelve eldest sons, which is pretty damn impressive considering that most people don’t even produce twelve potential heirs. Ramses ushered in a golden age of prosperity, commissioned restoration projects on the Great Pyramids, and was worshiped as a living god who righteously kicked the asses of anyone who crossed his mighty empire. He also sired more than a hundred children from his endless harem of superhot nubile wives, including the beautiful Nefertari, a woman who was so fly that the Egyptian priests actually declared that she was a living goddess. This chick was allegedly so smoking that any man within twenty miles of her immediately popped a boner for no reason at all, and if you looked directly at her, your eyes melted right out of your face.
Ramses, who is also known as Ozymandias for some bizarre reason I’ll never understand, was more than just the husband of a ten-megaton superbabe—he was also a genuine military ass whipper as well. As a young heir to the throne, Prince Ramses was commissioned to take down a group of jerkweed pirates that had been terrorizing the high seas with their bloody hijinks and murderous rampages. Ramses put an end to that nonsense quickly by sailing out with a small detachment of the elite Egyptian Royal Guard, hacking the arms off the scurvy bastards with a razor-sharp sickle sword and conscripting any survivors to serve as part of a mercenary army devoted to blindly carrying out his bidding.
As ruler of Egypt’s New Kingdom, the largest and most powerful empire in the world at this time, Ramses the Great led numerous
campaigns against the Libyans, Syrians, Philistines, Hittites, Hatti, Nubians, and a bunch of other obscure ancient civilizations, all of which featured at least one i. He managed to conquer lands as far as Lebanon, and successfully defended his borders from hostile raids by building a vast network of impenetrable forts across the outskirts of the empire, many of which would remain unconquered for centuries. After crushing a rival civilization, Ramses’s favorite way to celebrate a victory was by cutting off the right hands and penises of his defeated foes and placing towering piles of severed hands and dongs in the center of town to serve as a testament to his godlike military might. (Seriously.)
On top of his prowess as a military leader and conqueror who used his war chariots to mash the spleens of any barbarian ass-clowns dumb enough to mess with his people, Ramses also possessed the ability to run a propaganda machine that made Joseph Stalin look like the assistant editor of a semiannual middle school newsletter in suburban Iowa. In the uncommon event that his mighty armies lost a battle (gasp), Ramses would still go out and have his artisans carve huge reliefs depicting the mighty pharaoh riding alone on a chariot, firing lightning-bolt arrows out of his eyes, and caving in people’s skulls with a meat-normous skull-obliterating club. If these blatantly self-aggrandizing carvings are any indication, Ramses also liked to wash down his victories by forcing his pathetic vanquished foes to grovel at his feet like dogs while he kicked back and got lap dances from large-breasted Egyptian fertility goddesses.
