Badass

by Ben Thompson

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  Napoleon’s Imperial Guard was the world’s most elite fighting force during this period. These fearless infantrymen, or artillerymen, and cavalry troopers, handpicked by the emperor to serve in his personal bodyguard, were the best-trained, best-equipped, and toughest troops in Napoleon’s formidable army. All men in the unit had served the emperor from the beginning, and at the time of Waterloo many of these soldiers were ten- and twenty-year veterans. Their flawless tactical maneuvering and almost fanatical devotion made them feared and respected by armies across Europe.

  Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, was an awesome son of a bitch in his own right. Having served bravely for many years quelling native uprisings and rebellions in British India, the “Iron Duke” also managed to wrest control of the Iberian Peninsula from the French while Napoleon was off in Russia. It was his bravery and tenacity and that of his men that carried the day at Waterloo, an action that has made him a national hero of Britain.

  Toussaint L’Ouverture was born into slavery on a plantation in Haiti in 1743. Realizing that slavery was a bullcrap enterprise that sucked his ass on fire, Toussaint led a slave rebellion, uniting all the oppressed blacks on the island and rising against the white aristocratic plantation owners in a struggle that went on for ten years. He overthrew the colonial regime, abolished slavery, rebuilt the economy, opened trade routes, and took control of the nation. Various European jackasses tried to screw with him, including world superpowers such as Britain, France, and Spain, but a combination of yellow fever, malaria, and relentless ass-beatings sent them all running home to their mamas. Napoleon eventually captured L’Ouverture and had him executed for treason, but France was never able to reclaim her old colony.

  Most crazy people think that they are either Jesus or Napoleon. I have no idea why this is.

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  THE FRENCH FOREIGN LEGION

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  Formed shortly after the days of Napoleon, the French Foreign Legion is an insanely hardcore association of some of the most grizzled, dangerous, and fearsome men in the world, and a unit so ridiculously tough that its troops spend their R & R time wrestling bears and face-punching sticks of dynamite.

  Created in 1831 as a mercenary force attached to the French army, the Legion was famous for allowing pretty much anybody and everybody into their ranks. Enlistment procedures involved no background checks, no paperwork, and no questions asked. Hell, you didn’t even have to give them your real name—you told them what you wanted to be called, and they spent your entire tenure referring to you as Corporal Maxmin-ster Overdrive Awesometown. Basically, as long as you were willing to carry a rifle and suffer a gory and horrific death in the name of France, you were good to go.

  Well, the problem with having a regiment full of men seeking to preserve their anonymity is that they were generally doing so in order to escape a particularly sketchy past. As a result, the Foreign Legion ended up being more or less an entire regiment of some of Europe’s most violent criminals—ruthless, bloodthirsty men seeking to escape imprisonment and/or execution for crimes like murder, mass murder, and super-murder. While these bloodthirsty lunatics with nothing to lose were highly effective when they had an outlet for their uncontrollable rage, in times of peace they became somewhat of a liability. In fact, Legionnaires were pretty notorious for their unquenchable thirst for looting, drinking, and getting arrested for looting and drinking. One time, an entire company of the Polish Battalion got drunk and beat up all of their officers. Another time, a full battalion of men pawned all of their weapons and equipment in exchange for booze money. Not surprisingly, there was a law stating that no member of the French Foreign Legion was ever allowed to set foot in France.

  Eventually, the French decided that the best way to keep these scoundrels and ruffians from running amok all over the place was through ruthless discipline, a brutal training regimen, corporal punishment, and near-constant warfare. Operating out of their home base in Algiers—all of their training and drills took place in the middle of the damned Sahara Desert—the Legion fought across Africa, Europe, Central America, and Asia. They also rode camels occasionally, which is pretty sweet.

  While the Legionnaires were mostly foreigners (generally Poles, Germans, Swiss, Spanish, Belgians, Italians, and Dutch), the officers were all French, and all commands and orders were issued in French. After performing their tour of duty in the Legion, soldiers were made full citizens of France and issued an official passport in the name of their choosing. Sure, life in the regiment was hard, and the odds were not exactly stacked in your favor in terms of survival, but escaping to the Legion offered thousands of European thugs the unique opportunity to receive a blank slate, a new identity, and a fresh lease on life—and to legally kill a lot of people in the process. It also provided the French army with a fearsome assortment of the world’s most dangerous men, an unstoppable force of blood-mongering psychos who were more than eager to rip France’s enemies into tiny shreds just because they loved violence and, honestly, because they really had nothing better to do.

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  28

  AGUSTINA OF ARAGON

  (1786–1857)

  Oh those base invaders of my country, those oppressors of the best of its patriots; Should the fate of war place any of them within my power, I will instantly deliver up their throats with my knife.

  THE BEAUTIFUL NORTHERN SPANISH CITY OF SARAGOSSA HAD ENJOYED OVER SEVEN HUNDRED YEARS OF PEACE, LOVE, AND HIPPIE TREE-HUGGER PROSPERITY STRETCHING FROM THE TIME OF EL CID UP UNTIL THE FATEFUL YEAR 1808, WHEN HER WALLS WERE THREATENED BY THE MARAUDING ARMIES OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE’S EVER-EXPANDING FRENCH EMPIRE. Napoleon, perhaps suffering from the psychiatric complex that bears his name, had this crazy hard-on to conquer all of Europe, and one of his primary goals was to force all of Spain and Portugal under whichever one of his thumbs wasn’t currently shoved inside his coat pocket. Obviously, the Spanish weren’t too psyched about capitulating to the French (and who can blame them?), so the two nations became embroiled in an incredibly bloody and brutal campaign that would come to be known as the Peninsular War.

  The point here is that in 1808 the quiet city of Saragossa was completely surrounded by arbitrarily pissed-off Frenchmen with thin, waxed curlicue moustaches and berets, all eager and willing to slaughter some Spaniards for no good reason at all. The town had been cut off from supplies and ammunition for weeks, and the beleaguered defenders of the city were constantly being pounded by artillery and musket fire as the French commander tried to break their will like an Entenmann’s spokesperson at a Weight Watchers meeting. Finally, after sixty days of the siege, the French launched a full-on balls-to-the-wall invasion of the city. At this point the town was only defended by a small, heavily outnumbered force of volunteer soldiers, and before long the massive horde of Perrier-swigging, wine-connoisseuring Frenchies broke through the city gates and started flipping out on everyone.

  The imperial army fell on the artillery positions located just inside the gates, and many of the front-line Spanish defenders either ran for their lives or got some up-close-and-personal hard-hitting interviews with the pointy end of a bayonet. Within minutes it appeared that the defensive lines had broken, and it was beginning to look more and more like the citizens of Saragossa were going to need to start developing a taste for frog’s legs, moldy cheese, and Jerry Lewis.

  However, all was not as screwed up as it seemed. Amid all the confusion, smoke, gunfire, and epically graphic strings of Spanish profanity stood a woman known as Agustina Zaragoza Doménech. During the initial fighting she had been up on the battlements, passing out apples, PowerBars, and Gatorade to the men to help sustain their fighting spirit and replenish their electrolytes, doing her part to help defend her city. However, when she saw all these dudes running away with their panties in a wad shrieking like grade-school girls just because a couple of French dudes were waving knives in their faces, she did what any badass worthy of that moniker would have done—she got
really pissed and started bashing people’s heads together like B. A. Baracus from The A-Team. When one of the Spanish cannon crews dropped their gear and ran screaming away from the rampaging French invaders, Agustina of Aragon charged full speed toward the abandoned gun. With an entire company of angry, screaming soldiers only a few hundred feet away and rapidly closing in her position, she shoved a canister of black powder and grapeshot into the muzzle and packed it down with the ramrod. Then, right as the French troops were preparing to lunge at her with their bayonets and skewer her like a meatsicle, she coolly took a long drag from a cigarette, said something insanely witty, and flicked the lit cigarette into the hatch, sending forth a massive shotgun blast of metallic death into the enemy from point-blank range. When the smoke cleared, the bloodthirsty, stab-happy French troops had been reduced to a smoking crater of dead-ass bitches.

  Having effectively proven that she had the biggest, brassiest balls of anyone in the town (or is ovarian fortitude the correct terminology here?), Agustina turned and looked over her shoulder at the Spanish soldiers behind her. The men were all like, “Damn, if this chick can kick so much ass all by herself, what the Molly Ringwald are we doing standing around here with our hands in our pockets?” They immediately rushed back to their positions and began pouring artillery and small-arms fire into the invaders. Agustina’s inspiring actions pumped up the Spanish, and the soldiers were able to not only push the French back out of the city but also launch a counterattack that would force the enemy to lift the siege of Saragossa.

  Unfortunately, this wasn’t the last the Spanish would hear of Napoleon. The French returned a few months later, and after several weeks of hardcore house-to-house back-alley street fighting, the city’s hopelessly outnumbered defenders were forced to capitulate. Agustina was taken as a prisoner of war (she was working as part of an artillery crew during the battle, because after showing off her ability to vaporize organic meatbags the Spanish couldn’t possibly have ignored her bravery or mastery with a heavy weapon) and thrown in prison, but promptly led a daring Conan the Barbarian–style prison break from a maximum-security prison camp. Once free, Agustina joined up with the underground Spanish guerilla movement, where she participated in daring raids against French supply depots and military bases, doing her part to try to liberate her people.

  After a few years of bitter fighting, the Spanish, along with their British and Portuguese allies, began to break the Grande Armée’s double-reverse choke hold on Spain. Agustina’s guerrilleros were absorbed into the Free Spanish regular army serving under the command of a fellow badass, the Duke of Wellington, and during the campaign to liberate Spain she was placed in command of an artillery battery in Murillo’s division. At the Battle of Vitoria in 1813, Agustina de Aragon and her men fought bravely as Wellington’s forces defeated the French army and drove them from Spain once and for all. She returned home a hero, was awarded a medal for bravery by King Ferdinand, and was officially commissioned a lieutenant in the Spanish Artillery Corps. She earned an officer’s pension for life, and the “Maid of Saragossa” was often seen striding through the streets of the city she loved, proudly wearing her Spanish military officer’s saber and jacket with a long petticoat.

  FUN FACT: Shrapnel is named after the man who invented it–General Henry Shrapnel!

  HISTORY’S LEAST BADASS PEOPLE

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  KING JOHN

  King John of England went by two equally un-badass nicknames: “Lackland,” because he received no inheritance from his father, and “Softsword,” because his skill as a military commander vaguely resembled a flaccid penis. The younger brother of King Richard the Lionhearted, John took over when Richard was imprisoned in Austria and promptly started bungling everything up all over the place. He lost several wars, let Normandy be overrun by the French, and allowed himself to be voluntarily and publicly humiliated by the Pope. He also tried to have sex with the wives of a bunch of prominent barons. The nobility weren’t huge fans of this, and they hated the guy so much that they refused to serve him, repeatedly deserted him on the battlefield, and eventually forced him (under extreme duress) to sign the Magna Carta—a legal document that drastically limited the power of the king forever. Nowadays, King John is best known as the guy who gets repeatedly crotch-punched into submission in every single iteration of the Robin Hood story.

  PHILIP THE FAIR

  King Philip IV of France was what we like to refer to as a “mimbo”—a male bimbo. He was a handsome, charming fellow who enjoyed smooth jazz, long walks on the beach, persecuting the Jews, and leading several wildly unsuccessful military campaigns against England, but there really wasn’t a whole lot going on upstairs (if you know what I mean). When the Church excommunicated Philip for adultery, he responded by sending a group of thugs to beat up and arrest the Pope. When the prisoner Pope died, Philip appointed a new one, moved the papacy to France, and then posthumously convicted the old (dead) Pope of sodomy, heresy, sorcery, puppy-kickery, and hockery of giant loogies onto the cross. Next, he rounded up the Knights Templar—the legendary holy order of warrior-monks—and had them all brutally tortured and burned at the stake without a trial. Then he stole all their money and turned their headquarters into his summer home.

  JACK MCCALL

  “Coward” Jack McCall is hatefully remembered as the gutless bastard who shot Wild Bill Hickok in the back of the head for no reason at all. This slimy cattle rustler randomly walked up to the famous lawman and gunfighter one day while he was playing poker and busted a cap in his brain just to be a dickhead. McCall was tried for the murder by the city of Deadwood and somehow miraculously acquitted in 1876. Believing that he had just gotten away with cold-blooded murder, McCall moved to South Dakota and started talking smack about how awesome he was at gunfighting, but everybody quickly got sick of this loser and arrested him, retried him, and then hanged his stupid ass from the gallows.

  VIDKUN QUISLING

  This one-time defense minister of Norway cravenly sold out his own country for the sake of aiding the Nazis. Despite the fact that the Norwegians were more than eager to defend their homeland from Hitler’s Fascist storm troopers, Quisling collaborated with the Germans, gave them valuable intelligence, subverted his own country’s coastal defenses, and ordered his military commanders not to resist the invasion. Norway quickly capitulated, and Quisling was made prime minister of a puppet Nazi-run government. Vidkun promptly bent over and took it from Hitler, allowing the Reich full access to all the money and raw materials they needed for their wars, and then he put together a Fascist secret police force to beat up his citizens and discourage the rampant dissent that was spreading across his country. Norway’s national debt tripled, its finances were pillaged, and Quisling’s name became synonymous with miserable treasonous scumbags. He was unceremoniously executed by firing squad in 1945 and is now hatefully remembered by people across Europe.

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  Canister shot was a particularly nasty type of artillery ammunition. A tin cylinder packed full of small metal balls that spread out in every direction when fired, canister fire (much like grapeshot) basically morphed the cannon into a massive shotgun capable of liquefying any organic matter foolish enough to be standing within a few hundred yards of the barrel.

  In 1805 a small company of eighty-eight Polish light cavalrymen under Napoleon went on a ferocious charge up a mountain pass into a battalion of sixteen Spanish cannons. In an unbelievable display of brass nuts, the Poles, riding through a dense fog and a hail of grapeshot, somehow managed to hack the defenders to death with their sabers, force them off the ridge, and capture the guns. The ranking officer, Lieutenant Niegolewski, was later found pinned underneath his horse with nine bayonet wounds and two gunshot wounds to the head. He survived, received the Legion of Honor, and lived to his sixties.

  During the Battle of Gettysburg, U.S. general Daniel Sickles’s right leg was blown off by cannon fire. Sickles recovered the leg, as well as the cannonball tha
t destroyed it, and donated both items to a museum; they are currently on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C.

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  29

  BASS REEVES

  (1838–1910)

  He stepped out into the open, 500 yards away, and commenced shooting with his Winchester rifle…his first bullet cut a button off my coat, and [the] second cut my bridle rein in two. I shifted my six-shooter and grabbed my Winchester and shot twice. He dropped, and when I picked him up I found that my two bullets had hit within a half inch of each other.

  A LONE RIDER CAME TO A LEISURELY HALT ALONG THE SIDE OF THE DUSTY TRAIL. Standing in his path were three of the deadliest outlaws in the Indian Territory—the notorious Brunter brothers. These infamous murderers and thieves were the sort of cop-killing fugitive bastards who would just as soon have immolated you with a blowtorch as urinated on your burning corpse. The men, all looking like they’d just stepped off the set of the movie Tombstone, pointed a multiflavored assortment of shotguns and revolvers at the interloper, gesturing for him to dismount from his horse. The rider complied.