Liquid Courage

Drink: Shield and Friend

Ratings:
Strength: 1/5 (sling)
Skill: 4/5 (foreign legion)
Rank: 4/5 (knight of the realm)

[ingredients:]

• delicious Flemmish food
• friends
• the element of surprise

[preparation:]

1. Invite some friends over with an offer of delicious Belgian chocolates, Trappist Ales, pommes frites, and steamed mussels.
2. While their mouths are full, ask them to say “Shield and Friend” five times fast.
3. Punch the face of those who are unable to do so.
4. Wait in the bushes for their friends to come to your house, jump them, and steal their watches/earrings.

Background

Not a people known for fighting

Flanders, the Dutch/Flemish-speaking part of Belgium, has seen its fair share of major battles.  Waterloo, Ypres, and the Battle of the Bulge, to name a few.  One trait common to these battles is that they involved peoples other than the Flemish fighting for control of Europe.  Historically, Europe has used Flanders as its sandlot, a convenient rallying place for Great Powers to play games of Kick the Can for neighborhood bragging rights.  The Battle of the Golden Spurs, in 1302, is a notable instance of the Flemmish reppin’ in their own hood.

It is also, incidentally, one of history’s great examples of the military application of tongue twisters.  Not since the days of cavemen have a few men wrung so much mileage out of a few key words.

Say our names three times fast, or we'll clobber you and take your mammoth.

Several inopportune circumstances coincided to bring out the Flemmish fighting spirit.  France had officially added Flanders to its crown lands in 1297, but had not really done anything about it except update its maps.  At the same time, the Bruges wool brokers’ traditional monopoly on wool importation from England was being threatened by English King, “Factory Direct” Edward I, who was trying to bypass the Flemish merchants.  The Flemish appealed to French King Philip the Fair to protect their monopoly.  The French crown responded by garrisoning troops in Bruges and suppressing the wool guilds.

Had they known there is nothing to do in Bruges, the soldiers might not have come.

Objecting to being kicked out of their homes, a band of local militia crept back into town on the night of May 18th, 1302 and slaughtered the French soldiers in their beds.  To identify the occupying French (everyone looked the same in their stocking caps and  English-wool onesies), the militia asked their victims to pronounce a phrase very difficult for the French to say: “schild en vriend” which means “shield and friend.”  Only the leader of the French garrison (who was a big Rosetta Stone user) and a handful of others escaped with their lives.  A few native Flemmish who slept with retainers in their mouths were also killed accidentally.

As could be expected, the French were upset.  France was an imposing continental power, and things like this just didn’t happen to the glorious French military (not yet anyway).  King Philip sent 8,000 professional knights, infantry and crossbowmen into Flanders to punish the uppity wool merchants.  The Flemmings (yes, that is a correct name for them) brought out 3,000 men-at-arms from Bruges and another 5,500 from farther afield.  Despite being armed mainly with pointy sticks called Goedendag, the Flemmings made excellent tactical decisions.  They met the French in a field littered with trees, steams and ditches, making life difficult for the well-armored, and extremely heavy, French cavalry.

The two sides clashed on July 11th, 1302.  The French infantry was on the verge of breaking the Flemmings when the French commander Robert of Artois called them back so the cavalry could sweep in and claim victory (the infantry needed one more win to trigger an expensive vesting option in their contract for 1303).  French servants had been filling the streams and ditches with wood to help support the knights, but Robert did not wait for them to finish.  He sent the cavalry forward.  The knights were slaughtered by the mobile Flemmish infantry as the heavy horses and soldiers sank into the marshy ground.

My trusty cheval Jean-Luc-The-Horse and I are unstoppable! Now pull us out of this mud. Chop chop.

The battle turned into a rout, and the Flemmish pursued the French over ten kilometers.  Not in the mood to deal with captives, the Flemmish killed a lot of extremely high-ranking French officers and noblemen, including Robert of Artois and the French-appointed Governor of Flanders.  At least a thousand French knights were killed, from whom the Flemmish gathered golden spurs as trophies of their victory (and tons of xp).  Those spurs gave the battle its name.

Drink: The Siege of Quebec

Ratings:
Strength: 2/5 (musket)
Skill: 2/5 (national guard)
Rank: 3/5 (centurion)

[ingredients:]

• 1 recently-emptied (not cleaned) 16 oz maple syrup jug
• 2 oz French Brandy (cognac/Armagnac)
• 1 oz Canadian Ice Wine
• 1 tsp Drambuie

[preparation:]

1. Pour ingredients into jug
2. Shake or swirl to mix.
3. Garnish with a maple leaf.

Background

The Siege of Quebec was a pivotal 1759 battle in the North American theatre of the Seven Years War.  In the battle, British General James Wolfe’s derring-do defeated an undisciplined French and Indian force, striking a blow against the French colonial presence in North America.  The eventually-victorious British allowed some French colonials to remain in North America, paving the way for Canada’s peculiar cultural makeup and marking the end of the NHL’s “Original Two” era.

—–

In the 17th and 18th centuries, France and Great Britain held a series of “exhibition wars” in North America.  The purpose was to introduce European colonialism to a new market, and get developing soldiers more playing time.  These wars had all the good parts of European play (glory, death, spoils) without the bad parts (unruly peasants, despoiled fox-hunting grounds).  Everybody also got to say “North American theatre” a lot, which is really fun.

The fourth war took place between 1754 and 1763.  Sadly, poor branding resulted in way too many names: The French and Indian War, aka The War of the Conquest, aka The Seven Years’ War (note that 1754 to 1763 is nine years).  This list doesn’t even include names the Native Americans gave to this latest round of colonial fisticuffs.

Boras kept the top 2 fur trappers out of the draft

The backstory was familiar.  The French and British were trying to outmaneuver each other for economic and military opportunities, and for the rights to the best Native Americans in the amateur draft.  In 1754, tensions in both North America and Europe caused the two nations to throw down their sticks, pull off their gloves, and go at it.  Both sides brought starters over from the Old World, and the play was spirited.  The hearty French “Les Habs” (as their fans called them), with their entertaining coalition of stocky fur trappers, Iroquois Confederacy warriors and French soldiers, scored major victories at Fort Oswego and Fort William Henry.

In June of 1758, British coach King George pulled the goalie and instructed General Wolfe to take Quebec before the horn.  The British sailed twenty-two ships up the hazardous St. Lawrence River right into the heart of French Canada, much to the surprise of the Habs capitaine the Marquis de Montcalm.  The British hoped to bombard Quebec into submission, but Montcalm’s “stay at home D” and Habs rookie keeper Patrick Roy made it clear that wasn’t going to happen.

Is it "Roy" or "Wah"? Let the War decide.

After three months of plotting, General Wolfe decided to attempt a risky upstream troop landing.  The British sailed up the river, past the French D line, who apparently missed the conspicuous British whispering and even-louder “sssshhh, lads!” from the officers.  Wolfe managed to land 3,300 first-string troops on the outskirts of Quebec during the night of September 12th, 1758.  Montcalm had almost 14,000 troops in the area, and had he waited for them to amass, he could have attacked the British from two sides.  Instead, he hastily attacked the British line on September 13th with only 3,500 troops, a motley O-line of French soldiers, Native Americans, and French militia.

The battle ended within the regulation three 20-minute periods.*  The British troops’ mastery of musket fire and the neutral zone trap, combined with Montcalm’s poor field generalship and puck control, led to a British rout.  The first British volley sent the French line into a retreat, although Wolfe was killed almost immediately by a brutal Iroquois enforcer’s cross-check.  Brigadier-General George Townshend organized two battalions to turn and face French reinforcements approaching from the rear (the reinforcements Montcalm had failed to wait for).  Those French also retreated, allowing the remainder of Montcalm’s army to complete their retreat into Quebec.  This is the first known use of the famous French military tactic called Two French Armies Retreating In Opposite Directions.

Montcalm's enforcers spent the entire siege in the penalty box.

Montcalm, who was not required to wear a helmet (having been in the league prior to the 1747 helmet rule) was struck by a stray puck and died the following day.  Most of the French forces abandoned Quebec and the remaining garrison signed over the city to the British on September 18th.  The British won a resounding naval victory in November 1759 which ended French hopes of reinforcing their colonies.  By 1760 most of the fighting had ended, and the Treaty of Paris formally ended the exhibition season on February 10, 1763.  The British allowed French colonists remaining in Canada to keep their property and Roman Catholic religion, resulting in the bilingual problems Canada experiences today.

Commentators on both sides of the Atlantic approved of the off-season trades.

The following off-season was a busy one.  Britain offered France the choice of keeping either its North American possessions or the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique (all of which Britain had invaded).  French chose to cede Canada.  That same season Spain traded Florida to Britain for Cuba and five navigational sextants, then spun those sextants off to obtain Louisiana from France (a move Don Cherry called outstanding).  France was unperturbed by the loss of Nouvelle France; French hockey blogger Voltaire declared that the Treaty of Paris cost France only “a few acres of snow; France ftw!”  No one anticipated, however, that the Spain-Britain trade would eventually result, two centuries later, in that most unholy of apparitions, ice hockey in Florida.

*Another example of poor branding.  A siege that lasts an hour is no siege at all.