73: The Rain in Spain: Caesar's Luck

War is the great unknown. It is the most complex game of chess in existence. Its variables are near infinite. You have terrain, supplies, food, alliances, domestic politics, technology, strategy, tactics, experience, leadership, morale, treason, insubordination. And at times, it can be the smallest of variables that have disproportionately large effects. That's why that famous proverb exists about the importance of a single horseshoe nail. For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost. For want of a rider, the message was lost. For want of a message, the battle was lost. For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

It's a reminder that even the smallest of factors can have major and unexpected influences in war. And if the want of a horseshoe nail can lose you a kingdom, then of course the fortunes of war can turn on a dime. And because of this devilish complexity, it can often be near impossible to accurately predict the outcome of a war. But that hasn't stopped humans confidently attempting to do so since time immemorial.

And one variable we haven't even mentioned yet, which isn't minor at all, is the weather. And in the case of this Spanish campaign, the weather is about to have a massive impact. Not just on this campaign, but an impact on the course of the entire Civil War. We left off with both sides coming out of a small-scale engagement, both claiming victory. We'll call it a stalemate. Well, two days later, a great storm hits the area. Caesar writes that it was generally agreed that this storm brought the heaviest rainfall this region, modern Catalonia, had ever seen. He tells us it washed the snow away from the mountains and thus flooded the rivers, including the Sicoris River where Caesar and his army are camped. This flood sweeps through the river, overflows its banks, and obliterates both of Caesar's bridges. And just like that, the tides of war have turned against Caesar due to a variable that no one could have predicted. With both bridges destroyed, Caesar is stuck on the west side of the Sicoris. Which is a big problem since about 28 miles or 45 kilometers west of the Sicoris is another river Caesar calls the Cinga River. Today it is known as the Cinca River in Aragon, Spain. This river is also flooded from the recent rains and snowmelt. This means Caesar and his army are now trapped in the 28 miles or so between these two rivers.

Caesar describes his men as being imprisoned in this confined space. And with two armies camped in this relatively small area, food begins to run low very quickly. What's worse, the bridge at Ilerda, the one the Pompeians use, seems to have been made out of stone and it survives the flooding. So, Petreius, Afranius, and their men still have access to the eastern bank of the Sicoris, where there is a lot more food. What's more, before Caesar even arrived, they had been busy stockpiling Ilerda with food. So, they have no shortages whatsoever. Their stockpiling also means that the area around Caesar's camp is nearly completely depleted of grain.

There is a famous maxim of war often attributed to Napoleon, though it seems he did not actually say it, that ‘an army marches on its stomach’. There is an even more famous maxim, which is equally difficult to source, which goes, ‘amateurs practice tactics, professionals logistics’. Caesar is not unaware of these concepts. He may not know these maxims, but the concepts are familiar to him. And he realizes how important it is to get his army food and to do so quickly.

This is why he had had friendly local tribes bringing food to his army. But these tribes are on the eastern side of the Sicoris, and with the recent flooding, they can no longer reach him. Caesar also has men that had crossed the river to forage before the storm swept in. These men are now trapped on the eastern bank, the far bank, away from the rest of Caesar's army, and are unable to return with the food that they've gathered. All of this was made worse by the time of year. In June, Caesar says the winter stockpiles of the locals have already been depleted, and yet it's too early in the season for any crops to have been ripened in the field yet.

Caesar himself, meanwhile, had used up most of his own food in the preceding days. So, in desperation, he considers acquiring cattle from the locals, which it seems the Roman troops were not preferable to. He makes a similar comment in the Gallic Wars during the Siege of Avaricum. But the local Spanish tribes are not dolts, and they've made sure to get their herds of cattle well away from the vicinity of either army so as to avoid them being devoured. And when Caesar does send foraging parties out, they are continually harassed by light infantry from Lusitania, which corresponds to most of modern-day Portugal and a chunk of western Spain, specifically Extremadura and Castilla y León.

These targeteers, which were light infantry with a small shield and a javelin, know the local terrain well, and the rivers are no barrier to them at all. Caesar tells us it was their custom to always carry a bladder with them on campaign. As far as I can tell, these bladders were like bags made out of animal skins. They could inflate these bladders and use them to stay afloat as they swim across any river blocking their path. Caesar's army does not have such bladders and therefore cannot cross the river so easily.

So the obvious necessity here is to regain access to the eastern bank of the river where all the food is. And the simplest way to do that would seem to be to rebuild the nearer of the two bridges. So Caesar sets his men to doing this task. But the river is overflown and its waters moving so rapidly that the legionaries have a very tough time of it. The construction project is made significantly more difficult by the fact that Afranius and Petreius have cohorts of men on the far bank launching every kind of missile at Caesar's men. Caesar writes that his men found it difficult to finish their work while simultaneously struggling against the current and dodging missiles. The flooding continues though lasting several days and so Caesar's men persist in their efforts to build the bridge.

As this struggle is ongoing, Afranius and Petreius get word that large convoys carrying food for Caesar have arrived on the eastern bank of the Sicoris. There, of course, these convoys find out that there are no bridges available to them and they are stuck on the east side. These convoys are not part of Caesar's army though. They are convoys that have made their way all the way from Gaul.

Caesar writes in the Civil War commentaries, “Archers from the Ruteni had arrived as well, and cavalry from Gaul, with large trains of wagons and baggage, as is the Gallic custom. There were besides about six thousand men of various sorts, as well as domestics and children; but there was no organization, no defined authority, as everyone followed his own judgment and they all traveled on confidently, in the same informal way they had always done. There were also several young men of good family, sons of senators or of equestrian rank; there were official deputations from tribes; there were some of Caesar's lieutenants. All these were held back by the rivers.”.

As you can see, this is a very large and vulnerable group and Caesar can do nothing to protect them and so Afranius and Petreius decide to launch a nighttime attack on these convoys. The Pompeian force they put together consists of all the Pompeian cavalry and three legions. Riding ahead of the legions, the cavalry attacks the convoys first and succeeds in taking them by surprise. The Gallic cavalry of the convoys quickly rally, form up and engage the Pompeian cavalry in battle. Caesar tells us that despite being heavily outnumbered, the Gallic cavalry held its ground. This defiant nighttime stand buys the convoys enough time to retreat to higher ground. The Gauls continue to fight until they see the three Pompeian legions approaching, at which point they retreat to some nearby hills. It would seem the Pompeians then decide not to pursue either the convoys or the cavalry, not wishing to fight on disadvantageous ground in the dark.
In total, Caesar says 200 of the convoy archers died in the fighting, along with only a few Gallic cavalry and some, though not many, specifies, camp followers and pack animals. So, all considered, they come out of what could have been an unmitigated disaster relatively unscathed. Perhaps Caesar's luck has not fully abandoned him after all.
But Caesar's army is still no closer to having access to the convoy's food. They are still in desperate shape, and things are only becoming more desperate. Caesar tells us the price of food began to skyrocket, not just because of shortages, but also because of fears for the future. For a modern comparison, this is like when people started hoarding toilet paper during the pandemic. In such cases, any real shortages can be made much worse by people hoarding and refusing to sell unless they get exorbitant prices, not just because of greed, but also because they are scared of what the future holds.

Caesar writes in the Civil War commentaries, “The price (meaning of staple foods, which you'll see referred to as corn in the commentaries) So, he writes, “The price had already risen to 50 denarii a peck, and shortage of corn was sapping the soldiers' strength, while their difficulties grew from day to day. In a mere handful of days, circumstances had totally changed, and there had been a reversal of fortunes; our men were now laboring under shortages of all the necessities of life, while their opponents had plenty of everything and were considered the stronger force.”.

50 denarii a peck is an enormously inflated price. On average, a peck of grain in this time went for roughly 3 1/2 - 4 sesterces. Now, sesterces is obviously a different currency than denarii, so let's convert that. Four sesterces makes one denarii, so the price now for Caesar's army is 200 sesterces rather than the standard 3 - 4 sesterces per peck. Talk about inflation!

With the situation becoming increasingly desperate, Caesar asked some of the Spanish tribes that had come over to his side to provide cattle. He also sends his camp followers to more distant tribes in search of food. It's unclear how these followers got across the river, or if they did at all. Maybe they just traveled upriver, staying between the Sicoris and the Cinga. Caesar doesn't tell us. He does tell us that, in the meantime, he worked to resolve this food shortage in every way he could.

Now, seeing that Caesar and his army are trapped between these two rivers, slowly beginning to starve, unable to reach their convoys of food, Afranius and Petreius start to feel triumphant. So much so that they make the mistake not only of thinking that they've won the war, but of announcing in letters to friends back in Rome that they've won the war.
Caesar writes in the commentaries,

“Afranius and Petreius and their friends wrote to their adherents in Rome about this, with plenty of exaggerations and amplified detail. Rumors added further embroideries, and it was thought that the war was almost over. When the messengers with the dispatches reached Rome, great crowds gathered at Afranius' house, and congratulations were lavished on him. Many people left Italy to join Pompey, some in order to have the credit of being the first to bring such news, others to avoid turning up last of all, and appearing to have waited for the outcome of the wars.".

And so, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last time, Caesar's domestic enemies would count him down and out, seeing no way for him to recover his fortunes and win. We saw this in his final year of war in Gaul, when the Optimates spread rumors that Caesar's army had been badly mauled, and that Caesar himself was cut off from his army and surrounded. We see it here now in this Spanish campaign, and we will see it repeatedly in the coming campaigns of the Civil War. Caesar's enemies are always quick to pronounce his defeat, and thus always shocked when it turns out, not only is he not defeated, he's utterly victorious.

As I said in the opening of this episode, war is the great unknown, unpredictable in its outcomes, and the Optimates would have done well to remember that. As would the neutrals and fence-sitters, many of whom are now abandoning Italy and flocking to Pompey in Greece. This is why earlier I had said that the inclement weather would have an impact not just on this particular Spanish campaign, but on the entire Civil War as a whole.

Getting back to Caesar, he soon decides that rebuilding the bridge is not possible. Between the height and swiftness of the water, and the constant harassment of the Pompeians, it's just not going to happen. Which means it's time to get creative. Which is one of Caesar's strong suits, and that's one thing you certainly have to credit him with. He's very good at coming up with outside-the-box ideas when in a pinch, and he's not afraid to try such ideas.

In this case, his solution is to forgo bridges altogether, at least for the time being, and instead to focus on ships. Now that may not sound particularly creative, there are only so many ways to cross a river, but it's not so simple as just grabbing the boat you have on hand and rowing across. Caesar doesn't have any boats, and cohorts of Pompeians are guarding the far bank.

But fortunately, Caesar and his army have a lot of experience at this point. They've fought a variety of different types of campaigns, and it is specifically their experience during the invasions of Britannia that serves them well here. Caesar tells us he had learned to make a simple type of boat while in Britannia, which he orders his men to start constructing. He writes that the keels and ribs of these boats were made of light wood, whereas the rest of the boat was made of what he calls woven withies, or wattle. In more modern parlance, this would be something akin to wicker, flexible branches woven together. Finally, the boats are covered in hides, meaning animal hides.

So now Caesar does have boats. Maybe you wouldn't trust them on the open sea, but they'll do for a river crossing. But still, there is the issue of the Pompeian cohorts guarding the far bank. So at night time, Caesar has his newly crafted boats loaded onto wagons. It must have been of a decent size though, because he says he had to join multiple wagons together to convey them. Once the wagons are all loaded up, Caesar has them transported 22 Roman miles, or about 20 of our miles, upriver. Again, this is all happening at night to keep this activity hidden from the Pompeians.

Once far enough away from the Pompeian cohorts, Caesar's men unload the boats and start transporting men across them. Now on the eastern side of the river, these men occupy and fortify a hill near the river bank. Now Caesar sends an entire legion over via the boats to man this new outpost, this new hill of theirs. This allows Caesar to start the construction of a new bridge, only this time their fortified hill on the eastern bank can keep the Pompeians away from the construction project. If they find out about it, the hope is that they won't find out at all. And the legionaries are now able to work from both sides of the river, speeding up their progress. In this way, in only two days, they complete this new bridge. And with this new bridge, Caesar is able to get all of the Gallic convoys and the foragers who had been stranded back to his main camp. He tells us that this eased the food supply difficulties.

At this point, it seems the Pompeians still aren't aware of this bridge, and Caesar decides to take full advantage of this. That same day, he sends most of his cavalry across the bridge. The cavalry riding on the eastern side now, the far bank of the river, come across a Pompeian foraging party. This foraging party is scattered about. Caesar tells us that they had no fear. Well, Caesar's Gallic cavalry soon teach them fear, and falling upon them, capture many animals and men. The Pompeians then send cohorts of Targeteers to rescue this foraging party.

Remember, Targeteers are the light Spanish infantry with small shields and javelins. One of these cohorts gets ahead of the rest though, gets a little bit too eager. The Gallic cavalry see this and divide their forces into two. One stays to guard the booty, as Caesar calls it, or at least the translations call it, and the other sweeps down on the exposed lead cohort. Caesar tells us they annihilated this cohort. The Gallic cavalry then return to Caesar's camp with their spoils of war.
And here we take a brief break from the Spanish campaign to return to the siege of Massilia, modern Marseilles in France. Remember, Caesar had left his legate Trebonius in charge of the land portion of the siege, and Decimus Brutus in charge of the naval portion of the siege. And again, both of these men will be among his future assassins.

Anyway, in charge of the defense of Massilia is Ahenobarbus. Ahenobarbus has the Massiliotes prepare and equip 17 warships, 11 of these decked. The Massiliotes also include many smaller ships in their fleet in an attempt to intimidate Decimus Brutus' fleet by sheer numbers. They man their fleet with large quantities of archers, and with the Albici, the barbarian mountain men who owe their allegiance to Massilia. Caesar tells us the Albici had been bribed by promises of rewards by the Massiliotes, the people of Massilia. Ahenobarbus also requests a special detachment of ships for himself. He mans these ships with farmers and herdsmen who he had brought with him from his estates in Italy. With the Massiliote fleet now ready, they cast off to attack the Caesarean fleet commanded by Decimus Brutus. This fleet is stationed on an island nearby to Massilia.

Caesar tells us the number of ships Decimus Brutus had was greatly inferior to the number Ahenobarbus had. But the quality of the warriors he has on board his ships is superior. Before Caesar left Massilia for Spain, he had created a special corps of men, handpicked from all the legions for their courage, and had assigned them to man these ships as warriors. Caesar tells us this corps contained what he calls frontline men, as well as centurions who had demanded the privilege. And you have to love that sort of enthusiasm in Caesar's army. Not only is there no shortage of volunteers for this special assignment, Caesar has centurions demanding the privilege.

These cracked troops have prepared hooks, or what one translation calls iron claws, and grappling irons, along with large quantities of javelins, throwing darts, or looped darts, and other missiles. Well, Decimus Brutus and the Caesareans get word of the approaching Massiliote fleet, and so they cast off to meet them in battle. The two sides clash, and battle ensues. Caesar tells us that both sides fought with courage and spirit. In fact, he writes that the Albici almost matched the valor of his own men. Almost. To explain this, Caesar tells his audience that the Albici were a mountain people, used to warfare. He also says that the promised rewards from the Massiliotes were fresh in the Albici's minds. According to Caesar, even Ahenobarbus' herdsmen fought well, spurred on by the promise of freedom, and anxious to perform well before the eyes of their master, Ahenobarbus. No such compliment is paid to Ahenobarbus' farmers by Caesar.

Massilia is a port city, and thus the Massiliotes have a far more skilled crew manning their ships than Decimus Brutus does. Utilizing the greater speed of their ships and the greater skill of their steersmen, they are able to evade the Caesarean ships and, as Caesar puts it, baffle their onslaughts. The Massiliotes then stretch out their line of ships as far as possible, and repeatedly attempt to surround the Caesarean ships. They also look to isolate any one of Decimus Brutus' ships and surround it with multiple of their own. Another tactic they use is to steer close alongside the Caesarean ships and snap off all their oars. If the Caesarean ships do manage to force one of the enemy ships into close quarters combat, Caesar tells us that the enemy's reliance on the skill of their steersmen would give way to reliance on the courage of the mountain people, as he calls the Albici.

Meanwhile, Decimus Brutus' rowers and steersmen are much less skilled and experienced. In fact, they had been hastily recruited from transport ships rather than from warships. As such, they don't even know the names of all the equipment they are using on these warships. Meaning, if you've ever been sailing, you know that there is an entire nautical language in and of itself. These men are experienced sailors, but not on warships where they don't even know the lingo. The Caesareans also now learn that their ships are inferior too. They had made them in a rush out of unseasoned timber, and as such they are less able to maneuver agilely.

And yet, the Caesareans overcome all these maritime deficits by employing that age-old Roman naval tactic. Turning a sea battle into a land battle. Meaning, if you can get close enough to board the enemy's ships and turn this into a contest of hand-to-hand combat, then you neutralize the enemy's superior abilities at seamanship. And of course, the Romans always back themselves in hand-to-hand combat. It's what they do.

And so, in this spirit, whenever an opportunity arises, the Caesareans gladly pit one of their ships against two of the Massiliote ships if it means drawing them into combat. They throw out grappling hooks on either side of their ships and, hooking two Massiliote ships, pull them from both directions alongside their own ship. This is an extremely aggressive and confident move because they are intentionally allowing themselves to be surrounded on both sides. They then storm both of the Massiliote ships and kill many of the Albici and herdsmen. Again, no word on the farmers. This process is repeated, always with the confidence that, even surrounded and outnumbered, the Caesarean soldiers are the more skilled and experienced in close combat and will win out.

But that does not mean the fighting wasn't fierce. Several of our ancient sources tell us the story of an ordinary soldier of Caesar's 10th Legion named Gaius Acilius. Plutarch, Suetonius, and Valerius Maximus all praise Acilius in heroic terms. He is held aloft by both Plutarch and Suetonius as personifying the valor and fanatical loyalty that characterized the soldiers of Julius Caesar's army. All of these sources tell the story a little differently. But basically, the story goes like this. Achilles fought in this sea battle on one of the Caesarean ships. And, just like I said, the Caesareans would hook the Massiliote ships and pull them alongside to engage in hand-to-hand combat. Well, when they pulled one of these Massiliote ships alongside, Achilles reaches out, either with his right hand only or with both hands, and grabs hold of their deck in order to hold it in place so they can't escape and so that his comrades can board their ship. Reaching out your arm or arms like this in a battle with edged weapons has obvious dangers, and Acilius gets his right arm lopped off by the enemy. But what makes Acilius so worthy of heroic praise to the ancient sources is that he is seemingly unfazed by his right arm being lopped off.

Valerius Maximus, who had him originally only reaching out with his right arm, tells us that, after having his right arm chopped off, Acilius simply reaches out his left arm and refuses to let go. Then, rather than hanging back because he no longer has a sword arm, Acilius joins in the battle, using his shield on his left arm to batter his opponents. In this style, Acilius and his comrades defeat the rival crew and seize their ship.
Plutarch tells the story a little differently.

He writes, “His (meaning Caesar’s) soldiers showed such good will and zeal in his service that those who in their previous campaigns had been in no way superior to others were invincible and irresistible in confronting ever danger to enhance Caesar’s fame. Such a man, for instance, was Acilius, who, in the sea-fight at Massalia, boarded a hostile ship and had his right hand cut off with a sword, but clung with the other hand to his shield, and dashing it into the faces of his foes, routed them all and got possession of the vessel.”.

Take whichever version of the story you like, Acilius personified all of what the ancient Romans thought a soldier should be: selfless, courageous, aggressive, exhibiting a relentless dedication to duty and a willingness to suffer without complaint. And with these sorts of men populating their ranks, it's no wonder the Pompeians will often be intimidated by the Caesarian soldiers throughout the civil wars.

In the end, Caesar tells us his forces sank some of the Massaliote ships. Many others they were able to capture along with their crews. The rest of the ships they chased back to Massalia's harbor. In total, Caesar tells us the Massaliotes lost nine ships that day, including the ones the Caesarians had captured. News of this naval victory is then sent to Caesar in Spain. He receives word of it just around the time his bridge is being completed and his Gallic cavalry have had their victory over the Spanish targeteers.

All of this together, the news of the naval victory, the new bridge, the food coming in, the victory over the Spanish targeteers, brings what Caesar calls a swift change of fortune. No longer does it feel to the Caesarians, the Spanish tribes, or the Pompeians that Caesar's fighting a losing campaign. No longer does it feel like they are in dire straits. Caesar's luck has returned. His cause is ascendant once again.

And that is where we'll end our narrative today. In our next episode, with the tides of war having changed, Afranius and Petreius decide it's time to take the war to the interior of Spain and flee Ilerda. With Caesar determined to stop them, a desperate race to the mountains ensues.

As always, thank you all for listening. This podcast would not be possible without your guys' support. And as always, we have a few things to cover before our ending quote, which is a very special one today. First, if you are on YouTube, make sure to like and if you could, leave a comment. However simple it is, it still helps the algorithm and helps the channel to grow. Same with Spotify. Leaving a comment, again, however simple, helps the channel to grow because it tells Spotify that the audience is engaged and likes the content.

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And now for our ending quote. This is a quote by Cicero as translated by Anthony Everitt in his book, Cicero, “The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician”. It goes along with the theme of our previous episode, that many concepts and understandings of the world that we assume to be modern were actually understood thousands of years ago. This quote I'm about to share with you is from Cicero's book, “On the Republic”. In this book, Cicero lays out, via a Socratic dialogue, what he envisions as the ideal constitution and the ideal citizen.

The dialogue gets pretty creative and in the final book, one of its characters, Scipio Aemilianus, has a dream in which he finds himself far up in the sky looking back down at Earth. Maybe even in outer space we'd say today. By the way, Scipio Aemilianus was a real person in Roman history. He was the adopted grandson of Scipio Africanus, the man who defeated Hannibal. And Scipio Aemilianus is the man who destroyed Carthage in the Third Punic War. He's also the commander I mentioned in Episode 1a, who was greatly impressed by Marius striking his opponent down in single combat. Of course, this whole dialogue is fictional, just to illustrate a point.

And Scipio Aemilianus died over 20 years before Cicero was born. Anyway, Scipio finds himself high up in the sky, looking, on the one side, down onto Earth, and on the other, looking out into the cosmos. From that perspective, Scipio says, and remember it is really Cicero writing these words, but Cicero's Scipio says,

“When I looked around me from that point, everything else appeared extraordinarily beautiful. There were stars invisible from earth, all larger than we have ever conceived. The smallest was the most distant and the one closest to the earth shone with a reflected light. The starry orbs were much larger than the earth. In fact, the earth itself seemed so small that I felt scornful of our empire, which is only a kind of dot…(Cicero then continues later in the text) Beneath the Moon there is nothing that is not mortal and doomed to decay, except for the souls which, by the grace of the gods, have been conferred on humankind. But above the Moon, everything is eternal.”.

Think about what he's saying there. He's aware that a star's brightness can be a matter of its distance from Earth. He's aware that some stars are so far away they can't even be seen from Earth. And he's aware that stars, however small they look to us from Earth, are actually much larger than we can even imagine. In fact, he's aware that they are much larger than Earth. He's also aware that these stars are orbs. He looks down on Earth and, with this new cosmic perspective, finds the whole of the Roman Empire to be a tiny object of scorn. By the way, this sort of shift in perspective is common among modern astronauts who have seen Earth from orbit. It's called the overview effect. It often changes their entire perspective on our planet and our place in this universe.

Except Cicero is writing this book 2,000 years before space travel. That's a little spooky, isn't it? Elsewhere in the dream, Cicero, via Scipio Aemilianus talks of the moon being set on fire by the rays of the sun. What is that but a poetic way of saying that the light we see from the moon is actually sunlight being reflected by the moon? Cicero even describes stars and planets as round and globular bodies that circle in their fixed orbit with marvelous speed. And at one point he refers to stars as fires.

It's all a reminder of just how much the ancients did know; that they were far more knowledgeable about the universe that they lived in than we typically give them credit for. Cicero will even refer to the Earth as a sphere, proving to flat earthers everywhere that even 2,000 years ago people knew Earth was round. Though I should add, Cicero didn't have everything right. There is plenty of nonsense about the cosmos in there too, like the idea that the Earth was the unmoving center of the cosmos. But given his time period, I think we can let that slide. Especially when he goes on to say that all ponderable bodies are drawn by their own natural tendency downward toward Earth. That is a description of Earth's gravity. Sorry Isaac Newton.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't say that Cicero was not the inventor of these cosmological ideas. They were actually much older than him…which only makes them that much more amazing. If you want to buy Anthony Everitt's book on Cicero, I have included a link in the show notes. It's a very easy and approachable read and will give you a lot more insight on Cicero's life and on him as a person and his personality.

And that is all for today. Thank you all for listening, keep on sharing the podcast with others. Like I keep saying, it does wonders to help the show to grow. And I will talk to you on the next episode of The March of History.