562. Peter the Great: The Rise of Russia (Part 1)

0:09Let the soldiers know that now is the hour when in their hands rests the fate of the entire motherland. Either Russia will fall, or she will be reborn My soldiers, you are not armed and drawn up to fight for Peter You fight for the nation entrusted to Peter by birth For your kin, for the people of all Russia The land that has protected you The land that now awaits the decision of fortune Remember as you fight that God and truth are on our side and remember how many times the Lord of Battles has shown us his favour. And know this of me, of Peter, that on my life I set no value, as long as Russia may live in piety, in prosperity and in glory.

1:09There we have, in ringing masculine tones, the proclamation of Peter the Great, Tsar and autocrat of all the Russians to his troops on the 26th of June, 1709, the eve of the famous and seismically influential Battle of Poltava, the showdown that decided the Great Northern War. Dominic, quite possibly your favourite war, I think. I love the Great Northern War. It genuinely is a great war. It is a great war, isn't it? And it's very northern. and it's a war yeah so it ticks every box it ticks every box going and the reason it's a great war is that it marks the kind of definitive emergence of russia as the superpower that it will be from that point on yeah and unsurprisingly that speech which i think um my deep masculine tone conveyed a sense of peter as a titanic figure not just historically but physically i mean i hope people got that sense.

2:12But it's a speech that is obviously quite popular with the current leadership in Russia, isn't it? Because it's seen as a kind of great call to arms to people to die for Russia. Exactly. Exactly. And they actually read this speech or they often recite it to recruits in the Russian army. So even today, it kind of has a political resonance, I guess. And Vladimir Putin has compared himself with Peter the Great. He has compared the war in Ukraine with the Great Northern War. And the Great Northern War fought against Sweden. The Swedes currently are kind of issuing all kinds of slightly nervous calls to arms, aren't they?

2:47Yes. Not surprising. Although the interesting thing, of course, the Great Northern War, lots of people won't know this, is that the Swedes were the overdogs and Russia the underdogs in the Great Northern War, which seems completely bonkers. Well, because this is a story not just about Peter the Great, but about his great rival Charles XII, one of the most intriguing military figures of his age. But it's also about so much more, isn't it? Because the story of Peter the Great, I mean, it's mad in so many ways. It's one of those historical stories. We don't get them that often, but it genuinely is one of those historical stories that a fantasy novelist would hesitate to invent it.

3:28So to give people a sense of the suite before we get into the details, Peter became Tsar of Russia when he was 10. his early life was scarred by the most horrific violence there was a struggle for power with his own sister then he got power then he did a mad thing he went in disguise on a gap year to western europe where he worked in the shipyards in amsterdam and hung around with bishops and stuff in london and oxford and of course famously had wheelbarrow races um in deppford which is one of our favorite topics on the rest of history i think we've covered it about six times already And we're going to do it again in this series.

4:03But never in as much detail as we're going to do it this time. And then he comes back. He cuts everybody's beards off. He fights this colossal war against the Swedes. He founds St. Petersburg. He fights the Ottoman Empire. He tortures his own son to death. And after all this, he dies peacefully in his bed. But he becomes the embodiment of Russia's aspiration to join the top table of the world's powers and to rank alongside the nations of Western Europe. So Peter has become this enduring symbol of the kind of the struggle for Russia's soul, caught between East and West, Europe and Asia. But as you said, it's not just about Russia.

4:40So it's about Poland. It's about Sweden. It's about the Ottoman Empire. It's sort of... And it's about Western Europe as well, isn't it? As it's rising to kind of global power and wealth. Yeah. It's like a late 17th, early 18th century version of Risk with a strong element of Game of Thrones and a strong element of succession all kind of mixed together. Well, I think there's a much more obvious television drama that is drawing on the life of Peter the Great. And that is a drama called The Great, which was actually about Catherine the Great. And it features Peter's grandson, who historically was a bit of a cipher and gets bumped off very quickly.

5:16But I think that the producers of that series were massively influenced by the example of Peter the Great. And I think that Peter III in that series is Peter the Great. and there's a lot of cavorting with dwarves. He has kind of cohorts of pals who are getting up to all kinds of unspeakable business and he's always going, huzzah! Right, perfect. Nicholas Holt. There's going to be an awful lot of that in this series, it's fair to say. All right, well, let's get into the man himself. Sir Peter's born in Moscow at one o 'clock in the morning on the 30th of May, 1672 and he is the son of the second Romanov Tsar, Alexis.

5:56and his wife, Natalia Nareshkina. And Peter's defining physical characteristic is that he's incredibly tall. And he was a very big baby. And we actually know exactly how big, because what they would do is they would kind of paint an exact reproduction of the baby, life-size, on a board with an image of St. Peter on it. So you can kind of measure this image, and you know exactly how big the baby Peter the Great was. And there's all kind of bells ringing in Moscow. There's cannons firing to celebrate the arrival of the Tsar's son. So Moscow is also a kind of character in this story. So Moscow is at this point, well, it's a few centuries old.

6:34It was founded in the late 12th century. What had happened is that the Mongols had swept over what is now Russia. And amid the chaos, the principality of Muscovy or Moscow had risen and swallowed up its neighbors, a bit like kind of Rome, I suppose, in the Italian peninsula, had become the sort of defining power of the area, of the region. And so by now, it's a city of about 200 ,000 people, mainly out of wood. So it's always burning down, isn't it? Always burning down. Just kind of basically every five years. And European visitors say, basically, it's a pretty terrible place. It's full of fires.

7:11It's full of plague. It's very dangerous. The streets are full of kind of footpads and beggars and whatnot. But there's a kind of exoticism to it even then. So the culture of Moscow, of Muscovy, is this really interesting fusion of the legacy of Kievan Rus, the kind of the semi-state that Harold Hardrada visited a few weeks ago that had been established by the Vikings when they'd gone east. And it's that and it's the Mongols' golden horde that has swept over it. But above all, orthodoxy. So it sees itself as carrying the sort of precious gift of Christian orthodoxy, especially after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

7:54So it's come to call itself the Third Rome. The Third Rome. So we have basically inherited the flame from Constantinople that they had inherited from Rome, and we are keeping it alive. And Muscovy has expanded and expanded by 1547. the Grand Prince Ivan IV, who we know as Ivan the Terrible, had crowned himself Caesar, not just of Muscovy, but of what he called all the Russias. So now you have people talking about Russia, in other words. And Caesar is Russified to Tsar. To Tsar, exactly. So he did that in the late 16th century. But by the late 17th century, so by 1672, when Peter the Great is born, Russia is now the largest country on earth.

8:36It has expanded at a colossal rate. So at this point, they've already gone all the way across the forests of Siberia, largely uninhabited, all the way to the Pacific. They've gone down to the Caspian Sea. And they're obviously very, you know, their borders go as far as basically Eastern Europe. So it's a huge country, by far the biggest on Earth. But it is a kind of lumbering, weak giant. I think that's how most people perceive it, because it's surrounded by enemies, all of which you would think are more deadly, more powerful, more impressive. So there are three countries in particular that will play a massive part in this story.

9:13So to the west of Russia, you have a country that is very dear to the hearts of members of the Restless History Club, and it's the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Very exciting. They'll be cheering in the streets of our discord, as you mentioned that. Yeah. So the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which is this very strange state, all we need to say about it at this point is the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth has basically been kicking the Russians around for quite a long time. They'd actually occupied the Kremlin in Moscow in 1610. However, the Poles have passed their peak and are now in kind of a long-term decline, as we will see.

9:48Now, to the south, there is the Ottoman Empire. They are a massive superpower. So they control the Black Sea. They control the Balkans. They, through their vassals, the Tatars, they control Crimea. And their influence goes well into Ukraine. Yeah, and they've been attacking Vienna. They have. So the Ottomans are a serious, serious player. And basically, the Russians have never challenged the Ottomans. They are kind of frightened of them. And then to the north, there is the great rival, which is Sweden. So the Swedish Empire has only recently become a great power. But at this point in time, 1672, it controls Finland, Estonia and Latvia, as well as parts of northern Germany.

10:30And the Swedes are regarded as by far the most potent and formidable fighting force in Western Europe. So that's the legacy of Gustavus Adolphus, isn't it? Who was the great sword of Protestantism in the Thirty Years' War. So Sweden is a Protestant power. Yeah. The Ottoman Empire obviously is Muslim. Polish, Lithuanian, all kinds of religions flourishing there, but essentially Catholic. So Russia, as the orthodox power, is surrounded not just by geopolitical rivals, but by religious rivals. And presumably that intense, because it's the only orthodox power, because Constantinople has been conquered, that must presumably intensify both its sense of being beleaguered by heretics, but also the sense of mission that it has as God's chosen vessel.

11:19Absolutely, it does. Absolutely. So orthodoxy is probably the single defining thing about Russian culture. So to give you a sense of what Russian society is like, it has four times as many people as, let's say, Sweden. But about the same number as Poland, right? Right, exactly. And not nearly as many, say, as France. No, nowhere near as many as France. and very, very few of these people live in towns. There are very few Russian towns. The vast majority are illiterate peasants. And sort of culturally, it feels very different from, let's say, Sweden or Poland because, frankly, to use a word that academics don't like to use now, it is very backward.

11:57So because the Orthodox Church has such a stranglehold, it has no universities, it has no schools, it has no playwrights, it has no scientists, it has no parliament, it has no newspapers, It has no navy. Right. And the navy, I mean, that's in large part because it has no ports, right? I mean, it has Archangel on the north, so the Arctic. But often that's frozen. That's frozen for six months or whatever. It doesn't have a port on the Black Sea. No. And it doesn't have a port on the Baltic. No. Because the Black Sea is an Ottoman lake, and the Baltic is essentially a Swedish lake at this point. That's right.

12:32So a way to think of Russia is as quite effectively landlocked and isolated country. When people go to Russia, they say, you know, European ambassadors and whatnot. They say it is like going a little bit backwards in time. Even the way in which people talk about the Tsar feels sort of he's a magnificent figure. He is the father of the Russian family. His noblemen prostrate themselves in front of the Tsar. they you know they use this sort of language i'm your humble slave i'm but a lowly worm all of this sort of thing you if you talk to the czar you have to use it's a full official title at all times and you can never repeat what the czar has said to you there is this sort of pervasive culture of conservatism and deference i guess and nowhere is that more pronounced of course than the kremlin itself so again as with moscow i think we should give a sort of portrait of the kremlin so people who are not familiar with it can get a sense of what it's like.

13:31It's basically a city. The word means a citadel. It's a citadel within the city. It is cut off from the rest of the city by a moat and by huge walls. And at the centre of the Kremlin, where a lot of the dramas of Peter's life will play out, there is Cathedral Square and there are three cathedrals. If you've ever been, I have been, and it's an amazing, amazing place to visit. There's these medieval cathedrals and there's a palace called the Palace of Facets, which still stands. with a grand staircase running down the outside, which is called the Red Staircase. And there's going to be some very exciting action to come.

14:05The Red Staircase will be reddened. It will, indeed. So let's talk about Peter's family. His father is called Alexis. His nickname is Tishaisi, which means the quietest. He's monkish and kind of pious and modest and whatnot. And Natalia, his wife, is his second wife. So it's this classic thing where the Tsaras had two wives and there's a little bit of tension between the two sides of the family. So the first marriage was to a woman called Maria Miloslavskaya. And she had two surviving sons, lots of daughters and two surviving sons. And one is called Fedor and he's 11 years old and he is bright, bright and a nice chap, but he's very sickly.

14:49and the other one is called Ivan who is five and who is he's kind of half blind he's got a very serious speech impediment he's like Claudius only yeah certainly more so anyway their mother Maria Miloslavskaya had died and Alexis had to choose another bride and the rules are she has to be orthodox so it basically has to be Russian and they had this they would always have a kind of bridal show of candidates so these women would be from the the noble families the boyar families would be brought to the court and they'd have to prove their virginity. And some of them might even be serfs, isn't that right?

15:24That's right, yeah. It's the whole spread. But am I also right that actually this is all a bit of a sham? Yes. Because the Tsar has already decided who he wants. He has. It's been a real kind of coup de foudre. It hasn't. Well, so basically it's very Henry VIII. His chief minister, who's a guy called Artemon Matveev, has pushed forward his ward, who is called Natalia Naryshkina, now she's supposedly very beautiful very dark very sort of demure and Alexis took a massive shine to her she's Peter the Great's mother so they they get married and obviously you know this is brilliant news for the chief minister who's Matt Vaev who is a really interesting character and it's that's his surname isn't it he's not called Matt no he's not called Matt Vaev his name is Artemon Matt Vaev exactly he's interesting because he really anticipates Peter because he is a meritocrat and a modernizer.

16:19He's the son of a diplomat. He collects books. He has his own laboratory and his own private theater. He's really interested in kind of Western innovations. And what is more, he is married to somebody from our own island. So his wife is called Mary Hamilton, and she is the daughter of a Scottish royalist who fled abroad after the execution of Charles I. Because although the Russians are quite xenophobic, Yeah. The Tsar himself has a lot of sympathy for exiles from the civil wars in Britain, doesn't he? Because he's absolutely appalled that an anointed king has had his head chopped off. Exactly.

16:54And actually, so that story about the chief minister, Matt Vaev, being married to this woman tells a wider story. So during the 17th century, merchants and diplomats have been arriving in Russia in ever greater numbers. And Alexis had established a segregated quarter outside Moscow, which comes to be known as the German suburb. Because they think all foreigners basically are Germans. Is that right? Yes, exactly. And they say all these Germans, whether they be Dutch, Scottish, English or whatever, or indeed German, they have to go and live there. There's about 3 ,000 people there. And there they're allowed to keep up.

17:29I guess it's a bit like living in one of those compounds in the Middle East, you know, in Saudi Arabia. or something exactly there they can put on plays they can smoke tobacco which is disapproved of in russia they can mix with women again which is the mixing of the of the sexist is disapproved of in russia and we know that their influence is spreading outside the people are copying them because when peter was three years old alexis had to give a rollicking to his courtiers and said to them you know stop adopting german customs stop cutting your hair and wearing hats of foreign design so the russians take all this stuff which seems so comical they take it incredibly seriously if you turned up smoking and wearing a foreign hat you would be in enormous trouble with the czar but also with the orthodox church because for complicated reasons i'm not entirely sure of they've essentially see that smoking as and and foreign hats as um anathema to god yeah that's literally yes or indeed being clean shaven so yeah worse yeah that would be regarded as very poor behavior now there's there are hints that peter's mother natalia also likes this fascination with western habits that she's probably got this from matveev because she's been spending so much time in his house so she clearly doesn't really like the atmosphere of the kremlin which is all bells incense beards you know sort of patriarchs yeah dark corridors so as pete when peter's a little boy he and his mother spend most of their time outside the city and we only have a couple of kind of glimpses of him there's a story about him riding with some dwarfs on a coach i mean there are a lot of dwarfs in in this story but then about the first of many bombshells in this story um his father catches a chill and dies at the age of 47 in 1676 so that's what was peter he's about three and a half something like that um and he has succeeded by the older of peter's two half brothers to this bloke Fedor who's now 14 and he is so sickly that he had to be carried to his own coronation so that's actually really bad news you would think for Natalia and for Peter because the old family the previous wife's family are now in the driving seat the Miloslavskis and running through this story is a sort of rivalry between these two clans the Miloslavskis who were the first wife's family and Natalia's family who are the Narishkins and and Matt so Matt Vaev he, the chief minister he is stripped of all his property he's arrested and he's sent to an obscure town in the Arctic Circle oh god so that's bad news for him so now Peter sort of disappears from sight inside the Kremlin it's not that bad Fedor is actually his godfather and is actually quite nice to him and makes sure he's educated and all this sort of thing so he's not going all suetonious no no no no on his kind of rival no not at all on his little half brothers I think the sort of so some of these people you think oh they must be the most awful butchers and kind of callous, cruel.

20:28This is not the case at all. So Fedor is quite nice to Peter. And he's a little bit of a reformer, Fedor. But he dies young as well. So he rules for six years and then he dies. And now we have a big succession crisis. So it's 1682. Peter is 10 years old. He's this big, big boy, huge and bright. But he's only a child, of course. And he has one remaining half-brother, who is Ivan, who is 16 years old. he can't walk he can't see he speaks only with difficulty so he's also not a he's not an outstanding candidate and there are two camps basically there's the miloslavskis who want ivan and there's the narishkins who want peter and there's great arguments there's actually arguments around fedor's deathbed and the patriarch goes out onto the red staircase and he says to the crowd who do you want to rule do you want Ivan Alexievich or do you want Peter Alexievich son of Alexis and the crowd shout for Peter oh we want Peter the Patriot says brilliant he goes back inside he kneels before the 10 year old Peter and says will you be a czar with your mother Natalia as the regent yes brilliant get that bloke back from the Arctic Circle Matt yeah Matt Vaev get him back he can be chief minister again so it all looks great for Peter okay he's 10 but you know everything has gone his way what could possibly go wrong dominic there is a twist there is a an extraordinary twist so i mentioned offhand that peter's father's first wife maria milislovskaya had had a lot of daughters now normally these daughters were just shoved into a place in the palace called the terrem like the kind of harem and never let out again princesses but there's one of them who is clearly a really exceptional woman she's called Sophia she's 20 almost 25 she's very clever she's very brave she had been educated alongside her brother Fedor which is very unusual and when Fedor was our she had gone to his council meetings she'd talked to his ministers I mean this is really exceptional isn't it because it is hard to overemphasize how chauvinist Russian political culture is.

22:50Exactly. Extraordinary details about how when a woman is married, the father will hand over a whip to the man who's marrying her. Yeah, now you're in charge. Your turn. Yeah, I know. It's terrible. So from Sevilla's point of view, the accession of Peter, her half-brother, that's terrible news. Like she's going to be shoved into this sort of corner of the palace and never come out again. And she's a spirited... Yeah, who's been attending the council and stuff. Right. So kind of death. And so she basically says to the patriarch, what? At least have joint monarchs, Peter and my brother Ivan, because if you don't, you know, that's the end of me kind of thing.

23:29So she makes a massive spectacle of herself. She goes to Fedor's funeral. She breaks down in tears very conspicuously. She says, Fedor was actually poisoned. My sisters and I are in danger for our lives, all of this kind of thing. So she's sort of reminding everybody that she's still there. But what's crucial is that she has very powerful allies. And these allies are effectively the Praetorian Guard of Moscow, who are the Streltsi. And the Streltsi are Russia's first ever professional kind of standing army. They were founded by Ivan the Terrible a century earlier. There's 22 regiments of them.

24:07They're musketeers and pikemen. And they're stationed in Moscow. They're stationed in Moscow. they wear the most amazing outfits. They have these kind of long... They wear caftans, don't they? Caftans, yeah. And yellow boots and kind of fur hats and stuff. They look brilliant. You see, fur hats. I would be menaced by a man in a fur hat. Would you? And yellow boots. Yellow boots, but a caftan. Yeah. It's a bit Narnia, I think. Yeah. It's summer of love, isn't it? It is. That's exactly what it is. It's actually San Francisco in 1967. They basically become a hereditary caste. So you pass down your place in the Straltze from father to son.

24:48But the Straltze are always falling out among themselves. The officers treat their men like absolute dirt. And what is more, the officers get the men to basically do things like dig their gardens for them and kind of do odd jobs. And the men hate doing that. So by coincidence, while Fedor has been dying, there's been a mutiny among some of the Straltze. they're sort of pikemen and musketeers they accuse their officers of abusing them stealing their money and sofia and her allies use this they're like brilliant we can use this we can use these mutineers and they go to the strol so they they clearly spread rumors among them they say listen fedor was poisoned by foreign doctors working for the narishkins if peter becomes czar then And foreigners will be given all the commands in the army and orthodoxy will be undermined.

25:38And actually Natalia, Peter's mother, is planning a massive crackdown against you, against the Streltsy. So you should do something about this. So this clearly begins to seep into the Streltsy's imagination. And then the denouement comes on the morning of the 15th of May. So two of Sophia's mates, her sort of aristocratic mates, ride into the Streltsy quarter of Moscow. and they say the Norishkins are taking over the Kremlin. They have murdered Ivan, which is actually not true. They're going to kill the whole royal family quickly to the Kremlin, to arms. And the Streltsy rush out of bed. They put on their armor.

26:16They get their weapons and they march into the center of Moscow. Their banners flying and their drums beating and they're shouting, we're going to the Kremlin, we're going to the Kremlin, we're going to kill the traitors. They get to the Kremlin. The guards at the Kremlin let them in and they swarm into Cathedral Square, which is in front of this palace with the red staircase. And they're shouting, this is basically a mob of men waving pikes and shouting, give us the Norishkins, give us Matveev, death to the traitors, death to the foreigners, all this sort of thing. Inside, Natalia, Peter's mother, Peter, this guy, Matveev, they're all there.

26:50Oh gosh, what are we going to do? And Matveev says to Natalia, look, you have to calm them down. You have to tell them this is all nonsense. Go out onto the red staircase, take the two boys, Ivan and Peter, Show them to the strel seat. So Dominic, this is quite like Marie Antoinette confronted by the women from Paris. It's exactly what it is. It's exactly, I was thinking that myself. Natalia shows tremendous courage. She takes the two boys, 16-year-old Ivan who can barely walk. And he's meant to be dead. He's meant to be dead, but he's not dead. She takes them out onto the staircase. There's priests and kind of the boyars, noblemen behind her.

27:25and below there's this massive mob of men in yellow boots yeah waving their pikes and shouting for her blood and she says here are the czar and the czar of it there are no traitors you have been deceived and some of the strults he don't believe when they go up the stairs they go right up to they say are you really ivan alexievich and he says yes i am i am kind of thing and they're like hmm and then eventually they go back down the stairs matt feyer steps forward he's the chief minister and he says look chaps you've been misled this is all a massive misunderstanding um i will give you all a pardon you should go home and do you know what it works they they seem to listen he says brilliant he goes back inside but dominie do you know what a roman emperor would have done that situation he would have given them a massive bung yeah he would he'd give them a large amount of money so that's where i think matt went wrong well and also what goes wrong now is one of their commanders steps out onto the red staircase so one of the nobles who's like normally in charge of them who's a guy called prince michael dolgoruki and he says well you've been told now you've disgraced yourselves you've let yourselves down you're at musco down you've let the good name of the strelzi down go back home to your barracks and if you don't do as you're told i will flog you and this is very very this is a foolish move from prince dolgoruki because when the strelzi hear this they say what oh actually we're not gonna no forget it the mootin is back on they charge up the stairs they grab him and they throw this bloke over the balustrade onto the pikes wow of the men below so he's impaled on the pikes well that's him told yeah now there's a wonderful book about peter the great by robert k massey and i've had to restrain myself from just quoting enormous chunks but it's one of my he really goes for it in this passage.

29:18He says, the crowd roared its approval, shouting cut him to pieces. Within a few seconds the quivering body was butchered bespattering everyone around with blood. That's my kind of prose. This is just the beginning. So the Strelts now go absolutely berserk. They charge up the stairs, they've drawn their weapons, they burst him. The first person they see is Matvejev who is stunned to see them because he thought everything had passed off successfully. He sorted it out. He's chatting to Natalia, who's still holding the hands of the two boys. They grab Matvejev. They drag him outside. He's kicking and screaming.

29:48They throw him over the balustrade too, onto the waiting halberd points. And he is hacked to pieces too. So the square is covered with the bloodied pieces of Prince Dolgoruky and this bloke, the chief minister. And now the Streltsy are like, well, in for a penny, in for a pound. So now they really kind of turn it up to 11. And what about Natalia and Peter and Ivan? Well, she's there quivering with the two boys while the Streltsy are charging into the palace around them. They're basically in a corner, kind of sobbing, terrified. And the weird thing is that they're almost ignored. The Streltsy are just like, let's go through the palace and kill everybody.

30:23So they round up. They do what you would always do in this situation. I think you round up the dwarves. They round up the court dwarves. And they say to the dwarves, if you don't tell us where the Nurishkin family are, all the members of the Nurishkin clan, we will kill you. so the dwarves rather let that good name of dwarves down i think because they do betray a lot of the norishkins no but i think you're being very harsh there on the dwarves i mean what would you do in that situation i'd have thrown my lot in with the strultzy hours before i think it's fair to say yeah i would so the strultzy are kind of rampaging through the palace they're thrusting pikes into the cupboards and stuff to try in case there's anyone hiding there to quote Robert K.

31:04Massey again. Those who were caught were dragged to the red staircase and thrown over the balustrade. Their bodies were dragged from the Kremlin through the Spassky Gate into Red Square, where they were tossed onto a growing pyramid of dismembered human parts. So this goes on all afternoon. They're just killing dozens of people. And at nightfall, at last, the Strelts get tired. It's quite tiring work, I think, hacking people to pieces with a pike or something. So they get tired and the violence begins to die down. But, Tom, the whole crisis is far from over and we'll find out what happens next after the break.

31:41Thrilling. So if you want more violence, more bits of people being chopped into pieces, don't go away.