--- joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> As I have written before, Romania has a long,
> pathetic history of
> subjection and suffers from all the deformities that
> this engenders.
>
> "The bowed head is not cut by the sword."
>
> That is what passes for wisdom in Romania. Not a
> country of cossaks.
>
Well, there was Vlad Tepes, a guy who I'm starting to like more and more. He kicked a lot of slave-mongering Ottoman butt.
I'm currently on kind of an anti-Ottoman Empire kick, given that I am reading Hugh Barnes' book on Putin's African great-grandfather, _The Moor of Petersburg_ (Barnes speculates he was from what is now Chad). Since he was acquired through the Ottoman slave trade, it gets into them a lot. What a bunch of evil beeyatches. And poor Africa, trapped between them and the European slavers.
Indeed the attempt on the part of the Sultan to subjugate the Cossacks was one of the less-glorious episodes of Ottoman history, as in, they got their asses kicked. Must have been a bummer losing to a bunch of ex-serfs. The famous Letter to the Sultan they wrote has got to be one of history's greatest-ever "Fuck You's". Ah, here it is. This rocks:
Sultan Mahmud IV to the Zaporogian Cossacks:
As the Sultan; son of Muhammad; brother of the sun and
moon; grandson and viceroy of God; ruler of the kingdoms of Macedonia, Babylon, Jerusalem, Upper and Lower Egypt; emperor of emperors; sovereign of sovereigns; extraordinary knight, never defeated; steadfast guardian of the tomb of Jesus Christ; trustee chosen by God himself; the hope and comfort of Muslims; confounder and great defender of Christians -- I command you, the Zaporogian Cossacks, to submit to me voluntarily and without any resistance, and to desist from troubling me with your attacks. --Turkish Sultan Mahmud IV
Answer of the Cossacks of the Dnieper to the Sultan of Turkey
Thou Turkish Satan, brother and companion to the accursed Devil, and companion to Lucifer himself, Greetings!
What the hell kind of noble knight art thou? The Devil
voids, and thy army devours. Never wilt thou be fit to have the sons of Christ under thee: thy army we fear not, and by land and on sea we will do battle against thee. Thou scullion of Babylon, thou wheelwright of Macedonia, thou beer-brewer of Jerusalem, thou goat-flayer of Alexandria, thou swineherd of Egypt, both the Greater and the Lesser, thou sow of Armenia, thou goat of Tartary, thou hangman of Kamenetz, thou evildoer of Podoliansk, thou grandson of the Devil himself, thou great silly oaf of all the world and of the netherworld and, before our God, a blockhead, a swine's snout, a mare's cunt, a butcher's cur, an unbaptized brow, May the Devil take thee! That is what the Kozaks have to say to thee, thou basest-born of runts! Unfit art thou to lord it over true Christians! The date we write not for no calendar have we got; the
moon is in the sky, the year is in a book, and the day is the same with us here as with thee over there, and thou canst kiss us thou knowest where!
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