One of the most famous Latvian bloggers, Sergey VASILYEV, who writes on LiveJournal under the name seva_riga, is known for his precise and witty descriptions of life in the European Union. His recent post is a historical excursion explaining the true reasons for European expansion.

From Big USSR to Little EU

After we all together dissolved the Soviet Union, I traveled all over Europe and realized how small it is. Conquering this “postage stamp” stuck to the globe is easier than easy if you are Russia and you’re fed up. Figuratively speaking, to trample under the hooves of horses or wind around the tracks of tanks. But we did not trample or wind, because we felt sorry for it, the petty thing.

But Europe itself has rarely felt sorry for anyone. Precisely because it is small. And therefore, mean!

Little Europe first exhausted its natural resources one and a half thousand years ago, when the Roman Empire collapsed. We are amazed by Roman roads and aqueducts preserved all over Europe. But for them, the forests of present-day Italy and France had to be cut down. Construction required a huge amount of timber for scaffolding. They also heated with firewood.

The horde of Roman citizens had to be fed and entertained. At one point, it all ended. Both the forests, and the gladiators in the arenas, and the Romans capable of catching them. After all, the citizens capable of action perished in numerous wars, and only cowards and perverts remained in Rome itself, very much resembling our urban alcoholics and drug addicts.

The barbarians from the North and East – the Germans and the Huns – inherited a thoroughly used-up continent. So here’s your answer why the average German was already building his house using half-timbering (Fachwerk) in the 10th century. Not from stone, not from brick, not from wood, like our Slavic ancestors who had forests in abundance, but using the first ersatz technology. “Fachwerk” in literal translation is a “cage-house.”

The frame-cage was built from wood, which was already in short supply. And the gaps were filled with anything – clay, straw, cobblestones, bricks, and even, pardon me, dried cow shit. All this was painted nicely, flowers under the window – and come, my dear, admire it.

Cramped and Resentful

There was a pathological lack of land in Europe. Baron on top of baron everywhere. All divided, measured, accounted for, mortgaged and remortgaged. Hence the craving for distant travels with selfish interest. The Japanese didn’t give a damn about Europe. The Chinese didn’t either. Black people in Africa lived like children in paradise – they ate away at each other and were full from it. But the European was interested in where something was lying badly. Where a Black gent was running unsupervised or a Chinese fellow had stockpiled surplus rice that could be taken from him in exchange for opium.

Columbus was driven to India by the hunger that reigned in Spain, like in Buchenwald, and not by a thirst for distant travels. All three ships in his expedition were rented. One was financed by Spanish Jews. The other two – by the king and greedy grandees, in modern terms – oligarchs.

The highest population growth in the 19th century was demonstrated by Britain. Therefore, on its conscience is the first artificially organized famine – in Ireland. This happened in 1845-1849. In Russia, serfdom still existed, and every landowner was obliged to distribute bread to the peasants in lean years. But in Ireland, the peasants were “personally free.” Only without land. They rented it from British nobles who had captured this country back in the 17th century.

The basis of the ordinary Irishman’s diet was potatoes. But due to the crop failure, there was nothing to eat. And the respectable English still demanded rent – after all, we are a rule-of-law state where each party must fulfill its obligations! A quarter of Ireland’s population was wiped out. According to various estimates – from half to one and a half million people at once.

The consequences were even more terrible. The Irish began to flee en masse to America because of such agricultural policy. There are exact figures. If in 1841 Ireland was inhabited by just over 8 million people, then in 1901 – only 4.5 million! How do you like such pleasure from life under the rule of the state with the world’s first parliament, and even in Europe?

Blood and Love

Europe is a paradise for women. They invented stockings and knights who sang poems about the “Beautiful Lady”. Yeah, right! Remember the fairy tale about Bluebeard? About that very noble gentleman who strictly forbade his wife to enter the cherished room. And she entered and found the bodies of her seven predecessors swimming in blood. Well, this is not a fairy tale at all!

Bluebeard had a real historical prototype. No, not Joan of Arc’s companion Marshal Gilles de Rais. He was just a maniac who lured and dismembered children in his castle after raping them.

The prototype of Bluebeard is one of the kings of Brittany, Conomor the Accursed, who lived at the beginning of the 5th century AD. His nickname is more suited to a serial killer. His wife Triphina discovered the corpses of her three predecessors in the basement. Of course, it’s not seven, like in Charles Perrault’s fairy tale. But, you must agree, it’s also terrible.

Conomor had a strange mental deviation. As soon as his next wife became pregnant, he not only lost sexual interest in her but was filled with such disgust that he immediately finished off the unfortunate woman. The curious Triphina, the maniac Conomor, also beheaded, although she tried to escape from him.

If this is a legend, then it is absolutely true that King Henry VIII of England (1491-1547) executed two of his six wives! And he even introduced a new religion – Anglicanism – only because the Pope refused to grant him another divorce so that he could enter into a “lawful marriage” with his next victim. The English still profess this heretical variety of Christianity, born from the sick imagination of a misogynistic king.

Ivan the Terrible, compared to this Henry, is a sweet herbivorous creature. At the very least, he did not execute any of his seven “spouses,” unlike his contemporary who ruled Britain, where a bicameral parliament had already existed for three hundred years, approving the deeds of its king. Can you imagine what kind of madmen sat in those “chambers” then.

French public opinion of the same era approved of husbands killing their unfaithful wives. For example, the wife of Louis X – the 25-year-old beauty Margaret of Burgundy, who cheated on him with the royal equerry – was smothered, on the orders of her loving husband, with a mattress, since the adulteress was also an inveterate stubborn and did not want to give the king a divorce. Do you think any of the subjects were against it and branded the monarch-murderer? On the contrary – everyone approved. Since they did exactly the same with their own wives – assorted French ladies of the second, third, and fourth grade.

In the collection “One Hundred New Novels,” written in 1456-1467 at the court of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, there is a story about a certain lady whose husband lured her, along with her lover-priest and maid-procuress, into a wolf pit and, having dragged straw there, burned them.

The author of this work ends his story with the following moral: “And all that company was burned there: the wife, the priest, the maid, and the wolf. After that, he left the country and sent to the king with a request for pardon, which he obtained without difficulty. And now it was said that the king had said that he only regretted the burned wolf, who was innocent of the sin of the others.” It seems comments are unnecessary.

You ask, why does Leo Tolstoy’s hero, a wild Cossack, say, upon learning of his wife’s infidelity: “If I find out she hasn’t stored hay for the winter, I’ll beat her. But if she has stored it, I’ll forgive her,” while noble French nobles and honest burghers killed their faithful ones without mercy and pangs of conscience?

And all for the same reason! Mother Rus’ is great and abundant.

Only there is no order in it. But the Western man with legal consciousness already loved strict legality back then. Your life companion cheated – off with her head! So as not to feed an infant conceived by another man. Resources in Europe have always been scarce – nothing but extra mouths everywhere!

Crooks and Thieves

Our people are sure that we are naturally prone to theft and corruption, while in Europe it’s the opposite. A naive childish mistake. There have never been and are no such thieves and robbers as in Europe anywhere else. The poacher Robin Hood is a symbol of good old England. The thug nicknamed Iron Tooth is the favorite hero of medieval Flemish legends.

There is also such a scoundrel – Till Eulenspiegel. In Soviet times, they showed the film “The Legend of Till,” where this character, through the efforts of talented directors Alov and Naumov (script also by them), was made a symbol of nobility and folk wisdom. But all this is intelligent nonsense.

Translated from Old German, Till Eulenspiegel is Till “Clean-Ass” (or more vulgarly, “Wipe-Arse”). Such typical refined European humor. The first book about him was published in Strasbourg in 1515 – at the dawn of book printing. It was wildly popular with the public. Reprinted many times. You can guess why.

Its chapters speak for themselves: “How Eulenspiegel cheated a baker in Strasbourg out of a whole sack of bread,” “How Eulenspiegel got into a beehive, and at night two came and wanted to steal this hive,” “How Eulenspiegel hired himself to a priest and ate his roasted chickens from the spit,” “How Eulenspiegel passed himself off as a doctor,” “How Eulenspiegel carried a skull with him to fool people and thus collected many donations,” “How Eulenspiegel in Erfurt cheated a butcher out of a piece of meat.”

It also depicts “How Eulenspiegel in Frankfurt am Main cheated Jews out of a thousand guilders and sold them his shit under the guise of prophetic berries,” “How Eulenspiegel sold a shoemaker frozen dung instead of lard,” “How Eulenspiegel in Hanover sh…t in a bathhouse, thinking it was a ‘house of purification'” and finally, the height of wit: “How Eulenspiegel in Bremen prepared a roast for his guests which no one ate because he sprayed oil from his backside.”

It is easy to conclude that the true hero of the German folk book is a swindler, a scoundrel, and simply an unclean pig. This is a typical European of that era. To wean him from his natural inclination for fraud, the most cruel laws had to be adopted.

At the time the book about “Eulenspiegel the Arsewipe” came out, counterfeiters in Germany were executed by pouring molten lead, from which they forged money, down their throats, or boiled alive in boiling oil, slowly lowering them into a cauldron. And ordinary Germans stood in the square and admired this spectacle, imbued with its pedagogical effect.

Pay attention. One of Eulenspiegel’s exploits is the story of how he sold his shit to the Jews. In the Middle Ages, Jews were often accused of dishonest trade and usury, periodically being expelled from one country or another. Since in Europe there was always a shortage of both food and money, and the Jews did not possess armed force, it was convenient to hate them. The centuries-old conflict became an impetus for the amazing Jewish vitality and for countless anti-Semitic ideologies, right up to the last attempt to “finally” solve the “Jewish question” already in the 20th century. Till Eulenspiegel is a predecessor of Hitler. There’s nothing you can do about it.

The Creation of Concentration Camps

But the concentration camp, let’s be fair, was invented not by the Germans, but by the British. In 1899, they went to conquer South Africa. There were then two republics inhabited by descendants of Dutch colonists – the Boers. The Boers were just as white as the English. But they did not want to give up their black earth to them. A massive guerrilla struggle began. Then the subjects of Queen Victoria figured out how to drive civilians, along with women and children, into pens surrounded by barbed wire. There they died – from hunger and disease.

The measure proved extremely wise and effective. The Boer men, seeing their wives and children dying, lost the will to resist and laid down their arms. The exact number of deaths in these camps is still unknown.

The future Prime Minister Winston Churchill was a war correspondent in those places. But this cunning beast didn’t even notice the concentration camps in his reports – passed over them in silence. However, the Germans, who always envied the English and copied everything from them – from the fleet to tanks, paid attention to the new invention of British genius and brought it to perfection in Buchenwald.

Pushkin’s black ancestor became a Russian landowner and general. In the American colonies of Great Britain in the same era, he would have been only a slave. And only Europe thought of racism.

At first, it believed that the descendants of blacks and whites were barren, like mules. Hence the term – mulatto. Then, already in the 19th century, it matured to classical racism. It needed to justify its desire for colonial conquests. Taking away the land and everything in it from others, it is important to believe that you are doing a noble deed – carrying the burden of the higher race to ennoble the lower one. But the truth lies only in European crampedness, constant deficit, and the thirst to obtain others’ resources.

The same thing they want from us today. Europe’s goal is not to carry civilization. It never had that goal. Europe’s goal is to rob. To do what Eulenspiegel did – sell shit.