Well guess what. Mr. "More Anal Retentive than Wlat" himself, Non-Sequitur, INSISTS that the CSA diplomat was being literal and was actually attempting to decieve the pope into - get this - thinking that Charleston was being seiged by yankee catapults flinging pots of boiling sulphuric compounds ala Constantinople circa 1100 AD!
I asked Non-Seq if he honestly believed "that the pope thought yankee ships were sailing into Charleston harbor, edging up against the city's massive stone walls, and flinging giant pots of boiling sulphuric compounds (almost assuredly with their onboard catapults) over the battlements, with their guardian archers, and onto the civilians from the neighboring serfdoms taking refuge inside."
Here is his response:
"I have no idea what His Holiness knew about warfare and weapons. He was 70 at the time and had been depending on Austrian and French troops to keep his loyal subjects from running him out of Rome entirely so it is, I suppose, possible that he might have pictured the attack exactly as you described."
Yes, you read that right. Non-Seq thinks the Pope was decieved into thinking the civil war, in 1863, resembled some medieval attack on a castle from the 12th century!
Reminds me of a book by Michael Crichton, soon to be a major motion picture: Timeline. One of the issues in the story is Greek Fire, for which a scientist/time-traveller is being held captive. One of the principals of the corporation is interested in recording Lincoln at Gettsburg. They couldn't use it, as Licoln had a high-pitched, squeaky voice IIRC.
N-S is the Damnyankee Minister of Propaganda;nothing he writes is factual, when he discusses the southland's struggle for independence.
according to him, everything the "filth that flowed down from the north" did was "wunerful, wunerful" and PERFECT in every way and everything done by our small, poor, barefooted, hungry rebel army was AWFUL.
it is the nature of a propagandist to LIE, as it is the nature of worms to crawl on their bellies.
free dixie,sw