Alucard vs Lasombra Elder

[Archaic`]

Full-power Alucard is strong enough to toast cities with a thought.

What exactly did he do to give you the impression that he had this power? With enough time and with his powers unlocked, perhaps he could destroy a city, but with a thought? I don't really think so.

toasted a combined ancient Vampire and superdemon combined into one.

I'm not sure a "dead" Egyptian God quite qualifies as a "superdemon". It'd be quite difficult to quantify the combined power of Incognito/Set.

You can knock one into ther next county, but killing them requires an attack to which thety are vulnerable - although Alucard can dust weak vampires with a wave of his hand [through their hearts].

That's no special power of his. The gloves are blessed weapons, just like his bullets.

In any event, Alucard appears to have some powerful sort of faith. He carries around blessed bullets and has written on his gun "Jesus Christ is in Heaven Now".

It's true that he serves the Church of England's Knights, but there's no specific evidence to show that he personally has such faith.


While it's true that Arucard defeated a (Demi?)god at the end of the Anime (A feat which he has never managed in the as yet unfinished Manga I should note, where the entire Incognito story line never happens), that may be less a reflection of Arucard's power, and more a reflection of the lack of power of Incognito/Set. Set had been dead a long time. It's quite possible that the power he granted Incognito wasn't as great as we might otherwise have thought, especially when Arucard defeated him so easily with the Silver Stake.

[Smiling Bandit]

That's no special power of his. The gloves are blessed weapons, just like his bullets.

Good point, I hadn't considered that. I figured that vapping the Vamp's heart would do the trick for those weak newly-made undead.

While it's true that Arucard defeated a (Demi?)god at the end of the Anime (A feat which he has never managed in the as yet unfinished Manga I should note, where the entire Incognito story line never happens), that may be less a reflection of Arucard's power, and more a reflection of the lack of power of Incognito/Set. Set had been dead a long time. It's quite possible that the power he granted Incognito wasn't as great as we might otherwise have thought, especially when Arucard defeated him so easily with the Silver Stake.

As some of them pointed out, Set was a giant serpent of raw power and flung himself rather quickly at ALucard, who simply stopepd the sumb**** like it was nothing. Alucard's physical strength alone could trash a whole city. I'm also not certain Set was really dead, but simply without followers. I don't believe they said he was dead in the anime.

I was really exaggrerating with the "as a thought" remark, but the point is that Alucard could blow away all of civilization if he chose to. It mgiht take a him a few minutes for each city, but Incognito/Set was almost ready to shake down London a few minutes after he "killed" Alucard. Even cain desn't have that power - at least, not in any way that anyone ever wrote. Sure, he's got tenth-level disciplines, but in many cases thoses aren't all that amazing. And that assumes he has disciplines developed after his slumber started.

[Stormbringer]

That's no special power of his. The gloves are blessed weapons, just like his bullets.

They can't be blessed weapons or they would be harming Alucard as he was wearing them.

[white_rabbit]

And Alucard gets coolness points for sodimizing his opponents.

I hope this is a joke of some kind, otherwise Im not buying anymore Hellsing dvds.

[Stormbringer]

And Alucard gets coolness points for sodimizing his opponents.

I hope this is a joke of some kind, otherwise Im not buying anymore Hellsing dvds.

I assure you, there's no sodomy in Hellsing.

[Tatterdemalion]

Based on what evidence, exactly? Caine is old beyond belief, and Antes are at least ten thousand years old, minimum. Alucard is maybe 500-600 years old, from memory, even if he has been augmented.

-Taking into account all the posts against this me on this-

I stand by my statement. Full-power Alucard is strong enough to toast cities with a thought. Taking out Gangrel would be hard for getting through all that armor, but I believe Alucard can eventually do it. A second gen - and remember - they all died - would be tougher, but no impossible.

Cain is a major wildcard, but he;s been sleeping for a very long time and isn't quite himself. There aren't any Vampires in WoD tough enough to kill him anymore, but I'm not so sure Alucard couldn't. With no restrictions on his power, he came back from the dead (Leading to some question of whether one truly CAN kill him!) and toasted a combined ancient Vampire and superdemon combined into one. And he didn't even break a sweat doing it. That was not the limit of his power - not by far. Heck, he created a giant magic circle simply by waking up his full power. I don't think many of Cain's disciplines would even affect Alucard.

And as Alucard's age isn't as important. I don't think a strict comparison based on WoD standards is even relevant. regardless, Hellsing vamps seem to be easily killable only by certain forms of attack. You can knock one into ther next county, but killing them requires an attack to which thety are vulnerable - although Alucard can dust weak vampires with a wave of his hand [through their hearts].

In any event, Alucard appears to have some powerful sort of faith. He carries around blessed bullets and has written on his gun "Jesus Christ is in Heaven Now".

I haven't seen enough of Hellsing to truly gauge the upper limits of Alucards powers, but its not looking good for him. Not at all.

Trust me - at the end of this, he basically turns into a demigod and begins a battle with enough power to easily blow away London.

[Dark Hellion]

At the end of the series, I am pretty sure that Incognito has that silver stake shoved up his ass.
But I may just be crazy.

[Tatterdemalion]

Crap! The daily back up f***ed my entire message up, if some kindly Mod could see fit to delete my last post I'd be much obliged, in any case here's my actual post:

I stand by my statement. Full-power Alucard is strong enough to toast cities with a thought. Taking out Gangrel would be hard for getting through all that armor, but I believe Alucard can eventually do it. A second gen - and remember - they all died - would be tougher, but no impossible.

Going by Ravnos, Fortitude 10 took two magically enhanced nukes and the direct light of four suns to do penetrate and do enough damage to kill Ravnos off. I haven't really seen enough of Hellsing to comment upon Alucards powers but can he match that?

Incidentily how much sunlight can Alucard take? From what I remember the Gangrel ante can use high-level Protean to transform into a minature sun. All I'm saying is don't underestimate third generation vampires, Tzimisce could probably kick Alucards butt if he's anything short of a true immortal, and if Alucards not immune to mind-fucking through dominate/presence then even our Lasombra Meth could probably make him his bitch.

Whatever, I really ought to try and get hold of Hellsing sometime.

Oh and incidentily, here'sa very amusing URL for V:tM fans with only a vague relation to the actual topic at hand: http://www.tzimisce.net/humor/antefight.php

[LadyTevar]

Well... since no one's volunteering the information... *pulls out her 1st Ed. copy of "The Player's Guide to the Sabbat"*

A Losambra has the following Disclipines: Potence, Dominate, and Obtenebration.

Potence raises the possessor's strength beyond that see in normal Vampires. Forget tossing cars, a Vampire with middle levels of this power can toss buses. Higher levels can crush solid metal with minimal effort.

Dominate is the classic Jedi Mind Trick for Vampires, and is what makes all those lovely young movie ladies into Vampiric slaves. The abilities range from making someone forget what happened to them, to planting false memories, all the way up to taking control of the victim's body. Of course, the stronger the victim's will, the harder it is to control and influence them.

Obtenebration. The power of Shadow and the Abyss. This power can evoke a room in complete sound-dampening shadow to blind opponents completely, and not even night-vision goggles can aid.
Then, the Vampire can call up multiple shadowy images to confuse the opponent, as well as form tendrils of solid shadow to attack and grapple, or a dark ShadowSelf that can drain a victim it envelops completely of blood in minutes.
The Vampire can turn themself into a Shadow, able to slither thru tiny cracks, immune to physical harm although Sunlight and Fire harm them still, or animate their own shadow as a humonculus (think of Dracula's shadow in BramStoker's Dracula).
Finally, at the ultimate levels, this power can surround a victim with impenetrable darkness so solid that a mortal will suffocate, or call forth Abyssmal darkness to swallow the victim whole, removing them from this world... dead or alive (similar to Moroku's WindTunnel from Inu-Yasha manga/anime).

Losambra are some of the hardest vampires to try and kill in WoD. They are the leaders of the Sabbat: a sect that truly lives by the rule "Only the Strong Survive".
The smart ones learn quickly to trade favors in order to learn Disclipines from other clans such as Fortitude, Celerity, and even Thaumaturgy. This gives them toughness, speed, and nasty magical spells and rituals to use against opponents.
Losombra also learn the fine art of manipulation of allies and enemies alike in order to improve their standing within the sect. Any Losombra that has survived Sabbath in-fighting and made Elder status is a dangerous foe indeed.

[Stormbringer]

Tatterdemalion

We're talkin about a methuselah, not the Antedeluvian.


And for sun light, at the minimum it's evening (before the sun's gone down) and light overcast.

[Tasoth]

[Aye, there be spoilers below.......]









In the final showdown of the anime, arucard does bite it but then begins drawing on the accumulated spilt blood of the prisoners of the tower of london before treating cognito/set like an unwanted step child. So the question is: Are arucards powers directly proportional to the amount of blood he's ingested? he was imprisoned in the hellsing basement and apparently even his full powers could not free him, so he withered to a desecated husk.

[Stormbringer]

From all evidence, no. The blood was Alucard. It's how he reforms after getting chopped up. Kind of like a bloody T-1000

[Tatterdemalion]

Sorry, I was addressing Smiling Bandits claim that Alucard could kill Gangrel, I should have tagged it as such, but I had to re-write my entire message in about 30 seconds.

[Connor MacLeod]

That's no special power of his. The gloves are blessed weapons, just like his bullets.

According to what source, pray tell? The symbol on his gloves is definitely not a Christian one. Most sources I can find on the web place it as an Egyptian one (although the star itself is a pentegram, a symbol of binding and protection.)

The reason for his punchign through hearts is due to his own innate abilities (IE strength). HE cannot be in contact with any blessed or silver objects on his own (obviously bullets in his gun or ammo clip do not count.) This would include blessed gloves.

[Connor MacLeod]

[Aye, there be spoilers below.......]









In the final showdown of the anime, arucard does bite it but then begins drawing on the accumulated spilt blood of the prisoners of the tower of london before treating cognito/set like an unwanted step child. So the question is: Are arucards powers directly proportional to the amount of blood he's ingested? he was imprisoned in the hellsing basement and apparently even his full powers could not free him, so he withered to a desecated husk.

Vampires derive strength from blood (or more properly endurance/sustenance.) Much like a human who is starved or deprived of water, vampires will weaken if they do not feed (EG Seras) Alucard's abilities are "fixed", but lack of blood can make him weaker. (he seems to prefer vampiric blood, incidentally. He has something of a tendency towards cannibalism in the manga.)

Likley when Incognito "killed" him he was put into such a state where he could nto voluntarily restore himself. It took Integra's unlocking the final level to bring him back to life (his apparently "unkillable" state, I would guess.) One might presume that to gain his full measure of power (or to revive himself) he does need blood. In most battles, this should not be difficult to acquire, however.

[Connor MacLeod]

From all evidence, no. The blood was Alucard. It's how he reforms after getting chopped up. Kind of like a bloody T-1000

He was drawing blood from the dead hellsing soldiers (including Fargason).

[Connor MacLeod]

And Alucard gets coolness points for sodimizing his opponents.

I hope this is a joke of some kind, otherwise Im not buying anymore Hellsing dvds.

I assure you, there's no sodomy in Hellsing.

If you read the manga, there's a part where Seras licks blood from Integral's finger.

[Connor MacLeod]

At the end of the series, I am pretty sure that Incognito has that silver stake shoved up his ass.
But I may just be crazy.

Thats what impalement is. Except normally the stake doesn't come out the mouth (at least what I remember.. you wanted your opponent to be tortured)

[Connor MacLeod]

[quote="Smiling Bandit
As some of them pointed out, Set was a giant serpent of raw power and flung himself rather quickly at ALucard, who simply stopepd the sumb**** like it was nothing. Alucard's physical strength alone could trash a whole city. I'm also not certain Set was really dead, but simply without followers. I don't believe they said he was dead in the anime.
[/quote]

I scaled it. It wasn't nearly as impressive as you sound. Set was moving at a few meters per second (at the most generous, a few tens of meters per second - the limit is the length of the top of the tower, since they didn't leave it visibly, and that's being generous.) On top of that, it took him several seconds to slow Set's "strike" down. We're talking tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands (maybe a couple million if we assume tens of meters per second or an extraordinarily dense composition) of newtons worth of force. As for the serpent mass, it was ~70 meters long (scaled relative to vehicles and the background when Set first appeared, as well as his own bodily diameter.) and about a meter wide (upper limit established based on comparison to Alucard.) Assuming a density roughly comparable to a human (approximately that of wateR), we're talking tens of tons.

And its probable he wasn't using just physical strength to stop Incognito/Set, but also his TK (his TK is likely to greatly outmatch his physical strength, given the inherent limtiations of an organic body.)

Also, justify the claim that Alucard could trash the whole city (an unobserved phenomena.) Much less with a thought or ina ny near-instantaneous fashion. This would infer he has as much destructive force as a good-sized nuke, and we most definitely do not see this. (the observed destruction of london was not comparable, nor is Incoginto's claim he will destroy London applicable except in a very subjective interpretation.)

I was really exaggrerating with the "as a thought" remark, but the point is that Alucard could blow away all of civilization if he chose to. It mgiht take a him a few minutes for each city, but Incognito/Set was almost ready to shake down London a few minutes after he "killed" Alucard.

A few minutes??? either you're still exaggerating or you're just making things up outright. He might be able to destroy a city given time, as Archaic said, but even minutes is much too quickly (Incognito clearly was not capable of doing so - and it was more than a "few minutes" -he talked to Seras (after Seras and Alucard had their chat), then he went and fetched Integra, bound her down, prepared the ritual. Then he rushed up to the top of the building when Set was called, waited for him/them to arrive, then absorbed him into his body.

Even cain desn't have that power - at least, not in any way that anyone ever wrote. Sure, he's got tenth-level disciplines, but in many cases thoses aren't all that amazing. And that assumes he has disciplines developed after his slumber started.

Caine's power level was not quantified, nor even much shown. Tenth level disciplines are Antediluvian (third generation - there are at least one or even two generations before Caine!). Caine himself has no limit (IIRC the Book of Nod, he can create disciplines more or less at will.) On top of that, he's encountered the Antes before (I believe they tried to seek him out and kill him) and his level of prowess made them look like humans compared to him (I'm probably exaggerating slightly, but he was significantly more powerful.)

Besides which, Caine is protected by God's curse. Alucard tries to kill Caine, God wreaks vengence on Alucard (who can be killed by 5 holy bullets. God can do much worse, at least in WOD.)

[Connor MacLeod]

Potence raises the possessor's strength beyond that see in normal Vampires. Forget tossing cars, a Vampire with middle levels of this power can toss buses. Higher levels can crush solid metal with minimal effort.

Just how much metal? There are metal bending/crushing efforts in Hellsing from low level vampires. It doesn't tell us much. Elders IIRC with potence can shape weapons (Dark Ages vampire = some supplement I can't remember.)

However, if we assume low level vampires can toss cars, and Midlevel vampires can toss buses (and if that statement has canon backing from WoD - source?) then a high level vampire's strength/force generating abilities are between 5-10x higher (assuming roughly 2-3 tons for a car - 10-15 tons for a bus...)

IIRC WoD strenght charts do in fact list lifting/carrying capacities for vampires at various strength levels. It might be quite possible to "scale" up to Ante strength in some fashion if we know the changes as "dots" are accumulated (and ante strength/disciplines top out at Ten dots each.)

Lets also not forget that Potence is also partially telekinetic (though they say psychokinetic, even though it means the same thing.) As stated in Ghouls: Fatal Addiction.

Dominate is the classic Jedi Mind Trick for Vampires, and is what makes all those lovely young movie ladies into Vampiric slaves. The abilities range from making someone forget what happened to them, to planting false memories, all the way up to taking control of the victim's body. Of course, the stronger the victim's will, the harder it is to control and influence them.

Hellsing vampires can do this too. One vampire cast a spell over the entire Hellsing mansion to get close to Integra in ep 9 (we're talking dozens or hundreds of people to fool potentially, even some vampires) - and Alucard broke it rather easily.

Obtenebration. The power of Shadow and the Abyss. This power can evoke a room in complete sound-dampening shadow to blind opponents completely, and not even night-vision goggles can aid.

Vampires can see in the dark in Hellsing and spot things kilometers away (in addition to their sixth sense/danger senses and other supernatural senses.)

Then, the Vampire can call up multiple shadowy images to confuse the opponent, as well as form tendrils of solid shadow to attack and grapple, or a dark ShadowSelf that can drain a victim it envelops completely of blood in minutes.

Alucard is a shapeshifter, and can do much the same thing (in the manga, he slaughters an entire group of vampires in seconds by growing dozens of shadowy arms from his body that tear the vampire bodies to pieces - these same bodies are highly resistant to gunfire and most impacts.) He can also summon demons/familiars and shapechange to grow mouths, other heads, ro whatnot.

The Vampire can turn themself into a Shadow, able to slither thru tiny cracks, immune to physical harm although Sunlight and Fire harm them still, or animate their own shadow as a humonculus (think of Dracula's shadow in BramStoker's Dracula).

Alucard phases through walls and can teleport in about a second or less. He can also change into mist or bat forms. In addition to the aforementioned familiars/demons he can summon.

Finally, at the ultimate levels, this power can surround a victim with impenetrable darkness so solid that a mortal will suffocate, or call forth Abyssmal darkness to swallow the victim whole, removing them from this world... dead or alive (similar to Moroku's WindTunnel from Inu-Yasha manga/anime).

This might be something Alucard doesn't have. In ep 2 he appaered to open a "portal" and certain "official" sources (An RPG supplement for Hellsing) credit him with this power (opening a portal to the netherworld - which is consistent with his summoning" abilities and observed effects in the anime and manga.) - he can "Banish" his enemies in this fashion for damaging effects.

Losambra are some of the hardest vampires to try and kill in WoD. They are the leaders of the Sabbat: a sect that truly lives by the rule "Only the Strong Survive".
The smart ones learn quickly to trade favors in order to learn Disclipines from other clans such as Fortitude, Celerity, and even Thaumaturgy. This gives them toughness, speed, and nasty magical spells and rituals to use against opponents.

Celerity isn't a true form of "Acceleration" as I understand it. Its some bizarre temporal ability (I've heard hinted its a bastard discipline of the temporis discipline of the True Brujah, even.) - and this is substantiated by the fact that unless youre an elder with the special ability, you impart no momentum to your attacks or objects (think that acceleration + mass = force, and that also means KE.) Hellsing vampire acceleration insofar as I know is true acceleration.

Thaumaturgy depends on the effects. Alucard can mimic some powers (Lure of Flames or movement of the mind) with his own innate abilities, but IIRC thaumaturgy is largely a Tremere secret (I've heard of a few Meths who had it though.) Fortitude probably works as it does normally, though.

Losombra also learn the fine art of manipulation of allies and enemies alike in order to improve their standing within the sect. Any Losombra that has survived Sabbath in-fighting and made Elder status is a dangerous foe indeed.

Which won't help if Alucard comes calling.

[Connor MacLeod]

Going by Ravnos, Fortitude 10 took two magically enhanced nukes and the direct light of four suns to do penetrate and do enough damage to kill Ravnos off. I haven't really seen enough of Hellsing to comment upon Alucards powers but can he match that?

Possibly. "spirit nukes" foul the claim up some, but it was obvious that he was physically damaged (and hundreds of thousands, maybe millions were killed in the process.) But Nukes are spherical weapons, and the energy absorbed depends on the surface area of the Ante, the yield, and the range. I'd guess the yield was maybe low kiloton to low megaton. Probably sub-megaton. It might have been more than one nuke, though.

As for the sun, as I recall (Time of Thin Blood went over the Ravnos battle in some detail) that there were at least three Kuei-Jin, some Garou, in addition to the Technocracy fighting Ravnos, and the Kuei-Jin (or the Garou) were obscuring the sunlight for the purposes of the battle (K-J can't stand the sun either.) So Rav wasn't subjected to full sunlight until the end.

Incidentily how much sunlight can Alucard take? From what I remember the Gangrel ante can use high-level Protean to transform into a minature sun. All I'm saying is don't underestimate third generation vampires, Tzimisce could probably kick Alucards butt if he's anything short of a true immortal, and if Alucards not immune to mind-fucking through dominate/presence then even our Lasombra Meth could probably make him his bitch.

Alucard's tolerance for sunlight is never clearly demonstrated in the series (though Seras is quite immune to it later on, so we could presume Alucard is too.) In the manga it is made quite explicit that Alucard is immune to harmful effects of the sun - he just doesn't like bieng exposed.

Alucard's mind can be influenced so long as he isn't "aware" of it (ep 9) but he can clearly break such enchantments . Hiow manyt ppl can a Ante/Meth control simultaneously?

[Connor MacLeod]

Cain is a major wildcard, but he;s been sleeping for a very long time and isn't quite himself. There aren't any Vampires in WoD tough enough to kill him anymore, but I'm not so sure Alucard couldn't. With no restrictions on his power, he came back from the dead (Leading to some question of whether one truly CAN kill him!) and toasted a combined ancient Vampire and superdemon combined into one. And he didn't even break a sweat doing it. That was not the limit of his power - not by far. Heck, he created a giant magic circle simply by waking up his full power. I don't think many of Cain's disciplines would even affect Alucard.

Set's status as a demon, god, demigod have no relevance to quantification of his abilities, only what we observe. From what we observe, he had less destructive force at his co mmand than a nuke.

And yes Incognito was testing him, maybe not totally, but we're not talking a huge difference in power (Set was gaining temporary ad vnatages at times.)

And as Alucard's age isn't as important. I don't think a strict comparison based on WoD standards is even relevant. regardless, Hellsing vamps seem to be easily killable only by certain forms of attack. You can knock one into ther next county, but killing them requires an attack to which thety are vulnerable - although Alucard can dust weak vampires with a wave of his hand [through their hearts].

Then why are we claiming with confidence that some vampiric discipliens won't harm Alucard? I've watched Hellsing pretty heavily (I should, I did a fucking quantifiable analysis of it - I am certain I know far more about their abilities than most fans do.) and I've never seen anything that makes Alucard TOTALLY immune.

In any event, Alucard appears to have some powerful sort of faith. He carries around blessed bullets and has written on his gun "Jesus Christ is in Heaven Now".

Yet five silver blessed bullets put him down for the count (Incognito tlels him to "taste the blessed bullets" or something like that.)

Trust me - at the end of this, he basically turns into a demigod and begins a battle with enough power to easily blow away London.

Meaningless quantification and unsubstantiated speculation.

[Connor MacLeod]

And Alucard gets coolness points for sodimizing his opponents.

I hope this is a joke of some kind, otherwise Im not buying anymore Hellsing dvds.

I assure you, there's no sodomy in Hellsing.

Except for the bit where Alucard shoves a big silver stake up Incognito's ass. Rather too sadomasochistic for my taste.

[The Yosemite Bear]

BTW what's lillith considered?

I know mage, were, 2nd Gen, Caine's girlfriend.....

Two just how powerful would she be against Alucard?

[Smiling Bandit]

I assure you, five holy bullets wouldn't even make the anime Alucard twitch. He's much more powerful them. Hell, Paladin Alexander impales him multiple times with holy weapons, and it vaguely irritates Alucard.

Now, Alucard hasn't demonstrated massed-area destructive techniques. That's not his style. Yes, I was exaggerating fdor effect when I described him as being able to torch London in a matter of seconds, although it is possible he does have that power and simply hasn't had an opportunity to show it - I mean, when would he possibly have an reason to do that.

The anime basically says that Daddy Hellsing (a good name for a band) had Alucard's services and imprisoned him below ground, binding him to serve the family. Possibly, its Alucard's method of paying back the Hellsing family.

Set's status as a demon, god, demigod have no relevance to quantification of his abilities, only what we observe. From what we observe, he had less destructive force at his command than a nuke.

He was planning to kill London, so presumably he had the abiltiy to set up major attack spells.

As well, Alucard wasn't even at his limit in killing Set/Incognito. He crushed Incognito like he was nothing, albeit a hard-to kill nothing.

Then why are we claiming with confidence that some vampiric disciplines won't harm Alucard?

I'm not basing that on his gen, since he has none. His physical resistances, and the fact the more or less cannot be killed in his ultimate form, mean he isn't going to be taken down by any level 10 offensive power from WoD -I've seen them, they aren't really all that great, albeit useful against average WoD vampires. When you start talking about mental control and illusions and such, all goes out the window, since no one has a damned clue how it works. I usually go by the Badass Rule: "Any character cool and awesom enough cannot be affected by fear, mind control, or other such effect, and must be deffeated in a massive battle that destroys multiple blocks an/or cities."

Its fiction, what do you want?

Except for the bit where Alucard shoves a big silver stake up Incognito's ass. Rather too sadomasochistic for my taste.

Thats a reference to Vlad Tepich, aka Vlad Dracul, aka Dracua: He was much famed for sticking giant stakes up the rear ends of his enemies while they were still alive. It had the effect of keeping out nosy neighbors, such as conquering armies of Turks, when they saw miles of roads lined with the skeletons of the last army they sent.