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00:00After months of fighting to gain the French crown,
00:10the English king, Edward III, draws up his weary army
00:13near the village of Crecy in northern France.
00:17For a thousand years, the horsemen
00:20has dominated the battlefield.
00:23The English are outnumbered, but they have faith.
00:27Faith in their firepower.
00:28Faith in the longbow.
00:33Years of fighting the Scots and Welsh
00:35have taught Edward new tactics
00:37to exploit the longbow's potential.
00:43As day breaks at Crecy, Edward set his defenses.
00:49He dug holes to trap the French cavalry.
00:53He studded his front line with stakes
00:55to impale enemy horses.
00:57But at the core of the English battle plan
01:05was one decisive weapon, the longbow.
01:12It was tall as a man and made from the wood of the yew tree.
01:17It took 100 pounds of force to draw
01:20and was deadly at 200 yards.
01:40It took more strength to draw than the crossbow,
01:43but it could be fired faster and farther.
01:49As the English archers prepared for battle,
01:52Edward arrived with his knights.
01:57But today at Crecy,
01:59the English cavalry would not fight on horseback.
02:02Edward dismounted his knights and stood them among his archers
02:16in a V-shaped formation known as the Harrow.
02:19The French were confident of victory.
02:22They outnumbered the English three-to-one.
02:22They outnumbered the English three-to-one.
02:25Against the English longbow, the French now deployed the crossbow.
02:28The French king, Philip, had hired 6,000 mercenaries from Genoa.
02:36The French king, Philip, had hired 6,000 mercenaries from Genoa.
02:41These soldiers, expert crossbowmen, marched down the hill toward the English defenses.
03:03A chronicler of the time, Geoffrey LeBaker, described the scene.
03:17The first charge was made by the French against the English
03:20with resounding trumpets, drums, and kettle drums with strident clarions.
03:26And with shouting almost like thunder, the crossbowmen of the French advanced.
03:33But none of their quarrels reached the English.
03:50The English were out of range of the Genoese crossbow.
04:03But the Genoese were well within reach of the English longbow.
04:15The English archers then advanced one step forward
04:18and shot their arrows with such force and quickness
04:21that it seemed as if it snowed.
04:22This so disgusted the French king, he ordered his mounted knights to attack.
04:52The French knights charged through the confused lines of retreating crossbowmen.
05:06The ground was soft after rain.
05:10Within seconds, the French attack became a churning, muddy mass of chain mail, horses, and men,
05:18all writhing under the hail of English arrows.
05:24The French were in disarray.
05:27A few of their knights were driven into the English lines
05:30by the sheer impetus of their charge.
05:32They were beaten down with axes, lances, and swords.
05:37And in the middle of the host, many Frenchmen were crushed to death without any wound,
05:43simply by the weight of numbers.
05:46After 16 fruitless charges, the French withdrew, utterly defeated.
05:52The English remained in battle formation throughout the night.
05:55At sunrise, Edward's messengers found 1,542 French lords and knights
06:10dead beside 20,000 men and horses.
06:18The English lost two knights and 80 men.
06:23The English victory at Crecy stunned Europe.
06:30To the Europeans, English tactics based on the firepower of the longbow
06:35came as a complete surprise.
06:40A new day was dawning for the infantryman.
06:44The horseman would have a place on the battlefield for centuries to come,
06:48but he would no longer dominate as he had for the last 1,000 years.
06:54The days of the mounted knight were over.
06:59But the whiz of English arrows was not the only sound of firepower at Crecy.
07:06Edward had brought to the battle a handful of bombards,
07:09early cannon that hurled stone balls.
07:14The bombard was loud, inaccurate,
07:17and did little more than frighten the French horses.
07:27Yet, it delivered the opening shot
07:29in a revolution that would transform war and civilization forever.
07:35Gunpowder.
07:361453, where Europe meets Asia.
07:50Constantinople.
07:51For a thousand years, this great city
07:54has protected Christianity in the East.
07:57Now, it is the last bastion of Constantine,
08:0888th emperor of Byzantium.
08:14His empire is a Christian island
08:17leapt by the rising tide of Islam.
08:20As Islamic soldiers approach,
08:32farmers and peasants seek shelter.
08:34The once great empire has shrunk to the city of Constantinople
08:55and the farmland around it.
08:57North, south, east, and west,
09:14all has fallen to Islam.
09:19Constantine must rally his people.
09:21Only the walls of Constantinople stand
09:28between the Christian empire
09:30and the triumph of Israel.
09:37130 miles to the northwest,
09:39in Adrianople,
09:41a young Turkey sultan, Mehmet II,
09:44had just become ruler of the Ottomans.
09:46He cast his eyes on the greatest prize of all,
09:51Constantinople,
09:53a prize those before him failed to take.
09:57Mehmet was ambitious.
09:59He also was interested in new technology.
10:03A Hungarian engineer, Urban,
10:05brought him plans for a super gun.
10:08Mehmet was fascinated.
10:09Constantin already had refused Urban's new gun.
10:14It was too expensive.
10:18Urban built and tested his super gun.
10:22It fired an 18-inch diameter granite ball up to a mile,
10:27burying itself six feet deep in the earth.
10:36Mehmet made plans to lay siege to Constantinople.
10:40He positioned the super gun outside the main gate.
10:45On April 12th, 1453, his cannon roared.
10:56The thick city walls that for centuries
10:59had protected the Christian capital in the east
11:01crumbled in weeks.
11:05Mehmet's troops poured into the city.
11:08For days, they looted and murdered.
11:21Eventually, a severed head was delivered to Mehmet.
11:26They said it was Constantin's.
11:29Later, a headless body was discovered
11:31in Constantin's armor.
11:33Gunpowder had won Islam, a toehold in the west.
11:45Gunpowder had won Islam, a toehold in the west.
11:53Mehmet's super gun altered the course of history.
11:56But it wasn't a weapon to be dragged from siege to siege.
12:01It needed 60 oxen and 200 men to haul it into place.
12:07Once positioned, it took over an hour to load.
12:10It's recoil was so great, it took three hours to realign
12:18so it could be fired again.
12:21For lengthy campaigns, lighter, more mobile weapons
12:25would be needed.
12:2740 years later, the French King Charles VIII
12:30discovered how to make them.
12:32The new guns were light, metal weapons founded in bronze
12:38by the same technique used for making church bells.
12:44He called these light metal tubes cannon,
12:47from the Latin word canna, meaning tube.
12:51Because they were light, the cannon were mobile.
13:03And because they fired iron balls,
13:05they were more effective against city walls.
13:12This was the birth of mobile gunpowder artillery.
13:16In 1494, Charles VIII invaded Italy,
13:24armed with 40 of the new light cannon.
13:46The Florentine diplomat and historian,
13:49Francesco Ghiardini, watched his progress.
13:53They moved the cannon on carts,
13:55which were drawn not by oxen,
13:57as was the custom in Italy, but by horses.
14:00The men and equipment assigned to this work
14:02were so skillful that they could almost always
14:05keep up with the rest of the army.
14:09The cannon were planted against the walls with such speed,
14:13the space between the shots was so brief,
14:15and the balls flew so speedily
14:17and were driven with such force
14:18that as much execution was inflicted in a few hours
14:22as used to be done in Italy over the same number of days.
14:29In a few short weeks,
14:31Charles Cannon blasted away the security of centuries.
14:35After food, water, and shelter,
14:50people always have needed security from attack.
14:57From the earliest times,
14:59nature provided man with refuge.
15:01There were mountains to retreat to,
15:04caves to hide in.
15:07Men not only exploited nature's fortresses,
15:10they improved on them.
15:19High in the mountains,
15:20it was easy to hack out a home from a hole in the rock.
15:23But the rocky slopes of a mountain
15:35are poor land for farming.
15:38The valleys and lowlands where farmers lived
15:41were harder to defend.
15:47As farmers worked their land,
15:49they produced a surplus of food and livestock.
15:52They were at risk from raiders
15:55in constant search of food and supplies.
16:00To protect their crops and animals,
16:03the earliest farmers fortified their dwellings.
16:09As the enemy grew more determined,
16:12the farmers built high, defensive walls.
16:15Over the centuries,
16:19these walls evolved from a simple place of refuge
16:22to the purpose-built stronghold.
16:28Built on a natural strong point,
16:30a hill, island, or peninsula,
16:33the simple wall and tower design
16:35lasted for centuries.
16:36The ideal stronghold could be used for attack
16:43as well as defense.
16:45From it, the garrison could launch a counterattack.
16:51The stronghold's walls were not only difficult to attack,
16:55they also were dangerous to approach.
16:57High vantage points created deep killing grounds.
17:12High curtain walls made attackers vulnerable.
17:17Putting up ladders or siege towers was dangerous.
17:20The height of walls was more important than the thickness,
17:29as direct attack could often be repulsed
17:32given a strong vantage point.
17:40For centuries, man used his ingenuity
17:43to find new ways to break through castle walls.
17:46A bizarre array of siege engines was designed and built.
17:54A bizarre array of siege engines was designed and built.
17:54But for all the attackers' ingenuity,
18:08But for all the attackers' ingenuity,
18:22those inside the castle usually have the advantage.
18:33From the building of the ancient walls of Jericho
18:36to the end of the Middle Ages,
18:38fortification engineers added little to the three basic defences,
18:44wall, moat, tower.
18:49Overnight, the arrival of the cannon made them obsolete.
18:59The gun was a revolutionary weapon.
19:01It also very quickly revolutionized defences.
19:04You had to have a new kind of fortification,
19:06which, instead of being tall, was as low as possible
19:10and as thick as possible,
19:11so that it would nullify the effects of the smashing impact
19:16of the gun's shot.
19:19It was also seen very quickly to present many deflecting surfaces.
19:26So, you get this very distinctive shape.
19:31The new defences are technically called artillery forts,
19:34but they're often thought of as star forts,
19:36because in plan, they did often resemble stars.
19:41And the idea was that the incoming ball would glance off
19:46the angles of the star.
19:48Instead of being able to hit the face of the wall directly
19:52and do it damage in that way,
19:53they would bounce sideways,
19:56and the energy of the impact would be absorbed
19:58by the thick earth bank behind the masonry face.
20:03This is Barrick upon Tweed.
20:14Throughout centuries of war between England and Scotland,
20:17this city changed hands in one bloody siege after another.
20:24Here at Barrick, the impact of cannon on fort design is clear.
20:30These walls show to perfection the military architect's answer
20:34to the cannon, the angled bastion system.
20:39The importance of the bastion was twofold.
20:41First of all, it protected the face of the fortress
20:45from direct artillery fire.
20:48They were also fire bases themselves from which artillery
20:52could return fire against the enemy's besieging artillery,
20:55but also defending infantry could bring the attacking infantry
20:59under fire from flank and rear and various other angles.
21:04The outworks of a fortress composed an extremely dangerous killing zone,
21:10a set of killing zones, which were a horrifying area
21:14for infantry to find themselves in.
21:17You were entering a sort of masonry maze full of what
21:21the attacker's view were dead ends and blind alleys and overhangs.
21:28There were precipices, really, of lethal masonry or brickwork.
21:43But these were expensive defenses.
21:45City after city bankrupted itself in the arms race
21:49started by the cannon.
21:52Fortification was by far the greatest object of state expenditure
21:57in the 16th and 17th, and even in the 18th century.
22:01In 1677, over 200 years after Mehmet's gun blew down the walls
22:07of Constantinople, Marshal Vauban became the French commissary
22:11general of fortifications.
22:15Vauban built over 100 fortresses and conducted some 40 sieges,
22:19many of them against forts he himself designed.
22:24Vauban's systems of attack and defense were precise.
22:28If he knew the number and type of attacking guns
22:31and the design of the fort, Vauban could predict exactly
22:34how long a siege would last.
22:39The cannon transformed siege warfare.
22:42The hand-good would revolutionize war on the field of battle.
22:59The impact of the cannon on fortification was revolutionary.
23:04But on the field of battle, heavy artillery could only be used
23:08on wheeled carriages.
23:19Big guns were too slow to keep pace with the tempo of battle.
23:31As cavalry and foot soldiers advanced or retreated,
23:35cannon got stuck in the mud.
23:38As late as the 16th and 17th century,
23:40men still fought like the ancient Greeks.
24:08Once inside a phalanx or pike square, attackers could choose
24:26from a grisly range of hardware to butcher their opponents.
24:29But first, they had to get past the pikes, face to face,
24:33steel to steel.
24:38They still didn't have a way of blasting in from a safe distance.
24:55One answer to this problem was an unwieldy, hand-held gun,
24:59the Arkeboose.
25:03Foot soldiers turned to the gun as their weapon of choice.
25:06It's transformation from ugly launching tube to finely crafted
25:26weapon speaks of the pride with which infantry and cavalry regarded
25:31their new weapons.
25:36All that was needed was a quick and safe way to fire it.
25:42Two rival mechanisms offered a solution, the matchlock and the wheel lock.
25:47The matchlock used a fuse to ignite gunpowder in the flash pan.
26:08In dry conditions, it worked.
26:09Simpler, but more expensive, was the wheel lock.
26:19It used new clockwork technology to strike a spark from a small piece of iron pyrite.
26:24More dependable than the matchlock, here was a gun that could be used by cavalry, the first carbine.
26:43Simpler still was the flintlock, which struck the vital spark from flint and steel.
26:47Simplicity won, and for the next 200 years, pistols and rifles would be fired this way.
27:00The gun, like the longbow, could pierce armor, but for accuracy, range, and rate of fire, it was still inferior.
27:21The gun had one big advantage over the longbow.
27:24The skill and sheer strength needed to draw a bow demanded years of daily practice.
27:32A gunner could be trained in weeks.
27:40In the early 17th century, a Dutch nobleman, William of Nassau, studied the Roman tacticians.
27:48He read how Roman legions kept up a steady rain of javelins on the enemy.
27:54Nassau realized that modern soldiers armed with muskets could do the same.
27:59All they had to do was rotate their ranks.
28:03The principle was simple.
28:05Don't aim.
28:06Just send in a wall of lead.
28:09The air was so darkened by the smoke of the powder
28:12that for a quarter of an hour together, I dare say,
28:15there was no light seen but what the fire of the volleys of shot gave.
28:19Rapid volley required tight coordination in the heat of battle
28:24if muskets were to fire at the same time.
28:31Musketeers had drilled hard.
28:32The faster they could fire, reload, and fire again, the more deadly they were.
28:47Fire!
28:49In 1631, at the Battle of Breitenfeld,
28:54the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus showed the full potential of volley fire.
28:59He had drilled his men until they had the fastest reload times ever.
29:08In this battle against an army of the Holy Roman Empire,
29:127,000 lay dead, felled by rapid volley fire,
29:17most killed in the first two hours.
29:19Toward the end of the 17th century,
29:38rulers began to pay more attention to army medical care.
29:42Military hospitals were set up to cope with the increased killing power of the new weapons.
29:59This is the Josephinum,
30:00a surgical research hospital founded by Joseph II of Austria.
30:06Joseph was the first ruler to recognize the skill
30:09needed to heal gunshot wounds
30:11and return soldiers to the battlefield.
30:16His academy, the Josephinum,
30:19established the status of military surgeons.
30:23Previously, butchers and barbers
30:25had treated battlefield casualties.
30:26The Josephinum developed standardized instruments and manuals
30:45that became the model for field surgery worldwide.
30:48Anatomical research was carried out on detailed wax effigies.
30:57They were modeled in Florence on the bodies of executed criminals.
31:03Anatomical research was carried out on detailed wax effigies.
31:07They were modeled in Florence on the bodies of executed criminals.
31:11swords, pikes, and lances inflicted flesh wounds which could be understood at a glance by the surgeon.
31:30A gunshot wound demanded that the hidden path of a bullet be traced inside the cavities
31:37of the human body before it could be extracted.
31:45This was leading scientific research of the time.
31:49Before the Josephinum's investigation of gunshot wounds,
31:53military surgeons knew next to nothing of human anatomy.
31:56Relentlessly, the gun was driving man's advances in surgery,
32:09in engineering, and in efficient killing.
32:13Man's capacity to inflict death had increased beyond imagining.
32:371575, Japan is a lawless country.
32:41That year, a battle between two warlords made history.
32:48Takeda Katsuyori led Japan's finest army,
32:52famous for its ferocious cavalry and disciplined foot soldiers.
32:57Facing him was rival warlord Oda Nabunaga.
33:01Katsuyori's men were armed with swords, Nabunaga's with guns.
33:06With his three rows of arcaboussies,
33:09Nobunaga simply blew Katsuyori's cavalry apart.
33:19Japan saw the power of the gun.
33:21It played a major role in the wars to unify the country.
33:25Then something extraordinary happened.
33:32One hundred years later, the gun had vanished in Japan.
33:38The reasons are found in Japanese warrior culture.
33:43Before?
33:48ijevi extensive warlord
33:51ya cultural
33:52While the sword always had been important to the Western warrior, in Japan it was cult.
34:22The sword was sacred, part of Zen Buddhism and the pursuit of two warrior ideals, fidelity and indifference to physical hardship.
34:34The best samurai swords often had four million layers of forged steel.
34:40They are the finest edged weapons ever made.
34:44No people in history revered the sword as highly as the samurai of Japan.
34:54In Japan, for a time, it would displace the gun.
35:00Forging the samurai sword demands more than just superb craftsmanship.
35:09The swordsmith carefully chooses the steel, one piece at a time.
35:14He hammers until it can be folded around another layer, making a laminate.
35:21But for a proper Japanese sword, you have to work the raw material yourself.
35:26You have to make your own raw material.
35:29You see, a good sword must be made with good ingredients.
35:33It is the most basic part of the process and takes a lot of time and concentration.
35:39It is the most fundamental part, so if you get this wrong, you lose everything.
35:44To this day, the martial skills of the samurai are passed from generation to generation.
35:58In the 19th century, Japan would turn again to the gun.
36:02But even today, firearms play no part in the traditional learning of Bushido,
36:09the way of the warrior.
36:13The thin piece of her gun that goes inside is low in carbon content.
36:42and malleable.
36:45The U-shaped piece that goes on the outside is harder, containing more carbon.
36:51The harder the metal, the better it will cut.
36:57But that means it will also be brittle.
37:02That's why you need the more malleable metal inside.
37:05This is the traditional recipe for a sword which both cuts well and does not break.
37:12The folding process is vital to the ultimate sharpness and flexibility of each sword.
37:22The swordsmith is more than a craftsman, more even than an artist.
37:27He has a spiritual role that requires constant prayer, each prayer being folded into the steel.
37:38To produce a true and reliable blade, the swordsmith must be pure in mind and body.
37:44These elaborate preparations clearly demonstrate the spiritual significance of the samurai sword.
37:56This school, Maniwan NU, has continued unbroken for 21 generations in the Higuchi family.
38:05Here martial arts are taught as an extension of religion and a veneration for the past.
38:22Close to the school is the shrine, the cemetery of ancestors and the family museum.
38:31In Japan, there is no other way to learn the way of the warrior.
38:37The Japanese outlawed the gun because it threatened the status of the warrior swordsman.
38:52But as an island nation, the Japanese could easily enforce a ban on firearms.
39:02With laws to protect it, the cult of the sword continued, unchallenged, for another 250 years.
39:13The swordsmith's art tells us more about why Japan gave up the gun.
39:21All the ingredients used to make the blade are elemental.
39:26Straw to prevent the metal from overheating.
39:29Carbon, fire, water, to conform with the Japanese belief in the importance of unity with nature and natural forces.
39:45Even the muscular effort of the smith is natural.
39:48The chemical energy of gunpowder is not.
39:51Gunpowder reached Japan when tradition and religion enjoyed great respect.
40:00Gunpowder reached Japan when tradition and religion enjoyed great respect.
40:04Gunpowder reached Japan when tradition and religion enjoyed great respect.
40:14The sword play was traditional.
40:20The best swords were often ancient heirlooms with their own personal names handed on from father to son.
40:29It was customary to test the quality of new blades on the corpses of executed criminals.
40:39This was known as Temeshi-giri, the corpse being called a Temeshi-mono, or chopping block.
40:59Swordsmiths used to go to the execution ground, bringing with them blades they wanted to try out, and the servants in charge of the place would pile corpses on one another.
41:09A blade of exceptional quality could cut through the corpses of three men with one blow, according to the records, and it was certainly possible with a good blade to cut the body of a man in half.
41:20A sword, which could not cut off a man's head with one stroke, was considered useless and discarded.
41:29In 1854, almost 300 years after the Battle of Nagashino, the ships of U.S. Commodore Perry arrived in Tokyo Bay bearing guns.
41:46America was only seven years away from its bitter and all-consuming civil war.
41:54With Western technology poised to take over the world, Japan prepared to end a quarter of a millennium without gunpowder.
42:12500 years ago, the greatest empire in the Americas thrived here.
42:17It became great not because of its land or its wealth or its armies, but because of something no one could see, fear.
42:39Some empires thrive because they strike terror in their enemies.
42:46This empire thrived because the rulers themselves were governed by fear.
42:52These people are descendants of the Aztecs, whose empire dominated Central America in the 15th century.
43:01The Aztecs worshipped the sun.
43:08At the heart of their religion was the fear that one day the sun might not rise, killing their crops, plunging them into fatal darkness.
43:20To ensure the daily reappearance of their life force, the Aztecs sacrificed to the sun god on a grand scale.
43:33To slake the sun god's never-ending thirst, the Aztecs trained not to kill their foes, but to bring them back alive.
43:54The Aztec warfare required extraordinary courage.
44:00It is more difficult and dangerous to capture an enemy than to kill him.
44:05The Aztecs' weapons were designed to wound, not to kill.
44:12Wooden swords and clubs, edged with stone.
44:15Every opponent of the Aztecs knew his fate if captured.
44:25The Aztecs would single out their victim on the battlefield.
44:29He would be chosen for his physical fitness.
44:32He would then be lamed, grabbed by the hair, and disarmed.
44:40Bound hand and foot, he was carried back to the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan.
44:47Here the prisoner was treated like a king, served the finest food, given drink, women, everything for his comfort.
44:56But all the while the Aztecs gently teased him about his fate.
45:01The Aztec's boyfriend will be taken because of his future.
45:04The Aztec's the gods were given to the ground.
45:06The Aztec's the gods left to the new superhero, captain.
45:07The Aztecs are to the new community at the Prairie, and he is to be a child.
45:10The Aztec's the gods who never were named after the hang of the mahi and the new RaκΆ.
45:11The Aztec's been the two of the re Cubes in the past, he was taken by the Tenochtitlan,
45:14and I was reminded he had the next generation of the Γs of La Hia and the Terra.
45:17The Aztec's his dad is his father's father.
45:19The Aztec's the two of the three men, was taken by the adventure,
45:21and heAD's his father's father's father's father is in the house.
45:24On the appointed morning, the prisoner
45:31was led up the steep steps to the Aztec temple,
45:35taken to the altar, and bent backwards over the altar stone.
45:42There, his chest was slit open by the priests,
45:47and the priest was taken to the altar.
45:52The chest was slit open by the priests,
45:54his living heart torn from his body,
45:57and hurled into a burning crucible.
46:07Aztec homage to the sun.
46:13On permanent display near the Aztec warrior school
46:17were the skulls of all who died in sacrifice.
46:22When the Aztec empire was at its height,
46:25a strange breed of warrior arrived from another world, Europe,
46:31the old world.
46:34Their leader was Hernando Cortes.
46:37Cortes was looking for gold.
46:39He also was looking for glory.
46:42Armed with gunpowder, Cortes fought a vicious, bloody war
46:46against men armed with primitive weapons,
46:48who had never seen horses or guns.
47:04The Aztec king described meeting Cortes's army.
47:09He began to be afraid.
47:10He marveled at hearing the business of the artillery,
47:15especially the thunderous sounds that burst the eardrums
47:18and the stench of the powder.
47:20There was bitter fighting in the complex canal system
47:23around what is now Mexico City.
47:27The Aztecs moved quickly from place to place
47:30in small carved wooden boats, throwing up temporary bridges,
47:34then retracting them to confound the Spanish.
47:41The Aztec soldiers took many Spanish prisoners
47:44and many Spanish heads.
47:47They even took the heads of the Spanish horses.
47:55But in the end, the power of the gun, the horse, and armor
47:59all turned the tide in the Spaniards' favor.
48:09By 1521, the Aztec capital lay in ruins, destroyed
48:15by Cortes's guns.
48:22The Spaniards brought more than European firepower to Mexico.
48:27From the old world, they brought something
48:29no one could see, disease, lethal to native peoples
48:34of the new world.
48:39What happened to the Aztecs foretold the future of native peoples
48:43in America, Africa, and Asia.
48:46The gun would soon make Europe master of the world.
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