Be cruel to rule

If you are going to be a ruler then it helps if you are a bully. Make people obey your silliest wishes. If they don’t then have them punished.

Show everyone that you are the boss.

What happens if you talk in class? Your teacher shouts at you.

Feeble.

What did Countess Elizabeth Bathory do to her serving girls if they chattered too much?

She sewed their lips together.

Get the idea?

Tamerlane of Mongolia (1336–1405)

Tamerlane (or Timur the Lame or Tamburlaine) was a bit rough on the people he captured. In 1383 he had 2,000 prisoners buried alive at Sabzawar.

Then he had 5,000 beheaded at Zirih and had their heads piled up to make a pyramid.

You may think this is a sort of sick joke – but Tamerlane didn’t like jokes. The penalty for cracking a joke was instant death.

Tsar Paul I of Russia (1754–1801)

If you met the Tsar while he was out driving in his carriage then:

• you had to stop

• you had to get down from your horse or carriage…

• …and lie face down on the ground.

Everyone had to obey this rule. Even if it was snowing they had to throw themselves on to the ground. If you didn’t then the Tsar’s guards would give you a good beating.

The Tsar had a man called August von Kotzebue arrested and sent to a prison at the Arctic Circle.

The Kotzebue crime? He was a writer – and the Tsar thought all writers were troublemakers. (He could be write there.) Later Kotzebue went to Germany as a Russian spy. He was murdered by a student in 1819. Sometimes it’s no fun being a writer. Locked up, frozen and finished.

Tsar Paul ended up strangled on the orders of his own son, Alexander, in 1801. The trouble with being a bully is that sooner or later you meet a bigger bully!

Sultan Mehmed IV of Turkey (1642–1687)

Talking of writers, Mehmed of Turkey had a servant to write a diary of every day of his reign. One day nothing much happened, so Mehmed picked up a spear and stabbed the poor writer with it. He said:

Of course Mehmed had a tough life himself. One day, when he was a child, Mehmed cracked a joke that his father, Ibrahim, didn’t like.

Ibrahim grabbed his dagger and thrust it in his little son’s face.

Mehmed had the scar on his forehead for the rest of his life.

Bad dad.

King Frederick William I of Prussia (1688–1740)

Frederick William liked tall men. His dream was to command an army of giants.

He would do anything to add a tall man to his giant regiment.

He sent officers all around Europe to find them – and he paid parents who handed over their tallest sons.

If a giant refused to join him, Fred Will would have him kidnapped

.

But the good news for the giants was that they never had to fight in a battle! Fred Will loved them too much to risk them getting hurt.

They were given an odd little job – when King Fred Will was ill he ordered 100 of his giants to march up and down his bedroom to cheer him up.

King Christian VII of Denmark (1749–1808)

Christian was 17 years old when he took the throne. He was not very grown-up. His silly little cruel games included:

• throwing a bowl of sugar over his grandma’s head

• sticking pins through her chair to see her jump

• playing leapfrog over the backs of important visitors when they came and bowed in front of him (it wasn’t so much fun when he slapped their faces for no reason).

As he grew older he grew more cruel. He had his own Prime Minister executed viciously.

• The man’s hand was cut off.

• He was fastened to a wheel and all his bones broken.⁷

• He was beheaded and cut into four pieces.

Savage for servants

Peasants like you have suffered a lot in history. But the people closest to the Rotten Rulers endured the most – the suffering servants.

Sultan Osman II of Turkey (1604–1622)

Thirteen-year-old Osman was very fond of archery – especially when the targets were alive, like prisoners of war or his own page-boys. Osman got his comeuppance later when his troops strangled him and squashed his naughty bits. They cut off his ear and sent it to his mother. Soz Oz.

The Raja of Akhalot – Indian Prince (1800s)

The British Army conquered India and gave the Raja the power to rule Akhalot.

But they couldn’t give him brain-power. They began to suspect something was wrong with him when he whipped out a knife one day and lopped off a servant’s nose and ears for no apparent reason.

Veddius Pollio (died AD 15)

Not exactly a ruler, but a rich Roman friend of Emperor Augustus. Vicious Ved fed one of his servants to his man-eating eels.

The servant’s crime?

He dropped a glass.

Ten things you never knew about rulers

1 Peter the Great of Russia had a thing about dwarfs. When two of his favourite dwarfs got married, Peter invited 72 more dwarfs from all over Russia to the wedding. He had little tables and chairs made for them. When one of his dwarfs died, Peter gave him a rich funeral with the small coffin pulled by tiny horses. The funeral was led by a dwarf priest.

2 Attila the Hun was less than 140 cm tall.

3 Chinese Emperor Shih Huang Ti ruled in the 200s BC. He built 270 palaces all linked by tunnels. He was so afraid of being murdered that he slept in a different palace every night. He had a habit of having hands, feet and tongues chopped from people in his palace. He also had 160 teachers beheaded.

4 King Amanullah ruled Afghanistan from 1919 until 1929. He once stayed at London’s posh Ritz hotel and saw all the men in the street wore bowler hats. He went home to Afghanistan and tried to pass a law to make all the men in Afghanistan wear bowler hats.

5 In the 1700s King Henry Cristophe ruled northern Haiti. He had a huge snooker table in his palace. He used to hit the white ball into human heads on the table. This is not where the ancient joke came from…

Henry Cristophe also ordered his guards to show him how loyal they were. He told them to march over a 60-metre-high cliff. Those who did, died. Those who refused were executed.

6 Tsar Paul of Russia loved his dad, Peter III, so much he had him dug up. The corpse was dressed in royal robes, put on a throne and crowned. Peter had been dead 34 years so he must have been a mouldy monarch.

7 Napoleon, Emperor of France, is known as the best general ever. But even he got it wrong sometimes. Before the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 he said:

He lost.

8 The Sioux Indian Chief, Rain-in-the-face, was present when the Sioux massacred General Custer and the US Cavalry in 1876. While eating Custer’s heart he said:

9 The real Count Dracula ruled in Romania from 1456 till 1476. He was horribly cruel. One of his nastiest tricks was to take a group of prisoners of war and have three of them fried alive. The others were then forced to eat them.

10 Foulest fact of all:

Horrible Histories health warning: Reading the next bit can seriously damage your dinner. Do not read it. You have been warned!

Henry VIII of England had a servant who had just one job. The servant’s job was to follow Henry to the toilet and wipe his fat backside.