Horrible h’ends
Tsar Peter III of Russia discovered that his wife Catherine had a boyfriend. He had the boyfriend’s head chopped off and put in a jar. Catherine was then forced to have the jar at her bedside wherever she went.
That is Rotten Ruling.
If you are going to be a Rotten Ruler you need to think of new ways to kill people. People will remember you if you do that.
Get the idea?
Go and think of your own ways to kill people. Here are some examples to give you some ideas.
Emperor Alexander Severus of Rome (ruled AD 222–135)
Emperor Elagabalus planned to have his nephew Alexander killed. But Alexander’s friends started killing off Elagabalus’s assassins first.
They didn’t just chop them up or poison them. They made sure they died slowly.
They held them down, slit them open, then pulled out their guts, their livers, their lungs and their hearts.
Sultan Selim II of Turkey (ruled 1566–1574)
Selim loved booze. He really, really loved Cyprus wine. But one day he ran out of his favourite tipple.
Horror! ‘What can I do to get some more?’ he whined.
‘Take over Cyprus,’ his friends told him.
So he invaded Cyprus. Thirty thousand people died in the battles.
Finally the leader of the Cypriot army, Bragadino, was captured. He was skinned alive. His skin was stuffed with straw and paraded in front of the troops from Turkey.13
President Idi Amin of Uganda (1925–2003)
President Idi Amin had his enemies arrested by the police and then shot with machine guns. The trouble was, the machine guns made a lot of noise and the local people couldn’t get to sleep. So the police came up with a new way of execution. The prisoners were given a seven-kilo sledgehammer and told:
Prisoners had to take it in turn to kill another prisoner with the hammer – and then be killed themselves.
Kim Jong II of Korea (ruled 1994 –today)
You want chemical weapons that you can use to bomb your enemies, but how do you know they will work? Test them on prisoners in your jails.
In the 1990s reports came from North Korea saying that prisoners were being shut in a glass case, then gas was pumped into the case.
The chemist could then watch the prisoners die and see how well a gas worked.
One chemist was a bit shocked. He said:
But the chemists did it because Kim Jong Il told them to.
Genghis Khan of Mongolia (1167–1227)
Mongol warlord Genghis Khan won a battle then discovered that the enemy warlord was an old friend.
He said:
And that’s what they did.
Alexander ‘The Wolf’ of Badenoch in Scotland (1343–1405)
Awful Alex ruled the north of Scotland and had a nasty habit of hunting in the Ruthiemurchus Forest. He set fire to parts of it to drive out the deer so he could kill them. He also enjoyed hunting outlaws in the same way.
When he caught a victim he stood him in a cellar in a metre of icy water.
If the prisoner stood up he would live – if he tried to sit down or fell asleep, he would drown.
It was left there for two or three days. If he lived then he would be set free.
Robert III of Scotland (1337–1406)
Robert had a lot of trouble with Scottish clans, who wouldn’t stop fighting. To solve the problem he came up with a clever idea.
In 1396 he organized a contest on the North Inch of Perth. Robert and a huge crowd watched as 30 men of the Clan Davidson fought against 30 men of the MacPherson clan.
The fight was to the death.
Each man was dressed in a short kilt and armed with sword, dagger, axe, crossbow and three arrows.
Bagpipes played and the men slaughtered each other until at the end of the day only a dozen were still alive.
They were all badly wounded.
Of course the dead and wounded had been the worst troublemakers in Scotland. After that it was much more peaceful in the Scottish Highlands.
Emperor Domitian of Rome (AD 51–96)
Daft Domitian grew madder and crueller the longer he ruled. He would ask a victim, ‘What death are you most afraid to die?’
Whatever the victim said, Domitian would arrange it.
Of course if you knew this you could cheat him, couldn’t you?
Domitian also loved to torture men to death.
One of his favourite nasty tricks was to chain the victim to a wall. Then the Emperor would hold a flaming torch under the man’s naughty bits before cutting them off.
He then watched as the poor man bled to death.
Emperor Tiberius of Rome (ruled AD 14 –37)
This bad-tempered man was easily upset. And if you upset him he’d have your ears cut off and fed to his lions.
He became so annoyed with one of his wives that he had her locked in the bathroom, then ordered his servants to turn up the heat.
She was steamed to death.
Emperor Wenceslas of Germany (ruled 1378–1400)
Wenceslas was angry with his chef for cooking him a mouldy meal. The Emperor ordered him to be executed. The chef was taken away and roasted alive on his own kitchen spit.
Ten ways you wouldn’t want to die
Now that you’ve read this book you will know how to be a leader. But there’s one thing you need to know before you try: leaders die too!
And a lot of leaders have come to some very nasty ends.
King Mithridates IV of Asia Minor (ruled 112–63 BC)
The poet A.E. Housman wrote a comic poem about King Mithridates and the plots to kill him.
But the end of the poem is not quite true. And it doesn’t explain how the King ate the poisons and lived. Here is the Horrible Histories truth.
Mithridates was sure they were out to get him. ‘They hate me. They will try to poison me,’ he told his doctor. ‘How can I stop them?’
‘Poison yourself,’ the doctor told him.
‘You what? I don’t want to die.’
‘So, poison yourself. Take a little bit of poison every day. Your body will get used to it. Then, if someone puts poison in your food, it won’t kill you,’ the doctor told him.
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
So Mithridates took poison and lived. Until –
‘The Romans are coming!’ his spies told him.
‘They hate me,’ he said. ‘They’ll torture me horribly. What can I do?’
‘Poison yourself,’ they told him. ‘You’ll be dead before they get to you.’
‘Good idea,’ the crafty King said. So he took poison.
It didn’t work.
He took more poison.
It didn’t work. Well, it wouldn’t would it? His doctor had told him that.
‘What am I going to do?’ he moaned.
‘Use a sword,’ his girlfriend said, and held out a nice sharp blade.
‘It’ll hurt!’ the King argued.
‘Not much, and not for long,’ the woman sighed. ‘Give it here.’
And she chopped till Mithridates dropped.
Did you know…?
Emperor Napoleon of France had been captured and was really fed up. So in 1814 he decided to kill himself. He drank poison, but that just gave him pains in the gut. Then he decided to shoot himself, but his servant had emptied the gunpowder out of his pistols. Napoleon gave up and decided to stay alive.
He eventually escaped and started another war.
Thousands died at battles like Waterloo in 1815. It would have been much better if the little troublemaker had managed to top himself after all!
King Edmund II ‘Ironside’ of England (AD 989–1016)
King Edmund went to a feast. He needed the toilet (as you do).
The little boys’ room was the only place he went without his bodyguard. It was the only place his enemy could kill him.
What happened next is a mystery. All we know is that Ed became Ded.
Some say a man called Edric Streona hid in the toilet pit and stabbed the King as he sat down, but…
According to another story there was a loaded bow and arrow in the toilet. When the King sat down the bow went off and sent an arrow up into his guts. But…
However, everyone agrees that Edmund Ironside definitely died in the toilet.
Still, no one could figure out what happened to the murderer. It seems Edric Streona went to Edmund’s greatest enemy to claim a reward. That enemy was Cnut the Viking. Cnut told him, ‘I will raise you higher than any lord in England.’
Then he either…
• cut off Edric Streona’s head and had it stuck on the top turret of his castle or
• had Edric Streona hanged from the highest tree in the forest.
Did you know…?
The Mongol leader Ambakai Khan was captured by his Chinese Jin enemies. He was crucified on a wooden frame they called a ‘wooden donkey’. He died slowly. He died so slowly that he had time to send a message to his friends:
Frederick William I of Prussia (1688–1740)
When he was a boy, Freddy was told:
He grew up and married the slightly potty Sophia. One night Sophia went on a sleep-walk in her white nightie.
She crashed through the glass door into Fred’s bedroom. He awoke to see a white lady, splattered in blood, standing in his room. The white lady?
The shock was so great that he had a heart attack and never recovered.
A few days later he told the court, ‘Today I am going to die.’
And he did.
Alexander ‘The Wolf’ of Badenoch in Scotland (1343–1405)
Legend has it that Alex died after a game of chess with his old friend the Devil.
Alex had been visited at Ruthven Castle by a tall man dressed in black. The man offered to play chess with the Wolf.
The game went on for several hours, until finally the tall man moved one of the chess pieces and called ‘Checkmate – you lose.’
The man rose from the table. That night there was a massive storm of thunder, hail and lightning that went on for several hours.
Next morning an eerie silence fell.
Servants tiptoed into the hall. The stranger was gone. Alex’s guards were found outside the castle walls dead and blackened as if they had all been hit by the lightning.
The Wolf was found in the main hall. His dead body was not marked, but the nails in his boots had all been torn out.
Benito Mussolini of Italy (1883–1945)
In 1939 Mussolini had led Italy to war – and defeat – in support of Hitler’s Germany. The people who hated him most were his own subjects – the Freedom Fighters or ‘Partisans’ as they were known. He would be safe as long as he stayed out of their hands.
But his escape was ruined by a silly mistake.
It was an Esso petrol station.
You really wanted to know that, didn’t you?
King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (1594–1632)
Of course, some leaders died in battle. Take Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden…
In 1632 Great Gus marched across Germany and smashed Pomerania and Mecklenburg.
Then he came to Lützen.
In the Battle of Lützen the King was shot in the back.
Gus’s foot was caught in his horse’s saddle and he was dragged along. Eventually his foot came free and he lay there, just about alive.
His enemies finished him off with a shot through the head.
Next morning he was found face down in the mud. His body had been robbed of everything except his shirt.
Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre of France (1758–1794)
Talking of messy, Monsieur Robespierre was another who died with blood on his face.
Little Max led the French Revolution while the ‘Terror’ reigned. Posh people lost their heads at the guillotine.
Noble noddles fell into a basket and were carted away.
Lop and plop! Lop and plop! Non-stop lop and plop. (Try saying that with a mouth full of mushrooms.)
Horrible Histories fascinating fact:
Many history books say ‘Robespierre, the man who sent tens of thousands to the guillotine, ended the same way.’
Tell your teacher:
1 Yes, thousands died, but Max himself only ordered 72 executions. (Not a lot of people know that.)
2 No he did not end the same way! The others were chopped in the neck by the guillotine. Max Robespierre was executed face up – chopped in the throat.
And there is a history mystery about Max’s end.
Max was in a room with his friends when he heard his enemies were coming to get him. Some of his friends tried to kill themselves by jumping out of the window, but they ended up in the toilet pit below. Alive and very smelly.
Max Robespierre was dragged out by a French policeman called Charles Meda.
When they found him Max’s jaw was hanging off, tied up with a bloody rag. He had been shot. But how did it happen?
There are three stories.
1 Robespierre tried to shoot himself. The bullet tore his jaw but didn’t kill him.
2 Robespierre drew a gun. Brave Meda shot him in the jaw and arrested him.
3 Robespierre gave himself up and asked to speak to the people. Meda was told to shoot him in the jaw so he couldn’t speak.
The truth? We may never know.
A report at the time described the horror of his execution.
You get the feeling the French people didn’t really like him.
Emperor Caligula of Rome (AD 12–41)
Caligula was cruel and vicious. It was no surprise that there were plots to kill him.
At last one plot worked. The leader was Cassius Chaerea, an officer in the royal guard, who hated Caligula. Why?
One night Chaerea trapped Caligula at the theatre, swung his sword and hacked open the Emperor’s jaw.
Wounded Caligula made a run for his palace. A friend of Chaerea tripped the Emperor up.
More plotters rushed forward and started to stab Caligula. They kept going long after he was dead.
It was said that some even sank their teeth into his flesh.
Of course his wife and daughter were killed, too.
General Reinhard Heydrich of Germany (1904–1942)
Nasty Nazi Heydrich was nicknamed “The Hangman” because of his cruel treatment of his enemies. He made a big mistake – and it cost him his life.
Heydrich was one of the Nazis who planned the death camps that murdered six million people. Adolf Hitler sent him to rule Bohemia and Moravia for the Nazis.
His rule was so cruel that a team of Czech agents set out to assassinate him. They waited at a sharp bend in the road. When his car slowed down, an assassin jumped out, aimed his machine gun and pulled the trigger.
It didn’t work!14 Oooops!
Luckily for the assassins another man had a tank bomb that he threw at the car. Heydrich was badly hurt.
The best Nazi doctors were sent to help him but he died a week later.
What killed him?
a) loss of blood
b) germs from the bomb
c) poisoned medicine
Answer: b) The bomb was dirty and germs on the splinters poisoned Heydrich’s blood.
Was Mr Hitler angry?
Yes – he was angry with the Czechs. He sent his troops to massacre every man over the age of 16 in the nearby town of Lidice.
But he was also angry with Heydrich for getting himself killed! At the funeral Hitler said:
That’s all you need – you get assassinated then told it was your own fault!
Tsar Nicholas II of Russia (1868–1918)
If you kill a ruler then there is always the chance their children will grow up and seek revenge. So it’s best to kill the whole family, not just the ruler.
That’s what the Russians decided in 1918.
The royal Romanov family were taken to a cellar, lined up in two rows and shot by the secret police.
Their bodies were taken to old wells and mine shafts, where they were soaked with acid and burned on bonfires.
All that was found were a few jewels, false teeth, metal corsets – and a thumb.
But the thumb belonged to the family doctor.