Tyranny of Cambyses, terminating in madness—of Caligula—of the Emperor
Paul.
No questions which can become the subject of judicial examination
are more delicate and difficult than those which depend upon a man’s
mental sanity, whether the case be of a civil or a criminal nature;
whether it regard his competence to manage his own affairs, or his
possession of that moral feeling of right and wrong in the absence
of which he cannot be justly punished as a responsible agent. In the
first instance, daily experience shows us that general eccentricity,
and even delusion upon particular subjects, may exist in union with
the most acute perception of personal interests; in the second, it is
equally clear that the moral sense may be perverted upon one or more
points without being destroyed, and indeed without any other indication
of mental disease. We may take as an example of this the burning of
York Cathedral some years ago. Martin believed this to be morally a
meritorious act, and herein lay his madness: on a case of murder,
robbery, or any other infraction of the laws, he would have judged
aright. But though he believed it to be meritorious, he knew it to
be illegal; he knew that he was subject to punishment, and fled from
it accordingly: and upon this ground the question might be raised,
whether his madness should have protected him from the penalty affixed
to his act. But exclusively of those more strongly marked cases,
which alone are likely to become subjects of judicial inquiry, no man
can converse extensively with the living, or, through the medium of
books, with the dead, without continually asking himself whether the
eccentricity, perverseness, intemperance, and extravagance which he
sees on all sides are compatible with a perfectly sound state of mind.
Mental as well as bodily illness may assume all shapes, and be of all
degrees: and both reflection and observation lead us to conclude that
excessive indulgence of the passions will impair the understanding,
as surely as sensual intemperance injures the constitution. It would
not be difficult to enumerate a long list of causes tending more or
less to unsettle the reason; indeed, no pursuit, however unexciting
it may seem, can be exclusively followed without risk of this result.
Science has its dangers as well as love: the philosopher’s stone and
the quadrature of the circle have probably turned as many heads as
has female ingratitude, from the time of Orlando Furioso downwards.
At present, however, we mean to confine ourselves to one particular
manifestation of insanity, or something nearly allied to it, with the
view of illustrating, in some degree, that large portion of history
which is occupied by the crimes and follies of absolute monarchs.
In reading such narratives as the following, we naturally wonder how
it is that anything human can have been led to play a part so entirely
at variance with all the kindly feelings of human nature. To believe
that Caligula and Nero came into the world fully prepared for the
part which they were afterwards to play, would be as unreasonable as
to adopt the other extreme, and maintain, as some have done, that the
tempers and abilities of all men are originally similar and equal. But
“the child is father of the man.” The work of education begins at an
early period, and circumstances seemingly too trivial to notice, may
exert a powerful effect in fixing our future destiny for good or evil.
There are few persons whose patience has not been more or less tried by
spoiled children, and who cannot point out examples where the temper
of the mature man has been seriously injured by early injudicious
indulgence; and many must know cases in which the paroxysms of a
naturally bad temper, exasperated by uncontrolled licence and habitual
submission, have amounted almost to occasional insanity. Causes closely
analogous to those which render one man the dread of his domestic
circle, may render another the terror and the scourge of half the
earth. The same spirit which vents itself in ill–humour for a broken
piece of china, or execrations for an ill–cooked dinner, if fostered by
power, might correct breaches of etiquette with the knout, and deal out
confiscations and death as unsparingly as oaths. We may observe that,
bloody and unfeeling as their administration may have been, it is not
among the adventurers who have carved their own way to a crown that
the wantonness of tyranny has been most developed; it is rather among
their descendants, men nurtured among parasites, with the prospect of
despotism ever before their eyes. Surrounded from infancy by those
whose interest it has been to pamper, not to repress their evil
passions, taught, in Pagan countries, to regard themselves as gods, and
worshipped as such by a servile and besotted multitude, what wonder
that they tread under foot those who bow the neck before them, and
scorn to sympathise with a confessedly inferior race? In private life,
however, the regulation of the mind may be neglected, the supremacy
of law, and the knowledge that excess, beyond a certain point, cannot
be committed with impunity, exerts a salutary restraint over the
wildest spirits. But he who is above the influence of fear, whose angry
passions have never been checked, nor his desires controlled, and who
is harassed by the craving after excitement consequent upon satiety
of sensual pleasures, is prepared for any caprice or enormity which
the humour of the moment may suggest. The mind can hardly be thus
morally depraved without becoming intellectually depraved also: as the
animal man is cherished, and the reasonable man neglected, the former
will assume the guidance due to the latter, and human becomes little
superior to brute nature, except in its greater power to do mischief.
In this state of degradation
Even–handed justice
Condemns the ingredients of the poisoned chalice
To our own lips.
The dominion of the passions is worse than external oppression, and
conscience exasperates, after it has lost its power to reform. Misery
may then complete the ruin which intemperance began, and cruelty, from
being only indifferent, become congenial.
If a man deprives himself almost of the common necessaries of life,
for the purpose of accumulating money which he will never use or want;
if he sleeps all day, and wakes all night; if he chooses to wear
his shoes upon his hands, and his gloves upon his feet, or indulge
in any other such ridiculous fancies; we call him odd, eccentric, a
madman, according to the degree of his deviation from established
usages: and justly, for in all these things a sound mind is wanting.
Yet that man may be perfectly able to foresee the consequences of
his actions, perfect master of his reason upon every subject; and
therefore be both legally and morally responsible. It is a state of
mind strictly analogous, as we believe, to this, which has produced
the worst excesses of the worst oppressors; and one which has sprung
from the same cause—habitual submission to the will instead of the
reason. From the childish passion of George II., who manifested his
displeasure on great occasions by kicking his hat about the room, to
the superhuman crimes of Caligula, we find this disease, if we may call
it so, manifested in every variety of degree and form. In Henry VIII.
of England, we trace it in the contrast between the early and later
years of his reign, in the increased violence of his passions, and in
the capriciousness and cruelty ingrafted on a temper not naturally
ungentle. We ascribe to it the ungovernable fury which obscured the
brilliant qualities of Peter of Russia; and we find it still more
strongly marked in the extravagances which are ascribed to Xerxes. His
very preparations for invading Greece, on a scale so disproportionate
to the value of his object if attained, show how subordinate was his
judgment to his inclinations; and no one can read the narration of his
chastisement of the Hellespont, without recognising the weakness of a
mind unsettled by extravagant presumption. “When Xerxes heard that his
bridges were carried away, he was much vexed, and ordered three hundred
lashes to be given to the Hellespont, and a pair of fetters to be cast
into it. And I have heard that he sent men at the same time to brand
the Hellespont. Moreover, he commanded those that inflicted the stripes
to use unholy and barbarian language, saying, ‘Thou bitter water, thy
master inflicts this punishment upon thee, because thou hast wronged
him, having received no injury at his hands. And King Xerxes will cross
thee, whether thou wilt or no: and, as is fit, no one sacrifices to
thee, because thou art a salt and crafty river.’ So he ordered them to
punish the sea thus, and to cut off the heads of the Grecians who had
charge of the bridge.”[132] This is as downright frenzy as the walls of
Bedlam ever witnessed: a paroxysm of temporary insanity, produced by
disappointment acting on a vain, ungoverned mind.
Before proceeding to relate in detail the lives of some remarkable
persons which bear upon the point in question, we wish briefly to
allude to the very singular and striking history of Nebuchadnezzar,
though with no view of resolving that preternatural visitation, which
is expressly stated to have been from God, into a natural consequence
of his intemperate pride. From the few notices of him preserved in the
Bible, he seems to have been a man cast in no ordinary mould; to have
been endowed with powers and capability of excellence commensurate with
the exalted situation which he was appointed to hold. It is evident,
however, that he had drunk deep of the intoxication of despotism. His
intended massacre of the wise men, and the Chaldeans, in point of
wisdom and justice is on a par with the anger of a child who beats
his nurse because she will not give him the moon to play with; and
his conduct with respect to the image of the plain of Dura, if less
preposterous, is not more creditable to his notions of toleration or
humanity. In fact, he appears to have been in a fair way to become as
truculent a tyrant as Cambyses or Caligula, when that awful vision,
related at length in the fourth chapter of Daniel, was presented to
him, which foretold his banishment from the throne and from men: and we
may infer from the warning of the inspired interpreter, and from the
course of the narrative, that his overweening pride and hardness of
heart, the food and origin of that mental alienation of which we have
been speaking at such length, were the vices against which Divine anger
was especially directed. “This is the decree of the Most High, which
is come upon my lord the king: They shall drive thee from men, and thy
dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, till thou know that the
Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he
will.... Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and
break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by showing
mercy to the poor: if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquillity....
At the end of twelve months he walked in the palace of the kingdom of
Babylon. The king spoke and said, Is not this the great Babylon that I
have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and
for the honour of my majesty? While the word was in the king’s mouth,
there fell a voice from heaven, saying, O King Nebuchadnezzar, to thee
it is spoken; the kingdom is departed from thee. And they shall drive
thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field;
they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and seven times shall pass
over thee, until thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of
men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.”[133]
Of the following sketches the two first exhibit the dominion of passion
in its most violent form; the last differs rather in degree than in
nature. Strictly speaking, the life of Cambyses is not entitled to a
place here; but Herodotus makes us so familiar with Persian history
from the time of Cyrus, that it seems naturally to find a place in
works relating to the history of Greece.
Cambyses succeeded to the undisturbed possession of that vast empire
which his father Cyrus had acquired, extending from the Indus to the
Ægean, and from the Caspian to the Red Sea. This extent of dominion
might seem enough to satisfy the most ambitious, and employ the
most active mind; but the son, unhappily for himself, inherited the
father’s military spirit, and in the fourth year of his reign quitted
his paternal kingdom to conquer Egypt. He marched along the coast
from Palestine to Pelusium, where he found encamped Psammenitus, who
had succeeded his father Amasis on the Egyptian throne. A battle was
fought, in which the Egyptians were defeated; they fled to Memphis, and
the rest of the country submitted without further struggle. Herodotus,
who visited the field of battle, relates a curious story. The bones of
either nation were heaped apart, as they had been originally separated;
and the Persian skulls were so weak that you could throw a pebble
through them, whereas the Egyptian would hardly break, though beaten
with a large stone. Their descendants do not appear to have degenerated
in this respect.
Cambyses sent a ship of Mitylene up the Nile, to summon Memphis to
surrender. The savage and exasperated inhabitants tore the herald
and crew limb from limb, and made a long defence, during which the
Cyrenæans and the neighbouring Libyans submitted. The city being at
last taken, he put Psammenitus to a singular trial.
“On the tenth day after the capture of Memphis, he placed Psammenitus,
together with other Egyptians, without the gates; and meaning to make
essay of his temper, he acted thus. He clothed that king’s daughter in
servile raiment, and sent her, bearing a water–pitcher, to fetch water,
and with her other maidens of the noblest families similarly clad. And
as they went with wailing and lamentation past their fathers, these,
all but Psammenitus, re–echoed their cries, seeing the evil condition
of their children; but he bowed his head to the earth. When they had
passed, his son came by with two thousand Egyptians of like age, with
bits in their mouths, and their necks bound with halters, who were
thus led to death in retaliation for the Mityleneans who were slain at
Memphis. For the royal judges had decided that for every one of them
ten of the noblest Egyptians should perish. And he, seeing them pass,
and knowing that his son was carried to execution, while his countrymen
who were around him wept and were much distressed, did as in the case
of his daughter. When they were gone, an old man, who was formerly of
his drinking parties, being now deprived of his fortune, and compelled
to beg through the army, chanced to come where Psammenitus was sitting;
and Psammenitus, when he saw his friend, cried aloud, and smote his
head, calling upon him by name. Men were placed near, who told Cambyses
every thing that happened; and he was much surprised, and sent this
message: ‘Psammenitus, your master Cambyses asks why, having given way
neither to cries nor tears when you saw your daughter maltreated and
your son going to execution, you have honoured with them a man nowise
related to you?’ He answered, ‘Son of Cyrus, my domestic misfortunes
were too mighty to be wept; but the sufferings of a friend, who, on
the threshold of old age, has fallen from a high and happy state into
beggary, form a fit subject for tears.’”[134] The heart of Cambyses was
touched for once, and he ordered the Egyptian prince to be sought and
saved; but his mercy came too late.
Proceeding from Memphis to Sais, he broke open the tomb of Amasis,
the late king, and caused the body, which was embalmed as usual, to
be scourged, and insulted in every possible way.[135] Finally, he
ordered it to be burnt, wherein he transgressed equally the religion
of the Persians and Egyptians. For the former say that it is not fit
to consign a dead man to a divinity, esteeming fire as such; while the
latter believe it to be a savage animal, which consumes every thing
within its reach, and then dies; and consider it unlawful to let their
corpses be the prey of wild beasts. Hence the practice of embalming,
that worms may not prey upon their flesh. This wanton and disgusting
outrage was prompted by personal hatred, arising from a slight said to
have been put upon him by Amasis, in consequence of which the invasion
of Egypt was undertaken.
That country being subdued, far from being contented with his
acquisitions, he now meditated three expeditions at once: one against
Carthage, which was frustrated by the Phœnicians, who composed the
chief part of his fleet, refusing to serve against their kinsmen and
descendants; another against the Ammonians, who lived in the Libyan
desert, in a spot made famous by the oracle of Ammon;[136] a third
against the Æthiopians, called Macrobii, or long–lived, who were said
to be the tallest and handsomest of all men, and to reach the age of
120 years and upwards. The monarchy was elective, and they chose for
their king whoever was most eminent for strength and stature. Before
he set out, Cambyses sent spies into this country, charged with gifts
and professions of friendship, to which the Æthiopian replied, “The
king of Persia has not sent you with gifts, as setting a high price on
my alliance; and you speak falsely, for you are come as spies of my
realm. Neither is that man upright, for then he would covet none other
country than his own, and not have enslaved those from whom he has
had no wrong. Give to him, then, this bow, and say, ‘The king of the
Æthiopians advises the king of the Persians to invade the long–lived
Æthiopians with overpowering numbers, as soon as the Persians can draw
thus easily such bows as these; and, until then, to thank the gods who
have not inclined the sons of the Æthiopians to add the lands of others
to their own.’”[137]
Cambyses, as we may suppose, flew into no small passion at the receipt
of such an answer, and urged his march, says Herodotus, like one out
of his right mind, and too impetuously to wait until magazines could
be formed,—a precaution the more needful, because, according to the
prevalent notions of geography, he was going to the uttermost parts of
the earth. From Thebes he detached 50,000 men to enslave the Ammonians,
and burn the temple of Ammon, while he advanced towards Æthiopia with
the rest: but before one–fifth of the journey was accomplished, all
their food was consumed, even to the beasts of burden which attended
the camp. “If, when he found this out, he had changed his mind, and
brought home his army, then, bating the original fault, he would have
been a wise man. But, instead of this, he pressed continually forward,
without any consideration.”
The consequence of this improvident obstinacy was, that his soldiers,
who had lived on herbs so long as the earth produced anything, began
to live upon each other when they reached the sandy desert. Cambyses
had no relish for this sort of supper, whether he was to eat, or, like
Polonius, to be eaten, and at length turned back, not before he had
lost a large part of his army. The other detachment advanced deep into
the desert, whence they returned not, nor was it known what became of
them. The Ammonians said that a mighty south–west wind had overwhelmed
them with sand. The circumstances of their supposed destruction are
powerfully though rather extravagantly described by Darwin:—
“Now o’er their head the whizzing whirlwinds breathe,
And the live desert pants and heaves beneath;
Tinged by the crimson sun, vast columns rise
Of eddying sands, and war amid the skies,
In red arcades the billowy plain surround,
And stalking turrets dance upon the ground.
Onward resistless rolls the infuriate surge,
Clouds follow clouds, and mountains mountains urge;
Wave over wave the driving desert swims;
Bursts o’er their heads, inhumes their struggling limbs;
Man mounts on man, on camels camels rush,
Hosts march o’er hosts, and nations nations crush,—
Wheeling in air the winged islands fall,
And one great earthy ocean covers all!—
Then ceased the storm.—Night bowed his Ethiop brow
To earth, and listened to the groans below.—
Grim Horror shook—awhile the living hill
Heaved with convulsive throes—and all was still!”[138]
The king returned to Memphis, his army much weakened, and his warlike
ardour probably no less cooled, by this double failure; for he made
no more trials to extend his empire. So humiliating a disappointment
was not likely to sweeten his arbitrary temper, and to its effects
we are inclined to attribute the sudden change which appears to have
taken place in his conduct. We say appears, because up to this time
nothing is related of his private life: it is not probable, however,
that the historian would have omitted occurrences such as those which
characterise it from henceforward. The seeds of the evil which now
shot up had long been rooting themselves. Self–gratification had
been the end, and his will the guide, of his actions; and on such
persons uncontrolled power acts like a hot–bed, to draw up their bad
qualities into tenfold rankness. Old tales make frequent mention of
magicians being torn in pieces by the spirits whom they have called
up. He who gives loose to the evil passions of his nature, has a worse
set of fiends to deal with, than the grotesque imaginations of our
forefathers ever figured, and will find it harder to escape from them
in safety: what wonder is it if the reason proves unequal to bear
the shocks of such a warfare? That the mind of Cambyses so yielded,
the cruelty, impiety, and extravagance of his latter years, in which
his conduct was as impolitic as wicked, will not allow us to doubt.
Disappointment and vexation could not have produced the disorder,
though they may have hastened the crisis and increased its violence.
The Egyptians referred this change to another cause. When Cambyses
reached Memphis he found the city in great joy. Apis,[139] the sacred
bull, one of their most venerated deities, had just appeared, and,
as usual, the whole country celebrated it as a festival. The despot
suspected, not unnaturally, that they were rejoicing over his defeat,
and sent for the magistrates, to ask why the Egyptians, who had done
nothing of the sort when he was before at Memphis, made such show of
joy, now that he came there after losing his army. They replied, that
their god, who was wont to appear at long intervals, had manifested
himself, and that on this occasion the Egyptians always kept holiday.
Cambyses said they lied, and therefore sent them to execution. He
next sent for the priests, and being similarly answered, said that he
would soon know whether any tame god was come among the Egyptians.
At his command, the animal was produced; he drew his dagger, struck
Apis in the thigh, and said, laughing, “Fools, are such things gods,
composed of flesh and blood and penetrable to steel? He is indeed a
god worthy of the Egyptians! For you, you shall not make a mock of me
with impunity.” So saying, he ordered the priests to be scourged, and
all persons found celebrating the feast to be slain. Apis died, and was
buried secretly. From this sacrilege the Egyptians dated the madness
of Cambyses. Others ascribed it to epilepsy, to which he is said to
have been subject from his birth. The disease might have produced a
liability to insanity, but it could scarcely have been the agent in
working so sudden a change. The extravagances of Caligula, however,
were referred by many to the same cause.
The change in his temper was first shown by the murder of his brother
Smerdis, whom he had sent back to Susa in a fit of jealousy because he
was the only man in the army who could draw the King of Ethiopia’s bow,
even for two fingers’ breadth. After taking this step, he dreamed that
a messenger came to him from Persia, with tidings that Smerdis sat upon
the throne, and touched the heavens with his head. Fearing, therefore,
that this vision portended his being deposed and murdered, he sent a
trusty follower, named Prexaspes, to Susa, with orders to assassinate
his brother. The commission was faithfully performed.
A sister also, who had followed him into Egypt, and with whom he
cohabited, fell a victim to his intemperate passion. “Before this
time,” Herodotus says, “the Persians never married their sisters, but
he, wishing to do so, managed it thus. Knowing that he was about to act
contrary to their customs, he sent for the royal judges, and asked them
if there were any law permitting any one who wished to cohabit with his
sister. Now the royal judges are select men among the Persians, who
retain their office during life, or till convicted of some injustice;
and it is they who preside in the Persian courts and interpret the laws
and institutions of the nation, and all things are referred to them.
So to this question of Cambyses they returned an answer that was both
just and safe, saying that they could find no law permitting a brother
to marry his sister; but they had indeed discovered another—that it
was lawful for the king of the Persians to do whatever he liked. Thus,
then, they did not break the law from fear of Cambyses; and yet, lest
they should themselves perish out of regard for the law, they found
another law to help him in marrying his sister.”[140] Cambyses and
his judges seem to have been well suited. There is on record a better
instance of courtly evasion, related by Waller. The poet went, on the
day of a dissolution of parliament, to see the King, James II., at
dinner. “Dr. Andrews, Bishop of Winchester, and Dr. Neal, Bishop of
Durham, were standing behind his majesty’s chair, and there happened
something in the conversation these prelates had with the King on
which Mr. Waller did often reflect. His majesty asked the bishops, ‘My
lords, cannot I take my subjects’ money when I want it, without all
this formality in parliament?’ The Bishop of Durham readily answered,
‘God forbid, sire, but you should! You are the breath of our nostrils.’
Whereupon the King turned and said to the Bishop of Winchester, ‘Well,
my lord, what say you?’ ‘Sire,’ replied the bishop, ‘I have no skill
to judge of parliamentary cases.’ The King replied, ‘No put–offs, my
lord—answer me presently.’ ‘Then, sire,’ said he, ‘I think it is lawful
for you to take my brother Neal’s money, for he offers it.’”[141]
It was another sister who followed Cambyses into Egypt, and perished
there by his violence. She was present when he set a lion’s whelp to
fight a puppy. The latter had the worst, till another of the same
litter broke loose, and came to help it, when the two together beat the
lion. The princess shed tears at the sight, and being questioned why
she did so, replied that it was for the remembrance of Smerdis, and the
thought that there was no one to avenge his death. The brute kicked
her, and thereby inflicted a mortal injury.
He held Prexaspes, the person employed to murder Smerdis, in especial
favour, and among other marks of it appointed that nobleman’s son to
be his cup–bearer. One day he asked, “Prexaspes, what sort of person
do the Persians think me?” He replied with unseasonable candour, “that
they praised him very highly, only they said that he was terribly fond
of wine.” Cambyses was very angry at the imputation. “Do the Persians,”
he answered, “say that I am beside myself for love of wine? You shall
see whether they speak the truth, or whether it is they that are
beside themselves when they talk thus. If I cleave your son’s heart
with my arrow as he stands without the door, then the Persians will be
proved to talk nonsense: if I miss, then say that the Persians speak
truth, and it is I that am mad.” He drew his bow, the boy fell, and he
commanded that he should be opened: the arrow was found fixed in his
heart. He turned to the father and said, laughing, “Prexaspes, I have
made it clear to you that the Persians are mad, and not I. Now tell me
whether you have seen any man who shot so well?” The miserable wretch,
fearing for his own safety, replied that not even a god could have done
so well.
Crœsus, who was kept in attendance in his court, as before in Cyrus’s,
ventured to remonstrate on the course which he was pursuing, but
so unsuccessfully, that nothing but a rapid flight saved him from
furnishing another proof of Cambyses’ skill in archery. He was then
ordered to execution, but the officers who had charge of him, knowing
the value that their master set upon Crœsus, and expecting rewards for
saving his life, concealed him until the king’s anger should be over.
One day at length they produced him, when Cambyses was expressing
his regret for the Lydian’s death. It is dangerous to calculate upon
a madman’s conduct. The king said that he was very glad Crœsus was
preserved, and put the officers to death for disobeying his orders.
He had now been absent from Persia three years nearly, when a revolt
broke out; the natural consequence of so long a desertion of the seat
of empire, especially under a despotic government; in which case the
people, habituated implicitly to submit to those in authority, care
little from what head that authority emanates, provided it is conveyed
through the customary channels. On leaving Persia, Cambyses had
appointed Patizeithes, a Magian, or one of the hereditary priesthood,
to be steward or inspector of the royal household. This man probably
possessed rank and influence, as, under all monarchies, the nobility
have been eager to fill even menial offices about the royal person;
perhaps his station gave him political importance, as in France, under
the Merovingian dynasty, the Maires du Palais wielded the whole power
of the state. He had a brother named Smerdis, closely resembling in
person Smerdis the son of Cyrus; and knowing both that the latter was
dead, and that the fact of his death was carefully concealed from the
nation, he conceived a plan, founded probably on the reputed madness
and necessary unpopularity of Cambyses, for dethroning him, and
substituting his own brother as the son of Cyrus. The attempt seems
to have succeeded without opposition: for the historian merely states
that he set his brother on the throne, and sent heralds throughout the
empire, to say that in future obedience was to be paid to Smerdis,
son of Cyrus, and not to Cambyses. The herald sent into Egypt found
the latter with his army in Syria, and (a service of no small danger)
boldly delivered his message to the king in public. On this occasion
the madman behaved reasonably, for instead of killing Prexaspes and
the herald in the first instance, and then proceeding to inquire how
Smerdis came to be alive, he began by investigating, and soon perceived
the real state of the case. The true meaning of the dream already
referred to then struck him, in which he saw a messenger from Susa,
who told him that Smerdis sat upon the throne, and reached the heavens
with his head. Some remnant of kindly feeling and remorse now touched
his heart, and he wept to think that he had destroyed his brother to
no purpose; but this soon gave way to a natural anger, and with his
usual precipitation he would instantly have departed to assert his
own empire, and punish the conspirators. But as he sprung to horse
the button dropped off which closed the end of his scabbard; and the
naked point pierced his thigh, the spot in which he had sacrilegiously
wounded Apis. He thought that the injury was mortal, and asked the
name of the city where he then was. It was called Ecbatana,[142]
and in Ecbatana an oracle had forewarned him he should die; but he
naturally interpreted it of the more celebrated Ecbatana, the residence
of the ancient Median kings. When he heard the name he was sobered,
and comprehending the oracle aright, said “Here then Cambyses, son of
Cyrus, is destined to end his life.”[143] The wound mortified, and on
the twentieth day after the accident he sent for the most eminent of
his countrymen, and addressed them in these words: “Men of Persia, I
am now forced to declare to you what I have hitherto concealed most
carefully. For, being in Egypt, I saw in my sleep a vision which I
would fain never have seen, and thought a messenger from home brought
word that Smerdis sat upon the throne, and reached the heavens with
his head. Fearing, therefore, to be deposed by my brother, I did more
hastily than wisely, for it is not in man’s nature to turn aside that
which is decreed: but I, fool as I was, sent Prexaspes to Susa to kill
Smerdis, and lived in security when this great evil was done, never
thinking that, though he was removed, some other person might rise
up against me. And thus, being wrong concerning every thing that was
to happen, I have needlessly become a fratricide, and yet am equally
deprived of my kingdom. For it was Smerdis, the Magian, whose revolt
the divinity foretold in my dream. The deed then is done, and be
assured that you have no longer Smerdis, son of Cyrus, but the Magi
fill the royal office; he whom I left steward of my household, and
Smerdis his brother. He is dead, then, whose part especially it was to
avenge the wrongs done to me by the Magi; dead, impiously murdered by
his nearest of kin. And as he is no more, I am compelled to give in
charge to you, O Persians, those things which at the end of life I wish
to be done. I require of you then, and call the gods of our empire to
witness, that you suffer not the sovereignty to revert to the Medes,
but if they have obtained it by fraud, by fraud let them be stripped
of it; if by force, by force do you recover it. And as you do this,
may your land be fruitful, and your wives and flocks yield increase to
you as a free people for ever; but if you recover not the empire, nor
attempt to recover it, I imprecate upon you the reverse of all these
things, and further pray that the end of every Persian may be like
mine.” So saying, he bewailed in tears his whole condition. And when
the Persians beheld their king weeping they rent their clothes, and
made lamentation unsparingly.[144] Thus died Cambyses, in the seventh
year and fifth month of his reign.
The Egyptians, who were horror–struck at the outrage committed upon
Apis, and who ascribed the atrocities perpetrated by the Persian
monarch to madness, the consequence of this crime, saw in the manner
of his death a further manifestation of divine vengeance. Strange
inconsistency, that men should believe a deity unable to protect his
own person, and yet thus capable of inflicting punishment upon his
injurer! In a similar spirit, the death of Cleomenes, King of Sparta,
an event attended with remarkable and impressive circumstances, was
attributed to no less than four different acts of impiety by different
parties, each believing that it was caused by an infringement upon
those things which they themselves considered as peculiarly sacred.
Cleomenes’ mind was impaired before he ascended the throne, insomuch
that his younger brother endeavoured to set aside the strict order of
succession in his own favour. We may notice this as a strong proof of
what has been said of the efficacy of moral restraint in preserving
mental sanity, and checking the progress of existing disease. The
strict discipline of Sparta, the subjection of her kings in common with
all other citizens, not merely to written law, but to public opinion,
was sufficient to restrain the wanderings even of an impaired mind; for
though his reign was overbearing and violent, nothing is related of him
which can be considered as a proof of madness until towards its close,
when he became addicted to drunkenness, a vice especially contrary to
the Spartan laws. Being proved to have bribed the priestess to return
an answer suitable to his own interests on one occasion when the
Spartan government consulted the Delphic oracle, he fled to Thessaly,
and from thence to Arcadia, where he employed himself so successfully
in stirring up war against Sparta, that he was recalled and reinstated.
Shortly after he broke out into frenzy, having been before, says
Herodotus, somewhat crazed; and being placed in confinement under the
charge of a Helot, he obtained a sword from his guard, with which he
deliberately cut himself into pieces, beginning at the legs and so
proceeding upwards, until he reached the vital parts, and died.[145]
That so tragical an end should excite general attention, that it should
be referred to the direct interposition of the Deity to punish some
crime, is no wonder: what is chiefly observable, and characteristic of
Grecian religion, is that no one thought of attributing the anger of
the gods to moral guilt, of which Cleomenes had no lack, but merely to
some injury or insult offered especially to the gods themselves. Hence,
according to the religious prepossessions of the party speculating,
there were four methods current of accounting for his madness. Some
time before, when commanding in an invasion of Argolis, he had defeated
the opposing army, and driven many of them into a wood sacred to the
hero Argus (not he with the many eyes), from whom the Argians traced
their descent. Unwilling to lose his prey, he at first enticed them one
by one with promises of safety, and when his treachery was discovered,
and they refused to quit their asylum, he caused the Helots attendant
on the army to surround the grove with dry wood, and burnt it together
with the wretches it contained. The Argians then said that the hero
Argus thus avenged the pollution and destruction of his grove: the
Athenians were equally confident that he was thus afflicted because he
had once ravaged the sacred precincts of Eleusis: the other Greeks,
who cared comparatively little either for Argus or Ceres, found a
sufficient cause in his corruption of the Delphian oracle, which was
consulted and venerated by all alike. And the Spartans, bigoted
to nothing so much as to their own institutions, probably stumbled
upon the truth when they said that there was nothing divine about
the business, but that he was driven mad by hard drinking. A similar
feeling led the royalists to see something extraordinary in the death
of Lord Brooke, who was killed by a musket–shot in the eye, fired from
Lichfield Cathedral, while besieging it for the Parliament in 1643.
“There were many discourses and observations upon his death, that it
should be upon St. Chad’s day, being the 2nd of March, by whose name,
he being a bishop shortly after the planting of Christianity in this
island, that church had anciently been called. And it was reported
that in his prayer that very morning (for he used to pray publicly,
though his chaplain were in the presence), he wished ‘that if the cause
he were in were not right and just, he might presently be cut off.’”
Others went still further, and observed not only that he was killed in
attacking St. Chad’s church on St. Chad’s day, but that he received his
death–wound in the very eye with which he had said he hoped to see the
ruin of all the cathedrals in the kingdom. It is observable that the
honour of the tutelary saint seems to have been more thought of than
that of the Deity.
C. Cæsar Caligula, son of Germanicus and Agrippina, being left
an orphan at an early age, passed under the guardianship of his
grand–uncle Tiberius, who adopted and declared him his successor. In
this critical situation he profited so well by the admirable example of
duplicity ever before him, that neither the destruction of his nearest
relations, nor even the insults studiously offered to himself, drew
from him a complaint, or interrupted his obsequious attentions to the
reigning power. It was well said after his accession, in reference to
this period, that there never was a better slave or a worse master.
But cruelty and licentiousness showed themselves through this mask of
milkiness; and the clear–sighted Tiberius, it is said, often predicted
that Caligula would live for his own and all men’s perdition, and that
he was cherishing a serpent against the Roman people, and a Phaeton
against the whole world. If the speech be genuine, the emperor’s kind
intentions towards others merited that he should be the first victim
of his amiable pupil, and such was the case. At the close of his last
illness, while he lay in a stupor which was supposed to be death,
Macro, the favourite minister, proclaimed Caligula. But he revived—his
courtiers slunk away from the new–made monarch, and Caligula in passive
terror awaited the consequences of his precipitance, until Macro caused
his reviving benefactor to be smothered under the bed–clothes.
The news of a change of masters was received with universal joy, partly
from hatred to Tiberius, partly from love to the family of Germanicus;
and the early conduct of the young prince was calculated to increase
the general attachment. He honoured the ashes of his mother and
brothers with a splendid funeral, remitted punishments, discharged all
criminal proceedings, professed to have no ears for informers, watched
over public morals and the administration of justice, and in all things
assumed the semblance of a mild and conscientious monarch. But this
affectation of popularity lasted no longer than the caprice or fear
which produced it.
The extravagant folly of his nature broke out in the assumption of
divinity. This was no new pretension; but he surpassed his predecessors
in the extent and absurdity of his claims. He mutilated without remorse
the products of Grecian art, by placing his own head upon the images
of the gods, without regard either to the beauty or sanctity of the
statues which he thus disfigured. He built a temple in his own honour,
appointed priests, and laid down a ritual of sacrifice, including
only those birds which were most esteemed by the epicures of the day.
He assumed the title of Latian Jupiter, and completed the mummery
by pretending to hold secret conferences with the Jupiter of the
Capitol, in which he was heard threatening to send him back to Greece
in disgrace; and was only mollified by the repeated entreaties of the
father of gods and men, who invited him to share his own abode, the
venerated Capitol.
The Jews of course did not acknowledge his divinity, which angered
him exceedingly, insomuch that he issued an order to erect his own
statue in the temple at Jerusalem. At the intercession of Agrippa this
edict was recalled, but his anger against the nation still continued,
and gave rise to a very curious scene. A deputation of Jews had gone
to Rome in order to conduct a dispute between themselves and the
Alexandrians. Caligula appointed the parties to come before him at
a villa which he had ordered to be thrown open for his inspection.
On the introduction of the Jews, “You,” he said, “are those fellows
who think me no god, though I am acknowledged to be such by all men,
and who confess none except that unpronounceable one of yours;” and
raising his hands towards heaven, he uttered that word which it was
not lawful to hear, far less to speak. The Jews were in despair, while
their adversaries jumped and clapped their hands, and accumulated the
epithets of all the gods on Caligula. One of them, to improve this
advantage, said that the emperor would detest the Jews still more if
he knew that they were the only people who had never sacrificed in his
behalf. The Jews all exclaimed that it was false—that they had thrice
offered hecatombs for his welfare. “Be it so,” he answered; “what
then? You sacrificed to another, and not to me.” All this time he was
running over the whole house, up and down stairs, and dragging the
poor Jews after, who, besides being in mortal terror, were exposed to
the ridicule of all the court. Presently he gave some orders about the
building, and then turned to them and said gravely, “But why do you not
eat pork?” This was another triumph for their adversaries, who burst
into such immoderate laughter that the courtiers began to be shocked.
The Jews answered, “that the habits of nations varied. Some persons,”
they added, “do not eat lamb.” “They are right,” said the emperor, “it
is a tasteless meat.” At last he said, rather angrily, “I should like
to know on what plea you can justify your city;” and as they entered
into a long speech, he ran over the house to give orders about the
windows; then returning, he asked again what they had to say, and then,
when they began their speech again, ran off to look at some pictures.
Finally he sent them off, with the observation, “These are not such bad
fellows after all, but they are great fools for not believing me to be
a god.”[146]
No man ever spilt blood more lightly, with more refinement in cruelty,
or with less excuse. He had no rivals to fear, no conspiracies to
provoke him; but selfishness seemed to have stifled every humane
feeling, and to have left him a prey to the guidance of his evil
passions, unrestrained by that natural abhorrence of blood which
few even of the worst entirely overcome. To relate one half of his
atrocities would weary and disgust the reader: the few here given are
selected to show how closely levity was mingled with brutality. He
asked one who had been banished by Tiberius, how he employed himself
in exile. “I besought the gods that Tiberius might perish, and you
be emperor,” was the courtly reply. Thinking that those whom he had
banished might be similarly employed, he sent persons around the
islands of the Mediterranean, the abodes usually prescribed to those
unhappy men, commissioned to put all to death. Cowardly as cruel, he
was conscious that the prayer merited a hearing, and had superstition
to fear, though not religion to venerate or obey. A civil officer of
rank, resident for the sake of his health in Anticyra (an island of
the Ægean Sea, celebrated for the growth of hellebore), requested
the extension of his leave of absence. Caligula answered, “that
blood–letting was necessary, where so long a course of hellebore had
failed,” and sent at the same time an order for his execution. The
joke, such as it is, appears to have been the only provocation to this
act. Imperial wit need be brilliant if it is to be displayed at so high
a price. It was his frequent order to the executioner, whose work he
loved to superintend, “Strike so that he may feel himself die.” When,
by a mistake of name, one man had suffered for another, he observed
that both deserved alike; and here he probably stumbled upon a truth.
One of his exclamations is notorious: “Oh that the Roman people had one
neck!” In a similar spirit he lamented that his reign was distinguished
by no public misfortunes—he should be forgotten in the prosperity of
the age. It was a mistaken diffidence: he might have trusted in his
own powers to avert such a misfortune. Another source of bloodshed was
his profuse expenditure. Within a year he spent the treasure left by
Tiberius, amounting to twenty–two millions sterling, and then supplied
his extravagance by every species of extortion. He abrogated the wills
of some, because of their ingratitude in not making his predecessor,
or himself, their heir; those of others he annulled, because witnesses
were found to say that they had meant to do so; and having thus
frightened many into appointing him a legatee conjointly with their
friends and relations, he said that they were laughing at him, to
continue alive after making their wills, and sent poisoned dishes to
many of them. And being thus callous, and boastfully indifferent to
his subjects’ sufferings, he chose to affect horror when in the savage
sports of the amphitheatre one gladiator killed five others, and
published an edict to express his abhorrence at the cruelty of those
who had endured such a sight.
One instance of his extortion we could pardon. After an exhibition
of gladiators, he caused the survivors to be sold by auction. While
so employed he observed that one Aponius was dozing in his seat, and
turning to the auctioneer, desired him on no account to neglect the
biddings of the gentleman who was nodding to him from the benches.
Finally thirteen gladiators were knocked down to the unconscious
bidder for near 73,000_l._ Among other equally honest and dignified
ways of raising money, he sold in Gaul the jewels, servants, and other
property, even the very children of his sisters; and he found this so
profitable, that he sent to Rome for the old furniture of the palace,
pressing all carriages, public and private, for its conveyance, to the
great inconvenience and even distress of the capital. But the sale, we
may suppose, went off dully, for the emperor complained loudly of his
subjects’ avarice, who were not ashamed to be richer than himself, and
affected sorrow at being compelled to alienate the imperial property.
The most ludicrous part of his life is the history of his wars. Being
told that his Batavian guards wanted recruiting, he took a sudden whim
to make a German campaign, and set out with such speed that he arrived
at his head–quarters in Gaul before the troops could be entirely
collected. He now assumed the character of a strict disciplinarian;
broke those officers whom his own causeless hurry had made too late;
and mingling a due attention to economy with his caprices, deprived
6000 veterans of the pensions due to them. He claimed the conquest of
Britain, on the ground of receiving homage from an exiled prince of
that island; and having sent a pompous account of this magnificent
acquisition to the senate, he proceeded to the Rhine and even crossed
it. While marching through a defile, he heard some one observe that
the appearance of an enemy at that moment would cause no little
confusion. The notion of war in earnest was too much for the descendant
of Germanicus and Drusus. He mounted his horse, hurried to recross
the river, and rather than wait until an obstructed bridge could be
cleared, was passed from hand to hand over the heads of the crowd.
Not finding, or rather not seeking a real enemy, he made some Germans
of his own army conceal themselves in the forest, and while he was at
table caused the approach of an enemy to be hurriedly announced. On
this he rushed to horse, galloped with his companions and part of his
guard into the next wood, erected a trophy in honour of his exploit,
and quickly returned to censure the cowardice of those who had refused
to share the danger of their prince. In a similar spirit he sent away
some hostages privately, then led the hue and cry to overtake them,
and brought them back in fetters as deserters. But his most brilliant
exploit was that of giving battle to the ocean. He drew his troops up
in line upon the sea–shore, ranged his artillery, machines for throwing
large darts and stones, as if against an enemy, and then, while all
were wondering what folly would come next, commanded the soldiers to
fill their helmets and pockets with shells, calling them the spoils
of the ocean, due to the Capitol and the palace. To celebrate this
victory he built a lighthouse, and distributed a hundred denarii to
every soldier; and then, as if he had surpassed all former instances of
liberality, “Depart,” he said, “depart happy and rich.”
Such victories deserved a triumph, but there was some difficulty in
procuring proper ornaments for the ostentatious ceremony: for his
German victories had produced no prisoners, and it does not appear to
have occurred to him that the ocean contained fish as well as shells. A
live porpoise would have formed a novel and appropriate feature in the
procession, and have done honour to his own prowess and to the majesty
of the empire. To supply the deficiency he collected a number of Gauls,
distinguished by their stature and personal advantages, caused them
to let their hair grow, and to dye it red (the characteristics of the
German race), and even to learn the German language, and to assume
German names. Strange mixture of vanity with disregard of his own
character and contempt of the public opinion! The slightest reflection
must have shown the futility of these pretences, and the immeasurable
littleness of his own behaviour. But so long as he had the pleasure of
wearing his borrowed plumes, it seems to have mattered not that the
world knew them to be borrowed. In a similar spirit he affected to wear
the breast–plate of Alexander the Great. What bitterer satire could his
worst enemy have devised?
The capricious variations of his temper exposed his associates to
constant danger. At one time he loved company, at another solitude:
sometimes the number of petitions made him angry, and sometimes the
want of them. He undertook things in the greatest hurry, and executed
them with sluggish neglect. To flatter, or to speak truth, was equally
dangerous, for sometimes he was in a humour for one and sometimes for
the other; so that those who had intercourse with him were equally at
a loss what to do or say, and thanked fortune rather than prudence if
they came off unhurt.
His private life was polluted by vice and intemperance of every
description. Cowardly as cruel, the report of a rebellion among those
Germans of whose conquest he boasted, terrified him into preparing a
refuge in his transmarine dominions, lest, like the Cimbri of old, they
should force a passage into Italy. At a clap of thunder he would close
his eyes and cover his head, and in a heavy storm the Latian Jupiter
used to run under the bed, to hide himself from his Capitoline brother.
He usually slept but three hours in the night, and that not calmly,
but agitated by strange visions: the rest he passed sitting upon the
bed, or traversing extensive colonnades, impatiently calling for the
return of day. Justice began the work of retribution early, and he who
troubled the rest of all others was unable to find quiet for himself.
Among his other extraordinary qualities was a most insane jealousy of
the slightest advantages enjoyed by others. He overthrew the statues of
eminent men erected by Augustus in the field of Mars, and forbade them
to be erected to any one in future except with his express permission.
He even thought of not allowing Homer to be read: “Why not I, as well
as Plato, who expelled that poet from his republic?” and talked of
weeding all libraries of the writings and images of Virgil and Livy.
This folly he carried even to envying the personal qualifications of
his subjects, and being bald himself, he sent the barber abroad to
shave every good head of hair that came in his way.
Little remains to complete the picture, but to say that his tastes were
low, as his character was brutish. Passionately fond of theatrical
entertainments and the sports of the amphitheatre and circus, it
was from the profligate followers of these arts that he chose his
favourites, to whom, and to whom alone, he was devotedly attached.
The story of his meaning to appoint his horse consul is well known:
the brute would have done more credit to the subordinate, than his
master to the imperial dignity; but it is apocryphal. But besides a
marble stable and an ivory manger, indulgences to which so dignified
an animal might reasonably aspire, Caligula assigned to him a house
and establishment, that he might entertain company more splendidly.
We regret not to know whether the senators or their horses were the
objects of this hospitality.
He was wont to say, that of all his qualities, he most valued his
firmness of purpose (_̓ αδιατρεψία_). The judgment was in one sense
correct: this was indeed the predominant feature of his character.
But it was the firmness not of principle, not even of policy, but of
obstinate and entire selfishness, which regarded not the weightiest
interests of others when placed in opposition to its caprices; of
habitual self–indulgence, which gratified the whim of the moment, alike
careless of its folly or of its guilt. At first he would not, in the
end he probably could not, control his passions; and this inflexibility
is the symptom of that mental disease which we believe to originate
in uncontrolled power. This plea furnishes no particle of excuse for
him, no more than drunkenness for the excesses of the drunkard: in both
the loss of reason is a crime in itself, and in neither probably is it
ever so complete as to obliterate the perception of right and wrong.
Of genuine madness we find no trace in his life. He appears to have
been subject to no delusions upon particular subjects, to no access
either of frenzy or melancholy. As a boy he, as well as Cambyses, was
subject to epileptic fits, which were supposed to have impaired his
mind; and he entertained, it is said, doubts of his own sanity, and
had thoughts of submitting to a course of medicine for his recovery.
Others thought that a love potion, administered by his wife to fix
affection, had produced madness; but the tenor of his life countenances
neither supposition. Folly, selfishness, cruelty, and the restlessness
of a self–upbraiding spirit cannot be allowed shelter under the plea
of insanity; and the mental weakness and incapacity of self–control
which arises from the habitual dominion of passion, is no less
widely different in its effects than in its origin from that which is
dependent upon physical causes.
He perished by domestic conspiracy, in the fourth year of his reign and
the twenty–ninth of his age. He oppressed the people and the nobility
with impunity: he fell, when his jealous temper rendered him formidable
to his servants and favourites.
Paul, emperor of Russia, was the son of Catherine II., who, as is
well known, murdered her husband Peter III., and took possession of
his throne, which she retained till death. She conceived a strong
aversion for her son, who was in consequence brought up in retirement,
neglected, and even exposed to want. When arrived at manhood he was
still forbidden to reside at court; his children were taken away to
be educated under the empress’s care; he was studiously excluded
from all knowledge or participation in affairs of state; and even
denied permission to gratify his military taste by active service.
His mother’s object was at once to render him unfit for empire, and
to spread abroad the notion that he was so; with the view of passing
him entirely over in favour of his son Alexander, whom in her will she
appointed to succeed to the throne. Paul seems to have been naturally
affectionate, methodical, a lover of justice, temperate, even amidst
the most consummate profligacy ever witnessed in a court; but these
good qualities were stifled by the faults of his education. Privation,
contumely, and a constant sense of injury, soured his temper, and
rendered him distrustful and cruel, at the same time that the enjoyment
of a minor despotism made him capricious and ungovernable; for he was
the undisputed master of his little court, and could vent upon others
the ill–humour inspired by his own crosses, unchecked by the presence
of a superior, or the influence of public observation. He lived at the
country palaces of Gatschina and Paulowsky, surrounded by his household
officers and troops, and shunned by all others; devoted to the minutiæ
of military discipline, and employed chiefly in reviewing his guards,
for whom he devised a new system of dress and regulations, which it
was afterwards his great pride and pleasure to introduce into the army
at large. There was a long terrace at Paulowsky, from which he could
see all his sentinels, who were stuck about wherever there was room
for a sentry–box. Here he used to promenade with an eye–glass, sending
orders from time to time to one man to open a button more or less, to
another to carry his musket higher or lower, and sometimes trotting a
quarter of a league to administer a good caning with his own royal hand
to one soldier, or to bestow a rouble on another, as he was pleased or
displeased with his bearing.
One or two anecdotes of this part of his life will best illustrate his
temper. Travelling through a forest, with marsh on each side of the
road, he recollected some reason for going back, and ordered the driver
to turn. He did not do so instantly, and Paul repeated the order. “In
a moment,” the man replied; “here the road is too narrow.” Paul flew
into a passion, jumped out of the carriage, and called to an equerry to
stop the driver and chastise him. The equerry endeavoured to allay the
storm by assurances that the carriage would turn as soon as possible.
“You are a scoundrel as well as he,” was the reply; “he shall turn
even though he break my neck: at all hazards he shall do as I bid, the
moment I give the order.” Meanwhile the coachman had done so, but too
late to save himself from a sound beating.
He ordered a horse that stumbled under him to be starved. On the eighth
day word was brought him of the animal’s death; to which he merely
answered, “Good.” The same accident happened after his accession in the
streets of St. Petersburgh, on which he got off, made his equerries
hold a court–martial, and sentenced the offending beast to receive
a hundred blows with a stick, which were immediately inflicted in
presence of the Czar and the people. Worse anecdotes might be found.
His passion for the strict observance of military minutiæ has been
mentioned. One day, as he exercised his regiment of cuirassiers, an
officer’s horse fell. Paul ran to the spot in a fury: “Get up, you
rascal!” “I cannot, Sire—my leg is broken.” Paul spit upon him, and
walked away swearing.
Catherine, as before said, appointed Alexander her successor by
will. She had intrusted this important document to Zoubow, her last
favourite, who hastened immediately upon her death, in the year 1796,
to place it in Paul’s hands. It is due to the late emperor to say,
that he never took any part in the measures adopted for excluding his
father, who succeeded to the vacant throne without opposition. The
Czar’s conduct towards his family, on this occasion, does him honour:
the more, that under similar circumstances, few of his predecessors
would have hesitated to establish their power by the imprisonment or
death even of an involuntary rival. Instead of using severity, he gave
an affectionate reception to his sons, who had been separated from him
since childhood, increased their revenues, and assured them and the
empress, to whom he had been a harsh and capricious husband, of his
love and protection; and at the same time, with prudence commendable on
his son’s account no less than on his own, he provided employment for
Alexander which kept the prince near his person till the critical time
was over.
The court and city of St. Petersburgh, the whole public of Russia,
received with fear their new sovereign, whose caprice and extravagance
were well known; but his first measures belied their expectation.
He showed a decent respect to his mother’s memory, though he fully
returned the hatred which she felt for him, retained her ministers,
whom he had no reason to love, and displayed judgment and honesty
in his first political measures, until every body thought that a
false estimate had been formed of his character. This good sense and
moderation did not last long. His first step was to secure his throne
by incorporating with the royal guards his own household troops, on
whose fidelity he depended. The latter, like the Prætorian bands
of the Roman emperors, were a highly privileged and powerful body,
captains of which held the rank of colonels of the line. Its officers
of course were chiefly of high rank, and many of them, to the amount of
some hundred, resigned their commissions, angry at seeing men not of
noble birth, perhaps raised from the ranks, placed over their heads,
or unwilling to undergo the new and harassing discipline which Paul
introduced. The Czar became alarmed at this general desertion, and,
by way of conciliation, issued an order that all who had resigned, or
should thereafter resign their commissions, should quit St. Petersburgh
within twenty–four hours. Many persons transported suddenly without
the barriers, and forbidden to re–enter the city, and left on the high
road, without shelter or clothing fitted to protect them from the cold,
perished miserably for want of money to reach their homes.
Paul came to the throne ambitious of signalizing himself as a
reformer, but his mind was far too confined to perform so hard a task
successfully. In the civil department, he did little but reverse all
that his mother had done; in the military, his attention was confined
to insignificant details. His great object was to conform the dress and
exercise of the whole army to the model which he had been so long and
anxiously forming at Gatschina. The very morning after his accession
he commenced this important task by establishing what he called his
Wachtparade, to which every morning he devoted three or four hours.
However severe the cold, he was still there, dressed in a plain green
uniform, with thick boots and a large hat, for he placed his pride in
bearing a Russian winter without furs; stamping about to warm himself,
with his bald head bare and his snub–nose turned up to the wind, one
hand behind his back, and the other beating time with his cane, and
crying _Raz, dwa_—_Raz, dwa_, one, two—one, two—surrounded by gouty old
generals, who dared neither to absent themselves nor to dress warmer
than their master. The old Russian uniform was handsome, suited to the
climate, and could be put on in an instant: it consisted merely of a
jacket and large trousers, which enabled the wearer to protect himself
by any quantity of interior clothing, without injury to uniformity of
appearance. The hair was worn long, and falling round the neck, so
that it defended the ears from cold. Paul introduced the old–fashioned
German uniform, which every true Russian hated for its own sake,
and despised as holding the Germans in supreme contempt; he encased
their legs in long tight gaiters, made them powder and curl their
hair, and hung false pigtails from their necks. Marshal Suvarof, on
receiving orders to introduce these changes, together with the measure
of the men’s curls and pigtails (for everything under Paul was done
by measure), observed that “hairpowder was not gunpowder, nor curls
cannon, nor pigtails bayonets;” and this witticism is said to have cost
him his recall.
Not content with modelling the army after his own notions of elegance,
his meddling spirit exerted itself in the most vexatious and tyrannical
interferences with the freedom of private life. The dress, the colour
of carriages and liveries, the method of harnessing horses, everything
was matter of rule, and woe to him who met the Czar with anything about
his equipage contrary to etiquette. One day he saw Count Razumoffski’s
sledge standing in the street without the driver, and ordered it
to be immediately broken in pieces. It was of a blue colour, and
the servants wore red liveries: upon which he issued a proclamation
forbidding the use of blue sledges and red liveries in any part of
the empire. He waged a crusade against round hats, which he thought a
mark of jacobinism, the object of his greatest hate and fear. If any
person appeared in one, it was taken from his head by the police; if he
resisted, he was well beaten. The cocked hats in St. Petersburgh were
of course soon exhausted, and then round hats were metamorphosed into
three–cornered hats, by pinning up the sides. The emperor himself is
said to have stopped persons and pinned up their hats with his royal
hands, to show his people how a loyal subject ought to be dressed. An
order against wearing boots with coloured tops was no less rigorously
enforced. The police officers stopped a gentleman driving through the
streets in a pair. He remonstrated, and said he had no others with
him, and certainly would not cut off the tops of those; upon which the
officers, seizing each a leg as he sat in his droski, pulled them off,
and left him to go barefoot home. Coming down a street, the emperor
saw a nobleman who had stopped to look at some workmen planting trees
by his order. “What are you doing?” said he. “Merely seeing the men
work,” replied the nobleman. “Oh! is that your employment? Take off
his pelisse and give him a spade. There—now work yourself!” Once, when
he met an officer going to the palace wrapped in his cloak, a servant
following with his sword, he gave the servant his master’s commission,
and reduced the officer to the ranks.
It was an ancient Russian usage that all who met the Czar, male or
female, should quit their carriage, be it in mud or snow, to salute,
and even to prostrate themselves before him. Peter the Great used to
cudgel soundly any person who did so, and Catherine II. had abolished
the practice; but Paul revived it, and exacted its observance most
severely. Of course, amid a crowd of carriages continually passing at
full speed, it was easy to neglect it, without intentional disrespect;
but no such excuse was admitted. A lady, wife of a general in the army,
hastening into St. Petersburgh, from the country, to procure medical
advice for her sick husband, passed the Czar inadvertently, and was
immediately arrested and sent to prison. Alarm and anxiety threw her
into a burning fever, which terminated in madness; and her husband
died from the same causes, and for want of proper care and attendance.
On being presented to Paul, it was necessary to drop plump on your
knees, with force enough to make the floor ring as if a musket had been
grounded, and to kiss his hand with energy sufficient to certify to all
present the honour which you had just enjoyed. Prince George Galitzin
was placed under arrest for kissing his hand _too negligently_. When
enraged he lost all command of himself, which sometimes gave rise to
very curious scenes. In one of his furious passions, flourishing his
cane, he struck by accident the branch of a large lustre and broke it;
whereupon he commenced a serious attack, from which he did not relax
until he had entirely demolished his brittle antagonist.
Under a sovereign of such a temper no man could feel secure for an
hour. The police kept strict watch over the words, the actions, the
correspondence of every one; and the knout, exile to Siberia, or at
the best deportation without the frontiers, were unsparingly dealt out
for involuntary or chimerical offences: and suspected persons were
continually hurried out of the country without time being allowed for
the arrangement of their affairs, and in ignorance at once of their
offence and of the nature of the intended punishment. Such a state
of things was not likely to last very long in Russia, with so many
examples to prove how easy the descent is from the palace to the grave.
Towards the close of his reign his conduct became more and more
intolerable, and at last he took care to advertise all Europe of his
folly or madness, or both, by inserting in the St. Petersburgh Gazette
a notice to the following effect: “That the Emperor of Russia, finding
that the powers of Europe cannot agree among themselves, and being
desirous to put an end to a war which has desolated it for eleven
years, intends to point out a spot to which he will invite all the
other sovereigns to repair and fight in single combat, bringing with
them as seconds and esquires their most enlightened ministers and
able generals, such as Turgot, Pitt, Bernstorff, and that the Emperor
himself proposes being attended by Generals Count Pahlen and Kutusoff.”
This piece of extravagance appears to have completed the disgust of the
nobility, and consummated his ruin.
A plot was formed, at the head of which was Count Zoubow, the man to
whom he had been indebted for the important service of suppressing
Catherine’s will. Paul’s aversion to every thing which his mother had
favoured soon overcame his gratitude, and Zoubow was ordered to quit
the court, and reside upon his estates. Fresh intrigues again brought
him into favour, and the first use he made of it was to plan the
murder of his master. He opened his mind gradually to other noblemen:
it was resolved, as private crime will often assume the guise of
public virtue, that the safety of the empire required the deposition
of Paul; and as there is but one prison whose doors can never open to
a dethroned monarch, they resolved, in conformity with all Russian
precedent, to put him to death. The details of this catastrophe are
interesting, and, it is presumed, authentic and accurate, since they
were thus related to Mr. Carr by an eye–witness, and therefore an agent
in the deed.
“The Emperor used to sleep in an outer apartment, next the Empress’s,
upon a sofa, in his boots and regimentals; the other branches of the
imperial family being lodged in different parts of the same building.
On the, 10th March, o.s. 1801, the day preceding the fatal night
(whether Paul’s apprehension, or anonymous information suggested
the idea, is not known), conceiving that a storm was ready to burst
upon him, he sent to Count P——, the governor of the city, one of
the noblemen who had resolved on his destruction. ‘I am informed,
P——,’ said the Emperor, ‘that there is a conspiracy on foot against
me: do you think it necessary to take any precaution?’ The Count,
without betraying the least emotion, replied, ‘Sire, do not suffer
such apprehensions to haunt your mind; if there were any combination
forming against your Majesty’s person, I am sure I should be acquainted
with it.’ ‘Then I am satisfied,’ said the Emperor, and the governor
withdrew. Before Paul retired to rest, he unexpectedly expressed
the most tender solicitude for the Empress and his children, kissed
them with all the warmth of farewell fondness, and remained with
them longer than usual; and after he had visited the sentinels at
their different posts, he retired to his chamber, where he had not
long remained, before, under some colourable pretext that satisfied
the men, the guard was changed by the officers who had the command
for the night, and were engaged in the confederacy. An hussar, whom
the Emperor had particularly honoured by his notice and attention,
always at night slept at his bed–room door, in the antechamber. It was
impossible to remove this faithful soldier by any fair means. At this
momentous period, silence reigned through the palace, except where it
was disturbed by the pacing of the sentinels, or at a distance by the
murmurs of the Neva; and only a few lights were to be seen distantly
and irregularly gleaming through the windows of this dark colossal
abode. In the dead of the night, Z—— and his friends, amounting to
eight or nine persons, passed the drawbridge, easily ascended a private
staircase which led directly to the Emperor’s chamber, and met with no
resistance till they reached the anteroom, where the faithful hussar,
awakened by the noise, challenged them, and presented his fusee. Much
as they must have admired the brave fidelity of the guard, neither
time nor circumstances would admit of an act of generosity which might
have endangered the whole plan. Z—— drew his sabre and cut the poor
fellow down. Paul, awakened by the noise, sprung from his sofa; at this
moment the whole party rushed into the room: the unhappy sovereign,
anticipating their design, at first endeavoured to entrench himself in
the chairs and tables; then recovering, he assumed a high tone, told
them they were his prisoners, and called on them to surrender. Finding
that they fixed their eyes steadily and fiercely on him, and continued
advancing towards him, he implored them to spare his life, declared his
consent instantly to relinquish the sceptre, and to accept of any terms
they would dictate. In his raving he offered to make them princes, and
to give them estates, and titles, and orders, without end. They now
began to press upon him, when he made a convulsive effort to reach the
window; in the attempt he failed, and indeed so high was it from the
ground, that, had he succeeded, the attempt would only have put an end
to his misery. In the effort, he very severely cut his hand with the
glass; and as they drew him back, he grasped a chair, with which he
felled one of the assailants, and a desperate resistance took place. So
great was the noise, that, notwithstanding the massy walls and double
folding–doors which divided the apartment, the Empress was disturbed,
and began to cry for help, when a voice whispered in her ear, and
imperatively told her to remain quiet, otherwise she would be put to
instant death. While the Emperor was thus making a last struggle, the
Prince Y—— struck him on one of his temples with his fist, and laid
him upon the floor: Paul, recovering from the blow, again implored his
life; at this moment the heart of Z—— relented, and on being observed
to tremble and hesitate, a young Hanoverian resolutely exclaimed, ‘We
have passed the Rubicon: if we spare his life, before the setting
of to–morrow’s sun we shall be his victims.’ Upon which he took off
his sash, turned it twice round the naked neck of the Emperor, and
giving one end to Z—— and holding the other himself, they pulled for a
considerable time with all their force, until their miserable sovereign
was no more: they then retired from the palace without the least
molestation, and returned to their respective homes.”[147]
After the accession of the new emperor, Zoubow was ordered not to
approach the court, and Count P—— was transferred from the government
of St. Petersburgh to that of Riga. No other notice was taken of the
actors in this tragedy. Whether this extraordinary lenity is to be
ascribed to fear, or to a sense of the necessity of removing Paul from
the throne (for the high personal character of Alexander places him
above the suspicion of having been an accomplice), the late emperor
would better have consulted justice, the interests of his throne, and
his own reputation, if he had exacted a severer retribution for the
murder of a father and a sovereign.[148]
[Illustration]