The Good, the Bad and the Unready (17 page)
Read The Good, the Bad and the Unready Online
Authors: Robert Easton
Wenceslas the
Drunkard
see
Wenceslas the
WORTHLESS
Hugh the
Dull
Hugh, lord of Douglas, 1294–1342
‘Dismal’ or ‘Worthless’, particularly if undeserved, must be hard nicknames to accept, but being known to history as ‘the Dull’ must surely be the most painful slap in the face. Annals of the great Douglas family of Scotland do not dwell on Hugh’s tenure as the head of the clan. ‘Of this man,’ wrote the early seventeenth-century historian David Hume of Godscroft, ‘whether it was by reason of the dullness of his mind… we have no mention at all in history of his actions.’ It appears that he was gormless. Without doubt he was heirless, handing over the mantle of authority to his nephew William.
Napoleon the
Eagle
see
Napoleon the
LITTLE CORPORAL
Napoleon the
Eaglet
Napoleon Francois Bonaparte, titular king of Rome, 1811–32
Napoleon ‘l’Aiglon’, the sickly offspring of‘the Eagle’ (also known as Napoleon the
LITTLE CORPORAL
), was never in robust health. This painfully thin ‘king of Rome’ suffered from a persistent cough for most of his life, then contracted tuberculosis in his teens, and died aged just twenty-one when, in the winter of 1832, he literally caught his death of cold while watching a military parade.
Ladislaus the
Elbow-High
Ladislaus I, king of Poland, c.1260–1333
Ladislaus may have been small in stature, but he stood tall among his contemporaries as a skilful diplomat, courageous warrior and revered king. At a time of feudal disunity he forged a union between Little Poland and Greater Poland, and won the approval of the pope, paving the way for Polish territorial expansion under his son Casimir the
GREAT
.
His tactics were not always conventional. In suppressing a revolt by Germans in Cracow, for instance, he used a simple language test, echoing the ‘Shibboleth’ test found in the Book of Judges in the Bible. Anyone who could repeat and correctly pronounce
‘soczewica, kolo, miele, mlyn
’ was free to go. Those who could not were presumed guilty and duly punished.
Edward the
Elder
Edward, king of Wessex, d.924
Danish aggression was running slack, the Mercians (ruled by Edward’s formidable sister Aethelflaed) were in a compromising mood, and the hitherto independent residents of Northumbria and East Anglia were no match for his military supremacy. Peace on all sides ensured an uncommonly calm monarchy for Edward, whose neighbours acknowledged him as their ‘father and lord’ and, denoting rank rather than family relationship, their ‘elder’. Continuing the work begun by his father, Alfred the
GREAT
, Edward was able to prime England for complete unification, a goal achieved during the reign of his son and successor, Athelstan the
GLORIOUS
.
Sophia Charlotte the
Elephant
Sophia Charlotte, mistress of King George I of England, 1675–1725
The people of England were surprised when they learned that their king, George the
TURNIPHOER
, was enjoying more than a platonic relationship with his half-sister Sophia Charlotte, not only because she was his sibling but also because she was ugly and enormous. The masses referred to her in elephantine terms while Horace Walpole, that connoisseur of fine things, wrote that she had ‘two acres of cheeks and a swollen neck’.
Alexander the
Emancipator
Alexander II, emperor of Russia, 1818–81
The emancipation of the Russian serfs by Alexander II was, according to
The Times
of London, ‘the first and greatest… of Russian reforms’, but it literally came at a cost, not least to those it was intended to help. Most of the liberated peasants thought that Alexander, whom they referred to as ‘Little Father’, had given them not only their freedom but also their land. To their dismay they found they had to pay taxes, and that annual payments were higher than their former rents.
English Epithets
Below are five English noblemen with somewhat florid national epithets. In each case the individual is compared to an ancient hero. Whether their achievements warrant such comparison is a matter of debate.
Henry Our English Marcellus
Henry, prince of Wales, 1594–1612
Given his impressive political acumen and artistic insight, the young Roman Marcus Claudius Marcellus was expected to go far; however, he died aged nineteen, leaving his many virtues to be celebrated by a host of writers, not least by Virgil in
The Aeneid
. Henry was similarly a multi-talented young man: a superb swordsman, a keen patron of the arts and a man of deep piety. But, like Marcellus, he also died young, in his case at just eighteen, of typhoid, leaving a nation to mourn and muse on what might have been.
Robert the English Achilles
Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex, 1567–1601
French soldiers called Essex ‘the English Achilles’ because of his acts of valour on the battlefield. But, like his Greek mythological namesake, he had a fatal flaw: his Achilles heel was his hot-headedness, which regularly got him into trouble and finally resulted in his execution after he publicly stated that conditions in England were ‘as crooked as [Queen Elizabeth’s] carcase’.
Henry the English Alexander
Henry V, king of England, 1387–1422
Like Alexander the
GREAT
, Henry was a man of military action. At the age of ten he was given his first sword,
and at sixteen he fought in his first battle. Soon after coming to the throne he invaded France and in October 1415 won a famous victory at Agincourt when the French, outnumbering the English three to one, used disastrous tactics against Henry’s longbowmen.
Like Alexander, Henry was also over-fond of alcohol. Chroniclers furthermore state that in his youth he ‘fervently followed the service of Venus as well as Mars’ and a bevy of contemporary records, telling of his waywardness, leave little doubt that there is some truth to his reputation as something of a drunken wastrel.
Henry followed his namesake by dying in his thirties, in Henry’s case almost certainly of dysentery.
Henry the English Solomon
Henry VII, king of England, 1457–1509
The Lancastrian victory at the battle of Bosworth Field brought the Wars of the Roses to an end and Henry to the throne. With admirable Solomon-like diplomacy Henry succeeded in uniting the houses of Lancaster and York by marrying Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward the
ROBBER
.
Edward the Josiah of England
Edward VI, king of England, 1537–53
In the Second Book of Kings in the Bible one reads of the young King Josiah ordering the demolition of pagan temples and instigating a comprehensive set of religious reforms. Similarly, in histories of the Tudor period one reads of King Edward ordering the destruction of all shrines and images of saints as he continued the reforms of his father,
BLUFF KING HAL
.