The Good, the Bad and the Unready (40 page)

Louis VIII, king of France, 1187–1226

In depicting the city of Avignon as ‘a sewer where all the muck of the universe collects’, the Italian poet Petrarch was referring to its reputation for heresy and debauchery. A century before, in 1226, when Louis laid siege to it and eventually starved its inhabitants into submission, it was literally filthy as well. Though small, pale and often ill, Louis was an effective soldier and, for his ruthless tactics in establishing royal power in Poitou in the west of France, and Avignon and the rest of Languedoc in the south, was dubbed ‘a Reborn Alexander’ and ‘the Lion’ by his sycophantic court poet Nicholas of Brai. The capture of Avignon may have been the pinnacle of Louis’s military career but it also proved his downfall, for after a mere forty months as king he succumbed to dysentery, which he had contracted while fighting there.

William the
Lion

William I, king of Scotland, 1143–1214

William was not nicknamed ‘the Lion’ for his military record, which makes pretty dismal reading. During an invasion of England in 1173, for example, he mistook a group of his own troops returning from a raid as an attacking English force and ran them down with one of his siege machines. The next year, while laying siege to the castle at Alnwick, he foolishly managed to get himself captured. One foggy day he and sixty other men went riding in the castle grounds, oblivious to the dangers of such a jaunt. The fog suddenly lifted, and William found himself surrounded by Englishmen, who whisked off their prey to Richmond Castle. There William languished at the pleasure of their Majesties Henry
CURTMANTLE
and Richard the
LIONHEART
until the latter freed him in exchange for money to pay for a crusade.

The nickname of the grandson of ‘David the Saint’ instead derives from his choice of a red lion
rampant
for his heraldic device, and even though, according to one chronicler, William ‘never had much affection for those of his own country’, it remains to this day an integral element of the arms of Scotland.

Haile Sellassie the
Lion of Judah

Haile Sellassie I, emperor of Ethiopia, 1892–1975

The Jesuit missionaries who educated Ras (meaning ‘prince’) Tafari at the Ethiopian imperial court must have followed their pupil’s career with bewildered interest, as claims to divinity, Christian and otherwise, accompanied the entire life of this most extraordinary African statesman.

When he became emperor in 1930, Tafari changed his name to Haile Sellassie – Amharic for ‘Power of the Trinity’. At the same time he embraced the additional title of‘the Lion of Judah’, a soubriquet that derives from a verse in the Book of Revelation where Christ is described as such. By taking these titles, Ras Tafari was comparing himself with Jesus. The religion of Rasta-farianism, which emerged in Jamaica in the early part of the twentieth century, however, goes one step further and claims that Sellassie is indeed the one, true Messiah, and Ethiopia paradise on earth.

Opinion is divided as to Sellassie’s success as emperor. Some praise him for his abolition of slavery and his establishment of a national assembly. Others accuse him of being a brutal dictator. Certainly his authority was absolute: even the lions and cheetahs on his estates would allow him to feed them by hand. When he was angry, we are told, he spoke in a low voice. And when he spoke in a low voice, those around him cowered in fear.

Not everyone was scared of him, however. Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 led to five years of exile, and in 1974 Marxist revolutionaries overthrew his government and slung him in prison. When he died in captivity the following year, his jailers showed their utter indifference to the king by burying him
beneath a toilet. To cite the words of the biblical King David, ‘How the mighty have fallen.’

Richard the
Lionheart

Richard I, king of England, 1157–99

Without a doubt Richard ‘Coeur de Lion’ was a splendid soldier, and his conquests of Cyprus, Acre and Jaffa were the highlights of a crusade that fast acquired mythical status. One story that quickly circulated, and goes some way to explaining his specific nickname, was that on his travels he had physically ripped the heart out of a lion and eaten it.

His epithet ‘Lionheart’, or the less mellifluous ‘Lionhearted’, indicative as it is of courage and generosity, is somewhat misleading. In truth, Richard was a brutal and haughty tyrant and his fellow crusading princes deeply resented his limitless insolence. When, for example, Leopold, archduke of Austria, had planted his banners on one of the towers of Acre – as he had every right to do – Richard had them publicly torn down and flung into the latrines. His cruelty, meanwhile, was astonishing. In order to punish Saladin the
CHIVALROUS SARACEN
for delaying in sending him 200,000 dinars after Acre’s capitulation, he had 3,000 prisoners beheaded.

On his death from a crossbow wound while laying siege to some forces belonging to Philip the
MAGNANIMOUS
, many chroniclers and eulogists praised Richard for his bravery, patronage of the arts and ability to rally his troops when all seemed lost. With greater hindsight, later historians have acknowledged his hot temper, barbarism and irresponsibility, which made him, according to one contemporary source, ‘bad to all, worse to his friends, and worst of all to himself.

Little Charles
see
Charles the
FAT

 
Napoleon the
Little Corporal

Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of the French, 1769–1821

‘I am the successor, not of Louis XVI,’ Napoleon wrote to Pope Pius VII in 1804, ‘but of Charlemagne.’ Patently he was referring to his military genius rather than physical stature, since Charles the
GREAT
stood over six foot three, while Napoleon was comfortably a foot shorter. His limited size and propensity to stoutness naturally made him a sitting target for caricaturists (the English derisively referred to him as ‘Tiddy-Doll’ as well as the less imaginative ‘Boney’). And yet, while not physically commanding – his colleague General Lasalle thought he looked more like a mathematician than a general – Napoleon impressed everyone he met with his natural authority and, above all, his large greyish-blue deep-set eyes, which had an almost hypnotic effect. His troops adored him, not least when he used to ride among them, employing his phenomenal memory to address each one by name. Beautiful women, drawn by his magnetism, forgave him his bouts of hysterical cruelty (while never cruel to women, he at least once kicked a priest in the testicles) to be at his side.

To the epithets ‘the Corsican General’, ‘the Eagle’ and ‘the Nightmare of Europe’, ‘the Violet Corporal’ was added when Napoleon was banished to the island of Elba in 1814. Napoleon vowed that he would return to France when violets were flowering, and his supporters wore the flower in their lapels to demonstrate their loyalty. And he was true to his promise, arriving at the Tuileries in Paris in March 1815, when the violets were in full bloom. After his defeat at the battle of Waterloo, Napoleon allegedly asked to visit the grave of his wife, Josephine, before he was exiled to St Helena. He picked a few violets growing around her headstone and put them in a locket which he wore until his death six years later.

 
Little Father
see
Alexander the
EMANCIPATOR

Catherine the
Little Mother of all the Russians
see
Catherine the
GREAT