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 Phoenicians, 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.

Croesus, 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 Croesus, 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 Croesus 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 73,000l. 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 (? ad?at?e??a). 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]

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