Famous Sociopaths...
Some stories may be slightly graphic due to the violent nature of these famous sociopaths.
Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia...
History prefers to remember him by his nickname, Țepeș, the Romanian word for “Impaler.” He is guilty of crimes so orgiastically malicious that their horror is not expressible. You might consider it impossible for anyone to rank higher than any of the other entries of this list, but if the motive is the same, that of torture for sheer amusement, then in the end, ranking has to be done according to the cruelty of the tortures, and the numbers of victims.
Vlad III lived from 1431 to 1476, about a hundred years before Erzsebet Bathory, in the Wallachia and Transylvania areas of central Romania. His infamous Castle Poenari, on a steep cliff in the middle of the Transylvanian Alps, would be sitting in a peacefully scenic part of the world if it weren’t for the almost Satanic history he brought to the area. During his rule, Transylvania and Wallachia became Hell on Earth.
You’re sure to know at least some of what he did, particularly his preferred method of execution, which is how he got his nickname. The luckier Turkish invaders, under Mehmed II, were merely impaled through the belly or chest, from front to back, or back to front. But most of them were not lucky. Vlad thought of torture as something to study, to extract the maximum amount of pain possible from each body, while keeping the victims alive as long as possible.
The standard impalement method, not invented by him, but made most indelible by him, was to sharpen one end of the stake to a dull point, not very sharp, then oil it and insert into the anus or vagina, erect the victim on it, and leave him or her to die over the course of several days, sometimes a week, as gravity pulled the body down the stake and the stake up, perforating the intestines, pushing the organs aside, and finally exiting at the mouth or collarbone. Death was typically due to general shock, and in one famous woodcut from 1499, not 25 years after his death, Vlad is depicted eating lunch in a garden decorated by hundreds of dying people impaled on stakes.
This is true. The legend that he drank the blood of his victims from a goblet is probably not true, as this tends to make a person violently sick, but he did derive sadistic elation out of watching people suffer, hearing them scream and sob and beg, and then die. As a member of the nobility at war with other states and countries, especially the Ottoman Empire, the only thing anyone could do about it was try to overthrow him. But he was an expert field tactician, and an extremely capable fighter man to man.
Emissaries sent by Mehmed seeking a truce, refused to take their turbans off to show respect to Vlad. To require a Muslim to remove his turban is extremely insulting. So Vlad had his men nail the emissaries’ turbans to their heads, killing them, and then sent them back to Mehmed. Everywhere Vlad invaded and conquered, he impaled the surviving soldiers and most non-combatant civilians, even infants. Anyone caught stealing in his domain was locked in a pillory, had his bare feet coated in honey, and then suffered a goat to lick the honey off. Goats have rougher tongues than cats, and the goat would lick until the soles of the feet came off. Then salt was sprinkled in the wounds and the thief was released. Most of them died soon from infection.
During his war with Mehmed’s Ottomans, Vlad had a total of 30,000 to 40,000 men at his disposal, against a little less than 100,000 Ottoman Turks, but Vlad was no fool, and fought a series of masterful ambushes and skirmishes, flanking and cutting off mountain passes from the Turks. Vlad was not going to sit around and wait for Mehmed to come to him. He invaded modern Bulgaria and, near Oryahovo, which Vlad called “Rahova.” It is right on the present border between Romania and Bulgaria, and in that area, in early February 1462, Vlad invaded and killed 23,884 Turks, by his own count, among them women, children, peasant and wealthy. Most of them, he impaled. Then he burned down the entire city.
Why? To provoke Mehmed, and show him what sort of a monster he was dealing with. Mehmed, who was known to be sadistic, himself, responded in fury by invading Wallachia. The two armies fought around Targoviste, Romania, where Vlad routed and killed 15,000 Turks. Mehmed was already demoralized by what he had seen, and tried to flee, but was nearly forced back by his officers.
He attempted to besiege Targoviste, but instead found the city gates open and the whole city empty. On the other side of the city, his army followed the one road deeper into Romania, and the sight that greeted them was awesomely horrendous. The road was flanked for 60 miles by 20,000 Ottoman Turks and Bulgarian Muslims impaled, dead and dying and circled by clouds of vultures. The stench and plaintive moaning disgusted Mehmed, who turned with his army and left, never to return.
Vlad had run out of money to pay the mercenaries in his army. He appealed to an old Hungarian friend, who promptly imprisoned him, probably out of fear for the safety of the entire country. While in prison, he relished impaling all the rats he could find. Vlad was released about 1474 and immediately attempted to
start a new war. But he was assassinated on a road from Giurgiu to Bucharest, in late December or early January 1476-77. How he died is not known, but he is sure to have gone down swinging. He was beheaded before or after death, and his body was buried in a monastery. The total number of people he killed has been estimated at anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000, most of whom he impaled for his enjoyment. He is a national hero in Romania.
Vlad III lived from 1431 to 1476, about a hundred years before Erzsebet Bathory, in the Wallachia and Transylvania areas of central Romania. His infamous Castle Poenari, on a steep cliff in the middle of the Transylvanian Alps, would be sitting in a peacefully scenic part of the world if it weren’t for the almost Satanic history he brought to the area. During his rule, Transylvania and Wallachia became Hell on Earth.
You’re sure to know at least some of what he did, particularly his preferred method of execution, which is how he got his nickname. The luckier Turkish invaders, under Mehmed II, were merely impaled through the belly or chest, from front to back, or back to front. But most of them were not lucky. Vlad thought of torture as something to study, to extract the maximum amount of pain possible from each body, while keeping the victims alive as long as possible.
The standard impalement method, not invented by him, but made most indelible by him, was to sharpen one end of the stake to a dull point, not very sharp, then oil it and insert into the anus or vagina, erect the victim on it, and leave him or her to die over the course of several days, sometimes a week, as gravity pulled the body down the stake and the stake up, perforating the intestines, pushing the organs aside, and finally exiting at the mouth or collarbone. Death was typically due to general shock, and in one famous woodcut from 1499, not 25 years after his death, Vlad is depicted eating lunch in a garden decorated by hundreds of dying people impaled on stakes.
This is true. The legend that he drank the blood of his victims from a goblet is probably not true, as this tends to make a person violently sick, but he did derive sadistic elation out of watching people suffer, hearing them scream and sob and beg, and then die. As a member of the nobility at war with other states and countries, especially the Ottoman Empire, the only thing anyone could do about it was try to overthrow him. But he was an expert field tactician, and an extremely capable fighter man to man.
Emissaries sent by Mehmed seeking a truce, refused to take their turbans off to show respect to Vlad. To require a Muslim to remove his turban is extremely insulting. So Vlad had his men nail the emissaries’ turbans to their heads, killing them, and then sent them back to Mehmed. Everywhere Vlad invaded and conquered, he impaled the surviving soldiers and most non-combatant civilians, even infants. Anyone caught stealing in his domain was locked in a pillory, had his bare feet coated in honey, and then suffered a goat to lick the honey off. Goats have rougher tongues than cats, and the goat would lick until the soles of the feet came off. Then salt was sprinkled in the wounds and the thief was released. Most of them died soon from infection.
During his war with Mehmed’s Ottomans, Vlad had a total of 30,000 to 40,000 men at his disposal, against a little less than 100,000 Ottoman Turks, but Vlad was no fool, and fought a series of masterful ambushes and skirmishes, flanking and cutting off mountain passes from the Turks. Vlad was not going to sit around and wait for Mehmed to come to him. He invaded modern Bulgaria and, near Oryahovo, which Vlad called “Rahova.” It is right on the present border between Romania and Bulgaria, and in that area, in early February 1462, Vlad invaded and killed 23,884 Turks, by his own count, among them women, children, peasant and wealthy. Most of them, he impaled. Then he burned down the entire city.
Why? To provoke Mehmed, and show him what sort of a monster he was dealing with. Mehmed, who was known to be sadistic, himself, responded in fury by invading Wallachia. The two armies fought around Targoviste, Romania, where Vlad routed and killed 15,000 Turks. Mehmed was already demoralized by what he had seen, and tried to flee, but was nearly forced back by his officers.
He attempted to besiege Targoviste, but instead found the city gates open and the whole city empty. On the other side of the city, his army followed the one road deeper into Romania, and the sight that greeted them was awesomely horrendous. The road was flanked for 60 miles by 20,000 Ottoman Turks and Bulgarian Muslims impaled, dead and dying and circled by clouds of vultures. The stench and plaintive moaning disgusted Mehmed, who turned with his army and left, never to return.
Vlad had run out of money to pay the mercenaries in his army. He appealed to an old Hungarian friend, who promptly imprisoned him, probably out of fear for the safety of the entire country. While in prison, he relished impaling all the rats he could find. Vlad was released about 1474 and immediately attempted to
start a new war. But he was assassinated on a road from Giurgiu to Bucharest, in late December or early January 1476-77. How he died is not known, but he is sure to have gone down swinging. He was beheaded before or after death, and his body was buried in a monastery. The total number of people he killed has been estimated at anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000, most of whom he impaled for his enjoyment. He is a national hero in Romania.
Countess Erzsebet Bathory de Ecsed...
Modern scholarship has called into question just how extensive her crimes ran. She killed at least 80 young girls, according to court records at her trial, but various testimonies of that trial place her total tally at 36-37, more than 50, 100-200, and 650+. The truth will probably never be known, because reliable records could not be made of the lower gentry class on which she preyed.
Bathory knew that relatively few people would miss young girls of the low classes, at least for a time, and being a member of the nobility, she could always convince people by her very social status. This was the way things worked in feudal systems. People rarely questioned the kings and queens, and the other various ranks. In Bathory’s case, she killed so many people that the evidence against her mounted until it could not be ignored or denied.
She always chose young girls to torture and kill, and her motive for beginning this horror does not come from court testimonies given by her servants, who were her accomplices. She hired these girls on temporary and permanent bases to be her personal servants in her castle, Csejte, today called Cachtice, in present Slovakia. In succeeding generations, until the 1800s, folklore claimed that Bathory drank and bathed in the girls’ blood to retain her youth. One day, the folklore goes, while a girl was brushing her hair, she accidentally pulled it, and Bathory jumped up and slapped her so hard she broke the girl’s nose. Blood spattered Bathory’s hand, and where she wiped it away, she thought her skin looked younger. So she cut the girl’s throat and drained her into a bathtub, where Bathory bathed. She repeated this hundreds of times.
In reality, this is highly unlikely. Bathory had no history of such insane ideas, and her trial shed quite a bit of light on her personal history. It is much more likely, if even viler, that she killed these girls simply because she enjoyed it. And the nature of the tortures she inflicted on them indicates an extreme delight in watching others in physical agony.
She would have her servants invite the girls to her castle, and once there, they were bound and taken to her dungeon. It was like something out of Edgar Allan Poe, but it was real. They suffered red-hot needles shoved under their finger and toenails; being bludgeoned in the groin with clubs; being skinned alive; disembowelment; fatal surgeries, in which Bathory burst their organs in her bare grip; beating until death; stripping them naked and chaining them outside in the castle courtyard in midwinter, then pouring cold water over them, so they froze to death as macabre sculptures; locking them in hanging cages from the dungeon ceiling and swinging the cage into spikes on the walls, until the girls were ripped to pieces. This last torture was one Bathory particularly relished, because she could stand under them and be showered by their blood while she laughed at their screams, and this may be the origin of the “bathing in blood” story.
Once, when Bathory caught the flu and was bedridden for a week, she was too weak to get out of bed to torture the girls, so she had her servants bring the girls up to her bedside, where she leaned up and savagely gnawed chunks of flesh from their breasts and abdomens.
This went on from 1585 to 1610, when her crimes were discovered and she was caught. The primary evidence that led to her was the eerie absence of young girls in the villages around her castle, and the repeated missing person notices and grievances of parents in these areas.
Two of her accomplices were condemned to have their fingers ripped out of the knuckles with red-hot pinchers, then to be burned at the stake; one other accomplice was beheaded, then burned, and a fourth was imprisoned for life. Erszebet Bathory was walled up in the bedroom of her castle for the rest of her life, and fed through a slot in the brick. She died in 1614, aged 54. She left a letter, written to Satan, in which she besought him to send 99 cats to kill and eat King Matthias for convicting her.
Bathory knew that relatively few people would miss young girls of the low classes, at least for a time, and being a member of the nobility, she could always convince people by her very social status. This was the way things worked in feudal systems. People rarely questioned the kings and queens, and the other various ranks. In Bathory’s case, she killed so many people that the evidence against her mounted until it could not be ignored or denied.
She always chose young girls to torture and kill, and her motive for beginning this horror does not come from court testimonies given by her servants, who were her accomplices. She hired these girls on temporary and permanent bases to be her personal servants in her castle, Csejte, today called Cachtice, in present Slovakia. In succeeding generations, until the 1800s, folklore claimed that Bathory drank and bathed in the girls’ blood to retain her youth. One day, the folklore goes, while a girl was brushing her hair, she accidentally pulled it, and Bathory jumped up and slapped her so hard she broke the girl’s nose. Blood spattered Bathory’s hand, and where she wiped it away, she thought her skin looked younger. So she cut the girl’s throat and drained her into a bathtub, where Bathory bathed. She repeated this hundreds of times.
In reality, this is highly unlikely. Bathory had no history of such insane ideas, and her trial shed quite a bit of light on her personal history. It is much more likely, if even viler, that she killed these girls simply because she enjoyed it. And the nature of the tortures she inflicted on them indicates an extreme delight in watching others in physical agony.
She would have her servants invite the girls to her castle, and once there, they were bound and taken to her dungeon. It was like something out of Edgar Allan Poe, but it was real. They suffered red-hot needles shoved under their finger and toenails; being bludgeoned in the groin with clubs; being skinned alive; disembowelment; fatal surgeries, in which Bathory burst their organs in her bare grip; beating until death; stripping them naked and chaining them outside in the castle courtyard in midwinter, then pouring cold water over them, so they froze to death as macabre sculptures; locking them in hanging cages from the dungeon ceiling and swinging the cage into spikes on the walls, until the girls were ripped to pieces. This last torture was one Bathory particularly relished, because she could stand under them and be showered by their blood while she laughed at their screams, and this may be the origin of the “bathing in blood” story.
Once, when Bathory caught the flu and was bedridden for a week, she was too weak to get out of bed to torture the girls, so she had her servants bring the girls up to her bedside, where she leaned up and savagely gnawed chunks of flesh from their breasts and abdomens.
This went on from 1585 to 1610, when her crimes were discovered and she was caught. The primary evidence that led to her was the eerie absence of young girls in the villages around her castle, and the repeated missing person notices and grievances of parents in these areas.
Two of her accomplices were condemned to have their fingers ripped out of the knuckles with red-hot pinchers, then to be burned at the stake; one other accomplice was beheaded, then burned, and a fourth was imprisoned for life. Erszebet Bathory was walled up in the bedroom of her castle for the rest of her life, and fed through a slot in the brick. She died in 1614, aged 54. She left a letter, written to Satan, in which she besought him to send 99 cats to kill and eat King Matthias for convicting her.
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich...
He was General of the Police, chief of the Reich Main Security Office (including the SD, Gestapo, and Kripo) and Deputy Reich-Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. He was personally appointed to all these posts by Adolf Hitler, and he was Hitler’s favorite member of the Nazi Party.
Reinhard Heydrich committed such rampaging violence against Jews during the Holocaust that he didn’t even survive WWII. He was singled out for assassination by the Jewish Resistance in the Czechoslovakian area where he was in charge, because he almost “purified” the entire area, thus most closely realizing Hitler’s dream.
He was the chair of the Wannsee Conference, which outlined the plan for forcibly deporting and then murdering all the Jews in Europe. He took his orders from two people only, Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, and he was one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, both in terms of methods, motives and scope.
Heydrich commanded and oversaw the systematic extermination of the citizens of Czechoslovakia. He called his intent “Germanization of the Czech vermin.” On his arrival in Prague in late September 1941, he had 92 people executed in three days. Many of these were tortured first by hanging them from their wrists to trees, while their arms were behind their backs. This twists the shoulders in a way in which they will not rotate, and the weight of the body finally rips the ligaments and musculature, dislocating the arms. Some of them were then cut down and and forced to be eaten by German shepherd dogs.
Heydrich did not try to sweep any of this under the rug. He always justified his actions by claiming treason or espionage or other enemy motives, but no one in the Nazi high command had any problem with his methods. Hitler and Himmler were overjoyed and admonished all other Nazi officers to follow Heydrich’s example.
He kept good and public records of the numbers of dead and deported. By February of 1942, he had sent some 4,600 innocent civilians to their deaths, either executed on sight, or sent to Mauthausen Death Camp. Heydrich’s intent, as he freely and frequently admitted, was to eradicate all “non-German” presence from the Czech area.” His reign of terror was so fast-paced and determined that the Czech Resistance, based in London, England, sent two Czech soldiers trained by British Commandos to assassinate Heydrich.
They succeeded, but Hitler and Himmler made the consequences horrible. Hitler intended to execute 10,000 Czechs chosen at random, but he was advised by Karl Frank that doing so would severely reduce Czech production of German war equipment. They finally decided to place the blame on a random town for harboring the assassins, and chose Lidice and Lezaky. The inhabitants of the town were summarily shot dead in the streets or sent to death camps, and the towns were burned to the ground.
But the Czechs killed Heydrich.
Reinhard Heydrich committed such rampaging violence against Jews during the Holocaust that he didn’t even survive WWII. He was singled out for assassination by the Jewish Resistance in the Czechoslovakian area where he was in charge, because he almost “purified” the entire area, thus most closely realizing Hitler’s dream.
He was the chair of the Wannsee Conference, which outlined the plan for forcibly deporting and then murdering all the Jews in Europe. He took his orders from two people only, Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, and he was one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, both in terms of methods, motives and scope.
Heydrich commanded and oversaw the systematic extermination of the citizens of Czechoslovakia. He called his intent “Germanization of the Czech vermin.” On his arrival in Prague in late September 1941, he had 92 people executed in three days. Many of these were tortured first by hanging them from their wrists to trees, while their arms were behind their backs. This twists the shoulders in a way in which they will not rotate, and the weight of the body finally rips the ligaments and musculature, dislocating the arms. Some of them were then cut down and and forced to be eaten by German shepherd dogs.
Heydrich did not try to sweep any of this under the rug. He always justified his actions by claiming treason or espionage or other enemy motives, but no one in the Nazi high command had any problem with his methods. Hitler and Himmler were overjoyed and admonished all other Nazi officers to follow Heydrich’s example.
He kept good and public records of the numbers of dead and deported. By February of 1942, he had sent some 4,600 innocent civilians to their deaths, either executed on sight, or sent to Mauthausen Death Camp. Heydrich’s intent, as he freely and frequently admitted, was to eradicate all “non-German” presence from the Czech area.” His reign of terror was so fast-paced and determined that the Czech Resistance, based in London, England, sent two Czech soldiers trained by British Commandos to assassinate Heydrich.
They succeeded, but Hitler and Himmler made the consequences horrible. Hitler intended to execute 10,000 Czechs chosen at random, but he was advised by Karl Frank that doing so would severely reduce Czech production of German war equipment. They finally decided to place the blame on a random town for harboring the assassins, and chose Lidice and Lezaky. The inhabitants of the town were summarily shot dead in the streets or sent to death camps, and the towns were burned to the ground.
But the Czechs killed Heydrich.
Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus...
Modern history typically refers to him as Caligula, which means, “Little Boots.” He topped another of this lister’s lists, so his ridiculously lurid exploits will be kept to a minimum. During his 4-year reign as Emperor of Rome, he began the construction of two aqueducts, which were completed under his successor, Claudius.
His reign began rather well. Everyone throughout Italy loved him, especially because they hated Tiberius, his predecessor, and Caligula capitalized on this fame and love by thoroughly depleting the treasury, giving bonuses and huge pensions to soldiers and the Praetorian Guard to buy their loyalty.
A number of theories has been put forth to explain why his rule degenerated so quickly into outrageous madness. One of these is that, during a serious fever, he suffered brain damage, which can happen, and afterward, was no longer the same person. But given his preponderance, before this fever, for exercising his power to do anything he felt like doing, even before his ascent to the throne, it is more likely that when he depleted Rome’s coffers, he saw no problem with killing those he hated, then seizing their estates for the good of the Republic. This was commonly done, and it is called “proscription.” Whenever a new authority arises, he runs down the names of enemies on his “hit list,” eliminating them by murder or exile, under the pretense that they were dangerous to society and their goods might as well be confiscated.
Once he saw that he could get away with this, Caligula felt like he owed it to himself to live a little. Aside from his perverse hypersexuality, including public incest with his sisters at banquets, he relished watching people suffer. Who or why did not matter to him, but anyone who offended him in any way was as good as dead. And their deaths were almost never easy.
His favorite form of torture was sawing, in which the victim is turned upside down, so the blood rushes to the brain and prevents the victim from passing out until the very end. Then he or she is sawed in half from the groin down to the breast, filleting the spine and spinal cord. Most victims were unable to pass out until the saw reached their navels. Some lasted even longer. Caligula would sit on his throne snickering, and clap his hands while this went on before him. It was done in private, of course, because if the public had seen such butchery, he would have had an insurrection to deal with. He sometimes forced his favorite sister, Drusilla, to perform fellatio on him after he watched torture sessions.
Nevertheless, he delighted in watching the gladiatorial games, and his favorite event was the lions versus unarmed convicts. One day at the Circus Maximus, this event was next on the list, but the gladiator schools ran out of gladiators, and the prisons ran out of convicts. Caligula stood up and gleefully “decreed” that the first 5 rows of spectators be dragged into the arena. His Germanic guards, fanatically loyal, complied and hundreds of spectators were mauled to death.
To explain this particular act to the Senate, when they asked if he was afraid the public might come to hate him and start a riot, he replied, “Neque timendum est. Sit oderint me, sum timent me.” “I do not fear anything. Let them hate me, provided that they fear me.”
He indulged his sadism with a variety of tortures, almost as if he studied them to see which caused the most pain. Most of the time, he visited his bloodlust on criminals, so the public would not be too up in arms against him. Some were skinned alive, always upside down to prolong the agony; some were roasted to death, not burned, over fires. Others, accused of whatever it took to deserve execution, were forced to watch their entire families be strangled. One man was beaten every day with heavy chains, and care was taken that he was not killed, until the stench of his gangrenous brain offended the Emperor, who called for him to be thrown into a fire alive. And he personally chewed up the testicles of some victims.
But the Praetorian Guard, knowing full well that this was going on, was growing ever more tired of his disgusting abuse of office. He was doing nothing for the good of Rome, only himself, preferably at the greatest expense to all but him. He coveted the whole world’s hatred of him. And he got it. On January 24, 41 AD, while leaving the Circus Maximus, having just watched his fill of the games, he was surrounded by Praetorian Guardsmen, led by Cassius Chaerea, whom Caligula enjoyed insulting because of his high-pitched voice.
Cassius stabbed him first, and he was beset on all sides, stabbed 30 times and died in a pool of blood. His Germanic guards ran to his aid but were too late, and they took their fury out on the innocent civilians who had crowded around, the Praetorian assassins having fled.
His reign began rather well. Everyone throughout Italy loved him, especially because they hated Tiberius, his predecessor, and Caligula capitalized on this fame and love by thoroughly depleting the treasury, giving bonuses and huge pensions to soldiers and the Praetorian Guard to buy their loyalty.
A number of theories has been put forth to explain why his rule degenerated so quickly into outrageous madness. One of these is that, during a serious fever, he suffered brain damage, which can happen, and afterward, was no longer the same person. But given his preponderance, before this fever, for exercising his power to do anything he felt like doing, even before his ascent to the throne, it is more likely that when he depleted Rome’s coffers, he saw no problem with killing those he hated, then seizing their estates for the good of the Republic. This was commonly done, and it is called “proscription.” Whenever a new authority arises, he runs down the names of enemies on his “hit list,” eliminating them by murder or exile, under the pretense that they were dangerous to society and their goods might as well be confiscated.
Once he saw that he could get away with this, Caligula felt like he owed it to himself to live a little. Aside from his perverse hypersexuality, including public incest with his sisters at banquets, he relished watching people suffer. Who or why did not matter to him, but anyone who offended him in any way was as good as dead. And their deaths were almost never easy.
His favorite form of torture was sawing, in which the victim is turned upside down, so the blood rushes to the brain and prevents the victim from passing out until the very end. Then he or she is sawed in half from the groin down to the breast, filleting the spine and spinal cord. Most victims were unable to pass out until the saw reached their navels. Some lasted even longer. Caligula would sit on his throne snickering, and clap his hands while this went on before him. It was done in private, of course, because if the public had seen such butchery, he would have had an insurrection to deal with. He sometimes forced his favorite sister, Drusilla, to perform fellatio on him after he watched torture sessions.
Nevertheless, he delighted in watching the gladiatorial games, and his favorite event was the lions versus unarmed convicts. One day at the Circus Maximus, this event was next on the list, but the gladiator schools ran out of gladiators, and the prisons ran out of convicts. Caligula stood up and gleefully “decreed” that the first 5 rows of spectators be dragged into the arena. His Germanic guards, fanatically loyal, complied and hundreds of spectators were mauled to death.
To explain this particular act to the Senate, when they asked if he was afraid the public might come to hate him and start a riot, he replied, “Neque timendum est. Sit oderint me, sum timent me.” “I do not fear anything. Let them hate me, provided that they fear me.”
He indulged his sadism with a variety of tortures, almost as if he studied them to see which caused the most pain. Most of the time, he visited his bloodlust on criminals, so the public would not be too up in arms against him. Some were skinned alive, always upside down to prolong the agony; some were roasted to death, not burned, over fires. Others, accused of whatever it took to deserve execution, were forced to watch their entire families be strangled. One man was beaten every day with heavy chains, and care was taken that he was not killed, until the stench of his gangrenous brain offended the Emperor, who called for him to be thrown into a fire alive. And he personally chewed up the testicles of some victims.
But the Praetorian Guard, knowing full well that this was going on, was growing ever more tired of his disgusting abuse of office. He was doing nothing for the good of Rome, only himself, preferably at the greatest expense to all but him. He coveted the whole world’s hatred of him. And he got it. On January 24, 41 AD, while leaving the Circus Maximus, having just watched his fill of the games, he was surrounded by Praetorian Guardsmen, led by Cassius Chaerea, whom Caligula enjoyed insulting because of his high-pitched voice.
Cassius stabbed him first, and he was beset on all sides, stabbed 30 times and died in a pool of blood. His Germanic guards ran to his aid but were too late, and they took their fury out on the innocent civilians who had crowded around, the Praetorian assassins having fled.
Timur-e Lang
Western history remembers him best as “Tamerlane.” This is an Anglicization of “Timur-e-Lang,” or “Timur the Lame.” He suffered an injury to his left foot
in battle which never properly healed. He intended to restore and expand the Mongol Empire famously founded over a hundred years before by Ghengis Khan. Timur invaded from present Uzbekistan in all directions, and everywhere he conquered, entire regions of inhabitants were murdered.
All he cared about was conquering people, taking everything they owned, and subjugating them. Isfahan, Iran, surrendered without a fight in view of his
massive approaching army in 1387, and he treated them mercifully, until his tax collectors started collecting impossibly high tax revenue, whereupon they were killed in the streets. When Timur heard this, he ordered his army to about-face, march on the city, and kill every single living thing in it, even the rats. Birds were shot out of the sky by his archers. The people, men, women and children were beheaded, to a total of 70,000 in just over two days of slaughter. He then ordered their heads piled up as 28 giant towers in the grassy hills around the city, each tower consisting of about 1,500 heads.
In 1398, Timur invaded northern India, massacring whole cities of Hindu people in every direction. His only real motive for the invasion was India’s vast gold and gem treasuries. He was opposed in December of that year by Sultan Mehmud, who sent 120 war elephants against him. Timur forced the elephants to panic back into their own lines by stacking wood on the backs of all his camels and setting the camels on fire, then goading them toward the charging elephants. The camels bellowed in agony and the fiery sight did the trick. The elephants turned around and fled.
Timur then entered the capital of Delhi, pillaged it, burned it to the ground, and executed 100,000 innocent civilians in one day, by having them beheaded or speared. Timur claimed in his memoirs that he wanted to restrain his army from killing all these people, but could not, and besides this, he finally decided that he should not restrain his men, because it was the will of Allah that the residents of Delhi had to die.
He made it a point throughout his career as conqueror to wipe the Christian religion off the face of the earth, and thus, Christian areas, such as Armenia and Georgia, were depopulated. 60,000 civilians in Armenia and Georgia were spared to become slaves, while every major city in both countries was sacked and destroyed, and every inhabitant in it beheaded. The total is estimated to have been one million killed. The total number of people killed during his career is a broad estimate of 17 million. His motive was a desire to own the entire world for himself. He died in Otrar, near Karatau, Kazakhstan, on February 17, 1405, after contracting bubonic plague. He was planning an imminent invasion of China.
in battle which never properly healed. He intended to restore and expand the Mongol Empire famously founded over a hundred years before by Ghengis Khan. Timur invaded from present Uzbekistan in all directions, and everywhere he conquered, entire regions of inhabitants were murdered.
All he cared about was conquering people, taking everything they owned, and subjugating them. Isfahan, Iran, surrendered without a fight in view of his
massive approaching army in 1387, and he treated them mercifully, until his tax collectors started collecting impossibly high tax revenue, whereupon they were killed in the streets. When Timur heard this, he ordered his army to about-face, march on the city, and kill every single living thing in it, even the rats. Birds were shot out of the sky by his archers. The people, men, women and children were beheaded, to a total of 70,000 in just over two days of slaughter. He then ordered their heads piled up as 28 giant towers in the grassy hills around the city, each tower consisting of about 1,500 heads.
In 1398, Timur invaded northern India, massacring whole cities of Hindu people in every direction. His only real motive for the invasion was India’s vast gold and gem treasuries. He was opposed in December of that year by Sultan Mehmud, who sent 120 war elephants against him. Timur forced the elephants to panic back into their own lines by stacking wood on the backs of all his camels and setting the camels on fire, then goading them toward the charging elephants. The camels bellowed in agony and the fiery sight did the trick. The elephants turned around and fled.
Timur then entered the capital of Delhi, pillaged it, burned it to the ground, and executed 100,000 innocent civilians in one day, by having them beheaded or speared. Timur claimed in his memoirs that he wanted to restrain his army from killing all these people, but could not, and besides this, he finally decided that he should not restrain his men, because it was the will of Allah that the residents of Delhi had to die.
He made it a point throughout his career as conqueror to wipe the Christian religion off the face of the earth, and thus, Christian areas, such as Armenia and Georgia, were depopulated. 60,000 civilians in Armenia and Georgia were spared to become slaves, while every major city in both countries was sacked and destroyed, and every inhabitant in it beheaded. The total is estimated to have been one million killed. The total number of people killed during his career is a broad estimate of 17 million. His motive was a desire to own the entire world for himself. He died in Otrar, near Karatau, Kazakhstan, on February 17, 1405, after contracting bubonic plague. He was planning an imminent invasion of China.