| Author |
Message |
|
Karl G
Location: Australia Joined: 25 Apr 2016
Posts: 66
|
 Posted: Sat 06 May, 2017 8:20 am Post subject: Craziest leaders and their insane ideas |
 |
|
|
Guys I am trying to get some info on the more macabre or crazy acts heads of state and leaders have carried out. Not so much the genocidal maniacs or large scale conquerors which is what most google searches turn up. But more along the lines of Elizabeth Bathory, caligula making his horse a senator or the Russian noble who froze wedding guests in an ice castle. Thanks for any others of that nature you can think of.
|
|
   |
 |
|
Mark Moore
|
| Posted: Sat 06 May, 2017 8:46 am Post subject: |
|
|
Don't forget Vlad Tsepes(sp?), AKA: Vlad the Impaler---AKA: Dracula. Real guy, real psycho. Real vampire?  ...McM
''Life is like a box of chocolates...'' --- F. Gump
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mart Shearer
|
| Posted: Sat 06 May, 2017 1:55 pm Post subject: |
|
|
The Chronicle of Salimbene notes the Emperor Frederick II had a scribe's thumb cut off for spelling his name Fredericus rather than Fridericus.
ferrum ferro acuitur et homo exacuit faciem amici sui
|
|
|
|
|
|
Michel Pérusse
Location: Montreal Joined: 12 Mar 2007
Posts: 30
|
|
|
|
|
|
Niels Just Rasmussen
|
| Posted: Fri 12 May, 2017 4:30 am Post subject: |
|
|
Danish-Norwegian King Christian VII would qualify.
He showed intelligence as a child, but from his teenage years in onwards to a higher and higher degree prone to melancholy and sudden totally crazy ideas and behavior. He was paranoid against attempts on his life.
The older he got the worse he became.
But he was also lucid for periods and corresponded with Voltaire!
See: https://da.wikisource.org/wiki/Lettre_de_Mr._de_Voltaire_au_Roi_Chretien_VII_4._Fevr._1767
Voltaire even wrote a poem to celebrate Christian VII as the Northern Light.
See: http://www.monsieurdevoltaire.com/article-epi...99531.html
To give a few examples of his craziness:
Serial masturbator, even performing in public.
Going into town with a gang of followers, drinking, vandalizing and even attacking the street-police (DK: vægtere) stealing their maces.
Setting fire to a dog with alcohol and letting it run around the palace as a burning torch until it dies.
Suddenly slapping the faces of people he was talking with.
The Danish film "A Royal Affair" depicts the triangle of the King, his English Queen and German friend Struensee.
Here is some clips from the film of the King: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8znB50aF8A
Before the modern "war on terror", he declared "war on shit"!
|
|
|
|
|
Dan Howard
|
| Posted: Fri 12 May, 2017 6:31 am Post subject: |
|
|
Charles VI of France - also known as Charles the Mad.
Some of his psychotic breaks included:
Believing he was made of glass.
Forgetting that he was king and denying having a wife or child
He refused to bathe or change clothes for five months
All the doorways of his residence had to be blocked off to prevent him from leaving during one of his many episodes of running randomly around the corridors.
Author: Bronze Age Military Equipment, Pen and Sword Books
|
|
|
|
|
|
Timo Nieminen
|
| Posted: Fri 12 May, 2017 2:35 pm Post subject: |
|
|
For the amount of detail and reliability of that detail, the record is biased towards modern leaders. For old leaders, we often don't have the detail, or a lot of it is propaganda. Out of the old leaders, sometimes one is famous for doing something that many leaders did at the time. Sometimes, they did significantly more of it, so they can justifiably (in)famous, but sometimes they had many peers. (Sure, Vlad deserves "the Impaler", but maybe it should also be "Skanderbeg the Impaler".)
Anyway, for a modern example: Emperor Bokassa I, Central African Empire, r. 1977-1979 (as emperor; he was president from 1966).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-B%C3%A9del_Bokassa
"In addition to being efficient, all pole arms were quite nice to look at." - Cherney Berg, A hideous history of weapons, Collier 1963.
|
|
 |
|
|
|
This is a standard topic