—Hitler, speaking in his Austrian homeland, after it was absorbed by Nazi Germany in 1938
“Every deity and the spirits of your dead comrades are watching you intently.”
—Excerpt from the suicide manual carried by Japanese kamikaze (Divine Wind) pilots during World War II
“I am God.”
—Jim Jones, leader of the Peoples Temple cult who called for the suicide of more than nine hundred of his followers in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978
“Those who are not Christians go to a place of suffering and torment called hell.”
—Televangelist Pat Robertson, Answers to 200 of Life’s Most Probing Questions, 1984
“God has revealed to me that those doing battle for Allah and our country and meet death will immediately go to Heaven.”
—The Ayatollah Khomeini in 1984, during Iran’s bloody war with Iraq
“I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real god and his was an idol.”
—Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin on his 1993 response to a Muslim warlord in Somalia who boasted Allah would protect him
“This is America, God has sent one of the attacks by God and has attacked one of its best buildings. And this is America filled with fear from the north, south, east, and west, thank God.”
—Osama bin Laden, 2001
JERRY FALWELL: “What we have seen on Tuesday [September 11], as terrible as it is, could be minuscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.”
PAT ROBERTSON: “Well, Jerry, that’s my feeling. . . .”
JERRY FALWELL: “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way—all of them who have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.’ ”
—Christian evangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson during a 2001 broadcast on the Christian Broadcasting Network
“God is on our side, and Satan is on the side of the United States.”
—Saddam Hussein, 2003
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
—Biblical justification (Exodus 22:18) for the torture and murder of hundreds of thousands of women and men accused of being in league with Satan
“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them.”
—Biblical justification (Leviticus 20:13) for the hatred of homosexuals
“Everything in the water that has not fins and scales is an abomination to you.”
—Biblical justification (Leviticus 11:12) for the hatred of shellfish
Perkin Warbeck, aka “Richard IV“
Part VIII
THE GREAT PRETENDERS
“It’s good to be the king!” the saying goes. And so it seemed—at least to the scores of ordinary folk over the centuries who tried, with varying degrees of success, to pass themselves off as royalty. Sure beat scrubbing floors for a living. Since antiquity, these imposters have made regular appearances around the world, especially in times of chaos and uncertainty. After the Roman emperor Nero was hounded into suicide in AD 68, for example, no fewer than ten fake Neros reportedly popped up and claimed to have escaped death by fleeing Rome. Plenty of people believed them too (although few of these frauds could have ever hoped to match the depravity of the original). The following is a look at some of history’s more interesting royal impersonators.
1
The Paupers Who Would Be Prince
In medieval England, after the bloody struggle known as The Wars of the Roses,12 two successive imposters posed grave threats to the throne of Henry VII, the first Tudor king. Though Henry had defeated and killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, which ended the epic clash between the royal houses of York and Lancaster, his claim to the throne was rather remote. King Richard had left a number of Yorkist relatives with far better blood connections to the crown. One of them was his nephew Edward, Earl of Warwick, whose father was immortalized in Shakespeare’s Richard III when he was drowned in a malmsey butt. Henry VII kept the young earl closely confined in the Tower of London, but that didn’t stop an obscure lad named Lambert Simnel, the son of an Oxford tradesman, from claiming that he was the true earl and the rightful king of England.
Lambert Simnel was described by contemporaries as a “comely youth” with a strong resemblance to members of the royal house of York. (And in an age without mass media, few knew what they looked like anyway.) Lambert’s teacher, an Oxford priest named Richard Symonds, seized on the similarities in appearance and embarked on a bold plan to pass his pupil off as the imprisoned Earl of Warwick. He nearly got away with it. As historian G. R. Elton wrote, “The very fact that such a wildcat scheme could spring from an obscure priest’s brain—and that it came within a measurable distance of success—indicates the state of the country and the size of [King] Henry’s problem.”
One of Simnel’s first supporters was Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, sister of the late King Richard and center of Yorkist plots against the Tudor regime. Whether Margaret came to Simnel’s side out of political expediency, as a way of undermining Henry VII, or because she really believed he was her nephew remains a mystery. But she was a powerful ally. Soon Simnel gained support in Ireland as well. Any opportunity to throw off the English yoke was welcomed there, and in May 1487, Lionel Simnel was proclaimed “King Edward VI” by the Irish. Henry VII recognized the danger he faced in Ireland and tried to quell the enthusiasm for the false Warwick by parading the real one around London. It didn’t work. A force from Ireland, aided by two thousand mercenaries provided by Margaret of Burgundy, invaded England that June and began a march to London. Henry defeated them at the Battle of Stoke, during which many Yorkist leaders were killed.
Lambert Simnel was convicted of treason, but the English king demonstrated a trait not often associated with the Tudors when it came to rebels: a sense of humor. Rather than have Simnel hideously tortured and executed, the usual fate of traitors, Henry took him into his household and put him to work in the royal kitchens. When a group of Irish lords came to dinner one night, Henry made sure they saw the young man they had proclaimed king reduced to kitchen help. He thought it was a hoot.
But that flash of levity escaped the king entirely when another nobody named Perkin Warbeck emerged from obscurity and tried to claim Henry’s kingdom. With many of Europe’s monarchs behind him, Warbeck proved far more menacing than Lambert Simnel ever was. Consequently, he would meet a less savory fate.
As the imposter himself later recounted, the story began in 1491 when Warbeck, then a seventeen-year-old servant to a wealthy Breton merchant, was walking along the streets of Cork, Ireland, dressed in the silk finery of which his master traded. Unaccustomed to such a display of wealth, especially on someone so young, certain locals became convinced that he was the Earl of Warwick, whom Lionel Simnel had previously impersonated. When Perkin denied this, people then said he was a bastard son of Richard III. Warbeck again denied any royal connections, but the townspeople were insistent. He was, they declared at last, Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the two famed princes in the Tower who had been imprisoned and presumably murdered by their uncle Richard III after he stole the older boy’s throne in 1483.13 Worn down by their vehemence, or so he later claimed, Warbeck finally affirmed that he was indeed the long missing prince.
The great nobles of Ireland, perhaps still feeling burned after the Lambert Simnel fiasco, were less enthusiastic than the people of Cork over the discovery. On the other hand, Charles VIII of France, then at war with Henry VII, warmly welcomed Warbeck to his court with the idea that he might be a useful pawn in the ongoing negotiations with the English king. Charles could threaten to support the imposter if things didn’t go his way, or repudiate h
im if conditions warranted. As it turned out, the French and English did sign a peace treaty. Warbeck was expelled from France—right into the arms of Margaret of Burgundy.
Once again the question arises as to whether Margaret was incredibly gullible or just very crafty when she accepted Warbeck as her nephew, just as she had Lambert Simnel. (It is worth noting that Margaret had been sent off to the Netherlands and married five years before her real nephew Richard, Duke of York, was born, and had never met him. Still, this was the second “nephew” of hers to turn up at her doorstep out of nowhere, which should have at least given her pause.) In any event, Margaret worked successfully to have Warbeck recognized by Pope Alexander VI and Emperor Maximilian of Austria as “Richard IV,” the rightful king of England.
The official embrace Warbeck received was not appreciated by Henry VII, who ordered a trade embargo against the Netherlands in 1493. This was reciprocated the following year, but the situation was an economic disaster for both sides. The Dutch, eager to rid themselves of Warbeck, backed his invasion of England to claim the crown in 1495. The venture was a flop, but at least the Dutch had disposed of the troublesome pretender. Warbeck eventually made his way to Scotland, where King James IV gave him an allowance and official recognition as “Richard IV.” He even gave him one of his royal relatives as a bride—not bad for the son of a Flemish farmer. The Scottish king’s support did nothing to further Warbeck’s cause, however. Discouraged, the imposter left Scotland in 1497 and attempted another invasion of England through Cornwall, then in rebellion against Henry VII over his taxation policies. It was yet another failure, and Warbeck was forced to surrender.
King Henry was lenient with his would-be usurper at first, but then Warbeck foolishly tried to escape. His subsequent confinement in the Tower of London was a lot less cushy and reportedly included torture. Still, he continued to enjoy the support of some European monarchs, and that’s what ultimately doomed him. With a little help from the king, as some historians believe, Warbeck made a final escape attempt in 1498. That gave Henry the perfect excuse to kill him and do away with the real Earl of Warwick as well. Henry declared that the earl, still languishing in the Tower, had conspired with Warbeck and deserved death. The hapless young man, who had never done anything wrong other than be born into the wrong branch of the royal family, was fortunate enough to be dispatched quickly. Warbeck, by contrast, suffered a ghastly demise. He was hanged until almost dead, then castrated and disemboweled while still breathing. Finally he was chopped into four quarters. The remains were put on public display as a grisly warning to anyone else who might harbor kingly pretensions.
2
Tsar Struck
Ruling Russia was often a dangerous business. Tsars were bumped off with alarming regularity, which, though unfortunate for the royals, opened fertile opportunities for the frauds. Russian history is rife with imposters who grasped for the imperial crown. In 1605, one actually got it.
After Ivan the Terrible’s savage reign came to a close with his death in 1584, he was succeeded by his second son Fyodor. (Ivan had murdered his first son in a fit of rage.) Fyodor was a nice, pious fellow, if something of a dolt. He was completely controlled by the powerful boyar (noble) Boris Godunov, who effectively ruled Russia in Fyodor’s name. After the dim tsar died in 1598, without a successor, Godunov took the crown. It was openly whispered, however, that Godunov had earlier ensured Fyodor would leave no heirs by ordering the murder of the tsar’s younger half brother Dmitry in 1591.
Dmitry had been sent to live with his mother Maria Nagaia, one of the last of Ivan’s seven or so wives, in the Russian town of Uglich after Fyodor’s accession. One day in 1591, Dmitry’s mother reportedly heard a terrible scream that came from the courtyard of her home. When she ran outside to see what had happened, she found Dmitry on the ground, bleeding to death from a knife wound to the throat. The townspeople immediately concluded that one of Boris Godunov’s local henchmen had killed the boy, and in a frenzy they killed the suspect and his family. Godunov sent a commission to Uglich to investigate Dmitry’s death. The examiners came to the preposterous conclusion that the heir to the throne had fallen while playing and had accidentally slit his own throat. To bolster the commission’s findings, Godunov ordered the townspeople who had killed his agent severely punished. Many were executed, the rest sent to Siberia. Dmitry’s mother was forced into a convent, and her family scattered to remote corners of Russia. Although suspicions about Godunov’s role in the murder of Dmitry lingered, his critics had been effectively silenced.
And so it happened that, seven years later, Boris Godunov came to the throne as Russia’s first elected tsar. But he did not sit comfortably. Two years of crop failures, followed by terrible famine, made the people wonder whether this might be divine punishment for the murder of Dmitry. Besides, their tsar, on whom they were utterly dependent, had not been selected by God, but by them. Could this be the cause of their troubles? Agitation mounted. Then, in the summer of 1604, Godunov faced one of his greatest challenges. A young man, backed by an army of Cossacks, emerged from Poland and claimed to be Dmitry, the rightful tsar. It was the beginning of a dark period in Russian history known as the Time of Troubles.
The young man who came to be known as the False Dmitry began his career as a monk named Gregory Otrepyev. After traveling from monastery to monastery, Otrepyev eventually arrived in Moscow and became secretary to the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. There, in the very heart of imperial power, Otrepyev absorbed useful information for his future ambitions. “Do you know,” he remarked to some of his fellow monks, “one day I shall be tsar of Moscow.” When Boris Godunov heard of the monk’s impertinence, Otrepyev was banished to a monastery far away on the White Sea. He wasn’t there long before he escaped to another monastery near the southern city of Chernigov. When he eventually departed this refuge, Otrepyev left a note in his cell: “I am the Tsarevich Dmitry, son of Ivan IV. I shall not forget your kindness when I am on my father’s throne.”
Otrepyev next went to Poland, where he entered the service of a Polish prince and learned to fight from the fierce Cossacks. At one point, he pretended to be gravely ill and asked for a priest. When the priest arrived, Otrepyev handed him a piece of paper, a confession of sorts, which read, “I am the Tsarevich Dmitry, son of Ivan IV. I was saved from my murderers and hidden. A priest’s son died in my place.” (In another account, Otrepyev revealed his “true” identity when the Polish prince he served slapped him in anger. “If you knew who serves you,” Otrepyev reportedly responded, “you would not treat me like this.”) Otrepyev was duly presented before the king of Poland, who recognized his claim and granted him an annual pension. The False Dmitry was on his way.
He raised an army in Poland, and at the same time launched a propaganda campaign in Russia, through which he staked his claim to the throne and vowed to return and take it. The Russian people, disaffected by Godunov’s rule, were eager to believe that the son of Ivan IV had survived and would soon come and save them. Though Godunov tried to counter Otrepyev’s propaganda campaign with one of his own, the pretender’s cause quickly gained momentum, even among the most powerful aristocrats.
When the False Dmitry finally marched into Russia, he was greeted as a savior with widespread support. His forces defeated Godunov’s army in an initial clash. Although the tsar’s troops crushed Otrepyev’s in a second encounter, fate intervened when Boris Godunov died suddenly on April 13, 1605 (some said by poison). His son was immediately placed on the throne as Fyodor II but enjoyed little support. The citizens of Moscow stormed the Kremlin, seized the new tsar and his mother, and later killed them. “The time of the Godunovs is past!” the people shouted. “The sun of Russia is rising. Long live the Tsar Dmitry.”
The False Dmitry marched into Moscow on June 20, greeted by cheering crowds. He went straight to the tomb of Ivan IV. “Oh, beloved father!” he cried. “You left me in this world an orphan, but your saintly prayers helped me through all the pers
ecution and has led me to the throne.” Witnesses to the scene were much moved, and Otrepyev’s support was solidified. The following month he was crowned in the Kremlin’s Cathedral of the Assumption. An imposter now sat on Russia’s throne, but he would not rule for long.
It is unclear exactly why “Tsar” Dmitry became so unpopular so quickly. Some historians believe the Russians resented his Polish friends and associates, including his bride Marina Mniszech, a Polish princess. Ten days after their wedding, a group of boyars stormed the tsar’s palace. The False Dmitry leapt out of a window to save himself, but broke his leg in the fall. He pleaded for his life in vain, and was quickly dispatched. His body was then put on public display before it was cut into pieces and burned. The ashes were mixed with cannon shot and fired westward back to Poland, from where he had come. “Dmitry” had reigned for less than a year.
The Time of Troubles did not end with the death of the False Dmitry, however. Chaos continued as a succession of tsars were enthroned and deposed. It was during this period that a second False Dmitry appeared, supported as the first had been by Poles and Cossacks. His army came within ten miles of Moscow and besieged the city for a year. To complicate matters, the second False Dmitry married the widow of the first, and was even acknowledged by the mother of the real Dmitry! But in the end his efforts failed. In 1613, Russia came under the rule of Michael Romanov, founder of the dynasty that would occupy the throne for the next three centuries.
3
Queen-Wanna-Be
A Treasury of Deception Page 17