Indira Ghandi and her son Rajiv were both assassinated.
In those days, the Ottoman Turks were a force to be reckoned with, so when the sultan of Turkey summoned the Dragon, he jumped. Believing it to be a call under truce, he brought Vlad and his younger brother with him. The sultan seized the boys as hostages so that the Dragon would side with him against an ambitious political shark of the time, the White Knight.
TOUGH TURKEY
The boys were locked in a dungeon, denied food, and flogged daily. But it was what was going on outside their cell that would prove to be more important to Vlad’s development as an evil-doer.
The dungeon window faced onto the yard where executions were held several times a week. Young Dracula watched as, depending on their crimes, the sultan’s victims were hanged, shot with arrows or spears, beheaded, crushed under wheels, and even occasionally given to wild beasts of prey. Most of them, though, were impaled. . .a process somewhat like spitting a chicken.
ENTER THE WHITE KNIGHT
In most stories, it’s the White Knight who rides in on his charger and saves the day. But this is real life. And this particular White Knight wanted more than anything to be the king of Hungary. He saw Wallachia as a stepping-stone, and the Dragon as an impediment. The White Knight killed Vlad’s father, mother, and older brother, and took the throne of Wallachia. When Vlad found out what had happened, he vowed revenge. The sultan released him and gave him a contingent of troops to lead against the White Knight. This was in 1448. Vlad was 17 years old.
THE UPSTART
Vlad did pretty well for a kid. The Turks by his side, he routed the White Knight, and placed himself on the Wallachian throne. But it wasn’t going to be that easy. He held the throne for two months before being forced out. Eight years later, while the White Knight was invading Turkish Serbia, Vlad finally secured his position as the ruler of all Wallachia. The White Knight was killed in the fight against the Turks, and his army was defeated. Denied his revenge, Vlad took it out on everyone else who crossed his path.
LOVELY DOWNTOWN WALLACHIA
Wallachia was about the size of New York State. Its populace, mostly peasants, stood at half a million. On Dracula’s coronation, he declared martial law. His first act of revenge was directed at the boyars, or nobles, who had sided with the White Knight against the Dragon. He gathered up hundreds of them, including their families, at the cathedral on Easter Sunday. He impaled the oldest, then forced the others to march 50 miles to where they were put to work building a castle for him. They mixed mortar, carried rocks and lumber, dug a moat. So much for the upper classes.
Hatshepsut was the only female pharaoh to rule in her own name.
AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY IMPALER
Dracula didn’t neglect the lower classes either. He had the poor and sick of Wallachia gathered up and treated them to a banquet at his castle. Needless to say, it was their last meal. He sometimes wiped out entire villages for no particular reason. but he didn’t just kill his own people. Foreign dignitaries and traders, monks, priests, Turks—everyone was a likely candidate. Travelers started to go the long way around Wallachia. It was during this time that the Turks named him “Vlad the Impaler.”
Virtually any crime was punishable by impalement. Sometimes Vlad killed just because he was bored. He tortured and mutilated people, hanged them, burned them at the stake, and boiled them alive, but impalement was his favorite. It’s estimated that Vlad the Impaler was responsible for 100,000 deaths.
THE END. . .?
All this murder and mayhem made Tirgoviste, Wallachia’s capital, the safest place on earth. To prove it, Vlad put a golden cup on display in the central square, supposedly for thirsty travelers to use. You can bet that cup stayed right where it was for the six years that Dracula was in charge.
Vlad was killed outside Bucharest in a skirmish against his oldest enemy, the Turks, but it’s an historical toss-up as to whether he died in battle or was killed by his own men. The Turks decapitated him and sent his head to Constantinople, where it was put on display to prove that the man they had named “the Impaler” was really dead. His body was buried at a monastery near Bucharest, but disappeared. When archeologists in the 1930s removed the slab over Dracula’s supposed grave, they found an empty pit. Think about it.
After Britain conquered Quebec, it offered to trade it back for Guadeloupe. France refused.
THE HAMILTON AFFAIR
* * *
Here’s proof that politicians never change!
Americans today are sick and tired of sleazy politicians and their scandals. We long for the good old days of honorable leaders like our founding fathers. Well, not so fast. . .
THE GREAT PATRIOT
Alexander Hamilton was one of the greatest of America’s founding fathers. He was a powerhouse of ideas and action who put his personal stamp on the creation of America through his hard work, tenacity, and sheer brilliance. He served as George Washington’s trusted aide during the Revolutionary War. He was one of the primary architects of the Constitution, the first Secretary of the Treasury, and he created the National Bank. Quite a résumé.
THE GREAT PATRIOT AND THE OTHER WOMAN. . .
In 1791, at the height of his influence and power (and while he was happily married), Hamilton met Maria Reynolds. This captivating young woman asked him for money, saying her philandering husband had abandoned her. Hamilton later said he was touched by the poor woman’s story. Evidently, touched enough to begin an affair. Several months later, Maria’s husband appeared at Hamilton’s door. (Uh-oh.)
. . .AND THE OTHER WOMAN’S HUSBAND
The nervous Hamilton expected the outraged husband to demand “satisfaction”—a duel to the death. But to Hamilton’s relief, James Reynolds only demanded $1,000 as compensation for husbandly pain and suffering. Hamilton paid up, and James generously granted Hamilton leeway to continue the affair with Maria, in return for future payments.
THE GREAT PATRIOT AND A COUPLE OF SCAMMERS
Hamilton continued his relationship with the ever-more-clutching Maria until he could wriggle out of her grasp. He knew he’d been taken by a husband and wife con team. Hamilton breathed a sigh of relief. He considered himself lucky to be a few thousand dollars poorer as long as he was rid of Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds. (But it’s not over yet.)
Louis XVI might have escaped France, but he was recognized from his portrait on currency.
THE GREAT PATRIOT WASN’T OUT OF IT AFTER ALL
In 1792, Hamilton received another disturbing visit, this time from three U.S. senators, including James Monroe. The senators told Hamilton about a rumor that he had given money and secret Treasury Department information to a petty grifter named James Reynolds. (James was currently residing in a Philadelphia prison.) Faced with these accusations, Hamilton came clean. He confessed the affair with Maria, but denied giving away secret information. The senators believed him and withdrew. Hamilton had squeaked by again. (Or had he?)
THE GREAT PATRIOT LEARNS THAT POLITICS AND SECRETS DON’T MIX
A few years later, Hamilton left the Treasury Department and returned to private law practice. His scandals remained hidden, and he was an influential figure in national politics. He even considered running for president in 1800. Then in 1797, a pamphlet dredged up the whole Reynolds Affair. The tale of sex and payoffs in high places created a sensation. Hamilton suspected that James Monroe (one of the senators who came to his office) had leaked the story. Monroe was an ally of Hamilton’s competitor for the presidency, Thomas Jefferson (who may have had dirty laundry of his own with his slave Sally Hemings, but that’s another story).
“I AM NOT A CROOK”
Hamilton decided to have it all out. He dashed off a fiery essay admitting he had sex with Maria, but he denied any wrongdoing at the Treasury Department. Hamilton wanted everyone to know that he might be a two-timing skunk, but he wasn’t a crook. His public career survived, but just barely. His enemies continued to discuss the affair, and his friends were emba
rrassed by it. There was no chance that Hamilton could run for president. Thomas Jefferson won the election of 1800.
WHAT ABOUT BETSY?
The reaction of Hamilton’s long-suffering wife, Betsy, to the public exposure of her husband’s embarrassing behavior is unknown. After Hamilton’s dramatic death in the famous 1804 duel with Aaron Burr, Betsy burned all her correspondence. By the way, Maria Reynolds later had an affair with Aaron Burr too.
When Julius Caesar said, “I came, I saw, I conquered,” he came, saw, and conquered Turkey.
THE DREYFUS AFFAIR, AND NO, IT’S NOT A SEX SCANDAL
* * *
The French army may have surrendered to Germany more than once, but on some issues, they’ll never give up.
It started, as so many of these sorts of things do, with someone digging through some trash. This particular can of trash was located in the office of a German military attaché, in France, in 1894. In it were some handwritten papers that made it clear that someone in the French War Ministry was providing the Germans with French military secrets. Clearly, this would not do. Clearly, someone would have to be blamed.
THE OBVIOUS CHOICE
And someone was: Alfred Dreyfus, a French captain who worked in the War Ministry and who was (this will become important rather quickly) a Jew—the only one in the War Ministry, in fact. On the surface, Dreyfus was a fine candidate to be the traitor. His work in the War Ministry allowed him access to the secrets in question. Moreover, his family had come from Alsace, a former French province that had been annexed by the Germans in 1871, shortly after the Germans had seriously kicked French butt in the deeply embarrassing Franco-German War. Also, Dreyfus was a Jew, and in the conservative and largely anti-Semitic French military of the time, that pretty much made him as good as guilty.
A ONE-WAY TRIP TO DEVIL’S ISLAND
Dreyfus was arrested on October 15, 1894 and charged with treason. With the handwritten papers attributed to him, he was found guilty on December 22 and sentenced to life imprisonment on the Devil’s Island penal colony (yes, it really existed; it was located just off the coast of French Guiana in South America).
MERCI, I NEEDED THAT
The Dreyfus treason conviction was the slam-dunk, feel-good hit of the French military’s year; it gave the military and other conservative elements of French society the fuel they needed to take whacks at France’s Third Republic, the government formed in 1870 as the result of a particularly numbskulled military failure at the Battle of Sedan. The anti-Semitic press of the day also had a field day with the conviction, using it as proof that French Jews were treacherous curs.
Although Edward VIII abdicated, he did rule again. He became governor of the Bahamas.
THE SPYING ISN’T DYING
There was just one tiny little problem, however. Alfred Dreyfus was convicted and shipped off across the drink to South America, yet French secrets were still somehow making their way to the Germans. Unless Dreyfus had heretofore unrecognized telekinetic gifts that worked across several time zones, someone else had to be slipping notes to the Germans.
WELL, EXCUSEZ-MOI!
Enter Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart, who became head of the French military’s counterintelligence unit a couple of years after Dreyfus’s conviction. Picquart was an anti-Semite himself, so he wasn’t naturally sympathetic to Dreyfus, but after he’d examined the papers that had been used as evidence against Dreyfus, he realized a major error had been made.
A MAJOR PLAYER
The handwriting on the papers belonged not to Dreyfus but to a Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. Esterhazy, who was something of a piece of work even before his traitorous activities (he’d posed as nobility and served in the Austrian army in 1866, and had joined the French Foreign Legion before joining the French regulars in 1892), had gotten himself in debt and was selling French secrets to dig himself out of it. Picquart was not sympathetic to Esterhazy’s financial woes and had him court-martialed in 1897.
A MAJOR UPSET
This is the point where conspiracy buffs can officially begin drooling. Despite clear evidence that Esterhazy was a greedy backstabbing traitor, he was acquitted of treason by his fellow officers. Picquart, for his pains, was eventually arrested and tossed into jail. Here, the conspiracy-minded will imagine the French military smugly sitting back and swilling their wine glasses, convinced that this whole irritating Dreyfus thing would now just go away.
The Pilgrims first touched shore, not at Plymouth, but at nearby Provincetown.
OH, NO, YOU DON’T!
And they would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling intellectuals. In this case, novelist Émile Zola: on January 13, 1898, a few days after Esterhazy’s acquittal at court-martial, Zola published his famous “J’Accuse!” letter in the newspaper. In it, Zola accused the French army of knowing that Dreyfus was innocent and conspiring to cover it up. French society, which had already suffered stress fractures over the case, instantly polarized, with the artists and intellectuals on the side of Dreyfus and the military and church on the other (funny how these groups always seem split this way). Anti-Semitic riots broke out in the provinces; and Zola himself was tried for libel and convicted. He fled to England.
DREYFUS WAS FRAMED!
Then, just when you thought this thing couldn’t possibly get any more exciting, what with the riots and class divisions and fleeing novelists and innocent men rotting away in tropical island jails—it does! One Major Hubert Joseph Henry, the man who discovered the papers that started the whole thing, was found to have planted forged documents that implicated Dreyfus in treason. Major Henry confessed to his forgeries and then committed suicide in August of 1898. Esterhazy, the real traitor, suddenly remembered he had pressing business in Belgium and skipped town.
A pro-Dreyfus government was swept into office in June 1899; it brought back Dreyfus from Devil’s Island, and provided him with another court-martial. And at this court-martial, in light of all the shocking revelations concerning Henry and Esterhazy and forged documents and mixed-up handwriting. . .
NO, HE WAS NOT’!
. . .. He was found guilty again by the French army, which was clearly not taking the hint. At this point, the French president stepped in and pardoned Dreyfus, who accepted the pardon on the condition that he could continue to press his case for an official verdict of innocence. Dreyfus finally got his chance, and in 1906, 12 years after it all started, a civilian court of appeals cleared Dreyfus of wrongdoing and reversed his previous convictions. He was formally reinstated to the army on July 22, 1906, and for all his pains he was awarded the Legion of Honor.
Eleanor of Aquitaine was the only person to be queen of both England and France.
AFTER THE AFFAIR
Dreyfus stayed with the institution that tried to ruin him, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and serving in WWI as the commander of an ammunition column. He died in 1935.
Esterhazy, who eventually admitted he was a German spy, moved to England and worked as a translator and writer. He died in Hertfordshire (instead of Devil’s Island, where by all rights he should have been) in 1923.
Picquart, who established Esterhazy’s guilt and spent time in jail for his investigations, was made a general in 1906 after Dreyfus’s innocence was established.
Émile Zola died in 1902 from asphyxiation as a result of a stuck chimney flue—which some believe was the work of anti-Dreyfusards bent on revenge. In 1908, Zola’s remains were interred at the Pantheon; at the ceremony, a right-wing journalist tried to assassinate Dreyfus but only winged him. The journalist was put on trial for shooting Dreyfus. . .and (what else?) acquitted.
THE ARMY IS DEFEATED
The French army, whose position in French society was deeply damaged by the scandal (along with the positions of the church, the anti-Semitic movement, and the other conservative elements who ended up on the losing side of the Dreyfus affair), and which, as you’ll recall, found Dreyfus guilty a second time, finally di
d get around to admitting that he actually was, you know, well, innocent and all that. They did it in 1995—101 years after the “incriminating” papers were found in the wastebasket—and then only after an army historical journal not so subtly suggested that the French army still thought Dreyfus was guilty.
Proving that if you can’t be right, at least be consistent about being wrong.
The 1972 movie Papillon stars Steve McQueen as the real-life Henri Charrière, who attempted to escape the Devil’s Island prison colony in French Guiana in the 1930s.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into History Page 15