A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

ought to be a great conqueror, he found an excuse to pick a quarrel with Spain, marched 120,000
troops into the Spanish Netherlands and ended with vast tracts of land and important trade
concessions. But the Dutch cities revolted and, under the leadership of William of Orange,
gradually forced Louis to withdraw. When William of Orange became king of England by deposing
the bigoted Catholic James II, the English and the Dutch, joined by Sweden, Spain and Savoy (on
the Swiss-Italian border) so harassed Louis’s forces on land and sea that he was forced to sue for
peace. He was learning that, in this complicated modern world, there is no room for absolute
emperors. When his grandson, Philip of Anjou, became king of Spain in 1701, Louis saw the
chance of a masterstroke - of permanently uniting France and Spain into one empire. This was the
last thing the rest of Europe wanted, particularly the Dutch, who had suffered so much from Spain.
Louis marched again into the Netherlands to try to force the Dutch to agree, but in 1702, England
and Holland declared war on France, and half Europe joined in. The war dragged on until 1713,
when Louis finally made peace - having been forced to agree that his grandson Philip could never
become king of France. So twelve years of effort was wasted, and Louis felt old and tired and oddly
let-down - just as Charles V had in his last years; he died two years later, in 1715. If he had
concentrated on trade and expansion in the colonies, the French Empire would have spread across
the world, and the people of the United States would today probably be speaking French. As it was,
France lost its American possessions within a few decades, and the king of France lost his head
before the end of the century. If Louis XIV had not been so determined to play at being
Charlemagne, the French Revolution would never have taken place.
If our visitors from space could have revisited the earth at any time between 1450 and 1650, their
first impression would have been that things have not changed greatly since the days of ancient
Rome. There are still one or two major powers - such as the pope and the Holy Roman Emperor -
who dominate most of Europe. The barbarians - the Turks - are still battering at the gates and
making inroads. The scene is, admittedly, rather more complex than in the time of Diocletian; but
Europe is still a mass of armies marching and countermarching. Christianity, the religion of love
and reconciliation, has had no noticeable effect. And perhaps there is no reason why it should, for
human nature cannot be expected to change in the course of a thousand years or so. Whole cities
are still being wiped out by invading armies, just like Carthage. And there are still plenty of
Caligulas and Domitians - men like Sultan Selim I (father of Suleiman the Magnificent), Vlad the
Impaler and Ivan the Terrible. In fact, in this respect, mankind seems to have achieved new levels
of sadism. Vlad the Impaler - the historical Dracula - was a minor king of Wallachia (now in
Rumania), who spent most of his life fighting the Turks, displaying immense bravery and
resourcefulness; he was also one of the most appalling monsters in history, deriving tremendous
pleasure (undoubtedly sexual) from watching people die slowly. On a lightning raid into
Transylvania in 1457, Dracula had his captives - men, women and children - taken back to
Wallachia so that he could watch them being impaled - his favourite method of execution. Old
woodcuts show the victims impaled through their stomachs, but it seems certain that the wooden
stake was driven into the anus or vagina so that the victim’s own weight made him sink down on to
it; he gave orders that the end should not be too sharp, so that it would take longer. In a quarrel with
Saxon merchants around 1460, he held a mass impalement, and also burned alive four hundred
apprentices. The impalements were regarded as an entertainment during meals; one Russian boyar
had the misfortune to hold his nose when the smell of blood sickened him; he was immediately
impaled on a particularly long stake. Irritated by the number of beggars and sick people in his
domains, Vlad invited them all to a banquet, then locked them in and set fire to the building. When