The Good, the Bad, and the Unready: The Remarkable Truth Behind History's Strangest Nicknames

by Robert Easton

  Llewellyn the Great

  Llewellyn, king of Gwynedd, c.1173–1240

  By acknowledging the sovereignty of the king of England, early thirteenth-century Welsh chiefs were able to run their territories almost as they pleased. What made Llewellyn so ‘great’ was his consummate skill in diverting these rulers’ allegiances away from the English monarch and to himself – a programme of consolidation that culminated in Welsh independence during the reign of his grandson ‘Llewellyn the Last’. Llewellyn the Great was a warrior king, never one to be overawed by English might, and during his forty-year reign regularly repulsed invasions by the armies of both John LACKLAND and Henry III.

  Llewellyn may well have been rough-hewn, but he did possess a tender side. The story goes that, returning to his castle one day, he found his baby son’s cradle empty and his favourite dog, ‘Gelert’, covered in blood. Assuming that Gelert had eaten the child, Llewellyn immediately ran Gelert through, only to hear a baby’s wail mingled with the death throes of his faithful hound. After a brief search the king found his son snuggled under a pile of bedding next to the corpse of a fierce wolf, whom Gelert had obviously killed while protecting the little prince. Distraught, the great Llewellyn had Gelert buried with the pomp and solemnity reserved for noblemen.

  Peter the Great

  Peter I, tsar of Russia, 1672–1725

  Peter the Great transformed the Russian nation like an actor playing all the parts in a vast play. His roles included:

  The General. Through mass conscriptions, Peter increased the Russian army by some 270,000 men. His forces clashed with the Ottoman Empire, Persia and, in particular, in the Great Northern War of 1700-21, Sweden. Russia eventually won the war, making it the undisputed powerhouse of Northern Europe and providing it with a stretch of the Baltic coast, where Peter founded his new capital St Petersburg in 1703.

  Peter the Great

  Peter gave his enemies individual attention. In 1698 some 4,000 guardsmen rebelled in what became known as the Streltsy Uprising. They were quickly defeated and Peter personally ‘interrogated’ 1,200 prisoners in purpose-built torture chambers before they were all killed in mass public executions.

  The Taxman. To support all his measures, Peter tripled taxes. One of the most painful of the new taxes was his head tax, a levy that nearly every Russian male had to pay solely because he lived in Russia. One of the most controversial was his beard tax: all men, except priests and peasants, had to hand over 100 roubles a year if they wished to keep their beards. Many Christian folk saw this as a religious violation and, once they had had their beards shaved off, kept them and had them placed in their coffins, fearing they would not enter heaven without facial hair. Other economic policies were sometimes underhand. He actively promoted smoking, for instance, and then taxed tobacco.

  The Style Guru. Peter spurned traditional, Muscovite fashion and embraced Western styles instead. Out went the ankle-length oriental garments and in came the shorter versions worn in Paris and London. Peter hung across the gate of Moscow a suit cut according to the new fashion; any man who passed through in a suit cut in the old style was publicly humiliated by having any part of their garments that fell below the knee cut off. Women, too, had to conform. He demanded English-style coiffures, as well as the wearing of bodices, stays and skirts. Peter also alarmed much of Russian society by demanding that men and women should mingle together at court functions, banquets and weddings.

  The Giant. Peter was a colossus, standing six foot seven in his bare feet and often towering a foot above everyone else. Never afraid of physical labour, he kept in shape: one of his party tricks was to twist a silver platter into a scroll. Perhaps because of his excessive height, he delighted in a contingent of resident dwarves, with whom he entertained guests by having them dance on tables, trot about court on miniature ponies or spring, sometimes naked, out of pies. Once he arranged for a dwarf wedding, rounding up dozens of dwarves from Moscow and transporting them to St Petersburg, where they formed the retinue for the marriage ceremony and brought about the barely muffled guffaws of the (full-sized) congregation and priest.

  The Man of Action. Peter was a restless workaholic, from encouraging the mining industry to modernizing the calendar. Once, he managed to pass himself off as a carpenter while on an incognito tour of European courts. Other professions at which he tried his hand included barber, snuffbox maker and, much to the alarm of his friends, dentist. Companions with toothache were filled with terror lest Peter hear of their discomfort and offer his services. It is said that after his death a whole sackful of teeth was found among his possessions.

  The Man of the Sea. His favourite occupation was shipbuilding, and he spared no expense in extending and improving Russia’s shipbuilding industry. He even built a ship himself, which he then captained as ‘Peter Alekseevich’. The sea was eventually his undoing, however. In November 1724 he dived into the cold northern ocean to assist a ship rescue, an act of courage that led to his final illness and death.

  Peter loved the company of friends but also loved participating in barbaric acts of torture. He was a vulgar practical joker and yet a man who took the world and the work of the Church very seriously. He was, above all else, a man of contradictions, and historians continue to disagree wildly as to his greatness.

  Theodosius the Great

  Theodosius I, Roman emperor of the East and West, 347–95

  Fourth-century Rome suffered a chronic shortage of bakers and so a plot was hatched by baking magnates to conscript unwitting volunteers. Taverns-cum-brothels were built, and men who visited them to satisfy their thirst or lust fell through a trapdoor into the bakeries beneath, where they were forced to work as slaves. It is the emperor Theodosius who is credited with uncovering, and putting an end to, this deception.

  The reign of Theodosius is most notable, however, not for its clampdown on rogue businesses but for its prominence in the history of the Christian Church. Baptized in his thirties, Theodosius soon afterwards vigorously suppressed paganism and made belief in the Trinity the universal test of orthodoxy.

  Great… but not that Great

  The world of nicknames is one of sycophancy and caprice, and nowhere more so than in the field of ‘greatness’. Nobles with the nickname ‘the Great’ crop up regularly in our history books. From ancient Persian emperors to medieval princes, we find individuals who have been given this accolade, whether they warranted it or not. Below is a collection of some ‘great’ individuals who have not received a full entry for reasons of space. Some were indeed truly great. Others, completely without merit, have had the name thrust upon them.

  • Abbas the Great, the Persian shah who at the turn of the seventeenth century succeeded not only in keeping Uzbek and Ottoman troops at bay but also in assassinating his four sons, thus leaving the Safavid Empire heirless.

  • Amadeus the Great, the thirteenth-century count of Savoy, hailed for his expansionist policies in Italy.

  • Antiochus the Great, the Syrian king who conducted an eastward campaign in the third century BC as far as India, only to lose all his territories to the Western powers.

  • Arnulf the Great, count of Flanders, arch-rival of ‘William Longsword’ and one of the fiercest soldiers of the tenth century.

  • Canute the Great, the eleventh-century king of England who commanded the waves to turn back from the shore, knowing that he would fail, in a demonstration to his sycophantic flatterers that even he had no control over Mother Nature.

  • Charles the Great, under whose leadership the duchy of Lorraine attained its cultural and fiscal apogee. For more on the House of Lorraine, readers are referred to the Preface.

  • Charles Emmanuel the Great, the duke of Savoy who switched sides in the Thirty Years War so blithely that when he died in 1630 he was detested by the French and the Spanish in equal measure.

  • Cosimo the Great, a sixteenth-century member of the powerful Medici family under whose ruthless policies Tuscany enjoyed material prosperi
ty as never before.

  • Darius the Great, an administrator without equal whose financial and legal reforms of Persia in the sixth century BC consolidated the military conquests of Cyrus the GREAT.

  • Ferdinand the Great of Leon and Castile, who, in preparation for his own imminent death in June 1065, went to a church and lay on a bier covered with ashes until he breathed his last.

  • Hugh the Great, duke of the Franks from 936 until his death twenty years later, who famously helped Louis the FOREIGNER return from exile in England and then threw him in jail.

  • Ivan the Great, the fifteenth-century grand prince of Moscow who continued the work of his predecessors in wresting control of Russia from the Mongols.

  • Justinian the Great, whose greatness as the emperor of Constantinople from 527 to 565 relies heavily on his wife, Theodora, who took ruthless control of the empire when he was temporarily confined to bed with the bubonic plague.

  • Leopold the Great, the short, melancholic seventeenth-century Holy Roman Emperor whose preference for wearing scarlet hose earned him the alternative nickname ‘the Little Man in Red Stockings’.

  • Louis the Great, king of Hungary, whose military exploits saw him ruling the largest political complex of fourteenth-century Europe.

  • Louis the Great, prince of Condé, whose military career in the mid 1600s exhibited outstanding courage, and whose imprisonment of his wife on trumped-up charges of infidelity exhibited true nastiness.

  • Maximilian the Great, the Catholic duke of Bavaria whose troops routed those of ‘Frederick the Snow King’ (see the WINTER MONARCHS) in 1620 during the Thirty Years War.

  • Otto the Great, the tenth-century emperor of Germany whose military successes won him incomparable prestige within Europe.

  • Peter the Great, the enormously overweight thirteenth-century king of Aragon who also became king of Palermo.

  • Rhodri the Great, who managed to unite most of ninth-century Wales while fending off marauding Danes from the west and menacing Saxons from the east.

  • Sigismund the Great, the Polish king nicknamed for his forging of the Union of Lublin in 1569, which made Lithuania and Poland one indivisible body politic, with one king, one government and one currency.

  • Theobald the Great, the count who united the houses of Champagne and Blois in the twelfth century, thereby posing a significant threat to both Louis the FAT and ‘Louis the Foolish’.

  • Vladimir the Great, the barbaric ruler of tenth-century Russia who converted to Christianity and forced his entire nation to do the same.

  • William the Great, the duke of Aquitaine from 1004 to 1030 who claimed to have discovered the head of John the Baptist in his monastery and paraded it before his subjects. Most scholars consider his find to be utter humbug.

  By some contemporaries Theodosius was known as a warmhearted man who loved to sit at home and read histories, but history itself records him as being cruel, choleric and intemperate. For example, he generously pardoned the fractious citizens of Antioch in 387, but three years later approved of the massacre of some 7,000 people in Thessalonica, an act for which he had to humble himself in the cathedral of Milan in order to have his excommunication lifted.

  Anthony the Great Bastard

  Anthony, Burgundian nobleman, 1421–1504

  In the fifteenth century, being a bastard was not a congenital embarrassment. Anthony was unashamedly the illegitimate son of Philip the GOOD and, though not in line to any throne, was held in high regard among the elite of Burgundy. The first part of his soubriquet, ‘the Great’, celebrates the fact that he was a courageous jouster, a flamboyant patron of the arts and a collector of illuminated manuscripts.

  Less celebrated is Anthony’s abortive crusade of 1464. In the spring of that year he led eighty-two volunteers out of Ghent and started the long journey to Jerusalem. At Marseilles, however, the valiant soldiers heard the news that Pope Pius II had died, and in the absence of a pontiff the men reluctantly turned about face and plodded home.

  Roger the Great Count see the SONS OF TANCRED

  Arthur the Great Duke see Arthur the IRON DUKE

  George the Great Patron of Mankind

  George II, king of England, 1683–1760

  In his poem The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace Imitated Alexander Pope addresses his monarch, George II, with the following lines:

  While you, great Patron of Mankind! sustain

  The balanc’d World, and open all the Main;

  Your country, chief, in Arms abroad defend,

  At home, with Morals, Arts, and Laws amend…

  This was no panegyric, however, but a scathing attack on the king. In referring to George opening up ‘all the Main’, Pope was pointing out that the high seas were in fact full of Spanish ships harassing the English fleet. In mentioning ‘Arms abroad’, he was alluding to the arms of George’s long-term German mistress Countess Melusine von der Schulenberg. And in extolling George’s involvement in the arts and national legislation, he was merely highlighting George’s disinterest in culture and affairs of state.

  Indeed, the king was a pedant, an obsessive who spent hours counting the royal treasury coin by coin and who upbraided his officials for even the mildest of breaches of royal etiquette. His preoccupation with order and punctuality meant that court life was stultifying and monotonous. ‘No mill horse,’ wrote the statesman Lord Hervey, ‘ever went on a more constant track on a more unchanging circle.’

  The only excitement in court was when George lost his temper. His habit of falling into rages and kicking his wig around the room was legendary.

  Isabella the Great Sow

  Isabella, queen consort of Charles VI of France, 1371–1435

  Isabella enjoyed seven years of comparative wedded bliss with her husband Charles the SILLY until his first severe attack of insanity in 1392. Initially she sought both medical and supernatural remedies for his condition, but as his illness worsened (from time to time he didn’t even know who she was) she sought comfort in the arms of other men and in so doing earned her reputation and nickname.

  One might have expected her to have time for John the FEARLESS, who rescued her from imprisonment by her son Charles, but according to the Monk of St Denis she found John ‘hideously repugnant’. Isabella, whom chroniclers variously describe as ‘short and brown-coloured’ and ‘enveloped in horrid fat’, fell instead for the charming and sprightly Louis of Valois, duke of Orleans, who happened to be her brother-in-law. They were apparently seldom apart, putting ‘all their vanity in wealth, all their pleasure in bodily delight’. A scandal for France and a butt of English jokes, she died mocked by both nations.

  Anne the Great Whore

  Anne Boleyn, queen of England, c.1507–36

  Henry VIII tired of his second wife after about three years, and although BLUFF KING HAL and his cronies insisted that she had enjoyed a hundred lovers, only twenty offences of adultery were officially levied against her. It was, of course, a complete pack of lies and yet, even when, on the damnation of her immortal soul, Anne swore on the sacrament that she had never been unfaithful to the king (least of all with her brother George) she won little sympathy. That she was no ravishing beauty- one critic described her as having buck teeth, six fingers on her right hand and a massive wart under her chin – and that she may have shared too many romantic secrets with some of her courtiers may not have helped her cause, but a whore, let alone a great whore, she was not. For failing to produce a male heir (a girl, such as her daughter, GOOD QUEEN BESS, was decidedly second-class goods) Anne simply and spectacularly fell out of favour. On the scaffold she suggested that as well as ‘Anne of a Thousand Days’ (owing to the length of her reign) and ‘the Great Whore’, she would rapidly acquire a third nickname. ‘Soon,’ she quipped in true gallows humour, ‘I shall be known as “Anne sans tete” [Anne the Headless].’

  Aurelian the Greatest Goth see Aurelian the RESTORER OF THE WORLD

  Amadeus the Green se
e Colourful Characters

  Archibald Greysteel

  Archibald Douglas, sixth earl of Angus, c.1489–1557

  During Archibald’s tenure as earl of Angus, the Red faction of the RED AND BLACK DOUGLASES was at its zenith. On the death of his grandfather Bell THE CAT the young Archibald became the sixth earl and swiftly married Margaret Tudor, thus allying himself with her brother BLUFF KING HAL. Back in Scotland Archibald established something of a power base in Edinburgh and gained complete control over the twelve-year-old James the ILL-BELOVED. In 1527 Archibald became chancellor and members of the Red Douglas family held every important post in the royal household.

  Archibald’s soubriquet of ‘Greysteel’ suggests he was a man who knew how to wield a sword. This was certainly the case at the battle of Ancrum Moor in 1545, when he hacked down English forces led by one Sir Ralph Evers, who had (inadvertently) desecrated the tomb of William, the first earl of Douglas and forefather of the ‘Red Douglas’ clan. For such sacrilege, Evers was flayed and his skin turned into purses for the Scottish soldiers.

  Griff see POOR FRED

  Archibald the Grim

  Archibald Douglas, third earl of Douglas, c.1328–1400

  Despite his emblem of a bleeding heart, Archibald, the illegitimate son of‘the Good Sir James’ Douglas, was far from a liberal sap. Instead he was one of the ablest soldiers of his era. One historian suggests he was nicknamed ‘for his swart complexion’. The following entry from the chronicles of Jean Froissart, describing Archibald’s behaviour at a battle near Melrose, supports the idea that he was so named ‘for his terrible countenance in warfare’: