Frederick the Sand Dealer see Frederick the GREAT
Ptolemy the Saviour see PTOLEMAIC KINGS
Arthur the Saviour of the Nations see Arthur the IRON DUKE
Francis the Scarred
Francis, second duke of Guise, 1519–63
Adored by his troops and feared by his enemies, Francis fought in the army of Francis the FATHER OF LETTERS and received the scar that won him his nickname at the siege of Boulogne in 1545. Later, in 1552, he distinguished himself at the defence of Metz against the emperor Charles the HARLEQUIN, but in 1563 was mortally wounded by a Huguenot assassin as he prepared to besiege Orleans.
Henry the Scarred
Henry I, third duke of Guise, 1550–88
In a remarkable, indeed unique, father-and-son nickname double, Henry, son of Francis the SCARRED, also received a massive scar in battle and won the nickname ‘le Balafre’ for his injuries. His scar was from a frightful gash to his face that he received at the battle of Dormans in 1577. Henry was assassinated by the bodyguard of Henry the MAN-MILLINER, who stabbed him to death, burned his body and flung his ashes into the Loire. Like his father, then, Henry lived by the sword, was nicknamed by the sword and died by the sword.
John the Scot
John, Irish nobleman, fl. ninth century
John’s full name of ‘John Scotus Eriugena’ helps to explain this anomaly of nomenclature, since the latter two words go some way to identify the Irishman’s place of origin. In the ninth century the Latin word Scotus rather unhelpfully meant both ‘Irish’ and ‘Scottish’ depending on the circumstances. Eriugena, however, was far more specific. It is a word that appears to have been concocted by John himself, meaning ‘born in Ireland, or Erin’.
John, who was well known for his humorous banter, was a companion, chamberlain and adviser on theological matters to Charles the BALD. Once, writes the chronicler William of Malmesbury, Charles and John were sitting at a table, both having eaten and drunk to excess. Seeing John do something that mildly offended French taste, Charles rebuked him, saying, ‘What separates a drunkard from a Scot?’ to which the wag John replied, ‘Just a table.’
Eventually John tired of the French court and came to the court of Alfred the GREAT in England, where he became a tutor, his students including the young prince himself. His teaching clearly did not go down as well as his jokes, since a few years later some of his pupils stabbed him to death with their pens.
Attila the Scourge of God
Attila, king of the Huns, 406–53
To the Romans and Greeks, the Huns were an ugly bunch. The fifth-century Roman Ammianus Marcellinus compared them with the ‘stumps, rough hewn… that are used in putting sides into bridges’. Attila, their short and swarthy king, with his beady eyes, big head and flat nose, was no exception.
To historians of the time, Attila was more than just physically unattractive. According to many religious sources, he was ‘Flagel-lum Dei’, or ‘the Scourge of God’, while pagan chronicles dubbed him ‘the Terror of the World’. These grim epithets stemmed from the apparent barbarism of the Scythian hordes as they overwhelmed much of Europe. Attila and his men ravaged vast areas between the Rhine and the Caspian Sea, exacted draconian tributes from the emperor ‘Theodosius the Calligrapher’, and even invaded Italy, sacking modern-day Padua, Verona and Milan.
A Greek writer called Priscus visited the court of Attila and sat and ate at a banquet with him in 448. His description of the event suggests that by then the Scourge of God was not the fearsome monster portrayed by earlier chroniclers. ‘In everything,’ Priscus recalls, ‘Attila showed himself temperate – his cup was of wood, while to the guests were given goblets of gold and silver. His dress, too, was quite simple, affecting only to be clean.’
Charles the Scourge of God see Charles the AFFABLE
Charles A Second Charlemagne see Charles the HARLEQUIN
Sancho the Settler see NOBLE PROFESSIONS
Wilfrid the Shaggy
Wilfrid, founding father of Catalan political independence, d.897
En route to the Carolingian court, Wilfrid’s father, also called Wilfrid, was killed during a brawl with some Frankish soldiers. In outrage, Wilfrid junior, described in the twelfth-century Gesta Comitum Barcinonensium as ‘the Shaggy’ or ‘the Hairy’ owing to the unusually luxuriant growth of hair on his body, made for Charles’s court to demand revenge. And so it was that Wilfrid the Shaggy came face to face with Charles the BALD. Little is known of the conversation except that Charles apologized profusely.
According to the Gesta, Wilfrid was the proud founder of Catalonia and, like many of his regional contemporaries, defended his territories against Muslim aggression and strove to repopulate deserted territory. Wilfrid continued to show family loyalty when he founded and endowed two monasteries and named his own children as abbot and abbess.
Isabella the She-Wolf of France
Isabella, wife of King Edward II of England, 1292–1358
One of the vilest women of her age, Isabella did not merely dislike her husband Edward CARNARVON, she detested the very ground on which he walked. And so, together with her lover Roger of Mortimer, she invaded England in 1327 and arranged for Edward’s murder at Berkeley Castle. The manner of his death, the thrusting of a hot iron into his bowels, still makes the squeamish wince nearly 700 years later. Back then, it won for her the awesome title ‘the She-Wolf of France’, an epithet employed by the eighteenth-century poet Thomas Gray, when he wrote of her as a:
Isabella the She-Wolf of France
She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs
That tear’st the bowels of thy mangled mate.
Isabella’s son Edward the BANKRUPT replaced Carnarvon on the English throne.
Shockhead see Harold FAIRHAIR
Pepin the Short
Pepin III, king of the Franks, c.714–68
Pepin may have been short – by most accounts about four and a half feet tall – but his influence was extensive. Once he had exchanged his mayoral hat at the palace of the last Merovingian king, Childeric the STUPID, for the Frankish crown, he vigorously protected his vast lands from all would-be trespassers and even helped the papal forces to defend Rome against the Lombards.
Pepin, the son of Charles the HAMMER, may have been short, but with his wife Bertha BIGFOOT was the proud parent of Charles the GREAT, one of the tallest kings history has ever recorded.
Paul the Silent see Harald and the HAIR SHIRT
William the Silent
William I, prince of Orange, 1533–84
William the Silent – ‘Willem de Zwijger’ or ‘Guillaume le Taciturne’ if you prefer – was far from taciturn, let alone silent. In fact, he was a most affable, cheerful and delightful fellow and spoke Latin, French, German, Flemish and Spanish regularly and fluently. His soubriquet stems from the discretion he demonstrated in some of his dealings with Henry the WARLIKE (see GALLIC PRACTICE) and Philip the PRUDENT, most notably when he kept his own counsel on the news that the two kings were planning to send thousands of Spanish troops to rid the Netherlands of ‘heretics’ (i.e. Protestants). Churlish critics interpret William’s silence as sulking because he had not been asked to join their plot, but others counter that this would be wholly out of character for such an adroit politician and the courageous leader of the revolt against Spanish domination.
Many Dutch today regard William as their national hero. Even though he mainly spoke French, he is hailed as ‘the Father of the Fatherland’ for his role in steering Holland to independence from Spanish control. The Dutch national anthem was written in recognition of his achievements and, despite having a flag of red, white and blue, Holland has orange as its national colour, reflecting William’s lineage.
Charles the Silly
Charles VI, king of France, 1368–1422
In his early twenties Charles was tall and strong, with fair hair falling in thick curls to his shoulders. He was a lover of the outdoor life but was also a patron of the arts and, tog
ether with his wife Isabella the GREAT SOW, hosted luxurious gatherings at court despite the Hundred Years War that raged around them. For his gallantry and generosity some dubbed him ‘the Well-Beloved’. But then, on 5 August 1392, he went berserk.
Fuelled by alcohol or suffering from sunstroke, he lost his head in the forest of Le Mans and killed four men before his sword broke and he could be tied up. From then on, his attacks came with monotonous regularity and, as his mental health deteriorated, he was renamed ‘the Silly’ and eventually ‘the Mad’. Aware in lucid moments of his condition, Charles officially handed over authority of the running of the country to his porcine wife.
Silly Billy see William the SAILOR KING
John the Silly Duke
John Churchill, first duke of Marlborough, 1650–1722
Marlborough was an outstanding soldier, a brilliant diplomat and the long-suffering husband of the imperious QUEEN SARAH. The French considered him to be rather dashing and called him ‘the Handsome Englishman’. General Turenne, his commander in the 1670s, declared that he ‘was no less distinguished for the singular graces of his person than for his brilliant courage and consummate ability both as a soldier and a statesman’. Voltaire praised him for ‘that serenity of soul in danger, which the English call a cool head’. By contrast, the English called him ‘the Silly Duke’, because he would habitually cry ‘Oh, silly! Silly!’ whenever he heard some bad news.
Lulach the Simpleton see Lulach the FOOL
Basil the Slayer of the Bulgars
Basil II, Byzantine emperor, c.957–1025
Basil was short and blue-eyed and had a habit of twirling his bushy whiskers around his fingers when angry. He was a formidable opponent, and Samuel, the Bulgarian tsar, was unsurprisingly very concerned when in 1014 he learned that Byzantine forces were once more advancing towards his capital city, Ochrida. Spies told him that Basil was twirling his whiskers furiously and was in no mood for a peace offering.
Nothing, however, could have prepared Samuel for the spectacle that he confronted when his men returned from battle in the Belasica Mountains. Basil, it transpired, had not only defeated Samuel’s army but also blinded the 14,000 prisoners, leaving one eye to each hundredth man in order that they could lead their comrades back home. On staring at 27,860 bloody eye sockets, Samuel died of shock.
Harald the Smooth Talker see Harald and the HAIR SHIRT
Frederick the Snow King see the WINTER MONARCHS
Elizabeth the Snow Queen see the WINTER MONARCHS
Softsword see John LACKLAND
Louis the Solomon of France see Louis theSAINT
The Sons of Tancred
Tancred de Hauteville was a Norman nobleman of little note. Several of his twelve sons, however, achieved considerable notoriety through their exploits in southern Italy. Three of the children who found fame and fortune in the Mediterranean acquired nicknames that reveal their different paths to success.
William the Iron Arm
Count of Apulia, d.1046
In about 1035 William and his brothers Drogo and Humphrey left France to join the mercenary Norman army in southern Italy where William soon became count of Apulia. He earned his nickname of ‘il Bracchio di Ferro’ during the siege of the Muslim-occupied city of Syracuse. According to one biographer, the count was not only a ‘lamb in society and an angel in council’ but also a ‘lion in war’, and with his ‘iron arm’ is said to have ‘unhorsed and transpierced’ the city’s hapless emir.
Robert the Cunning
Duke of Apulia, c.1015–85
That same year Robert ‘Guiscard’ –sometimes translated as ‘the Weasel’ but more commonly as ‘the Cunning’ –headed south from France with four horsemen and a couple of dozen followers on foot. Once in the Mediterranean he initially led the life of a robber baron and supported himself by cattle rustling. By 1053, however, he had amassed a considerable army and defeated the forces of Pope Leo IX at the battle of Cività. The pope himself was taken prisoner, but, in a cunning plan, Robert and his men knelt and asked for his blessing, knowing that an alliance with the papacy could be an advantage in the future. Indeed it was. Six years later Pope Nicholas II formally invested Robert with all the lands he had conquered.
Robert was not satisfied with being just the duke of Apulia, Calabria and (by his own decree) Sicily. Various military exploits followed, including an invasion of Rome and an expedition through Greece to fight the Byzantine emperor Alexius I. It was on this final campaign that he made a deep impression upon Anna, the emperor’s daughter. In The Alexiad Anna describes Robert as ‘In temper tyrannical, in mind most cunning… and subordinate to nobody in the world.’ Anna was also impressed with Robert’s physique. In breathless tones she tells us that ‘his stature was so lofty that he surpassed even the tallest, his complexion was ruddy, his hair flaxen… [and] his eyes all but emitted sparks of fire.’
Roger the Great Count
Count of Sicily, 1031–1101
Roger, Tancred’s youngest, decided that he would like to rule the island of Sicily rather than a region on the Italian mainland, and in 1061, after a spell as a bandit and a horse thief, his campaign to conquer the entire island began in earnest.
It was no easy task. Starting with a mere hundred knights and facing fierce Muslim resistance, he made painstakingly slow progress. For thirty long years he laboriously laid siege to each and every town until finally, in 1091, the island was his and he was on a par with most of the monarchs in Europe. Extremely proud of his achievements Roger deemed the title of ‘count’ that came with the crown of Sicily to be demeaning, and so instead he gave himself the title ‘the Great Count’.
Some contemporary historians write how Roger demonstrated general tolerance to Sicily’s vanquished Muslim population by allowing them to maintain their magistrates and mosques. The count’s other epithet, ‘the Terror of the Faithless’, suggests that he made it unequivocally clear that Sicily was a Christian realm.
Ptolemy the Son of a Bitch see PTOLEMAIC KINGS
Charles the Son of the Last Man see Charles the MERRY MONARCH
Louis the Springer
Louis, margrave of Thuringia, 1042–1128
Convicted of murder, Louis was imprisoned deep in the impregnable Giebichenstein Castle near Halle – the Colditz or Alcatraz of its day. After two years of incarceration he managed to escape by climbing to the top of the battlements and ‘springing’ into the River Saale below. For his courage, the emperor pardoned him and gave him his nickname as well as his liberty.
Sitric the Squint-Eyed
Sitric, king of Dublin and York, d.927
When Sitric ‘Cáech’ signed a treaty with the powerful Athelstan the GLORIOUS in order to prevent any hostilities, part of the agreement was that Sitric had to accept Christianity and marry Althelstan’s sister Edith. The glorious Athelstan should have noticed the deception behind those squinty eyes. Within months of the nuptials Sitric renounced the faith and sent Edith packing to a convent.
Robert the Steward see NOBLE PROFESSIONS
Sigurd the Stout
Sigurd II, earl of Orkney, d.1014
In 1013 Sigurd, the mighty earl of Orkney, was asked by ‘Sitric Silkenbeard’, the Norse king of Dublin, for help in his battle against the Irish high king Brian Bóru. Sitric promised that if they were victorious, Sigurd would become the high king. With such a prize Sigurd could not refuse, and the battle took place on 23 April 1014. Brian Bóru was killed, but Sigurd, possibly not helped by his plump physique, also lost his life.
Augustus the Strong
Augustus II, king of Poland, 1670–1733
As duke of several territories, including Saxony and Meissen, Augustus possessed the means to rule without having to ask for financial support. As an elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he wielded considerable influence. Moreover, as commander of the imperial armies in a number of campaigns, he had a distinguished military reputation. All in all, he looked a fitting successor to the great John the WIZARD,
but it is for his love life rather than for his leadership that Augustus is best remembered.
His romances formed one of the wonders of the age, attesting no less to his catholic and cosmopolitan taste than to his phenomenal stamina. After a series of youthful adventures abroad, where he had variously disguised himself as a matador and a monk, he returned to Dresden in 1693 to the charms of his bride, Eberdine, to the labours of electoral office, and to the cultivation of a covey of concubines whom his courtiers classified for public consumption as ‘official’, ‘confidential’ or ‘top secret’.
Augustus was the father of some 300 children. Gossipmongers have it that the abandoned mistress of the British ambassador to Saxony, who turned to him for comfort, was the only woman he was unable to seduce in fifty years of amorous endeavour. His nickname, it is held, was awarded after he slept with his own mother at the royal hunting-lodge at Mauritzburg.
The political ventures of Augustus the Strong’ were less suc- cessful than his sexual forays. By the end of his reign Poland had declined from a thrusting major European power to a flaccid protectorate of Russia.
Strongbow
Richard, son of Gilbert de Clare, second earl of Pembroke, d.1176
Richard’s strength and skill at archery knew no equal. It is said that his arms were so long that, when standing fully upright, he could touch his knees with the palms of his hands.
Louis the Stubborn see Louis THE QUARRELLER
Childeric the Stupid
Childeric III, Merovingian king, d.755
In the second quarter of the eighth century the mayors of the Merovingian palace, Pepin the SHORT and his brother Carloman, grew aware that their growing power was making the other Frankish leaders increasingly agitated, so Pepin and his brother looked around for a puppet figure who would nominally be king but allow them to continue in absolute command. Childeric was their man. Playing no part in public business whatsoever, he simply did as he was told.
The Good, the Bad, and the Unready: The Remarkable Truth Behind History's Strangest Nicknames Page 20
