Punch or The London charivari: Punch or The London charivari (5.1843)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

113

PUNCH'S LIVES OF EMINENT SCOUNDRELS.

PROEM.

Let it be granted that whoever commits robbery and murder is a
scoundrel, and consequently that the more robbery and murder he commits,
the greater scoundrel he is. Now, we hope, the reader will not be startled
at our entering «n our list of scoundrels, individuals whom he may have
been taught to call heroes. Without more ado, let us measure pens with
Plutarch.

SCOUNDREL THE FIRST.

This notori-
ous thief was
the son of Phi-
lip, king of Ma-
cedonia, who
was a thief be-
fore him, and
of Olympias,
his queen.

According
to some, him-
self and his
mother (who
appears to
have been de-
ranged,)
among the
number, he
was the son of
Jupiter.

Alexander
had the advan-
tage of certain
modern and
minor heroes

of his stamp, who have mostly come to the gal-
lows, in being able to read and write. Lysima-
chus taught him his Alphabetagammadelta. His
finishing tutor was the philosopher Aristotle, who
instructed him how to fight with syllogisms ;
but that was not the sort of fighting for him.

He gave, while yet a boy, a strong proof of
his disregard of his own neck—a quality so in-
dispensable to gentlemen of the predatory pro-
fession. In the presence of Philip and the whole
court, to the great risk of that part of his per-
son, he tamed, by his personal prowess, the
afterwards the " Brown Bess " to his Dick Turpui.

When he was a little bigger, at the early age of sixteen, he com-
mitted his first offence. Philip had gone marauding to Byzantium, and
had left young Alexander in command of the rest of his gang. The
Medari, whose territory Philip had appropriated, were beginning to show
symptoms of wishing to have their own again. Alexander, at the head of
a select band of desperadoes, attacked, took, and pillaged their city,
turned its inhabitants out of house and home, and put some of his own
rogues in their places.

He next went thieving with his respectable father to Greece, and at
Chseronea, where the Greeks made a stand against the Macedonian
banditti, committed a daring and successful outrage ; breaking the sacred
band, or A Division of the Thebans, and sending them to the right-about.

On the death of Philip, who was stabbed by one of his own fellows, in
which transaction his hopeful son was suspected of having been concerned,
Alexander became king of the cut-throats. They were in an extreme
state of insubordination, but he reduced them to reason by knocking
some of the most refractory on the head. He then led them on a
housebreaking expedition against Thebes. The Thebans, objecting to
stand and deliver, stood, without delivering, against him on the field.
They had better have let him have their money quietly, for he took their
lives. He cut six thousand of them to pieces on the ground to begin with ;
then he took their city, pillaged it first, razed it afterwards, and sold all
the inhabitants, who were not murdered, for slaves.

The Greeks, upon this, perceived that Alexander was a
They formed themselves, therefore, into one large band of
and he, nothing loth, marched at the head of them into Asia.

His merry men comprised thirty thousand footpads, and five thousand
mounted highwaymen. He provided himself with no more than a month's
pay for their maintenance, being of opinion that the slave who pays is
base, and intending that they should pay themselves out of what they
stole.

His grand series of atrocities now commenced.

At the battle of the Granicus, his first, he destroyed twenty-four thousand
five hundred men, losing only thirty-four of his own rascals.

He took Halicarnassus and Miletus by storm—a military operation
which consists in burning, demolition, the indiscriminate slaughter of

great hero,
freebooters,

men, women, and children, and other proceedings for which civilians are
usually hanged. He subdued the rest of Asia Minor, committing in so
doing a number of sanguinary crimes which has not been exactly cal-
culated.

He defeated Darius, the Persian king, who withstood his aggression
near Issus in Cilicia. On this occasion he left a hundred and ten thousand
victims dead on the ground, besides mangling and crippling at least as
many more for life. In addition to this murderous exploit, he stole an
enormous amount of property, and made prisoners of Darius's family,
whom, it is due to him to state, he treated with great civility for a ruffian,
letting them break their hearts in quiet without killing or abusing them.

After the battle, he stole more property at Damascus ; and kidnapped
other women and children. Then he took Tyre after a seven months'
siege ; and, by way of indemnifying himself for his trouble, butchered two
thousand of the citizens in cold blood.

At Arbela, after a wholesale murder on the grandest scale, he finally
routed the army of Darius ; whereby the whole of Persia became his-
prey. Hereupon, his first act was to break into the king's palace at.
Susa, and to steal, take, and carry away, money, jewels, wearing apparel,
and furniture, to the value of forty-five thousand talents.

He now ravaged Media, Syria, Egypt, and the whole of India, in which
last country his spoliations and massacres were nearly as extensive as
those of a gentleman named Bull have been since. When he had at-
length robbed as much as he could, he is reported to have cried because
he could rob no more.

Alexander did not come to be hanged ; but, having plenty of rope
given him, he, in conformity with the adage, was his own Jack Ketch. His
gang being laden with all the spoil they could carry, he retired to Babylon ;
where, like most Eminent Scoundrels who are prosperous, he set to work
to enjoy himself, by indulging in all kinds of luxury and dissipation.
Here, after a short career of hard living, he got very drunk one fine day,,
caught a fever in consequence, and died, aged thirty-two, not at all
regretted by anybody who knew him. •

Latterly, indeed, he had given in greatly to drinking, and one day, in a.
state of fermented liquor, committed the mildest murder of the many he
was guilty of, by running his friend Clitus through the body. On another
occasion, being tipsy, he burnt down the city of Persepolis, as the little
boys say, lCfor a lark."

Arson, robbery, and murder, were thus the deeds which gained him the
surname of Great.

Let us consider the exploits of Alexander as well as we can, numerically..
Besides multitudes which have not been enumerated, he killed, as we-
have seen, of his fellow creatures—

At Thebes .
The Granicus
Issus
Tyre

6,000
24,500
110,000
2,000

wild horse Bucephalus,

142,500

Suppose that in his other battles and sieges he killed only as many
again (an estimate far beneath the mark, no doubt), he must have done
at least 2iJ5,000 murders, without reckoning that of Clitus ; consequently,
he deserved the halter 285,000 times, and was by just so much a greater
villain than Courvoisier.

MADNESS.

There is a madness of the heart, not head—

That in some bosoms wages endless war ;

There is a throe when other pangs are dead.

That shakes the system to its utmost core.

There is a tear more scalding than the brin-s
That streams from out the fountains of the eye,

And like the lava leaves a scorched line,

As in its fiery course it rusheth by.

What is that madness ?—Is it envy, hate,

Or jealousy more cruel than the grave,

With all the attendants that upon it wait

And make the victim now despair—now rave ?

It is when hunger, clamouring for relief,

Hears a shrill voice exclaim, "That graceless sinner,

The cook, has been, and gone, and burnt the beef,
And spilt the tart—in short, she 's dish'd the dinner

iftUbt'cal Reports.

It is incorrect that Lord Brougham's head is turned. He turned
alloc/ether.

Mr. Ferrand, M.P., has been recommended, it is said, to go to Kiss
engen ; and has set off for Stafford.

The cerebral apoplexy of Lord Londonderry lias been contradicted, on
the authority of his faculties. His head was never of a full habit.