Free THE WORLD'S MOST EVIL PEOPLE (True Crime) by Rodney Castleden Page A

royal prerogative of taking ten innocent lives a day by shooting passers-by with an arquebus, people he deemed to be too near the palace walls. He came upon a group of women in a meadow and took exception to the amount of noise they were making, so he had them drowned.
    Murad’s heavy hand produced the desired effect. A turbulent and unstable empire stabilized, though at a terrible cost in human lives.
    Sultan Murad IV took his cruelty abroad with him too. In 1638 he led an expedition to Baghdad, then the capital of Persia. He laid siege to the city. During this siege he engaged in single combat a Persian champion, slicing the man’s head in half. When Baghdad finally fell, he pitilessly massacred the 30,000 defenders.
    But at least Murad IV was the last of the all-powerful tyrannical Ottoman despots. He died in 1640. At 28 he was worn out by habitual self-indulgence.

Peter The Great
    (1672–1725)

     
    Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia from 1682, was the fourth son of Tsar Alexei I Mikhailovitch, by his second wife, Natalia Naruishkina. He was born on 30 May 1672. He was made co-tsar jointly with his half-brother Ivan V, when their elder brother Fedor III died; the boys ruled under the regency of their sister, the Grand Duchess Sophia. His election as tsar seems to have been a signal for general rebellion. He saw one of his uncles dragged from the palace and butchered by a savage mob. He saw Artamon Matvyeev, his mother’s mentor and his own best friend, pulled away and cut to pieces. These awful childhood experiences made Peter a twitchy and anxious boy, and it is thought that the convulsions he experienced in later years had their roots in these early traumas.
    During the regency of his sister, Peter was free to indulge himself. His new friend, a Swiss adventurer called Francois Lefort, introduced Peter to all the delights of a dissolute lifestyle in a special house, which was built at Peter’s own expense. Peter’s mother was understandably alarmed at her son’s antics, and hastily arranged his marriage to the beautiful but stupid Eudoxia Lopukhina, the pious daughter of a nobleman, when he ‘came of age’ in 1689. The marriage was a disaster, and Peter virtually abandoned Eudoxia only a year later. He also had his sister, the Grand Duchess, arrested and immured in a convent, where she died in 1704, so that he could rule on his own with his feeble-minded brother as a figurehead. In 1690, Eudoxia had a son, the Tsarevich Alexis.
    Peter’s strength and failing lay in his boundless energy and curiosity. This gave him a great capacity for work, but also an appetite for roistering. He had a coarse contempt for religious ceremony and political formality.
    In 1695, after six years of preparation, Peter moved his army against the Turks. Peter characteristically served in this army as a humble bombardier. The following year, he captured the crucial Black Sea port of Azov.
    In 1697, Peter the Great set off incognito on a Grand Tour. This ‘Grand Embassy’ of Europe had the ostensible purpose of winning allies for Russia against the Turks. Peter spent a year and a half touring Holland, Germany, England and Austria, even working as a shipwright in shipyards in Holland and at Deptford on the Thames. Peter’s private mission, his personal agenda, was to gather a comprehensive knowledge of western technology so that he could modernize Russia. He hired thousands of specialist craftsmen and military personnel to return to Russia with him to instruct the Russian people in western methods.
    Peter had to return to Russia in a hurry in 1698 to deal with a rebellion of the musketeer regiments (streltsy). This he suppressed with great savagery with the help of a Scottish general, Patrick Gordon. The Tsarina Eudoxia was accused of conspiracy, divorced and sent to a convent. He then started introducing many western customs, by force, and caused a great deal of unnecessary offence by doing so. He ordered all beards to be shaved off at