After reading parts of "The Hessians" by Lowell, I've grown attached to learning about one of the Margrave of Anspach, who seems to take the cake as the most feared rulers. He looked over the territories of Anspach and Bayreuth.
What did this prince do when he ran out of booze? Death penalty to criminals. Charles Alexander didn't mess around. When hearing that his dogs had not been fed, he rode to the house of the man who was sent in charge of his dogs, and shot him. An inn-keeper who complained about a little theft? The thief was hanged on the inn-keeper's door. After a servant girl helped a soldier desert, even she was hanged.
Charles Alexander wasn't someone I'd want to come across of in one of his unexpected bad moods either. After a sentinel guard was asked for his musket, and when he gave it up to the Margrave, he was sent to drag through a pond at a pair of husssars' horses tails. It is safe to say that the man died.
The histories of these princes gave me a better idea of the control they had of their territories, and how the treatment of their people rested in their hands. As the saying goes, it's good to be the King.
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