The Kind Man and the Tyrant One day in the kingdom of Ahrah, shortly after their former leader passed, rumors spread through the land about a kind man to be chosen as their next leader. The kind man had heard these rumors but didn’t care for he only wanted to help others that needed it. One day, he was summoned to the castle for he was to be Ahrah’s next leader. The journey was long, but one of luxury for he was escorted into one of the finest carriages in the area and enough food to feed the entire kingdom for many years to come. As the kind man approached the castle, he wondered about why he was treated with this much luxury while the people he lived with for starved and struggled. The Council When the kind man reached the castle, he was …show more content…
However, after mentioning the current condition of his new subjects and how their lifestyle must improve, he was met with many nods of disagreement. They explained to him that they were only peasants and that he was superior to them and should not need to worry about them. The king was repulsed by how cruel the councilors were but went one with his plans anyway. Many months passed and the king kept trying to improve the life of his subjects but was only met with criticism and distaste from both the peasants and the council. The peasants accused him of seeing the peasants of inferior to himself and the king were only helping them to make himself look good. The council, on the other hand, treated him poorly because the king was taking money and food from the wealthy and giving it to the poor. These accusations infuriated the king and he decided that he would show that what he was doing was the right thing to do with enforcing laws and taxes on both the wealthy and the poor. He expected the wealthy and the poor to beg him for his forgiveness and for his kindness to return but instead was met with hate and riots. These reactions pushed the king to his limit and he enforced more laws and taxes on both groups along with curfews and the public executions of those …show more content…
However, when he started the meeting, the unthinkable occurred. The doors slammed shut and rebels came flooding in. He soon learned who started the rebellion, his own counsel. He was panicking running from door to door trying to escape, but the rebels were closing in. After trying multiple doors, to no avail, he surrendered. He thought they would kill him but instead, they cast him out banned him from returning and forced him to stay in a nearby, rundown, town. As he walked around, he was shocked by the horrors he saw, people that are just skin and bones, waste and trash everywhere, and bodies rich with all types of diseases, to name a few. He began to ask around why this had happened and why it was so bad here only to hear a response he wish he never heard, “You did this to us, you were the one who doomed us all to a painful slow death.” He desperately looked around for the one who said that but no one was there. “You used to be a good man, but what are you
Wiesel brings him up to reinforce that his faith is gone, the death of the boy is the death of God to him, “Behind me I heard a man asking: ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where is he? This is where hanging from the gallows.’ That night the soup tasted of corpses.” And after that, we see him slowly begin to change as a person.
A final topic focused and reformed by Catherine II and Peter I was the peasantry. During the time of both rulers, the lower classes did not benefit from their “reforms”. Peter I forced peasants to work on major projects, serve for life to others of higher class, or educate the sons of nobility. While Catherine II advocated the abolition of serfdom and cruel treatment of peasants, she failed to enhance the lives of the people and, instead, gave away thousands of state peasants who became serfs.
In Political Testament, Cardinal Richelieu explains that the nobility is something to be used as a tool, a perpetual game of appeasement and request of services. He understood that the nobility could be a nuisance and a body of dissent against the King, but that they were necessary to the crown to provide military aid and money. Richelieu explains that one must know how to manage and manipulate them: “To take away the lives of these persons, who expose their lives every day for a pure fancy of honor, is much less than taking away their honor and leaving them a life which would be a perpetual anguish for them. All means must be used to maintain the nobility in the true virtue of their fathers, and one must also omit nothing to preserve the advantages they inherited.” ...
When the king opened the gates of the city to your soldiers, treating them as if they had indeed been Gods, we tried to follow his example, but soon those men began to act as if our Palaces where their own to do with as they please. It became clear that they thought that all they had to do was to stretch out their hands and there would be food or drink. They also took an intense liking for women.”
... his life. He has done good to the society as well as saving lives. He confesses his sins and also declared that he was the real witch that has been disrupting the town. Even though he was able to save himself from his death, he chose not to in order to sacrifice for the people that were being called a witch. He did not deserve this kind of punishment for his noble actions. But in the end this had to be done to allow himself to become free as well as the town.
Because of his displeasing appearance, he is abhorred by society and forced to live. away from it, secluded in forests and so on. Finding the door open I entered the. An old man sat in it, near a fire, over which he was preparing his breakfast for the day. He turned on hearing a noise and perceived me, shrieked loudly, and quitting the hut ran across the fields."'.
When the aristocrats had all of the power, they were bloodthirsty. They would "sentence a youth to death" for not kneeling to monks. This was a very bad time and this seems extremely evil. It seems as if the peasants were good, yet when the tables turned they acted the exact same way as the aristocrats. The peasants had "eleven hundred defenseless prisoners killed just because they could."
...king also had to meet the needs of the poor and disadvantaged. (text, 113) The king was directly with the people, not so much as the gods. (text, 114)
... here, could have left his men under the influence and sailed off but instead he dragged all by forced and brought them to order.
what he was doing, but guilty of the act he commits. He is a good king
A ruler should have a reputation of being generous, but not actually being generous. If you truly are generous your reputation could be damaged. A ruler who has a reputation as being generous will end up wasting all of his resources and money, causing him to tax the people to continue living plentifully. This will make the people hate him, and possibly turn against him. In the end this helps no one. “ So we see a ruler cannot seek to benefit from a reputation as a generous without harming himself” ( pg. 49) Being miserly is better than being generous. A miserly ruler may be perceived as miserly in the beginning, but he will eventually earn a reputation as being generous. A ruler who is frugal will eventually have enough money to defend himself and his people against danger, and undertake new initiatives without having to tax the people. By being miserly a ruler has greater power because he has money and with money comes great power, and with power you can dominate anything that you want, hence the phrase a person who has money is dangerous. Being mean allows a ruler to govern. This does not mean you should rob your people.
middle of paper ... ... However, when he sent the soldiers to shoot the protesting crowds an important change of sides took place. The soldiers refused to shoot at the people and instead, shot their officers, and joined in the demonstration of the symphony. They had had enough of the war and the conditions they were in.
...He is forced to see that the new hedonism he embraces with open arms is not without price to himself and those around him. It leads him deeper and deeper into sin and depravity until he cannot be redeemed for his faults. In a fit of madness he decides he no longer wants to have his own faults, the results of his impulsive, narcissistic, and selfish behavior visible to him. He takes a knife to the canvass and, in doing so, ends his own life. A life devoted to following his impulses without tempering them with reason, a life of thinking only of his own selfish desires and disregarding the hurt caused to the people around him. The legacy begotten by new hedonism.
ruled by a king whose power was constrained to the extent that he had to listen to the citizenry. This king could only
The Tale of the Sage’s Favors In the city of Hudid, there lived a Sultan by the name of Rifat. He was as greedy as one could get, leeching the money out of people, increasing taxes, and using his wealth just for his petty needs. In fact, he was so terrible of a ruler that many aristocrats tended to stay away from him along with their children for fear of the Sultan wanting something unreasonable from them such as for the hands of their daughters in marriage (cough, cough, forced, cough). As he continued his dirty deeds, the citizens of Hudid kept going into poverty while the Sultan bathed in his riches.