The Purge: Difference between revisions

* For a long period of history in the Ottoman Empire, a Sultan's sons would compete for the crown amongst themselves by slaughtering their male siblings (and sometimes nephews and uncles.) Whomever was left alive at the end of the purge was declared the new Sultan. (This lasted until the Empire finally got into the habit of declaring the firstborn son the next ruler.)

* [[Tsarist Russia|Ivan IV "The Terrible"]] accused the top Boyars of trying to reduce him to their puppet - he seized actual power in the wake of a big riot against them. Later he moved out of Moscow with some favorites and issued what amounts to ultimatum: he gets to "set aside" some land as royal personal property (a pre-existing mechanism, but not ''intended to'' manage confiscations or keep servants above the law) and sort out "the traitors" (list attached) - or abdicates. If this oligarchy did see fit to steal from the crown prince or refer to a minor noble as "slave", one can only guess how they treated common people... So the monarch got support of pretty much everyone else. Cue raids, confiscations and exile of heirs to the borders. The purge dropped in popularity when some participants reduced it to plain "[[Rape, Pillage and Burn]]" deal. Also the folk from confiscated (i.e. best) lands ran to the borders: instead of "devil you know" they may get a favorite of the worst sort, and even if not, this voided various lucrative arrangements. The more people ran, the more infrastructure failed, so more ran - until this led to two lost wars. After which Ivan IV fixed some problems his purge created... and purged his troublesome servants too for good measure.

 

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