In others, the passion for blood is developed alongside with indifference to suffering.
Thus Andreas Bichel enticed young women into his house, under the pretence that he was possessed of a magic mirror, in which he would show them their future husbands; when he had them in his power he bound their hands behind their backs, and stunned them with a blow. He then stabbed them and despoiled them of their clothes, for the sake of which he committed the murders; but as he killed the young women the passion of cruelty took possession of him, and he hacked the poor girls to pieces whilst they were still alive, in his anxiety to examine their insides. Catherine Seidel he opened with a hammer and a wedge, from her breast downwards, whilst still breathing. "I may say," he remarked at his trial, "that during the operation I was so eager, that I trembled all over, and I longed to rive off a piece and eat it."
Andreas Bichel was executed in 1809.
Again, a third class of persons are cruel and bloodthirsty, because in them bloodthirstiness is a raging insatiable passion. In a civilized country those possessed by this passion are forced to control it through fear of consequences, or to gratify it upon the brute creation. But in earlier days, when feudal lords were supreme in their domains, there have been firghtful instances of their excesses, and the extent to which some of the Roman emperors indulged their passion for blood is matter of history.
Gall gives several authentic instances of bloodthirstiness. A Dutch priest had such a desire to kill and to see killed, that he became chaplain to a regiment that he might have the satisfaction of seeing deaths occuring wholesale in engagements. The same man kept a large collection of various kinds of domestic animals, that he might be able to torture their young. He killed the animals for his kitchen, and was acquainted with all the hangmen in the country, who sent him notice of executions, and he would walk for days that he might have the gratification of seeing a man executed.
In the field of battle passion is variously developed; some feel positive delight in slaying, others are indifferent. An old soldier, who had been in Waterloo, informed me that to his mind there was no pleasure equal to running a man through the body, and that he could lie awake at night musing on the pleasurable sensations afforded him by that act.
Highwaymen are frequently not content with robbery, but manifest a bloody inclination to torment and kill. John Rosbeck, for instance, is well known to have invented and exercised the most atrocious cruelties, merely that he might witness the sufferings of his victims, who were especially women and children. Neither fear nor torture could break him of the dreadful passion till he was executed.
Gall tells of a violin-player, who, being arrested, confessed to thirty-four murders, all of which he had committed, not from enmity or intent to rob, but solely because it afforded him an intense pleasure to kill.
Spurzheim tells of a priest at Strasbourg, who, though rich, and uninfluenced by envy or revenge, from exactly the same motive, killed three persons.
Gall relates the case of a brother of the Duke of Bourbon, Conde, Count of Charlois, who, from infancy, had an inveterate pleasure in torturing animals: growing older, he lived to shed the blood of human beings, and to exercise various kinds of cruelty. He also murdered many from no other motive, and shot at slaters for the pleasure of seeing them fall from the roofs of houses.
Louis XI of France caused the death of 4,000 people during the reign; he used to watch their executions from a neighboring lattice. He had gibbets placed outside his own palace, and himself conducted the executions.
It must not be supposed that cruelty exists merely in the coarse and rude; it is quite frequently observed in the refined and educated. Among the former it is chiefly in insensibility to the sufferings of others; in the latter it appears as a passion, the indulgence of which causes intense pleasure.
Those bloody tyrants, Nero and Caligula, Alexander Borgia, and Robespierre, whose highest enjoyment consisted in witnessing the agonies of their fellow-men, were full of delicate sensibilities and great refinement of taste and manner.
I have seen an accomplished young woman of considerable refinement and of a highly strung
nervous temperament, string flies with her needle on a piece of thread, and watch complacently
their flutterings. Cruelty may remain latent till, by some accident it is aroused, and then
it will break forth in a devouring flame. It is the same with the passion for blood as with
the passions of love and hate; we have no conception of the violence with which they can rage
till circumstances occur which call them into action. Love or hate will be dominant in a breast
which has been in serenity, till suddenly the spark falls, passion
blazes forth, and the serenity of the quiet breast is shattered for ever. A word, a glance, a
touch, are sufficient to fire the magazine of passion in the heart, and to desolate for ever
an existence. It is the same with bloodthirstiness. It may lurk in the deeps of some heart
very dear to us. It may smoulder in the bosom which is most cherished by us, and we may be
perfectly unconscious of its existence there. Perhaps circumstances will not cause its
development; perhaps moral principle may have bound it down with fetters it can never break.
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