The whole Trump assassination attempt, has been, pardon the expression, beaten to death. But then I came across this piece by JMSmith. He brings history to bear on the subject, and I think his take is insightful. Voila:
Simpletons and Scoundrels
“A flighty and half-witted man is the very instrument generally preferred by cunning politicians when very hazardous work is to be done.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England (1848)*
Macaulay makes this trenchant remark while discussing a deluded wretch named Granville, the doomed patsy in a failed plot to assassinate the English King William of Orange in 1692. Macaulay tells us that Granville, a Frenchman, was “undoubtedly brave, and full of zeal for his country and his religion,” but that his main qualification as an assassin was that he was “flighty and half-witted.” By “flighty” Macaulay means both impetuous (overhasty) and given to romantic illusions (i.e. “flights of fancy”). I trust what he means by half-witted is plain enough.
A flighty and half-witted man is the preferred tool of cunning politicians when their scheme is very hazardous because “no shrewd calculator” will do the deed “for any bribe.” What cunning politicians require is therefore a romantic simpleton who dreams of glory and cannot calculate the odds.
As Macaulay explains,
“It was plain to every man of common sense that, whether the design succeeded or failed, the reward of the assassins would probably be to be disowned by the Courts of Versailles and Saint Germains [the exiled court of James II], and to be torn with redhot pincers, smeared with melted lead, and dismembered by four horses. To vulgar natures the prospect of such martyrdom was not alluring.”
When Granville was betrayed by his accomplices, his punishment was simply to be hung, drawn and quartered, but the prediction that the French and Jacobite principals of the plot would disown their assassin was fulfilled in full. The official position of Versailles and Saint Germains was that assassination was abhorrent and Granville had acted alone, perhaps under the influence of madness or some personal vendetta.
After his trial, and without hope of reprieve, Granville named one Barbesieux, an agent in the French War Office, as the architect and director of the plot. Although Louis XIV officially abominated political assassination, he quietly protected Barbesieux. Macaulay asks:
“If he really abhorred assassination as honest men abhor it, would not Barbesieux have been driven with ignominy from the royal presence, and flung into the Bastille?”
Macaulay’s question is, of course, rhetorical.
A failed assassination. A flighty and half-witted patsy who met a grisly end. Official shock and detestation. The designer concealed and protected.
Some people are going to say this smells like Killary's handiwork and I'm not going to say they are wrong.
If the name Granville sounds familiar, it's because there have been a number of Granvilles in English history, but none that I found from this time period. JMSmith concurs, the only reference we have is in Macaulay's book.
