No es lo mismo el terror de una tiranía del pasado que se ha
dado en los sistemas totalitarios modernos. En el pasado, los tiranos
utilizaron el terror como arma para atemorizar, esclavizar; y sobre todo,
someter a sus oponentes. Veremos como la diferencia estriba en esta última
palabra: “oponentes”.
Según la Historia Ecclesiastica de Orderic Vitalis I, el
historiador Orderic relata algo muy significativo acerca de un moribundo y
arrepentido rey medieval tirano y brutal como todos. Así, Guillermo el
Conquistador confesaría en su lecho de muerte:
"I
treated the native inhabitants of the kingdom with unreasonable severity,
cruelly oppressed high and low, unjustly disinherited many, and caused the
death of thousands by starvation and war, especially in Yorkshire....In mad
fury I descended on the English of the north like a raging lion, and ordered
that their homes and crops with all their equipment and furnishings should be
burnt at once and their great flocks and herds of sheep and cattle slaughtered
everywhere. So I chastised a great multitude of men and women with the lash of
starvation and, alas! was the cruel murderer of many thousands, both young and
old, of this fair people".
