Bokassa, former president of the Central African Republic, together with Ugandan President Amin and Zaire President Mobutu, is known as the "Three Tyrants of Africa".
Although these three have common characteristics, such as brutality, tyranny, and cannibalism, Bokassa is incompatible with the three because of his special dreams.
After all, Bokassa was a man who wanted to be emperor.
If it is said that in the feudal era, the people had no better institutional choices and were willing to live under the imperial system, but when the people of the world have tasted the sweetness of freedom, but there are still people who are willing to brave the world and play the game of being called emperor, it is doomed to slip the world.
From China's Yuan Shikai to China's Bokassa, history has once again proved this truth.
Takefu is in power
Bokassa's birth was not ordinary, his father was after all a tribal chief in a village in the lower Bangui River near equator.
Unfortunately, because Bokassa's hometown was being colonized by the French at the time, Bokassa's father was brutally murdered for disobeying the French colonists.
Bokassad's mother, who suffered the blow, was also in pain and subsequently committed suicide.
This year Bokassa was only 6 years old.
The death of both parents made the young Bokassa want to escape to seminary to study theology and become a priest in the future.
But Bokassa's grandfather was adamantly opposed, and as the chief's son, in Bokassa's grandfather's view, this meant that Bokassa was destined to embark on the path of Xi Wu to join the army.
Bokassa's family was even more of a military family, and he was given the hope of a tiger at an early age, so at the age of 18, his grandfather resolutely sent him to the French barracks despite opposition.
But I don't know if it's Grandpa's old eyes or what, the French are Bokassa's father-killers, but Bokassa doesn't care.
On the contrary, he charged forward on the battlefield, extremely heroic, invincible everywhere he went, unharmed, and could be called the god of war.
Even more amazing was that Bokassa captured the famous Vichy French general, the pseudo-French regime, and made a great contribution, so he was promoted to French captain.
This is equivalent to the management of the French army, which is very rare among blacks, and after the end of World War II, Bokassa was sent by france to Vietnam and other places to fight in the north and south, and once again made great achievements.
Bokassa, who had returned from Vietnam with a lot of military achievements, was looking forward to the scene of the French medal for them, but to his surprise, the first person he saw after returning to France was President de Gaulle!
"Ah, my father!" Whether de Gaulle wanted to or not, Bokassa shouted excitedly, and repeatedly called it that way in the later years of his life, not knowing how his father, who had died tragically, would feel.
In fact, choosing this time to personally meet Bokassa, France also has its own small calculation. With the rise of national independence movements, france could no longer maintain colonial rule, but did not want to give up this fat, so they thought of ways to support agents.
As a management talent cultivated by the French army, Bokassa is loyal to France, and the most important thing is that the current president of Central Africa is Bokassa's cousin, in summary, Bokassa is definitely the best chess piece arranged by France in Central Africa.
With the support of France, Bokassa returned to China, quickly formed an army, became the supreme commander, grasped the military power of the country, and fought with the president's cousin.
As Bokassa's power grew, the president's cousin did not hesitate to cook beans and burn beans, in the same room, and plotted to assassinate Bokassa, but the plan was learned by Bokassa in advance, so he deposed the president's cousin three times and five times, and then sat on the presidential throne himself.
Tyrannical rule
When the president was in charge at the beginning, Bokassa's personality was still relatively restrained, and now that he has ascended to the throne, Bokassa has completely released himself.
On the night of the coup, Bokassa used the radio to shout to the whole country, and halfway through the shouting stopped, because he did not know what his political program was, and he had no plans for the future, and he ended awkwardly.
This old brother is also unlearned, and there is no such thing as documents and letters in the government, and every day he takes the radio to give orders.
He first declared his party to be the only legal party in the country, and then in order to centralize power, he was also the minister of fourteen departments of defense, agriculture, commerce, and industry, which was rare in the world.
In order to expand his influence, he announced that his portrait must be printed on all banknotes in Central Africa, even on stamps, student workbooks and all other publicly printed paper products.
He made a lot of money, took the only hotels, airlines, diamond companies, cotton companies, coffee companies, etc. in the poor country of Central Africa into his subordinates, turned public property into private property, and became the largest capitalist in Central Africa.
Bokassa claimed that "the treasury is me", plucked the hair of the goose, and announced that all the people in the country would be taxed, and that it would be rich and poor, that enterprises would pay taxes, that workers would also pay taxes, that if they could not pay taxes, they would send government personnel to collect them, and that if they did not have money, they would sit in hard labor for half a year.
For foreign companies, he also has to levy 10% of the turnover, and must give him 20%-30% of the dry stock, otherwise you will not be able to play at all.
Bokassa sucked the marrow of the bone, and the tyranny gathered a huge wealth, of course, to eat and drink with the family.
He built more than a dozen royal palaces and palaces in Central Africa according to the standards of the French royal palace, all of which were magnificent and extravagant. It is said that more than fifty mansions were also bought in Europe and South America, and more than a billion dollars were deposited in Swiss banks.
He openly admitted to marrying more than a dozen wives and bearing more than fifty children, and how many in private is a mystery.
Central Africa was so poor, but he and his ladies took private planes to and from various palaces every day, which was really a wine pond meat forest.
In addition, he was also bloodthirsty, raising a large number of lions, tigers and other beasts in the palace, and liked to keep the corpses of executed prisoners as their food, and even taste them himself, including one of his disobedient sons.
He resumed all kinds of corporal punishment in Central Africa, and once rushed into prison, killed more than fifty prisoners with canes and other things, and was a murderous demon king.
Despite all this, Bokassa still seemed dissatisfied.
His power in Central Africa is so monstrous that it seems that there is only one thing that has not been done, and that is the emperor of Central Africa!
Napoleon of Central Africa
On the one hand, because Bokassa had served in the French army for a long time and had fully embraced French culture, he was completely intoxicated and became a complete "fine law" element.
Of all the affairs of France that he liked, he admired Napoleon the most, who single-handedly swept across the European continent, defeated the anti-French coalition forces, conquered most of Europe, and then successfully crowned the French Republic into the First French Empire, calling himself the First Emperor of France.
Napoleon fascinated Bokassa the most, so suddenly one day Bokassa, who was keen on chasing stars, looked around at Central Africa, the whole world, could it be the king's land, the coast of the land, could it be the king's subject, or should he not play with the emperor?
On the other hand, it is said that Bokassa once visited China, after visiting the arranged attractions in Beijing, he particularly emphasized the need to "add food", hoping to go to the Forbidden City in China to see how the emperor's life is, this small requirement we can of course meet, Bokassa went in to experience it, and deeply felt that the emperor's day is really heaven and earth.
In 1976, Bokassa said he would do it, his head was hot, and he habitually broadcast to the whole country on the radio: I declare that the Central African Republic will be transformed into the Central African Empire, and I will be emperor, and from now on please call Bokassa I.
His voice shouted to the whole world, the African people had a hard time getting out of feudal society, and as a result, someone wanted to be called emperor?
Bokassa did not care about the opposition of the outside world, I was in charge of my turf, he wanted to just announce that it was not okay, I wanted to have a coronation ceremony in front of the world like Napoleon had done in those years, so as to live up to my name of "Napoleon of Central Africa".
He first sent invitations to all 200 governments around the world, inviting heads of state to attend his coronation ceremony. It is conceivable that people such as the Queen of England and the Emperor of Japan all felt that he was neurotic and threw the invitation into the trash.
He also extended invitations to more than 4,000 celebrities around the world, as well as a specific invitation to the Pope of Rome to support his coronation, all of which were rejected.
Sure enough, on the day of the ceremony, except for the king of a false kingdom set up by a university student prank organization, none of the people he invited were present, and the pope, out of respect for the faithful, arranged for only local clergy from Central Africa to preside over the ceremony.
But Bokassa took great pains to this ceremony, and his request was to imitate everything about Napoleon's coronation, from dress to etiquette.
To this end, he gave the Minister of Finance an order to do whatever it took, at all costs.
Bokassa first built the infrastructure, rebuilding the palace and the bangui church, and the palatial standards were comparable to the French royal palaces.
Later, a bocass avenue was built as the road he would pass on that day, and a magnificent French triumphal arch was reproduced on the avenue, and a huge statue of Bokassa was erected.
Correspondingly, on the day of the ceremony, because he felt that the houses of the residents of the capital were obstructive, Bokassa ordered that all the residents' broken houses be surrounded with cloths so as not to lose their eyes.
Then there was the hardware, he hired a group of Skilled Craftsmen in France, and designed for him a gilded throne weighing 2 tons, as well as a series of thrones of queens and princes, etc., all of which were engraved with the shape of a huge flying eagle.
He ordered the making of a crowned robe, inlaid with 780,000 pearls and 1 million gemstones, weighing 25 pounds.
His crown is set with 6,000 top-of-the-line diamonds.
He ordered the charter of 22 planes to bring in the valuable materials he needed from all over the world, including hundreds of high-end cars imported from Germany and Japan, BMW motorcycles, and 8 super-fine white horses.
There are also 40,000 bottles of French fine wine, 22 tons of champagne, 25,000 bunches of flowers from the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia and other places, and a huge cake 1.5 meters high.
The farce is said to have cost more than $30 million, equivalent to half a year's worth of revenue for the entire central African state.
There was no feast in the world, and after the ceremony, Bokassa suddenly found that the treasury was empty, which could not be done, and there was no money to buy it.
So he thought of amassing wealth in the name of the empire, didn't he change the empire?
The student's uniform had to be changed, and the whole country was changed to an imperial uniform with the flying eagle logo.
He thought that the parents in Central Africa could not be poor in education, the children's money was always willing to come out, the school uniform was not expensive, and there was one CFA in 25.
what! Bokassa is really a beggar who wants to grab food in his mouth, and the money is nothing less than a sky-high price for the people of Central Africa who have been plundered by him.
Many parents could not afford to buy, just the workers of the whole country could not see it, launched a strike march, Bokassa did not panic, thinking that I am the emperor, naturally can give and take.
Ordered the military police to shoot directly and indiscriminately at the marching crowd, killing more than 100 people on the spot, and then sending children who were reluctant to buy school uniforms to prison, up to more than 1,000 people!
Since the invention of the prison, I am afraid that there has not been a time when so many underage students have been imprisoned, and the reason why they have been imprisoned is that they do not buy school uniforms!
This time, Bokassa's perverse behavior caused strong dissatisfaction in the world, and the United Nations Children's Organization published a report of Bokassa's child abuse at the General Assembly, which made France, Bokassa's biggest supporter who had been silently conniving behind his back, decide that he could no longer be protected.
At this juncture, Bokassa was still like no one else, thinking that the new king would definitely go out for a walk to publicize the propaganda and let others see if the clothes were not beautiful.
So just when he and his African stinking brother "King of Kings" Gaddafi and the like were drinking wine, France immediately decided to support the coup d'état launched by the domestic forces in Central Africa, removed Bokassa from the throne, and invited President Dacko, who had been ousted by Bokassa, to come to power again.
After Dako come to power, he immediately announced the abolition of the imperial system.
After Bokassa, who was abroad, heard the news, he immediately woke up, and originally wanted to return to China to revitalize Heshan, but when he heard that he wanted to hunt down and kill him at home, he was reluctant to go back.
But Gaddafi was a powerful man who did not let Bokassa stay for long, and poor Bokassa took a few beloved wives everywhere to beg grandpa and grandmother to ask for shelter, but the countries of the world were so fishy that even the other two tyrants in Africa rejected him.
Bokassa was desperate, found France, France said I have a rare time to take you in, then, I help you coordinate it, after France to talk about evil, and finally the president of Côte d'Ivoire pinched his nose and promised Bokassa to stay short, but the premise is that you can't participate in politics.
Bokassa went out in a hurry, the poor bank card did not wear anything, and the people who stayed in the country were naturally liquidated, so their old age was very bleak, and finally they could only live with the pension of the French captain.
On November 3, 1996, at the age of 75, Bokassa suffered a heart attack and died of ineffective medical treatment, ending his magical life.
Friends who think the article is good, may wish to click a free follow, your support is my greatest motivation!