Gulliver's Travels (Swift)/Part 1/Chapter 7
from the Collection “Gulliver's Travels. Part 1”
The division of this summary into sections is editorial.
In Lilliput, Gulliver was preparing to visit the neighbouring empire of Blefuscu when he learned that powerful courtiers had spent two months plotting against him.
A secret warning
One night a court lord whom Gulliver had helped during a period of disgrace came secretly to his house. Gulliver hid the visitor’s chair in his pocket, dismissed the bearers and shut the door. The lord had risked his life to obtain the charges against him.
The lord named the high admiral, Skyresh Bolgolam, as a leading enemy. Gulliver’s success against Blefuscu had eclipsed the admiral’s own glory. Bolgolam had joined the treasurer and other senior officials in preparing charges of treason.
The charges turned Gulliver’s services and restraint into crimes. He had extinguished a palace fire by urinating on it, breaking a law against urinating within the palace grounds. After capturing Blefuscu’s fleet, he had refused to seize its remaining ships and help reduce its people to subjects or kill those who would not abandon their religious practice of breaking eggs at the larger end. He was also accused of entertaining Blefuscu’s peace ambassadors and preparing to visit their emperor, although his own emperor had verbally permitted the journey.
Mercy conceals a death sentence
The lord reported that the emperor had recalled Gulliver’s services and resisted a death sentence. The treasurer and admiral had nevertheless proposed burning Gulliver in his house, shooting him with poisoned arrows and poisoning his shirts. The general supported them.
Reldresal, the principal secretary for private affairs and Gulliver’s friend, offered what he called a merciful alternative: spare his life but put out both eyes. Gulliver would still be strong enough to serve the emperor.
Bolgolam insisted that Gulliver’s past services made him more dangerous, while the treasurer complained that feeding him was too expensive. Reldresal then proposed secretly reducing Gulliver’s food until he weakened and died; his body could be cut up and buried to prevent infection. The council accepted this compromise, recording only the sentence of blindness.
Only Bolgolam dissented: the empress continued to demand Gulliver’s death because she resented his way of putting out the fire. The visitor warned Gulliver that in three days Reldresal would announce the sentence and surgeons would blind him with arrows. He then left as secretly as he had arrived.
Alone, Gulliver reflected on the court’s habit of praising the emperor’s mercy whenever it imposed a cruel punishment:
the more these praises were enlarged and insisted on, the more inhuman was the punishment, and the sufferer more innocent.
Gulliver chooses escape
Gulliver considered standing trial, but his reading of state trials made him distrust judges facing powerful enemies. He also considered resistance: he was strong enough to devastate the capital with stones. He rejected violence because he had sworn an oath to the emperor, who had shown him favour and given him a high title.
Instead, before the three days expired, he wrote to Reldresal that he was setting out for Blefuscu under the permission already granted. Without waiting for an answer, he went to the fleet, took a warship and loaded it with his clothes and coverlet. He pulled the vessel across the water, partly wading and partly swimming.
Welcome at Blefuscu
At Blefuscu’s royal port, where he had long been expected, two guides led Gulliver towards the capital. He carried them in his hands and sent them ahead to announce him. The emperor came out with his family and court, and Gulliver lay down to kiss the emperor’s and empress’s hands.
Gulliver said he had come with his own emperor’s permission and offered service consistent with his duty to his prince. He said nothing of the plot, assuming that Lilliput would keep it secret while he was beyond its reach. He later discovered that he was mistaken.
The Blefuscudian court received him generously. For lack of a house or bed large enough for him, however, Gulliver had to sleep on the ground wrapped in his coverlet.