Lilliput and Blefuscu

The relationship between the neighboring empires of Lilliput and Blefuscu is one of the most sustained and pointed satirical constructs in Gulliver's first voyage. The two states, separated only by a channel eight hundred yards wide, are locked in a bitter and seemingly endless war that has consumed lives, treasure, and national energy for reasons that are, from any rational perspective, absurd. Swift uses this conflict to lampoon the religious wars and dynastic squabbles of eighteenth-century Europe, reducing grand ideological divisions to a quarrel over the proper way to break an egg.

Origins and the Big-Endian Controversy

The war between Lilliput and Blefuscu began, as Reldresal explains to Gulliver, over a matter of religious doctrine. The current emperor's grandfather, while still a boy, cut his finger breaking an egg according to the ancient practice—that is, on the larger end. In response, his father, the reigning emperor, issued an edict commanding all subjects, under severe penalties, to break the smaller end of their eggs. This decree sparked a furious and enduring schism. The people who insisted on breaking the larger end, known as Big-endians, were deemed heretics. The dispute, ostensibly a matter of interpreting the words of their great prophet Lustrog—who commanded that "all true believers break their eggs at the convenient end"—became a cause for rebellion, persecution, and exile. Six rebellions were raised on this account, costing one emperor his life and another his crown. Eleven thousand persons are said to have suffered death rather than submit to breaking their eggs at the smaller end. The Big-endian exiles, finding refuge and support at the court of Blefuscu, became a constant source of friction and a casus belli between the two empires.

The Course and Consequences of the War

By the time of Gulliver's arrival, the war had been raging for six-and-thirty moons. The conflict had been prosecuted with great ferocity and at enormous cost. Lilliput had lost forty capital ships and a much greater number of smaller vessels, along with thirty thousand of its best seamen and soldiers. The damage inflicted on Blefuscu was reckoned to be somewhat greater. The animosity between the two peoples extended beyond the battlefield; the languages of the two empires differed as much as any two in Europe, and each nation prided itself on the antiquity, beauty, and energy of its own tongue while holding the other in avowed contempt. Despite a constant flow of trade, mutual reception of exiles, and the custom of sending young nobility to the other country to polish their manners, the political and religious divide remained absolute. At the time of Gulliver's audience with Reldresal, Blefuscu had equipped a numerous fleet and was preparing to make a descent upon Lilliput, placing the empire in imminent danger of invasion.

Gulliver's Intervention and Its Aftermath

Gulliver, having obtained his liberty, offered his services to the Emperor of Lilliput. He devised an extraordinary stratagem to neutralize the Blefuscu navy. Wading and swimming across the channel, he used a set of cables and hooks he had prepared to tow the entire Blefuscu fleet—fifty men-of-war—back to the royal port of Lilliput. This act of immense physical prowess made him a hero and earned him the highest title of honor, Nardac. However, the emperor's ambition was not sated; he desired to reduce the whole empire of Blefuscu into a province, destroy the Big-endian exiles, and compel the people to break the smaller end of their eggs. Gulliver, refusing to be an instrument of enslaving a free and brave people, openly protested against this design. This refusal, which he declared in council, marked the beginning of his downfall at the Lilliputian court. It was the first open breach between him and the emperor, and it fueled the intrigues of his secret enemies, particularly Flimnap and Skyrris Bolgolam. When a solemn embassy from Blefuscu arrived to sue for peace, Gulliver's friendly intercourse with the ambassadors was later represented as a mark of disaffection, further deepening the court's hostility toward him.

The Conspiracy and Gulliver's Escape

The enmity between the two empires ultimately became the framework for the conspiracy against Gulliver. The articles of impeachment drawn up by his enemies included the charge that he had refused to seize the remaining Blefuscu ships and destroy the Big-endian exiles, a refusal they labeled high treason. The admiral, Skyrris Bolgolam, argued that the same strength that enabled Gulliver to bring over the enemy's fleet might serve, upon the first discontent, to carry it back, and he accused Gulliver of being a Big-endian in his heart. The conspiracy, which had been forming for two months, culminated in a sentence to put out his eyes and starve him by degrees. Warned by a friend, Gulliver escaped to Blefuscu, where he was received by the emperor. The Emperor of Blefuscu, while grateful for Gulliver's role in making peace, was also eager to be rid of him, and when the Lilliputian envoy demanded his return, the Blefuscu monarch politely refused, noting that Gulliver had found a vessel to carry him away and that both empires would soon be freed from so insupportable an incumbrance. The relationship between the two empires, defined by a trivial religious schism and a costly war, thus directly shaped Gulliver's fate, driving him from Lilliput and ultimately back to his own world.