The conspiracy against Gulliver and his escape to Blefuscu

The conspiracy against Gulliver and his escape to Blefuscu forms the climax of his stay in Lilliput, transforming him from a celebrated hero into a condemned traitor and forcing him to choose between submission to a brutal sentence and flight to a rival empire. The event reveals the fragility of favor at court, the depth of ministerial malice, and the gap between Gulliver's self-perception as a loyal servant and the political reality that his very virtues—refusal to enslave a free people, mercy toward the Blefuscudian ambassadors—are recast as treason.

Origins of the Conspiracy

The plot had been forming for two months before it came to a head. Gulliver, who had been a stranger to courts all his life and unqualified for them by the meanness of his condition, had heard and read enough of the dispositions of great princes and ministers but never expected to find such terrible effects in so remote a country, governed, as he thought, by very different maxims from those in Europe. The immediate trigger was his refusal to reduce the whole empire of Blefuscu to a province, a design the emperor cherished after Gulliver's capture of the Blefuscudian fleet. Gulliver's open, bold declaration that he would never be an instrument of bringing a free and brave people into slavery so opposed the emperor's schemes that he could never forgive it; from that time began an intrigue between his majesty and a junto of ministers maliciously bent against Gulliver. The principal conspirators were Skyrris Bolgolam, the high admiral, whose hatred had been Gulliver's mortal enemy almost from his arrival and had increased since the success against Blefuscu obscured his own glory as admiral; Flimnap, the lord high treasurer, whose enmity was notorious; Limtoc, the general; Lalcon, the chamberlain; and Balmuff, the grand justiciary.

The Articles of Impeachment and the Debate on Punishment

A considerable person at court, to whom Gulliver had been very serviceable when he lay under the highest displeasure of the emperor, came to Gulliver's house very privately at night in a close chair, without sending his name. After the chairmen were dismissed, Gulliver put the chair with his lordship in it into his coat-pocket, fastened the door, placed the chair on the table, and sat down by it. The visitor, observing his lordship's countenance full of concern, desired Gulliver to hear him with patience in a matter that highly concerned his honor and his life. He revealed that several committees of council had been called in the most private manner on Gulliver's account, and that it was but two days since his majesty came to a full resolution. The articles of impeachment against Quinbus Flestrin, the man-mountain, included four main charges: first, that he had traitorously pulled the empress by the arms and lifted her high in the air under color of extinguishing the fire in her apartment, against a statute making it high treason to lay hands upon the empress or any of the royal children; second, that having brought the imperial fleet of Blefuscu into the royal port, he was commanded to seize all the other ships and reduce that empire to a province, but like a false traitor petitioned to be excused upon pretence of unwillingness to force consciences or destroy the liberties and lives of an innocent people; third, that he did aid, abet, comfort, and divert the Blefuscudian ambassadors, although he knew them to be servants to a prince who was lately an open enemy; fourth, that he was now preparing to make a voyage to the court of Blefuscu, having received only verbal license, and under color thereof did falsely and traitorously intend to aid, comfort, and abet the emperor of Blefuscu. In the several debates upon this impeachment, the emperor gave many marks of his great lenity, often urging the services Gulliver had done him and endeavoring to extenuate his crimes. The treasurer and admiral insisted that Gulliver should be put to the most painful and ignominious death by setting fire to his house at night, with the general attending with twenty thousand men armed with poisoned arrows to shoot him on the face and hands; some of his servants were to have private orders to strew a poisonous juice on his shirts and sheets, which would soon make him tear his own flesh and die in the utmost torture. For a long time there was a majority against him, but the emperor, resolving if possible to spare his life, at last brought off the chamberlain. Reldresal, the principal secretary for private affairs, who always approved himself Gulliver's true friend, was commanded to deliver his opinion. He allowed the crimes to be great but said there was still room for mercy; he proposed that if his majesty would please to spare Gulliver's life and only give orders to put out both his eyes, justice might in some measure be satisfied, and all the world would applaud the lenity of the emperor. He argued that the loss of his eyes would be no impediment to his bodily strength, that blindness is an addition to courage by concealing dangers, and that the fear he had for his eyes was the greatest difficulty in bringing over the enemy's fleet. This proposal was received with the utmost disapprobation by the whole board. Bolgolam, rising up in fury, said he wondered how the secretary durst presume to give his opinion for preserving the life of a traitor; that the services Gulliver had performed were, by all true reasons of state, the great aggravation of his crimes; that he who extinguished the fire in that unprincipled manner might at another time inundate and drown the whole palace, and the same strength which enabled him to bring over the enemy's fleet might serve, upon the first discontent, to carry it back; that he had good reasons to think Gulliver was a Big-endian in his heart, and as treason begins in the heart before it appears in overt acts, he accused him as a traitor on that account and insisted he should be put to death. The treasurer showed to what straits his majesty's revenue was reduced by the charge of maintaining Gulliver, which would soon grow insupportable, and argued that the secretary's expedient of putting out his eyes would probably increase it, as is manifest from the common practice of blinding some sort of fowls, after which they fed the faster and grew sooner fat. But the emperor, fully determined against capital punishment, was graciously pleased to say that since the council thought the loss of his eyes too easy a censure, some other might be inflicted hereafter. Reldresal, humbly desiring to be heard again, answered the treasurer's objection by proposing that the establishment be gradually lessened, so that for want of sufficient food Gulliver would grow weak and faint, lose his appetite, and consume in a few months; immediately upon his death, five or six thousand of his majesty's subjects might cut his flesh from his bones, take it away by cart-loads, and bury it in distant parts to prevent infection, leaving the skeleton as a monument of admiration to posterity. Thus, by the great friendship of the secretary, the whole affair was compromised. It was strictly enjoined that the project of starving him by degrees should be kept a secret, but the sentence of putting out his eyes was entered on the books, none dissenting except Bolgolam, who, being a creature of the empress, was perpetually instigated by her majesty to insist upon his death, she having borne perpetual malice against him on account of that illegal method he took to remove her and her children the night of the fire. In three days, the secretary was to come to Gulliver's house and read the articles of impeachment, then signify the great lenity and favor of his majesty and council, whereby he was only condemned to the loss of his eyes, which his majesty did not question he would gratefully and humbly submit to; twenty of his majesty's surgeons would attend to see the operation well performed by discharging very sharp-pointed arrows into the balls of his eyes as he lay on the ground.

Gulliver's Decision and Escape

Left alone, Gulliver remained under many doubts and perplexities of mind. He reflected that it was a custom introduced by this prince and his ministry that after the court had decreed any cruel execution, the emperor always made a speech to his whole council expressing his great lenity and tenderness, which was immediately published through the kingdom; nor did anything terrify the people so much as those encomiums on his majesty's mercy, because it was observed that the more these praises were enlarged and insisted on, the more inhuman was the punishment and the sufferer more innocent. Yet Gulliver, having never been designed for a courtier either by his birth or education, was so ill a judge of things that he could not discover the lenity and favor of this sentence but conceived it rather to be rigorous than gentle. He sometimes thought of standing his trial, for although he could not deny the facts alleged in the several articles, he hoped they would admit of some extenuation. But having in his life perused many state-trials, which he ever observed to terminate as the judges thought fit to direct, he durst not rely on so dangerous a decision in so critical a juncture and against such powerful enemies. Once he was strongly bent upon resistance, for while he had liberty the whole strength of that empire could hardly subdue him, and he might easily with stones pelt the metropolis to pieces; but he soon rejected that project with horror, remembering the oath he had made to the emperor, the favors he received from him, and the high title of nardac he conferred upon him. At last he fixed upon a resolution: having his imperial majesty's license to pay his attendance upon the emperor of Blefuscu, he took this opportunity before the three days were elapsed to send a letter to his friend the secretary, signifying his resolution of setting out that morning for Blefuscu pursuant to the leave he had got, and without waiting for an answer, he went to that side of the island where the fleet lay. He seized a large man-of-war, tied a cable to the prow, lifted up the anchors, stripped himself, put his clothes together with his coverlet into the vessel, and drawing it after him, between wading and swimming arrived at the royal port of Blefuscu, where the people had long expected him. They lent him two guides to direct him to the capital city, which is of the same name. He held them in his hands until he came within two hundred yards of the gate and desired them to signify his arrival to one of the secretaries. In about an hour he had an answer that his majesty, attended by the royal family and great officers of the court, was coming out to receive him. He advanced a hundred yards. The emperor and his train alighted from their horses, the empress and ladies from their coaches, and he did not perceive they were in any fright or concern. He lay on the ground to kiss his majesty's and the empress's hand. He told his majesty that he was come, according to his promise and with the license of the emperor his master, to have the honor of seeing so mighty a monarch and to offer him any service in his power consistent with his duty to his own prince, not mentioning a word of his disgrace, because he had hitherto no regular information of it and might suppose himself wholly ignorant of any such design; neither could he reasonably conceive that the emperor would discover the secret while he was out of his power, wherein however it soon appeared he was deceived.

Consequences and Aftermath

The emperor of Blefuscu, having taken three days to consult, returned an answer to the Lilliputian envoy consisting of many civilities and excuses. He said that as for sending Gulliver bound, his brother knew it was impossible; that although Gulliver had deprived him of his fleet, yet he owed great obligations to him for many good offices he had done him in making the peace; that both their majesties would soon be made easy, for Gulliver had found a prodigious vessel on the shore able to carry him on the sea, which he had given orders to fit up with his own assistance and direction, and he hoped in a few weeks both empires would be freed from so insupportable an incumbrance. The monarch of Blefuscu related all that had passed to Gulliver, offering him at the same time, but under the strictest confidence, his gracious protection if he would continue in his service. Although Gulliver believed him sincere, he resolved never more to put any confidence in princes or ministers where he could possibly avoid it, and therefore, with all due acknowledgments for his favorable intentions, humbly begged to be excused. He told him that since fortune, whether good or evil, had thrown a vessel in his way, he was resolved to venture himself in the ocean rather than be an occasion of difference between two such mighty monarchs. He discovered by a certain accident that the emperor was very glad of his resolution, and so were most of his ministers. These considerations moved him to hasten his departure somewhat sooner than he intended, to which the court, impatient to have him gone, very readily contributed. The event thus completes the arc of Gulliver's disillusionment with Lilliputian politics: the same court that had honored him as a nardac now condemns him to blindness and starvation, and the same emperor who had embraced him as a savior now pursues him as a traitor, leaving Gulliver with the bitter lesson that the greatest services to princes weigh nothing against a refusal to gratify their passions.