Tramecksan

The Tramecksan, also known as the High-Heels, constitute one of the two warring political factions in the empire of Lilliput. Their name derives from the height of their shoe heels, which they regard as more agreeable to the ancient constitution of the realm. The party is numerically superior to its rival, the low-heeled Slamecksan, but holds less power, as the emperor has determined to use only low heels in the administration of the government and all offices in his gift. The animosity between the two parties is so extreme that they will neither eat, drink, nor talk with each other. The heir to the crown is suspected of having some tendency toward the High-Heels, a suspicion grounded in the observable fact that one of his heels is higher than the other, giving him a hobble in his gait.

Origins and the Big-Endian Connection

The Tramecksan faction is deeply entangled with the religious and political schism over egg-breaking that has convulsed Lilliput for generations. The controversy began when the emperor's grandfather, as a boy, cut his finger breaking an egg according to the ancient practice of breaking it at the larger end. His father then published an edict commanding all subjects, under great penalties, to break the smaller end of their eggs. This law provoked six rebellions, cost one emperor his life and another his crown, and drove eleven thousand persons to suffer death rather than submit. The Big-endian exiles, who refused to break their eggs at the smaller end, constantly fled for refuge to the rival empire of Blefuscu, which fomented the civil commotions. The Tramecksan, as the party of the high heels, are implicitly aligned with the Big-endian cause, or at least with the resistance to the low-heeled, Small-endian orthodoxy imposed by the court.

Political and Military Consequences

The factional struggle between the Tramecksan and the Slamecksan has left Lilliput vulnerable to invasion from Blefuscu. The Big-endian exiles have found so much credit at the court of the Emperor of Blefuscu, and so much private assistance and encouragement from their party at home, that a bloody war has been carried on between the two empires for six-and-thirty moons, with various success. Lilliput has lost forty capital ships, a much greater number of smaller vessels, and thirty thousand of its best seamen and soldiers. The damage received by the enemy is reckoned to be somewhat greater. The internal division, symbolized by the heel-height distinction, thus directly fuels the external conflict, as the exiled Big-endians—natural allies of the Tramecksan—use Blefuscu as a base to continue the struggle.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

The Tramecksan faction serves as a central vehicle for Swift's satire of party politics and religious schism. The absurdity of basing political allegiance on the height of a shoe heel mirrors the triviality Swift perceived in the conflicts between English Whigs and Tories, or between High Church and Low Church. The faction's connection to the Big-endian controversy further extends the satire to the bloody religious wars of Europe, where vast human suffering arose from disputes over seemingly minor points of doctrine. The Tramecksan, though numerically superior, are politically marginalized by the emperor's preference for low heels, illustrating how power, not popular support, determines the ruling faction. The heir's hobbled gait, with one heel higher than the other, suggests that even the next generation is physically marked by the unresolved conflict, a bodily emblem of a nation unable to stand evenly on its own feet.