History shows that rulers do not always rule. It is the phenomenon of the power or powers behind the throne, often referred to as éminences grises or grey eminences. The prototypical éminence grise in European history is the famous or infamous Cardinal Richelieu, who ran France for Louis XIII (1610-1643). On the whole Richelieu did a good job of keeping France together during the wars of religion, but to do this he had to adopt a cynical international policy which meant that, even as he repressed French Protestant restiveness, he favored the Protestant cause in Germany to foil Spain. Richelieu managed to transmit his political power to another grey eminence, Cardinal Mazarin, who might have done an even better job than Richelieu as it was he who ruled France during the minority of Louis XIV and saved the French monarchy from the attempts by the nobility to curtail its power in the rebellions known as the Frondes.

Power brokers go far back in time and their roles have actually been decisive in the histories of the states in which they were active. Perhaps the oldest notice of a power behind the throne is from ancient Egypt. After the monotheist pharaoh Akhnaton, the priesthood gained political power. During the reigns of Neferti, Smerikhkhare or Smenkhkara, and Tutankhamen (ca1327-ca1318), of the famous tomb, the real ruler was the priest Ay. Egyptian self-absorption can be illustrated by a curious anecdote from Hittite archives in which a prince was solicited from Hittite king Suppililiumas as husband for presumably Nefertiti. The chosen groom, prince Zannanza, was killed in Egypt, probably by Ay, who ruled in Egypt directly from ca1323 to ca1315.

The Praetorians

Another prototype of power-brokering, this one by an entire military division rather than by individuals, was the Praetorian Guard, originally the bodyguards of military commanders but formed into a permanent imperial corps by the first Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar (27 BCE-14 CE). Some of his successors were somewhat unsavory characters and the Praetorian Guard assassinated the third emperor, Caligula (37-41), who was quite mad when he was killed. It is said that Caligula's successor, his cousin Claudius (41-54), was cowering behind a curtain where the Praetorians found him and proclaimed him emperor. Nero too, emperor from 54 to 68, was abandoned by the Praetorian Guard, who were put in their place by strong emperors starting with Trajan (98-117). The Praetorians came into their own again after the misrule of Commodus (180-192), another mad tyrant who left a torn and warring empire. Septimius Severus (193-211) was a strong emperor after whom, despite some deplorable rulers, the Praetorian Guard lost their influence as power brokers.

No country can rival Japan in the prevalence of powers behind the throne. Japan, which has always had emperors, apparently had true emperors until the arrival on the scene in the early 9th century of Sakanoue Tamuramaro, the conqueror of Hokkaido, one of the main Japanese islands, and the first military leader to bear the title of shogun. After him all Japanese emperors were in effect puppets of successive ruling clans. In 1192, the head of the Minamoto clan, Yoritomo, obtained the heritability of the title of shogun, which marks the consolidation of the system of indirect rule. This arrangement became known as bakufu (tent government) and was retained through successive period changes.

At the start of the 13th century power passed to the Hojo family, who were of lower nobiliary rank and transferred the shogunate to imperial princes while they controlled both the shoguns and the emperors (indirect indirect rule). An uncommonly ambitious emperor, Go-Daigo (Daigo II), tried to grab power from the Hojo, which gave the Kamakura general Ashikaga Takauji the opportunity to do so, thus inaugurating a new period in Japanese history, the Ashikaga period (1333-1603), during which the shogunate functioned in Kyoto, next door to the imperial palace.

The tozama were daimyo (lords) not in particular favour with the Tokugawa shoguns. Among them were the powerful clans of the Choshu (in southern Honshu) and the Satsuma (in Kyushu). Between 1853 and 1864, in a process dramatically initiated by the American commodore Matthew Perry, who entered the bay of Tokyo with warships and remained there despite Japanese orders to leave, the bakufu government came under intense western pressure. Gradually the shogun accepted the necessity of cooperation, but in this he was opposed by the tozama, whose fortresses were bombarded by western flotillas. In an ironic twist, the tozama clans then became the supporters of westernization, deposed the shogun, and installed emperor Meiji (1867-1912) in Edo, which was renamed Tokyo. Meiji was a regnal name and the emperor's birth name was Mutsuhito. Once Meiji was recognized as a true monarch, he acted like one. Whether he did so in accordance with his own views or followed the policies and inclinations of the tozama, who in time became known as genro or elder statesmen, it is impossible to say.

Mamelukes and Janissaries

The Abbasid caliphs, who ruled from Baghdad starting in 754, began the practice of using non-Arab slaves, known as mamluks or mamelukes, as the main components of their armies (9th century). The original rationale for this was that the caliphs had to affirm their rule against Muslim pretenders and it was considered wrong that Muslims should fight with other Muslims. As the mamluks were converted to Islam, the policy made little sense and had as consequence that these slave soldiers started acting politically as a military class. The mamluks in Baghdad acted as power brokers, but in Egypt they set aside legitimist scruples and took power outright in 1250 and until 1517, when they were made vassals of the Ottoman sultans.

Islamic states had a tendency to fragmentation because they were theocracies in which legitimization was achieved through the Koran by including the ruler's name in the kutbah or Friday prayers. The Ottomans got around that by inducting Christian children in the Balkans to form the corps of the janissaries starting in the late 14th century (the devshirme system). Janissaries were the sultan's own and although they, like all Muslim slave soldiers were converted to Islam, they knew no other loyalty than that to the sultanate. The Ottoman Empire straddled Anatolia and the Balkans and it centralized power in Istanbul. Strictly speaking the janissaries were not slaves and they formed a military organization which had some similarities with Christian military orders such as the Templars, the Knights of St. John, or the Teutonic and Livonian monk-soldiers. Their unflagging loyalty might have had to do with their Balkan background. A crucial influence on Ottoman unity in contrast to Muslim dispersion elsewhere could have been the ethnic solidarity of the Ottoman Turks themselves. In any event, the janissaries, like the Praetorian Guard in Rome and the Egyptian mamluks, also became power brokers who deposed and imposed sultans in the 17th and 18th centuries. They were extremely conservative and resistant to modernization until in 1826 sultan Mahmud II managed to form a rival army with which he utterly broke their power.

The streltsy were a Russian Praetorian Guard formed during the reign of Ivan the Terrible (1533-1584). The streltsy contributed to the consolidation of Russian autocracy, although they could not prevent the Time of Troubles that supervened upon the death of the illegitimate tsar Boris Godunov (1598-1605). They contributed to the restoration of order in Russia and acquired so much political power that they acted as arbiters between the half-brothers Ivan V and Peter I. However, here they were dealing with none less than Peter the Great (1682-1725), who wanted desperately to modernize Russia and in the process of doing so he came up against streltsy insubordination, which he put down with all possible ruthlessness in 1698. 

The Peshwas

The practice of indirect rule was imposed in India by the peshwas, capable ministers who controlled kingdoms and principalities in Maharashtra. The first Peshwa, Chitpavan Brahmin Balaji Bishnawath, was appointed by a rajah of Satara, near Bombay, who had been accorded his position by Bahadur Shah (1707-1712), the first of the late and weak Mughal emperors. Chitpavan initiated the organization of an united Maratha state. His successor Baji Rao (1720-1740) controlled the Maratha states of Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh), Indore (Madhya Pradesh), and Baroda (Gujarat) from Pune. Although the Marathas never really managed more than a loose confederacy, from their bases they raided all over northern India: Delhi (1719 and 1737), Rajasthan (1735), Bengal (1740), against which the powerless Mughal emperors could do very little. The Peshwa Balaji Baji Rao resisted Afghan invasions. Although the Afghans defeated the Marathas at Panipat (1761), the results were indecisive and the nawab of Oudh, Shuja-ud-Daula, emerged as the real power in northern India with the Mughal Shah Alam as puppet emperor.

Haider Ali, the Muslim ruler of Mysore, warred against the Marathas but was defeated by the Peshwa Madhav Rao (1767). These wars between Hindu and Muslim states benefited the British. When Madhav Rao died (1772), his uncle and successor Raghunath tried to come to an accommodation with the British in Bombay. Raghunath attempted an invasion of northern India which was defeated by Shuja-ud-Daula with British support. The Peshwa Mahadaji Scindia of Gwalior rebelled against Raghunath and defeated him. British strategy in India was being co-ordinated by Warren Hastings, governor general in Bengal since 1771. Hastings ordered an offensive from Bombay against Gwalior and peace on British terms was imposed on the Marathas (1775-1782). Hastings' recall to Britain in 1785 encouraged Mahadaji to attempt the conquest of Delhi which he achieved in 1788, but the Marathas were not strong enough to consolidate their expansion and after Mahadaji died in 1795, the British gradually forced their political hegemony upon the Maratha states. The recalcitrant state of Mysore was taken by the British in 1799.

By then the only remaining independent state in the subcontinent was Pune but since it was surrounded by British dependent principalities (Gwalior, Indore, and Baroda), it soon entered the imperial ranks. The Second Maratha war (1803-1805) was actually a British intervention in favor of Baji Rao II of Pune when his ascendancy was contested by other Maratha clans. Although the British defeated the Maratha armies, their rule was still resisted. In particular the Holkar rulers of Indore were recalcitrant to British control. With the excuse of suppressing the Pindaris, outlaw bands thrown up by the social dislocations in Maharashtra, the British invaded in 1817-1818 and Indore, the Holkar capital, was occupied.

Indirect rule was also applied in another part of the Indian subcontinent. The Malla family ruled in the valley of Kathmandu from the 10th to the 18th century and Hinduized the country, which served as a refuge for Hindus from the Islamic invasions that began ca1000 from Ghazni in Afghanistan. Nepal was a very disunited country. The most important of these divisions occurred with the formation of separate but related monarchies at Patan, Baktipur, and Kathmandu in the late 15th century. Among Nepal's statelets, Gurkha rose to prominence. Prithvi Narayan Shahi or Sahi, a Gurkha king, united Nepal from 1742 to 1769 and chose Kathmandu as the country's capital. Nepal divided again after his death and became prey to dynastic maneuvering at which the Thapa (1st half of the 19th century) and the Rana (2nd half of the 19th century) families were the more skilled, although the Shah kings were retained as puppet rulers. After various wars with its neighbors, it was under Rana rule that Nepal won recognition of its independence from British India in its actual borders (1860). An alliance between king Tribhuvan and Nepalese politicians with experience in India's independence movement restored the power of the Shahi monarchy in 1951.

Eunuchs

Perhaps the oddest form of indirect rule has been that exercised by eunuchs in certain countries and in certain periods. In the Achaemenid Empire, after the death of Artaxerxes II (404-358), there was some political decomposition at Persepolis. The eunuch Bagoas acted as kingmaker. He placed Artaxerxes III in the throne for a brief reign (358-357) and then was instrumental in the coronation of Darius III (357-331).

In China, eunuchs have been known as éminences grises since at least the Han dynasty (206 BCE to 221 CE). In Ming times (1368-1644), an eunuch, Gen. Zheng He, organized and led seven naval expeditions starting in 1405, one of which was composed of 63 large ships and 255 smaller craft. Zheng sailed to India and explored the Indian ocean coastlines. In subsequent expeditions Zheng reached Arabia and probed the Red Sea. The giraffe he brought back from Africa became a sensation in Beijing. Surrounded by eunuchs and concubines, Ming emperorsin time tended to be ineffectual. The most famous or infamous eunuch in Chinese history was Wei Zhongxian, who was all powerful during the reign of emperor Ming Tianqi (1621-1627). Wei, who had himself castrated to pay gambling debts and who had many mistresses, divided the administration with his intrigues contributing to Ming decadence. The last strong imperial Chinese ruler was not a man but the former concubine Cixi (died 1908), who ruled China during the last decades of the Qing dynasty (ended in 1912). In period photographs she is seen on a palanquin surrounded by numerous odd-looking men wearing long-sleeved tunics all of whom were eunuchs, each one as retrograde as the mistress they served.