I'm reading A Tale of Two Cities at the moment, and there's this bit where this French Marquis is speeding through the suburbs of Paris in a carriage and runs over a peasant baby, and is all like: you filthy dogs should learn to look after your grubby children better, throws them a silver coin and rides off.

Got me thinking - this is obviously a character in a novel and as such created to convey a point about a certain time in history. But nonetheless there were obviously some right horrible bastards in history.

Lets have some wikipedia links people.