The Most Evil Men and Women in History

Tomás de Torquemada was a fifteenth century Spanish Dominican friar, first Inquisitor General of Spain, and confessor to crypto-Jews and crypto-Muslims of Spain. The number of autos-de-fé during Torquemada's tenure as Inquisitor General have been hotly debated over the years. Today, there is a general consensus that about 2000 people were burned by the Inquisition in the whole of Spain between 1480 and 1530, while Torquemada was Grand Inquisitor from 1483 until his death in 1498.

Francisco Pizarro González, was a brutal Spanish conquistador who was fuelled by greed and ambition. He conquered the Incan Empire and founded Lima, the modern-day capital of Peru.

There are few surviving sources on Caligula's reign, and although he is described as a noble and moderate ruler during the first two years of his rule, after this the sources focus upon his cruelty, extravagance, and sexual perversity, presenting him as an insane tyrant, leading many to believe he had neurosyphylis.

Hitler was appointed as The Chancellor of Germany in 1933, quickly transforming the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideals of national socialism. Between 1939 and 1945, the SS, assisted by collaborationist governments and recruits from occupied countries, systematically killed somewhere between 11 and 14 million people, including about six million Jews, in concentration camps, ghettos and mass executions, or through less systematic methods elsewhere.

As ruler of Cambodia Pol Pot was responsible for killing nearly 2 Million people that's a quarter (some sources even say a third) of the countries population. In his 4 year reign Pol Pot tortured and starved the Cambodians to death. Men women children and babies were often brutally clubbed to death with hammers and buried alive.

Nero's cruelty, violence and grotesque appetite for self-indulgence brought the Roman empire to the brink of financial and political ruin. He is known for a number of executions, including those of his mother and stepbrother, and as the emperor who "fiddled while Rome burned", and as an early persecutor of Christians.

Idi Amin rose to become a brutal & utterly ruthless Dictator who comitted atrocities on his people. Amin's rule was characterised by human rights abuses, political repression, ethnic persecution, extrajudicial killings, nepotism, corruption and gross economic mismanagement. The number of people killed as a result of his regime is estimated by international observers and human rights groups to range from 100,000 to 500,000.

After his brutal rise to power he embarked on his ruthless enforced collectivisation programmes and deliberate use of starvation, murder and labour camps to enforce his power and control over the population. Perhaps 7 million or more were shot with a total suppression of about 50 million under Stalin.

Attila the Hun was the Ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in 453. He was leader of the Hunnic Empire which stretched from Germany to the Ural River and from the Danube River to the Baltic Sea. In much of Western Europe, he is remembered as the epitome of cruelty and rapacity.

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was a Russian mystic who is perceived as having influenced the latter days of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II, his wife the Tsaritsa Alexandra, and their only son the Tsarevich Alexei.

Vlad the Impaler has been characterized as a tyrant who took sadistic pleasure in torturing and killing his enemies. The number of his victims ranges from 40,000 to 100,000.

Ivan IV, know as Ivan the Terrible, is most known for his brutal ruling, centralised administration of Russia and expantion of the boundaries of the Russian Empire. In 1581, Ivan beat his pregnant daughter-in-law for wearing immodest clothing, and this may have caused a miscarriage. His son, also named Ivan, upon learning of this, engaged in a heated argument with his father, which resulted in Ivan striking his son in the head with his pointed staff, causing his son's death.

Throughout his 17 year reign the man who would be forever known as Bad King John betrayed those closest to him, persecuted the innocent and was the first King of England to be accused of murder by his own hands. Writing after John's death a medievil chronicler said of him "He feared not God nor respected men. His punishments were refinements of cruelty, the starvation of children, the crushing of old men, his court was a brothel where no woman was safe."

Mary I was the fourth crowned monarch of the Tudor dynasty, she is remembered for restoring England to Roman Catholicism after succeeding her half brother, Edward VI, to the English throne. In the process, she had almost 300 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian Persecutions, earning her the sobriquet of "Bloody Mary".

Ilse Koch, was the wife of Karl Koch, the commandant of the concentration camps Buchenwald from 1937 to 1941 and Majdanek from 1941 to 1943. She was one of the first prominent Nazis to be tried by the US military. She was accused of taking souvenirs from the skin of murdered inmates with distinctive tattoos.

After her husband's death, she and four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls and young women, with one witness attributing to them over 600 victims, though the number for which they were convicted was 80. Elizabeth herself was neither tried nor convicted. In 1610, however, she was imprisoned in the Csejte Castle, where she remained bricked in a set of rooms until her death four years later.