| “ | Who dares challenge Cluny the Scourge shall perish! | „ |
| ~ Cluny the Scourge |
Cluny the Scourge is the main antagonist in the book Redwall by Brian Jacques and the first season of the TV series Redwall. He is a vicious rat warlord who seeks to conquer Redwall Abbey, using ruthless and sadistic means to do so.
He was voiced in the TV series by Diego Matamoros, who also voiced Badrang the Tyrant in the third season.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
Novel series[]
- He's a notorious warlord with a long history of atrocities, having razed many barns and sunk many ships with creatures in them.
- He had caused cattle to bellow in pain as he battled a pike that had taken his eye.
- When he wanted to settle his army in a mine, after some badgers and other creatures that owned the mine had driven him and his army out, out of spite, he led his horde to return at night and, with them, gnawed away and undermined much of the woodland shoring, causing the mine to collapse the next day and kill the owners.
- Moving on with his horde, over the course of six years, he would have them eat a whole litter of piglets alive, burned down a farmhouse, infected livestock herds with sickness and disease, and caused a whole village to be destroyed and massacred by causing a cow stampede.
- At one point, he had killed a ferret and placed his skull on the top of his long pole.
- In addition, while he was able to gather a large horde, he does not care about his soldiers at all and will go berserk if his minions fail him. In other words, he treats his soldiers as disposable pawns, and in addition shows no remorse at the deaths of many of his captains.
- While rats are part of the verminous races in Redwall, it is proven with Vitch and Nadaz that they can be loyal to someone else, so Cluny does have moral agency to a degree. His lackey Redtooth, himself a rat, also shows himself to have some standards as he at one point decides not to do what Cluny himself would have done in a similar situation.
- On his way to Redwall Abbey, as his cart passes by, he notices a couple of young rabbits playing in a field and makes the passing thought of eating them, only not doing so because the cart had not stopped yet.
- He gets one of his own minions, Skullface, viciously killed by tossing them at the horse carrying the horse’s cart to provide it with motivation when it stopped out of exhaustion, leading to him falling off the horse once it began running out of fear and crushed bloodily by the cart’s iron wheels, bleeding to death as Cluny tauntingly tells him to tell the devil he sent him.
- He has peaceable creatures conscripted into his horde with threats of death.
- He tells the creatures of Redwall to surrender and become his slaves, or he will kill them all, including their young.
- He launches multiple attacks on Redwall, using any tactic it takes to win.
- He steals the Redwall tapestry of Martin the Warrior to demoralize them. Additionally, it is proven that serving him well is no guarantee of safety, as he decides to leave Shadow to die (Constance had accidentally mortally wounded him, or Matthias in the TV series) even though he succeeded in his task.
- He executes a soldier for talking back.
- When Sela and Chickenhound interfere with his plans, he has them put to death, with only Chickenhound surviving. And while Sela was a double agent, she was not lying when she said she would restore Cluny to health. He had earlier threatened their lives before their betrayal simply because Sela was taking too long to give him the herbs.
- While his plans to take over Redwall repeatedly fail (and he is comically thwarted by porridge at one point), this does not make him incompetent or sympathetic, as not only does his persistence eventually pay off, he decides to go beyond taking over the abbey and kill everyone inside.
- He had a family of 20 dormice, which consisted of a mother, father, brothers, sisters, a wife, and two children to their leader Plumpen, kidnapped by his horde and after starving them to the point of where they were dull-eyed, he makes a subtle threat to Plumpen to burn them all to death in a fire started by his minions to force him to open the Abbey door for him. And it is implied he has no intention of upholding his bargain, as he ignores him when the dormouse begs Cluny to return his family to him.
- Upon successfully seizing Redwall Abbey, he makes plans on changing the names of everything, even planning on giving sadistic titles after the cruel methods he has planned for how he will kill people, like "The Lake of Drowning" ("The Drowning Pond" in the TV show) and "The Field of Dead Mice."
- He fatally wounds Abbot Mortimer and as noted above, he orders a massacre of all living at Redwall, only being stopped by Matthias.
- He uses Killconey as a shield, who was sympathetic for a minion of his.
- He takes Friar Hugo hostage to try to force Matthias to surrender.
TV series Exclusive[]
- He massacred Matthias' village, killing Matthias' family while burning it, unintentionally leaving Matthias and his sister as the sole survivors. And his sister would eventually die anyway as it took her too long to find a safe shelter from the rats.
- He has the mouse delivering food for Redwall Abbey executed and prevents any sources from being delivered to it with the intent of starving everyone within to death.
- Right after ordering two rats to carry out the order, he has to have others kill them simply for not being effective enough as troops.
- Upon capturing a dormouse spice merchant and his wife, he holds the latter hostage to force the former to cooperate in a plan of his to kidnap Cornflower in order to lure Matthias out.
- When Cornflower is brought to him captured, out of spite towards her for insulting him, he has her be subjected to water torture where she is strapped to a water mill that repeatedly carries her under water and then back out over and over to drown her before having a letter be sent to Matthias of her situation as blackmail.
- When the spice merchant demands that his wife be freed since he's done his part, as punishment, Cluny instead has her be strapped to a grindstone to force him to comply further.
- When his minions had captured Warbeak, he tried to have her be eaten by Asmodeus.
- He takes Cornflower hostage, though she did try to stab him.
- It is implied in the TV Series that the abbot died of natural causes instead of Cluny, but Cluny still intended to murder him.
External Links[]
- Cluny the Scourge on the Villains Wiki.
- Cluny the Scourge on the Redwall Wiki.
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 Pure Evils
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Books Mossflower Mattimeo Mariel of Redwall Outcast of Redwall The Legend of Luke Lord Brocktree Rakkety Tam TV Series | ||
 Pure Evils
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Movies Cartoons See Also | ||