Cannibalism, which earned them in earlier years a terrible name, was generally restricted to the bloodthirsty banquets which always followed a victory.
And indeed his huge wallet of scraps stood him in little stead at the trim banquets to which he was invited at Oxford, while the wandering habits by which he had filled it absolutely unfitted him to be a guest.
In 1790 he conducted the military operations on the Dniester and held his court at Jassy with more than Asiatic pomp. In 1791 he returned to St Petersburg where, along with his friend Bezborodko (q.v.), he made vain efforts to overthrow the new favourite, Zubov, and in four months spent 850,000 roubles in banquets and entertainments, a sum subsequently reimbursed to him from the treasury.
In many of the principal capitals he was invited to public banquets, which afforded him an opportunity of propagating those principles of which he was regarded as the apostle.
Prayers for the dead, attendance at funerals of gildsmen, periodical banquets, the solemn entrance oath, fines for neglect of duty and for improper conduct, contributions to a common purse, mutual assistance in distress, periodical meetings in the gildhall, - in short, all the characteristic features of the later gilds already appear in the statutes of these Anglo-Saxon fraternities.
