The Grand Duke turned inward after 1802, becoming more and more reclusive and eccentric. With 99% of his holdings swept away by the Napoleonic Wars, and the remaining tiny rump territory under French “protection,” Edjard IV began to obsess over those few things he could still control.

He instituted decrees to demolish any buildings that interfered with the strict line of sight and straight boulevards near his hold. His people were required first to count steps they took by twos, and then to always begin a journey with their right foot. Double locks were to be installed on all doors and checked five times daily.

Eventually, the Edjard IV’s obsessions found even stranger outlets. He began hoarding items in the ducal hold, chiefly hunks of quartz or granite. Citizens who turned in suitable stones were rewarded from the treasury, while those found to be in possession otherwise were executed–even if the stones were loadbearing members of a house.

The Ducal Guard were most directly affected, as by 1806 their livery had changed 19 times and their drill 103. Edjard was preoccupied with finding a uniform style and marching pattern that would, as he wrote, “cover every corner of the courtyard with every color.” Surviving depictions of the last, 1806, livery show a rainbow of brightly clashing diagonal stripes and saltires, and accounts from former Ducal Guards indicate that the garment took nearly an hour to don (with assistance) and was so bulky as to inhibit the very precision Edjard’s complex marches demanded.

It’s not surprising, then, that the Guard “found” the Grand Duke crushed beneath a pile of his own stones in December 1806. The local French commander, unsurprisingly, quietly arranged for the last ducal holdings to be annexed while pensioning off the remainder of the Guard.