I have heard of such things before, but never came across, till tonight, a man who would actually shoot himself in order to gain a vulgar notoriety, or blow out his brains for spite, if he finds that people don't care to pat him on the back for his sanguinary intentions.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Idiot (1887)
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To all of them from the marshal to the least soldier, that place was not the Vozdvizhenka, Mokhavaya, or Kutafyev Street, nor the Troitsa Gate (places familiar in Moscow), but a new battlefield which would probably prove sanguinary.
Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace: With bonus material from Give War and Peace A Chance by Andrew D. Kaufman