AND then only one of "the bastards" was left standing ...
Michael Portillo and Peter Lilley rejoiced in their illegitimate status, famously bestowed by John Major in an off camera comment to ITN's political editor. The bastard badge seemed a guarantee of greatness to come.
John Redwood decided not to await the tide of history, jumping the cabinet ship in 1995 to accept "John Major's challenge to the Tory Eurosceptics to "put up or shut up". Mr Portillo hesitated, before concluding that he who wields the dagger can never inherit the crown. Better to stick the course, play the loyalty card and collect when, as seemed inevitable, the voters turfed out Major. Ditto Lilley.
Alas for Portillo: the plan came unstuck courtesy of the Enfield Southgate voters, who unceremoniously dumped him along with most of the rest on May 1st. The night the party died provided many images which will endure, the rapture which greeted Portillo's defeat prominent among them.
Another, hours later, came when the defeated Major arrived back at Conservative Central Office. Portillo had made his way to the wake, and when they met, Major took Portillo's hand in both of his in silent sympathy. Or was it? What were they really, thinking? The diaries to comer may tell us.
Lilley, meanwhile, one of the survivors of the carnage, was already thinking ahead. With Portillo out of the road, his supporters saw him as the most credible rightwing candidate for the succession.
So he appeared until Tuesday, when the results of the first ballot were declared. To Lilley's surprise (and Michael Howard's astonishment) Redwood emerged, at the head of the rightwing field. "He who dares will clearly suggested itself to "the Vulcan" as he raced around the radio and television studios, cheerfully inviting "Peter and Michael" to join his team.
It seemed a not unreasonable expectation. Lilley and Howard had clearly stated in advance that they would expect the bottom two candidates to fall behind the best placed in subsequent ballots. They were patently not talking about William Hague. He was derisively spoken of as a candidate of the centre right plainly not "one of us", as shown by Baroness Thatcher's refusal to endorse him.
Within minutes of the declaration by the 1922 Committee's replacement for Sir Marcus Fox (remember him?) Redwood was turning his attention to Hague's supporters, urging them to see that he was now the only man to stop Kenneth Clarke.
But the "Stop Clarke" campaign took a dramatic twist just hours later, when Lilley and Howard ditched Redwood in favour of Hague. Suddenly, Hague, at 36 described by one commentator as "everybody's idea of a man old before his time", and by others as John Major Mark Two, was the front runner. And the right wing air, was filled with charges of treachery and betrayal. A civil war within the civil war.
Redwood yesterday shrugged off suggestions that he, too, should now stand down. He did not accept Hague was a right wing" candidate, fostering the notion of "Hague the Vague", and insisting he could win support from the Lilley and Howard camps for his consistent and unequivocal opposition to the European single currency and his pledge to rediscover Thatcherite values.
The intriguing thing will be to see if he can win the Lady's endorsement.
The expectation, in the Clarke camp as elsewhere, is that Hague will win in the end. That said, he needs over half the combined Lilley/Howard total of 47 to secure a thirdround play off against Clarke. Tuesday night's "betrayal" carried confirmation that Lilley and Howard share the general consensus that Redwood will never shake off his "Vulcan" image and prove electable.
He is able, though, on the strength of Tuesday's result, to warn the press not to write him off. Nor can we yet dismiss Clarke. Mrs Gillian Shepherd yesterday left the abandoned Lilley campaign to declare for the former chancellor. Further big name endorsements are predicted.
And the Clarke campaign will seek to recover momentum, citing his clear popularity with Tory activists, bidding to widen his appeal across the party policy spectrum, and appealing to continuing unease in some Tory circles about the "unknown quantity" that is the youthful and relatively inexperienced Hague.
There is even fanciful speculation that the logical response to a "Stop Clarke" campaign would be an eventual alliance between Clarke and Redwood to "stop young William".
But it does seem fanciful, as it seems unlikely that the Tories will make up their mind to do the smart thing and elect the man who can reconnect the party with a public which contemptuously ejected them from office, barely five weeks ago.
"Unfortunately this is a right wing party," said one Clarke ally yesterday, and Hague looks to be the nearest thing to a right winger on serious offer. Unfortunately for the Tories, that looks like an admission that they are already resigned to a second term in opposition.
John Major could be forgiven a wry smile. But the biggest smile of the week belongs to Mr Tony Blair.