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Preface
Preface
T HE thirty-one assassinations, famous in history, which are narrated in this volume, have never before had their stories told in a collected form in any language. The accounts of them were scattered through the historical works of all nations, and through many volumes of private memoirs, which had to be scanned for proper and trustworthy material. It is hoped that their presentation in this form will make an interesting volume, not only for the student of history, but also for the general reade
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CHAPTER I ASSASSINATION OF PHILIP OF MACEDON (336 B. C.)
CHAPTER I ASSASSINATION OF PHILIP OF MACEDON (336 B. C.)
T HE assassination of Philip of Macedon, which occurred in the year 336 B.C. , was one of the most important in ancient history, not only because it terminated the glorious career of one of the most remarkable men of his times, but also because it led immediately to the accession of Alexander, one of the supremely great men of history,—an event which would very likely not have taken place at all if Philip had continued to live for a number of years and had himself selected the successor to his t
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CHAPTER II ASSASSINATION OF TIBERIUS GRACCHUS (133 B. C.)
CHAPTER II ASSASSINATION OF TIBERIUS GRACCHUS (133 B. C.)
I N the history of ancient Rome there occurs one political assassination which stands out as an event of special significance, not only on account of the great celebrity of the victim, but also owing to the fact that it is the first occasion on record in which the conflicting economical interests of different classes in a republic were settled by a resort to arms, instead of being adjudicated on principles of equity and justice, or simply by public authority. This great historical event was the
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CHAPTER III ASSASSINATION OF JULIUS CÆSAR (44 B. C.)
CHAPTER III ASSASSINATION OF JULIUS CÆSAR (44 B. C.)
A MERICANS are not great students of history, especially ancient history. Very likely the assassination of Julius Cæsar, one of the most important events in the history of ancient Rome, would also be among the “things not generally known” among Americans, had not Shakespeare’s great tragedy made them familiar with it. It is true, the aims of the dramatist and of the historian are wide-apart. The dramatist places the hero in the centre of the plot, and causes every part of it to contribute to the
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CHAPTER IV ASSASSINATIONS OF TIBERIUS, CALIGULA, CLAUDIUS, NERO (A. D. 37-68.)
CHAPTER IV ASSASSINATIONS OF TIBERIUS, CALIGULA, CLAUDIUS, NERO (A. D. 37-68.)
A T the time of the assassination of Julius Cæsar, the Roman people, and especially the higher classes, had reached a degree of perversity and degeneracy which appears to the modern reader almost incredible. They had become utterly unfit for self-government. The most atrocious public and private vices in both sexes had taken the place of the civic virtues and the private honor for which the ancient Roman had been famous the world over. In public life, corruption, venality, and bribery were gener
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CHAPTER V ASSASSINATION OF HYPATIA (A. D. 415.)
CHAPTER V ASSASSINATION OF HYPATIA (A. D. 415.)
N EVER, perhaps, did the wonderful genius of Alexander the Great appear to better advantage than when he selected Alexandria as a commercial centre and distributing point for the products of three continents, and as an intellectual focus from which Hellenic culture should be transmitted to those countries of Asia and Africa which his victories had opened to Greek civilization. The rapidity with which the city—to which Alexander had given his own name—grew to the dimensions of a great capital and
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CHAPTER VI ASSASSINATION OF THOMAS À BECKET (December 29, 1170)
CHAPTER VI ASSASSINATION OF THOMAS À BECKET (December 29, 1170)
O NE of the most remarkable careers and one of the most famous assassinations in the middle ages were the career and the assassination of Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. His life (at least after he had been elevated to the Primacy of England) and his death show him as the great representative of the Church of Rome, standing up for the defence of its rights and dying in their defence; and they show also how necessary, in those dark ages, was a superhuman power, to hold the arrogance an
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CHAPTER VII ASSASSINATION OF GESSLER (A.D. 1307.)
CHAPTER VII ASSASSINATION OF GESSLER (A.D. 1307.)
T HE assassination of Julius Cæsar and of the first Roman Emperors led to greater demoralization of the people, and thereafter to anarchy, bloodshed, civil war, and ultimately to an atrocious despotism; but at an interval of twelve hundred and forty years after the death of Nero there occurred a political assassination, growing out of personal revenge, which freed a whole people from oppression and placed the murderer among the heroes of mankind and the liberators of nations. We speak of William
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CHAPTER VIII ASSASSINATION OF IÑEZ DE CASTRO (A.D. 1355.)
CHAPTER VIII ASSASSINATION OF IÑEZ DE CASTRO (A.D. 1355.)
A S one of the most cruel and heart-rending tragedies of the middle ages, the love-story and the assassination of Iñez de Castro has lived in song and story for five hundred and fifty years, and still awakens echoes of pity and sorrow whenever read or heard. Constancia, the wife of Pedro, son of Alfonso the Fourth of Portugal, and heir-presumptive to the crown of that kingdom, died in 1344, and left to her husband a son of tender age, named Ferdinand. Pedro thereupon desired to marry the countes
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CHAPTER IX ASSASSINATIONS OF RIZZIO AND DARNLEY (March 9, 1566; February 9, 1567)
CHAPTER IX ASSASSINATIONS OF RIZZIO AND DARNLEY (March 9, 1566; February 9, 1567)
A MONG the female rulers of Europe there is one who on account of her matchless beauty, her genius, her adventurous life, but especially her tragic death, has enlisted the attention and admiration of authors and poets even to a higher degree than Catherine the Second of Russia or Elizabeth of England, who perhaps surpassed her in political genius. More regretted and admired for her misfortunes and accomplishments than condemned for her sins and crimes, Mary Stuart, the beautiful Queen of Scots,
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CHAPTER X ASSASSINATION OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE (July 10, 1584)
CHAPTER X ASSASSINATION OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE (July 10, 1584)
I T was said by one of the wild revolutionists of France, in extenuation of his incessant demands for the execution of a larger number of the nobility, that the tree of liberty, to grow vigorously, should be watered with plenty of blood. Alas! The history of the republics of the world, not only since the great French Revolution of 1789, but at all times, both ancient and modern, proves the justice of this assertion, but none furnishes a more convincing proof of it than the history of the Dutch R
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CHAPTER XI ASSASSINATIONS BY IVAN THE TERRIBLE (1560-1584)
CHAPTER XI ASSASSINATIONS BY IVAN THE TERRIBLE (1560-1584)
R USSIAN history abounds in instances of famous assassinations. Sometimes these murders were committed by the rulers of Russia, at other times these rulers themselves were the victims. Ivan the Fourth, whose very surname, “the Terrible,” sufficiently indicates his character, was one of the most cruel and inhuman monarchs who ever ruled over a nation, either in ancient or modern times. It is therefore not one famous assassination which we wish to describe, but a series of monstrous crimes, unpara
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CHAPTER XII ASSASSINATION OF HENRY THE FOURTH OF FRANCE (May 14, 1610)
CHAPTER XII ASSASSINATION OF HENRY THE FOURTH OF FRANCE (May 14, 1610)
R ELIGIOUS wars—that is to say, civil wars for religious causes—had desolated France for half a century, and tranquillity and apparent harmony had finally been restored only by the genius of one man—Henry the Fourth. He it was who issued the Edict of Nantes, conferring equal religious and political rights upon the professors of both religions, the Protestant and the Catholic. A short time after Martin Luther had inaugurated the great movement of religious reform in Germany, a similar movement ha
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CHAPTER XIII ASSASSINATION OF WALLENSTEIN (February 24, 1634)
CHAPTER XIII ASSASSINATION OF WALLENSTEIN (February 24, 1634)
I N a previous chapter we have seen how a King of England got rid of a contentious Archbishop of the Church of Rome by assassination when the latter stood in the way of his usurpation. In a similar manner, also by assassination, an Emperor of Germany freed himself from a general who had twice saved him from ruin, but who had grown too powerful for his security, and whose loyalty he (perhaps justly) mistrusted. Although nearly three hundred years have passed away since Wallenstein’s assassination
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CHAPTER XIV ASSASSINATION OF THE BROTHERS JOHN AND CORNELIUS DE WITT (August 20, 1672)
CHAPTER XIV ASSASSINATION OF THE BROTHERS JOHN AND CORNELIUS DE WITT (August 20, 1672)
N EVER, perhaps, was the old saying, “Republics are ungrateful,” more strikingly verified than in the case of the two brothers De Witt, who, after having rendered many great services to the Dutch Republic, were foully murdered by an infuriated mob in the streets of the Hague, August 20, 1672. John and Cornelius de Witt were the sons of a distinguished citizen of the city of Dordrecht, who had represented that city in the general assemblies of Holland and Friesland and was known as an eloquent an
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CHAPTER XV ASSASSINATION OF ALEXIS, SON OF PETER THE GREAT (June 26, 1718)
CHAPTER XV ASSASSINATION OF ALEXIS, SON OF PETER THE GREAT (June 26, 1718)
T HE sudden death of Alexis, son of Peter the Great by his first wife Eudoxia, has always been and is still shrouded in mystery; but the prevailing opinion of historians is that the unfortunate young man was assassinated by direct order of his father, and all the surrounding circumstances point to this conclusion. We think we are therefore justified in placing it here among the famous assassinations in history. It is the darkest chapter in the history of Peter the Great, a monarch whose achievem
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CHAPTER XVI ASSASSINATION OF PETER THE THIRD OF RUSSIA (July 17, 1762)
CHAPTER XVI ASSASSINATION OF PETER THE THIRD OF RUSSIA (July 17, 1762)
I N a previous chapter we have told the story, full of horror and crime, of the life of Ivan the Terrible of Russia. It was not one famous assassination which placed that life-story in this series of historical murders; it was an uninterrupted, long-continued succession of butcheries and assassinations which entitled it to this place. In the long line of historical characters extending through the ages there is not one who so fully deserves the designation of a wholesale assassin as Ivan the Ter
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CHAPTER XVII ASSASSINATION OF GUSTAVUS THE THIRD OF SWEDEN (March 17, 1792)
CHAPTER XVII ASSASSINATION OF GUSTAVUS THE THIRD OF SWEDEN (March 17, 1792)
O N the seventeenth of March, 1792, Gustavus the Third, King of Sweden, was assassinated by Ankarström, a Swedish nobleman, and this crime caused a sensation throughout Europe, although the horrors of the French Revolution and the wholesale executions by the guillotine had made the world familiar with murder and bloodshed. This assassination was of a political character, and private revenge or other considerations had nothing whatever to do with it. But in order to understand fully the causes le
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CHAPTER XVIII ASSASSINATION OF JEAN PAUL MARAT (July 13, 1793)
CHAPTER XVIII ASSASSINATION OF JEAN PAUL MARAT (July 13, 1793)
I N the letter of farewell which Charlotte Corday, from her prison cell as a doomed murderess, addressed to her father, she used the phrase (the French words are a well-known verse from a famous tragedy): for she still adhered to the belief that in killing Marat she had not committed a crime, but an act of patriotic devotion for which posterity would honor her, and history would place her name among the benefactors of mankind. In this belief she was more than half right, for in the long list of
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CHAPTER XIX ASSASSINATION OF PAUL THE FIRST OF RUSSIA (March 24, 1801)
CHAPTER XIX ASSASSINATION OF PAUL THE FIRST OF RUSSIA (March 24, 1801)
T HOSE who have followed the preceding chapters will remember that Catherine the Second of Russia got possession of the throne by the murder of her husband, fortified that possession by the murder of another Czar imprisoned in the fortress of Schlüsselburg (the weak-minded Ivan the Sixth), and finally, haunted by the constant fear of being dethroned by some new pretender, sacrificed all those whose claims might become dangerous to her security. History, which is filled with the crimes of remorse
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CHAPTER XX ASSASSINATION OF AUGUST VON KOTZEBUE (March 23, 1819)
CHAPTER XX ASSASSINATION OF AUGUST VON KOTZEBUE (March 23, 1819)
A FTER the downfall of Napoleon the monarchs of Europe had a very difficult task to perform. Not only were the domestic institutions of their states, which had been overthrown by the French conquest and in many cases altered by French decrees, to be regulated anew or reinstated on a firm footing, but the relations between governments and subjects were to be reorganized on a new basis, in conformity with the liberal principles which had spread from France and been adopted readily by the intellige
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CHAPTER XXI ASSASSINATION OF THE DUC DE BERRY (February 13, 1820)
CHAPTER XXI ASSASSINATION OF THE DUC DE BERRY (February 13, 1820)
T HE political situation in France, after the overthrow of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons, was even more difficult and more precarious for the governing classes than it was in Germany. The French nation, proud in the consciousness of having occupied the first place in Europe for twenty years, chafed at the idea of living under a king whom foreign rulers and foreign armies had imposed on France, and who, in consequence, had to act in blind obedience to the dictates of these foreigne
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CHAPTER XXII ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN (April 14, 1865)
CHAPTER XXII ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN (April 14, 1865)
I N the annals of this nation no tragedy more pathetic has been recorded than the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States. The Civil War which had divided the country into two hostile camps for four years and had laid waste the Southern States of the Union—or the Confederate States of America, to designate them by the name they adopted—was at an end. General Lee had surrendered the army of Virginia, the flower of the Confederate fighting forces, to General Grant at Appom
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CHAPTER XXIII ASSASSINATION OF ALEXANDER THE SECOND OF RUSSIA (March 13, 1881)
CHAPTER XXIII ASSASSINATION OF ALEXANDER THE SECOND OF RUSSIA (March 13, 1881)
T HE assassination of Abraham Lincoln leads up to that of the other great emancipator of the nineteenth century, Alexander the Second of Russia, which occurred on the thirteenth of March, 1881, and which filled the world with horror. In one of Goethe’s most famous poems a magician’s apprentice, in the absence of his learned master, sets free the secret powers of nature which his master can control by a magical formula. The apprentice has overheard the formula, and has appropriated it to his own
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CHAPTER XXIV ASSASSINATION OF WILLIAM McKINLEY PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (September 6, 1901)
CHAPTER XXIV ASSASSINATION OF WILLIAM McKINLEY PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (September 6, 1901)
T HE North-American Republic had lived eighty-nine years before political assassination made its entrance into its domain. From 1776 to 1865, a period occasionally as turbulent, excited and torn by political discord and strife as any other period in history, political assassinations kept away from its shores, and appeared only at the close of the great Civil War between the North and the South, selecting for its victim the noblest, gentlest, most kind-hearted of Americans who had filled the Pres
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CHAPTER XXV ASSASSINATION OF ALEXANDER I AND DRAGA, KING AND QUEEN OF SERVIA (June 11, 1903)
CHAPTER XXV ASSASSINATION OF ALEXANDER I AND DRAGA, KING AND QUEEN OF SERVIA (June 11, 1903)
T HE Balkan countries—Servia, Bulgaria, Roumania, Bosnia, and Herzegovina—are generally considered the political centre from which will spread, sooner or later, the conflagration of a gigantic war, which will eventually place Russia in possession of Constantinople and European Turkey. Some of these Balkan countries are nominally independent, others are still under the suzerainty of the Sultan, who holds on to them with the energy of despair. He watches every change in the political situation wit
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