As the Enlightenment gave way to the West’s great revolutionary age in the late 18th and early 19th century, the crowned heads of Europe weren’t just sitting around — and with good reason. Regimes don’t get to be ancien without knowing how to deal with troublemakers.

For the next three days, Executed Today presents the mailed fist in three lands, and the agitators it smashed.

• Sept. 20: Robert Emmet
• Sept. 21: The Four Sergeants of La Rochelle
• Sept. 22: Nathan Hale

On this day..

• 1547: Jan Olivetsky, Moravian publisher
• 1878: John Speer
• 1821: Corporal Chaguinha, Brazil's saint of freedom
• 1917: Herbet Morris, British West Indies Regiment deserter
• 1937: Lev Karakhan, Marina Semyonova's husband
• 1889: Thomas Brown, Fargo-Moorhead outlaw
• 1246: Mikhail of Chernigov, Miracle-Worker
• 1631: Anna Katharina Spee
• 1763: Gabriela Silang
• 2006: Clarence Hill, former last-minute reprieve beneficiary
• 1586: Anthony Babington and fellow plotters, Walsingham'd
• 1918: The 26 Baku Commissars
• 1803: Robert Emmet, "let no man write my epitaph"