On this date in 1329, Italian condottiero Alberghettino II Manfredi was beheaded in Bologna.
He was the poor fruit of the Manfredi family, the lords of Faenza. Posterity doesn’t know a tremendous amount about Alberghettino, but one can infer a certain state of mind from his actions. While dad ran Faenza, his brother Ricciardo was on the condottiero cursus honorum as the temporary captain of nearby Imola.
In the mid-1320s, Alberghettino got his Fredo Corleone on by allying with the lord of Forli, a Faenza rival, in a treasonable (not to say Freudian) plot to supplant his father’s position.
He enjoyed a temporary run of the place from 1327-28 but was ousted by papal troops.
Forced to retire to Bologna, he returned immediately to conspiring with an attempt to make Bologna’s first man L-o-u-i-s, as in the Holy Roman Emperor Ludwig IV — at that moment barging about the Italic peninsula setting up antipopes.
That plot, too, failed. After that, on top of all his other woes, Alberghettino stood a head shorter than his more fortune-favored relations.
On this day..
- 1872: Joseph Garcia, for the Llangibby Massacre
- 1936: The Seven Martyrs of Madrid
- 1784: Richard Barrick and John Sullivan
- 1441: Roger Bolingbroke, "hanged, hedyd, and quartered"
- 1813: Ezra Hutchinson, teen rapist
- 1427: Johann Bantzkow, Mayor of Wismar
- 1646: Twelve at an Evora auto da fe
- 1961: Four for the assassination of Rafael Trujillo
- 2009: Danielle Simpson, "If I can't be free - Kill me!!"
- 1864: Hong Tianguifu, in the Taiping Rebellion
- 2005: Elias Syriani, a family affair
- 1577: Soulmother of Kussnacht