On this date in 1744, Skinnar Per Andersson was beheaded in Stockholm — a cautionary examplar of the limits of electoral change.

Andersson, (English Wikipedia entry | Swedish) a farmer from Dalarna, was his constituency’s most eloquent exponent of grievances against the ruling Hat party.

The latter had proven deeply unresponsive to the complaints of farmers and peasants while also harrowing the countryside for recruits to die in the Hats’ insane war of choice against Russia.

Andersson tore into the war policy at a public meeting in July of 1742, demanding punishment for the politicians who had launched it; he found himself elected to the Riksdag for his trouble.

That’s just fine, but the anger of his neighbors was outrunning Andersson’s personal capacity to act as one legislator in a chamber. A peasant revolt against continued military recruitment, the Dalecarlian Rebellion, broke out among Dalarna farmers in 1743 — and though the enterprise was much against Andersson’s own urging toward moderation, he thought himself duty-bound to adhere to it when commenced.

As is usual with peasant rebellions, it did not last long, and the Hats who had somehow retained control of government despite their self-inflicted catastrophe had Andersson arrested and executed along with other leaders of the rising.

On this day..

• 1953: Mat Indera, for the Bukit Kepong incident
• 1945: Andrew Brown, Leading Aircraftsman
• 1937: Georgy Pyatakov, Anti-Soviet Parallel Trotskyist
• 1944: The Homfreyganj massacre of the Andaman Islands
• 1801: Four entrapped Jacobins
• 1857: Jean-Louis Verger, doctrinaire
• 1913: John Williams, the Case of the Hooded Man
• 2011: Ahmed Ali Hussein, enemy cleric
• 1474: Not the Archer of Meudon
• 1996: William Flamer, Alito'd
• 1661: Oliver Cromwell, posthumously
• 1649: Charles I