1671: Hans Erasmus, Count of Tattenbach

Hans Erasmus, Count of Tattenbach, was beheaded as a traitor in Graz.

Governor of Styria in present-day Slovenia, Tattenbach took an unwise interest in Zrinski and Frankopan’s Magnate Conspiracy, hoping to position himself as a big wheel in the prospective southern realm broken away from the Austrian empire.

Perhaps a more thoroughgoing assessment of risks was called for.

Tattenbach’s own valet turned him in. The nobleman lost his head a few months after the plot’s principal authors, and punitive confiscation relieved his heirs of the count’s estates.

On this day..