On this date in 1714, Geczy Julianna was executed in the marketplace of Gyor as a traitor.

“The White Woman of Locse” — which is also the title of an 1884 romantic novel about her life by Mor Jokai — this woman allegedly betrayed that place* into the hands of imperial Habsburg troops during Hungary’s unsuccessful 1703-1711 rebellion. Sober historians view her as simply a person trusted to serve as the emissary between the garrison and its Habsburg besiegers which role would eventually entail her communicating the defenders’ surrender.

She salvaged her reputation for posterity — and set herself up for torture and execution — by paying the betrayal forward to the empire when she destroyed a number of documents sought by the imperial marshal Janos Palffy that could have incriminated Kuruc nobles in plotting for a renewal of hostilities.

“How can a woman sacrifice her whole country for a kiss, and then sacrifice her handsome head for the same country?” Jokai mused of his paradoxical subject. “What reconciles the heaven and hell in the character of a woman?”

* Formerly part of Hungary’s northern reaches, this town today resides in Slovakia.

On this day..

• 1965: The Carrillos, by the ELN
• 1852: The assassin of Korfiotaki
• 1863: Spencer Kellogg Brown, Union spy
• 1987: Gennady Modestovich Mikhasevich, Belarus serial killer
• 1794: Edmund Fortis, in the hands of God
• 1911: Dmitry Bogrov, Stolypin's assassin
• 2013: Xia Junfeng, chengguan slayer
• 1561: Sehzade Beyazit, inevitably
• 1991: Warren McCleskey
• 1998: Cao Haixin, unwelcome meddler
• 2007: Michael Richard, whose time ran out
• 1792: Jacques Cazotte, occultist