Category Archives: Soldiers

1765: Juan de la Cruz Palaris

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On this date in 1765, the Pangasinan rebel Juan de la Cruz Palaris was hanged by the Spanish authorities.

Palaris — the nickname by which history remembers him; de la Cruz was his proper surname — was a native coachman to some forgotten grandee of the colonial governing council when the Spanish authorities were obliged to flee the British occupation of Manila.

Woes multiplied for the Spanish imperial agents when their new hosts in Pampanga found it convenient to avail the unasked visit to press complaints about taxation — which only seemed the more relevant in view of the fact that the state whose maintenance they were funding had been pulverized by the British — and a litany of other official neglects and abuses. Palaris, who hailed from this part of the country, emerged as a leader of this revolt around the end of 1762. As his rising unfolded simultaneous with, and adjacent to (next province over), and even in coordination with, the Silang revolt, the Spanish authorities had a winter to forget.

Neither revolt much outlasted the end of the Seven Years’ War, with its attendant withdrawal of British invaders and return to normalcy. Now the organs of state had the werewithal to deploy all that ill-gotten tax money … to the armies that would smash the tax revolts. His own army reduced by the peace, Palaris was defeated for good at San Jacinto. His attempt to take refuge in Pangasinan so terrified his family at the potential repurcussions that his own sister Simeona is said to have shopped him to the mayor in March 1764.

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1810: Andreas Hofer, Tyrolean patriot

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On this date in 1810, Tyrolean hero Andreas Hofer was shot in Mantua.

Andreas Hofer monument at Bergisel, where Hofer fought four battles in 1809. (cc) image by Mathias Bigge.

Hofer (English Wikipedia entry | German) was the heir to his father’s Sandhof Inn in tiny St. Leonhard — a village today that’s just over the Italian border but was in Hofer’s time part of a Tyrol undivided by nation-state borders.

This county took pride in its ancient affiliation to the House of Habsburg, who had once even made its imperial headquarters in Tyrolean Innsbruck. When in the aftermath of crushing Austria at Austerlitz the rampant Corsican transferred Tyrol to the overlordship of his ally the King of Bavaria, he did not transfer their affections: indeed, when Bavaria imposed upon its new prize the Bavarian constitution, along with added levies of taxation and military conscription, she sowed the dragon’s teeth.

Hofer emerged as one of the leaders of the anti-Bavarian party in the Tyrol’s south, and joined an 1809 delegation to Vienna to secure Habsburg support for an internal rising.

The Tyrolean Rebellion broke out in March 1809 with direct coordination from Austria — which declared war on April 9, and attacked France on several fronts hoping to regain Tyrol and various other baubles of Germanic patrimony lately lost to Napoleon. Unfortunately for the irregulars in the south Tyrol, who under Hofer and others won several early skirmishes, the French once more handed Austria a decisive defeat at Wagram July 5-6 of that year, knocking Vienna out of the war almost as speedily as she had entered it.

The consequences of Wagram were far-reaching: still more choice provinces (Salzburg, West Galicia, Trieste, Croatia) stripped away from an empire stumbling into second-ratehood. Not yet numbered among them, one could readily discern the imminent fate of our party — as did the English editorialist who cried, “O, the brave and loyal, but, we fear, lost Tyrolese!”

By this time the self-described “Imperial Commandant”, Hofer’s successful engagements could not disguise an increasingly untenable position. The militiamen who had so brightly embarked on national liberation that spring withered up and blew away in the ill autumn wind. Hofer himself hid from his enemies in one of the panoramic mountain refuges that still decorate his homeland’s inviting hiking-grounds — but the price on his head could reach him even there, and a countryman betrayed his humble hut to the French. He was surprised there and removed to Mantua for a condemnation that was allegedly came ordered straight from Napoleon.

Hofer’s martyrdom has lodged firmly in Tyrolean lore. A plaque in the town of Menan marks the spot where he was kept overnight en route to his fate in Mantua. A folk song that emerged in the 1830s and 1840s, Zu Mantua in Banden, celebrates Hofer’s sacrifice and is now the official Tyrolean anthem. (“To Mantua in chains / Loyal Hofer was led / From Mantua to Death / The enemy had him sped …”)

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1802: Joseph Wall

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(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.)

On this date in 1802, disgraced colonial administrator Joseph Wall was executed in London for crimes committed on the appropriately named island of Goree, off the coast of modern-day Senegal in Africa.

Paterson, who formerly kept a hatter’s shop in Catherine-street, Strand … was brought to the gangway by order of the Governor, without drum-head, or any other Court-martial, and flogged with a Boatswains cat, until his bones were denuded of flesh. Still the unfortunate man never uttered a groan. The Governor, who superintended the punishment, swore he would conquer the rascals [sic] stubbornness, and make him cry out, or whip his guts out … the flogging was continued until the convulsions of his bowels appeared through the wounds of his lacerated loins, when he fainted under the lash, and was consigned to the Surgeon’s care; but died in a few days.

–“An Authentic Narrative of the Life of Joseph Wall, Esq., Late Governor of Goree” (pdf)

The Irish-born Wall came from an “ancient and respectable family.” He became a soldier and distinguished himself in Cuba during the Seven Years’ War, but as a civilian he wasn’t up to par: he allegedly assaulted a girl he was courting, and later killed a man in a duel. In 1779, he became Lieutenant Governor of Goree, where he quickly developed a reputation for brutality.

Over the next few years his health began to suffer and, in 1782, he decided to return to England.

On July 10, 1782, shortly before Wall’s departure, a deputation of his men approached him and asked to be paid their back wages. Outraged by the effrontery of the help, Wall ordered the petitioners arrested on charges of mutiny. Without benefit of court-martial, seven of the men were sentenced to flogging, four of them to an incredible 800 lashes each. Three died a few days after the beatings.

Wall was charged with cruelty on his return home, but the charges were initially dropped for lack of evidence. After more witnesses turned up, Wall had to flee to the Continent, where he lived under an assumed name for several years. He came back to England in 1797 and in 1801 he surrendered himself to stand trial.

Since all but two of the witnesses against him had died by then, Wall may have expected that the case against him had weakened. Instead he found himself convicted of murder and sentenced to be hanged.

His execution didn’t go well: it was a “short drop” hanging, and when the trap sprung, the knot on the rope slipped around to the back of his head. He strangled to death slowly over twenty minutes.

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1970: Three in Baghdad

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One last coda to our recent Iraqi coup series occurred after a day’s pause in the hecatombs, as reported by the New York Times on Jan. 25, 1970:

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Jan. 24 — Three more men were executed in Baghdad at dawn today bringing to 44 the number shot or hanged since the leftist Baath Government in Iraq headed off a rightist plot on Tuesday.

The three-man special court that has sentenced 37 conspirators said the three were the last of those apprehended. Others, it added, are still at large.

An Iraqi military aircraft landed here this afternoon with a token gift of 30 submachine guns confiscated from the plotters. Iraq has promised to turn over all 3,000 submachine guns captured to the Palestinian commandos.

More blood was spilled in Baghdad this week than after any comparable attempted coup since World War II, and many Arab commentators expressed dismay and horror.

OTHER MASSACRES RECALLED

The nearest approach was 18, shot after a Nasserite rising against a Baathist Government in Syria in July, 1963.

The Baghdad executions fitted the context of Iraq’s violent history, which has led some historians to compare the current regime with that of the eighth-century Abbasid governor Al Hajjaj Ben Yussef, who declared, when he took office, that the Iraqis were a mean people and he was “going to wring their necks.” Great numbers of executions followed.

In more recent times the Iraqis in 1933 killed several thousand Assyrians who had volunteered for armed service with the British. In 1941 several hundred Jews were killed in a major pogrom in Baghdad.

In contrast to Egypt’s bloodless overthrow of King Farouk, the Iraqis in 1958 shot King Faisal and his family in the garden of their palace and went on to drag the bodies of Prince Abdul Illah and Premier Nuri al Said through the streets.

Part of the Daily Double: Saddam Hussein crushes a coup.

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1970: Nineteen in Baghdad

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From the Jan. 23, 1970 Times of India:

Damascus, January 22.

Iraq’s execution mill worked without let-up today with 36 people put to death in 24 hours — all but seven of them accused of plotting to overthrow the Government.

Seven of the men, not connected with the plot, were convicted in November of spying for the U.S., Radio Baghdad said.

It identified one of them, Albert Nounou, as a Jew.

The 29 people who were accused of trying to overthrow the leftist regime of President Ahmed Hassan al Bakr on Tuesday night and early yesterday faced firing squads or hangmen.

Mr. Bakr addressed crowds outside the Presidential palace, saying that any plot against his Government would “only lead to the cutting of the plotters’ throats,” Radio Baghdad said.

DETAILS GIVEN

The executioners worked past midnight yesterday, carrying out death sentences given to 22 persons convicted of the coup attempt.

Then at dawn, the seven people convicted in November were put to death. A few hours later, Radio Baghdad said six Army officers and a civilian were doomed by a special court for taking part in the attempted coup. Shortly thereafter, the military men were shot by firing squad and the civilian was hanged.

The Government newspaper, “Al Thawra,” said firing squads were using the plotters’ own weapons for the executions.

The Baghdad broadcast said that in addition to the six military men and civilians executed this morning, the court had sentenced three other people to life imprisonment. –U.N.I.

From the Jan. 23, 1970 London Times, under the headline “Toll of executions in Iraq reaches 41”:

Baghdad, Jan. 22. — The abortive coup d’etat in Iraq on Tuesday was engineered with the assistance of the Israel, American, and Iranian secret services, the Iraq news agency said tonight. It made the accusation after the executions of two more soldiers and three civilians, bringing to 41 the total number of alleged plotters executed in Baghdad either by firing squads or hanging since yesterday morning.

Two more men were waiting execution after sentence.

Some 3,000 sub-machineguns, 650,000 rounds of ammunition, and a mobile radio transmitted had been seized, the agency stated.

Earlier today Iraq accused the Iranian Ambassador and four members of his Embassy staff of being implicated in the coup attempt, and ordered them to leave the country within 24 hours.

In Teheran, Iran retaliated by giving the Iraq Ambassador, the military attache, and his three assistants 24 hours to leave Iranian soil. It also ordered the closure of all Iraq consulates in Iran. — Agence France Presse and Reuter

Part of the Daily Double: Saddam Hussein crushes a coup.

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1970: Twenty-two in Baghdad

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From the Jan. 22, 1970 London Times:

Baghdad, Jan 21. — Twenty-two people were executed in Baghdad today for plotting to overthrow the Iraq Government.

First of all three retired Army men and two serving officers were executed by firing squad. Seventeen more executions were carried out tonight and Baghdad radio said a special three-man tribunal set up to try the plotters was still meeting.

The radio had interrupted its programmes to announce the discovery of a plot, crushed by tanks last night, against the ruling Baath Party. All the plotters were arrested, it said.

Two Government soldiers had died in putting down the conspiracy, the radio said. An official funeral for them will be held in Baghdad tomorrow, and the radio called on the people to attend in thousands.

Although there were no details of how many plotters were arrested, the fact that clashes occurred suggested to observers that an actual attempt had been made against the Government when the Army moved in. Tanks from Rashid Army camp, on the fringes of the capital’s suburbs, foiled the plot, according to the official Iraq news agency.

The radio claimed that the United States, Britain and West Germany were behind the attempted coup.

The Middle East News Agency said some Army officers pretended to join the conspirators and then reported them to the authorities.

The executed men were accused of plotting against the socialist regime of President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr in the interests of “imperialism and Zionism”. –Reuter, A.P. and U.P.I.

Part of the Daily Double: Saddam Hussein crushes a coup.

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1864: Private Samuel Jones, in retaliation for Private Daniel Bright

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The New York Times of January 23, 1864

Gen. Getty:

DEAR SIR: We, the subscribers, request to say that there was found this morning a dead man, and still hanging, in our neighborhood, as the inclosed scrip which was found pinned to his back, will show you by whom it was done. We have made a suitable box and buried him near the place he was found hung. Should his friends wish to get his body, they can get it by applying to any of the subscribers. We trust that you will not attach any blame to any of the citizens of this neighborhood, as we were entirely ignorant of any of the circumstances until we found the body. From all we can learn, he was brought across the Chowan River to this place, and as soon as the men who had him in charge hung him, they went back.

It was signed by ten people of Pasquotank County, North Carolina.

The note they enclosed, retrieved from the hanging body, read:

NOTICE

Here hangs Private Samuel Jones, of Company B, Fifth Ohio regiment, by order of Maj.-Gen. Pickett, in retaliation for Private Daniel Bright, of Company L, Sixty-second Georgia regiment, hung Dec. 18, 1863, by order of Brig.-Gen. Wild.

Bright, a member of the newly-formed 66th North Carolina guerrillas, had been hanged as a spy. Jones had been obtained by casting lots among Union prisoners of war held at the Confederate capital of Richmond, in response to Pickett’s demand for some Yankee to execute tit for tat. (Pickett’s proclivity for retaliatory executions would soon require him to quit the country at the end of the Civil War.)

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1794: Nicolas Luckner, German marshal of France

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On this date in 1794, Nicolas Luckner was guillotined in Paris.

A count with his own manor on the German-Danish frontier, Luckner (English Wikipedia entry | German, where he’s Nikolaus von Luckner) made the sort of cross-national career pivot that was still possible in the pre-revolutionary world by going from commanding hussars against France in the Seven Years’ War to serving in the Bourbon army.

Allegedly convinced that Marie Antoinette had blocked his advancement, Luckner supported the French Revolution, and by 1791 had summited his profession as Marshal of France.

He was the very commander of the Army of the Rhine to whom Rouget de Lisle dedicated the 1792 Chant de Guerre pour l’Armée du Rhin … the marchable tune which later became the Marseillaise. (Luckner’s name also appears on the Arc de Triomphe.)

Things did not go as swimmingly with the Army of the North, where he bogged down in the Low Countries — and the incriminating defection of the Marquis de Lafayette to France’s royalist enemies did him no favors in the court of Jacobin opinion. Luckner was relieved of his command by the impatient National Convention.*

This septuagenarian foreign count showed a lordly blindness to his adoptive country’s situation both fiscal and political by journeying to Paris later in 1793 to complain that his pension was not being funded in full. Other officers had already fallen under the Terror’s blade for command failure, where any shortcoming in the field could be readily conflated with treachery — and Luckner, no surprise, was soon denounced as a royalist.

City hall in the small Bavarian town of Cham, where Luckner was born in 1722, still chimes the Marseillaise every day to honor its native son … whose name also associates with Germany’s World War I naval hero Felix von Luckner, the great grandson of our man Nicolas.

* The Convention’s emissary on this occasion was Choderlos de Laclos … best known now (and then) as the author of the viperous epistolary novel of ancien regime misbehavior Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

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Feast Day of St. Gordius

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January 3 is the feast date of Saint Gordius, a centurion said to have abandoned his spatha and scutum in favor of a pious hermit’s desert solitaire.

While we have many examples of martyrs attributed to Diocletian‘s persecution, Gordius belongs to the subsequent, transitional era. His purported death in 320 would have been a mere five years before the Council of Nicaea convened by the empire’s Christian ruler Constantine.

But in Gordius’s time, Constantine only ruled half the Roman world — the western half. The eastern half, where Gordius munched his insects, was in the hands of the empire’s last pagan baddie,* Licinius.

Gordius is said to have tied a knot in some games being staged in the Anatolian city of Caesarea to honor “a war-loving deity” (presumably Mars). “The whole people were collected above the hippodrome, and not a Gentile or a Jew was absent. No small portion of the Christians was mingled with them, who guarded not their lives from sin, but sat in the assemblies of vanity.”

We are quoting here from one of our primary sources on the life of Gordius, or at least of how it was understood just a few generations distant: it is a homily on the martyr delivered by St. Basil in the late fourth century — a native son of Caesarea, and then its bishop, who says of Gordius that “we are the more attached to him, inasmuch as he is our peculiar ornament … having grown up in our native soil, and attained the very height of glory.”

Per Basil, his late countryman, “mighty in soul, sublime in resolution, descended from the mountains upon the theatre” to harangue the impious spectators — and to solicit his own martyrdom.

The eyes of the whole theatre were instantaneously fixed on the unwonted prodigy. They beheld a man of aspect wild, and savage, through his long abiding in the mountains: his hair was matted, his beard bushy, his garments squallid, his whole body parched and shrivelled: he bore in his hand a staff; a wallet was suspended by his side; and beaming around him from an unknown source, a certain grace ineffable threw a charm upon the whole.

As soon as he was recognized, a loud and commingled shout was raised by all; those who were allied to him in faith, crying out for joy; and those who were enemies to the truth, exciting the judge to murder him, and before his trial, condemning him to death …

Being immediately apprehended, he was dragged before the governour, who sat in the theatre, and directed the contention of the chariots. At first, he addressed the prisoner in a gentle, and benignant tone … [Gordius] said, I am present here, by deeds to attest at once, my disregard of thine imperial mandate, and my faith in that God upon whom my hopes repose. Having heard that thou art eminent in harshness and severity, I have chosen this, as the fittest season for accomplishing my desire.

When he thus spake, his words lighted up the fury of the ruler, and drew upon himself his accumulated rage. Call the Lichtors hither. Where are the leaden weights? Where are the scourges? Let him be stretched on the wheel; let his limbs be racked: let all modes of punishment be prepared: the wild beasts; the fire; the sword; the cross; the pit …

While the tyrant thus felt, and purposed, the saint, looking unto God, was weaving round his heart, the enchantment of a holy psalm. “The Lord,” he exclaimed, “is my helper. I will not be affrighted at what man shall do unto me. I will not e affrighted at evil things, for thou art with me.” Other passages akin to these, and inspiring courage, he repeated; such as ye may imagine him to have been deeply imbued with; him, who was so far from trembling at the threatened evils, that he even provoked and challenged them. Wherefore do ye linger? he exclaimed. Wherefore do ye stand inactive? Let my body be torn: let my limbs be racked: torture them as much as ye desire: do not envy me the blessed hope I cherish; for in proportion as ye extend my sufferings, ye acquire for me a brighter retribution.

…

He spake: he signed himself with the symbol of the cross, and went forward to receive the blow. No fear blanched the hue of his complexion, or dimned the glory of his countenance. He seemed, not as if he were delivering himself to the Lictors, but as if consigning himself to the hands of angels; those angels, who in the moment of his liberation, wafted him to the blessed life, as once they wafted Lazarus. — But oh! who can describe the terrific shout, which arose from the assembled multitude? What thunder, pealing from the clouds, ever transmitted such a sound to earth, as then thundred from earth to heaven? This is the very stadidum in which he was enwreathed. This very day beheld that wonrous spectacle; whose impression, no time can obliterate; no familiarity can weaken; no future achievements can surpass. For as we ever behold the sun, and ever admire his brightness; even so, will the memory of the Martyr be ever blooming and efflorescent. “The just man is for an everlasting memorial;” a memorial with the inhabitants of earth, as long as the earth endureth; a memorial with the Saints in Heaven; a memorial with the all-righteous Judge; unto whom be ascribed glory, and dominion, through eternity.

Amen.

* Bar Julian the Apostate‘s short-lived attempt to revive the ancient rites.

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1864: James Utz, St. Louis spy

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Confederate agent James Morgan Utz had a blue Christmas indeed in 1864, awaiting his December 26 execution for espionage.

The Missourian had been captured traveling with a small band out of St. Louis disguised in Union uniforms and carrying supplies and ciphered messages for the invading Confederate army of General (and former governor) Sterling Price.

The federals handled Utz as a spy and a military court sentenced him to hang — a sentence that had already been carried out by the time President Lincoln’s grant of executed clemency arrived.

Tuesday morning last I was horrified at the announcement by a friend that Jas. Utz, Paul’s companion and leader in their attempt to go South, had been executed, being hung on Monday, the day after Christmas, in the jail yard.

It plunged me in a stupor or excitement from which my mind was not free for the entire day. The sentence barely issued and the punishment instantly carried out! The hurry, the suddenness was most revolting. No time given for taking leave of family, friends! No time for appealing for mercy or for a reprieve. No time allowed for composing himself for death!

–Diary of a family member of Paul Fusz, one of Utz’s secret party. (Fusz, only 17 when captured, was pardoned after serving six months at hard labor.)

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