On this date in 1822,* General Jean Baptiste Berton (sometimes Breton) was guillotined in Poitiers.
A young junior officer during the French Revolutionary Wars, Breton/Berton scaled the Napoleonic ranks in the early 19th century and was elevated by the Corsican’s own hand to Brigadier General.
Upon Napoleon’s 1815 return from exile Breton rallied to the ex-emperor’s cause but he did not suffer the worst of it after Waterloo, instead scribbling his memoirs in enforced half-pay retirement.
This situation permitted the ex-marechal-de-camp both the time and the liberty to dabble in that era’s rife conspiracies intending the overthrow of the Bourbons — a fact which was exposed by mischance when one of the young cavalrymen he had recruited was killed in an accident with incriminating documents in his pockets. Agents provocateur baited him thereafter into a treasonable and doomed rebellion.
* Some sources give October 6, which was a Sunday. Primary documentation prefers October 5.
On this day..
- 1546: Jorge Robledo, Popayan conquistador
- 1866: The Richard Burgess gang, for the Maungatapu Murders
- 1737: Five Johns
- 1802: Sanite Belair, tigress
- 1736: Herry Moses, Jewish gangster
- 610: Phocas, "will you rule better?"
- 1943: 1,196 Jewish children from Bialystok
- 1900: Coleman Gillespie
- 1816: Camilo Torres, Manuel Rodriguez, and other leaders of independent New Granada
- 1922: C.C. Stassen, white miner
- 1949: Yoshio Kodaira, soldier turned serial killer
- 2007: A factory manager in a packed stadium
Bloch-Serazin 