The killing of holders of high office for a predetermined political or ideological purpose is a practice as old as power politics itself. Assassins tells the darkly sensational story of twenty centuries of political murder, from the Roman era to the present. It includes accounts of many of the most infamous assassinations in history, from the slaying of Julius Caesar in 44 BC to the shooting of President Kennedy in 1963. Drawing on the latest research, Dr Steven Parissien presents a richly entertaining sequence of case-studies of this, the ultimate method of regime change. Each elegantly written essay includes not only a gripping account of the assassination, its political context and consequences, but also a biographical profile of both the slayer and the slain. Assassins runs the full gamut of murderous methods and motivations - from multiple stabbing to suicide bombing to aerial attack, from dynastic overthrow to religious fanaticism to the 'propaganda of the deed'. Sometimes shocking, but always involving and informative, it offers a dramatic and distinctive perspective on more than two millennia of world history.
Introduction: the long history of assassination. Julius Caesar, Roman
general and dictator, assassinated 44 BC - Birth of the Roman Empire.
Caligula, Roman emperor, assassinated AD 41 - The invasion of Britain. Thomas
Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, assassinated 1170 - St Thomas. Conrad of
Montferrat, Crusader leader, assassinated 1192 - The death of the lion. Lord
Darnley, Consort of Mary, Queen of Scots, assassinated 1567 - The death of
Mary, Queen of Scots. William I, "the Silent", ruler of the Dutch United
Provinces, assassinated 1584 - Father of the Fatherland. The Two Henries,
Henry, Duke of Guise, assassinated 1588, and Henry III of France,
assassinated 1589 - Ending the Wars of Religion. Henry IV, King of France,
assassinated 1610 - The Salic Law. 1st Duke of Buckingham, English royal
favourite, assassinated 1628 - Buckingham and the English Civil War. Gustav
III, King of Sweden, assassinated 1792 - "A Masked Ball". Jean-Paul Marat,
French revolutionary, assassinated 1793 - Marat's legacy. Paul of Russia,
Tsar of Russia, assassinated 1801 - Russia in the Napoleonic Wars. Spencer
Perceval, Prime Minister of Great Britain, assassinated 1812 - Perceval and
the radicals. Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States,
assassinated 1865 - The Gettysburg Address. Alexander II, Tsar of Russia,
assassinated 1881 - Serfdom. James Garfield, 20th President of the United
States, assassinated 1881 - The Battle of Chickamauga. Lord Frederick
Cavendish, Chief Secretary of Ireland, assassinated 1882 - The Fenians.
Elisabeth of Austria, Empress of Austria-Hungary, assassinated 1898 -
Anarchism. William McKinley, 25th President of the United States,
assassinated 1901 - The Spanish-American War. Jose Canalejas, Prime Minister
of Spain, assassinated 1912 - Primo de Rivera. Archduke Franz Ferdinand,
Austro-Hungarian heir, assassinated 1914 - Gavrilo Princip. Rasputin, Russian
royal favourite and mystic, assassinated 1916 - A British plot? Englebert
Dollfuss, Chancellor of Austria, assassinated 1934 - Austria in
1945.
Alexander of Yugoslavia, King of Yugoslavia, assassinated 1934 - Louis
Barthou and conspiracy theories. Huey Long, Governor of Louisiana,
assassinated 1935 - Casting a long shadow. Leon Trotsky, Russian
revolutionary, assassinated 1940 - Trotskyism. Reinhard Heydrich, Nazi
officer, assassinated 1942 - Origins and endings. Lord Moyne, British
colonial administrator, assassinated 1944 - Partitioning Palestine. Mohandas
K. Gandhi, Indian political leader, assassinated 1948 - Partition. Folke
Bernadotte, Swedish United Nations mediator, assassinated 1948 - US denial
and UN succession. Faisal II, King of Iraq, assassinated 1958 - From coup to
coup. Medgar Evers, US civil rights worker, assassinated 1963 - The Ku Klux
Klan. John F. Kennedy, 36th President of the United States, assassinated 1963
- Jack Ruby. Malcolm X, US civil rights activist, assassinated 1965 - Black
Power at the Olympics. Hendrik Verwoerd, President of South Africa,
assassinated 1966 - Apartheid. Martin Luther King, US civil rights leader,
assassinated 1968 - The March on Washington. Robert Kennedy, US politician,
assassinated 1968 - Chicago
1968. Georgi Markov, expatriate Bulgarian
dissident, assassinated 1978 - The end of a dictator. George Moscone and
Harvey Milk, elected officials of San Francisco, assassinated 1978 - The
Castro. Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, assassinated 1980 - The
School of the Americas. Anwat al-Sadat, President of Egypt, assassinated 1981
- The road to al-Qaeda. Benigno Aquino, Filipino politician, assassinated
1983 - Imelda Marcos: life after death. Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of
India, assassinated 1984 - After Indira. Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of
Israel, assassinated 1995 - The raid on Entebbe. Ahmad Shah Massoud, Afghan
guerrilla commander, assassinated 2001 - The Taliban. Alexander Litvinenko,
expatriate Russian dissident, assassinated 2006 - The new KGB. Epilogue:
Benazir Bhutto. Index.
Dr Steven Parissien is one of Britain most admired popular historians and the author of a number of distinguished works of architectural and social history. His many authorial credits include George IV: The Grand Entertainment, Station to Station, The Georgian House, Regency Style and Palladian Style.
