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ISSUE 5
VOLUME 1
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HISTORY
A S S A S S I N S & A S S A S S I N A T I O N S
INSIDE
DALLAS 1963
THE DAY
THAT KENNEDY CAME TO TOWN
*The Romanovs* Rosa Luxemburg* Franz Ferdinand: The Assassination that Changed the
world* Lord Mountbatten* Anwar Sadat* The Plot to Kill the Future George V *Spencer
Percival* Charlotte Corday* The assassination of George Villers* U.S Presidents Garfield,
McKinley and Lincoln*

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
The History of Assassin's & Assassinations can be a rather murky
one. Not everything is at seems. President Kennedy's assassination
on the 22nd November 1963 is a testament to that statement.
Whilst the official story is one where Lee Harvey Oswald acted as a
lone gunman, conspiracy theories have since taken a hold on the
public's imagination. It is easy to see why. With so much conflicting
evidence it was a murder primed with contention. However, it is
important to remember that the work of historians is not to mould
the evidence to suit their own agenda. We must be impartial and
go where the evidence takes us. We take a look at the day's events
for our article and let you decide whether or not to take it further.
It would have been easy to have created an issue based on simply
recreating the narratives that currently exist but for this issue some
of our articles explore a different narrative. In some instances, we
take a closer look at how assassinations shaped the lives of those
who were there yet became victims despite not being the intended
target. We also look at the mental health of assassins who would
go on to take their place in history and how politics can often be
responsible for pulling the trigger.
Our aim with this edition is to give a mix, not simply of
assassinations that changed the world, but also to highlight the
assassins themselves.
As always, we have gathered writers from different fields to help us
understand more about our selected assassinations. From Thomas
Becket to Anwar Sadat, I am sure you will agree that we have
covered as many bases as possible.
I hope that it inspires you to find out more for yourselves.
N I C K K E V E R N
Editor-in-Chief
ASSASSINS &
ASSASSINATIONS
21
INSIDE
HISTORY
EDITOR
N I C K K E V E R N
DESIGN
36
N K D M E D I A
CONTRIBUTORS
Melanie Clegg
Zoe Davies
Luke Foddy
Vince Guerriei
James Hobson
Anmol Irfan
Mallory James
Dean Jobb
Rachel Lee Perez
Hannah Pringle
Natasha Tidd
Heidi Wachter
Robert Walsh
IMAGES
Smithsonian
Pickpik
Pikrepo
Public Domain Review
Wikimedia Commons
British Library
Pixabay
National Maritime Museum,
Greenwich
Netflix
Pen & Sword
Dean Jobb Collection
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INSIDE
THIS ISSUE
Luke Foddy
of Thomas Becket
Vince Guerriei
the assassination of William Mckinley
36
SACRILEGE & REPENTANCE: The Assassins
6
40
Franz Ferdinand: The Assassination
assassination of George Villers
the
James Hobson
Zoe Davies
10
that changed the World
44
Killing a Dynasty: The assassination of
14
Charotte Coday and the Assassination
Melaine Clegg
of Jean-paul Marat
Hannah Pringle
the Romanovs
48
18
PERCEVAL: An infamous murder
SPENCER
Mallory James
Heidi Wachter
The last hours of rosa luxumburg
52
Nightmare on elm street: WHEN JOHN F
No One Survived: How Lincoln’s
Assassination Destroyed the Lives of
Nick Kevern
22
KENNEDY CAME TO DALLAS
All who Sat in the Presidential Box
Rachel Lee Perez
that Night
56
DEATH AT MULLAGHMORE: The
assassination of lord LOUIS
26
Madness of CHARLES Guiteau
The
Natasha Tidd
Robert Walsh
Mountbatten
The untold story of the 1883 fenian
to kill the future king george v
plot
Dean Jobb
Anmol Irfan
the assassination of Anwar sadat
30
60

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HISTORY

KILLING A DYNASTYOF THE ROMANOVS
THE ROMANOVS
THE ASSASSINATION
44 INSIDE HISTORY

INSIDE HISTORY | 45

THE ROMANOVS
Walt Disney’s Anastasia introduces the tragic events that
encompassed Russia in the early part of the twentieth
century. We are familiar with the storming of the Winter
Palace and the role of Rasputin, but what do we know
about the assassination of the monarchy and the events
that led up to their deaths?
The assassination of the Romanov family in 1918 was an
act fuelled by general unrest, military disagreement and
political greed. Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was unpopular
with the public, Duma and military. He was represented as
a tyrant within propaganda and he was viewed as an
incapable ruler. These negative perceptions of the Tsar,
were accompanied by the growing faction under Vladimir
Lenin - the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks challenged Nicholas
II’s rule and undermined his authority. They were
responsible for the assassination of the Romanov family.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin)
In the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905,
workers and peasants turned their anger and frustration
towards Tsar Nicholas II. The 1905 revolution was the first
of three revolutions that sought to change the way Russia
was governed. The St. Petersburg peaceful protest ended
in an extremely violent attack, where the Imperial Guard
shot down all protestors that approached the Winter
Palace. ‘Bloody Sunday’ became a contributing factor to
the assassination of the Romanov family. It is accompanied
by the poorly equipped Russian army in WWI and Nicholas
II’s failure to uphold the constitutional monarchy, which he
outlined in the October Manifesto 1905.
The February Revolution of 1917 witnessed the abdication
of the Tsar and the establishment of the provisional
government. In order to protect his country and his family,
Tsar Nicholas II abdicated on March 17, 1917, bringing an
end to 300 years of Romanov rule. The autocracy was
replaced by a provisional government that lasted only 9
months. Nicholas II’s wife, Alexandra Feodorovna, was the
granddaughter of Queen Victoria and the Romanov family
requested refuge in England. George V, King of England,
refused their plea due to the unpopular - public and
parliamentary - opinion of Nicholas II.
Whilst the Romanovs were imprisoned in Tobolsk, Siberia,
Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky organised the second
revolution. As the civil war began to pick up pace following
the October Revolution of 1917, the Romanovs were
moved and imprisoned in Yekaterinburg.
The Romanovs occupied the ‘House of Special Purpose’ for
74 days before the fateful night of July 16, 1918. The
increasing threat of the White army, encouraged a decision
to be made regarding the fate of the Romanovs. A group
of Bolsheviks, led by Yakov Yurovsky, turned their guns on
the family and violently murdered Nicholas II, his wife
Alexandra Feodorovna and their five children, Olga,
Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexei. This premeditated
murder was not a quick one. The murderers used guns,
bayonets and brute force to murder the children, as the
jewels sown in to their clothing acted as a shield to the
Nicholas II on the day of his wedding in 1894 (Public Domain)
46 | INSIDE HISTORY

THE ROMANOVS
The assassination of his wife and children remained a
secret. It is likely that the Bolsheviks spun the news of the
assassination in a way that enabled them to gain public
support. They produced a range of propaganda that
exploited the late Tsar’s weaknesses. The news of the
assassination provided an opportunity for Vladimir Lenin
to establish a new government and push through a new
political system. The violence did not stop on July 16, but
continued for 84 days as the Bolsheviks continued to
murder members of the Romanov family.
Ipatiev House, Yekaterinburg, (later Sverdlovsk) in 1928
bullets. The family were stripped of their clothing, doused
in acid and buried in two unmarked graves. It is thought
that the first grave was too shallow to contain the bodies
of the family and their servants. The remains of Anastasia
and Alexei needed to be buried elsewhere.
In the days that followed, it became public knowledge that
Nicholas II had been assassinated:
" It is now announced by the
Bolshevik Government that the ex-
Tsar has been shot by the order of the
Ural Regional Council, who state that
they decided upon that course owing
to the threat of the Czecho-Slovaks
against the capital of the Red Ural,
and their discovery of a counterrevolutionary
plot in which the
former monarch was involved."
No One Survived
The graves were not discovered until 1979 and 2007. In
1979, the remains of Nicholas II, Alexandra, Olga, Tatiana
and Maria were uncovered. The Russian Orthodox Church
canonised the Romanovs on November 1, 1981 and
reburied their remains in 1998. The church, however, failed
to recognise the discovery of Anastasia and Alexei in 2007.
The remains of these two children have not been laid to
rest with their family, sparking interesting ideas regarding
political motives and the place of the Romanovs in modern
day Russia.
There are many unanswered questions surrounding the
assassination of the Romanovs: Would the Romanov family
have been assassinated if they were granted refuge in
England? Was Tsar Nicholas II the tyrant he is perceived to
be, or a man that was just not destined to rule? Why was
the entire Romanov family assassinated and not just Tsar
Nicholas II?
The assassination of the entire Romanov family, symbolises
anger, frustration, violence and calculated actions. Prior to
Anastasia’s identification, many speculated how she
somehow escaped and was alive. She represented hope for
those that wanted to reestablish the monarchy in Russia.
The Russian Orthodox Church continues to hold
ceremonies honouring the Romanov family, and a
proportion of the population still mourn their deaths. Was
the assassination of the Romanov family a necessary evil in
order for Russia to move forward?
Hannah Pringle is a Early Modern Historian and researcher
specialising in Witchcraft and Folklore. She has previously
written for Inside History with our Witchcraft issue and
appeared on numerous podcasts including History Hack. .
@hannahjpringle
INSIDE HISTORY | 47

18th Century
14 | INSIDE HISTORY

18th Century
CHARLOTTE CORDAY
& THE ASSASSINATION OF
JEAN-PAUL
MARAT
In the eyes of Charlotte Corday, Jean-Paul Marat, was an enemy of the people
following the September Massacres of 1972. She held him responsible for the
murders of prisoners in Revoultionary France. Months later, she made sure he
would be made accountable. Melanie Clegg explains more about what led
Charlotte Corday to assassinate Jean-Paul Marat.
At seven in the morning of Sunday, 13th
July 1793, Marie-Anne Charlotte Corday
d’Armont, an attractive and unusually
tall young woman with neatly but not
very fashionably arranged chestnut hair,
clear blue eyes, an enviably fresh
complexion and a confident demeanour,
walked the short distance between the
slightly down at heel but still respectable
Hôtel de la Providence at 19 Rue Hérold
and the famously elegant arcades of the
Palais Royal, which had been one of the
most fashionable spots in Paris ever
since its owner, the king’s renegade
cousin, the Duc d’Orléans, opened it to
the public in 1786. It was Corday’s first
visit to Paris - she had arrived only two
days earlier from Caen in Normandy,
after telling her concerned relatives that
she was planning to emigrate to England,
having become disenchanted by the
increasingly violent direction that the
Revolution was taking. She was an ardent
supporter of the moderate Girondin
group, many of whom had recently taken
refuge in Caen after being forcibly
purged from the Convention by their
enemies, the Montagnards, who were led
by their most implacable enemy Marat
and his associates, Robespierre and
Danton. Inflamed by the furious rhetoric
of the exiled Girondins, Corday
developed an intense loathing for
Marat, whom she considered to be the
root cause of all the evils that were
currently besetting France and quickly
resolved to kill him - an action that she
believed would bring the violence to an
end. However, her original plan to
publicly murder Marat in front of
hundreds of witnesses, either during
the Bastille Day celebrations or in the
Convention was quickly thwarted when
she discovered that he was seriously ill
with a painful skin condition and had
not been seen abroad for several
weeks. Forced to think again, she
abandoned her plans to murder Marat
on Bastille day and instead decided to
somehow gain admittance to his
lodgings a day earlier and kill him there
without any witnesses. It was not quite
the grand public gesture of bloody
defiance that she had anticipated but it
would have to do.
Although Marat, the self proclaimed
‘Ami du Peuple’, had once prided
himself on his extreme accessibility and
had formerly been in the habit of
welcoming anyone who wanted to see
him to his apartment, it was now
extremely difficult for anyone other
than his wife, Simone and closest
friends and associates to see him.
However, Corday was undaunted by this
latest set back and after her stroll in the
Palais Royal gardens, she purchased a
cheap knife and set out for Marat’s
home on the Rue des Cordeliers. Her
first attempt to gain admittance was
foiled by Marat’s sister in law, Catherine,
who refused to let her in, after which
she returned to her hotel and wrote
Marat a brief note, in which she claimed
to have information about secret plots
that her Girondin friends were hatching
in Caen.
When there was no reply to her first
missive, Corday sent another more
forceful one to Marat, after which she
once again made her way to his home,
this time wearing a rather more
INSIDE HISTORY | 15

attractive outfit, which she hoped would
make him more likely to admit her. This
time it was Simone who came downstairs
in order to block the path of this
suspiciously attractive young visitor and
demand to know why she was so keen to
see her husband. Sensing that Simone
would be only too happy to forcibly eject
her from the premises and that this
might well be her last chance to get close
to Marat, Charlotte desperately shouted
that she was simply a good citizen who
had come all the way from Normandy in
order to report the terrible plots against
the nation that were currently being
cooked up by the renegade Girondins
hiding out in Caen. As she had hoped,
this bold declaration was enough to stop
Simone in her tracks and had also floated
up the stairs to the back room where
Marat was resting in his daily herbal bath.
Intrigued, he feebly called down the stairs
to ask Simone bring Charlotte to him
straight away.
Once inside Marat’s room, Charlotte was
disappointed to find that Simone was
clearly determined not to leave them
alone together and so was forced to talk
to Marat about the alleged conspiracy
until his wife got bored and left the room
- at which point, Corday pulled out the
knife that she had concealed down the
front of her bodice and stabbed him in
the chest. Marat’s dying screams brought
his wife running back into the room,
along with other members of the
household, who apprehended Corday
before she could leave. She was then
interrogated in Marat’s apartment for
several hours before being escorted
through a baying, threatening crowd to
the nearby Abbaye prison. The
murderous rage of the mob left Charlotte
shaken - she was still completely
convinced that killing Marat had been
the only right and proper thing to do but
had underestimated just how beloved a
figure he was amongst the working
classes in Paris, where he truly was
regarded as a benevolent friend to all
men. While Charlotte settled into her
dank prison cell, plans were already
going ahead for Marat’s elaborate funeral
as well as his commemorative portrait by
his friend, the artist David - which
remains the greatest masterpiece of
French revolutionary art. His murder had
shocked his colleagues in the Convention
- and they were all the more horrified to
learn that his assassin was a well brought
up and respectable young woman from
the provinces. It was completely
inconceivable to everyone that such a
woman could possibly have acted alone
and so it was assumed that there must
surely be a lover lurking in the background,
who had manipulated her into doing his
bidding.
On the 16th July, Charlotte was moved to
the Conciergerie, a formidable turreted
Medieval fortress close to Notre Dame on
the Ile de la Cité in the middle of the Seine.
Formerly a royal palace, it now housed the
Tribunal and a large prison, which was
already becoming known as the
‘antechamber of death’ thanks to the fact
that usually only those who were about to
be put on trial were transferred there. The
following morning, Charlotte was taken
from her cell, where she was being kept in
solitary confinement and taken to the
court room, where a large crowd had
gathered to watch her trial. ‘I knew he was
perverting France,’ Corday proudly
declared to the judges. ‘I killed one man in
order to save a hundred thousand.’ Later
she would also tell the court that: ‘I was a
Republican long before the Revolution and
I have never lacked energy’ before
clarifying, with a patriotic vigour that even
accomplished orators like Danton, Saint
Just and Robespierre might have envied,
that by energy she meant ‘that resolution
which is given to people who put their
private interests aside and who know how
to sacrifice themselves bravely for their
country.’ Although the verdict was a
foregone conclusion, her lawyer,
Chauveau-Lagarde, who would later
defend Marie Antoinette, put up a spirited
defence, claiming that Charlotte’s actions
had been motivated by a pure and
passionate love for her country. ‘The
defendant calmly admits the horrible
murder she has committed,’ he told the
court before going on to emphasise the
fact that she showed no evidence of
being insane and that the murder had
been premeditated and carefully
planned rather than being a deranged
and impulsive act of spontaneous
violence. ‘Such calm, such composure,
such serenity in the face of death,
sublime in their own way, are unnatural:
they can only come from an exaltation
of spirit born of political fanaticism. That
is what put the knife in her hand.’
Charlotte showed no emotion as she
was declared guilty and sentenced to be
executed that same day at five in the
afternoon. Before her trial began, she
had asked the Committee of General
Safety if an artist could be allowed to
paint her portrait. ‘I would like to leave
this token of my memory to my friends,’
she wrote to them. ‘Indeed, just as one
cherishes the image of good citizens,
curiosity sometimes seeks out those of
great criminals, which serves to
perpetuate horror at their crimes.’
Surprisingly, they agreed and the artist
Jean-Jacques Hauer was authorised to
paint her likeness, completing the
painting only moments before she was
led away to her tumbrel. Corday went to
her death wearing the red shift dress
traditionally worn by murderers and
with her chestnut hair cut short. As her
tumbrel made its way through the
streets of Paris, the hot weather finally
broke and there was a sudden
rainstorm, which ended shortly before
her cavalcade arrived in the Place de la
Révolution, where the guillotine awaited
her. Hoping to spare her from the
terrifying sight, the executioner Sanson
stood up and tried to block it from her
view - only for Corday to ask him to
stand aside. ‘I have a right to be
curious,’ she gently scolded him. ‘This is
the first time that I have seen it.’ After
her execution, an onlooker on the
platform snatched her head out of the
basket and slapped the cheeks, which
appeared to blush red with shame -
much to the horror of the crowd. Later,
her body would be taken to the Hôpital
de la Charité on the Rue des Saints-
Pères where, in the presence of the
artist David and several other curious
deputies from the Convention, it was
subjected to a post mortem where to
general disappointment it was
16 | INSIDE HISTORY

18th Century
established whether or not Corday was
as virginal as she had claimed to be, after
which she was interred in the cemetery
of the Madeleine church, in plot five,
directly next to the spot where Louis XVI
had been buried almost seven months
earlier.
Naturally, the Girondins were inclined to
greatly admire Charlotte’s self sacrificial
heroism, which would not have been out
of place in one of the Ancient Roman
books that she had once loved to read,
but they were nonetheless still dismayed
by her poor choice of target - if it had
been up to them, they would
have killed the far more insidiously
dangerous Robespierre instead of Marat
and certainly it could be argued that this
death would indeed have had the
desired effect of saving many thousands
more. ‘An astonishing woman, heeding
only her courage, came to kill the apostle
of murder and piracy: she deserves the
admiration of the universe,’ Madame
Roland wrote about Charlotte Corday.
‘But being ill informed about the state of
things, she chose the wrong time and the
wrong victim. There was a greater
scoundrel.’ Meanwhile, her friend
Barbaroux, to whom Charlotte had
written from prison, complained that ‘if
she had consulted me and if it had been
possible to advise on such an act, it
would not have been to Marat’s heart
that I should have shown the way.’
Meanwhile, Barbaroux’s colleague and
friend Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud, who
was currently languishing in La Force
prison in the Marais, was quick to grasp
the fact that her act would have serious
and dangerous repercussions for himself
and all the other Girondins. ‘She has
killed us,’ he remarked dryly. ‘But she has
also shown us how to die.’
Melanie Clegg
graduated from the
University of
Nottingham with a
degree in History of Art.
She originally turned to
writing historical fiction
and her women’s history
blog, Madame
Guillotine, before
becoming a full time
writer and historian.
@MmeGuillotine.
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