Et tu ...? - Sepia Saturday

The prompt this week shows Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife leaving the town hall in Sarajevo eight minutes before he was assassinated on 26 June 1914.

This week people are commemorating the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy of the USA. Unfortunately I cannot recall where I was or what I was doing on that day. My wife says she was feeding our month-old son.

I have chosen therefore to look at other assassinations and assassination attempts from history starting with:

Death of Caesar, 15 March 44 BC
(Oil on canvas - Jean-Léon Gérôme - Walters Art Museum, Baltimore)

The painting depicts the aftermath of the incident where Caesar is stabbed to death, with Brutus striking the final blow - immortalised by Shakespeare's "Et tu, Brute." 

Shortly after Shakespeare has Cassius encouraging people to proclaim, "Liberty, freedom and enfranchisement."

That seems to me to be a natural link to the cry arising during the French Revolution - "Liberté, egalité, fraternité" - and the republican assassinated in his bath by a 24 year-old gentlewoman.

Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat by Charlotte Corday,
13 July, 1793
(Painting by Jean=Joseph Weerts)

Charlotte did not attempt to escape and lost her head to the guillotine. [You may read about her here ]

On 18 May 1912 John Bellingham lost his life at the end of a rope. Convicted by a jury who took only ten minutes to find him guilty just 4 days after the bankrupt and embittered business man had become an assassin.

Assassination of Spencer Perceval the British Prime Minister by John Bellingham at the Palace of Westminster in 1812

Edward Oxford was more fortunate; his assassination attempt failed.

Edward Oxford shoots at Queen Victoria - June 18, 1840

This water colour painting by G H Miles, now in the British Museum, shows the Queen and the Prince Consort driving in a phaeton towards Constitution Hill; a policeman runs towards Oxford as he fires.

Oxford, a discharged barman, was treated as a madman and confined in Bedlam, before eventually being sent to Broadmoor. Released on his promise to go to Australia,  he was reported to be working there as a house painter as late as 1882.

By that time two American Presidents had been killed by bullets from assassins. Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth in 1865 and James A Garfield by Charles J Guiteau in 1881

Engraving of Garfield's assassination (July 2, 1881)

The caption to the picture of the engraving, published in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, reads:

Scene in the ladies room of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Depot - the arrest of the assassin. - ... - The assassin Charles Guiteau is being restrained by members of the crowd.

Guiteau, a preacher, writer and lawyer, was convicted and hanged.

I looked for videos to back up this post and came across the Stephen Sondheim musical "Assassins" which included actors representing Booth, Guiteau, Leon Czolgosz (killer of President McKinley) and Lee Harvey Oswald.

That brings us back to Kennedy again and enough exposure of assassins in an age when states can kill by remotely controlled drones.

For hopefully less morbid memories cross over to Sepia-Saturday-204.