The assassination of a single prominent person has often changed the fate of nations. Throughout history, rulers of all kinds—kings, emperors, and presidents—as well as reformers and revolutionaries, have fallen prey to the weapons of assassins, sometimes marking the end of an era or the beginning of a new one. Assassinations have often shown how quickly or profoundly the actions of a single person can reshape the prevailing arrangements in a city, country, or even the entire world. Not surprisingly, assassinations date back to antiquity. In the first century CE, a radical Jewish splinter group operated in Judaea, using hidden daggers (sikae) to assassinate Roman officials. The word assassin, however, is derived from Hashshashin (or Nizari Ismailis), a secretive medieval sect of Shia Muslims founded in 1090 CE by Hassan-i Sabbah. Operating out of mountain fortresses in Persia and Syria, they conducted political killings and espionage because they lacked the military strength of their enemies.
Among ancient rulers, several were assassinated, including pharaoh Teti of the Old Kingdom Sixth Dynasty (23rd century BC), Amenemhat I (c. 20th century BC), Ramesses III (c. 1155 BC), and Queen Jezebel of Israel (9th century BCE), also Philip II of Macedon (336 BCE), the father of Alexander the Great, stabbed to death by Pausanias, one of his own bodyguards, during a public festival. Julius Caesar (44 BCE), the famous dictator and general, was stabbed 23 times by a group of senators, including his friend Marcus Brutus. The conspirators believed they were saving the Roman Republic from tyranny. Ironically, they achieved the opposite of what they intended. Instead of restoring republican government, it plunged Rome into civil war, ultimately paving the way for the rise of Caesar’s adopted heir, Augustus, the first Roman emperor.
Following the rapid Arab conquests, Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Caliph of Islam, was fatally stabbed in 644 CE by an enslaved Persian man named Abu Lu’lu’ah (Firuz) while leading the morning (Fajr) prayer at the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina. In the Byzantine period, the emperor Nikephoros II Phokas was assassinated in 969 in his bedchamber in the Boukoleon Palace in Constantinople, murdered in a conspiracy led by his trusted general and nephew, John Tzimiskes, with the complicity of his own wife, Empress Theophano.
Moving to the Middle Ages, in 1584, William the Silent, leader of the Dutch revolt against Spanish rule, became the first head of state to be killed with a handgun. Although his death was a severe blow to the Dutch independence movement, it did not destroy it. Instead, William became a national martyr, and the struggle eventually resulted in the independence of the Dutch Republic. A little later, in 1610 in Paris, Henry IV, remembered as Good King Henry, was assassinated by the fanatic François Ravaillac in one of the most momentous murders in French history.
Moving to the New World, Abraham Lincoln (1865), 16th United States President, was shot in the back of the head by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. during a performance of Our American Cousin and died the following morning. His assassination at the end of the American Civil War solidified his legacy as one of America’s most revered leaders.
James A. Garfield, 20th US President, was shot with two bullets in 1881 by an office seeker, Charles Guiteau. Garfield died from severe infection caused by unsterilized medical practices rather than from the direct impact of the bullet. William McKinley, the 25th US President, was shot twice in 1901 with a concealed weapon by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz at the Temple of Music on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. He died eight days later, now thought to have been due to slow leakage of pancreatic juice from an injury of the pancreas.
The old continent of Europe also suffered continued attacks on its rulers. In 1881, Tsar Alexander II, known as “the Liberator” for freeing millions of serfs, was killed by members of the revolutionary organization Narodnaya Volya. Ironically, the tsar had been considering constitutional reforms when he was assassinated. His successor abandoned these plans, imposed harsher repression, and widened the gulf between the Russian monarchy and its people, helping create the conditions that eventually led to the Russian Revolution. Empress Elisabeth of Austria, wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I, was assassinated in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1898, by Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni, who stabbed her in the heart with a sharpened file as she walked to a steamship on the Quai du Mont-Blanc. King Umberto I of Italy was shot four times by Gaetano Bresci, an Italian-American anarchist on September 29, 1900 in Monza, Italy, to avenge the Bava Beccaris massacre, in which the Italian military had fired on starving protesters in Milan in 1898. Perhaps no assassination had more immediate consequences than that of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary. On June 28, 1914, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was shot in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb nationalist. The web of military alliances across Europe transformed the incident into a continental crisis. Within weeks, Europe was engulfed in the First World War, a conflict that claimed millions of lives, destroyed four empires, and laid the foundations for the Second World War.
Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, a British politician, was shot dead on June 22, 1922, in London by two Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers. Alexander II, King of Yugoslavia (1934), was killed on a visit to Marseilles by the Croatian nationalist Vlado Chernozemski, connected to both the Croatian Ustaše and the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). The attack also claimed the life of French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou. Pancho Villa, one of the most conspicuous figures behind the Mexican Revolution, was assassinated in 1923 in Hidalgo del Parral, Chihuahua. Gunmen ambushed his car, firing over 40 shots and killing the revolutionary leader along with four companions. The attack is widely believed to have been politically orchestrated by government officials who feared his return to power.
The twentieth century also witnessed assassinations motivated by struggles for national independence and civil rights. In 1948, Mahatma Gandhi, leader of India’s non-violent independence movement, was assassinated by a Hindu extremist who opposed Gandhi’s efforts to promote reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi’s death shocked the world, yet his philosophy of non-violent resistance continued to inspire leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela.
The United States experienced another profound tragedy in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was shot while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas. Official inquiries concluded that shooter Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, although alternative theories continue to attract public interest. Kennedy’s death marked the end of a period of optimism for many Americans and profoundly influenced the nation’s politics during the turbulent 1960s. Two days later, while being transferred to the county jail, Oswald was shot and killed at point-blank range by local nightclub owner Jack Ruby. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the former president’s brother, campaigned for the presidency and was assassinated in Los Angeles in 1968.
Hendrik Verwoerd, the prime minister of South Africa, known for his rigid adherence to apartheid, was assassinated by a parliamentary messenger in 1966. He was associated with the institutionalization of racial division in South Africa, which set the stage for decades of conflict and repression. In April 1968, Martin Luther King Jr., the foremost leader of the United States civil rights movement, was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee. His commitment to peaceful protest conversely transformed American society and helped secure landmark civil rights legislation.
Political assassinations have continued into the modern era. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was killed in 1981 after signing a peace treaty with Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by an extremist who opposed the peace process. Benazir Bhutto, the first female Prime Minister of Pakistan, was assassinated by a combined shooting and suicide bombing after a political rally in Rawalpindi. It destabilized Pakistani politics and altered the course of democratic transitions in the region.
Most assassinations mentioned here had consequences far beyond the deaths of the individuals involved. The assassination of Julius Caesar contributed to the fall of the Roman Republic, the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand ignited World War I, and the deaths of Lincoln, Gandhi, Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. altered the political and social development of their nations. Thus, assassinations are not mere acts of violence against individuals. They are often turning points that reshape the course of history.