Assassins' Deeds: A History of Assassination from Ancient Egypt to the Present Day: A History of Assassination from the Pharaohs of Egypt to the Present Day

345 Pages·2020·10.687 MB·English

by  John Withington

AssAssins’ DeeDs

A S S A S S I N S’
D E E D S
A History of AssAssinAtion
from Ancient egypt to
tHe present DAy
JoHn WitHington
Reaktion Books
For Anne
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
Unit 32, Waterside
44–48 Wharf Road
London n1 7ux, uk
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published 2020
Copyright © John Withington 2020
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Press Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
isbn 978 1 78914 351 5
CONTENTS
Prologue 7
1 The Ancient World 13
2 The Roman Empire and the Dark Ages 41
3 The Age of Chivalry 72
4 The Wars of Religion 102
5 The Age of Revolution 138
6 The Modern Age: World Wars and Terrorism 205
7 The Ones That Got Away 290
Select Bibliography 325
Photo Acknowledgements 335
Index 337

PROLOGUE
In the dead of night, the assassin creeps into the hotel room, and
is immediately confronted with a dilemma. The man he is there
to murder, an arms dealer supplying the enemy, is lying under a
mosquito net. Should he lift it, running the risk of waking the
sleeper, or should he just stab through it? In the darkness, his target
is an indistinct shadow, apart from a foot protruding from the net
right next to where he stands. This small corner of the dealer’s body
is illuminated by light from a window. A sudden noise startles
the assassin. Is he discovered? No. It is just car horns in the street
outside. He reflects that they seem to belong to a different world
to this one in which he is about to commit murder.
Then fear of being caught, tortured, executed evaporate. All
that matters is that he should kill the arms dealer before he can
fight back or cry out. He fumbles in his pockets. In the right is a
razor, and in the left, a dagger. Another dilemma. Which should
he use? He feels the razor is more dependable, but for some reason
it disgusts him. The profound silence in the room makes him
freeze, as though he is terrified that something might topple over
and wake his target. But nothing does.
He wonders: when he strikes with the dagger, will it penetrate
the victim’s flesh easily, or will it meet resistance? He cannot help
pressing its point into his own arm. The sleeper’s foot, by now
almost touching him, suddenly moves. To add to his horror, he
7
ASSASSINS’ DEEDS
feels an insect run across his skin. No, it is the trickle of blood! His
blood. The assassin’s eyes begin to adjust to the gloom, and he can
see the arms dealer is wearing just a pair of shorts and lying on his
side, making his heart a more difficult target. He is too chubby for
the assassin to make out the ribs, which means he will need to use
the victim’s nipples as markers to guide him to a fatal strike. As he
toys with the dagger, working out the best angle of attack, a death
rattle rasps in the arms dealer’s throat, but he carries on breathing
and the rattle turns into a snore. Then all at once he moves. With
a blow that would have split a plank, the assassin drives the dagger
down through the net and into the arms dealer.
The victim leaps up towards him, his body rebounding from
the bed springs. The assassin fights to hold him down. The arms
dealer’s legs jack-knife towards his chest, then jerk out straight and
stiff. The assassin thinks he needs to stab him again to be sure, but
can he pull the blade out? He does not dare let go of the dagger,
and now his shoulder is starting to hurt. The blood running down
his own arm is mixing with the blood running from the wound in
the victim’s chest just as it seems his own anguish is merging with
the arms dealer’s. Both are motionless. It appears to the assassin
that the only thing moving in the room is his furiously pounding
heart. He feels sure now the man must be dead, but as he holds
on to the knife, his arm starts to tremble. He feels overwhelmed
by revulsion but also by a taste for blood. His revulsion grows as
a mysterious figure with pointed ears begins to take form on the
sheet beside the dead man. Is it an evil spirit? The assassin is not
superstitious, but now he is paralysed with fear. Then a miaow.
It is an alley cat, which has somehow slipped in. Now it flees out
on to the balcony. The assassin follows and finds himself back on
the city streets.
Ten minutes later, the killer realizes he has left behind a crucial
document he was meant to steal, and he has to go back. Returning
to the room feels like going to prison. But in spite of the terrible
deed he has done, nothing seems to have changed. The man’s
8
Prologue
clothes are still hanging by the bed; just as before there is the
solitary rectangle of light, which he sees is coming from a late-
night gambling den. He thinks the document will be under the
pillow, but is he certain he has really killed the man? The assassin
has to close his eyes before he can steel himself to extract the paper.
Once he has it, he sees the arms dealer is dead all right. Eyes open.
No breathing. Blood on the sheets. The assassin finds the key, goes
out of the room, double-locks the door, and takes the lift down.
He checks in the mirror to make sure the deed has not put some
dreadful mark of guilt on his face. No. He looks the same as ever,
perhaps a bit tired.
The assassin was a young Chinese revolutionary, the city
Shanghai, the year 1927 and the murder the opening of André
Malraux’s award-winning novel La Condition humaine (1933).
When it comes to real assassins, we do not have the benefit of the
novelist’s all-seeing eye to peer into their souls. But we can exam-
ine whether Malraux’s nervous, self-doubting, rather bungling
young man is closer to their profile than those cool, assured fic-
tional killers who are better known, like James Bond or the Jackal.
That is one of the puzzles this book will try to unravel as it tells
the story of more than 4,000 years of assassination.
Even though Malraux’s assassin is operating in the twenti-
eth century, he chooses a weapon that would have been available
4,000 years before. How much has the practice of assassination
been changed by the many ingenious developments in ways to kill
people that those forty centuries have seen? Then there is motiva-
tion. Malraux’s character is driven by determination to advance a
political cause. How common is that among real assassins, and how
does it compare with other motives – religion, personal ambition,
financial or other reward, revenge, fear? What sort of people are
assassins? Malraux’s is a rebel, but how prominent have rulers and
governments been in assassination projects?
The victim in Malraux’s novel appears to have taken few pre-
cautions. Is that typical? Down the centuries, how careful have
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