- 1 day ago
- #history
- #royalty
- #assassination
#History #Royalty #Assassination
The Most Brutal Ways Legendary Kings Were Murdered
So, you conquer the entire known world by the time you’re 32, you’re undefeated in battle, and everyone basically thinks you’re a literal god. How do you go out? In a blaze of glory on the battlefield? Assassinated by a jealous rival? Nah, man. You go out in a sweaty, delirious, agonizing fever dream in a palace in Babylon. That’s the exit Alexander the Great got.
The story starts in late May, 323 BCE. Alexander attends a banquet, drinks a massive bowl of unmixed wine—like, the ancient equivalent of chugging Everclear—and soon after, he’s hit with this searing abdominal pain and a raging fever. For the next two weeks, this guy who stared down armies just… deteriorates. We’re talking chills, sweats, crippling exhaustion. But he’s still trying to run the empire from his bed, the absolute madman.
Timestamps:
00:00 - 02:13 Alexander the Great
02:13 - 04:25 Genghis Khan
04:25 - 06:25 Julius Caesar
06:25 - 08:30 Leonidas I of Sparta
08:30 - 10:42 Richard I “the Lionheart” of England
10:42 - 12:57 Shaka Zulu
Note:
⚠ All videos are created by myself. Copying without permission is prohibited.
📚 This
The Most Brutal Ways Legendary Kings Were Murdered
So, you conquer the entire known world by the time you’re 32, you’re undefeated in battle, and everyone basically thinks you’re a literal god. How do you go out? In a blaze of glory on the battlefield? Assassinated by a jealous rival? Nah, man. You go out in a sweaty, delirious, agonizing fever dream in a palace in Babylon. That’s the exit Alexander the Great got.
The story starts in late May, 323 BCE. Alexander attends a banquet, drinks a massive bowl of unmixed wine—like, the ancient equivalent of chugging Everclear—and soon after, he’s hit with this searing abdominal pain and a raging fever. For the next two weeks, this guy who stared down armies just… deteriorates. We’re talking chills, sweats, crippling exhaustion. But he’s still trying to run the empire from his bed, the absolute madman.
Timestamps:
00:00 - 02:13 Alexander the Great
02:13 - 04:25 Genghis Khan
04:25 - 06:25 Julius Caesar
06:25 - 08:30 Leonidas I of Sparta
08:30 - 10:42 Richard I “the Lionheart” of England
10:42 - 12:57 Shaka Zulu
Note:
⚠ All videos are created by myself. Copying without permission is prohibited.
📚 This
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:01Alexander the Great
00:02So, you conquer the entire known world by the time you're 32.
00:07You're undefeated in battle, and everyone basically thinks you're a literal god.
00:12How do you go out?
00:14In a blaze of glory on the battlefield?
00:17Assassinated by a jealous rival?
00:19Nah, man.
00:20You go out in a sweaty, delirious, agonizing fever dream in a palace in Babylon.
00:27That's the exit Alexander the Great.
00:30The story starts in late May, 323 BCE.
00:35Alexander attends a banquet, drinks a massive bowl of unmixed wine,
00:40like the ancient equivalent of chugging Everclear.
00:42And soon after, he's hit with this searing abdominal pain and a raging fever.
00:47For the next two weeks, this guy who stared down armies just deteriorates.
00:53We're talking chills, sweats, crippling exhaustion.
00:58But he's still trying to run the empire from his bed, the absolute madman.
01:03But it gets worse.
01:04He gradually loses the ability to speak.
01:07His soldiers, these grizzled veterans who had followed him to the ends of the earth,
01:11were so worried they demanded to see him.
01:14So they file past his bed, one by one, and all Alexander can do is greet them with his eyes.
01:21Can you imagine that?
01:23The most powerful man in the world, rendered completely silent, just watching his army say goodbye.
01:29He finally becomes unresponsive and is declared dead.
01:34But here's where it gets really weird.
01:36According to the accounts, his body doesn't decompose.
01:40For days.
01:42No signs of rot.
01:43Nothing.
01:44This, of course, just fuels the rumors that he was a god, or that he wasn't actually dead and was
01:50just paralyzed.
01:51Modern theories range from typhoid fever and malaria to acute pancreatitis from the heavy drinking.
01:58Some even whisper of poison, a slow-acting toxin slipped into his wine.
02:03The man who conquered the world was ultimately conquered by something inside his own body,
02:08leaving his empire to be torn apart by his generals.
02:13Genghis Khan
02:14Alright, so if Alexander's death was a slow, public spectacle,
02:19Genghis Khan's was the complete opposite.
02:21This is the guy who built the largest, contiguous land empire in history,
02:25a disciplined war machine that stretched from China to Europe.
02:30His death?
02:31A state secret.
02:32A ghost story.
02:34It's August 12, 27.
02:36Genghis is in his mid-60s, still personally leading a campaign against the Western Xia in northwestern China.
02:44They had defied him, and Genghis Khan did not do defiance.
02:48His goal was total annihilation.
02:52But during the campaign, he suddenly falls ill.
02:55Chinese and Persian chronicles say he developed a raging fever and was dead within about eight days.
03:01Just like that.
03:02The cause is a total mystery.
03:05Traditional stories are all over the place.
03:08Some say he was killed in battle.
03:10Others whisper he was mortally wounded by a captured Xia princess
03:13who used a hidden device to, uh, castrate him in his sleep before taking her own life.
03:20A more likely theory is that he died from complications from an earlier fall from his horse,
03:25or maybe an infectious disease like typhus or even the bubonic plague.
03:30The man who unleashed biological warfare on his enemies may have been taken out by a single invisible microbe.
03:37But here's the most insane part.
03:40His death was kept completely secret.
03:43His inner circle didn't want the army to lose morale or the enemy to get wind of it.
03:48So they pretend he's still alive while they finish the campaign.
03:52They crush the Western Xia, slaughtering its population and burning its cities to the ground,
03:57all while their leader's corpse is hidden in a tent.
04:01After the war is won, they transport his body back to Mongolia for a secret burial.
04:07The location is still unknown.
04:09The funeral procession supposedly killed anyone and anything they encountered to conceal the route.
04:15They literally erased his grave from history.
04:19The man who redrew the map of the world doesn't even have a marker.
04:25Julius Caesar.
04:26Okay, this one is the OG political assassination, the one all the others are compared to.
04:33Julius Caesar.
04:35The man who conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon, and basically dismantled the Roman Republic to make himself dictator for life.
04:43The date is the Ides of March.
04:45March 15th, 44 BCE.
04:48The whole city of Rome is buzzing with bad vibes.
04:51Soothsayers had warned Caesar about this day.
04:54His own wife, Calpurnia, had a nightmare that his statue was bleeding and begged him not to go to the
04:59Senate.
05:00But he goes anyway, probably feeling invincible like he always did.
05:04He arrives at the Curia of Pompeii, the Senate's meeting place.
05:08A group of senators, his supposed allies, surround him.
05:11They pretend they're presenting a petition.
05:13Then, one of them, Casca, strikes the first blow.
05:17It's the signal.
05:19Suddenly, it's a feeding frenzy.
05:21Daggers flash.
05:22These guys, about 60 of them, just go to town on him.
05:26Caesar tries to fight back at first, but he's overwhelmed.
05:28He staggers, bleeding, and collapses at the base of a statue of his old rival Pompeii.
05:36The irony is just, chef's kiss.
05:39An autopsy later revealed he had been stabbed 23 times.
05:4423!
05:45But here's the kicker.
05:47Only one of those wounds was actually fatal.
05:50A deep one to the chest.
05:52Most of the senators were just wildly stabbing, probably hitting each other in the chaos.
05:56It was a messy, savage, and deeply personal execution.
06:01His last words are famously recorded as,
06:04Et tu, Brute?
06:05You too, Brutus?
06:07As he saw his protege among the killers.
06:10Though in reality, he probably just died in shocked silence.
06:13The liberators thought they'd save the Republic,
06:15but all they did was light the fuse for a civil war
06:18that would burn it to the ground and give rise to the Roman Empire.
06:22Good job, guys.
06:24Leonidas I of Sparta.
06:27We all know the story.
06:28The 300 Spartans at the narrow pass of Thermopylae,
06:31holding off the entire Persian army.
06:34At the center of it all is their king, Leonidas.
06:37Unlike the others on this list,
06:39his death wasn't about intrigue or disease.
06:41It was about turning his own body into the final line of defense.
06:46For two days, Leonidas and his small force of Greeks
06:49used the terrain to perfection,
06:51neutralizing the Persians' massive numbers.
06:54They held the pass.
06:56But then, betrayal.
06:58A local Greek named Ephialtes shows the Persian king, Xerxes,
07:03a mountain path to outflank them.
07:05Leonidas finds out he's surrounded.
07:07It's over.
07:08He dismisses the rest of the Greek allies,
07:10telling them to get out while they can.
07:12But he stays.
07:14He and his 300 Spartans,
07:16plus a few other loyal Greeks,
07:18are going to see this thing through to the end.
07:20In the final, climactic battle,
07:23Leonidas fights at the very front.
07:25Accounts say he was killed relatively early in the fighting,
07:28falling in a hail of arrows and spears.
07:31But his death wasn't the end of the fight.
07:33It was the reason for the rest of it.
07:36The remaining Spartans,
07:37seeing their king fall,
07:39go absolutely berserk.
07:40They fight their way to his body
07:42and drag it back to a small hill.
07:45For the next hour,
07:46the battle rages over Leonidas' corpse.
07:49His men, exhausted and wounded,
07:51form a circle around him,
07:53fighting with swords, hands, and teeth,
07:55until they are finally cut down by a storm of arrows.
07:59Even in death,
08:01the Persians weren't done with him.
08:02A furious Xerxes,
08:04enraged by his losses,
08:06ordered Leonidas' head to be cut off
08:08and his body to be crucified.
08:10It was meant to be the ultimate disgrace,
08:12but it completely backfired.
08:15It just cemented his legend.
08:17Leonidas didn't die in a palace.
08:19He died on the front line,
08:21and his dead body became the last piece of ground
08:24his men would surrender.
08:25His corpse was the final fortress.
08:29Richard I, the Lionheart, of England
08:33Richard the Lionheart,
08:35the legendary Crusader king,
08:38the Bane of Saladin,
08:39the guy with a reputation
08:41for being an absolute terror on the battlefield.
08:44So how does a guy like that check out?
08:46A duel with a Saracen emir?
08:48A heroic last stand in the Holy Land?
08:51Not even close.
08:53He died because of a petty squabble over treasure,
08:56taken down by a boy with a crossbow
08:58and a frying pan.
08:59I'm not kidding.
09:01It's March 1199.
09:03Richard is besieging a minor castle,
09:06Chalut Chabrol, in France.
09:08The reason?
09:09A rumor that a local peasant
09:11had found a trove of Roman gold.
09:14Richard, always short on cash,
09:16wanted his cut.
09:17One evening, he's walking the perimeter
09:19of the castle, no armor on,
09:21when a defender on the walls
09:23takes a pot shot at him.
09:24The defender, a boy named Pierre Bazille,
09:27was apparently using a frying pan
09:29as a makeshift shield.
09:30He fires a bolt,
09:32and it hits Richard in the left shoulder,
09:34near his neck.
09:35At first, Richard just shrugs it off.
09:37But the wound was serious.
09:39Back in his tent,
09:40a surgeon makes a complete mess
09:42of removing the arrowhead.
09:44The wound quickly becomes infected.
09:46For the next 12 days,
09:48the Lionheart,
09:49the great warrior,
09:50lies in his tent
09:51as gangrene sets in.
09:53The wound turns black,
09:55it stinks,
09:56and he slowly,
09:57painfully,
09:58rots from the inside out.
10:00He finally dies on April 6th,
10:02with his mother,
10:03Eleanor of Aquitaine,
10:04by his side.
10:06But here's the twist.
10:07Before he died,
10:09Richard ordered the boy
10:10who shot him
10:10to be brought in.
10:12In a final act of chivalry,
10:14he forgave him,
10:15gave him a bag of silver,
10:16and ordered him set free.
10:18A truly noble gesture.
10:20Except,
10:21as soon as Richard was dead,
10:23his men ignored the order.
10:24They flayed the boy alive
10:26and then hanged him.
10:28So,
10:28the great Lionheart dies,
10:30not in a blaze of glory,
10:31but from a festering wound
10:33inflicted by a kid
10:34during a shakedown
10:35over some rumored treasure.
10:37History, man.
10:38It's merciless.
10:41Shaka Zulu.
10:42Shaka Zulu.
10:43The man who revolutionized
10:46warfare in southern Africa,
10:47who turned the Zulu clan
10:49into a fearsome,
10:50expansionist empire
10:51with his short,
10:52stabbing spear,
10:53the Ikla,
10:54and his brutal,
10:55bullhorn formation.
10:57This was a man
10:58who lived and breathed
11:00violence and conquest.
11:02The years leading up
11:04to his death were dark.
11:05After his mother,
11:06Nandi,
11:07died,
11:08Shaka plunged
11:09into a period of extreme,
11:10grief-fueled tyranny.
11:12He ordered mass killings
11:14of anyone deemed
11:15not mournful enough,
11:16forbade the planting
11:17of crops,
11:18and even ordered
11:19that no milk be consumed.
11:21He basically alienated
11:23everyone around him.
11:24His two half-brothers,
11:26Dingane and Mushlingana,
11:28saw their chance.
11:30Along with a trusted advisor
11:32named Ubofa,
11:33they plotted
11:34to take him out.
11:35On September 22, 1828,
11:38they made their move.
11:40They approached Shaka
11:41in his royal crawl
11:42at Quaducuza.
11:44It wasn't a battle,
11:45it was an execution.
11:47They found him
11:48with only a small retinue,
11:50not his full bodyguard.
11:52Mbofa struck the first blow,
11:54and then his brothers
11:55moved in,
11:56stabbing him repeatedly.
11:58And here's the savage detail.
12:00They used the very weapon
12:02he had perfected,
12:03the Ikla.
12:04They killed the master
12:05with his own tool.
12:08As he lay bleeding
12:09on the ground,
12:10surrounded by the men
12:11who were supposed
12:11to be his family,
12:13Shaka is said
12:14to have uttered
12:14a chilling prophecy.
12:16He told them
12:17they would never rule,
12:18and that the real power
12:20in the land
12:20would go to
12:21the swallows,
12:22the white settlers
12:24who were beginning
12:24to arrive.
12:25He was right.
12:27His brother's reign
12:28was plagued by conflict,
12:30and the Zulu kingdom
12:31would eventually fall
12:32to the British.
Comments