March 14th: Today in 1757 Admiral John Byng was executed by firing squad for ‘failing to do his utmost‘ in a naval battle with the French. Voltaire later satirized his execution by saying that the British executed an Admiral now and again to encourage the others (pour encourager les autres), it seems to have been effective, for quite awhile British Admirals were the world’s best by far.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 14th, 2006 at 3:15 am and is filed under History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.