10 Historical Backstabs That Backfired Big Time

By the 5th century CE, it’s fair to say the Roman Empire had seen better days. Or at least the western portion of it; the east still had plenty of life in her yet. Beset by barbarians, corruption, and famine, the empire was ripe for plunder. Enter the fearsome warlord Attila. 

The Hun king swept through western Europe ransacking what is now France. The incursion was halted by a coalition of Visigoths, Saxons, Alans, and Romans led by the Roman general Flavius Aetius at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields in the summer of 451 CE. He just about held off another Hunnic incursion into Italy the following year.

Flavius Aetius’s reward for his stellar service to Rome was treachery at the hand of the emperor Valentinian III. Believing Aetius intended to place his son on the throne in the place of Valentinian’s firstborn, the emperor hatched a plot to slay the last great Roman general. He summoned the general before him and accused him of trumped-up charges of drunkenness and insubordination, which Aetius naturally denied. Valentinian and a court chamberlain Heraculis killed the general. When the emperor ruminated on the act, according to one source, a courtier apparently said to him:

You have just cut off your right hand with your left.

The ominous prediction held true, for Valentinian’s days were numbered. Less than six months later, two of Aetius’s subordinates got their revenge on Valentianian and Heraculis. Right in the middle of the city, at the Campus Martius, the two men attacked and killed the emperor and his chamberlain in broad daylight. The numerous guards posted nearby didn’t lift a finger to aid Valentinian. 

When you think of the Renaissance, chances are the Italian city of Florence is one of the first places that comes to mind. Though a republic in name, the city was run by the powerful Medici family. Cosimo de Medici was the de facto ruler of Florence for 30 years until his passing in 1464. 

The Medicis made their fortune in banking, and spent lavishly to support the burgeoning arts movement in the city. With this wealth and acclaim naturally came jealousy and a plot by a rival family, the Pazzi, to knock the Medicis from their perch.

Pope Sixtus was in on the scheme, or rather expressed approval of the removal of the Medicis from power, and pledged to work with whomever ousted them (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). The plan was really quite simple in the end - assassinate Lorenzo (the current ruler) and his younger brother Guiliano. They wanted to finish off the siblings at the same time and to strike outside the city walls, but the brothers weren’t so obliging and kept separating when the attacks were supposed to commence. After months of waiting (and discovering Guiliano wouldn't be at the feast they originally planned to strike at), the plotters decided at the last moment to attack the Medicis during Mass.

Guiliano was slain at the scene and stabbed 19 times, with Francesco Pazzi making the killing blow. Lorenzo managed to escape the sacrilegious ambush with a minor neck wound. During the attack, Jacopo Pazzi was supposed to rouse the city’s population against the Medicis but soon found the Pazzi family badly underestimated the level of public support for the Medicis. Francesco was dragged from his bed by an angry mob and summarily hung alongside several other conspirators. Jacopo fled the city but was soon captured and executed along with scores of his family. But apparently, death alone was not sufficient punishment for Jacopo.

His body was exhumed from the Pazzi family tomb and reburied outside the city walls. Some local children dug up the remains and dragged Jacopo back through the city before chucking him into the river Arno. 

The Pazzi Conspiracy to destroy the Medici family backfired spectacularly. Not only did the scheme strengthen the Medicis' hold on Florence, but the surviving members of the Pazzi family were also banished from Florence. As for Pope Sixtus, the Medicis had little sympathy when he passed away a few years later, with an envoy remarking:

Today at 5 o'clock His Holiness Sixtus IV departed this life – may God forgive him!

You probably know him from his portrayal in the movie 300 as the severely deformed Spartan who seeks acceptance from his peers. When he’s rebuffed by Leonidas, Ephialtes turns his crimson cloak to a black one and leads Xerxes’s men around a hidden pass to flank the Spartans. While elements of that story are true, much of it is simply made up for the movie (hardly the only point of deviation from history in that picture).

The real Ephialtes wasn’t a Spartan, nor was he disfigured - at least the sources don’t make any mention of it. The simple truth was that he was an otherwise unremarkable individual who spotted a chance to get rich quickly at the expense of his fellow Greeks. 

As in the movie, he approached Xerxes with his offer and led a portion of the men around the Greek army to secure victory. In the film, a disappointed Leonidas says of the treachery, “You there, Ephialtes, may you live forever.”

In a certain sense, he did. Today the word ephialtes means “nightmare,” a reference to treachery unforgotten many centuries later. But his mortal life didn’t last much longer. 

His hopes of riches were dashed when the Persian fleet came a cropper at Salamis and the shattered expedition was finished off at Plataea. Fearing retribution for his deeds, he fled north to Thessaly but a price was put on his head at a gathering of Greek leaders at Pylai. He was finally slain at the hands of a man named Athenades, not actually in relation to the bounty on his head. Nonetheless, the grateful Spartans still rewarded Athenades.  

Not content with unifying Japan under his banner, Toyotomi Hideyoshi launched an audacious bid to become emperor of China, beginning with the conquest of Korea in 1592. That the invading force just so happened to be comprised of tens of thousands of battle-hardened warriors just done fighting one another, was but a happy coincidence. The samurai swept through the peninsula, reaching Seoul in just 19 days. But the incursion stalled when a reliable supply route couldn’t be secured.

The cause of that breakdown? One outstanding Korean admiral named Yi Sun-sin who inflicted a series of catastrophic defeats upon the Japanese fleet. Yi’s dazzling victories were achieved with minimal losses (not bad for a guy with no prior naval experience). But with great acclaim also comes great jealousy and Yi’s position was coveted by Won Gyun, a fellow officer who was involved in a plot to remove Yi from his command. 

When Yi was imprisoned for disobeying orders that would have sent his fleet into a trap, Won was handed the reigns. In his one and only naval battle as commander, he fell completely for a ruse by his Japanese counterpart and lost all but 12 of the Korean navy's warships. The hapless commander didn’t survive the battle, while Yi's allies in court managed to convince the king of his innocence. 

After he was restored to his post, Yi was ordered to scuttle the few ships that remained but instead took the remnants of the fleet and won his greatest victory, despite being outnumbered more than 10 to 1. A year later, Yi perished in the final engagement of the conflict; he led from the front and was struck by a stray bullet. As he lay dying below deck, his nephew donned his armor to take his place and see out the victory. 

Yi Sun-sin died a hero and his statue takes pride of place in the Korean capital. Won Gyun’s tomb is far more modest.

Lü Bu was a legendary ancient Chinese general and warrior whose martial skill was matched only by his capacity for betrayal. During the Three Kingdoms period, he was one of several warlords vying for control in the wake of the Han Dynasty's collapse.

The actual historical sources for his life were penned much later and haven’t yet been fully translated into English. Much of his story comes from the 14th-century novel The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a dramatized version of the events. So this is very much an item that should be taken with a hefty pinch of salt.

Lü Bu cut his teeth as an officer in service of a magistrate named Ding Yuan. He became the adopted son of Ding Yuan, but when the powerful warlord Dong Zhuo came onto the scene, Lü Bu jumped at the chance to betray his adopted father in exchange for the best horse in the land and a place at Dong Zhuo’s side. He lopped off poor Ding Yuan’s head and became the foster son of Dong Zhuo. He served his new master well. For a while.

The novel suggests Lü Bu’s wandering eye got the better of him and an affair with one of Dong Zhuo’s maids caused a rift between father and adopted son. There’s no mention of this in the actual histories, of course, but what good is a novel without a romantic side plot? Whatever the truth, Lü Bu did what he did best - he betrayed his adopted father and killed him. 

Dong Zhuo was a brutal warlord whose demise wasn’t exactly mourned across China. Lü Bu spent the next few years moving from one warlord to another. He was apprehended in his sleep by two subordinates (presumably sick of the constant shifts in loyalty) and presented to another great warlord of the era Cao Cao. When the mighty Lü Bu complained of the tightness of his bonds, Cao Cao - who was certainly no stranger to the art of subterfuge - apparently remarked that “binding a tiger must be tight.” 

Lü Bu made one last plea for his life, offering to serve Cao Cao, but this was rebuffed on the advice of Liu Bei, whom Lü Bu had the unfortunate habit of calling “big ears.” Those big ears were deaf to Lü Bu’s pleas for mercy and the tiger went out with a whimper, strangled on the orders of Cao Cao.  

The eldest son of Alexander the Great's bodyguard and later ruler of Egypt. Ptolemy Ceraunus (also written as Keraunos) was passed over for the Egyptian throne in favor of his younger brother Philadelphus who ruled as Ptolemy II. 

Ceranus roughly translates to “thunderbolt” - a comment on the his impatient nature. After he was disinherited, he linked up with another of Alexander’s successful diadochi (“successors”), Seleucus (pictured), to topple yet another Alexandrian alum, Lysimachus, and claim his kingdom. After Lysimachus was vanquished, Seleucus and Ceraunus met at a temple to pay tribute to the gods and plan their next move. The impetuous Ceraunus knifed his patron in the back and claimed Lysimachus’s kingdom as his own.

To seal the deal, he offered to marry the widow of Lysimachus, his own half-sister Arsinoe (inbreeding was very much in fashion among the diadochi). She agreed, so long as her children would be spared. At the wedding ceremony, Ceraunus proved you can’t kid a kidder - even with kids involved - and had two of his nephews slain. Arisnoe fled to Egypt where she married, for a third time, her full-brother Ptolemy II. 

Treachery may have won Ceraunus a crown but it didn’t help him to keep it. His underhanded ways created many enemies and few friends. He managed to fend off the initial challenges to his throne but the chaos prompted an army of Galatians (Celts who migrated to Asia Minor) to swoop in. 

Ceraunus refused to lend aid to the neighboring tribes and, in doing so, signed his own death certificate. His would-be allies became enemies and joined up with the Galatian king Bolgius. Ceraunus was defeated in battle and the victorious Celts mounted his head on a spear. An ignoble end to a thoroughly ignoble career.