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The Old World’s Medieval Untouchables and Other Random Historical Facts

Khalid Elhassan March 17, 2020 33 min

Pancho Villa - Mexican Revolution — General Pancho Villa before a firing squad in 1912. Wikimedia

26. Pancho Villa Was Spared at the Last Moment From Execution by Firing Squad

General Pancho Villa before a firing squad in 1912. Wikimedia

Mexico’s rebel alliance split when the new government failed to enact promised land reforms. Villa, appointed a brigadier general, supported the new government against his former comrades, but struck a superior general during a quarrel and was sentenced to death. He was saved from the firing squad at the last moment by the arrival of a telegram from the president ordering his imprisonment instead.

Villa escaped and fled to the US, but returned to Mexico in 1913, after securing American support to fight against a new government that had seized power in a coup. He again achieved considerable success, and local military commanders appointed him governor of the state of Chihuahua. As governor, he confiscated grand haciendas and broke them up into smaller plots which he redistributed to the widows and families of fallen revolutionaries. It was during this period that Villa gained international fame, and was depicted in the press as a romantic bandit-warrior who took from the rich and gave to the poor.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.