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29-744: Note: Varies by jurisdiction Note: Varies by jurisdiction A massacre is an event of killing people who are not engaged in hostilities or are defenseless. It is generally used to describe a targeted killing of civilians en masse by an armed group or person. The word is a loan of a French term for "butchery" or "carnage". Other terms with overlapping scope include war crime , pogrom , mass killing , mass murder , and extrajudicial killing . Massacre derives from late 16th century Middle French word macacre meaning "slaughterhouse" or "butchery". Further origins are dubious, though may be related to Latin macellum "provisions store, butcher shop". The Middle French word macecr "butchery, carnage"

58-646: A man who did the President's bidding to save my job". Nevertheless, having been brought to the White House by limousine and sworn in as acting attorney general, Bork wrote the letter dismissing Cox. Initially, the Nixon White House claimed to have fired Ruckelshaus, but as an article published the next day by The Washington Post pointed out, "The letter from the President to Bork also said Ruckelshaus resigned", catching Nixon lying. The night he

87-750: A sampling error of 2 to 3 per cent. In the days that followed, numerous resolutions of impeachment against the president were introduced in Congress, and the impeachment process against Richard Nixon was underway. However, the House Judiciary Committee did not approve its first article of impeachment until July 27 the following year – more than nine months after the Saturday Night Massacre – when it charged Nixon with obstruction of justice. Two more articles of impeachment quickly followed. Within two weeks, Nixon had made

116-666: Is again used in 1695 for the Sicilian Vespers of 1281, called "that famous Massacre of the French in Sicily" in the English translation of De quattuor monarchiis by Johannes Sleidanus (1556), translating illa memorabilis Gallorum clades per Siciliam , i.e. massacre is here used as the translation of Latin clades "hammering, breaking; destruction". The term's use in historiography was popularized by Gibbon's History of

145-576: Is first recorded in the late 11th century. Its primary use remained the context of animal slaughter (in hunting terminology referring to the head of a stag) well into the 18th century. The use of macecre "butchery" of the mass killing of people dates to the 12th century, implying people being "slaughtered like animals". The term did not necessarily imply a multitude of victims, e.g. Fénelon in Dialogue des Morts (1712) uses l'horride massacre de Blois ("the horrid massacre at [the chateau of] Blois") of

174-647: The Battle between Duke Charles and Sigismund , Duke Charles defeated King Sigismund 's troops in the Battle of Stångebro in Sweden in 1598 and then made an expedition to Finland, where he defeated the resistance during the Cudgel War and executed the estates in Turku without consulting Finland's leading nobles . An early use in the propagandistic portrayal of current events was the " Boston Massacre " of 1770, which

203-503: The Saturday Night Massacre —the dismissals and resignations of political appointees during Richard Nixon 's Watergate scandal . Robert Melson (1982) in the context of the " Hamidian massacres " used a "basic working definition" of "by massacre we shall mean the intentional killing by political actors of a significant number of relatively defenseless people... the motives for massacre need not be rational in order for

232-479: The United Kingdom is a notable exception since it has three separate jurisdictions because of its three separate legal systems . Also, China has the separate jurisdictions of Hong Kong and Macao . This article related to international law is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Saturday Night Massacre The " Saturday Night Massacre " was a series of resignations over

261-454: The " White House Plumbers ". Continuing Cox's investigation, Jaworski did look at broader corruption involving the White House. While Nixon continued to refuse to turn over the tapes, he agreed to release transcripts of a large number of them. Nixon said he did so partly because any audio pertinent to national security would have to be redacted from the tapes. There was further controversy on November 7 when an 18½-minute portion of one tape

290-892: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1781–1789), who used e.g. " massacre of the Latins " of the killing of Roman Catholics in Constantinople in 1182. The Åbo Bloodbath has also been described as a kind of massacre, which was a mass punishment carried out on the Old Great Square in Turku on November 10, 1599, in which 14 opponents of the Duke Charles (later King Charles IX ) in Finland were decapitated ; in

319-604: The Solicitor General of the United States, Robert Bork , as acting head of the Justice Department, to fire Cox. Both Richardson and Ruckelshaus had given personal assurances to Congressional oversight committees that they would not interfere, but Bork had not. Although Bork later claimed he believed Nixon's order to be valid and appropriate, he still considered resigning to avoid being "perceived as

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348-713: The U.S. Senate, promised not to use his authority to dismiss the Watergate special prosecutor unless for cause. When Cox issued a subpoena to Nixon, asking for copies of taped conversations recorded in the Oval Office , the president refused to comply. On October 12, 1973, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the subpoena, rejecting Nixon's claims of executive privilege . On Friday, October 19, Nixon offered what

377-490: The Watergate probe, while Congress , having largely taken a wait-and-see policy regarding Nixon's role in the scandal, quickly turned on Nixon and initiated impeachment proceedings that would end in Nixon's resignation . The actual origin of the phrase is unknown; it first appeared in writing two days after the events, in a Washington Post article by David S. Broder on October 22, but even in that article, Broder writes that

406-601: The assassination of Henry I, Duke of Guise (1588), while Boileau , Satires XI (1698) has L'Europe fut un champ de massacre et d'horreur "Europe was a field of massacre and horror" of the European wars of religion . The French word was loaned into English in the 1580s, specifically in the sense "indiscriminate slaughter of a large number of people". It is used in reference to St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in The Massacre at Paris by Christopher Marlowe . The term

435-638: The break-in of the Democratic National Committee's offices at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., on June 17, 1972. The appointment was created as a career reserved position in the Justice Department, meaning it came under the authority of the attorney general, who could only remove the special prosecutor "for cause", e.g., gross improprieties or malfeasance in office. Richardson had, in his confirmation hearings before

464-443: The decision to resign; following a televised speech in which he announced his intentions, he did so on August 9, 1974. Nixon felt political pressure to allow Bork to appoint a new special prosecutor, and Bork, with Nixon's approval, chose Leon Jaworski . There was a question whether Jaworski would limit his investigation to the Watergate break-in or follow Cox's lead and look into other corrupt activities, such as those involving

493-807: The dismissal of special prosecutor Archibald Cox that took place in the United States Department of Justice during the Watergate scandal in 1973. The events followed the refusal by Cox to drop a subpoena for the Nixon White House tapes at President Richard Nixon 's request. During a single evening on Saturday, October 20, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Archibald Cox; Richardson refused and resigned effective immediately. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox; Ruckelshaus refused, and also resigned. Nixon then ordered

522-616: The events were already "being called" the Saturday Night Massacre. In a 2017 article in The Washington Post , Amy B. Wang attributed the phrase to humorist Art Buchwald , based on the recollection of Sally Quinn . U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson had appointed Cox in May 1973 after promising the House Judiciary Committee that he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the events surrounding

551-419: The federal state forms a single jurisdiction for that purpose. A jurisdiction may also prosecute for crimes committed outside its jurisdiction once the perpetrator returns. In some cases, a citizen of another jurisdiction outside its own, can be extradited to a jurisdiction in which the crime is illegal even if it was not committed in that jurisdiction. Unitary state are usually single jurisdictions, but

580-424: The killings to be intentional... Mass killings can be carried out for various reasons, including a response to false rumors... political massacre... should be distinguished from criminal or pathological mass killings... as political bodies we of course include the state and its agencies, but also nonstate actors..." Similarly, Levene (1999) attempts an objective classification of "massacres" throughout history, taking

609-505: The regulation establishing the special prosecutor's office. Congress was infuriated by what it saw as a gross abuse of presidential power – as were many Americans, who sent an unusually large number of telegrams to the White House and Congress in protest. Less than a week after the Saturday Night Massacre, an Oliver Quayle poll for NBC News indicated that, for the first time, a plurality of U.S. citizens supported impeaching Nixon, with 44% in favor, 43% opposed, and 13% undecided, with

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638-463: The second being given to the phenomenon of many small killings adding up to a larger genocide . Jurisdiction (area) Each state in a federation such as Australia , Germany and the United States forms a separate jurisdiction. However, certain laws in a federal state are sometimes uniform across the constituent states and enforced by a set of federal courts; with the result that

667-441: The term to refer to killings carried out by groups using overwhelming force against defenseless victims. He is excepting certain cases of mass executions , requiring that massacres must have the quality of being morally unacceptable . The term "fractal massacre" has been given to two different phenomena, the first being the fracturing of Aboriginal tribes by killing more than 30% of the tribe on one of their hunting missions, and

696-510: The third-most-senior official at the Justice Department, Solicitor General Robert Bork , to fire Cox. Bork carried out the dismissal as Nixon asked. Bork stated that he intended to resign afterward, but was persuaded by Richardson and Ruckelshaus to stay on for the good of the Justice Department. The political and public reactions to Nixon's actions were negative and highly damaging to the president. The impeachment process against Nixon began ten days later, on October 30, 1973. Leon Jaworski

725-400: Was appointed as the new special prosecutor on November 1, 1973, and on November 14, 1973, United States District Judge Gerhard Gesell ruled that the dismissal had been illegal. The Saturday Night Massacre marked the turning point of the Watergate scandal as the public, while increasingly uncertain about Nixon's actions in Watergate, were incensed by Nixon's seemingly blatant attempt to end

754-603: Was employed to build support for the American Revolution . A pamphlet with the title A short narrative of the horrid massacre in Boston, perpetrated in the evening of the fifth day of March, 1770, by soldiers of the 29th regiment was printed in Boston still in 1770. The term massacre began to see inflationary use in journalism in the first half of the 20th century. By the 1970s, it could also be used purely metaphorically, of events that do not involve deaths, such as

783-479: Was fired, Cox's deputy prosecutor and press aides held an impassioned news briefing and read the following statement from him, "Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people [to decide]." On November 14, 1973, federal district judge Gerhard Gesell ruled firing Cox was illegal absent a finding of extraordinary impropriety as specified in

812-577: Was found to have been erased. Nixon's personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods , said she had accidentally erased the tape by pushing the wrong foot pedal on her tape player while answering the phone. Later forensic analysis determined that the tape had been erased in several segments – at least five, and perhaps as many as nine. Nixon's presidency succumbed to mounting pressure resulting from the Watergate scandal and its cover-up. Faced with almost certain impeachment and conviction, Nixon resigned. In his posthumously published memoirs, Bork said Nixon promised him

841-726: Was later known as the Stennis Compromise – asking the infamously hard-of-hearing Senator John C. Stennis of Mississippi to review and summarize the tapes for the special prosecutor's office. Cox refused the compromise that same evening, and it was believed that there would be a short rest in the legal maneuvering while government offices were closed for the weekend. However, on the following day (Saturday), Nixon ordered Attorney General Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned in protest. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus also refused and resigned. Nixon then ordered

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