Andreas Hofer - Court Martial and Execution

Court Martial and Execution

Officers holding the court martial disagreed on the exact sentence until they received a message from Milan. It was supposedly from the Viceroy, transmitting Napoleon's order to "give him a fair trial and then shoot him." Later Napoleon claimed to Prince Metternich that Hofer was executed against his wishes.

Andreas Hofer was executed by a firing squad on February 20, 1810. He refused a blindfold and gave money to a corporal in charge, telling him to "shoot straight". Hofer became a martyr in Germany and Austria and a rallying point against the power of Napoleon.

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