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From the guillotine to the spider hole, history is full of shocking moments where the mighty came crashing down. Join us as we count down the most stunning falls from political power ever recorded! Our countdown includes the executions of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and Nicolae Ceaușescu, Napoleon's catastrophic defeats, Nixon's Watergate disgrace, and more! Which fall hit hardest? Let us know below!
Transcript
00:00But the guards have no intention of protecting the family, and this night will soon become the brutal closing chapter
00:06of three centuries of Romanov rule.
00:09Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we are counting down our picks for the most stunning falls from political influence.
00:16Her most grueling battle is with another woman, her own cousin.
00:22Number 10. The fall of Saddam Hussein.
00:25For 24 years, Hussein ruled Iraq through fear, patronage, and an immense security apparatus that made opposition and dissent seem
00:34impossible.
00:35At his peak, his image dominated public life, his enemies vanished, and his word carried the force of law.
00:42Saddam Hussein was the kind of guy who, um, failure was not an option, and he didn't care about its
00:51horrific effects on humanity.
00:53Then came the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Baghdad within weeks.
00:58Saddam disappeared from public view, sparking nearly a nine-month manhunt.
01:03On December 13th, American forces found him in a cramped spider hole on a farm near Adar, south of Tikrit.
01:15I heard the operator come on the radio and say, we've got jackpot.
01:20Footage of the once-feared dictator undergoing a medical exam stunned Iraqis worldwide.
01:25Convicted of crimes against humanity, Hussein was hanged on December 30th, 2006,
01:30guarded by the very soldiers of the coalition he had spent decades vilifying.
01:35I am convinced that he did not think he was going to die.
01:38Whether he thought he was going to live out the rest of his life on a Mediterranean island or something,
01:43I don't know.
01:44Number 9. Collapse of the Soviet Union and Gorbachev's Fall
01:48When Mikhail Gorbachev took power in 1985, he inherited one of the world's two superpowers.
01:54Determined to modernize a stagnating system, he launched Glasnost and Perestroika,
01:59reforms meant to revive Soviet communism, not dismantle it.
02:04For the first time in 70 years, the Soviet leadership was allowing multi-candidate elections for a powerful body.
02:11President Mikhail Gorbachev knows that he's taken a risk.
02:14Instead, decades of suppressed nationalist and economic tension burst into the open,
02:19and republic after republic moved toward independence.
02:23A 1991 coup failed to remove him, but instead hastened the collapse it was meant to prevent.
02:28The coup, only 72 hours old, was crumbling.
02:32Troops were withdrawn from Moscow's center.
02:35The coup leaders were placed under arrest.
02:37By December, the Soviet Union itself was dissolving, while Gorbachev still occupied the Kremlin.
02:42On Christmas Day, 1991, he resigned in a live televised address,
02:47and the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the final time.
02:51It was replaced minutes later by the Russian tricolor.
02:54Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is no more.
02:58Number 8. Fall of Maximilien Robespierre
03:01As one of the leading figures of the French Revolution,
03:04Maximilien Robespierre helped engineer the Reign of Terror.
03:08That period involved sending thousands to the guillotine,
03:12in the name of revolutionary virtue, while political rivals vanished.
03:16In the last week of September 1793,
03:19Robespierre began to make the link between virtue and state terror more explicit.
03:24By July 1794, even former allies feared they were next,
03:29and on the 27th, a coalition of deputies turned on him.
03:33Cornered at the Hotel de Ville, Robespierre was arrested after a chaotic scene
03:37and a self-inflicted gunshot that reportedly shattered his jaw.
03:46He was then dragged and bandaged before the very convention he had once dominated.
03:51On July 28th, 1794, he was beheaded at the Place de la Révolution,
03:57alongside few followers,
03:59receiving the same fate he used to claim the lives of others.
04:02A badly wounded Robespierre was ultimately finished off by the guillotine.
04:07But arguments about the man still rage.
04:09Number 7. Execution of Nicolae Ceausescu
04:13Nicolae Ceausescu was the last communist dictator of Europe.
04:17The Romanians faced 24 years of Nicolae Ceausescu's totalitarian rule.
04:22This dictator governed through a personality cult
04:25and the feared Securitate Secret Police.
04:27While Romanians endured shortages of food, heat, and electricity,
04:32he filled cities with his portraits.
04:34In December 1989, protests erupted nationwide,
04:37and a planned rally in Bucharest turned on him
04:40when the crowd began jeering instead of applauding.
04:43He and his wife Elena fled by helicopter,
04:46but were captured within hours and faced a military tribunal on Christmas Day.
04:50It was a show trial.
04:52It lasted two hours.
04:54Convicted of genocide and economic sabotage,
04:57The couple was executed by firing squad that afternoon.
05:01State television, once a tool of Ceausescu's propaganda,
05:04partly broadcast footage of his trial and death
05:07to the nation he had tormented for nearly a quarter century.
05:11Ten years after the revolution, Romania has a democracy.
05:14But the choices Romanians are making are similar to the choices that were made for them.
05:19Number 6. Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots
05:22crowned Queen of Scotland as an infant,
05:24Mary briefly reigned as Queen Consort of France,
05:27and held a strong hereditary claim to the English throne.
05:30This made her a source of anxiety to her cousin,
05:33Queen Elizabeth I of England.
05:35The Queen of Scots is, and always will be,
05:47political turmoil, rebellion, and some controversial decisions
05:51eventually forced Mary to flee to England in 1568, seeking protection.
05:57Instead, she spent nearly 19 years in confinement across English castles.
06:01Mary's held in castles all over England, but she never accepts being a prisoner.
06:07Since you have detained me forcibly, if you suspect that I desire my liberty,
06:12I cannot help it. I am a free princess.
06:14As the Babington plot to assassinate Elizabeth intensified,
06:18Mary was viewed as a constant threat and became implicated.
06:21She was tried and convicted of treason,
06:24then beheaded at Fotheringay Castle on February 8th, 1587.
06:28Her son, James VI of Scotland,
06:31would later unite the two crowns she never held together.
06:36The first stroke goes right into the back of the neck.
06:39She continues praying,
06:42into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit, in Latin.
06:45Number 5. Impeachment of Richard Nixon.
06:47In 1972, he won re-election,
06:50in one of the largest landslides in American history.
06:53He seemed politically unstoppable,
06:55and his victory stood at the height of his influence.
06:57The global chess game paid off.
07:00In 1972, Nixon won a landslide victory,
07:04being re-elected with 60% of the popular vote.
07:08But behind the scenes,
07:09the Watergate break-in and its cover-up
07:11were unraveling into a constitutional crisis.
07:14Secret Oval Office recordings
07:16revealed Nixon's direct role
07:18in obstructing the investigation of the scandal.
07:20As public support collapsed,
07:22and senior Republicans told him
07:24impeachment and conviction were now certain,
07:26Nixon resigned on August 9th, 1974.
07:29He became the only U.S. president
07:31to ever step down from office.
07:33Always remember,
07:35others may hate you,
07:38but those who hate you don't win,
07:41unless you hate them.
07:44And then, you destroy yourself.
07:46The image of Nixon's arms raised in a final salute
07:50before the helicopter lifted off
07:51from the White House law
07:52became the defining symbol
07:54of his political downfall.
07:55The emotion of the moment,
07:57saying goodbye to so many friends,
07:59left me drained, empty.
08:01Number 4.
08:01Abdication of Tsar Nicholas II.
08:03For more than three centuries,
08:06the Romanov dynasty ruled Russia
08:07as one of the world's most powerful royal houses.
08:10Nicholas II inherited that legacy,
08:13governing an empire
08:14stretching from Poland's to the Pacific.
08:16He controlled the government.
08:17He was the supreme head of the Orthodox Church.
08:20He was worshipped as a demigod
08:23by most of his subjects.
08:26Yet, military catastrophes,
08:28food shortages,
08:29and revolutionary unrest
08:30steadily weakened his authority.
08:32When the First World War
08:33intensified Russia's problems,
08:36confidence in the monarch
08:37collapsed completely.
08:38In March 1917,
08:40amid strikes and mutinies in Petrograd,
08:43Nicholas is forced to abdicate the throne,
08:45and the rebels drive him into exile,
08:48far from the seat of power.
08:50Nicholas abdicated,
08:51ending the dynasty's claim to the throne.
08:53What followed was even more shocking.
08:55The former imperial family
08:57were held under guard,
08:59moved around locations,
09:00and ultimately imprisoned by the Bolsheviks.
09:03On the night of July 16th through 17th, 1918,
09:07the radical revolutionary forces
09:08executed Nicholas
09:09and his family in the basement.
09:12In the first wave of the attack,
09:13the room fills with smoke.
09:15The guards stagger out to catch their breath,
09:18many of them sickened by the carnage.
09:20Number three,
09:21fall of Romulus Augustulus
09:23of the Western Roman Empire.
09:24He was installed Western Roman Emperor
09:27as a teenager in October 475
09:29by his father,
09:31the general Orestes.
09:33He became a figurehead
09:34for a weakened realm
09:35that had spent decades
09:36losing wealth, authority,
09:38and territory beyond Italy.
09:40After only 10 months,
09:42the Germanic commander Odoacer
09:44crushed Orestes' forces,
09:46captured Ravenna,
09:47and deposed the boy emperor.
09:49He sent him away to live with relatives,
09:51even granting him a pension
09:52before declaring himself
09:53the ruler of Italy.
09:54Unlike the usurpers before him,
09:56Odoacer declined to crown
09:58a new Western emperor
09:59and sent the imperial regalia
10:01to Constantinople,
10:03ending the office itself.
10:05Romulus was spared,
10:06granted a pension,
10:07and exiled to a villa in Campania,
10:10where he lived quietly for decades.
10:12In 476,
10:14a Gothic commander
10:15quietly told the last Roman emperor
10:18of the West
10:18he was out of a job.
10:20The emperor withdrew
10:21to his villa by the sea.
10:23Nobody cared
10:24or even noticed.
10:26For generations afterwards,
10:28historians still debate
10:29whether Romulus' deposition
10:31was the symbolic moment
10:32that closed the book
10:33on the Western Roman Empire.
10:35With Rome's passing,
10:36the West's long love affair
10:38with its memory began.
10:40Number 2.
10:41Fall of Napoleon Bonaparte.
10:43From minor Corsican nobility,
10:45Napoleon Bonaparte rose
10:47to crown himself
10:48Emperor of the French
10:49in 1804.
10:50At his prime,
10:51he built an empire
10:52through astonishing military victories
10:54that reshaped Europe's map.
10:56He is ambition in motion.
10:59As time went by,
11:00he only had confidence in himself.
11:03He considered himself invincible.
11:06Kings were overthrown,
11:07borders redrawn,
11:08and rival powers
11:09repeatedly humbled
11:10until the momentum broke.
11:12His invasion of Russia in 1812
11:14proved catastrophic,
11:16devastating the Grand Army,
11:17and shattering the myth
11:19of his invincibility.
11:20Coalition forces entered Paris
11:22in 1814,
11:23forcing his abdication
11:24and exile to Elba.
11:26Stripped of his old rank
11:28and title,
11:28he was granted a new one,
11:31Emperor of the Isle of Elba.
11:34Remarkably,
11:35he returned within a year
11:36and briefly reclaimed power
11:38during the Hundred Days.
11:39Yet British and Prussian forces
11:41crushed him
11:42at the Battle of Waterloo
11:43in June 1815.
11:45Exiled a second time
11:47to the remote island
11:47of St. Helena,
11:48Napoleon died there
11:50on May 5th, 1821.
11:52He died,
11:53deliriously whispering,
11:55France,
11:56army,
11:58chief of army,
12:00Josephine.
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12:13Number 1.
12:15Execution of Louis XVI
12:16and Marie Antoinette
12:18Before the French Revolution,
12:19Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
12:21stood as the pinnacle
12:23of absolute monarchy.
12:24They lived within
12:25the splendor of Versailles,
12:27and their court's extravagance
12:28became increasingly at odds
12:30with a kingdom buried in debt,
12:32food scarcity,
12:33and social inequality.
12:35Let them eat cake.
12:37That's such nonsense.
12:39I would never say that.
12:40As rebellion swept France
12:41in 1789,
12:43the royal family
12:44was stripped of its authority
12:45and placed under guard.
12:52After a failed escape
12:53to Varennes in 1791,
12:55what remained of public trust
12:57in the king
12:58was destroyed.
12:59Convicted of treason,
13:01Louis was executed
13:02on January 21st, 1793
13:04at the Place de Révolution.
13:06Marie Antoinette followed
13:07nine months later
13:08on October 16th,
13:10after a rather
13:10controversial trial.
13:12Their executions shattered
13:14a centuries-old belief
13:15that kings ruled
13:17by divine right.
13:18It was said that
13:19to the very end
13:20the queen displayed
13:21courage and dignity.
13:23Which of these falls
13:24was the most devastating?
13:25Let us know
13:26in the comments section.