Don John of Austria punished a mutiny by massacring the prisoners, not the mutineers

Evidence

The means that he employed to stop the riot was quite simply not the exemplary punishment of his guilty men but the massacre of the soldiers’ victims: more than four hundred prisoners, women and children. To speak plainly, a gruesome atrocity. M´armol makes it clear that he at least thought that Austria’s underlying motive was rage (ira) at the humiliation of suffering terrible casualties in fighting against a largely civilian “enemy” who resisted unbowed right to the end. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1046

Categorization

• CANDY: A stark, memorable historical anecdote: a commander quelled his own troops’ looting by killing the looting victims instead of the looters.