April 28 in Military History — On This Day

Battle of Cerignola

Outnumbered, Gonzalo de Córdoba dug a ditch and an earth rampart across the French line of advance, lined it with arquebusiers, and waited. The French gendarmes — the finest heavy cavalry in Europe — charged into the ditch and were shot to pieces at point-blank range. Nemours was killed. The Spanish lost perhaps a hundred men.

Generally reckoned the first battle in history decided by gunpowder small arms. Gonzalo had grasped what nobody else had: that massed arquebusiers behind a field fortification could stop the armoured charge that had ruled European battlefields for five hundred years. His reorganisation of Spanish infantry into combined pike-and-shot units became the tercio, and the tercio ruled Europe for the next 150 years.

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⚔️📍 Dongo, Lake Como, Italy1945

Mussolini Captured and Executed by Partisans

Italian partisans captured Benito Mussolini while he was attempting to flee to Switzerland hidden in a German convoy. He was shot the following day along with his mistress Clara Petacci; their bodies were hung upside down at a Milan gas station.

Mussolini's ignominious end contrasted sharply with the imperial grandeur he had promised Italians and symbolized the complete collapse of European fascism.

Outcome

Mussolini killed; Italian Fascism ends