Felice Orsini’s plot to assassinate Napoleon III at the opera

Posted in Famous crimes, Historical articles, History, Revolution, Royalty on Thursday, 6 February 2014

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This edited article about Napoleon III first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 544 published on 17 June 1972.

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor Napoleon III by Tancredi Scarpelli

“In 1855, I was placed in a dungeon in the heart of the great fortress of Mantua.” Felice Orsini gazed at the sea of faces dimly seen by the light of the lowered gas lamps. “I will now tell you how I made my escape from this place . . .”

Felice Orsini was launched once more on one of his lectures which had made him something of a minor celebrity in London and the provinces.

It was all too easy to understand why the respectable and worthy citizens who attended his lectures were so impressed. He was tall and handsome and there was an air of nobility about him which particularly appealed to the ladies. The stories that he told also added to his glamour. They were stories of a patriotic Italian who had been caught up in a series of conspiracies, imprisonments and escapes, while fighting to free Italy from the yoke of Austrian domination.

What was surprising was that all these stories were true. As Orsini’s father had been killed in an uprising, it was hardly surprising that his son had grown up a revolutionary who could think of nothing else but revolt and assassination. By the time he was 17 he had been condemned to penal servitude for life for his part in various conspiracies. A general amnesty in 1846, however, had set him at liberty, when he once again became an expert agitator.

Finally arrested again, he had been sent to the fortress of Mantua, from where he had made a fantastic escape. By using a series of disguises, he had managed to reach England, where he had kept himself in comfortable circumstances with lectures on his adventures as an Italian revolutionary.

But although he was now in a strange land, far away from his own country, Orsini had not forgotten he was an Italian, dedicated to the cause of his country’s independence. He was now firmly of the opinion, too, that Napoleon III of France was the chief obstacle to that independence, and the principle cause of the anti-liberal attitudes in Europe which helped to keep Italy subjugated. It followed, therefore, that it was vital that Napoleon should be forcibly removed from power by the only means available to a simple revolutionary – assassination.

To carry out the plan he had in mind, Orsini needed a handful of fellow conspirators. The first of them he found by accident while giving one of his lectures in Birmingham. After his talk he was approached by a fellow Italian and refugee named Luigi Pieri, who was now a teacher of languages. It needed only a few minutes conversation with Pieri for Orsini to realise that he had met a fellow patriot who was willing to risk his life for the cause of Italian independence.

Spurred on by his meeting with Pieri, Orsini started to comb the city’s foreign cafes and cosmopolitan haunts for more men who would be willing to join in his conspiracy. He eventually found two men, a Neapolitan named Gomez, and a Venetian gentleman named Carlo de Rudio, who had been driven to crime by poverty. They were both unstable and resentful men with a grudge against society.

Orsini was now ready to put his plan into operation. First, he arranged for a Birmingham hardware merchant to make him a number of bombs which could be split up into two sections, with a hole in the end of one of the sections in which the charge could be inserted. Incredibly, the merchant did not report the matter to the police, and eventually he delivered the bombs to Orsini, who then asked a waiter he had met to take the bombs over to Belgium for him. The waiter had been told that they were to do with a new invention for the production of gas, and the customs officer at Ostend accepted this story, with the result that the potentially lethal baggage was passed through. Orsini followed him shortly afterwards, carrying the charges in small packages distributed about his person.

Picking up the parcels at Ostend, Orsini travelled with them to Paris, where he obtained a furnished apartment. By January 10th he had been joined by Pieri, Gomez and de Rudio, who had taken the precaution of checking into different hotels.

With the help of Gomez, Orsini charged his bombs with the explosive. All that was needed now was a suitable opportunity to use them. It came much sooner than Orsini had expected. Opening the morning paper, Orsini noted that the Emperor and Empress had agreed to visit the opera on January 14 for a benefit programme. Hastily calling the others together, he sent Pieri and de Rudio off to reconnoitre the scene where they would make their attempt. They returned with the information that the best place to throw the bombs was outside the theatre.

On the day of the proposed assassination, the conspirators met for a drink at Orsini’s apartment. After several toasts, Orsini then distributed the bombs among them, and shortly afterwards they left the house to make their way separately to the theatre. What Orsini did not know was that amongst his three companions was one who had already seriously jeopardised the whole venture.

Luigi Pieri, overcome with the knowledge that he was shortly to become an instrument of destiny, had not been able to refrain from speaking to a chance acquaintance he had met on the way to Paris. “I am embarked on a course of action which may well cost me my life,” he had said in doom-laden tones. It was not a remark which meant much in itself but somehow it was one which reached the ears of the Brussels police which set them to thinking. An investigation followed, which unearthed the fact that the comment had been made by a notorious and dangerous Italian agitator by the name of Pieri. This was quite enough for the Belgian police, who forthwith sent a telegram to the French authorities, giving them Pieri’s description and warning them that he was now in Paris, and probably bent on mischief.

Unaware that the French police were not looking for him, Pieri reached the theatre first, where he was immediately recognised by an alert plain clothes officer. Pieri was swiftly arrested and whisked away to the nearest police station. Asked to empty his pockets, he produced a loaded revolver, a stiletto and a bomb. Confronted by this formidable arsenal on his desk, the commissionaire mentally congratulated himself for having brought in a dangerous potential assassin. It does not seem to have occurred to him that his captive might well have accomplices who were still outside the theatre waiting for the arrival of the Emperor.

Certainly the Emperor and Empress were still in deadly danger. Orsini and Gomez were not stationed outside the theatre, waiting only for their arrival. At half past seven they suddenly heard the loud clatter of hooves. The drummers outside the theatre began to beat out a salute, and the waiting guard of honour was called to attention. A few minutes later the Imperial carriage appeared.

Gomez was the one to hurl the first bomb. Screams and the sound of shattered glass mingled with the explosion. But Gomez could not see how successful he had been as all the gas lamps in the street had gone out as the bomb had detonated. Orsini then threw his bomb wildly into the darkness, and there was further pandemonium as the terrified people who had come to see the arrival of the Emperor were showered with falling girders and huge chunks of collapsing masonry.

Torches were lit almost immediately afterwards to reveal the Emperor and Empress clambering out of the shattered ruins of their coach, apparently unharmed. Both of them had had a miraculous escape. But there were others who had not been so lucky. Eight people had been killed and another 56 had been seriously injured. Among them was Orsini, whose face had been cut by a flying glass.

Staggering away from the scene, Orsini managed to find a carriage, which took him back to his apartment.

But Orsini was not to remain free for long. After the explosions, Gomez had fled into a nearby restaurant, where his strange, almost demented manner, aroused the suspicion of one of the waiters, who went off at once and brought a police sergeant in from the street, Gomez was arrested.

Shortly afterwards, the police tracked down Orsini and de Rudio, thanks to information supplied to them by Gomez.

The trial of the four men lasted for only two days. At the end of it, Gomez was sentenced to penal servitude for life and the other three were condemned to die. De Rudio, however, was later reprieved.

The deaths of Pieri and Orsini on the scaffold did not end the affair. The French public voiced loudly their indignation that England should have given shelter to foreign refugees who were obviously potential assassins. The outcry against England became so hysterical that there was even talk of an invasion. The English answer to this threat was the formation of a Volunteer Force which consisted of 120,000. It was the Volunteers who eventually became in 1907, the Territorial Army, which played such a large part in World Wars I and II.

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