Felice Orsini

Felice Orsini

Felice Graf Orsini (* 1819 in Meldola (Emilia-Romagna) ; † (executed) March 13, 1858 in Paris ) was an Italian lawyer and was killed by an assassination attempt on Napoléon III. known.

Life

Felice's father was a member of the Carbonari secret society , and young Felice also felt drawn to this organization at an early age. When he was old enough, however, the carbonari organization in Italy no longer existed. Under the pressure of reprisals she had evaded to France and there almost disappeared into insignificance. Therefore Felice joined the organization of the Genoese lawyer Giuseppe Mazzini "Young Italy" and became one of his most loyal supporters. Orsini took part in the conspiracy of the Bandiera brothers in 1844 and was therefore sentenced to life in the galley , but released in 1846 because the newly elected Pope Pius IX. amnestied the more than 2,000 political prisoners for pledges not to disturb public order any more. Felice and his father were among them.

But already in 1848 Felice Orsini was active again as a revolutionary. First he served in the army of the state of Piedmont , which tried in vain to chase the Austrians out of Lombardy , where he resigned after a few weeks with the rank of major. Then, after the revolution in the Papal States broke out and the Pope was driven out, Orsini became a member of the newly proclaimed “Roman Republic”. But after just a few weeks, the republicans had to flee Rome , as the pope's troops, supported by the French army, Napoleon III. sent to restore the Papal States, marched into the "Eternal City" and started a wave of arrests. Orsini fled to Nice . There he met other fugitive revolutionaries from almost all of Europe, including the Russian nobleman Alexander Herzen and the German Georg Herwegh .

Orsini remained in close contact with Mazzini and took part in a number of his organization's ventures, all of which failed miserably. In December 1854 Orsini traveled to Sibiu in Transylvania , where he intended to incite the troops stationed there from the areas of Italy occupied by Austria against the government of the Habsburgs . He failed. He was arrested and spent a year in the Castello San Giorgio in Mantua . From there he managed a spectacular escape in March 1856, the exact course of which he himself described in his memoir, published in London in 1857. His representations were later confirmed by Emma Herwegh , who organized the escape (see "Felice Orsini e Emma Herwegh. Nuovi Documenti", edited by Alessandro Luzio. Florence 1937).

Reasons for the Napoleon assassination attempt

Poster depicting Orsinis

Orsini was disappointed in his mentor Mazzini and left for London . There he met the French doctor Simon Francis Bernard, who preached a radical New Jacobin ideology and therefore had to seek shelter in England. According to many witnesses, this ex-ship's doctor and enthusiastic amateur photographer Bernard was the spiritus rector of the assassination attempt on the French Emperor Napoleon III . However, there is also reason to believe that Orsini was seeking revenge on Napoleon for helping the Pope put down the revolution in Rome in 1848.

Orsini himself testified at the trial that he acted for two reasons: First, he wanted Napoleon III. punish him for breaking the infamous Carbonari Oath. As a very young nobleman, the future French emperor, then still known as Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, joined the revolutionary Carbonari in Rome. However, he fled Rome after just a few months, and later tried to do everything possible to quickly forget this episode in his life. The second reason was the desire to make the world aware of the situation in Italy, where the division among several states continued to favor the continued occupation of much of the Apennine peninsula by Austria-Hungary .

The assassination

As a hobby photographer, Bernard had acquired some knowledge of chemistry. He was familiar with the effects of fumed mercury, discovered by the Englishman Howard in 1799 . He therefore bought all the ingredients he needed in a London pharmacy and made the substance with which he filled the containers made by the communist Thomas Allsop . Trying it out was entrusted to another participant in the conspiracy, the editor-in-chief of the socialist newspaper "The Reasoner" George Holyoake . Orsini also managed to win three other compatriots (Antonio Gomez, Giuseppe Andrea Pieri and Carlo di Rudio) for the company. After the successful test, he set off for France on November 28, 1857 from London. The others followed him at short intervals. Orsini carried the fiery mercury with him, while the strange-looking containers, declared as “novel devices for gas lighting”, reached Paris via Ostend and Brussels .

There, in the French capital, the assassination attempt took place on January 14, 1858. However, the conspirators suffered setbacks from the start. Shortly before the plan was carried out, Pieri was arrested by a detective inspector. The remaining assassins carried out their plan anyway. When the French emperor's motorcade appeared in front of the opera on Rue Le Peletier at nine o'clock in the evening, they hurled four bombs. The force of the explosions was so enormous that the street lights went out, the glass roof over the entrance to the opera shattered and more than a hundred people were injured. The exact number of those affected was later given as 156, eight of whom died from their injuries. The emperor Napoleon III. and his wife were miraculously not hurt.

With the help of the arrested Pieri, it was easy for the police to arrest the other conspirators, including Felice Orsini.

Process and the consequences

Orsini confessed to the crime during the trial and gave detailed information about his motives. According to reports from several witnesses, Orsini's appearance was so dignified and serious and at the same time so aristocratic and casual that he became the darling of the audience within a few days. Allegedly Napoleon III. Orsini was so impressed by the liberal rhetoric that he sent the police chief to prison to convey his regret to Orsini that the execution of the death penalty was unfortunately unavoidable for reasons of state.

On March 13, 1858 Orsini and Pieri were publicly in the Rue de la Roquette on the guillotine executed . Gomez and di Rudio were sentenced to life imprisonment. Three years later, di Rudio managed to escape from Cayenne , where he was serving his sentence, to America, where he made it to major in the American Civil War . He did not die in San Francisco until 1913, leaving memoirs. Gomez was released from prison after many years and returned to his homeland in Naples . His further fate is unknown.

In Great Britain, the attack led to a government crisis. To prevent the abuse of British hospitality by extremists from the continent, the Palmerston government introduced a law against the conspirators, the so-called Conspiracy Bill. The law was voted down, however, as France did everything possible to denounce England as a “hoard” of extremists and British MPs felt their pride was offended by such attacks. The government resigned. Bernard was also acquitted by a jury because the jury did not want to be "intimidated" by the French emperor. Both Allsop and Holyoakes got off scot-free, as the prosecutor, under the impression that Bernard had been acquitted, dropped the charges against Allsop and Holyoakes' involvement only became known after 30 years. A few months after the assassination, Napoleon III met. and the Sardinian Prime Minister Cavour in the Vosges . They agreed that Sardinia would provoke Austria to war and that France would then come to help Sardinia. It was the first step towards the unification of Italy.

literature

• Jörg von Uthmann. Attack. Murder with a clear conscience. Berlin 1996, ISBN 3572012309 .

Web links

Commons : Felice Orsini  - collection of images, videos and audio files