Joseph Fieschi

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Joseph Fieschi

Joseph Gérard Fieschi or Joseph Marco Fieschi or Giuseppe Fieschi or Giuseppe Marco Fieschi (born December 13, 1790 (?) In Murato on Corsica , † February 19, 1836 in Paris ) was a French assassin and the main conspirator of the assassination attempt on the French King Louis -Philippe I from 1835.

Life

Born into the poor pastoral family of Ludovico (Louis) Fieschi and his wife Maria Lucia de Pomonto , Joseph Fieschi experienced a difficult childhood marked by family tragedies . In 1804, under the tyranny of General Joseph Morand , his father was arrested and sentenced to six years in prison. He escaped punishment and died in 1808 far from the island. A year later his older brother Thomas, who fought in the imperial troops , fell in the battle of Wagram .

Joseph Fieschi joined the Grande Armée in 1806 . This enabled him to learn to read and write. In 1812 he took part in the Corsican Legion of Napoleon's campaign to Russia . In the Battle of Polotsk (August 17/18, 1812), after the death of his superior, Fieschi took the lead in a group of soldiers and prevented a Cossack troop from escaping .

Back in France, he soon moved to the Kingdom of Naples in the service of Joachim Murat . Only after the Peace of Paris on May 30, 1814 did he return to Corsica. When Napoleon left the island of Elba and his “ rule of the hundred days ” began, he again joined the emperor. After the Battle of Waterloo (June 18, 1815) he said goodbye and switched back to Joachim Murat, who wanted to recapture his throne with a flotilla composed of six ships and a total of 250 sailors and soldiers in Corsica . However, the unrealistic plan failed. Fieschi was captured at the beginning of October 1815 together with Joachim Murat and his troops in Pizzo , Calabria , and sentenced to death, but pardoned as a French subject.

After his return to Corsica he had to serve a ten-year prison sentence for several thefts and went to Paris when the July Revolution of 1830 broke out , where he got himself a pension and various jobs under the pretext that he was a political martyr. When this was discovered, he was released and left to face extreme need.

Assassination attempt on Louis-Philippe I.

Fieschi's assassination attempt (German copper engraving)
Fieschi's assassination attempt (picture by Eugène Lami )
Jacques Raymond Brascassat (1804–1867): "The head of Giuseppe Fieschi on the day after his execution, February 20, 1836"

Fieschi, who was without real political convictions, came up with the plan to assassinate the king. For this purpose he devised a hell machine consisting of 25 shotgun barrels in the form of an improvised volley gun and detonated it on the Boulevard du Temple on the anniversary of the July Revolution (July 28, 1835) . Marshal Édouard Adolphe Mortier and ten other people from the king's entourage were killed immediately, the king himself only slightly injured. Seven people later died from their injuries. Fieschi, who, for his part , had suffered injuries from the cracking of individual runs of his murder machine, could no longer flee and was immediately arrested. In a trial that opened on January 30th and was also internationally acclaimed, he was sentenced to death and executed on February 19, 1836 with co-conspirators Théodore Pépin and Pierre Morey on the guillotine à la barrière Saint-Jacques in the 14th arrondissement . His severed head, which was used by painters such as Jacques Raymond Brascassat as an object of study, was examined in detail by medical professionals who, in accordance with the phrenological teaching at the time, looked for relevant clues on the assassin's skull. Several head busts made after the death mask was removed are still preserved today.

Consequences of the attack

The so-called September Acts were a consequence of the attack . Since the opposition press was accused of having prepared the climate for the attack, censorship was reintroduced on September 9, 1835 , and the penalties for all press offenses were drastically increased.

Trivia

The Vormärz poet Ernst Ortlepp addressed Fieschi's attack as early as 1835, that is, while the assassin was still alive, in a psychologizing night piece .

literature

  • Joseph Fieschi, the notorious maker of the infernal machine that he burned down on July 28, 1835 on the Boulevard du Temple in Paris. A faithful account of the biography of this criminal, this outrageous murder, and his execution with his co-defendants Morey & Pepin. Processed according to the original French documents. [Without location] 1836 ( online at Bayerische Staatsbibliothek digital)
  • Strange trial and condemnation of the murderer Fieschi and his co-defendants before the court of peers in Paris. Collected from authentic sources and faithfully presented according to the truth. Lewent's Verlagbuchhandlung, Berlin 1836 ( online at Google Books ).
  • Maxime Du Camp : Les ancètres de la commune. L'attentat Fieschi , Paris 1877
  • René de Pont-Jest: Les régicides. Fieschi. La machine infernale. 3rd edition Paris: Dentu 1888. Reprinted in Boston: Adamant 2001. ISBN 0-543-87556-3

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ December 13, 1790, which is regularly referred to as his birthday, is evidently the day on which Fieschi was baptized: Cour des pairs. Procès Fieschi, avec une notice historique sur l'auteur de l'attentat du 28 juillet, ornée de son portrait. Marseille 1835, p. 3 ( online at Google Books); unlike what is stated here, December 13th in 1790 was not a Friday, but a Monday. The year information is also inconsistent: Fieschi himself stated his age as 40 and 41 years in the course of the studies in 1835/36.
  2. ^ Giuseppe Marco Fieschi: Attentat du 28 July 1835. Volume 3, France. Cour des pairs, Imprimerie royale, 1835
  3. ^ Armand Fouquier: Fieschi, Morey, Pepin et Boireau. Machine infernale de 1835. In: Causes celebres de tous les peuples. Issue 23. Lebrun & Co., Paris 1858, p. 12 ( online at Gallica).
  4. ↑ A lithograph by Honoré Daumier dated August 7, 1835 shows Fieschi dit Gérard with head bandage: Musée Carnavalet , Histoire de Paris, G.1201 .
  5. ↑ Guillotine dans le XIVème arrondissement (1832-1851) (Memento of March 10, 2020 at Internet Archive ).
  6. ^ Musée Carnavalet, Histoire de Paris, P1070 .
  7. ^ E.g. Musée Carnavalet, Histoire de Paris S3561 .
  8. ^ Ernst Ortlepp: Fieschi: A poetic night piece. L. Fort, Leipzig 1835 ( online at Google Books ).
personal data
SURNAME Fieschi, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fieschi, Joseph Gérard (full name); Fieschi, Joseph Marco (full name); Fieschi, Giuseppe; Fieschi, Giuseppe Marco
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French assassin
DATE OF BIRTH December 13, 1790
PLACE OF BIRTH Murato in Corsica
DATE OF DEATH February 19, 1836
Place of death Paris