Felice Orsini
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Felice Orsini | |
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Born | Felice Orsini 10 December 1819 |
Died | 13 March 1858 | (aged 38)
Cause of death | Execution by guillotine |
Felice Orsini (Italian pronunciation:
Early life
Felice Orsini was born at
Arrest and revolutionary activities
Orsini was arrested in 1844 along with his father, implicated in revolutionary plots and condemned to imprisonment for life. The new pope,
Orsini was elected member of the Roman Constituent Assembly in 1849, and after the fall of the
In 1856, he briefly visited Great Britain and received a favourable welcome. The daily news had published the first English translation of his tale of escape.[citation needed] He published The Memoirs and Adventures of Felice Orsini in 1856. In 1857, he also published an account of his prison experiences in English under the title of The Austrian Dungeons in Italy, which led to a rupture between him and Mazzini. Then he began to negotiate with Ausonio Franchi, editor of the Ragione of Turin, which he proposed to make the organ of pure republicans.[1]
Orsini became convinced that Napoleon III was the chief obstacle to Italian independence and the principal cause of the anti-liberal reaction throughout Europe.[1] He plotted his assassination with the logic that after the emperor's death, France would rise in revolt and the Italians could exploit the situation to revolt themselves. He went to Paris in 1857 to conspire against the emperor.
At the end of 1857, Orsini briefly visited England, where he contacted gunsmith Joseph Taylor and asked him to make six copies of a
Assassination attempt on Louis Napoleon
On the evening of 14 January 1858, as the Emperor and Empress were on their way to the
Orsini himself was wounded on the right temple and stunned. He tended his wounds and returned to his lodgings, where police found him the next day.
The attempted assassination actually increased Napoleon III's popularity. Because the bombs had been made and tested in England, it caused a brief anti-British furore in France because of suspicion of British involvement. The Emperor refused to escalate the situation and the indignation eventually died down.
Letter to Napoleon III
On 11 February Orsini wrote his famous letter to Napoleon, in which he exhorted him to take up the cause of Italian independence—a cause Napoleon III had already supported in his youth. Modern historians have even suspected that Napoleon wrote some of the letter himself.[
Judgment
Orsini was sentenced to death and went calmly to the guillotine on 13 March 1858. Accomplices Pieri was executed and Gomez condemned to hard labour for life. Di Rudio was sentenced to death, which was commuted to life imprisonment on
References
- Works by or about Felice Orsini at Internet Archive
- St. John Packe, Michael (1957). The Bombs of Orsini. London.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Adams, Jad (September 2003). "Striking a Blow for Freedom". History Today.
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Orsini, Felice". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 20 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 331. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the